Spilt Oil

Jun. 4th, 2010 05:03 pm
rebeccmeister: (Default)
[personal profile] rebeccmeister
Today a friend passed along an image that someone created:



Meanwhile, many people are deeply troubled by the images of oiled animals that are appearing in the media.

I always have a hard time with this - the suffering animals are suffering, yes. But what's more insidious are all of the levels of suffering that we cannot see and cannot relate to as easily - things like pesticide use and rising carbon dioxide levels. Many people have made great strides in identifying ways to get people to relate to these more insidious problems, in recognition that we desperately need to do things about them.

Here's what my father wrote:

On the front page of today's Seattle Times: A brown pelican laden with oil struggles in the surf at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010.
Thomas Berry asked: How can you have a healthy human population on a sick planet?
Listening to interviews of people who live in Louisiana who oppose the moratorium on drilling in the gulf, people who are concerned about the loss of well-paying jobs, I wonder, if in the process of obtaining our livelihoods we destroy the planet ... How to make sense of this tragedy?


Meanwhile, I try to imagine what life would be like if I lived somewhere where there were no building materials available, no method for dealing with sewage, not enough food, and no promise of a better life.

When I leave school today, I will ride my bicycle home, to my garden and chickens, then I will ride my bicycle to the store. I will not ride past either of the ghost bikes, but I will think about them as I ride. This state is symptomatic of many larger problems.

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