Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

Okay, I’ve got water on the brain this week. There is so much water news. How ’bout those torrential downpours in New York City that flooded the subway system and caused other havoc?

Just more weird weather.

But today’s water news is about something so abhorrent, in my old Catholic terms, it amounts to a mortal sin. What constituted mortal sin? Among the requirements — that the offense be ‘grievous,’ and that the one doing the offense knows it is grievous.

Thus BP oil company’s plans to dump more pollution from its Indiana refinery directly into Lake Michigan – with the compliance of the state’s governor, Mitch Daniels. Yes indeed. They want to expand the refinery and to do that they just sort of have to dump much more ammonia and toxic sludge into this precious natural wonder.

This is the same BP with those misleading and disingenuous commercials trying to establish its ‘green’ credentials.

Reps Rahm Emmanuel (D) of Illinois and Vernon Ehlers (R) of Michigan are trying to get Congress to help stop this. I mean, folks, there is something terribly wrong with a system in which one corporation and one state governor can decide to add pollution to a body of water bordering three other states, and in the case of Michigan and Wisconsin, a whole lot of their states.

But more, this kind of action and the insistence on it in the face of growing opposition, represent an attitude towards the natural gifts of this planet, towards Nature, and therefore even towards ourselves. This is violence of the worst kind; it is an orientation of violence towards all that we need to have a rich and abundant fabric of life. It is the human trying to stand outside Nature and use and abuse it to the benefit of the human — worse, to the profit margins of corporations.

Now we all know the money links between oil companies and politicians. So I thought you might find this article interesting — the money BP has spread around to local politicians in the Lake Michigan region — including Mitch Daniels.

BP and Daniels try to argue that we all want this because it will help lower gasoline prices. First of all, it will not do that appreciatively. Second of all, destroying what we need to live, destroying the ecosystem of Lake Michigan, in order to shave a few cents off gas prices is an insult to this Earth and to our intelligence.

I have a niece in Chicago living right on the lake shore. She is feeling this offense keenly and has made sure I not only know about this, but that I post about it. Thanks, sweetie. We’ll follow this one together — for the sake of the lake we love.

Meanwhile, please contact legislators about stopping this offense. If you live in a Great Lakes state, get your state and local officials involved as well.

[tags] Lake Michican pollution, BP, Mitch Daniels[/tags]