Lessons to Learn from the Current Oil Spill Tragedy

As I watch the continued devastation in the Gulf of Mexico on TV, in the papers and online, a growing sense of something dark looms over my head. Switching channels or attempting to distract myself with one fleeting idea or another doesn't seem to erase the feeling. What is this consuming emotion that is an obvious reaction to the images constantly confronting me? It is a heaping plate of guilt sprinkled with a hearty spoonful of shame.

I wasn't working on the off-shore refinery during or around the time of the accident, nor was I anywhere nearby. I'm not even remotely associated with the company involved. My guilt doesn't come from being a direct cause of the accident; it comes from being an indirect one. That bottled drink I had at lunch today, yesterday and the day before that are to blame. Those over-packaged snack products that fill up all those plastic store bags are to blame. So is every car ride, plane flight and Caribbean cruise.

I'm not saying that some of these things aren't crucial to modern day society. I'd feel hopeless having to endure a two month carriage ride back to Arizona to visit my family, so of course I'd rather take a six hour flight. Family is important enough to burn some fuel in order to spend time with them. Of course I hope for a cleaner technology that doesn't slowly kill our planet, but until then I will do what it takes to be with those I hold dear. It is all those other things that baffle me; things we can easily change, but don't.

Convenience seems to be a misunderstood word. People deceive themselves into believing its purpose is to make life easier when in fact adds a world of complexity... perhaps not immediately recognizable while you're driving through the fast food window or loading up your cart at big mart. I'm not sure life is supposed to be easy. In fact, easy is boring. The most difficult times in life tend to become the most gratifying. As a species we are meant to overcome obstacles, and now we have another big one: to quit trying to make everything so convenient.

So what if you want strawberries in the dead of winter, they're not ready yet. And won't they be that much more delicious in the summer, grown somewhere nearby? And what about all those packages you constantly have driven, flown and then driven again (shipped) to your home in Florida? All of these things that make life "better" are slowly killing us and our home. All the manufacturing, packaging, shipping, selling, purchasing, consuming and throwing away; all of the fuel and energy that goes into conveniences like that tiny snack cake so carefully preserved in a plastic wrapper or the enormous variety of bottled drinks fooling you into thinking you need more than just a glass of water.

Visible signs of change are popping up everywhere. Suddenly it's cool to be green, one trend that will hopefully stick. There are substantial numbers of people who are now making efforts to buy locally grown organic and seasonal foods. Basically, the less packaging and shipping involved in getting food to your table the better. There are more recycled goods available and a trend toward natural and organic textiles has become more main stream. They are baby steps in the grand scheme of things, but at least they are steps. We should embrace the possibilities of innovation and invention heading toward a more permanent and all-encompassing green existence.

We should also avoid using the word "need" to describe anything other than family, health or safety issues; you don't need new living room furniture, you just want new furniture. With the vast numbers of people now populating the planet, and many more to come, we don't have many options except immediate change. If we would like to continue living in a habitable world and keep making babies there are probably some sacrifices that "need" to be made in exchange, such as that lifestyle of ultra convenience. All of our conveniences have a cost, at the moment that cost is spewing forth in unfathomable amounts from the ocean floor doing some pretty awful things to our ecosystem. Take baby steps if necessary, or giant leaps, but however we decide to do it we need to do SOMETHING.