RBWords - Volume 23 - Number 5: May 2010
Something to Think About
– The continuing saga of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and all the implications of this gives one much to think about. It’s not just the question of who is to blame or the failures to stop up the broken pipe. The “blame game” will be going on for years. Ask anyone who had anything to do with the Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska back in the late 80’s. The clean up is still going on from that one!
What has caught my own attention are the stories of the fishermen, wildlife, oil derrick workers who perished (and those who survived), threatened wetlands, tourist beaches and the dependent local economies. All of these stories weigh in on the balance between their interests and the national need for oil that goes into so much of what is manufactured as well as into the tanks of our vehicles.
What will happen after the hole is plugged? Will the story continue to be told after all those media folk leave Venice, LA? When all the fuss dies down, will the big drills just start up again? Will any new regulations make any difference? Will all the money being paid by BP serve to make this nightmare “go away?” Hurricane season is about to begin and anxious folks will be worrying about the safety of those big drilling platforms. The oil and gas in the ground and the wind in the sky have shown they are the match of anything we puny humans can put up! “It isn’t nice to mess with Mother Nature!” A season of earnest prayer lies ahead. IT’S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
It Has Been Said
Nature – with its frequent droughts, its devastating floods, its hurricane winds, its termites ready to destroy our dwellings, its plague-bearing animals, its malarial infections – assaults and challenges us, and we need all our skills and effective technologies to defend ourselves against such forces that are ever ready to destroy us. But while these are assaults on the human are all-pervasive, nature has so arranged its balance of forces that the remedy is already available. Much of the assault that we perceive as natural is really human in origin. By cutting forests we invite floods; by practicing extensive monocultural agriculture, we invite pest infestation on a massive scale; by pouring chemicals on the land, we kill the soil and invite erosion. We could extend the list endlessly. Nature is both benign and terrible, but consistently creative in the larger patterns of her actions. The difficulty with our technologies is not that they have a dark aspect, that that this dark aspect is so sterile that it terminates rather than enhances further life development.
From THE DREAM OF THE EARTH by Thomas Berry, C.P.