I don't know if you were horrified by the fact that the Mineral Management Agency, the government bureau that overseas permits for drilling new oil wells in the ocean, wasn't bothering to get permits or do environmental impact analyses when they allowed big companies like BP to drill.
This sentence from the New York Times story struck me as particularly ironic: "The BP well that blew up in the gulf last month was granted an exemption from the NEPA process because company officials had assured regulators that it carried little hazard."
And now, of course, eleven men are dead, and countless mammals. As the oil moves almost inevitably to the beaches of Gulf Coast, it is impossible to know what kind of environmental impact it will have -- decades?
On NPR today a few scientists were talking about the possibility of multiple extinctions if we continue on our course without making significant alterations in the way we live.
The example that stuck in my mind was the box turtle -- which just doesn't exist in many parts of the suburbs any more.
And I can't figure out why we don't seem, as individuals, to invest more time in trying to make a difference. We get furious about Obamacare. We worry that perhaps someone is trying to take away our guns. We boycott Arizona (not that I disagree). We compare America to Greece. We picket the politicos who are making cuts in education and trying to impose a soda tax.
Can we look beyond our own personal context? In my more pessimistic moments, I have to admit that I wonder.
Or perhaps do we trust that our government will look to our interests and do what is good for all of us? Even now?
So nu? as my relatives would say. That's Yiddish for ...what are you going to do it about it?
While picking up more than a 100.00 of dry cleaning in Eagle today, I ran into a parishioner at a local Episcopal Church. As we were chatting, I confessed guiltily that I sometime feel like, as a mother, I spend half my time driving kids around. Both of us, we agreed, have a pretty big carbon footprint.
No stranger to ambivalence, then, I grapple -- and wonder if you are doing so, too. If you have figured out what to do next, please tell us.
Am I the only one who is concerned that we are in a time crunch -- and the door in which to change our behavior is closing behind us?
Talk about Huis-clos.
1 commentaire:
I think the key IS all of us looking to our own interest. What needs to change is what we perceive that interest to be. You are not alone, there are growing communities committed to change. As I have stated before on this topic....the door is already closed. Planetary systems are already moving and can not be turned on a dime.
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