The+Big+Idea

**The Big Idea - Environmental Responsibility - Water, Economics, Wildlife**
** __Overview__ **

The importance of instilling in our children, at an early age, our needs, as citizens of a community, to set high standards, develop solid moral understandings, and accept individual responsibility for protecting our environment is an essential component of a child’s education.

It is a simple fact of life: the quality of life we live is dependent upon the environment in which we live. We have a moral responsibility to protect our environment. The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is now the worst catastrophe of its kind in the nation’s history with 25,000 barrels of oil, per day leaking into the Gulf. This disaster tops the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989. President Obama has placed a six-month moratorium on offshore drilling on the East Coast. The West Coast has a standing ban on offshore drilling.Both effective and non-effective offshore drilling affects our quality of life.

You can make a difference by educating your community on the benefits as well as the risks of off-shore drilling; enabling them to make more informed decisions when electing and persuading officials such as congressional representatives who in turn, ultimately make the decisions about off-shore drilling.