Engulfed

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:38:20 -0400

One issue I’ve been following assiduously is the Gulf Disaster (forget “spill,” this is a major disaster even right now, and we all still have a month to go before any relief wells are done. And we won’t know until then if it will even work.)

The sea, and all life in it, is being poisoned. Oil is washing up on once-beautiful beaches and coating marshes which are bird refuges for nearly every migrating species; we will never know how many lives have been lost in the sea. The human toll alone is bad enough; but the ocean never, ever stops moving: time and tide wait for no man. The entire ocean will bear traces of our folly, just as our streams did a generation ago, and our air does now.

Most everyone I know can’t talk about this for longer than a very few minutes... I myself can barely manage to think about it for long. We, the human race, are committing speciocide - for money. The manatees, dolphins, whales and sharks that fuel our imaginations, and a wealth of fish and crustaceans that are the food supply for millions of human beings - are suffocating and dying in tortured innocence... while we (in the person of our elected representatives) dither and spin.

Over whether we should drill in the deep ocean, change from a petrochemical-based to cleantech and energy-based economy, or require higher mileage standards for cars, or even agree that we have an addiction to oil - in the face of indisputable statistics that we consume far more than a proportionate share of the world’s resource of that material.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen some officials lean over backwards to keep the government from regulating any industry’s behavior or even require that liabilities and deficiencies be addressed more directly, a nearly inexplicable obeisance toward the petrochemical, financial, healthcare and pharmaceuticals industries, and megacorporations in general. Thanks to the activist SCOTUS decisions of late, these corporations are now “people” just like us. Except they throw around their weight every day - in the form of political donations, withholding of investment and taxes and job creation - to blackmail legislators and the “small people” and get their way.

This is shameless behavior. It reminds me of a tot throwing a tantrum because you remove a toy he is using to hit another child. And the legislative reaction reminds me of a harassed parent, too... soothing the tantrum-throwing child to avoid embarrassment, rather than laying out the simple rules and boundaries and insisting they be respected.

We are all so simply overwhelmed dealing with our lives, and so saturated with problems and shortcomings that have been accumulating over decades (or more) - one might say we feel ENGULFED - that, like the weary parent reeling from lack of sleep, we allow the toddler its latest tantrum without disciplining, encouraging its bullying tendencies without a thought of what it will become as it grows up.

With respect to the Gulf, let us hope we’ll still have time to find the right disciplinary method, and soon... the oceanlife is dying as we ponder, and sunset is fast approaching.

Inner voice.

Engulfed