BP's Gulf Oil Spill / Exxon's Prince William Sound, Alaska
The case against off-shore oil drilling
NO XL Keystone Oil Pipeline
Featured Poets
Fall 2011
Ken Pobo
Jacqueline Marcus
Bill Mckibben: Game Over for the
Climate
For a fourth straight day outside the White
House, environmentalists were arrested for
peacefully protesting a pipeline that would
carry acidic crude oil from Western Canada to
the Texas Gulf Coast. Environmentalist and
author Bill McKibben, who spent the weekend with
fellow demonstrators in a Washington jail,
discusses the the success of the protest and the
shortcomings of Obama's environmental policy
with Keith.
McKibben echoes the warning from NASA's Jim
Hansen that if the Tar Sands project goes
forward it will be "essentially game over for
the climate."
At the dinner table, Uncle Tim says
“I’d rather buy a car than read him.”
He means Thoreau. He does read—
car manuals, antique car catalogues,
car repair books. Henry David
didn’t see why we needed to go
35 mph. He’d turn down
a spin with my Uncle, a horrified
ghost among oil spills and
clear-cut forests. Yet, when I look
closely at the Gulf, I see him
on tortured wetlands, hear him
speaking from shells of dead
sea turtles. Look even closer
and there he is, writing a poem
on a stump. The mall opens.
Email rushes in. Henry David
keeps still. A pelican tries to stretch
oily wings. He licks off what he can,
blesses the final heartbeat.
Kenneth Pobo’s
chapbook Contralto Crows is coming out soon from Green Fuse Press and will
include the poem published in this issue of Forpoetry.com. Another chapbook,
this one of micro-fiction, Tiny Torn Maps, is forthcoming from Deadly Chaps
this fall.
Exxon Oil Spill Prince William Sound, Alaska
by Jacqueline Marcus
None of it mattered any more—not the rain,
not the sea and its sad reluctance,
not the trees hiding the moon’s drum
or the leaves flashing their ornamental fans,
not the slack mallard, painfully struggling for air,
her wings trapped in a thick ooze,
the reefs bristling with poison,
the otter swirling helplessly down to the bottom of the bay, anchored.
All night the waves layered the black coves with inarticulate matter,
all day the birds circled the skeletal pines.
For years the waves licked their toxic wounds
where egrets used to gather,
a wet sun warmed the backs of whales,
and cool winds handled the shifting tides
of sea-weed and sea-clams that shimmered across the splashing rocks
where once or twice a seal could be seen spying from the choppy waters.
This island is dead now. Not a sign of life
from the poisoned sea where a black sun sinks over the daily wreckage.
The case was made on behalf of Exxon
that the largest profitable oil industry could not be held responsible
for their intoxicated captain who, in a drunken stupor,
steered the cargo straight into the rocks.
The five corporate ghosts veiled in their black robes agreed.
“Exxon,” they repeated, “is not responsible.”
As for the bloated salmon and the years of invisible rain,
as for the sea’s bright and timid blues wrestling the shore’s reluctance,
as for the wind taking its time to lift the leaves—
it all comes down to a body of water not yet spoiled or defiled,
a forest of pines and firs, aspens and birch,
if that’s barely possible to remember?
Full moon, silence of water, winter tree, finding its place inside the sky.
____________________________________________________________________________ Note: March 29, 1989, the Exxon Valdez spilled between 11 and 38
million gallons of crude oil into the fishing waters of Prince William
Sound. The spill contaminated more than 1,200 miles of Alaska’s shoreline
and killed hundreds of thousands of seabirds and marine animals. It also
dealt a staggering blow to the residents of local fishing towns, and the
effects of the disaster are still being felt today.
The
D.C. Earthquake Makes For an Alarming Case against the Keystone Pipeline
The
August 23rd earthquake that rocked D.C. all the way up to
Martha’s Vineyard where the President is vacationing should be an alarming
wake up call to President Obama on how easily a crude oil pipeline can
rupture from a crushing earthquake.
It’s
bad enough that this President gave the thumbs up to Arctic offshore oil
drilling. "The Arctic’s Beaufort Sea is plagued with high seas, shrieking
winds, darkness, sea ice, and minimal visibility. Yet, the Obama
administration just approved aggressive offshore drilling in these harsh
waters—before doing a full environmental review, and without
requiring reliable safety equipment or an approved oil spill response plan."
(EarthJustice.com)
The
President still has a chance to be on the right side of history by saying NO
to Arctic drilling and NO to the Keystone pipeline project
which threatens to poison our fragile ecology, agricultural land and fresh
water aqueducts. The pipeline is from the oil sands of
Alberta and would run from Canada through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska,
Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. In addition, the consumption of this oil would
be the same as setting off a “carbon bomb into the atmosphere,” as
environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben put it, by intensifying global
warming beyond the tipping point.
As for
creating jobs—that certainly is an appealing selling point, but as the Gulf
residents who lost their livelihoods in the fishing, real estate and tourism
industries worth billions of dollars a year before they were swept away or
lost to BP’s black tides of oil will tell you, it’s not worth the risk of
employing workers temporarily for Canadian oil that in
the end will not make our gas prices cheaper because it will be sold on the
international market. Just ask the Gulf residents who were in the fishing
industry what they think about more oil coming their way. Sen. Bernie
Sanders is right: we can produce a lot more jobs with the creation of green
energy technology. In fact, solar and wind companies are beginning to boom
and they’re doing it without the Federal government. You can’t stop
progress.
Lastly, the public has learned too many times that there’s no way to prevent
oil spills. The August 23rd earthquake is an urgent red warning
to the President that ruptured pipes from earthquakes and floods are
happening with far more frequency and violent velocity under climate change
conditions than ever before. The rising floods that left thousands of
people homeless is the reason
ExxonMobile’s pipeline ruptured into
Montana’s Yellowstone River July 3rd 2011. By approving these dirty energy projects, Obama will be making climate change conditions worse knowing full well
that there is no efficient way to prevent or to clean oil spills,
especially in the Arctic’s turbulent and icy dark seas. Did this President
learn anything about the message of climate change when he stood in
front of the tornado damaged homes in the mid-west?
Will
President Obama have the good conscience or moral fortitude to do the right
thing? We’re waiting to see.
Jacqueline
Marcus
is the author of Close to the Shore (Michigan State University Press). She
taught philosophy at Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, and is the
editor of
ForPoetry.com.
