Oil Spilling & John Bartlett's Awakening

• An interview with designer John Bartlett over at Tim Groen has me pretty inspired and excited! We all know how rare it is to meet other fashion people interested in compassionate lifestyle and cruelty-free design. Bartlett, who is ardently anti-fur and veg, has committed to eliminating all leather from future collections, saying "I decided that I’m not going to work in leather anymore at all."

• 42,000 gallons of crude oil are spewing out into the Gulf of Mexico very 24 hours. Experts say it could take months to stop the leak that has already covered 600 square miles and threatens wildlife areas and coastlines, like the sensitive Louisiana coastal ecosystem and the Mississippi Delta, now mere miles from the slick. The explosion that caused the oil rig to collapse and killed 11 crew members remains a mystery. BP (Beyond Petroleum), Transocean (the rig's operational company) and government have not been able to stop the oil from spewing out of a broken pipe 5,000 feet below sea level. And lastly, the blowout-preventer - a device designed to stop a leak in scenarios like this, did not deploy and remains unable to be triggered. Burn the oil. Skim and collect the oil.  There is no harmless solution and, in the fashion of an addict that never learns the lesson, the oil economy chugs on. We will all be reassured that "everything is being done" and "no one could have predicted this" and "it's an unfortunate but unavoidable risk".  Who is doing the reassuring? Well, according to a NYT article yesterday, BP is and their profits more than doubled in the first quarter of last year, thanks to increased oil prices.

How can we ever move on from oil? Will these disasters ever cease and, if not, what does that mean?