Hands Across the Sand Miami and Sierra Club say NO to offshore drilling (Summer 2010)

Hands Across the Sand Event May 18 at Noon

We are once again teaming up with local environmental groups like the Urban Paradise Guild, to make a point. Tar sands, natural gas, coal, and oil. For every type of dirty fossil fuel we use, there is an equally nasty and destructive way of getting it out of the ground and into our environment. That’s why this Saturday we'll stand together on sandy beaches and lakefronts from Pensacola to Miami to send a clear message to our leaders that we won’t allow fossil fuels to wreck our planet.

Now more than ever our voices count. Right now, President Obama is considering whether to permit the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which will carry tar sands oil all the way from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast. Top scientists say the tar sands are "game over" for the climate.

May 18 at noon, in more than 25 places around Florida, we join hands to protect our environment. Come to 5th Street on Miami Beach (drive to 501 Ocean Drive). We will join with members of the Urban Paradise Guild out on the sands. In four short years, Hands Across the Sand/Land has grown into a global movement. Now it's your turn to join this powerful grassroots movement to take on climate change by taking a stand against dirty fuels and embracing clean energy.
- Phil Compton, Regional Representative, Sierra Club Florida Healthy Air Campaign

Gulf Oil Update - November 2012

A year and a half after the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico of 2012, fairness hearings will begin in New Orleans over the proposed settlement. BP's Macondo well blowout killed 11 workers and caused an environmental disaster in the gulf. The court will try and resolve economic claims, property damage claims and medical claims. Environmental groups have garnered support on stopping oil drilling off the coast of Florida, because of the damage seen on the Lousiana coast.

National Wildlife reports on Long Term Impacts of Macondo Oil Spill

Although Oil is no longer easily visable on the surface, all of it has gone somewhere. Scientists have found significant amounts on the Gulf floor and the oil has washed into wetlands and beaches.

In October, a 3-mile oil slick detected in the Gulf was confirmed to be oil from the 2010 disaster. The slick illustrates what evironmental organizations have been saying all along, that the long-term effects of the spill are ongoing.

Those effects include:
Unbalanced Food Web - The disaster hit at the peak of breeding season for many species of fish and wildlife. The oil's toxicity may have hit egg and larval organisms, diminishing or wiping out those age classes. Without the generations, the populations will dip and the cascading food effects on bigger organisms may not show up for years yet.

Decreased Fish and Wildlife Populations After the Exxon Valdez disaster, it was four years till we realized the herring population had collapsed, and twenty years later it has still not recovered. The Louisana coastal marshes are home to many species of fish and sea shore life.

Read more on how coastal wetlands and wildlife are faring? Click here.
Read what Sierra Club has to say about the BP Disaster. Click here.

Other Conservation Issues:

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