Oil spill in Nigeria's poverty stricken, oil-rich Niger Delta.
But mostly? For about 5 minutes out of the day when you're bombarded with these images, you're mostly pissed off.
See the Video: Watch President Obama's Oval Office Address on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
Live Streaming Video: See Real-Time Video of the Source of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Gusher
Jeff's Nation Blog: Gulf Coast Oil Spill Is Not Obama's Katrina
Photos: 5 Things You Can Do to Go Green
Over the last couple of years, you've watched big corporate baddies bleed this country dry, while the rest of us clean up the mess. And here we are again.
We have a giant multinational conglomerate literally sucking the life out of the Gulf of Mexico and its inhabitants (human and otherwise) -- and doing a godawful job at trying to stem the tide of this #FAIL of epic proportions.
Over the last few weeks, you’ve watched BP bumble its way through attempts to stop the leak with a bunch of hare-brained schemes that seemed to have been dreamt up after inhaling too many of their own gas fumes. (Top hat? Junk shot? Sounds more like moves you’d see on a street ball court. But I digress).
If you're like me, and you have allotted yourself that 5 minutes of daily oil spill rage, I'd ask you to reconsider your level of anger.
You're not angry enough.
I want you to get madder. We're talking David Banner with the bulging biceps, torn pants, full-on green-skinned transformation into the Hulk kind of rage.
Because somewhere else on this planet, there's an oil spill that makes what's happening in the Gulf of Mexico look like a dribbling puddle of Crisco.
Only there, there are no 24-hour oil cam rolling on the gushing grease, no president making weeklong tours to a devastated region, no CNN stories of businesses and birds stuck in the muck, and certainly no government putting public pressure on the guilty oil company to make it right.
It reminds me of that proverbial tree falling in the forest.
If a corporation leaks oil, and there’s no camera around to see it spill, did it make a sound?
I’d argue that, whatever the answer to that question, an oil spill ALWAYS makes an impact.
And it has ruined lives and land in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.
Here, by some estimates, up to 13 million barrels of oil have accidentally been spilled since the oil industry first went into business in the African nation in 1958.
That’s the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez-scale catastrophe happening once every year for the last 50 years. And as of 2008, there were some 2,000 sites across the Niger Delta that were still awaiting clean up in the aftermath of an oily oops.
In that time, the people living amongst the ooze have endured the withering of the environment upon which they depend almost entirely for their survival.
Oil creeps into the crops and the land, and the fish and the waters, making it nearly impossible to cook, wash, or eat without the slick and stench of oil tainting everything.
And as the oil chokes the life out of the soil and the rivers, the people here, unable to make a living with the traditional trades of farming and fishing, are mired in a cycle of poverty.
Which is odd, since $600 billion dollars worth of black gold has flowed through the hundreds pipelines that stretch like veins all across the Niger Delta for decades.
With that kind money, you’d think the Niger Deltans wouldn’t have to farm, fish, or lift a finger another day in their lives.
But they don’t see a cent of that money. No share in the profits. And no $30 billion dollar rescue plan to rebuild lives that have fallen apart after the oil. That money is shared by the oil companies, and the Nigerian government, which is financed almost entirely by oil profits.
Meanwhile, the Niger Delta remains one of the poorest regions in all of Nigeria.
Mad yet?
Wait. It gets worse.
Those who died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion that first released the oil into the Gulf of Mexico were memorialized with a service that honored and remembered each of their lives.
But in Nigeria, there’s no official account of oil-related lives lost. If there were, it’d be sure to include the 100 who died in an explosion in Lagos in 2008.
And that list must account for those in the Niger Delta, where life expectancy is declining, due in part to the malnutrition and disease that have become as commonplace as leaking oil.
And surely that list would include Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who in 1995 was executed on trumped up charges by the Nigerian government. His crime? Daring to demand that his people, the Niger Delta’s Ogoni tribe, be compensated for the oil that was being excavated from their land at the expense of their health and that of their environment.
NGOs, environmentalists, and the people who are boxed into the grid of miles and miles of criss-crossing oil pipelines point the finger at the oil companies, who drag their feet in maintaining and replacing old and corroded pipes.
Shell, the corporation with the largest business interest in the Niger Delta, has countered with the claim that the vast majority of damage to the pipes is the result of sabotage by local people.
Hoping to take some of the profits that many feel should have been rightfully given, these thieves tap into the pipes to steal oil for sale on the black market, or destroy the pipes in order to profit from working on the clean-up effort after the spill.
Fair enough. But even if the oil companies are right, and they are in fact blameless innocents in all of this, I can’t really knock the hustle of these so-called saboteurs.
I mean, if you were dying of thirst, and I was standing over you with a bottle of water, can I really blame you for trying to poke a hole to get a few sips?
Sorry, Shell. You need more people.
And judging from the findings of an Amnesty International report on the impact of oil in Nigeria, the companies are less interested in cleaning up the leaking oil than they are in eliminating anything that gets in the way of keeping it flowing.
Even if that thing is a human being.
According to the blistering 143-page report, “Communities are often seen and treated as a ‘risk’ to be pacified, rather than as stakeholders with critical concerns about the impact of oil operations.”
So let me get this straight. People = risk. The oil corporations must be using that new math.
By now, you have succumbed to my original request, and worked yourself up into a “Hulk mad!” level of frothy-mouthed, righteous indignation. But I’m sorry to say that I have to slap some sense into you with the cold, hard hand of truth.
That’s because part of the problem, my friends, is us. Or U.S., to be specific.
Nigeria is the 5th largest exporter of crude oil to the United States. Our energy-greedy nation consumes almost 1/4th of the world’s energy (that's more than China, a nation of over 1 billion people whose population makes ours look tiny by comparison).
We are sucking almost 1 million barrels of crude oil out of the Niger Delta every day.
Look down. Those are our hands – yours and mine - covered in blood oil.
While there’s no sign that the worldwide demand for oil (and the devastating consequences of that demand) will be stopping or slowing anytime soon, you can still do your part to get over your addiction to the sticky icky.
For starters, you can give a damn. Next time you see an image of that greasy bird on a beach in the Gulf, think about those who are suffocating under the oil in a village in Nigeria.
Add a sixth minute to that angry quota. Be a little more pissed off.
Then do something. (Something other than boycotting your local BP. BP’s pump profits are chump change as far as the company is concerned, and you’re doing more damage to the small business owner who paid BP for the right to operate the station).
Channel that Hulk rage and keep the Hulk color, because going green with some of the tips below is the best way to wash the oil off of your hands.
Photos: 5 Things You Can Do to Go Green
the stand you took here is worth a praise.
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