Nicole Summer
No matter how soon the leaking well is capped, or how much BP pays in restitution, the lesson of this environmental catastrophe is clear: our nation’s dependence on fossil fuels, which drives expansion of increasingly risky offshore drilling, must be reduced.
SmartPower, the nation’s leading non-profit marketers of clean, renewable energy and energy efficiency, announced today the launch of My Gulf Action, an online campaign that enables individuals who are deeply concerned about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to reduce their personal energy use, helping to offset the oil spilling into the Gulf.
My Gulf Action allows individuals to reduce their personal use of fossil fuels, calculate the effects of those reductions, and see how their reductions, combined with others from the My Gulf Action community, add up to offset the Gulf oil spill. The website is available for free to anyone, and new information about the campaign is posted daily on Twitter (@MyGulfAction) and Facebook. The campaign’s goal is to offset every last drop of oil leaking into the Gulf.
My Gulf Action is powered by Climate Culture, a powerful personal energy use reduction platform developed by SmartPower’s technology partner, Efficiency 2.0. The campaign is a partnership with several leading environmental groups, including 350.org, Waterkeeper Alliance and Save Our Gulf, League of Conservation Voters, Clean Water Action, Center for Resource Solutions and Gulf Future, a joint initiative of the Gulf Coast Fund and Gulf Restoration Network.
MyGulfAction.com is adapted from technology used in Smart Power’s award-winning “America’s Greenest Campus” campaign. By visiting the website, creating a free account and pledging to make simple changes in one’s daily energy usage, any individual can join millions of others who are angry and frustrated about the oil spill and ready to reduce our nation’s reliance on fossil fuels and offshore drilling.
Each commitment to reduce oil use will aggregate with other reductions on the site’s homepage, showing how many gallons of leaking oil have been offset by the MyGulfAction.com community.
“It’s time for Americans to take action – not just throw up our hands and look to President Obama, the Coast Guard and BP,” said Brian F. Keane, President of SmartPower. “With My Gulf Action, everyone can channel our collective frustration into positive change and set our nation and the world on a dramatically sounder course.”
The latest estimates, reported by PBS NewsHour, are that more than 80 million gallons of oil have been spilled into the Gulf of Mexico since BP’s Deepwater Horizon well exploded on April 20, with estimates of daily leakage ranging anywhere from 1.4 million to 4.2 million gallons.
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