I feel pretty helpless in regards to the Gulf oil spill. We are all being told BP is paying for everything, so what about donating money? Seems to me big corporations throw money at problems, and we all know throwing money at a problem sometimes can make a problem worse. It’s also  hard to donate money because I feel like “BP better damn well pay for that mess” but I actually do *want* to donate money, it’s just a bit of a catch 22. So I thought about what I could to feel like I was doing something. I researched a bit and found out that Dawn dish soap has already shipped 1,000 bottles of their soap towards wild life bird rescue’s in the gulf, to help with cleaning. I see on their website that they will donate $1 for every bottle you purchase goes towards the Marine Mammal Center and the International Bird Rescue Research Center, (however you must go here to activate the donation).

I found out about the Tri-State Bird Rescue that is leading the bird clean-up response for the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. The Marine Mammal Center (based in CA) is another great organization involved in helping ocean mammals in need of help, and then there is the International Bird Rescue Center which is also already has more then 20 people helping out with the clean up now.

So here are the things I have decided to do in order to help;

• Encourage anyone I know with sheep to donate extra wool (like Fleury Sheep & Wool has done) to help with the clean up.
• Not buying gas from BP, we can all argue about how oil drilling in general is dangerous but the fact is this was a BP spill, so I have no quams about  boycotting them. If after an investigation is completed there is proof of negligence, well I hope they go out of business. Is that harsh? Is it bad for the economy? Not bailing out the banks would have been VERY bad for the economy but I don’t care, I am tired of companies screwing up and getting a get out of jail free card. If you can’t run your company properly, you don’t deserve to be in business. That includes not destroying the environment. Also their spraying of dispersants without disclosing the ingredients pisses me off to no end. There are many educated and intelligent people with experience with these things that say the dispersants are very dangerous, as the men on the boats who got sick miles away from the spraying well know (as reported on cnn.com).
• Boycotting rig owner Transocean and oilfield services contractor Halliburton, they and BP included are all pointing fingers and no one is taking responsibility for what happened on the rig.
• Adopting a bird from the Tri-State Bird Rescue, and also this year we will be doing bird adoptions as holiday gifts.
• Buying Dawn dish soap (I have not purchased their brand before) and following up on the donation website.
• Visiting the Gulf next spring. We take our annual trip in the spring, and we will not avoid it because of the oil, we will find something else to do there and help the community with our vacation dollars. I highly recommend Destin Florida, if I didn’t have little children I would take a vacation to a bad spot in the gulf and help clean up instead.

I believe each one of us should be empowered in some way to feel like we are making a difference, because we each can make a difference. Make yourself watch this. You will want to do something, you will be angry, you will cry. You will be enraged. You should be.

If you have Dawn dish soap in your house right now, run to your kitchen and plug the number on the back into the Dawn website please! If you did so please come back here and comment and let me know! If you go out and buy a new bottle, come back here and let me know! If you adopt a bird, come back here and let me know!