In 2010, Pulitzer Prize-winning animator Mark Fiore created this humorous and poignant take on the BP oil spill.

Three years ago this week, a disastrous oil spill began in the Gulf of Mexico, eventually hemorrhaging 210 million gallons of Louisiana sweet crude into the water. Now the media has moved on and public anger has cooled, but the full extent of the damage is finally coming out—and it’s clear that the spill was even worse than we thought.

Newsweek:

"It’s as safe as Dawn dishwashing liquid.” That’s what Jamie Griffin says the BP man told her about the smelly, rainbow-streaked gunk coating the floor of the “floating hotel” where Griffin was feeding hundreds of cleanup workers during the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently, the workers were tracking the gunk inside on their boots. Griffin, as chief cook and maid, was trying to clean it. But even boiling water didn’t work.

“The BP representative said, ‘Jamie, just mop it like you’d mop any other dirty floor,’” Griffin recalls in her Louisiana drawl.
...

Griffin did as she was told: “I tried Pine-Sol, bleach, I even tried Dawn on those floors.” As she scrubbed, the mix of cleanser and gunk occasionally splashed onto her arms and face.

Within days, the 32-year-old single mother was coughing up blood and suffering constant headaches. She lost her voice. “My throat felt like I’d swallowed razor blades,” she says.

Then things got much worse.

Like hundreds, possibly thousands, of workers on the cleanup, Griffin soon fell ill with a cluster of excruciating, bizarre, grotesque ailments. By July, unstoppable muscle spasms were twisting her hands into immovable claws. In August, she began losing her short-term memory. After cooking professionally for 10 years, she couldn’t remember the recipe for vegetable soup; one morning, she got in the car to go to work, only to discover she hadn’t put on pants. The right side, but only the right side, of her body “started acting crazy. It felt like the nerves were coming out of my skin. It was so painful. My right leg swelled—my ankle would get as wide as my calf—and my skin got incredibly itchy.”

We already knew that BP had lied about how much oil had gushed into the Gulf (210 million gallons, according to government estimates) , as lying to Congress was one of the 14 elonies to which BP pleaded guilty last year in a legal settlement with the DOJ. What is now finally coming to light thanks to an anonymous whistleblower, is how BP managed to hide such a massive amount of oil from the public, and the media.

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Blockadia Rising: Voices of the Tar Sands Blockade from Garrett Graham on Vimeo.

"Blockadia Rising: Voices of the Tar Sands Blockade" is an hour-long documentary film written and directed by Garrett Graham in collaboration with the Tar Sands Blockade and features exclusive video footage shot by the blockaders themselves during the course of over six months of sustained resistance.

In 2012, Texas landowners and environmental activists came together to organize resistance against a dangerous pipeline being built by a Canadian corporation to bring tar sands oil from Alberta Canada to refineries near the Gulf of Mexico. This hazardous project continues despite unprecedented opposition from indigenous communities, local farmers and even global environmental movements. From this struggle, a community of resistance was born that has attracted volunteers from around the continent who have successfully defied this multi-million dollar corporation with the power of non-violent direct action.

The film is meant to be both a celebration of the blockades' achievements and a primer for those interested in joining the campaign. It explains the dangers of tar sands extraction and the risks to public health posed by the pipeline as well as the strategy of non-violent direct action that has been delaying the pipeline so far.

The story takes place in the backwoods of East Texas where the pipeline crosses farmlands and homesteads as well as aquifers and old growth forests. You will hear the voices of the blockaders who are risking their lives to stop this pipeline. In the Texas heat, they have locked themselves to heavy machinery, and braved the elements by living in trees. Hear these courageous folks in their own words.

Blockadia Rising is just the opening chapter in this ongoing movement to stop this pipeline and halt the extraction of the Canadian tar sands, but the blockaders see themselves as a part of a larger struggle against the consequences of run-away climate-change caused by unchecked extraction of natural resources by industry at the expense of both human and non-human communities. This film speaks to all movements for environmental and social justice and showcases direct action techniques that have never been attempted before.

Blockadia Rising: Voices from the tar Sands Blockade (2013) was written, edited and narrated by Garrett Graham, an active participant of the Tar Sands Blockade who continues to support their efforts. This film is dedicated to them, and everyone fighting for environmental and social justice.

The Campaign: tarsandsblockade.org
The Filmmaker: garrettgrahamonline.wordpress.com

[Via Garrett Graham]

Aerial footage from May of 2010 by John Wathen shows the extent of the devastation created by the BP oil spill. H/T Treehugger.

The Department of Justice presented examples of “gross negligence and willful misconduct” on the part of BP leading up to the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The case is set to go to trial in a New Orleans court in early 2013, and the government is trying to demonstrate that most of the blame for the spill—the largest American spill ever—rests with the British company. “The behavior, words, and actions of these BP executives would not be tolerated in a middling size company manufacturing dry goods for sale in a suburban mall,” government lawyers fumed in an August court filing in New Orleans.

In the wake of Hurricane Isaac, the Coast Guard reported on Sunday that teams surveying for pollution found new oil and oiled animals in the vicinity of two inactive oil production facilities near Myrtle Grove. The crews found three juvenile pelicans with oil exposure, one of which was dead. Ten dead nutria were also recovered in the area. The source of the oil has not yet been identified.

Officials have expressed concerns that the hurricane could stir up remnant oil in the bottom of the ocean from the BP oil spill. Up to 1 million barrels of oil are estimated to remain in the Gulf of Mexico. That oil remains because BP has failed to clean it all up in the more than two years since the tragedy.

A Greenpeace research team took samples of tarballs that were discovered on Alabama beaches on September 2nd, including from an area with hundreds of tar balls in the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge.

Will you look at all the freaking oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico! Via Jalopnik, this graphic shows the current projected path of the hurricane brought to you by the National Weather Service superimposed with a map of oil rigs and platforms in the Gulf of Mexico from GeoCommons.

The point of the article is to let you know you may want to fill up your gas tanks now, just in case Issac takes out some oil rigs, as historically, this causes gas prices to shoot up higher than they already are. But I'll recall this graphic each and every time I hear someone has once again uttered "Drill, baby, drill!"