This photo makes me sad beyond words. Sometimes I just can’t believe what people are doing to this planet. (And I know, this is hardly the worst evidence of what we’ve done.)

From DotEarth: There is little to say about the scope of the unfolding Gulf of Mexico petro-calamity that the photography of James Duncan Davidson doesn’t say better (play the Deep Purple’s “ Smoke on the Water” while you’re exploring the gallery below). Here’s a  high-resolution version of the photograph above.

Davidson is part of  a team of photographers and videographers in the region now compiling imagery to present on June 28 in Washington at a gathering called  TEDxOilSpill, devoted to exploring new ideas for America’s energy future and mitigating the mess in the gulf.

Burning the oil at sea is seen as progress?  Yes, let’s add lots of black smoke filled with toxins and poisons and CO2 to the atmosphere to get rid of the oil we’ve dumped into the ocean.  Now that’s a solution. <sarcasm>  Sure, it’s a way to get the oil out of the water — some of it — but then it’s adding another very dangerous type of pollution to the air.  This will add to the greenhouse gases contributing to climate change. There must be another way to remove this oil. Burning can’t remove the emulsified oil either. That’s the oil mixed in fine particles with the water. That will eventually rot and sink to the bottom or make it to the shores of the U.S., killing everything on the way there.

 Below is a video explaining the burning process.

Notice the first scene in this video, which is from BP, and you can see how “apocalyptic” it looks.

This is why the drilling moratorium is important.  This could happen again. There are deeper wells than this one in the Gulf, and possibly even larger oil fields that could be unleashed into our oceans. It’s not worth the cost. We can’t afford another spill like this — hell, we can’t even afford just this one.