Mindful Musings - 8

The big news of the day is that the Gulf Oil Spill has been contained after 3 months of flowing freely. This disaster took over all of the national news with horrible pictures of dying animals, fish, and other sea creatures. Huge areas were shut down in Louisiana, and parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. Some states were luckier than others, with Louisiana being the unluckiest one of all with oil slabs coming ashore. Others had tar balls dotting their beaches while others only had the rumors of the disaster to keep many from going to the gulf beaches.

One has to feel for the gulf coast residents. It's difficult to imagine what they have been through. I can't imagine the Pacific Ocean dealing with this but ,out of sight out of mind, is a huge garbage dump in the middle of the Pacific that is as huge as the state of Delaware. No one can clean it at this point, because no one really cares to clean it. It's so far out there that most people wouldn't know it existed.

If the Pacific dump languishes across the ocean to Hawaii or California, we would be in a snit over it. We would have to deal with garbage at our shores and dead fishes and fowl as well. Many Americans living in the midwest, might consider what it would be like if the Great Lakes were fouled up with garbage. Most Americans are not as affected by this Gulf oil spill more than the gulf coast waters and its people.

In the 1970s, we "youngsters" came up with Earth Day. We celebrated mother Earth and promised that we would preserve her loveliness. We saw it was a matter of life and death. Some real movement occurred such as the Clean Air Act. Many states adopted emission standards. I can remember seeing Los Angeles on a clear day, little pollution. We had it right, back so many years, but now, because of the greed and callousness of our society and the worship of the dollar, our wetlands, forests, cities, oceans and the very air we breathe are in jeopardy.

BP is being blamed for the oil spill in the Gulf but we are just as much to blame because we allowed government and business to take their eyes off the ball. That ball, of course, is mother Earth.