Wake up and smell the nightmare (Carl Hiaasen calls for eyes wide open as oil spill reaches Pensacola Beach)

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My heart has been aching for my idyllic childhood home, Pensacola Beach, Florida. When the spill first started, I couldn't even wrap my head around the thought of those pristine white beaches destroyed by oozing greed and rotting wildlife. In his Miami Herald column, Oil spill: The nightmare becomes reality, Carl Hiaasen expressed everything I've been thinking...
The polls say most Americans, although not all, are outraged by the oil spill. Those untouched by the disaster may, if they choose, keep a distance. Along the Gulf shores, workers are scooping up dead dolphins and trucking them off for necropsies. The pictures aren't easy to stomach, and the impulse is to look away. It might be difficult for someone who was born and raised far from a beach or a bayou to visualize a place they cherish being poisoned and defaced on such a massive scale...
Click here for the rest of the column. (The expression "read it and weep" comes to mind.)

Comments

Colleen Thompson said…
I'm just sick about this. I was raised on the water up North - on the beaches in boats, crabbing - and taught from childhood that the marshes are the source of so much life. Some of my best friends' families made their living on the water. To think of all the wildlife and so many families' way of life fouled and poisoned infuriates me. Not to mention the 11 men who died because BP was cutting corners.
9:42 AM
Kathryn Peterson said…
It's terrible, and I can't understand why more people aren't incensed--or why people keep blaming everyone but BP. It's like if something doesn't affect people directly, they just don't care anymore.
12:20 PM
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