Oil Spill: Rock Bottom Should Be Deep Enough

So I'm watching the whole Gulf Oil Spill Epic unfold with the same feelings of desperation and anger everyone feels. If there really was just one person - one company - to blame, we'd have this wrapped up by now. Wrapped up as in it wouldn't occupy our attention anymore. 
When the Valdez defiled Prince William Sound, it was troubling, disturbing. But it fit into a tidy box. It had the ideal elements: 
- It was a LONG way away from where most of us live our lives. 
- There was a single, rich culprit. 
- It had a shelf life - just shy of 11 million gallons. 
- You could follow along at home while they wrapped it up: Get the culprit on the case. Berate the lawyers. Empathize with the locals - truly. 
- Hold Exxon accountable for the rest of their quarterly reports. 
And then... go on with our lives. Order Alaskan crabs and book cruises to Prince William Sound. 
Life restores. That was the unspoken promise: Life restores. 




But this... this is as close to "forever" as anyone has ever come in terms of a planetary climate shift. 
Because there IS no restoring the Gulf of Mexico to its former state. 
How this statement is being avoided is a mystery of the Church to me. 
(Listen to Charles Wohlforth on the Kojo Nnamdi show on WAMU in DC. 
http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2010-06-10/oil-ocean-lessons-alaska. 
Pick it up about 8 minutes in.)


For all the pledges by the CEO of BP, all the "careful monitoring" by the government, the expenditure of billions on "cleanup," it's all playing out on a paper thin platform, beneath which is the unspoken fear: the Gulf as we love it is now merely a memory. If we pay attention - for once - to the rhythms of the earth, we conclude that the outrage of the people along the immediate spill line will eventually be shared by all nations of the Gulf, the Caribbean Islands, the Atlantic Seaboard, the North Atlantic... 
To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen: This is no Valdez.


This is not a condemnation of anyone. We're way past that. This is simply an attempt to push "what's so" to the forefront so we can even see what we have to work with.
Stepping into the truth - the accuracy - of what is now the Gulf of Mexico is so painful. But how we own it may be like any other experience at the ocean. We can inch our way in deeper one gasp at a time, or just dive in and let it wash over us. Either way, the Gulf itself will not alter. What must now be altered is how we address our responsibility as residents of the planet.    


Fare Well.