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This is the ocean as I used to know it.

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And I find that since I've been
in the Gulf a couple of times,

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I really kind of am traumatized
because whenever I look at the ocean now,

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no matter where I am,

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even where I know
that none of the oil has gone,

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I sort of see slicks,

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and I'm finding that I'm very much
haunted by it.

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But what I want to talk to you about today

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is a lot of things that try
to put all of this in context,

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not just about the oil eruption,
but what it means and why it has happened.

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First, just a little bit about me.

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I'm basically just a guy
that likes to go fishing

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ever since I was a little kid,
and because I did,

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I wound up studying sea birds

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to try to stay in the coastal habitats
that I so loved.

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And now I mainly write books
about how the ocean is changing,

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and the ocean is certainly
changing very rapidly.

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Now we saw this graphic earlier on,
that we really live on a hard marble

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that has just a slight bit
of wetness to it.

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It's like you dipped a marble in water.

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And the same thing with the atmosphere:

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If you took all the atmosphere
and rolled it up in a ball,

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you would get that little sphere
of gas on the right.

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So we live on the most fragile
little soap bubble you can imagine,

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a very sacred soap bubble,
but one that is very, very easy to affect.

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And all the burning of oil and coal
and gas, all the fossil fuels,

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have changed the atmosphere greatly.

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Carbon dioxide level
has gone up and up and up.

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We're warming the climate.

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So the blowout in the Gulf

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is just a little piece
of a much larger problem

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that we have with the energy
that we use to run civilization.

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Beyond warming,

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we have the problem
of the oceans getting more acidified --

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and already measurably so,
and already affecting animals.

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Now in the laboratory, if you take a clam
and you put it in the pH that is not 8.1,

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which is the normal pH
of seawater, but 7.5,

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it dissolves in about three days.

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If you take a sea urchin larva from 8.1,

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put it in a pH of 7.7 --
not a huge change --

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it becomes deformed and dies.

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Already, commercial oyster larvae
are dying at large scales in some places.

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Coral reefs are growing slower
in some places because of this problem.

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So this really matters.

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Now, let's take a little tour
around the Gulf a little bit.

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One of the things that really impresses me
about the people in the Gulf:

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They are really, really aquatic people.

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And they can handle water.

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They can handle a hurricane
that comes and goes.

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When the water goes down,
they know what to do.

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But when it's something other than water,
and their water habitat changes,

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they don't have many options.

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In fact, those entire communities
really don't have many options.

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They don't have another thing they can do.

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They can't go and work
in the local hotel business

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because there isn't one
in their community.

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If you go to the Gulf and you look around,
you do see a lot of oil.

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You see a lot of oil on the ocean.

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You see a lot of oil on the shoreline.

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If you go to the site of the blowout,
it looks pretty unbelievable.

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It looks like you just emptied
the oil pan in your car,

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and you just dumped it in the ocean.

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And one of the really
most incredible things, I think,

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is that there's nobody out there
trying to collect it

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at the site where it is densest.

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Parts of the ocean there
look just absolutely apocalyptic.

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You go in along the shore,
you can find it everywhere.

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It's really messy.

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If you go to the places
where it's just arriving,

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like the eastern part
of the Gulf, in Alabama,

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there's still people using the beach

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while there are people
cleaning up the beach.

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And they have a very strange
way of cleaning up the beach.

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They're not allowed to put
more than 10 pounds of sand

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in a 50-gallon plastic bag.

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They have thousands
and thousands of plastic bags.

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I don't know what they'll do
with all that stuff.

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Meanwhile, there are still
people trying to use the beach.

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They don't see the sign
that says: "Stay out of the water."

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Their kids are in the water;

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they're getting tar all over
their clothes and their sandals--

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It's a mess.

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If you go to where the oil has been
for a while, it's an even bigger mess.

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And there's basically
nobody there anymore,

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a few people trying to keep using it.

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You see people who are really
shell-shocked.

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They are very hardworking people.

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All they know about life
is they get up in the morning,

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and if their engine starts,
they go to work.

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They always felt that
they could rely on the assurances

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that nature brought them
through the ecosystem of the Gulf.

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They're finding that their world
is really collapsing.

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And so you can see, literally,
signs of their shock ...

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signs of their outrage ...

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signs of their anger ...

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and signs of their grief.

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These are the things that you can see.

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There's a lot you can't see,
also, underwater.

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What's going on underwater?

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Well, some people say
there are oil plumes.

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Some people say there are not oil plumes.

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And Congressman Markey asks, you know,

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"Is it going to take a submarine ride
to see if there are really oil plumes?"

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But I couldn't take a submarine ride --

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especially between the time I knew
I was coming here and today --

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so I had to do a little experiment myself

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to see if there was oil
in the Gulf of Mexico.

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So this is the Gulf of Mexico ...

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sparkling place full of fish.

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And I created a little oil spill
in the Gulf of Mexico.

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And I learned, in fact,
I confirmed the hypothesis

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that oil and water don't mix ...

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until you add a dispersant ...

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and then ...

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they start mixing.

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And you add a little energy
from the wind and the waves,

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and you get a big mess,

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a big mess that you can't possibly clean,

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you can't touch, you can't extract

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and, I think most importantly --
this is what I think --

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you can't see it.

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I think it's being hidden on purpose.

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Now this is such a catastrophe
and such a mess

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that lots of stuff is leaking out
on the edges of the information stream.

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But as many people have said,

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there's a large attempt
to suppress what's going on.

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Personally, I think that the dispersants
are a major strategy to hide the body,

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because we put the murderer
in charge of the crime scene.

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But you can see it.

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You can see where the oil
is concentrated at the surface,

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and then it is attacked,

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because they don't want
the evidence, in my opinion.

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OK.

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We heard that bacteria eat oil?

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So do sea turtles.

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When it breaks up,

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it has a long way to go
before it gets down to bacteria.

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Turtles eat it.
It gets in the gills of fish.

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These guys have to swim around through it.

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I heard the most incredible story today
when I was on the train coming here.

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A writer named Ted Williams called me,

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and he was asking me
a couple of questions about what I saw,

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because he's writing an article
for Audubon magazine.

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He said that he had been in the Gulf
a little while ago; like about a week ago,

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and a guy who had
been a recreational fishing guide

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took him out to show him what's going on.

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That guide's entire calendar year
is canceled bookings.

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He has no bookings left.

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Everybody wanted their deposit back,
everybody is fleeing.

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That's the story of thousands of people.

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But he told Ted
that on the last day he went out,

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a bottlenose dolphin
suddenly appeared next to the boat,

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and it was splattering oil
out its blowhole.

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And he moved away
because it was his last fishing trip,

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and he knew that the dolphins scare fish.

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So he moved away from it,
turned around a few minutes later,

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it was right next to the side
of the boat again.

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He said that in 30 years of fishing
he had never seen a dolphin do that.

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And he felt that --

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(Sigh)

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he felt that it was
coming to ask for help.

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Sorry.

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Now, in the Exxon Valdez spill,

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about 30 percent of the killer whales
died in the first few months.

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Their numbers have never recovered.

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So the recovery rate of all this stuff
is going to be variable.

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It's going to take longer for some things.

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And some things, I think,
will probably come back a little faster.

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The other thing about the Gulf
that is important

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is that there are a lot of animals
that concentrate in the Gulf

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at certain parts of the year.

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So the Gulf is a really
important piece of water --

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more important than a similar volume
of water in the open Atlantic Ocean.

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These tuna swim the entire ocean.

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They get in the Gulf Stream,
they go all the way to Europe.

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When it comes time to spawn,
they come inside,

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and these two tuna that were tagged,

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you can see them on the spawning grounds

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very much right in the area of the slick.

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They're probably having,
at the very least,

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a catastrophic spawning season this year.

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I'm hoping that maybe the adults
are avoiding that dirty water.

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They don't usually like to go into water
that is very cloudy anyway.

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But these are really
high-performance athletic animals.

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I don't know what this kind of stuff
will do in their gills.

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I don't know if it'll affect the adults.

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If it's not, it's certainly affecting
their eggs and larvae,

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I would certainly think.

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But if you look at that graph
that goes down and down and down,

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that's what we've done to this species
through overfishing over many decades.

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So while the oil spill, the leak,
the eruption, is a catastrophe,

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I think it's important to keep in mind

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that we've done a lot to affect
what's in the ocean, for a very long time.

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It's not like we're starting
with something that's been OK.

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We're starting with something
that's had a lot of stresses

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00:10:42,564 --> 00:10:44,426
and a lot of problems to begin with.

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If you look around at the birds,
there are a lot of birds in the Gulf

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that concentrate in the Gulf
at certain times of the year,

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00:10:51,291 --> 00:10:52,575
but then leave.

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00:10:52,599 --> 00:10:55,671
And they populate much larger areas.

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00:10:57,387 --> 00:11:01,577
For instance, most of the birds
in this picture are migratory birds.

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00:11:01,601 --> 00:11:03,443
They were all on the Gulf in May,

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00:11:03,467 --> 00:11:06,584
while oil was starting
to come ashore in certain places.

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00:11:06,608 --> 00:11:11,163
Down on the lower left there
are ruddy turnstones and sanderlings.

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00:11:11,187 --> 00:11:12,910
They breed in the High Arctic,

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00:11:12,934 --> 00:11:15,496
and they winter
down in southern South America.

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00:11:15,520 --> 00:11:20,331
But they concentrate in the Gulf
and then fan out all across the Arctic.

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00:11:20,355 --> 00:11:23,481
I saw birds that breed
in Greenland, in the Gulf.

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00:11:24,852 --> 00:11:28,263
So this is a hemispheric issue.

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00:11:28,287 --> 00:11:33,083
The economic effects
go at least nationally in many ways.

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00:11:33,107 --> 00:11:36,174
The biological effects
are certainly hemispheric.

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00:11:38,867 --> 00:11:44,060
I think that this is one of the most
absolutely mind-boggling examples

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00:11:44,084 --> 00:11:46,896
of total unpreparedness
that I can even think of.

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00:11:46,920 --> 00:11:50,818
Even when the Japanese
bombed Pearl Harbor,

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00:11:50,842 --> 00:11:52,249
at least they shot back.

216
00:11:52,273 --> 00:11:56,356
And we just seem to be unable
to figure out what to do.

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00:11:56,380 --> 00:12:00,016
There was nothing ready,

218
00:12:00,040 --> 00:12:03,430
and, you know, as we can see
by what they're doing.

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00:12:03,454 --> 00:12:06,218
Mainly what they're doing
is booms and dispersants.

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00:12:06,242 --> 00:12:09,994
The booms are absolutely
not made for open water.

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00:12:10,018 --> 00:12:14,859
They don't even attempt to corral
the oil where it is most concentrated.

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00:12:14,883 --> 00:12:17,117
They get near shore --
Look at these two boats.

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00:12:17,141 --> 00:12:19,765
That one on the right
is called Fishing Fool.

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00:12:19,789 --> 00:12:21,799
And I think, you know, that's a great name

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00:12:21,823 --> 00:12:24,881
for boats that think
that they're going to do anything

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00:12:24,905 --> 00:12:27,977
to make a dent in this,
by dragging a boom between them

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00:12:28,001 --> 00:12:30,965
when there are literally
hundreds of thousands of square miles

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00:12:30,989 --> 00:12:33,870
in the Gulf right now
with oil at the surface.

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00:12:33,894 --> 00:12:37,644
The dispersants make the oil
go right under the booms.

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00:12:37,668 --> 00:12:41,032
The booms are only
about 13 inches in diameter.

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00:12:41,867 --> 00:12:44,893
So it's just absolutely crazy.

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00:12:44,917 --> 00:12:46,611
Here are shrimp boats employed.

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00:12:46,635 --> 00:12:50,576
There are hundreds of shrimp boats
employed to drag booms instead of nets.

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00:12:50,600 --> 00:12:51,923
Here they are working.

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00:12:51,947 --> 00:12:53,744
You can see easily

236
00:12:53,768 --> 00:12:57,663
that all the oily water
just goes over the back of the boom.

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00:12:57,687 --> 00:12:59,637
All they're doing is stirring it.

238
00:12:59,661 --> 00:13:01,259
It's just ridiculous.

239
00:13:03,104 --> 00:13:05,209
Also, for all the shoreline
that has booms --

240
00:13:05,233 --> 00:13:07,404
hundreds and hundreds
of miles of shoreline --

241
00:13:07,428 --> 00:13:09,209
all of the shoreline that has booms,

242
00:13:09,233 --> 00:13:11,919
there's adjacent shoreline
that doesn't have any booms.

243
00:13:11,943 --> 00:13:16,976
There is ample opportunity for oil
and dirty water to get in behind them.

244
00:13:17,000 --> 00:13:20,823
And that lower photo,
that's a bird colony that has been boomed.

245
00:13:20,847 --> 00:13:25,416
Everybody's trying to protect
the bird colonies there.

246
00:13:25,440 --> 00:13:30,671
Well, as an ornithologist,
I can tell you that birds fly, and that --

247
00:13:30,695 --> 00:13:33,000
(Laughter)

248
00:13:35,671 --> 00:13:40,976
and that booming a bird colony
doesn't do it; it doesn't do it.

249
00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:44,520
These birds make a living
by diving into the water.

250
00:13:45,623 --> 00:13:46,773
In fact ...

251
00:13:48,140 --> 00:13:51,283
really what I think
they should do, if anything --

252
00:13:51,307 --> 00:13:54,444
they're trying so hard
to protect those nests --

253
00:13:54,468 --> 00:13:57,141
actually, if they destroyed
every single nest,

254
00:13:57,165 --> 00:13:59,201
some of the birds would leave,

255
00:13:59,225 --> 00:14:01,530
and that would be better
for them this year.

256
00:14:02,415 --> 00:14:03,948
As far as cleaning them ...

257
00:14:05,001 --> 00:14:09,934
I don't mean to cast any aspersion
on people cleaning birds.

258
00:14:09,958 --> 00:14:13,858
It's really, really important
that we express our compassion.

259
00:14:13,882 --> 00:14:17,422
I think that's the most important
thing that people have, is compassion.

260
00:14:18,026 --> 00:14:21,976
It's really important
to get those images and to show it.

261
00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:25,375
But really, where are those birds
going to get released to?

262
00:14:25,399 --> 00:14:27,844
It's like taking somebody
out of a burning building,

263
00:14:27,868 --> 00:14:29,508
treating them for smoke inhalation

264
00:14:29,532 --> 00:14:33,285
and sending them back into the building,
because the oil is still gushing.

265
00:14:33,686 --> 00:14:37,578
I refuse to acknowledge this
as anything like an accident.

266
00:14:37,602 --> 00:14:41,189
I think that this is the result
of gross negligence.

267
00:14:41,213 --> 00:14:45,976
(Applause)

268
00:14:46,348 --> 00:14:48,631
Not just BP.

269
00:14:48,655 --> 00:14:55,312
BP operated very sloppily
and very recklessly because they could.

270
00:14:55,336 --> 00:14:57,283
And they were allowed to do so

271
00:14:57,307 --> 00:15:01,700
because of the absolute failure
of oversight of the government

272
00:15:01,724 --> 00:15:06,049
that is supposed to be
our government, protecting us.

273
00:15:08,305 --> 00:15:09,814
It turns out that --

274
00:15:09,838 --> 00:15:13,069
you see this sign on every commercial
vessel in the United States --

275
00:15:13,093 --> 00:15:15,695
you know, if you spilled
a couple of gallons of oil,

276
00:15:15,719 --> 00:15:17,098
you would be in big trouble.

277
00:15:17,122 --> 00:15:21,729
And you have to really wonder
who are the laws made for,

278
00:15:21,753 --> 00:15:25,425
and who has gotten above the laws.

279
00:15:25,449 --> 00:15:27,800
And there are things
that we can do in the future.

280
00:15:27,824 --> 00:15:30,876
We could have the kinds of equipment
that we would really need.

281
00:15:30,900 --> 00:15:33,503
It would not take
an awful lot to anticipate

282
00:15:33,876 --> 00:15:36,271
that after making 30,000 holes

283
00:15:36,295 --> 00:15:39,120
in the sea floor of the Gulf
of Mexico looking for oil,

284
00:15:39,144 --> 00:15:41,537
oil might start coming out of one of them.

285
00:15:41,561 --> 00:15:44,721
And you'd have some idea of what to do.

286
00:15:44,745 --> 00:15:47,036
That's certainly
one of the things we need to do.

287
00:15:47,060 --> 00:15:51,109
But I think we have to understand
where this leak really started from.

288
00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:57,347
It really started from the destruction
of the idea that the government is there

289
00:15:57,371 --> 00:15:59,086
because it's our government,

290
00:15:59,110 --> 00:16:01,994
meant to protect
the larger public interest.

291
00:16:06,000 --> 00:16:09,960
So I think that the oil blowout,
the bank bailout,

292
00:16:10,640 --> 00:16:17,305
the mortgage crisis and all these things
are absolutely symptoms of the same cause.

293
00:16:18,236 --> 00:16:21,105
We still seem to understand that at least,

294
00:16:21,129 --> 00:16:25,519
we need the police to protect us
from a few bad people.

295
00:16:25,543 --> 00:16:28,546
And even though the police
can be a little annoying at times --

296
00:16:28,570 --> 00:16:30,481
giving us tickets and stuff like that --

297
00:16:30,505 --> 00:16:33,030
nobody says that we should
just get rid of them.

298
00:16:33,054 --> 00:16:35,976
But in the entire rest
of government right now

299
00:16:36,000 --> 00:16:37,862
and for the last at least 30 years,

300
00:16:37,886 --> 00:16:40,976
there has been a culture of deregulation

301
00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:46,406
that is caused directly by the people
who we need to be protected from,

302
00:16:46,954 --> 00:16:49,477
buying the government out from under us.

303
00:16:50,263 --> 00:16:57,263
(Applause)

304
00:16:59,921 --> 00:17:02,727
Now this has been a problem
for a very, very long time.

305
00:17:03,165 --> 00:17:08,524
You can see that corporations were illegal
at the founding of America,

306
00:17:08,548 --> 00:17:11,256
and even Thomas Jefferson complained

307
00:17:11,280 --> 00:17:16,896
that they were already bidding defiance
to the laws of our country.

308
00:17:18,162 --> 00:17:21,057
OK, people who say they're conservative,

309
00:17:21,691 --> 00:17:26,504
if they really wanted to be
really conservative and patriotic,

310
00:17:26,528 --> 00:17:29,572
they would tell
these corporations to go to hell.

311
00:17:30,183 --> 00:17:33,000
That's what it would really mean
to be conservative.

312
00:17:33,807 --> 00:17:38,505
So what we really need to do
is regain the idea

313
00:17:38,529 --> 00:17:41,744
that it's our government
safeguarding our interests,

314
00:17:41,768 --> 00:17:45,976
and regain a sense of unity
and common cause in our country

315
00:17:46,000 --> 00:17:47,629
that really has been lost.

316
00:17:48,932 --> 00:17:50,862
I think there are signs of hope.

317
00:17:50,886 --> 00:17:52,976
We seem to be waking up a little bit.

318
00:17:53,415 --> 00:17:56,427
The Glass-Steagall Act --
which was really to protect us

319
00:17:56,451 --> 00:17:59,477
from the kind of thing
that caused the recession to happen,

320
00:17:59,501 --> 00:18:03,193
and the bank meltdown and all that stuff
that required the bailouts --

321
00:18:03,217 --> 00:18:07,432
that was put in effect in 1933,
was systematically destroyed.

322
00:18:07,937 --> 00:18:11,674
Now there's a mood to put
some of that stuff back in place,

323
00:18:11,698 --> 00:18:16,219
but the lobbyists are already there
trying to weaken the regulations

324
00:18:16,243 --> 00:18:18,976
after the legislation has just passed.

325
00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:20,976
So it's a continued fight.

326
00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:23,048
It's a historic moment right now.

327
00:18:23,072 --> 00:18:27,085
We're either going to have an absolutely
unmitigated catastrophe

328
00:18:27,109 --> 00:18:28,746
of this oil leak in the Gulf,

329
00:18:28,770 --> 00:18:31,416
or we will make the moment
we need out of this,

330
00:18:31,440 --> 00:18:33,107
as many people have noted today.

331
00:18:33,131 --> 00:18:34,787
There's certainly a common theme

332
00:18:34,811 --> 00:18:37,218
about needing to make
the moment out of this.

333
00:18:37,242 --> 00:18:41,257
We've been through this before
with other ways of offshore drilling.

334
00:18:41,281 --> 00:18:43,976
The first offshore wells
were called whales.

335
00:18:44,305 --> 00:18:47,163
The first offshore drills
were called harpoons.

336
00:18:47,187 --> 00:18:49,976
We emptied the ocean
of the whales at that time.

337
00:18:50,735 --> 00:18:52,431
Now are we stuck with this?

338
00:18:52,455 --> 00:18:56,367
Ever since we lived in caves,
every time we wanted any energy,

339
00:18:56,391 --> 00:18:59,942
we lit something on fire,
and that is still what we're doing.

340
00:18:59,966 --> 00:19:04,160
We're still lighting something on fire
every time we want energy.

341
00:19:04,590 --> 00:19:08,075
And people say we can't have clean energy

342
00:19:08,099 --> 00:19:10,411
because it's too expensive.

343
00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:12,772
Who says it's too expensive?

344
00:19:12,796 --> 00:19:15,054
People who sell us fossil fuels.

345
00:19:15,078 --> 00:19:17,976
We've been here before with energy,

346
00:19:18,000 --> 00:19:22,101
and people saying the economy
cannot withstand a switch,

347
00:19:22,125 --> 00:19:25,337
because the cheapest energy was slavery.

348
00:19:25,361 --> 00:19:28,118
Energy is always a moral issue.

349
00:19:28,142 --> 00:19:30,407
It's an issue that is moral right now.

350
00:19:30,431 --> 00:19:32,974
It's a matter of right and wrong.

351
00:19:32,998 --> 00:19:34,166
Thank you very much.

352
00:19:34,190 --> 00:19:35,563
(Applause)