The oil spill in the Gulf may be just the first domino in a collapsing series of events that make life in the Southeast U.S. something fit for a Stephen King movie.
The reality of the BP oil spill holocaust is just beginning to hit home. Not only are Gulf coast residents panicked about the destruction of this priceless natural jewel, they may, quite literally, lose everything. How so? Consider these developments.

A conference being held this week looks at the "Post Growth" world economy. While looking at the many topics covered, I found this interesting ecological footprint calculator.
Click HERE to try the calculator.

Despite BP's efforts to cover up the extent of the devastation in the Gulf, the more we learn about what's really happening, the more obvious the solutions.

Reading the news reports and interviews about the nightmare unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, I found myself sinking into a deepening funk. Having lived in the region for several years, I always considered it one of the natural crown jewels of U.S. territories.

Now, the prognosis for the area is one of decades of poison and destruction of nature's beauty. Who's responsible for the spill? On one level, of course, it's every one of us who drives a car, flies in a plane, or eats a piece of food trucked across the country. We're all oil addicts. Maybe it was inevitable that it end this way, with our shortsightedness and self interest laying the groundwork for the destruction of our oceans.

Why such gloom and doom? Read for yourself. What can/should we do now?

1. Seize all of BPs assets. They have continued to attempt to make profits throughout this debacle, putting only a small fraction of their efforts into stopping the leak. The smaller government rhetoric heard in much of the media (none of which has ever been reflected in reality by any federal administration since Eisenhower) has actually led to corporate control of government. BP is running the show, not the White House. That's a lose lose scenario for all of us.

2. Acknowledge the real size of the leak (it's huge) and treat it as the global emergency it is. Watch this informative video.

Watch another, even scarier video HERE

3. Start criminal proceedings against all individuals who willingly shrugged off safety measures allowing this disaster to happen. This will lead to the highest levels--not just BP executives, but U.S. oil executives and politicians.

4. Clearly, the oil economy is no longer healthy for human beings. It's time to get very serious about changing direction. How? Check out THIS SITE. Here's hoping we smarten up before we poison the rest of the planet.

With the ability to bend without special tools or heat, PEX tubing makes an ideal plumbing solution when it's time to repair or remodel. It can also connect easily to existing copper.

It's hard to know whether to cheer or weep about Dow's announcement yesterday that their net income surged by 2,300 percent, because they're selling more plastic wrap.
Let's face it. We're all deeply involved with plastic. Look around your home or office and count the number of items that contain plastics. From a manufacturing perspective, it's almost the perfect product: moldable, waterproof, flexible, long lasting (although that depends to an enormous degree on the item in question, the type of polymer).

Economists yesterday were cheering about Dow's announcement of enormous profits from the sale of plastic wrap and plastics for cellphones and other gadgets. But as a chemist at Bill McDonough's (Cradle to Cradle) office pointed out to me recently, not all plastics are created equal.

Most plastic, contrary to what you may think, is not recycled--only about 6.8 percent, according to Discover. It either languishes in landfills, or worse, may make it's way to waterways, or end up in the Pacific Gyre, the nightmarish swirling mass of discarded plastic that is growing like a cancer in the Pacific ocean.

About 70 percent of our plastics are made from domestic fossil fuels. Did you happen to notice what's happening in the Gulf of Mexico this week? That disastrous oil spill isn't the fault of plastic manufacturers. But we all bear some blame--every time we buy a pre-packaged salad or unwrap an overpackaged, plastic-wrapped pallet of windows.

So what's the solution? That we stop using plastics? Obviously, that's not going to happen right away. But a change in the plastic culture is clearly needed. My suggestions for both manufacturers and consumers.

* Use it Again. Reduction and reuse of packaging. Manufacturers could make pallet wrap removable and reusable. This will mean accepting used wrap back at the plant, and offering a small recovery incentive to end users who participate.

* Make it Hurt. This tactic is already in play in many municipalities, including my own, here in Maine. If I don't recycle my plastic, I have to pay ever increasing fee for putting it into the landfill.

* Add Consumer Caveats. Why not label plastics with information labels, telling consumers where to recycle them, and what will happen to the plastics if they don't manage them responsibly?

Now here are a couple of ideas for Dow--something constructive to do with all that surging income from sale of plastics.

* Change to Bio-Based Plastics. New R&D is underway on corn-based polymers and other materials that may replace polymer plastics. Polymers don't break down naturally, so they're essentially toxic to the natural world. It's time for plastics that are truly biodegradable--that break down into natural molecules. It looks like Cargill Dow is already working on this problem. But it's time to move faster.

* Clean Up the Gyre
The Pacific Gyre is an immense source of already produced plastics. It can't simply be ignored. Companies making a profit from these non-degradable products have a responsibility to help deal with their mess. I'm betting someone will figure out how to turn a profit at the same time by harvesting some of that 26 million square kilometers of debris, containing about 100 million tons of plastic.