Download Shadows on the Gulf: A Journey Through Our Last Great Wetland AudioBook Free
In the spring of 2010, as we watched engine oil gushing unstoppably into the waters of the Gulf coast of florida, many Americans flipped their concentration to the spot for the very first time, wondering how this could happen and challenging corporate and federal accountability. Yet Rowan Jacobsen brings a astonishing perspective to the tragedy: as bad as the spill was, it is only the latest chapter in a century-long story of destruction. In the height of BP's dispersant madness, the total amount sprayed each day merely equaled the amount of dispersant that washes down the Mississippi from the Heartland's dishwashers and washers. Coastal drilling has broken the region's ecology far more than just offshore drilling. Plus the acres of marshland ruined by engine oil slicks can't compare to the total amount that disappears in every hurricane, because of the work of the Military Corps of Technicians. Southern Louisiana is subsiding. Whether or not we succeed in restoring every mile of beach and wetland from the engine oil spill, the complete Mississippi Delta could be lost this century, and New Orleans will sink under the waves, an American Atlantis.Surveying the Gulf Coastline by sailboat, skiff, car, and kayak, Jacobsen journeys from the bayous of Terrebonne Parish, where he goes on engine oil patrol with a Local American man whose tribe is being displaced as their island disintegrates; to the last shucking house in New Orleans's People from france 1 / 4, whose oyster source has vanished; to the pristine barrier islands of Mississippi, where a Kafkaesque cleanup work is underway. He discovers a little-appreciated ecological wonder of breathtaking natural beauty and abundant culture struggling to hold on to the things that have always suffered it.Shadows on the Gulf details the catastrophe creeping across the region and uncovers why the damage to the Gulf will influence us all. Not simply are the Gulf's wetlands the best oyster reefs and seafood nurseries on the globe, they also provide critical habitat to the majority of America's migratory songbirds and waterfowl. If the Gulf is permitted to fail, the consequences will ripple across America. And fail it'll, unless BP's blunder can in some way galvanize a countrywide effort to save it.
