Photo Album Photo Credit: Jeffrey Dubinsky, Gulf Restoration Network

Photo of oil invading Louisiana wetlands as seen from the air.

Tidwell flies over the oil disaster site with Aaron Viles of the Gulf Restoration Network

More pictures from Tidwell’s Gulf Coast trip>>

I just got back from a four-day tour of the Louisiana coastline. I flew over the oil catastrophe in a small plane. I toured the oily marshes in fishing boats. And I walked the beaches myself, smelling what people here say is a mix of oil and “agent orange,” their name for the toxic chemical dispersant BP is spraying on the oil. Watch this short video. I went to Louisiana to see for myself just what’s at stake for Maryland and Virginia. Unless we re-instate a permanent ban on all new offshore drilling in the mid-Atlantic, this could be us. Thankfully, due to the activism of people like you, President Obama last week cancelled a plan to sell drilling leases just 50 miles off the Virginia coastline. That’s a good start. But it’s not a done deal. Please sign this petition for a permanent offshore ban. And donate to CCAN to help us keep up this critical fight. Based on my trip to Louisiana, I can tell you we’ll never be safe with oil. Never. It’s wrecking our climate, of course, and there’s no way to permanently eliminate human error and equipment failure through regulation. As long as we have thousands and thousands of drilling rigs off our shores, there will be another spill. I visited innocent Louisiana fishing families now being wiped out by the spill. Many of them weep openly as they talk. They describe spending their whole lives fishing only to be told last week that they’ll get a $10,000 fine if they drop a single net or line in the water. One fisherman said, “BP thinks they can repay us with money. But they’ve taken away something no money can repay. They’ve taken away our way of life.” If a similar blowout occurred off the coast of Virginia, we’d have oil from Virginia Beach to Cape May, NJ. And it would be innocent Virginia watermen crying. Innocent Maryland hotel owners and dockworkers crying. Please donate to CCAN to help us make sure this never happens. Offshore wind power in Virginia and Maryland is the better path, of course. Using only a small portion of the coast, windmills in Virginia alone could provide enough electricity to power 3.6 million electric cars [pdf] forever. That’s with practically zero pollution even if, god forbid, a hurricane blew through and knocked down some or all the windmills. It’s clean energy. We are all victims of climate change, of course. But the Louisiana families I visited last week are the victims, right now, of one the ugliest addictions within the climate crisis. It’s our responsibility to make sure their suffering is not in vain.