Some updates

1.)  Weekly Deity will appear on Friday this week

2.) I saw this on my Blog Stats and had to laugh.  WordPress keeps tabs on the top searches on my site, and one of the top searches apparently is “plan of sita’s abduction”.  I was at first concerned until I realized it’s probably due to my Weekly Deity post on the goddess Sita.  At least, I hope no one out there is planning my abduction!

Oil Too Costly

I was surfing the Internet today, bored in my unemployment, and came across this story on Yahoo! News: “Large China oil spill threatens sea life, water”.  Apparently a pipeline burst and has spilled hundreds of thousands into the ocean.  Worse, China doesn’t have the equipment to clean it properly.  The article reports that some workers are using rubber gloves and chopsticks to clean the water.

Seriously?  How is it that China, of all places, a major hub of production for countries around the world, doesn’t have any better means of cleaning up oil?  Maybe they got bad advice from BP…

We should have learned our lesson in the 80s with the Exxon Valdez spill.  Our oceans are now ruined, probably beyond repair, because of what we’ve been dumping into them, and oil is the worst of it.  Sure, eventually Mother Nature will sort it all out herself, but not if we keep dumping oil into the water.  We should have known back then that oil is going to have a high price, and I’m not talking about the price at the pumps.  Oil is killing our environment because we’re too stupid to learn from our collective mistakes.  If we can’t collect oil safely, we shouldn’t use it at all.  Hybrids are becoming more of an option for more people, and cars that are powered by alterate energy are being intensively researched and developed.  But oil isn’t used only for cars, it’s used to heat homes and businesses as well, and for other things.  What we really need is some way to make people understand that solar energy, wind energy, water energy, etc., all are more viable long-term options for power and better for the environment than oil.  One of my professors from my first college built his home with a bunch of solar panels as well as some means of using the water soure nearby for power.  Now he produces so much energy from the solar panels and the water that he has the power company paying him to take the excess energy off his hands!

Slight ranting aside, I think the oil spills that have happened recently are a sign that our dependence on oil must end, and must end now.  We can’t afford the cost for accidents like these to keep happening, not only in terms of the affect on the economy, but the affect on the environment and also on ourselves.  Polluted water equals polluted animals and plants equals polluted humans.  We’re a very self-absorbed and self-serving race–the danger of polluting ourselves with contaminated water or food should be more than enough reason to take action against oil.

Because this is a pagan blog I should probably relate this back to paganism–but I should hope that it’s obvious how this relates to paganism without me having to spell it out.  If not, let me know.