So much has been written about the disaster in the Gulf that I’ve felt no need until now to add my two cents. But I’ll ask you to check out this video from the Environmental Defense Fund which uses music and images to get to the heart of the issue. Better, I might add, than our president did last night.
Please, let’s not allow this crisis to pass without taking action to cap carbon emissions and promote clean energy. This is about our legacy.
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Here are a few words about the video from David Yarnold, the executive director of Environmental Defense Fund:
From a comfortable distance the BP oil disaster is depressing and horrific. But up close, it’s worse.
Two days in the Gulf of Mexico left me enraged – and deeply resolved. Both the widespread damage and the inadequacy of the response effort exceeded my worst fears. I’d spent a full day on the Gulf and we ended up soaked in oily water and seared by the journey.
By Tuesday night, I was home. My throat burned and my head was foggy and dizzy as I showed my pictures and video to my wife, Fran, and my 13-year-old daughter, Nicole, on the TV in the family room.
Images of the gooey peanut-butter colored oil and the blackened wetlands flashed by. Pictures of dolphins diving into our oily wake and brown pelicans futilely trying to pick oil off their backs popped on the screen. And, out of nowhere, Nicole put on the music from the season finale of Glee.
With all these horrific images on the screen, she had turned on the show’s final song of the year, “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.” The song, a slow, sweet, ukulele and guitar-driven version, couldn’t have added a deeper sense of tragic irony.
I choked up. And then that resolve kicked in: I wanted anyone/everyone to see what our addiction to oil had done to the Gulf and to contrast that with the sense of hope and possibility that “Somewhere” exudes.
Long story short, last weekend, Peter Rice, Chairman of Fox Networks Entertainment, gave Environmental Defense Fund the green light to use the song. The pictures you’ll see were shot by two incredibly talented EDF staffers, Yuki Kokubo and Patrick Brown – and a few are mine.
The inspiration was Nicole’s. This is for her, and for all of our kids – and theirs to come.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Marc and David, thank you for sharing this video. As you say, it does get to the heart of the matter…and to the heart. Pairing it with “Somewhere over the Rainbow” added a bittersweet tone to the hope (remember Judy Garland?). So here’s the issue: oil-slicked pelicans and dolphins are a horrific sight to see, BUT…For many doubters, who claim global warming is a hoax concocted by Al Gore (in the US their numbers are far more substantial than many think) drowning polar bears are something they laugh at. Why should they care? They don’t see the connection. At all. Our challenge in reducing consumers’ reliance on fossil fuels is to get to THEIR hearts, and as painful as these Gulf images are to see, poisoned animals will move few of these skeptics. Words like “addiction” are alienating to many in the mainstream – fine for the activists among us, but off-putting to those who are not. Our challenge is to use images such as these to anger and inspire activists — and also to find ways to connect each person’s consumption with a burning desire to reduce it. We are not there yet — sadly, fear and anger and horror generated by these images will move a minority. We need better communications, incentives and, yes, penalties to have a dramatic effect on consumer demand.
Amy, I think you make an excellent point here, although my hope would be that the suffering animals might move some of the previously-indifferent to act. Not the skeptics, surely. As I wrote earlier this week, we do need to find new ways to talk about the climate issue. I think the climate-health connection is one promising alternative–telling people that driving less, walking or biking more, using cleaner energy and eating less meat will all deliver immediate health benefits as well as long-term climate benefits.