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I can't seem to care. :/
May. 18th, 2010 01:45 pmI feel like a bad environmentalist. I feel like a bad person. I can't seem to care about the BP oil spill.
I know I should care a lot. I love animals and wild spaces and I remember the gulf coast somewhat fondly when we visited it in my childhood, but I can't seem to get upset about it. It's unreal, it's far away, and I think perhaps I know that caring won't really do me any good.
We live as green as we can, we've been working on making ourselves more and more green. We do beach cleanup. We pick up trash when we're hiking. I've got it on my list to sew nice tote bags to give to people at Burning Man that we see picking up trash, but it's all so small and insignificant. So tiny.
The oil spill may seem huge but it's only because it's obvious and a single event. What we're doing to the oceans and air on a global scale is far worse, and some part of me knows that this wasn't an accident. It was laziness and greed that caused this, the results were fully predictable. If not here, then somewhere else. It was only a matter of time. I know also that the people who deserve the blame for this massive destruction will never be tried for crimes against humanity and crimes against nature. Most of them are multi-millionaires. Nothing will ever happen to them. In time, the company will be told they must pay an insignificant fine which they will later weasel out of and then spend a fortune telling us how good they are towards the environment.
I'm also sick of listening to the right wing try to spin this as Obama's fault. Obama is too centrist for me, but let's face facts. BP was the company that had a refinery explosion in Texas in 2005. It killed 15 people, wounded 120 more. The Bush administration should have been responsible, should have cracked down on them and got them to clean up their act. In fact, that same year, there was a recommendation to force BP to install the very safety mechanism on this oil rig that would have shut off in this situation and prevented the oil spill all together. But it went nowhere, conveniently forgotten by the Bush administration.
If I were Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, or Europe, the moment the oil hit my coastal waters, I would be filing charges in the world court against the United States. The safety valve which costs only a fraction of what the rig made IN ONE DAY is required in the civilized world. Who is the US to hold out a greased palm and look the other way at the expense of other nations. Our behavior is of criminal negligence. But this too I know will not happen.
I could hope this disaster will wake up the conservatives in the southern states, make them realize that we live on a small planet and that we should consider our impact and yet I know it won't make a damn bit of difference to them.
So I can't let myself care. A bunch of animals will die, a bunch of coast will be ruined, and the people who should care, the people who are right there, the people who are responsible by their complacency and their ignorance in voting are just going to keep blaming other people and being ignorant and not giving a flying fuck, so why should I? What good will it do?
I know I should care a lot. I love animals and wild spaces and I remember the gulf coast somewhat fondly when we visited it in my childhood, but I can't seem to get upset about it. It's unreal, it's far away, and I think perhaps I know that caring won't really do me any good.
We live as green as we can, we've been working on making ourselves more and more green. We do beach cleanup. We pick up trash when we're hiking. I've got it on my list to sew nice tote bags to give to people at Burning Man that we see picking up trash, but it's all so small and insignificant. So tiny.
The oil spill may seem huge but it's only because it's obvious and a single event. What we're doing to the oceans and air on a global scale is far worse, and some part of me knows that this wasn't an accident. It was laziness and greed that caused this, the results were fully predictable. If not here, then somewhere else. It was only a matter of time. I know also that the people who deserve the blame for this massive destruction will never be tried for crimes against humanity and crimes against nature. Most of them are multi-millionaires. Nothing will ever happen to them. In time, the company will be told they must pay an insignificant fine which they will later weasel out of and then spend a fortune telling us how good they are towards the environment.
I'm also sick of listening to the right wing try to spin this as Obama's fault. Obama is too centrist for me, but let's face facts. BP was the company that had a refinery explosion in Texas in 2005. It killed 15 people, wounded 120 more. The Bush administration should have been responsible, should have cracked down on them and got them to clean up their act. In fact, that same year, there was a recommendation to force BP to install the very safety mechanism on this oil rig that would have shut off in this situation and prevented the oil spill all together. But it went nowhere, conveniently forgotten by the Bush administration.
If I were Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, or Europe, the moment the oil hit my coastal waters, I would be filing charges in the world court against the United States. The safety valve which costs only a fraction of what the rig made IN ONE DAY is required in the civilized world. Who is the US to hold out a greased palm and look the other way at the expense of other nations. Our behavior is of criminal negligence. But this too I know will not happen.
I could hope this disaster will wake up the conservatives in the southern states, make them realize that we live on a small planet and that we should consider our impact and yet I know it won't make a damn bit of difference to them.
So I can't let myself care. A bunch of animals will die, a bunch of coast will be ruined, and the people who should care, the people who are right there, the people who are responsible by their complacency and their ignorance in voting are just going to keep blaming other people and being ignorant and not giving a flying fuck, so why should I? What good will it do?
