Tag Archives: Santa Barbara oil spill

The Road to Diamond, Day 145: Fifty-four Years Later

0
Posted by on in animal and plant life, collaborating, Community, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

April 22, 2025- We are at a point where it is felt, by the government, that it is time to halt “coercion”, in matters of the environment and caring for Mother Earth. The case is being made for individuals and entities to tend to matters, without “government interference”.

The last time this was official policy, in the late 19th Century, there was a moral laxity afoot and the emphasis was on maximum profit, with the attitude that Nature would take care of itself. The legacy of that ethos led to such things as the fire that broke out on the Cuyahoga River and the Santa Barbara oil spill, in 1969, which in turn led President Richard Nixon to establish the Environmental Protection Agency, a year later. Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, was the national public response to the catastrophic events.

It has been celebrated every year since, with some Administrations supporting a measure of environmental safeguards and others leaning more on the judgment of business and industry. The current Administration seems to be taking the latter course.

To be fair, business and industry of today are not as blinkered, or myopic, as their forebears. “Green” technology is viewed, rightly, as profitable, when pursued in a cost-effective manner and incrementally. Sustainability is recognized as being good for business, in the long-term. There are ham-handed industrialists and financiers, as yet, but their likelihood of staying in the drivers’ seats of publicly-held corporations is not a given. Many business people with whom I have talked are quite concerned about leaving a viable enterprise and a livable world for their children and grandchildren.

So, the long-term prognosis for our planet is not as bleak as it may seem, in the wake of climate change and the increase in catastrophic natural events. We have part to play in mitigating the severity of these events, and that means working together on solutions, which will neither bankrupt our economies nor add to the suffering of those already in the crosshairs of the storms, fires and quakes that are striking us with seemingly unpredictable regularity.

Fifty-four years after the first Earth Day, it falls to the citizenry to show Mother Earth our love and concern.

Everyone’s Earth

4
Posted by on in animal and plant life, collaborating, Community, distraction issues, Hiking and Nature, impediments, Inner Struggles, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Striving

April 22, 2022- It’s been fifty-two years since environmental activists gathered, en masse, to protest the policies that contributed to the Santa Barbara oil spill, which happened less than a year earlier.

We have, as a species, gone back and forth on the environment vs. economics issue, over these past many years, and a relative handful of entrepreneurs have engaged in “greenwashing” practices, which look like they are contributing to the improvement of the environment, but do little or nothing to actually help things along. There is also the microplastics aspect, to say nothing of their larger refuse, which has considerable long-term validity, in that the residue of plastics does settle in the stomachs of people and animals, finding its way into the bloodstreams and tissue, of those who ingest it. We can be more discerning, in dealing with the former. The latter, by contrast, will take much more research, as to how to safely capture microscopic plastic residue, store it, reverse engineer it into a usable fuel, and so on.

In the meantime, we have many tasks ahead, in saving both the Earth and ourselves. Alternative sources of energy are in their relative childhood, as electric cars are still prohibitively expensive for a good many people, disposal of spent batteries for such vehicles needs to be addressed-as does the safe disposal of the rare metals that go into such batteries. Every innovation that helps relieve one problem has its drawbacks that need to be addressed, preferably before the innovation becomes a mass-produced item.

That said, there is no place for throwing up our hands and just continuing down the road that we’ve been bumping along, for the next century or more. Every energy-wasting practice needs to be evaluated, and either reformed or discarded, based on the availability of viable alternative practices. Thankfully, there are solutions, some yet not articulated or made practicable, which will go along way towards alleviating the distress of the planet once the bugs are worked out.

Tonight and tomorrow night, I will man a shelter for those fleeing a sizable wildfire, southeast of town. During the day tomorrow, it’ll be time to help man a couple of booths at the community’s Earth Day event. I will cat-nap my way around these and have time to rest afterward.

As a one-time psychedelic band advised in the late ’60s: “Wake up, it’s tomorrow.”