I hate to say it but there isn't a single person on this forum (or in the nation for that matter) who wont feel the sting of the irresponsibility of a few oil tycoons. I grew up on the Gulf of Mexico and my family goes back on the same island for four generations, and until a few months ago it never even entered my mind that something like this could happen. I have never been for Offshore oil drilling. I don't care what argument you throw out at me, I wont budge. I look at the island and the Gulf not just as an incredible work of nature but almost like a part of my families heritage. I live just below Tampa Bay (the largest estuary in FL), which is a breeding ground to almost everything that swims,mates, or feeds, in the Gulf of Mexico. The waters here are nothing short of amazing, I routinely see dolphins, sharks, manatees, and so many species of fish you cant keep track of all you've seen in even a single day. You cant poison the planet you live on to support what is essentially a technology with a very short remaining lifespan. It's the height of our egotism to think we can do whatever we want and not pay the price. We've known that oil is bad for our at home economy and bad for our environment for the past 40 years and we have remained hamstrung in the development of sustainable, environmental power by the same companies that harvest that oil. In the next ten years you are going to see what a lack of insight produces as this body of water and almost everything that lives in it or around it is slowly polluted to death. Tack on the fact that the same companies that are destroying our environment right now will be gouging us at the pumps citing this disaster as the reason (I'd have a joke for that but, I get so mad thinking about it that I cant even come up with something). It's time to change our thinking....You can't decide not to "see it" just because it isn't washing up in your lake,ocean,spring,etc...You might be already up to your nose in it.