An encyclopedia entry from 1969. It hurts to read it 41 years too late. Ecocide is what happens when we kill the ecology on which our lives depend. It’s suicidal. Ecocide is the crime and punishment of this century.
“When man becomes greater than nature, nature, which gave him birth, will respond.”
– Loren Eiseley, US anthropologist and philosopher
“We are become as Gods, destroyers of worlds.”
- J. Robert Oppenheimer quotes the Bhagavad Gita after watching the first nuclear explosion in the New Mexico desert
“The time has come … for destroying those who destroy the Earth.”
- Revelations 11: 17-18
Ecocide, in scientific terms, happens when so many species in an ecosystem are killed that it disrupts the ecosystem’s structure and function. The Gulf Oil Disaster is ecocide. Ecocide has epic importance. This year, the UN is being petitioned to accept ecocide as a fifth "crime against peace" along with genocide and other crimes against humanity.
Over the next months and years, consider the people who rely on the Gulf of Mexico for life - and not just on the American side. The Gulf of Mexico is a tri-national living treasure, “the Mediterranean Sea of North America.” It’s the ninth largest body of water on Earth. It supports billions of living creatures, including millions of people, and hundreds of millions of North America’s birds rely on the Gulf during their yearly migrations. The Gulf of Mexico also plays a “vital role in generating oxygen, taking and holding carbon, distributing nutrients, stabilizing temperature, yielding freshwater to the skies that returns as rain -- contributing to the ocean's planetary role as Earth's life support system.” The Gulf affects the water cycle of the eastern half of the North American continent, which has apparently led some Russian government scientists to predict “total destruction” from toxic rainfall.
Doomsday scenarios aside, one only needs to use common sense to appreciate the apocalyptic magnitude of this oil and gas gusher. The commander of the International Space Station has lamented how “very scary” it looks from outer space. And it’s growing bigger every passing minute.
The Gulf provides means of life in five American states (Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas), as well as five Mexican states (Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatan) and Cuba. While prevailing wind and ocean currents will send the oil, gas and chemical witches’ brew to the north and east, the devastation to the entire food chain and water column will have damning repercussions in every bay, in every wetland and river mouth, and in every coastal community. As the seabed continues to disgorge oil and gas, the entire Gulf basin – already stressed by agricultural runoff, climate change, over-fishing, mining and other pollution – moves ever closer to systemic exhaustion.
The oceans of the world are connected by myriad chemical and climatic processes. Consider the container of rubber duckies that fell off a Chinese ship in 1992. Over the next 15 years, the duckies ended up travelling to every corner of the world. Nothing is an isolated event, let alone this catastrophe. The Gulf Stream starts in the Gulf of Mexico, exits the Straits of Florida and flows up the eastern coastline of the United States, passing by Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, Canada. It then crosses the Atlantic Ocean and splits in two. One stream goes to northern Europe, the other stream re-circulates off West Africa. This is an event of worldwide significance, and not just because it will accelerate the extinction of Atlantic bluefin tuna. The Gulf Oil Disaster will accelerate the extinction of life on Earth, period.
The Gulf of Mexico is a critical, diverse and abundant part of the global ocean. But ecocide doesn’t just threaten the Gulf’s gigantic marine web of life, which stretches from microscopic oxygen-producing plankton right up to sharks, sperm whales and the 5,000 dolphins now calving in the path of destruction. The ocean is what makes life on land possible, so many other species, from birds and alligators to bobcats and river otters, will perish along with their fish food sources.
Despite the disgusting media blockade by US federal and BP workers who are trying to stop photo and video evidence of the immensity of the disaster from reaching the public – despite the threat of arrest by local police – people on the ground will continue to document the expanding crisis. There’s now allegations of wifi and cellphone connections being jammed at spill sites to suppress the dissemination of evidence, and allegations that animal carcasses are being hauled away under cover of night. This possibility is chilling, but so is the lack of health and safety precautions for workers and coastal residents, and the image of BP using inmate labour in the cleanup effort.
But let’s take the big picture view. Any media “cover up” will only postpone and further inflame the rising tide of outrage, disgust and despair. Lies about the severity of the crisis will only make the long-term situation worse, similar to BP’s dispersants. Dispersants may “hide” some oil under the water’s surface, away from the cameras, but these chemicals exponentially exacerbate the ecological toll. Eventually reality will crush the PR illusions coming from BP and the White House. Truth, like the oil, gas and neurotoxic pesticides, cannot be neatly contained.
No comments:
Post a Comment