“The earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.” Utah Phillips
“The magnitude and the potential for ecological damage is probably more great than anything we’ve ever seen in the Gulf of Mexico.” Nancy Rabalais, a scientist who heads the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, on the BP/Transocean oil rig explosion. Click here for more information on the impact of the spill on the Gulf’s ecosystem on Think Progress’s “The BP Oil Spill’s Toll on Gulf Coast Wildlife: All Bets Are Off.” To get a sense of the magnitude of the disaster, click here to go to The Atlantic for “If You Think You have a Sense of the Oil Spill’s Scale” which allows you to overlay a scaled representation of the Deepwater Horizon spill onto a Google Earth view of any city or region you choose.
The catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico shows clearly what our fossil fuel addiction is doing to our planet (if climate change and widespread loss of biodiversity isn’t obvious enough!). This could be a pivotal moment, however, when we finally turn from our addiction to filthy fuel and embrace clean energy. There are much better ways for us to get our energy – but Big Oil & Gas don’t want to wean themselves off their addiction to billions and billions of dollars in profit every year, so they are very invested in the status quo (and don’t forget we, the taxpayers, subsidize these companies to the tune of $500 billion dollars a year!). But there is a cleaner, greener way!
“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait ’til oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” Thomas Edison
“The world’s deserts can supply energy for every conceivable demand by humankind.” Dr. Gerhard Knies
“Rather than continuing to base our economy on a finite supply of dead things, we can base it on sources that are practically infinite and eternal: the sun, the moon and the Earth’s inner fire.” Van Jones
From “Friends of The Earth”:
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