A Fish Needs Oil Like a Duck Needs a Shotgun

I was recently asked to give a quote on the gulf oil disaster.  This is what came out of my small but pliable head:

 “It doesn’t take a Christian environmentalist to realize that God didn’t create fish to swim in oil, it just takes a Christian who cares.  We can’t continue to sit in the cheap seats on environmental issues and expect anyone to care what we think about the other challenges that face our world.  It’s all connected -- Christ cared deeply about all sorts of suffering – physical, emotional, spiritual, economic. The Christian church can ill afford to continue to exhibit indifference in the face of human and ecological tragedy.  Sadly, that continues to frequently be our best and only apparent answer.” 

I don’t know about you, but I find the whole Gulf spill to be very overwhelming. Crabs in oil, boats in oil, the entire southeastern United States in oil. A friend recently posted an app that super-imposes the current dimensions of the oil slick over any region of the US. It’s crazy, seeing a black shadow stretch from Philadelphia to Boston. It provides perspective of the disaster that continues to unfold, and it brings home the devastation.

But then again . . . .  It’s nothing. I’m sorry, but just think about the numbers with me. There are, on the high side, twenty thousand barrels of oil spilling into the Gulf every day. Terrible! Insane. A certified disaster of historic proportions. And we consume, in the United States alone, twenty MILLION barrels of oil . . . a day. At the current rate of discharge, the broken well would have to spew oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 2.7 years, just to provide for one single day of America’s consumption. That may be more horrifying than the ever-spreading oil slick that is clinging to Florida like hot Saran Wrap.

Funny how we see risks in our lives. The other day, after working on my Yamaha Cruiser, I had to put the bike back in the garage, about a ½ mile away. It was a warm and sunny evening, and my black helmet looked awfully hot. So I stuck the helmet on the back of the bike and roared down to the garage with the wind pushing through my hair. Well, I don’t have much hair for wind to push through, but you get the picture.

Risky, right? Who in their right mind would ride a motorcycle without a helmet? Anybody who rides a motorcycle a lot. It’s a funny thing we humans do, adapting to risk. The more time we spend with risk, the less it means to us. You do it too. Tearing down the highway at a rate of speed that would make someone from the 1930s die of fright. Texting/talking/surfing the web in traffic. We adapt to risk; it seems to diminish in proportion to the time we spend around it. In reality, of course, it’s not true. Only our perception of risk changes, not the actual risk. Kind of a dangerous proposition.

Jim Moriarty (Surfrider CEO) Talks About Faith & Oil 

I have known Jim Moriarty for over five years now and I consider him a good friend.  He and I don’t always see eye to eye on every issue, but we do see eye to eye on Christ.  As the CEO of Surfrider Foundation, one of the biggest coastal environmental organizations on earth, Jim agreed to be a part of Humanitarian Jesus (one of only two secular non-profit leaders who are in the book) and I will share that interview later this month.  But, given the media coverage that the current oil spill is getting I asked him if he would answer 5 Questions on the topic.  He did and the answers are worth reading:

1.  What was your immediate reaction to the spill as someone that cares deeply about our oceans?

I met Rusty Pritchard (founder and president of Flourish) several years back when we were both at different organizations and I ended up writing a story on surfing and creation for his then journal Creation Care.  I found him to be profoundly passionate about the environment and the impact it has in our lives. 

Flourish exists to inspire and equip “churches to better love God by reviving human lives and the landscapes on which they depend” -- a decidedly de-political mission and message.  With a background in environmental academics, research, policy, ministry, and consulting he has touched and seen a lot; and it would seem that he continues to find the overwhelming truth that God through His creation is still transforming hearts and minds one person at a time.