Driving Our SUVs to the BP Protests

[Dover]

I'm sorry, but the irony is just too thick these days. We Americans are rightly upset with BP for the devastating spill in the Gulf that is wreaking ecological devastation on a mammoth scale. But as I watch the television news and read the daily coverage, I'm not hearing enough outrage at our petroleum-dependent lifestyles and the gas-guzzling vehicles we hop into at a moment's notice to drive to the store for a pint of ice cream. We need to hold a mirror up to ourselves at those protest rallies.

Oil spills are tragic on multiple levels: to the affected ecosystems; to those who depend on the region's bounty for their livelihoods; to the tourism industry in the region; and even to employees at the oil companies and public agencies whom we have to assume are trying hard to do the right thing. Residents of the Gulf Coast and ecosystems are being--or will soon be--devastated by the spill that continues to hemorrhage tens of thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf daily. We must redouble efforts to protect coastal wetlands while workers with their undersea robotic vehicles continue trying to stem the leak. And we certainly should hold the companies that caused the leak liable for the costs of cleanup, as well as for the economic damage both the oil and its cleanup are causing. Those impacts will likely be measurable for years, if not decades.

But at the same time, we too--consumers of the oil and gas we are going to ever-greater effort to harvest--must share some of that blame. Every once-in-a-while we are reminded in a very dramatic way of the larger impacts of our profligate consumption of oil. The Santa Barbara oil spill in January 1969 spilled 200,000 gallons of crude oil, despoiling a 35-mile stretch of the California coastline and resulting in a ban on offshore drilling. Twenty years later in March, 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spilled 10.8 million gallons of crude oil, ravaging the rich biodiversity along a 1,300-mile span of Prince William Sound coastline and leading to tighter regulations on shipping oil, including the requirement for double hulls in the oil tankers that haul billions of gallons of oil around the world each year.

cont'd

http://www.buildinggreen.com/live/index.cfm/2010/6/8/Driving-Our-SUVs-to-the-BP-Protests

[zipplewrath]

1. Yup, social and political responsibility

It has long seemed that we, as consumers, don't really try at all to align our political, social, and moral convictions with our consumerism. This isn't so much a call for individual "purity" of some sort. But it would seem we'd be a tad more sensitive to our consumer choices when making overt political acts of advocacy.

Who you choose to give your money to matters. There are times when events justify making difficult choices. But at the very least one would think we would want to at least provide the appearance of making conscious choices on these matters.

[katmondoo]

2. I see this all of the time, huge vehicles with one person driving

Really makes me sick.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

3. I really wished people would get whipped-up and ditch thier SUVs and Trucks in protest...

that way I could buy a nice used truck or SUV alot cheaper.
My 4 banger is just not practical anymore.

[Javaman]

4. It's easier for people to feign disgust for their few minutes per day...

then forget everything once they change the channel.

The revolution is being televised but no one is tuning in.