The worst environmental disaster in America’s history is still happening right now – so where are all the benefit concerts, the televised fundraisers, the celebrities posing for photo ops in canoes? The truth is, despite the severity of the situation, very few people are willing to pony up the cash to help with relief efforts for a simple reason: BP is a billion dollar corporation, and it should be coming out of their wallet. But as BP hedges and fights, environmental organizations on the scene need emergency funds.

That, in a word, sucks. How long can we wait for a corporation that’s clearly in denial of its responsibilities to act, while we watch animals suffer, hard working people lose their livelihoods and an ecosystem change forever? Hopefully, more people will step up to the plate and come together to help a region that’s desperately in need. But in the meantime – even if you can’t (and perhaps shouldn’t) head down to the Gulf yourself to help out, you can contribute in these seven small, fun ways – like sipping on specialty cocktails, downloading songs and shopping for delicious-smelling soap.

Dine Out For the Gulf

From June 10th-12th, all you have to do to aid in oil spill recovery efforts is head to a local restaurant and enjoy some good food and specialty cocktails. Restaurants around the country participating in Dine Out for the Gulf will offer up Gulf seafood offerings and donate either a portion of total sales or the sales from specific menu items to organizations supporting the Gulf Coast fishing industry.

Get Anything You Want at Amazon.com

Got some shopping to do? If you spend some cash at Amazon.com via the Hope Vote website, a portion of your order will go to Gulf oil spill relief at no extra cost to you. HopeVote.com donates a portion of the profits it earns through the Amazon Affiliate program to charitable causes, with the recipients chosen through site users’ votes. Proceeds are currently benefiting the National Wildlife Federation and the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund.

Help Canada Get Clean with LUSH

All eyes might be on the Gulf of Mexico right now, but LUSH wants to remind us that Canada is in the midst of an oil crisis, too. The cosmetics company is not only parading its employees around in oil barrels, but offering shoppers a chance to clean themselves in order to clean up oil pollution. One hundred percent of the proceeds from LUSH’s Wild Rose Country Bath Bomb will go to the Rainforest Action Network in support of their tar sands campaign effort, or you can get smooth and deliciously scented with the ‘Charity Pot’ hand and body moisturizer, which benefits the Dogwood Initiative’s No Tankers campaign protecting Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest from oil spills.

Wear Your Support On Your Chest

Want to spread awareness of the spill? Say it loud and contribute to cleanup campaigns at the same time with the COAST Save the Gulf! t-shirt. COAST Apparel is donating 100 percent of the proceeds from the sales of this tee to two non-profit organizations: the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana and the Gulf Restoration Network.

Download a Charitable Tune

Send some of your hard-earned pennies to the Waterkeeper Alliance just by downloading a new tune from Grammy Award-winning singer Sophie B. Hawkins, who’s donating all proceeds from “The Land, the Sea and the Sky”. Hawkins told US Magazine, “I don’t think there’s anybody else standing out in the forefront. I just performed a sold out show as a benefit for the organization Waterkeeper Alliance. It was a really good show and I met all these people, so [my outreach has] really been blossoming from there because what I realized is that everyone is looking for some way to do something. In addition to the concert, I am donating the proceeds from my song’s iTunes sales – I’m not taking a penny of this.”

Build a Bear, Help a Marine Mammal

Marine mammals may not be fuzzy and huggable as teddy bears, but Build-A-Bear Workshop is looking to spread the love. The interactive retailer, which allows customers to make their own custom teddy bears, donated $5,000 to the Louisiana Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Rescue Program within the Audubon Nature Institute and will invite guests to donate $1 at the cash register in any Build-A-Bear location in the U.S.

Help New Orleans, Wherever Your Travels May Take You

Booking a hotel sometime soon? No matter where you’re going, a portion of the cash you spend on your hotel could go straight to New Orleans to help with both Hurricane Katrina and Gulf Coast oil spill recovery. Expedia Inc. launched a new website and charity program, TravelRelief.org, that allows you to send eight percent of your total hotel booking price to the charity of your choice – including The Greater New Orleans Foundation.

As millions of gallons of sticky black crude continue to gush out of a pipe in the Gulf of Mexico, we’re hearing a lot about how adorable animals like sea turtles, otters and dolphins are going to be affected. But while we love the cute animals, we don’t want to overlook the so-called redheaded step-children of the animal realm, either. They need just as much help as the fluffy furry ones, if not more because, according to a recent study, ugly animals are more likely to go extinct.

Manatees

There’s a reason that manatees are called sea cows – they sort of resemble what the remains of a drowned cow might look like after a week or so. These bloated, bulbous animals may not be beauty queens, but they definitely deserve our attention and protection. Scientists don’t know exactly what’s going to happen when manatees start swimming through the oil, but they’re going to find out all too soon; a group of seven animals was spotted swimming along the coast of Destin, Florida.

Marsh Rice Rat

Few animals are more reviled than rats, even though these animals are technically incredibly similar to the ones we think are so dang cute (think fuzzy bunnies). The semi-aquatic Marsh Rice Rat resembles its landlubber cousins with its grayish-brown fur and long naked tail, but its need to dive underwater to forage for food like plants, snails and subterranean fungus will put it at risk as the oil seeps into the marshes of Gulf states like Louisiana.

Gulf Sturgeon

The gulf sturgeon, a bizarre-looking relic of the dinosaur age, ended up on the Endangered Species list back in 1991 when its populations were nearly annihilated in the wild by centuries of demand for its meat and caviar. During the warmer months, Gulf Sturgeon spend their time in coastal rivers from Louisiana to Florida, but come cooler weather they’ll be back in the Gulf of Mexico, where they’re likely to face a battle for survival in the aftermath of the oil spill.

American Alligator

It’s got a spiky back, a powerful tail that could knock you to the ground in an instant and what seems like a sinister grin. But as imposing as the American Alligator may be to us, this animal is defenseless against the negative changes that are starting to occur in the marshes and wetlands that it calls home in Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Alabama.

Shrimp

Shrimping is big business in the Gulf of Mexico – or at least, it was. The fishing industry has been effectively shut down for obvious reasons, and even when the fisherman are allowed to start trawling again, consumers might not bite. While the oil may not have had a catastrophic effect on creepy-crawlies like shrimp that live along the sea floor on its own, BP’s toxic dispersants are actually spreading the contamination deeper into the water.

Oysters

Because each of these bumpy mollusks breathe 50 to 100 gallons of water a day, “the oyster is to Louisiana’s estuaries what the fabled canary was to coal mine safety,” according to NOLA.com. So water that has been contaminated both by oil and by toxic dispersants will be deadly to the intertidal oyster reefs that grow along and just inside the coast of Louisiana.  Ironically, the American Petroleum Institute once produced a video with a segment called “Lifeline to Oysters,” attempting to convince skeptical Gulf fishermen that oysters and offshore drilling get along just fine.

Smalltooth Sawfish

The critically endangered Smalltooth Sawfish has already seen its habitat shrink from a large portion of the Atlantic Ocean to a small area near the lower peninsula of Florida. But when the Loop Currrent, a strong flow of warm water in the Gulf, brings oil to the Florida Keys, this rare fish could be wiped out altogether.

Plankton

They’re literally at the bottom of the food chain in the sea, but that doesn’t mean that curious-looking zooplankton aren’t important – they serve as sustenance for small animals like snails, shrimp and jellyfish, including some endangered species.  These drifting organisms are just as much at risk from the oil spill as the larger animals whose suffering we can actually witness.

Images:Andrea Westmoreland, Wikimedia Commons (manatee, marsh rice rat, sturgeon, alligators, shrimp, oysters, smalltooth sawfish, plankton)

They’re a potent symbol of excess: bloated floating mansions that stir up the calm waters of the ocean, pump out CO2 and suck up fuel like there’s no tomorrow. But those poor beleaguered billionaires who seek refuge on the high seas aren’t about to give up their luxury yachts.

Still, in an increasingly eco-conscious world, many yacht owners are realizing that they’d better shape up or ship out – at least, on the surface. Enter Ecoyachts, a web-based consulting and service company for yachters who want to go green”¦ish.

Ecoyachts posits itself as a one-stop shop for eco-friendly yachting supplies, services and information.

“Whether you are building, own, operate or manage a luxury sailing or power yacht, Ecoyachts will help you discover innovative products and services to compliment your yachting experience and at the same time contribute to improving our environment,” reads the site’s mission statement.

But is it good enough for luxury yacht owners to load up on recycling bins, homeopathic first aid kits, filtered tap water and organic upholstery? What about sustainable wood decks, waste water recycling systems and non-toxic finishes? Do all of these things add up to a real step forward, or are they just lipstick on a pig? After all, the oceans are in bad enough shape without the harm that gigantic pleasure crafts can do.

Sure, going green doesn’t have to mean giving up all the pleasures of life, and Ecoyachts’ aim to help the industry reduce its environmental impact is a noble one. But if yachters really wanted to go green, they’d at least downsize – or switch to sailboats, which do everything that fancy hybrid/solar/biodiesel yachts can do, but with the original renewable resource: wind.

Image: Ecoyachts

The tens of thousands of albatross chicks who have been sickened or killed by lead-based paint can’t exactly walk into a courtroom and stand up for themselves – so an environmental group is doing it for them.

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to clean up lead-contaminated paint on buildings at a former U.S. Navy base on the Midway atoll, which is the most important breeding site for the Laysan albatross.

Up to 10,000 chicks are killed each year by lead poisoning, says the center, citing a study published last October. Many more albatross chicks are affected by neurological conditions like “˜droopwing’, in which the chick is no longer able to lift its wings. This condition, which makes flying impossible, often causes the affected chicks to die of starvation.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took over responsibility for the Midway atoll, located near Hawaii, in 1996. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, FWS stopped maintaining 95 military buildings coated with layers of lead-based paint which are now chipping off and being eaten by the chicks.

In fact, confused albatross parents even feed such inedible debris to their chicks. Photographer Chris Jordan documented the consequences of this unfortunate habit in a series of troubling images depicting albatross remains filled with bits of plastic. The shocking photos illustrate the effects that human civilization can have upon the natural world.

The center alleges that in failing to clean up the lead paint, the Fish and Wildlife Service is violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Endangered Species Act and Resource Conservation and Recovery. The Laysan albatross is listed as a “vulnerable species” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Image: Kristin McCully/Midway Coral Reef

We need to save our oceans, and quickly. The most recent and widely cited report on fisheries predicts a complete global fisheries collapse by 2048 and asserts that ninety percent of large fish such as tuna and swordfish are already gone.

Other than the people using seafood wallet cards and reading eco-blogs, does anyone care?

In a 2008 report on the US Marketplace by Seafood Choices Alliance, chain restaurant operators report that only 22% of their customers are concerned about the environmental condition of the oceans. According to retailers, 25% of their customers are concerned. They better start caring because all-you-can-eat shrimp platters might not be the only casualty of the coming catastrophe. All life on earth depends on the health of the oceans. Even ours.

Not surprisingly, if consumers don’t care, few retailers and restaurants will take action because, after all, their job is to give consumers what they want or to go out of business. If retailers and restaurants won’t take action, neither will the wholesalers. Only 37% of retailers decided not to sell a certain seafood because of environmental considerations, according to a 2007 survey.

The terribly sad thing about this nearly imminent collapse is that it’s preventable. Though pollution, ocean acidification, and global warming all play a part, overfishing is by far the largest problem. And the most fixable. According to the book Bottomfeeder, we are vacuuming the bottom of our oceans clean.

We need a multi-pronged plan:

1. Consumers (and that means everyone) need to step up and push retailers and wholesalers to do the right thing. The power of the purse truly is a force to be reckoned with, but it has to be collective to work.

2. Governments need to cooperate on regulations and enforce fishery quotas.

3. New policies need to be put in place to protect fisheries.

Point 1: How do we get consumers to care? I truly believe that people would care if they only knew how bad it was. It’s not in the seafood seller’s business plan to let their customers know. That’s why I believe in-your-face tactics like some of Greenpeace’s recent campaigns can be really effective. Their ability to raise consumer awareness can push retailers to do the right thing.

Greenpeace’s recent brilliant attack on Trader Joe’s is a case in point. They used the attack, Twitter and humans dressed as giant orange roughy outside the stores to protest Trader Joe’s sales of endangered fish. The campaign was barely out of the gate before Trader Joe’s announced it would follow Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch recommendations for purchasing seafood.

Then there was the protest against the high-end Manhattan Restaurant, Nobu. It got a lot of attention, including in the New York Times.

Lamely, Nobu chose to leave the fish on the menu but to tell customers that it’s endangered and they should choose something else.

Less well-publicized, Greenpeace also puts out a seafood scorecard that allows consumers to assess how well their favorite supermarkets do in terms of sourcing sustainable seafood.

Another novel idea is that of consumer supported fisheries. Or Seafood CSAs: These seem promising from the point of view of supporting the smaller scale fisherfolk and keeping them in business. Such schemes, though great, are likely to be adopted by so few people that they won’t make a huge difference in the future of our oceans on their own.

In addition to consumer-focused efforts and campaigns, other ideas are being floated to help save our oceans. In order to do away with what is called the tragedy of the commons, some fisheries experts and governments (including ours) are proposing a privatization plan that provides individual transferable quotas that fisherfolk bid for. The logic is that everyone will have a vested interest in conservation. The plan does seem to have worked in some places. But I suspect, as usual, the devil is in the details. Critics say that such a plan will force smaller fisherfolk out of the game in favor of the large fleets that cause most of the destruction in the first place.

Up until now, governments have been lousy at cooperating to save our fisheries and oceans. The problem with global trade is that everyone has to commit to supporting bans on certain types of equipment or fishing moratoriums on certain species. That is slowly changing. The Pew Environmental Group recently formed a coalition dedicated to reforming the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy.

And even more recently, France’s President Sarkosy announced his support for a ban on the sale of bluefin tuna. The British fisheries minister joined the ban, and more are likely to follow.

It’s clear from all of this, that everyone needs to do his or her part. How can you do yours? Here are six easy recommendations:

1. Educate yourself about what is sustainable and what isn’t. Try reading a book on the subject. The wallet cards such as Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch cards are great, but a subject as complex as this deserves further study.

2. Know the big three. The three most popular types of seafood in America are also the most environmentally problematic – salmon, shrimp and tuna. Stay away from farmed salmon and eat wild salmon as a special occasion food. Find out where your shrimp was farmed or caught. If it’s really cheap, you probably shouldn’t eat it. Most species of tuna are endangered and high in mercury, too. Enjoy the small species (such as skipjack) if they are hook and line (not long line) caught, and only once in a while.

3. Give that supermarket sushi a pass. It’s full of cheap tuna, salmon, and shrimp. See above.

4. Develop a love for sardines, both canned and fresh. They are great for you (full of Omega-3s), are low on the food chain and are abundant.

5. This is the hardest one. You have to spread the word. Remember, people don’t know this information, so you have to tell them. It’s hard to talk to people about their food choices without being seen as an annoying, judgmental killjoy, but find a nice way to tell your friends and family members that they might want to lay off the canned albacore or treat it as a special occasion food.

6. Be Hopeful.

Further Learning:

End of the Line
Bottomfeeder
A Good Catch
Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World
Fish Forever
Seafood Lovers Almanac

Image: Jonathan Assink

In the future, rising sea levels are going to drive people out of their low-lying communities and up to higher ground. But you might not know it’s going on right now.

As Luanne reported recently, the government of the Maldives is facing the prospect of inundation with admirable foresight by moving to a carbon zero economy by the end of the next decade and adding a splash of green to its luxury status.

The country is also going to use future profits to fund a wholesale relocation of the population to another part of the world before the island chain disappears under the waves by 2100.

Ninety years to prepare – sounds like luxury indeed if you’re from the Carteret Islands.

For the last 20 years, the inhabitants of this South Pacific atoll have been struggling to keep out rising tides, planting mangroves and erecting sea defences, but now the population of 2,600 are in full evacuation m0de, funded by the Papua New Guinea government.

Like the Maldives, the Carteret islands are low – just 170cm above sea-level at their highest point – and every high tide swamps the islanders’ efforts at subsistence agriculture and raises the salinity of the soil even further. It’s untenable, so they’re off.

Dan Box of The Ecologist has been watching the Carteretians rebuild their homes at Tinputz on the coast of Bougainville, and is currently preparing to visit the Carteret islands to see for himself how they’re faring.

Experts aren’t certain that the islands are being wiped out by global warming. This is a volcanic island chain, so sea floor movement is to be expected. But if independently rising sea levels aren’t primarily to blame, it could be the degradation of the coral that forms the backbone of the islands. When this dies, islands lose their natural defences against the sea – and coral is fragile enough to be killed by something as seemingly innocuous as sun screen, let alone the severely destabilizing effects of warmer seas.

However, as George Monbiot notes at The Guardian, these aren’t the world’s first “climate change refugees” – and they’re certainly not going to be the last.

For example, a rise of 20cm (well within the 88cm upper boundary estimated by the IPCC report in 2001) will make three quarters of a million people homeless in Nigeria alone.

We’re already coming up with innovative new ways to build flood-resistant homes, but until these become a widespread reality, we’re faced with the modern-day version of the King Canute story – and the best we can do is get out of the way.

Image: Addu Atoll, Maldives – nattu

For everyone’s good, we need to leave the oceans well alone for a while.

That’s the recommendation of over 100 scientific papers assessed by the Professor of Marine Conservation at the University of York, England. All these papers suggest that the demonstrably successful marine protected area (MPA) scheme should be dramatically expanded until it covers at least 20% of the world’s oceans – and maybe even up to one-third of them.

Why? Because many fish stocks are in deep crisis – not just depleted but at such dangerously low levels that their ability to reproduce is threatened, making their recovery more a question of If rather than When.

In the waters around Europe, conditions are dire – some 88% of all European fishing stocks are being overfished, and the European Union can shoulder a lot of the blame with its largely ineffective Common Fisheries Policy, doing little in practice to limit the efficiency of oversized fishing boat fleets and supporting muddleheaded subsidizing designed to help hard-hit fishermen make profits by chasing after what little is left under the waves.

The answer seems to be to ban fishing outright in the hardest-hit areas. This worked stunningly well around the UK’s Lundy Island – but that was small-scale. A worldwide, large-scale fishing ban is likely to light the touchpaper for the marine food industry and prove immensely unpopular for everyone whose traditional livelihood has just been outlawed to them. If managed badly, it’s going to ruin lives.

But what other answer is there? Either fish populations are allowed to recover – or they’re hunted until they never will again.

Image: treehouse1977

A day at the beach shouldn’t include body surfing through plastic bags. But, equally detrimental is the harm that’s being done to wildlife when plastics photo-degrade (break down from the sun’s UV rays). In the ocean, birds and marine life often mistake these small pieces as food, and as they provide no nutrients, wildlife slowly starve to death.

The Surfrider Foundation recently announced the roll out of its long-awaited program Rise Above Plastics, which seeks to reduce the amount of plastics making their way into our beach and marine environments though education and outreach efforts.

“In certain areas of our oceans, the amount of suspended plastic particles outnumbers plankton by a ratio of six to one,” said program director Angela Howe in a press release. “Subsequently we see all this plastic making its way up the food chain, where it harms and kills birds and marine life.”

The Surfrider Foundation began the initial outreach for its Rise Above Plastics program earlier this summer as part of Jack Johnson’s All At Once tour (his songs can be heard on the Surfrider Foundation website).

“People are ready to make behavioral changes that benefit our environment,” said Johnson’s wife, Kim, who along with Jack, helped in the planning and launch of Surfrider’s program.

Log on to learn more about how plastics impact our marine and coastal environments and how to take steps to reduce your plastic footprint. Take the campaign pledge. To find a brick and mortar location and meet with like-minded souls, visit the area chapter page.

Image: guzzzt