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Category: Make a Difference: Community & Calls to Action

  • Oil Spill, Day 64

    Oil washing ashore in Alabama

    Thank God men cannot fly,

    and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

    -Henry David Thoreau

    Day 64.

    Remember how BP first said the spill meant about 5,000 barrels a day? That sounded pretty bad. Now, conservative estimates put the spill at 35,000- 50,000 barrels a day, but the earth is possibly gushing up to 100,000 barrels of oil. EVERY DAY.

    To put that into perspective, that means the amount of oil already “spilled” could power 114,000 cars for a year.

    Or to put it another way, the amount of oil already spilled could take care of the auto fuel needs of Sussex County, Delaware for a year.

    This is where it starts to get ugly.

    Sussex County is pretty sparsely populated. When you look at those numbers from that viewpoint it starts to not look quite as bad. Power the cars of Sussex County? Big deal. There really aren’t that many people in Sussex County. It’s a fairly small area, relatively speaking.

    Running the numbers, each car in Sussex County uses an average of 580 gallons of gas a year, or 11 gallons a week- for most people somewhere around 3/4 of a tank. This seems about right from what I’ve seen.

    Until you learn that the average European uses– are you ready for this?- 59 gallons of gas A YEAR.

    We’re using more than ten times the amount of gasoline.

    When the Exxon Valdez spill happened- once considered one of the worst environmental disasters ever, the Valdez dumped a comparatively paltry 250,000 barrels of crude oil- Greenpeace ran an ad in the New York Times that read,

    “It wasn’t the Exxon Valdez captain’s driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill.  It was yours.”

    Ain’t that the truth. We’re a nation of gas guzzlers. It’s shameful.

    If we each adjusted our driving habits and reduced our gasoline consumption by 38 miles per week, we’d eliminate our need for oil drilled in the Gulf of Mexico.

    I have an idea. What if we each decided, committed, today to the concept of driving the car we currently own until hybrid, electric, or other alt energy vehicles are widely available, safe and affordable? If we said, my next car will be environmentally responsible. And (this is important) what if we LET AUTOMAKERS AND OUR GOVERNMENT KNOW of our intentions? Well. I bet they’d get hopping on those new technologies, yes? Can’t have people not buying new cars, that’s unAmerican.

    The people I’ve already laid this info on, have universally had a knee-jerk response of, well, it’s easy in Europe, the public transportation system is better there. That’s lazy thinking. It’s better because the public demanded it to be, because they used it. If we all used public transportation more, lines and times would be expanded to make public transport easier and more enjoyable. After all, it’s a source of income to the state.

    But no one’s going to bother improving public transportation if they can’t prove that their investment will turn a profit. You gotta use it, or at least indicate that you will and then follow through. We can talk all we want. Things happen because we force them to.

    I know that popular opinion holds that Americans don’t do sacrifice, and that it was telling that President Obama didn’t ask us as a nation to curb our oil addiction. Still. I think it’s worth asking. You don’t get anything if you don’t ask, except a nation of people self-righteously saying, “Well, nobody ever asked us.”

    I’m asking you. Reduce your gas consumption. Use public transportation. Carpool, or bike or walk- it’s good for you, anyway. Commit to the idea that your next vehicle will be a hybrid, or an electric, or whatever superstar technology they’ll have come up with to replace gas guzzlers. Use the power of your voice, your vote, and your dollar- tell automakers and the government what you’re up to.

    After all, in the long run we’re sacrificing a lot more, right? Like our oceans. Our wildlife.

    And for god’s sake, our self-respect. Are we going to let Europe get away with the superior moral stance here? Step up, people!

    oil covered brown pelican

    For more depressing, but eye-opening, images of the situation in the Gulf of Mexico, check out Oil in the Gulf: Two Months Later and Scenes from the Gulf of Mexico from The Big Picture.

  • Today is World Oceans Day

    Filthy water cannot be washed.
    ~African Proverb

    Today is World Oceans Day, but I hesitate to say “Happy World Oceans Day!”
    The theme for 2010 is “Oceans of Life;” ironic when new images of death by oil keep surfacing.

    It’s hard to celebrate the beauty and vastness of the ocean while we sit and wait word on whether the oil gushing into the Gulf can be stopped anytime soon. How soon and to what extent our coastlines will be affected. And yet, because of this tragedy, educating ourselves on the complexity and wonder of the ocean, and what we as individuals can do to protect it, is even more important.

    For starters, we can go to the Ocean Project website and take the “Seven Cs Pledge:”

    THE SEVEN C’s:

    1. Commit to making a real difference
    2. Conserve in my home
    3. Consume consciously
    4. Communicate my interest and concerns
    5. Challenge myself daily
    6. Connect in my community
    7. Celebrate our Ocean

    All well and good, but right now wildlife rescue efforts need MONEY.  Consider donating to the National Wildlife Federation.

    If your kids are worried or confused about the oil spill, here are some tips about talking to them about it, courtesy of Ranger Rick.

    I think we would all feel better, though, if empowered with actions that make a difference. I just don’t know what that action is yet. For a while I was angry, but as the days stretch out into weeks and months– we are on day 50– I am feeling more and more helpless. Our oceans are being taken away from us and especially from our children.

    No, wait. There IS something we can do.  We can eliminate dependency on oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico. And we can do it by reducing our driving by about 5.4 miles per day. (And we’d STILL be using 500% more gasoline for travel than they do in Europe!)

    That is not a misprint or a joke, the breakdown happens here. Please, please, please, share that article with your friends.

    5.4 miles per day. Maybe carpool a few days a week, or schedule your errands all in one go.

    Feeling empowered yet? No? Maybe fire off a letter to BP letting them know your intent, and how you’re climbing up on your soapbox and yelling from the mountaintops. Telling them you’re enraged by their lack of foresight.

    That made me feel a little better, anyway.

    Happy World Oceans Day.

    Maybe not a day of celebration- more of a call to action.

  • Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring; the "Classic that Launched the Environmental Movement"

    Jeez, with a title like that, who can resist?

    Silent Spring is a book that most everyone has heard about; even my seven year old knew about Rachel Carson, the spring without birdsong, and the effects of DDT on eagle’s eggs.

    It is comprehensive and admittedly somewhat exhausting; Carson explores the hazards of pesticide abuse from every conceivable angle, with the chemical, biological, and historical research to back her every step of the way.

    Some fast soundbites that made my hair stand on end:

    • Ten years after the use of arsenic spray on tobacco was halted, the arsenic levels in cigarettes made from American tobacco increased by more than 300 percent. It has not gone away but rather continues to accumulate.
    • Since pesticides do not wash away but rather cling to leaves, grass, etc, as well as seep into the earth and groundwater, when earthworms process these items, the poisons become concentrated within them. The robin population in sprayed areas was decimated the following spring, when a lethal dose was delivered in 11 earthworms– about how many a robin will consume in fifteen minutes.
    • Many pesticides would be stored in the body within the fatty tissue, lurking undetected until a period of stress or a loss in weight would cause these tissues to be metabolised, releasing the poisons into the system.

    The whole book is like that. It’s scary and infuriating.

    It’s important to bear in mind what a radical idea Carson was setting forth at the time that she wrote Silent Spring. Chemical companies asserted that the pesticides they provided were tolerable within limits; Carson countered that there were no satisfying studies that explored the long-term effects that occur when varying chemicals accumulate residually in the body, and more frighteningly, begin to interact with each other on a cellular level.

    While DDT and other pesticides like it have been banned, I think this alarm should still be sounding: why aren’t people more concerned about the residual, cumulative, interactive qualities of the chemicals we willingly expose ourselves to everyday? In our cleaning products, our foods, our clothing, our water, our car upholstery…in short, in everything.

    From Afflenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic:

    Out of 75,000 chemicals now in common commercial use,
    only 1,200 to 1,500 have been tested for carcinogenicity.

     


    Why don’t we hold the companies that produce these things more accountable? Why don’t we demand stronger regulation? Why doesn’t everyone buy organic whenever possible? Why do we turn our heads and hold our breath and hope the problem will go away?

    Rachel Carson was also a female scientist in 1962, writing a scientific thesis in the form of an emotional appeal to the public at large. Chew on that for a moment.

    Reviewers mocked her research:

    “To identify the person whose views you are quoting is, according to this reviewer, name-dropping….My critic also profoundly disapproved of my bibliography. The very fact that it gave complete and specific references for each important statement was extremely distasteful to him. This was padding to impress the uninitiated with its length.”

    Consider also how she was leaving herself open to public ridicule from her field: using the imagery of dead robins to compel the masses to take notice. Scientists were supposed to be objective observers, writing technical, scientific essays for other eminent scientists. I’m sure that many dismissed her work without even taking the time to examine it, as the treacly overwrought passions of a woman. “Oh, dear, the poor birds.” As Carson herself articulated,

    “One obvious way to try to weaken a movement is to discredit the person who champions it.”

    This attitude seems familiar today as well; some people dismiss the environmental movement by undermining the science- for example, 14% don’t think global warming is an issue, and another 23% aren’t sure– and others prefer to cast environmentalists as treehuggers, bleeding hearts who just like to find issues to preach about.

    The point that I am making is that Rachel Carson didn’t care about that. I think people are waiting for another Martin Luther King, another Gandhi, another JFK, someone who is going to be the spokesman, the leader. Rachel Carson looked at the world around her, identified a problem, defied the condescension of her peers, stepped up proudly on her soapbox, and spoke compellingly from her heart to everyone that would listen.

    And people responded. A movement was born.

    What we can learn from Rachel Carson is the importance of our voice, as individuals.

    We achieve nothing if we do not appeal to everyone- every person- to take a look at the world around them and observe the changes that are undeniable.

    To compel them, through the example of our actions and the strength of our convictions, to step up.

    To see the interconnectedness of all things, to demand action and accountability.

    Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation. He has sought to insulate himself, with steel and concrete, from the realities of earth and water. Perhaps he is intoxicated with his own power, as he goes farther and farther into experiments for the destruction of himself and his world. For this unhappy trend there is no single remedy- no panacea. But I believe that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
    –from a speech Carson gave in 1954

    For the purposes of the Bookworm Challenge, I would rate Silent Spring 4 out of 5 stars for its historical context, and recommend it to the “deeply green”.

    For the “not-quite-as-hardcore-green”, I would recommend Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson , a collection of excerpts from Carson’s essays, published writings, letters, notes and speeches. This book captures her intelligent spirit in manageable bites without having to slog through the sometimes dry scientific analysis of Silent Spring.

    For parents, I highly recommend The Sense of Wonder. The subtitle reads, “Words and pictures to help you keep alive your child’s inborn sense of wonder, and renew your own delight in the mysteries of earth, sea, and sky.” This was one of Carson’s essays, first published as “Help Your Child to Wonder”, which she had intended to expand into a book; an inspiration to revisit the natural world through a child’s perspective. This particular edition is an oversized hardback, includes lovely photography, and is appropriate for sharing with a grade-school-aged child; I think I may start giving out copies as birthday presents, or maybe end-of-year gifts for teachers.

    I’m still working through the 800+ pages of John Muir’s Nature Writings, but am liberally peppering his words throughout everything I write; what an inspiration this man is to me. I would guess a formal review of his life and essays will be ready sometime mid-July.

    Thankfully, the Bookworm Challenge has been extended for as long as we bloggers want to keep on reading, and the resulting reviews, thoughts, etc. now reside at their own site, The Blogging Bookworm. Inch through the stacks, or join in on the fun.

    I really feel that it’s done me no end of good. I’ll keep reading no matter what (like anyone could stop me!) and I’ll keep blogging about it until the overwhelming majority petitions me to stop.

    What should I read next? Taking suggestions for late July and August…