How to help with the oil spill from home.

From NOW Magazine
I’m at a loss as to how to help with the BP oil spill when I live nowhere near it. What are we supposed to do?

By ADRIA VASIL

Q: I’m at a loss as to how to help with the BP oil spill when I live nowhere near it. What are we supposed to do?

A: Twelve weeks into watching the Gulf of Mexico drown in oil, millions of North Americans have started flipping the channel. Why? Disaster fatigue.

Most people are at a loss as to how to get involved and be part of the solution (outside of packing bags and heading to the Gulf). After all, if the most powerful government in the world and a multi-billion-dollar corporation can’t figure out how to fix things, how are we supposed to?

Think outside the well.

Turns out you can help wash the sticky stuff off struggling birds without physically going there.

Adopt your own pelican or heron through the International Bird Rescue Research Center, which has rescued birds at more than 150 oil spills and whose executive director has been named one of Oceana’s Ocean Heroes of the Year. You’ll get an adoption certificate with the band number of your bird and the place and date of its release (ibrrc.org/adopt_a_bird.html). Up your donation by giving adopted birds as b-day gifts.

Of course, every org involved in the cleanup welcomes a generous donation. But instead of simply sending $20, consider organizing a creative fundraiser at work/summer school/your local community centre – anything from an organic bake sale to a dance-athon to an inventive pledge drive. (One York student just emailed me wanting to start a living-plastic-free pledge.) Just make sure you’re sending collected money to a reputable org, since disasters trigger a tsunami of scammers.

You could also ask guests coming to your backyard BBQ/family reunion/wedding to bring a donated item from the wish list of a wildlife org. In the case of Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary, for instance, that could be laundry detergent, dish soap, heating pads with auto shut-off, bath towels, stainless steel scrubbing pads or rain ponchos. The National Wildlife Federation wants old digital cameras, clipboards, pens, bug repellent, gas gift cards, even GPS units – all for their wildlife surveillance teams.

Collecting your beard trimmings and mailing them off to be made into booms might not do all that much for the cause, but convincing your hair salon to join the collection drive will certainly boost volume.

True, hair booms were rejected by Unified Area Command for the Deepwater Horizon/BP response for being considerably less effective than sorbent booms, but hair mats (laced with mushroom spores) are still super-useful at sopping up oil that hits the coast (matteroftrust.org/programs/hairmatsinfo.html).

Try being an armchair lobbyist. Honestly, the National Audubon Society isn’t just asking for physical volunteers; it’s calling on the public to call and email officials about freezing expansion of offshore drilling on the American east coast.

Why stop at the border?

WWF Canada says Canada’s regulatory framework is even weaker than the U.S.’s, making a spill here “almost inevitable.” The org adds that extreme conditions in the Beaufort Sea would limit the ability of emergency responders to tackle a spill in ice-covered waters. Send a letter to the PM, the federal Natural Resources minister and the head of the National Energy Board calling for tougher safeguards for drilling in the Arctic (wwf.ca/conservation/oceans/oil_spill_petition.cfm).

And tell them to wake up to the risks of letting Chevron drill the deepest offshore oil well Canada has ever seen off Newfoundland without first establishing safeguards to prevent a BP sequel. They should stop upselling the tar sands as a greener option than offshore drilling, too. We want real clean energy.

Finally, skim off some oiliness from your everyday life. Obvious enough when it comes to choosing cycling and subways over gas-powered transport, but can you get through the rest of your week without buying a single item of plastic (from electronics cases to dental floss)? Can you steer clear of petrochemicals altogether? That means no synthetic fabrics, no synthetic fragrances, no foods grown with synthetic fertilizers, no synthetic shampoos.

Try it for a day and you’ll see how intricately linked our daily lives are with BP, Exxon Mobil and every other oil driller on the planet.

Their by-products are impossible to entirely avoid unless you’re a Quaker, but reaching for plastic- and petrol-free options is an honest start.