Earth Day 2012

Bull of the Woods mushroom

Earth Day, 2012.

Two years after the BP-inflicted Macondo Oil disaster exploded onto the national consciousness, thousands of Gulf of Mexico dolphins are stranding themselves on the shore and food fish (red snapper, in particular) are pulled from the water bearing lesions and strange infections.  (But, don't worry!  FDA mucky-muck Robert W. Dickey assures us the fish are safe to eat!)  Meanwhile, gas prices are running at about $4 per gallon and Big Oil continues raking in money hand over fist. 

In these economically shaky times, environmental worries recede before the urgent and immediate concerns of people struggling in the pitiless currents of a "free-market economy."

Cue Dick Cheney and the resource extraction pirates.  Start the chanting and the disinformation campaigns.  "Drill, baby, drill!"   "Tree-hugging hippies want to take your jobs."  "Global warming is a hoax!"

Even if they don't believe it, people will espouse that kind of claptrap to assuage any vague discomfort that might arise from watching Creation wither before mankind's rapacious appetites.

I don't know.

We were born into this world, full of beauties and wonders.  It doesn't seem right that we should deny these things --the Siberian tigers, the white rhinoceroses, the Northern Spotted Owls, the Amazonian rainforests, the Great Coral reef --to the people of the future.