How quickly people seem to forget the anger and frustration they felt when they were watching the BP Macondo well erupting a volcano of black poison into the Gulf of Mexico. Nine months later, millions of fish and birds are suddenly, inexplicably dropping dead all over the world. Is the fear brewing among a confused population a subtle admission that we have finally lost the war we have been waging on our planet?
From the earliest days of civilization, humans have been trying to conquer and harness the forces and resources of nature. Each time we are humbled by an earthquake, or tornado, we pick up the pieces and rebuild, as if falsely convincing ourselves that an act of nature will never touch us again.
With technology came unnatural disasters; namely oil spills. Since the 1950’s when widespread oil drilling began, a feeding frenzy for black gold has evolved. It has pushed us deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth to fuel our growing thirst for energy. Along the way, political corruption and the drive for corporate profits have made oil spills one of the deadliest assaults on our world.
All oil spills are avoidable. Including the Deepwater Horizon disaster that polluted the Gulf of Mexico with so much oil, methane gas and toxic chemical dispersant, no one can say with certainty that the 5 million barrel event has not changed our environment forever.
In the midst of our delusions that the pollution of our atmosphere for the past 70 years has had no effect, we are fighting the battle of climate change. Science proves that our planet is changing. The debate revolves around whether it is natural, or if human pollution is either causing or accelerating it.
On New Year’s Eve 2010, thousands of birds, followed by millions of fish all over the world began to suddenly die. Like everything else we don’t truly understand, we manufacture what we think is a rational explanation for a disruption in our ecosystem that is mysteriously devastating the top of the food chain on four continents. Must be bad weather, authorities say, or perhaps noisy fireworks.
The always arrogant human race has blinded itself to the possibility that at the start of 2011 our planet reached a breaking point and finally said to us, “Enough. The damage is already done.”
Corporate greed and corruption has spread through our governments like a malignant cancer. And even if we found the strength to implement a ‘cure’ tomorrow, the decades of damage we have already done may be irrevocable and irreversible.
Prophesies of the Apocalypse do not always specify how or why we will meet our end, only that we inevitably will.
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