Mar 08 2008
Sea Shepherd
When I have gotten older, and the boys have grown up and moved on to adventures of their own, I want to be Paul Watson’s henchman.
Y‘know, people talk all the time about how “when I am an old woman, I shall wear purple“, and they expect you to get all old and eccentric and wacky. For my 60th birthday, I wanna buy myself an ironclad trawler, paint *it* purple, and go work for Paul, sailing the seas for whatever marine life is still left by then.
I dunno. Maybe I’m just hostile and crazy because of all the environmental badness I’ve been posting about on this blog for months. Maybe I’m just really sad because I’ve figured out that the Great Blue Heron that used to roost here in the marina in the windbreak and drop gorgeous blue feathers on the ground is well and truly gone. Natural causes? Sewage? Oil? Who knows? I just know he was great, and now he’s gone. I know I haven’t seen our resident harbor seal in months. I have to assume she’s gone too.
I love what Sea Shepherd does. I love that they named their new ship Steve Irwin. I love that they are unapologetic for what they do; enforcing laws that already exist, when no other enforcement agency can or will. I love that Paul Watson will say things like this, in a recent article in the New Zealand Herald:
At the last Sierra Club Conservation Governing Committee meeting, there was a discussion about supporting hybrid cars to help prevent global warming.
Although I believe that hybrid and alternative cars and transportation should be promoted, I am wary of sending out a message of false hope.
Instead of tackling the impossible to try to prevent global warming, we should be focusing attention on how to live on a warmer planet. The Sierra Club could provide some leadership here. No one else is, to the best of my knowledge.
There is no preventing global warming. Global warming is a process we are currently experiencing and well into.
Bam. There is is. His delivery reminds me of John Muir and Edward Abbey and Farley Mowat; also heroes of mine. People who said what they thought, and didn’t really care too much about softening the message so people could hear it without getting their knickers in a twist.
So often, people equivocate. We’ve learned to speak in the language of passivity, the language of ambivalence. We’re getting a bit short on heroes these days. So it makes my heart sing when someone, anyone, steps up and says what everyone knows but no one will say: It’s gotten dire out, and we need to pay attention.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about words, it’s that you can’t achieve with a sledgehammer what is best done with needlenosed pliers. To every job, to every situation, to the advancement of every concept - a proper tool. And sometimes, that tool is a sledgehammer just as often as it is needlenosed pliers. And just as much as it is that a poor craftsman blames his tools, the proper advocate, the right spokesman, is just as important as the words that are spoken. Efficacy is what I’m talking about. I’m guessing that this is what Paul Watson is doing when he suggests that the Sierra Club provide leadership in learning to live on a warmer planet.
Hmmm, I see good and bad about this. Bad because, we should be educating people how to live on a warmer planet , BUT, it gives ground to giving up hope to living a more holistic life, by just learning to cope with it.
zen…
are those two things really mutually exclusive? Can’t we learn to live on a warmer planet by living a more holistic life?
You make your Momma’s heart to soar like an eagle. ::BEAM::
XOXOXOXOXO
DSLOGMx3