Image credit: NASA and the MODIS Rapid Response Team
Beyond belief: the size and impact of the oil catastrophe. Destruction on a scale unknown in human memory.
Beyond belief: in just 2 months, the effects of human industry have destroyed an ocean and laid waste to the coastal life of a vast part of a continent.
Beyond belief: the utter lack of meaningful response to the worst. environmental. disaster. ever. The lying and shirking of British Petroleum. The hollow words of a well-meaning but ineffective President. The continued patronage of the oil industry by gangrenous, soul-dead Congressional bodies and Court systems (the oil industry successfully challenged the moratorium on deep-water drilling, heaping insult on top of mortal injury). Equally incredible is the stultifying apathy of a nation full of SUV-driving, over-air conditioned, Fox news-watching drones, willfully ignoring the need for change.
I’m not putting my stock in any of the current U.S. energy legislation in congress, either. Bills like the Kerry-Lieberman Climate Bill or the slightly more appealing Cantwell-Collins CLEAR Act (PDF) only scratch the surface of what we need to effect. And I know I’m not alone when I might dismiss the prospect of real change coming from Congress.
A national overhaul of policy, technology and attitude is more the recipe I would consult in confronting the devastation wrought on the Gulf of Mexico. What we need is nothing short of a sea change. Pardon my pontificating. At the moment I am at a loss for anything else.
Damn. | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine.
