Larry McKinney, executive director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, once described a bird as a lump of oil that blinked.
That was last summer in an article from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. That was also two months after the April 20 explosion and spill of an offshore oil rig. It’s been a year since that event tore apart the Gulf Coast’s economy and environment. The anniversary comes two days before Earth Day.
The disaster shouldn’t be forgotten or swept under the rug just yet. People and animals are still recovering there.
McKinney, who helped assess and clean up the oil spill, said the image of how bad it was from the air became overwhelming — that the mess was a difficult picture for someone to wrap their thoughts around.
“You can’t grasp it as a person. It’s something that large, and it’s still going,” he said. “It’s numbing, at this point.”
Numbing — a word that literally means no feeling. Earth Day seems that way. It’s become just one day out of the whole year where everyone gets together to clean up and take care of our environment. People actually show appreciation much more for our planet that day than any other, or so it feels. The rest of the time, a lot of people seem insensitive to our environment.
True, society has those who constantly show appreciation for our environment, but most of us forget how fragile it is when we could be doing our own part to help. The oil spill is a perfect reminder of this.
I’m not saying join an activist group. I’m saying that it’s OK to be a tree hugger. I’m saying get involved even if it simply means recycling or not littering.
Yes, something terrible happened on that oil rig, but one of the reasons the disaster happened was because we as a nation were too greedy with our resources.
Too often, students leave food or trash in the parking lots.
Too often, people don’t care about what products are spilled or what chemicals leak from cars.
Too often, people don’t stop to think about the consequences of their actions.
But even something as small as watching what one is doing can help the plants and animals that are living here too. We tend to take advantage of the world around us. It’s time to start helping out more instead.
