Its Bigger Than We Thought

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.... well, maybe you didn't really think that, but you did think the Gulf oil spill was fading from the news spotlight. Yesterday, new video footage emerged that should remind us of the enormous impact of this environmental (and potentially economic) disaster.  The homemade video is from Alabama resident John Wathen (Hurricane CreekKeeper) taken as a volunteer pilot (Tom Hutchings) flew him over the area where the oil rig sank.  Wathen is a member of Bobby Kennedy Jr.’s environmental group and an ex-construction contractor (who looks more like a former Hells Angel than a tree hugger).  

 

Wathen spent several days filming the video showing animals in the Gulf of Mexico dying while covered in oil and tar balls. Sperm Whales, Dolphins and other sea animals can be seen suffering and dying in the Gulf of Mexico. He said many of the dolphins were already dead and the ones who weren't had their heads above water like they were looking off in the distance to where BP is currently setting collected oil on fire in an effort to burn it off. He describes the situation as "hopeless". A word he has not used in the past.

This is not just an American disaster, it's an international disaster. If - or should I say, when - the spill gets into the Gulf Stream, it will be transferred to the Atlantic. That means it's going to hit the Everglades National Park in Florida, Jamaica, the Bahama Islands, Cuba...

Another potential hazard is that if the light sheen on the edge of the slick is evaporated then the oil will be rained down on the southern coast.

What’s not understandable is the risk we continue to take trusting our energy choices and our public seas to oil companies like BP

Having just returned from seeing the ruins of several of the greatest civilizations of the past, I found this video excruciatingly difficult to watch. It brought tears to my eyes. Why do great civilization fall? The history of humankind has been marked by patterns of growth and decline. Some declines have been gradual, occurring over centuries. Others have been rapid, disappearing over the course of a few years.

According to a NY Times essay called "The ends of the world as we know them" Jared Diamond (Pulitzer prize winning novelist)says that collapse results from several inter-woven factors:

1. Drought, natural disaster, disease, over population and the damage people have inflicted on their environment

2. Climate change

3. War

4. Changes in friendly trading partners

5. Society's political, economic, and social Reponses to those shifts.

If you have not seen this video, please take some time to watch. It's about 9 minutes long

What can we learn from the past?

I'm Just Sayin