Almost exactly one year to the day that the oil spill in the Gulf began, young activists took over a BP gas station in D.C. last weekend. This wasn’t your usual protest- people gathered to throw a beach party at a BP gas station. LaShunda Campbell was at the angry demonstration, along with more than 1,000 others.
“The idea behind this protest was ‘you flood our beaches, so now we will flood your stores!’” LaShunda said.
The BP oil spill. Nuclear disaster in Japan. The #GasIsTooDamnHigh.
These news stories have come and gone from the front pages of our newspapers, but their long-lasting effects on our environment are here to stay. For many of us, they are a bitter reminder that we need to invest in more sustainable and clean forms of energy. Environmental causes are not just Al Gore’s pet project anymore: the devastating effects of global warming and corporate irresponsibility are becoming too intense to ignore.
Find out what brought 10,000 young people to D.C. this weekend…
Today, I listened in on a live web chat that was broadcast in the White House with the EPA’s (Environmental Protection Agency) Administrator Lisa Jackson, who discussed measures to reduce Toxic air pollutions from power plants. Administrator Jackson and The EPA are proposing standards to limit mercury, acid gas, and other toxic pollution from power plants, keeping 91 percent of the mercury in coal from being released into our air. Toxic air pollutants from coal and oil fired power plants cause serious health issues all around the world. If levels of toxins, mercury and harmful gas are reduced, it would prevent thousands of illnesses – it’s that simple. But currently there are no limits on the toxic air pollutions released from power plants and I think that this is a major issue that needs to be resolved before our whole country suffers from power plant pollution.
That picture fairly sums up everything else I’m going to say: what’s the difference between the left switch and the right? Options. Something we’re all woefully without when it comes to the nuclear standoff between man and his machines happening right now in Japan, by far the worst non-local-like-in-your-backyard news story still unfolding today…and potentially an in-your-backyard apocalypse. The tsunami and earthquake devastation in Japan would, by themselves, constitute a massive human tragedy. But the looming threat of nuclear meltdown has given the last few days a particular poignancy outside the scope of Mother Nature.
What safeguards do we have with an off-less switch? Open up.
In a time when gas prices are rising, jobs and affordable health insurance are hard to find, and climate change threatens our way of life, we should be shocked that fewer people are carpooling than 30 years ago, right? Do we continue to drive our large vehicles by ourselves because we’re lazy? Maybe. Is it because we enjoy the convenience of being able to go where we need to be, when we need to get there? Sometimes. Or is it because people lack the options and infrastructure to commute sustainably in a convenient, reliable and affordable manner?
I believe that in order to create the paradigm shift that is necessary to get people out of their current ‘lazy mindset’, we have to make it easy for them! If we continue to ask the same “why is nobody changing their way of life and carpooling” question without changing what is available to them, that outlook shift will never change.
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