The World is Bleeding

This is one ugly reason to restart this blog. I would have much rather done it because ENDA passed or DoMA was overturned or even because a meteor struck Rush Limbaugh's latest wedding reception and most of our troubles were solved in one fell swoop. (Or huge release of kinetic energy, but whatever...)

No. I'm writing this because our World is bleeding.

In case you were hiding in a cave or vacationing on Neptune, there's an ecological disaster of global proportions happening in the Gulf of Mexico. Behold, I am a soothsayer: in less than five years, over ninety percent of the life in the Gulf--fish, plankton, crustaceans, plants, anything you care to name--will be gone. Dead. Smothered. Rotted. Poisoned.

Murdered.

(I can hear the jeers already: treehugger! Eco-terrorist! Socialist! Guilty as charged to the last count, Your Honor, but the others are pretty ludicrous. I've never hugged a tree--unless you count hanging on for dear life when I was a kid climbing them--and I gave up terrorizing others when my wife and I separated.)

Yeah. Murdered. With malice aforethought, as the courts say. With gleeful abandon. Deliberate callousness.

I read an interesting op-ed on Slate; you wanna know who to blame? Look in the mirror, Mr. and Mrs. America, with your two and a half kids and your MacMansion in default of payments and your nasty, petroleum-guzzling Hummer that you absolutely must have to take the 2 1/2 kids to soccer practice. Look in the mirror. You are the one responsible because you won't give up that damned metal beast crouching in your driveway, that dinosaur that burns the World's blood.

Oh, and by the way: fuck you both. (We'll leave your kids out of it. For now.)

I can say that because I don't drive a car. Mine was stolen four years ago. Best thing that ever happened to me. I saved four hundred dollars a month in payments, insurance, maintenance and, most important: gasoline. I make less than ten dollars an hour working for a non-profit charity and there's no way I could have afforded it, anyway. So you did me a favor, even though you're a rat-bastard, whoever you were.

I walk. I take public transit. I bum rides with others, although that's pretty rare. I've done some jet travel lately and that's gotta be one of the most energy-intensive and costly ways to travel anywhere in this World but there aren't many "green" ways to get to New York State or Denver, Colorado or Baltimore, Maryland. So I flew on a jet plane more than once and frankly, it was pretty cool. I enjoyed it. Sue me.

Can't say as I enjoy watching our World bleed, though.

British Petroleum screwed up pretty badly and screwed the entire human race and our one and only World in the process. And they're whining about how it's impacting their profits. Too bad. Howdja like them profits shoved up your ass and ignited, boys?

(Sorry. That was less than literary and awfully undiplomatic. I must learn to control my outrage. It's going to result in a cardiovascular accident soon enough if I'm not careful.)

To say that this is a disaster of global proportions is not an exaggeration. Google the data. It's easy enough to lie with facts and stats but these might be a little hard to fudge. Or at least, not for long, because BP is the only outfit on-scene with cameras. Not for long, I think. I suspect the Prez is about to send in the Navy and about time, I think.

That isn't enough, unfortunately. Too little, too late and piss poor planning besides. What the hell do we do?

Stop drilling. Stop using oil. It's too valuable to waste by being burned in a goddamned car, for Heaven's sake. You know how many pharmaceuticals, exotic chemicals, plastics and just plain useful things can be had from crude oil? Thousands. More than you can possibly imagine.

But, nooooo! We burn it, adding to the rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and increasing the greenhouse effect and accelerating global warming. Great. Why don't we just set fire to the whole mess and walk away?

Whoops, can't do that, despite the cheers of agreement I hear from my fundie brothers and sisters. Sorry, I don't think we're quite ready for the Rapture but if y'all wanna go, don't let the screen door hit you in the ass on the way out. The rest of us will stay and try to clean up the mess that you supposedly Christian, capitalistic, warmongering and violently testosterone-poisoned assholes left for us. Don't expect the welcome mat if you change your mind and want to come home to the good, formerly green Earth that gave you birth.

I can think of one very effective punishment that will forever dissuade oil executives from cutting corners, faking inspection records, lying to inspectors (and bribing them) and blithely figuring in fines, PAC donations, lawsuits and more bribes as the usual cost of business in Corporate America.

Execution.

My World is bleeding and I want the rat-bastards responsible to die, painfully. Slowly, if possible, but most certainly painfully. Boiling in their own goddamned oil sounds about right.

Barbaric, you say? Medieval? You recoil in horror. Oh, dear! We can't possibly do that! That would be...inhumane! Why, these are good family men, with full lives. Pillars of their community. Beloved by their friends and relative. They contribute to charities. They're just human and subject to mistakes, like any of us.

Hmm, izzat so? "One may smile and smile and still be a villain." Shakespeare, I think. No, they're not human. I'm denying them that. They have no right to call themselves 'human'. They are no more human than a rabid wolf or a recluse spider or a great white shark is human. I have no doubt that they'd love that last analogy. Something about violent, rapacious images gives all of these guys serious hard-ons. I pity their wives and their mistresses.

Why do I say that my World is bleeding? Look at those camera feeds from two miles down. Thick, dark fluid spurting from a rent in the skin of the Earth, deep beneath the ocean, where the skin is thin and the only illumination is from halogens dropped from the airy light above. It billows out just like blood as when a great white tears into the side of a victim, fanning out into the salty water like parasols of pain and filth in 3-D.

It's blood. Our World's blood. It's the nasty, organic residue of millions of acres of prehistoric forest and reptilian life squashed into a thick, gooey mess and it's spurting, gushing, bleeding into the underbelly of the World.

It's pornography in the way that a hardcore S&M flick is pornography. Not B&D, although that distinction often escapes most folks. (Then again, the distinction between myself and a common hooker often escapes most folks as well, so whatcha gonna do?)It's a frickin' snuff film and you may be damned sure that I've never seen one and if anyone is stupid enough to try to show me one, he's gonna be minus the cost of a tape or DVD and some substantial facial repair.

Murder most foul. Premeditated. Planned. Executed with deliberation.

So that's why I say: execute those who would kill our planet, out home, our World. They knew what they were doing. They did it with full knowledge of the risks and they dare to complain to us about their costs?

I have a suggestion to the fine boyos from BP: shut up. Now. You're going to make it worse when we finally bring you to trial, right before we hang you for crimes against humanity. Shut up and get to work and you might, just might, get that sentence lowered to merely life in prison, short as that's likely to be.

At the very least, that's a lot more mercy than you showed our World.

Our World.

Not yours, BP.

Michelle Diane Rose
June 9th, 2010