The Big Disconnect

Imagine seeing this on the beach, smelling almost overwhelming heated diesel smell, and watching people in protective gear cleaning the beach. What would you do?

Would you be curious and concerned and walk out on the beach? Maybe take a few photographs? Touch it? Take a bit of oil as a souvenir?

Or would you stare blindly at cleanup workers, laying on your beach chair sipping cocktails while your children frolic in the surf? It’s not that I want to be a party pooper but now is the time for brains to engage and synapses to fire correctly. We are, you see, living in a very toxic environment…in case you’ve been in a media blackout for the past 70 days.

Just ask the sea gulls. I witnessed several whose feet were showing signs of walking in the toxic sludge. The webbing between their toes is beginning to ‘melt’ away. I know many folks don’t want to hear this news but I can only report what I see and feel. I don’t want to be disconnected from this horror because I am a part of it as are all of us who drive cars and use petroleum products.

I had dinner with a friend who has been on the beach a good bit during this crisis and she shares the same concern I have–there’s a schism in many people’s psyches. They see the oil, smell it and see cleanup crews lining the beaches but somehow cannot make the leap to understand that their kids don’t need to play in it and they don’t need to sit out for hours in the hot sun breathing the fumes.

Is this part of a larger disconnect our society has about cause and effect, about conservation of resources versus rape of the environment. Are people really that out of touch with the physical reality of now?