Passionate and convicting article by Bill McKibben in the recent Christian Century on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Read it now. I am supposed to fly to NYC in a couple weeks for a day of interviews with recent Orthodox seminarians at St. Vladimir's Seminary. Then a flight to Amsterdam for a conference on theology. Then driving to Holden Village for their annual board meeting. Then a flight to Norway and Sweden with family for vacation. All good things. All related to good work, to family fun. But I wonder if I should simply give up going places outside of my upper-midwest home. Isn't this summer itinerary exactly the assumed lifestyle of travel and ease rich countries (and people) are unwilling to give up and so the drilling, refining and burning of dirty sources of energy continue? Continue till . . .?
McKibben: You think maybe, just maybe, that the needle BP stuck into the bottom of the sea flows straight into our veins? If you want to understand the stakes, here's what you need to do: Stop looking at the oil-soaked birds for a little while. Stop studying the newspaper pictures of the spread of the sheen. In this case, your eyes are fooling you. Yes, the plume of black oil is nasty and dangerous and damaging. But it's merely the visible face of dirty energy, in many ways less damaging than the underlying daily damage.
He makes the case for activism, and focuses on 10/10/10 as a key day to work towards to show political will to change our polluting ways. He goes so far as to call our polluting ways "blaspheming." I think he's right. I'm getting with it.
Anon and +peace,
Chris
Recent Comments