I did Prince William Sound years before the Exxon Valdez despoiled much of it. It was the richest most pristine environment imaginable. Whales, Orcas, Bald Eagles, Bear, sea otter, salmon streams thick with fish, bays teeming with herring. Kayaked and mountain-climbed for 6 weeks, half-starved, survived all kinds of tough moments but came out of it a man and also learned that when in the wilds you try to leave almost no evidence you were ever there. The Exxon Valdez did more damage in one week can even be described. I find religious meaning in the purity of nature. What a grand creation. But how man can spoil it as a by-product of his greed.
I have also done extensive hiking and climbing in the Northwest, Sierras, etc and am always shocked that the damage cutters did decades or even 100 years ago to the forests is still unhealed. These forests are thousands of years old and take that long to come back. In those days who knew, but now we know and now I'd much rather see a living tree than a hard wood floor. I feel sorry for the throw-back types who are trying to make cash by exploiting their private land but the big companies with their lobbyists who want to get away with "murder" if they can disgust me.
I am also very-very concerned about the oceans, reefs and fish populations as I am an avid scuba diver around the world and have seen what the slightest alteration to an ocean eco-system can do. This includes over-fishing with high-tech drift-nets, dredging and aerial reconnaissance hunting of fish populations. And of course many of us fought long and hard to create "dolphin-free" tuna but dolphins and other species remain in jeopardy worldwide.
The list of depletions is long and sad and I just hope we can neutralize future damage and try and sustain what we have.
I may be dead and gone soon but I would like to think future generations of kids can have some of the experiences I have had in the wilds. With leaders like Bush/Cheney in charge (if they had their way) in time it would almost all be gone, and I am not exaggerating. If you look at the damage caused just since I was a boy in the 70's you can easily see how within 20-30 years many of our natural glories could cease to exist or just be a few protected monuments to what once was.
I believe all this goes into religious areas and that when th Religious Right allies themselves with the exploiters they are doing something unholy. To fight for foetuses yet ignore forests and oceans is self-defeating. If those future children cannot enjoy what wilds we have left they will have lesser lives because of it. And I'm sure God (whatever you believe in) did not put us here to destroy and annihilate. Easy for someone like Cheney to push exploitation. He's rich and has his own private Wyoming paradise to enjoy. But I'm sure it's fenced off and private property. What about the rest of us who are not worth $50,000,000? It is afterall "Our Land".
I urge everyone to make forest, ocean and wildlife preservation a key concern in your lives, and to start talking amongst conservative right-wing circles about the importance of this. Also, it will only isolate your political wing and lose elections to be able to be dubbed The Toxic Party in league with the villains who seek to wipe out our natural resources for short-term gains. I hope people like oil lobbyist/Senator Murkowski of Alaska, Dick Cheney and others of their ilk go the way of the extinct species soon. They are throwbacks whose ideas can no longer be afforded. Remember, kill the Golden Goose and it lays no more eggs. But these type of men just don't care. |
