The New Path to Change; Catastrophe

Democrats, Republicans, the Obama administration and the public are beginning to sway with environmental activists. What did it take? It only took an oil spill from Deep Water Horizon into the Gulf of Mexico. That is exactly what the state of Louisiana needs… another catastrophe. It is bitter sweet what we see going on in America now. The number of volunteers that have surfaced for the cleanup is amazing and the support is awesome. But it is still sad to think that it took such a tragic accident to change the political agenda and get the public aware of what the real problem is.

Environmental groups, like the Sierra Club, are using this tragedy to their advantage by cornering government officials with no other choice but to look at the risks of offshore drilling instead of ANY of the benefits. Our governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Florida’s Charlie Crist have opposed any drilling off their state’s shores and the administration is going to revise their plan in which new offshore drilling exploration was going to occur. According to the Washington Post, even some moderate Republican senators say they want to reexamine the role offshore drilling should play in the nation's energy supply. The question is now over who has the upper hand? Reaching a drilling compromise will involve having to attract Republican support without alienating Democrats and on top of that, environmentalists are thinking this is their time to shine. It’s already getting sticky in the political realm.

As environmental groups turn this crisis into an opportunity, looking at the volunteer base is a lot more optimistic than focusing on the political side of things. Clean up days, rallies and massive donations from big companies like Hanes are taking place. That’s right, I said Hanes, as in the underwear. Did you know that hair, the filaments that grow from our skin, can soak up certain materials like oil? Now that’s making use of our natural resources without being wasteful or harmful to the environment. Stuffing human and animal hair into pantyhose and nylons has become known as the fancy invention called BOOM. Volunteers are hosting boom construction lessons as well as protests, rallies and marine protection awareness. The environment and people are not the only ones being affected by this catastrophe. Marine life is hit the hardest, but we cannot pull out sea creatures from the ocean and house them in gym’s and shelters like we did with the victims of Katrina. Marine victims have no choice but to suffer from our mistakes.

It is sad that this has happened. But it’s even sadder that it took such a tragedy for people to become aware of the real, environmental problems that have been predicted for years by scientists and environmentalists. We are depleting the Earth of its resources. What is it going to take to step up the volunteer rates another notch? How far will we destroy nature before everyone gets it? There are alternative ways to live, alternative energies to use. It’s time to stop talking about it and just do it. This path to change is an ugly one and I hope that the increase in public awareness will make a clearer path to minimizing the destruction of our planet.