Forget ANGER, OILED PELICANS and OBAMA: the drama in the Gulf is the Earth's "moment"

[nashville_brook]

Bill McKibben: Missing the Real Drama of the Deepwater Horizon Blowout

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mckibben/missing-the-real-drama-of_b_606562.html


When a well started spewing oil off Santa Barbara in 1969, it spurred the first Earth Day, which in turn launched the environmental movement and a fundamental questioning of the balance between humans and the rest of nature. It turned out, in other words, to be a real Moment.

(snip)

Yes, the obvious story is important: There's oil spewing out, BP has demonstrated infuriating nonchalance, shrimpers are watching the sheen wash up on the coastal marshes, etc. This all needs to be covered, and is being covered with the incredible agonizing boredom that only 24-hour cable channels can bring to any issue. And there's a "political angle," which as usual has been about atmospherics. Is Obama angry enough? Is he connecting with "real people"? This sort of thing is conventional good fun for political reporters (especially when Obama plays along, announcing he's consulting with various academics in order to see "whose ass needs kicking."). But isn't there something more? Isn't this potentially a Moment too?

Let's think about the stories that are suggested by this trouble. One has something to do with peak oil. BP has gone to all this trouble for a well that taps into what they now think may be 100 million barrels of oil. And that's... five days supply for the U.S? Does that give you any sense of the precariousness of the arrangements under-girding our economy right at the moment?

Another -- even more important -- has to do with global warming. Let's assume that the oil from the Deepwater Horizon made it safely onshore and was refined and then burned in the gas tank of your car. What then? Well, the CO2 in the atmosphere would be doing at least as much damage as the oil spreading across the Gulf. Consider the following things that have happened since the Deepwater exploded:

(snip -- 129 degree temps in Pakistan, flooding in Nashville, and the melted Arctic)

All of these, it seems to me, could be considered parts of the Deepwater Horizon story because they demonstrate that fossil fuel is everywhere dirty. They change the political question from "is Obama angry enough" to "can Obama lead a credible fight for real energy and climate legislation?" More to the point, they connect with the mood of existential despair and anger that the oil spill has set off across the country. People are sad and bitter only in part because they see those pelicans oiled; mostly, they sense correctly that our leaders have yet to deal with what is clearly the biggest problem we face: the transition off of fossil fuels.

(snip)

[Coyote_Bandit]

1. Leaders are few and far between

We mostly have bought and paid for folks who are elected to fill a position and do a job. That doesn't make 'em leaders.

[nashville_brook]

2. McKibben is asking each of us to make this a Moment -- to take it beyond "leadership"

and i wonder if it's possible. i hold on to the hope that it's possible, but i don't know what "people" can do wrt an oil giant. we need leadership and we're not getting it -- so...to The Moment.

[xchrom]

3. we can't even get a public option. nt

[nashville_brook]

4. yep -- "the People" have been taken out of every equation. time to make ourselves relevant again.

[wordpix]

6. that is because The People are more engaged with the latest American Idol or Jackass

than with where the water comes from out of the tap, or the fish from the store. The People, for the most part, couldn't care less. OTOH, the politicians have not asked The People for any kind of sacrifice or change in way of life---Victory Gardens and can recycling, for example---such as they did during WWII. So the people remain clueless and idiotic.

[nashville_brook]

9. i don't know if that's true of Coastal Floridians. they're busy watching the death of the Gulf in

slow motion.

[nashville_brook]

5. a deep ecological kick

[Overseas]

7. K&R -- I agree. //nt

[nashville_brook]

8. ...