BP should be breathing a little easier these days. Goody for them.
It may have 'died' somewhat as a news item, but the animal species keep on dying in the Gulf. For a sobering and depressing daily tally on the amount of species that have died or could die due to being drenched in oil, visit the excellent website: http://dailydeadbirds.com/. It's a one-page website that just gives the tallies. As of yesterday, the death toll for seabirds was 1 682, dead sea turtles numbered 452 and dead mammals (dolphins, porpoises, etc) was at 57.
82 days since the spill and the creatures keep dying.
Creatures at our mercy. Can you imagine being that much at our mercy?
The oil keeps spilling and spilling and the excuses by BP become more and more insufferable, more corporate greenwash. Even if now it's considered less newsworthy.
And that's the paradox of our modern media-saturated information age. Yes, we know more and we know it quicker and in so much greater detail. But it too can slip from our collective memory as quickly as it assaulted us when it first 'broke' as a news item.
Is it precisely because we get so bombarded by the 24/7/365 media, like some endless News Item Loop From Hell, that we seem to get so switched off so suddenly? Moving on like herds of restless antelope to greener fields of breaking news heaped on the lives, fortunes and misfortunes of others? It certainly seems that way.
Perhaps we just don't want to keep hearing the same old, bad news. Perhaps we need our bad news to be as fresh and as unique as possible, before that too becomes stale and, well, boring? Because heaven knows good news just doesn't sell as well as the bad, the ugly and the horrific. Maybe it's always been that way.
But there's something very unsettling about the way we are in this regard.
Not to mention fickle. This fickle species called humanity that (thinks it) rules the world as it spews pollution and toxicity wherever it goes. And decides what makes news on a whim based on its own sense of self-importance. And this is replicated again and again after every single 'environmental disaster'. Which, by the way, is inevitably because of our own short-sighted greed or stupidity.
All I can say is thank goodness that the sea turtles and dolphins and seabirds of the Gulf of Mexico don't get to watch just how unimportant a news item they've become on TV.
Do you get my point?
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