We are their stewards. (1 pic)

[Are_grits_groceries]

An oil-soaked bird struggles against the side of a ship near the oil-spill site

In the rush to do this and that, this fact is lost in the rush a lot of the time. When we have the ability to control the possible fate of any entity, this should always be kept in mind. That includes a responsibility to be stewards not just of people but of many things.

That is too often lost in the rush. People argue that the greater good of our populace is paramount in many cases. That can be just a way to get around doing a more expensive or more complicated process.

If we can't take care of these innocent creatures, how can we be expected to take care of anything? A callous lack of regard for life doesn't end with animals for too many people. It is a mindset that becomes engrained.

We are all in this together whether we want to realize it or not. We are in the same mess as that bird. It is oily and toxic.

[Dead_Parrot]

1. damn right. nt

[Scuba]

2. Yeah, we're doing a swell job, aren't we?

[secondwind]

3. if only we could turn back the clock to the Carter era, knowing what we know NOW. :-(

[Scuba]

8. If only... my financial picture sure would be better !!!

[blindpig]

4. It is Capitalism which is the greatest engine of death for this planet

This horror, the wholesale destruction of rainforest, the rape of the seas, climate change, the pervasive pollution, these and others are primarily laid at the door of Capitalism. When the pursuit of profit eclipses all other consideration you'll have that.

[jotsy]

5. Hear here!

[Uncle Joe]

6. Ultimately preserving the global environment is the greatest good.

If we lose that, we lose everything that could possibly be considered a greater good insofar as the human race is concerned.

Thanks for the thread, grits.

[Scuba]

9. Ultimately preserving the global environment for the GREEDEST

[Uncle Joe]

12. I suppose that's true if you consider all of humanity, including your descendants the "Greedest."

Try Scuba diving in the Gulf, that's just a small taste of what your fossil fuels will do for you.

[Scuba]

15. Yeah, I was in the Keys in February....

... Great diving,beautiful coral reefs, abundant sea life and a conservationist mentality in almost everyone I encountered.

"Cheney's Chernobyl" is a tragedy of immeasurable proportions. The Keys may be destroyed soon. The remaining destruction of our planet's ability to support human lifeforms has almost reached it's conclusion. This has been done largely in the name of profits, the balance in the name of power.

Mankind doesn't deserve this planet.

[Uncle Joe]

16. I'm of the mind that humanity can and must evolve to a sustainable level of existence.

Should we do so, we deserve to survive as much as anything else, but the jury is still out.

[Scuba]

17. Well, our track record sucks....

... in just a few thousand years we've managed to muck up much of the planet. Worse, we've manufactured the weapons and created a political climate nicely lined up to send it into a 100,000 year nuclear winter. I suppose some humans will survive, just like cockroaches and crocodiles.

[Uncle Joe]

18. That's true about track record sucking but the same mental power; which

which threatens our existence is also our greatest asset in potentially saving it.

The key being our emotional self-awareness must catch up to our mental prowess and we must break through the barriers of inertia.

I believe global warming climate change to be humanity's greatest threat even over the prospect of all out nuclear war because nuclear war requires absolute suicidal insanity to take over, the looming catastrophe of global warming climate change just requires business as usual to go on for too long.

[Scuba]

19. No argument. Sorry to be so cynical. I'll try to be more positive.

[Uncle Joe]

20. Peace to you and yours and have a happy Memorial Day.

:hi:

[Scuba]

22. Thank you. Peace to you also.

[jotsy]

7. The true nature of our calling got lost in the echo of capitalism.

I had started an OP about this aspect of the situation, but since it isn't finished and speaks to your view of what should have played a more central role in our commerce decisions...

Some days it’s difficult to reconcile myself to what makes me human with what makes humans so destructive. It seems it’s me or them that don’t fit, and since there are so many more of them, it must be me that represents some sort of irregularity. As something of a social beast, the isolated view from a distant hill held by this diligent fool form a burden that is mine alone to beat or bear.

I see my species as a planetary public, caretakers to vast herds of a wide array of other kinds of life. Through the complex composition of our capacity to comprehend sophisticated facts, ours was the DNA pattern that drew what I deem the ‘shepherd’s’ straw.
Not enough sipped long enough often enough.

[Are_grits_groceries]

10. We are trusted by these creatures.

They can't express to us their needs or emotions like our pets. They do trust us nevertheless, and the trust is implicit.

I believe they trust us to do one thing. Let Mother Nature be the one to control their fate. Mother Nature can let some things happen that appear incredibly cruel to us too. However, that has been the cycle of Earth for a long time. She does try to adjust to what man does. However, we can push the limits of her ability to respond and restore a balance.

They just want us not to eff things up so badly that Mother Nature can't respond quickly or even in the long run. We might have pushed too far this time. If and when the Gulf recovers, it will take more time than we can imagine.

Nature is a very delicate system, and yet at the same time it is very durable, tough even. It is delicate enough to be affected by everything that we do. It has been tough enough to adjust to a lot of it in some way.I hope it is tough enough now.

[jotsy]

11. A hope we share.

[TheKentuckian]

13. This is a sin against life and as a spiritual person a direct abdication

of God's role for humankind.

I don't know if I've ever had such a mixture of lament and fury in my life. We have not only no right to act so irresponsibly but are obligated by the Creator to care for life.

I'm sick to my soul.

[Are_grits_groceries]

26. I have never believed in the Rapture

and all of the events that go with it.

If there is such an event, I hope it takes a different form and takes all the animals and others we can harm out of our way. We would be lonely then, and we would deserve it.

If there is a second coming, Yeats had a good name for the path to it. We are 'slouching towards Bethlehem' in as a destructive manner as possible. We will meet the Beast that is to be born there as it slouches too in some form.

In fact, collectively maybe we are that Beast he spoke of. We will then see there the horrible part of ourselves that has been allowed to take hold. Sometimes, the scariest thing that can happen is to truly see what one has become.

The Second Coming (Slouching Towards Bethlehem)
W B Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[G_j]

14. and we also came from the oceans

symbolic, I suppose. :cry:

[Mimosa]

21. AGG, thank you for showing the heart of the matter.

This world is full of God given beauty. And human beings have the responsibility not to ruin it. We have failed, mostly because we can't control those who don't care and only want to exploit natural resources.

[The2ndWheel]

23. Self appointed stewards

I'm pretty sure nobody had a vote on this one, human or non-human. Might made us right on this one, I guess.

[Are_grits_groceries]

25. We are stewards by default.

Once we have the power to hurt or to harm, we either choose to take care of nature or we let man ruin it. Might didn't make us right. It just made us, as Bush would so immortally and immorally say, the decider.

The decision this time was catastrophic for untold numbers of living entities including man.

[The2ndWheel]

27. But we decide based on a very narrow set of criteria

And it's a criteria that we created, and we define. It's impossible to take into account all the complexities and variables involved in being a steward of the entire planet and all of life on it. Look at what we do with just people, in just this country. Maybe that's why we've simplified the criteria to such a narrow checklist.

"Once we have the power to hurt or to harm, we either choose"

Right. We choose to do it. We appointed ourselves. Really, life, or the planet itself, is the steward. Fewer predators, more prey. The larger you are, the slower you are. The smaller, the quicker. The more resources you consume, the fewer of you there are. The easier you are to kill, the larger your population.

Sure, the oil in the gulf is bad. No question. But, for example, our road system is incredibly destructive environmentally. It's actually even more fundamental than the broken pipe in the water. Anyone saying we should let the roads, at the very least, crumble because of the harm they do? No. We say we should spend whatever amount of money needed to, at the very least, maintain them. Because they create jobs, and allow us to move around, etc, etc.

[Are_grits_groceries]

28. I said that too many times

we don't even take into account that we are stewards. We do harm nature by our acts. Everything we do affects it. And I also said that Nature tries to take that into account and adjust.

When something as massive as this occurs, we overwhelm nature's capacity to adjust except in a very, very long time. Then it may adjust to a point where some places just won't recover and become dead zones.

My point is that in cases like this gusher, nobody thought enough of the damage it might do if it couldn't be capped in an accident. We chose a course of action that was going to cause an incredible amount of harm. There was't much new technology for this type of drilling. There was no back up plan or plans in place. There was no plan to be ready for a massive cleanup.

If one thinks about the pressure at that depth and the amount of oil in that reservoir, it isn't hard to imagine the result if the BOP fails.

We can't help but do some harm because we live here. However, we don't have to create this type of destruction. A course was chosen that lead to this moment. It took one well to fail at some point to do all of this.

BP has tremendous profits and they get breaks from our government. If they used a portion of those profits to create and test new methods and equipment to be ready for capping that type of well and the clean up, they would still be making money hand over fist.

[Yeahyeah]

24. We actually dig a hole at the bottom of the ocean and do this to them.

.