Thinking Bigger Than Yourself

This oil leak, while catastrophic, is NOTHING compared to the eventual implications if we continue business as usual. This is a chance for the world to galvanize. This is an opportunity. Universally, this leak has become more of a unifying symbol for environmental crisis than climate change itself, less divisive, more immediate, more visible. This leak accomplishes - with its scale and its financial effect and its first world proximity and its oil-drenched wildlife - what the slower decay of climate change simply isn’t. It’s got North Americans in general thinking that maybe it’s time for a more radical shift in the way we do things. For the first time ever, oil=bad. Unequivocally, irreversibly, the oil all over our beaches and our wildlife is BAD, and we don’t want this happening again.

We’re looking for change, and we’re at a tipping point. We are all going to have to take the steps to make that change come about. Each of us, individually, has the responsibility to make changes in our own life, and to call for changes on the larger scale. We need to consume less, be smarter about travel and purchasing where possible, and be outspoken about the importance of this issue. Higher level decision-makers, in their turn, have to take these choices and these voices into account, and start making the tough decisions. The decisions that, perhaps, won’t get you re-elected. The decisions that, instead, might help turn the tide on all this backwards dependency and put humanity back on track, or at least in a slightly more stable position.

Obama seems to be taking, tentatively, the right first step. It’s time for the rest of us to follow suit.