Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Katrina deja vu

Re: In other words, I'm right.
er — (archived)

No, you're not. The spill has not been totally plugged, the bulk of the oil is still offshore, the dispersed hydrocarbons are causing unknown mischief deep below the surface, damage to coastal communities human and natural, will continue for decades, and they will not recover fully in a lifetime. I've witnessed that effect myself on a local scale, personally. Once an area is altered, dredged, filled,the mangroves pulled out, the turtle grass ripped up, or seawalls put in, it never "comes back" fully. You don't need oil. The coast can spring back from a hurricane, but the destruction from a causeway or a bridge is forever.

Damage has been done, and we haven't a clue how much. But those of us who live here and know these waters have seen the damage accumulating over our lifetimes,long before this spill, and in places where there are no spills and it is confirmed by the memory of the old timers. And the TB's of this world go on, "See, nothing catastrophic has happened yet, build, clear, spray, dredge, develop, drill. We don't have enough condos yet."

Tom, you have no idea what the Gulf Coast was like when I was a kid. And the stories of decline we heard from our grandparents back then were even more heartbreaking. But I suppose to you it's all just a pathetic greenie fantasy, nostalgia for aging hippies, tired old farts spinning yarns about the days when the crab were so plentiful they were a nuisance to anglers, and when you couldn't sleep by the water on the nights the mullet were running up-river. Those were times when a man in a rowboat could feed his family from the sea, with enough left over to buy anything he needed the sea did not provide.

You may be right, but you've lost. And you don't even know it.

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