If you are wondering just how bad things really are in the Gulf see this ABC news report. Philippe Cousteau (Jacque’s grandson) calls it a “nightmare.”
Transocean is holding a memorial today for those who died in the Deepwater Horizon in Jackson, Miss. .
People have died. The US government is now calling it the worst oil spill ever.
While most adults seem to be taking this in stride, rationally calculating the ratio of a country’s need for oil to the spill’s impact, many kids feel defiant and betrayed. This is their planet. As they watch adult authority figures still unable to stop the flow of oil into the ocean, cynicism molds childhood laughter in a wary grimace, the dull mask of survival. They believe that the world they know may be coming to an end, and sometimes, as one adolescent explained, “it is simpler to just harden up and ice over.”
Another young man said, “The subdued reaction to this crisis makes everything seem very false. As long as everyone around us denies that these things are happening, we tag along: the as-if generation in an as-if world.”
Three teenagers from New York City’s Upper West Side, however, tried something different. This is their story and here is their petition.
Ordinary Earth ™ 