"This thing begins to eat into your soul after a while, doesn't it?"

I saw some stuff in the news today about the oil spill - this on the possible causes from New Scientist: BP ordered changes on day of Gulf oil disaster - and in the British press some think BP has been too criticized, that the criticism is anti-British: Backlash grows to 'anti-British rhetoric' in US. My negative feelings about the oil spill have nothing to do with BP being British but everything to do with the consequences of the spill. This short post from Andrew Sullivan today expresses my feelings well :( ....

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The Birds, Ctd
- Andrew Sullivan
10 Jun 2010 12:06 pm

A gruesome new detail:

[A] bird has a natural repellent in its feathers that keeps the water out. That’s a little area - a little cushion - that keeps it cool. Well, this oil here gets on those feathers, and they lose that little insulation. And then, when you have this oil at 100+ degrees, the bird experts say, it begins to literally cook the birds.

This thing begins to eat into your soul after a while, doesn't it?

I sound like a goddamned hippie but you have to be emotionally and spiritually dead not to watch this and not feel some deep qualms about what our civilization is doing to its environment and to itself. The addiction metaphor - even used by George W. Bush by the end of his term - is the only apposite one. We're like junkies trying to find a new vein. It keeps us alive and growing, but that simply brings into sharper focus the moral and spiritual costs of exploitation of the earth rather than prudent stewardship.

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