My heart is heavy with grief. The ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico weighs on me and I find myself angry, sad, and frustrated.

I grew up with mullet, great blue herons, baby flounders and other coastal wildlife when I lived with my family on the magical coast of Alabama. This is one of my spiritual homes on the planet and it is a true treasure that I deeply value and love. To think of it on the verge of ecological devastation is almost more than I can bear. Layers of loss and potential loss loom in my mind. Sea turtles, dolphins, oysters, shrimp, barracuda….anything that eats anything in the Gulf waters is at risk. I think of these beings as my friends. And what about the human life that also is at risk. I cannot wrap my thoughts around the depth and breadth of this catastrophe.

I have ranted about the spill but more recently I have ranted that we, as citizens, allow money-hungry oil executives to decide it is okay to drill deep into coastal waters without contingency plans and equipment ready for use in the event of an emergency. Common sense seems to dictate pre-tested measures to deal with deep ocean oil flows out of control. Why were there not domes already constructed, tested and ready for such disasters? Why does it seem the oil industry was caught with their proverbial pants down?

There must be a list of reasons such plans and equipment were not standing by. But deep rigs like the horizon are state-of-art drilling platforms with numerous safety measures built-in, ready to stop any disaster. Yes and they also said the Titantic was unsinkable.

This is a wake-up call to all of us. How much are we willing to lose to fuel our hunger for oil? What is each of us willing to do to use less oil? Drive 55? Consolidate trips to town? Carpool? Are we willing to fully understand that the fate of our environment is also our fate and accept what that means? Are we willing to be good stewards of planet earth?

Our fate lies in our own hands.