it keeps spilling and spilling

I have been almost obsessing about this subject lately, easily brought to tears every time I hear news on the radio. Oil is a symbol of some of the highest levels of greed and corruption in today's society, while the men who died, plants, animals and the people whose livelihoods are potentially gone end up being helpless casualties of this. What are we doing about this? What can we do about this? Personally, I feel completely overwhelmed by the level of devastation. Only 21 years after the crisis of the Exxon Valdez. What have we learned? What next?
These  thoughts have been finding their way into my latest sketches and paintings. Just having fully embraced color once again, the last few days I find myself picking up the burnt umber and carbon black to use liberally in each piece. I don't know how this will resolve itself, both in real life and in my artwork. More to follow.

Here are a couple of excerpts from Wired Magazine. First article is about the current crisis. Second article was written last year, about the long-term findings after the Exxon Valdez spill:
"High concentrations of oil are acutely toxic, but low concentrations have more subtle, widespread effects. As oil percolates through food webs, it retards plant and animal growth, leaving them vulnerable to predation and disease, and less fit to reproduce. With the Deepwater Horizon spill already too large and unpredictable to contain, the question is no longer whether it will cause damage, but what form damage will take"

Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/05/gulf-tipping/#ixzz0oKPqsrX6

"Researchers expected the oil to break up in a few years. Instead, it will take more than a century. They found that oil’s compounds, especially polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — carcinogenic molecules that attach to fat, and refuse to break down in water — are toxic at levels hundreds, even thousands of times lower than was previously believed.

The Valdez pollution set off a cascade of environmental effects that have yet to be fully understood, but have at least been measured. Few of the region’s fish, bird and marine mammal populations have recovered. To the naked eye, Prince William Sound is beautiful and wild — but beneath the surface, it is profoundly damaged. As the Exxon Valdez Oil
Spill Trustee Council recently reported, oil in many areas "is nearly as toxic as it was the first few weeks after the spill.""

Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/valdezlegacy/#ixzz0oKRaVgGC