BP's Black Beach Burden

Teaser for "Black Beach" from Fourth World Media, LLC on Vimeo.

Video.

I recently wrote about "oil-eating microbes" and the lack of evidence that they will offer a solution to cleaning up the environmental nightmare that began last April after the BP oil spill.

What will BP's "black beach" burden become?

I believe that new technologies will guide us towards a solution and hope that it will provide enduring lessons that will prevent such an environmental disaster from ever happening again. As is now commonplace in regions in crisis, online social networking can serve as a powerful tool in sharing information quickly, efficiently and with accuracy - if used responsibly.

My colleague Dr. Norma Bowe has been working with undergraduate students, traveling to various sites affected by the oil spill and learning life lessons - an important education beyond the borders of our campus. See our artilce in The Huffington Post about the experience last year.

Consider how you can help, using whatever skills and tools you have available. I am.

From Blackbeach.org:

America's current Gulf Coast crisis has outraged and saddened citizens from around the globe. Those most concerned with BP's weak response to the crisis have aggressively expressed their opinions using the myriad of social networking tools available on the Internet. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have become the weapons-of-choice in this ongoing battle with the corporate giant, BP, and the amount of user-generated content committed to the attack is staggering. Black Beach will synthesize the outrage of the American people into a compelling series of webisodes, as well as a feature film, based on the BP oil spill. The Black Beach team encourages every American citizen to pick up a camera and defend themselves against corporate neglect.

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