I’m sure you read about this in the news:
The Gulf of Mexico is being strangled to death and with it all the living creatures who call it home.
The Gulf is being strangled to death by oil, greed, politics, inaction and a lack of imagination. But mostly it’s the oil. Consumptive greed is but the root cause.
We need your help.
We don’t need commissions and investigations and anger. We already have plenty of frustration and anger, enough to last for a long time.
We need action. We need to, first, stop the hemorrhaging. We need, first, to stop the volcano of oil. There will be plenty of time later for commissions and investigations and finger pointing and, maybe, arrests and prosecutions.
A lot of people, these days, find it somehow satisfying to shout about smaller government. They are foolish and small-minded. What we need right now is just about the biggest federal government we can imagine.
We need all the power and resources and energy and creativity of our people brought together by government to stop this disaster and stop it now.
The death of the Gulf of Mexico would mean the death of our region and if our region dies can our nation survive?
Mr. President. I voted for you and I support you. With tears of joy streaming down my cheeks as the historic importance of that vote swept over me, I cast my ballot with a political hope I’d long ago forgotten.
I want you to succeed. You were handed the worse national troubles since Hoover turned over the White House to Roosevelt in 1930. It could not have been much worse. We understand that and you’re digging us out of that dreadful hole and we’re grateful.
But, Mr. President, all your good works will be for naught if the Gulf of Mexico is destroyed.
The nation gets 30 percent of its seafood from the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly 20 percent of the Gulf is now closed to fishing. We may be testing Gulf seafood for contamination for a decade or longer.
Less than 30 percent of our oil comes from the Gulf. That’s a dreadful trade-off.
But it’s not just about the seafood. It’s about a natural resource so profoundly important our human minds cannot fully comprehend it. It’s about wildlife, sure, and fish and marine mammals and countless plants and animals.
But it’s also about people, the people of the Gulf of Mexico; millions and millions of people who – for one reason or another – are so intrinsically tied to the Gulf of Mexico that it is part of them. And we are part of it.
Allowing the Gulf of Mexico to die is allowing us to die – all of us, all living creatures through whose very being flows the Gulf of Mexico.
Mr. President, allowing the Gulf of Mexico to be strangled will be – and is – a crime of the highest magnitude.
The United States of America is better than that. We can soar to the moon and back. We can create astounding advances in technology, energy, medicine, compassion.
We need you now. We elected you to right a sinking ship of state. Act now and be the captain we elected you to be. We cannot save a ship from the bottom of a dead sea.
Respectfully,
The People of the Gulf of Mexico.
