Voices From The Gulf from Tinkham Town on Vimeo.
Today, my friend Barbara encouraged me to go with her to Through This Lens Gallery in Durham to see a presentation by four photojournalists on the importance of documentation in the face of disaster. It was all about the BP oil spill and Hurricane Katrina. The thing that hit me like a hard dose of reality was a film that Todd Tinkham and my friend Molly Matlock are making about what could very easily happen to our beautiful North Carolina coast if the greedy politicians and the greedy oil companies start drilling off of our coast. We saw a clip of the film and I encourage you to watch it if you love the coast as much as I do. I had no IDEA this was happening, WHY don't I know what's going on!? Because there is no investigative journalism anymore, there are no newspapers that can afford to investigate anything.We don't even get a paper any more because there is nothing worth reading in them. USA Today had as their lead story this week the TOP TEN FOOTBALL TEAMS. And none of us seem to have any time to care about issues like this. I can't even get my own family to pay attention to me as I am ranting around the house about this, they don't seem to have the time to sit down with me and even watch a 7 MINUTE video for crying out loud! Let me tell you what I learned today: the wetlands in Louisiana are disappearing at the rate of a piece of land the size of a football field every HOUR! This country better wake up, I'm just saying. (Click on the voices link above to go to vimeo if you want to see a larger version.)
In their words:
A brief and important message to the state of North Carolina from the gulf coast of Louisiana about the realities of allowing big gas and oil companies to drill and develop in your communities.
As our state government often seems unable to protect us and our environment from large corporations, it is vital that we contact our state legislators and tell them to support Governor Perdue's veto of Senate bill # 709.
4 comments:
Yeah it happened in California, they put houses in the richest farm land in our country in the central valley with top soil eons deep and now those houses aren't worth the powder to blow them up with, but the developers made their cash and the politicians who let them, our food must come from other countries that still use DDT as a pesticide. I had no idea about Louisiana, so sad what is happening to our country everywhere and yet what can we do speak out, but it seems to fall on deaf ers.
Not only are oil companies going to ruin our planet but our government is going to continue subsidizing them to do so, even if that means that people don't get the money that they paid into social security and medicare when they retire.
What can we do? Write to your elected officials and hope they know how to read.
I've lived in Louisiana all my life.64 years. I can remember when we had an abundance of food from the Mississippi River and the Gulf.The Mississippi fish have mercury and the Gulf and coast are dying. IT MAKES ME SAD.But until we all understand everyone is to blame and everyone is responsible nothing will change.It's already 82 degrees here and the air is set on 78 so it just kicked on. As a child we did not have air and slept by open windows with an attic fan. Wet,soggy sheets(moss mattress also)and the bugs that got around the screens made for less than restful nights.Could I do that (and all the other things that made for a great deal lesser carbon footprint) again?? Yes I could and I know I should.But then we all should and most of us won't.Most of us, no matter how we try not to, will today consume some amount of fossil fuel in some form or another. I have no real answers but I think we all need to start asking the questions and searching for the solution.
Well said, you are so right. I grew up on the SC coast and we didn't have AC for a long time either, just window fans, and our cars had no AC. Since I have no AC in my studio I am so cold when I come in my house. I think we all could live a little less comfortably and be alright, but will we until we are forced to, that is the question!
Post a Comment