- Courtesy US Coast Guard
It seems like a sick joke – an oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico and the beginning of what could be the worst environmental disaster in decades, just in time for Earth Day. A month and a half later with no end in sight, the deadly leak has spewed as much as 47 million gallons of oil in the waters and Florida has just declared a fisheries disaster – to be followed soon by Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi . The gravity of the situation for the ocean waters in the gulf and all the creatures who depend on it is hard to even comprehend. For anyone who missed how this all happened and how it played out, here’s a timeline of everything that went down during and after the explosion: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/05/bp-gulf-oil-spill-timeline.php
And while we feel the heartbreak of the situation, it seems sadly that these kinds of disasters are like an alcoholic’s rock bottom – it does, even for a moment, make us sit back and take a look at what we’re doing. Obama has re-evaluated his push to expand offshore drilling, put these plans on hold and called for rolling back tax breaks for oil companies to net billions for alternative energies. It is sad that it takes a crisis on this scale to open our eyes, but perhaps this is the last straw – driving the rumblings of a shift in consciousness into a full blown earthquake.
For so long we seem to have lost our connection, our understanding that what we do to the earth’s ecosystems we also do to ourselves. But I am hopeful that we are starting to finally wake up…there are signs, like the overwhelming success of movies like Avatar, the explosion of grassroots environmental groups around the globe, powerful movements calling for change which are forming worldwide through social media. And as a result we’re seeing polluting corporate giants beginning to crumble under exposure. It is an exciting time to be alive, because when a tipping point happens, things can change very quickly – we might see a shift within our lifetime so that when we look back to these days, it will boggle our minds that we were ever this foolish or disconnected. What do you think? Does this seem like a Pollyanna view on the situation, or do you see hope for our future relationship with the planet?
June 5, 2010 at 6:48 pm |
WE are who will make the shift happen in our global back yard.
The Canadian minority Conservative government is about to gut the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act this week with an add-on provision to the budget bill — if unopposed by the opposition parties. If it passes, this will bulldoze the Canadian federal EA process to open the floodgates for drilling without prior sound assessment, in an environment more sensitive and far less resilient than the Gulf of Mexico — that is the Arctic waters with the Beaufort Sea on Canada’s northern coastline and the adjacent separately named Arctic Ocean from Alaska to Greenland and all around our world’s north pole.
Please, Act Now to stop this by emailing party leaders. There’s a sample letter at http://greenparty.ca/fix-c-9?utm_campaign=C10.C9&utm_source=massmail&utm_medium=email. Thank you.