Growing up in our area makes you forget that there is a huge world out there. That Northern Michigan is a small speck on the earth. 
Not everyone loves the beauty of our beaches and not everyone is worried about our local environment. The recent attention in the Gulf has brought everyones attention to our oceans, beaches, and wild life. It has also shown us how much tourism has brought to the state economies. Very few of our states are land locked. The west coast has our awesome National parks as well as a huge coast for that let us appreciate the wild life and sports of each area.
Many times elections here in Michigan, are based on Michigan’s Natural Resources. This week Michigan had an oil leak of their own. It started near the Kalamazoo River and everyone freaked out that it was going to flow into Lake Michigan (Righly so I might add).
Not only are the laws, rules and regulations effecting our country but our decisions make a difference to other countries. Their shores too will be impacted by this mess. We are holding BP accountable but in the end it will be us that pays the cost (did you hear they want to make this a tax deduction?). We’ll be paying for higher gas and now higher food costs. Our econonics is already slumped and the US Costal area employment forces are going to be influenced.
Ok climbing off off of my soap box for the rest of the day.
That’s not all,either. What about the health costs? I am sure there will be some sickness from the oil and the dispersants. BP has been fined for more safety violations than all of the other oil companies combined for years. They made billions of dollars in profits. Yet, the owners and top management will end up walking away, with at most a slap on the wrist. The man they are now putting in charge just got kicked out of Russia, for doing a poor job handling things there. Is that an improvement for us? As long as profits come first, everything else will always come last.
This is the beginning of a whole new mess like we have never seen. I may be working on a post very similar to this one. Such beautiful areas just ruined, turned into toxic dumps because someone was careless. So sad.
Well said!