Imagine

The worst environmental disaster in the history of the U.S.

As a woman facing 50, I am old enough to have seen the beginnings of the environmentalism. The first Earth Day. The initial calls for recycling. The No Nukes movement. The early days of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. The transformation of the Sierra Club from well-meaning, middle-aged, well-heeled do-gooding types to angry activists.

And yet here we are. The worst environmental disaster in the history of the U.S.

I have no words for what's going on in the Gulf right now. So I'll pass on the words of Ted Anthony and Mary Foster, two AP reporters*:

There is still a hole in the Earth, crude oil is still spewing forth from it and there is still, excruciatingly, no end in sight. After trying and trying again, one of the world's largest corporations, backed and pushed by the world's most powerful government, can't stop the runaway gushes.
As desperation grows and ecological disaster spreads, the operative word on the ground now is, incredibly, August--the earliest moment that a real resolution could be at hand.
And even then, there's no guarantee of success. For the United States and the people of its beleaguered Gulf Coast, a dispiriting summer of oil and anger lies dead ahead.
Oh--and the Atlantic hurricane season begins Tuesday. . . . It brings the horrifying possibility of wind-whipped, oil-soaked waves and water spinning ashore and coating areas much farther inland. Imagine Katrina plus oil leak.

Imagine.

*"August relief saps hope," The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA), 31 May 2010, p. 1, p. 6.