EARL

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

In the Huffington Post, Katharine Jefferts Schori riffs on the Gulf oil spill:

"The original peoples of the North American continent understand that we are all connected, and that harm to one part of the sacred circle of life harms the whole. Scientists, both the ecological and physical sorts, know the same reality, expressed in different terms. The Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) also charge human beings with care for the whole of creation, because it is God’s good gift to humanity. Another way of saying this is that we are all connected and there is no escape; our common future depends on how we care for the rest of the natural world, not just the square feet of soil we may call “our own.” We breathe the same air, our food comes from the same ground and seas, and the water we have to share cycles through the same airshed, watershed, and terra firma."

Some of the more cynical among you might attribute sentiments like those to half a lid of high-grade Humboldt County chronic but don’t expect me to agree. Tomorrow, I had planned on spending my day off strip-mining Blackburn Park, here in Webster Groves, in search of gold but Katharine Jefferts Bumper Sticker has shown me a better way.

"The still-unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is good evidence of the interconnectedness of the whole. It has its origins in this nation’s addiction to oil, uninhibited growth, and consumerism, as well as old-fashioned greed..."

Says the woman who’s pseudo-spiritual debating society is currently spending millions of dollars suing Christians out of their meeting houses.

"...and what my tradition calls hubris and idolatry."

Slow down there, big smacker. Are St. John the Divine or Trinity-Wall Street heated by wood-burning stoves? Does TEO have a fleet of cars that run on cupcakes? Then you’re as addicted to oil as anyone. And if using the resources that God provided in this “good gift” of His constitutes “hubris and idolatry,” I guess that means that Katharine Jefferts Buzzword is never going to eat or drink anything again.

"Our collective sins are being visited on those who have had little or no part in them: birds, marine mammals, the tiny plants and animals that constitute the base of the vast food chain in the Gulf, and on which a major part of the seafood production of the United States depends. Our sins are being visited on the fishers of southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, who seek to feed their families with the proceeds of what they catch each day. Our sins will expose New Orleans and other coastal cities to the increased likelihood of devastating floods, as the marshes that constitute the shrinking margin of storm protection continue to disappear, fouled and killed by oil."

I wonder if Katharine Jefferts Banality has ever heard the name Ixtoc. This was another Gulf oil spill that took place in Mexico in 1979 and lasted over nine months. If my calculations are correct, approximately eight millions barrels of oil were pumped into the Gulf by this blowout, three million of which affected beaches in this country.

If oil spills were as deadly as Vapidity Jefferts Platitude seems to think they are, we wouldn’t be having this conversation since the Gulf of Mexico would be a dead zone and the shrimpers, oystermen and fishermen would have moved on decades ago. Yet since they’re supposedly threatened by this new spill, they’re apparently still there.

Meaning what? Two things. Excrement happens. If the organic grocery next door catches fire and my house burns down, I’m not going to waste time raging against the sin of smug, left-wing self-righteousness. I’m going to rebuild and if I can’t do that, I’m going to find a new place to live.

When God makes planets, He makes them tough. Ixtoc no doubt ended some fishing careers but there are no guarantees in this life. The fact that there’s still a seafood industry in the Gulf that’s there to be threatened by this new spill suggests that the Earth can fix itself fairly quickly.

"The oil that continues to vent from the sea floor has spread through hundreds of cubic miles of ocean, poisoning creatures of all sizes and forms, from birds, turtles, and whales to the shrimp, fish, oysters, and crabs that human beings so value, and the plankton, whose life supports the whole biological system — the very kind of creatures whose dead and decomposed tissues began the process of producing that oil so many millions of years ago."

I’ve heard that whale marinated in light crude is supposed to be pretty good.

"We know, at least intellectually, that that oil is a limited resource, yet we continue to extract and use it at increasing rates and with apparently decreasing care."

The Presiding Bishop also knows, at least intellectually, that there are plenty of land-based alternatives to Gulf oil(tar sands, oil shale, etc) that this country could be exploring but refuses to. So until the Episcopal Organization switches to electric cars and discovers the concept of videoconferencing, Triviality Jefferts Bong Hit really ought to keep her mouth shut.

"That oil will move beyond the immediate environs of a broken wellhead, spreading around the coasts of Florida and northward along the east coast of the U.S. That oil will foul the coastal marshes that also constitute a major nursery for coastal fauna, again a vital part of the food chain. That oil will further stress and poison the coral reefs of Florida, already much endangered from warming and ocean acidification."

That oil will develop sentience. That oil will come on to the land. That oil will be baptized in an Episcopal church. That oil will attend Episcopal Divinity School. That oil will be ordained as an Episcopal minister. That oil will one day become an Episcopal bishop!! The Africans will probably bitch again, though.

"We are all connected, we will all suffer the consequences of this tragic disaster in the Gulf, and we must wake up and put a stop to the kind of robber baron behavior we supposedly regulated out of existence a hundred years ago."

You mean like buying politicians? No, wait…