Friday Quote
"We're doing damage as big as the Gulf oil spill every day, and there's no fixing it. Humanity has grown in power, wealth, and appetite to the point that there is no more margin of error anywhere. We're on a knife's edge, facing the very real possibility that for our children, all the world may be one big Gulf of Mexico, inexorably and irreversibly deteriorating.
Perhaps if the public gets a clear taste of this, they'll step back and contemplate whether the kind of energy we use is really as "cheap" as it looks. Maybe they'll stop thinking about how to drill better and start thinking about how to avoid drilling altogether. Because some mistakes just can't be undone." - David Roberts of Grist in an article titled, "What if the oil spill just can’t be fixed?"
As a side - check out the always mind-blowing photo's from The Big Picture blog HERE.
Roberts posted this piece a few days before BP's "Top Kill" attempt, a PR move at best that has a lot of people around the world thinking they're (BP) actaully slowing this thing down. The reality is the only fix appears to be the drilling of relief wells and by all estimates that is several months away. We posted on this story on our Facebook pages, Twitter page and talked about it on our radio show - crediting Roberts with being one of the best enviromental writers out there. And also crediting him with not holding anything back in his critique of the situation. But did his piece use fear mongering as a crutch? And are there "greenies" out there who are now saying "I told you so" instead of saying, "what can we do?" And what if this would have happened in some other gulf or coastline? These are all great questions to ponder and after some healthy dialogue on the topic, here's a little taste of what we concluded.
Some of the comments, albeit from people we don't respect whatsoever (Palin, Limbaugh, etc) that some in the "green movement" are reveling in this because it legitimizes what they've been saying for so long, are in some sense warranted. What we're seeing here is a very complex "coming to terms" process. It took nearly a week for people to even realize what was happening, several weeks to craft anger, and now almost a month for our leaders to get serious. We're just now seeing people come to terms with policy decisions crafted LONG ago and how they're effecting us. And soon the discussion will turn to the geography of the tragedy and what that means in a social context. And then there will be the legal struggles.... oh the legal struggles.
What we got most out of Roberts piece was his point about a "Gulf oil spill" happening every day somewhere in our ecosystem. Sure it was heavy on the scare tactics and worst case scenario talk, and yes, we agree that our society isn't cable of thinking critically enough to process that kind of speak rationally, but in some small way we feel it was written to open people's eyes and challenge them to think beyond the headlines to the day to day struggles our planet faces.
