Tuesday's oil spill is being called "a worst nightmare scenario" by officials in Santa Barbara, California. It's giving us images of dead birds, clean-up crews and over nine miles of California Coast covered in 105,000 gallons of thick black oil. For Southern California, these images also bring echoes of the much larger 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill – which dumped three million gallons of crude oil. That spill spurred the modern environmental movement and motivated some activists to run for higher office.
Photo: Clean-up efforts underway in Santa Barbara after Tuesday's oil spill (Saul Gonzalez)