I am not usually one to shrink from learning about difficult topics. I’ve read or seen films about global warming, the horrors of industrial farming, native habitat destruction, etc. But my brain is just shutting down when it comes to the oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico. I can’t handle the thought of the zillions of innocent animals that will die (immediately, or long-term) from another human mess. I feel like I’m in a horror movie and even though I have my hands over my eyes, and my fingers in my ears I keep hearing impossible horrors: 200,000 gallons spilling out a day, BP expending more effort to hide the impact instead of stopping the leak, endangered sea turtles dying, the oil reaching up the Eastern seaboard.
Why did this happen? Greed seems to be the answer to most of our environmental problems. What I don’t understand is the people who push for more drilling, even when they’ve been warned that the equipment can’t handle it. Do they have some Plan B to live in a colony in space when they’ve completely mucked up the Earth? What am I missing? Don’t they breathe the same air as I do? Isn’t the sight of a verdant, green forest soothing on their eyes also? Don’t they want their children to be able to go camping and find wildflowers and mushrooms and salamanders?
The honeybees are dying, the bats are dying, the frogs and toads are dying. Birds migrate back to their homes only to find a new clear-cut (gotta send out more catalogs!) Why are the birds and bats and frogs dying? Most likely because they just hit a tipping point where their little bodies can’t handle all the pesticides and crap we’ve thrown at them.
So I’m being a coward and shutting down. I take periodic peeks between my fingers, but I really am unable to deal with the magnitude of this spill and what we’ve done to muck up our world.
