"Harsher punishments for people who hurt animals"? What about all of us, who are responsible not only of hurting single animals, but whole species - in fact, of wiping them out completely?

This still seems to be too far away to be recognized: What does my littering have to do with an owl getting hit by a car? What does my groceries bag have to do with a sea turtle suffocating? What does my plastic consumption have to do with an albatross starving with its belly full (of plastic)? What does my seafood have to do with millions of whales, sharks and dolphins dying in fishing nets? What does my shrimp dinner have to do with far exceeding "bycatch" being dumped overboard, dying? What does my beef consumption have to do with the suffering of countless animals in tropical rainforests?

If we are really concerned about animal abuse and neglect, we should not limit it to domestic animals, i.e. cute pets, but include the much more severe and much less recognized issue of wild animals being abused and neglected by us, up to the extinction of thousands of species, each year.
wk

Hence we are stopping our counter; today's last status for the records (on the lower end of the estimates by the way):

[image]

Second thoughts ... what did that mean "taking full responsibility for cleaning up the spill"; it certainly does not mean that BP takes responsibility for the oil spill itself. When it comes to legal questions they can be pretty accurate in their wording. In the same TV ad, BP also recognized that "it is our responsibility to keep you informed", which I assume meant something like "we should keep you informed (but actually we don't intend to)". It manifested itself in disinforming the public (who really believes BP didn't know that their own well "spilled" 10 times as much as the announced 5000 barrels a day?), engaging in denial- and hairsplitting games like arguing over terms ("it may be down to how you define what a plume is here"), to plainly holding back information by providing low-res videos of the gusher and keeping the more revealing HD videos for themselves (for several weeks until being forced to release them). Being really sarcastic, you may wonder if the emphasis was meant to be on "it is our responsibility", i.e. it is not yours to inform yourself, which would explain the "BP rules" and some extensive flight restrictions which hindered reporting and recently even spurred speculations BP might have hidden areas where dead animals have been processed out of sight (- with BP's track record of (mis)information, would we be surprised?).

So much for responsibility.

Should somebody really be at a BP station in the near future and wait for the car to be filled up, he or she may ponder about the sign "Do Not Leave Pumps Unattended - You Are Responsible For Spills" [image], which went somewhat viral a couple of weeks ago.

After a small mishap you may start a discussion that "it may come down to how you define 'spill' here". With some justification: if we collectively consider a 150 million gallon oil catastrophe a "spill", you may have a good point relabeling your puddle something more cute. Consider including the words "light" and "sweet".

You may also try to argue over the meaning of "being responsible" and go by the example given by BP.
wk

[image] [image] [image]

[image] [image] [image]

... "If things never changed, there'd be no butterflies"

The last one of the three fell asleep in one of our backyard trees and will start his/her journey tomorrow - watch this if you didn't see it yet!: The Incredible Journey of the Butterflies [image]
ek

Going by this coast guard quote [image], BP successfully implemented "BP rules", enforced by the people's (!) executives - the ones who are legitimized by the people for the people, now working for a company, which by neglect and greed destroyed a large portion of the people's livelihood.

Isn't this about the worst thing that can happen to our democracies? Global companies openly "take over", exploit the environment, while people are locked out, denied even mere information. Maybe companies are since long more powerful and in-control than governments, i.e. the people, but this incident has a new quality; how can it be that "BP rules" keep you from informing yourself? On public beaches. Moreover, if I interpret the various fruitless interview attempts [image] with clean-up workers (at least partly contracted former fishermen) right, BP now even uses its power, lended by destroying the premier source of income in the region and becoming the only remaining "employer" (cleaning up their mess) to ... is this overstated? ... effectively buy the freedom of speech.

There should be an outcry from the people, and the media. Where is it?
wk

-- A news video from Germany [image][image]; even if you don't speak German, please watch the start and end of it (like minutes 0:15 and 2:00) - no need to see the BP officials in between.

-- A series of images on boston.com [image]; the almost 3000 comments so far (in 4 days) seem to show we start thinking critical about our lifestyles, mostly anyways. - "We really are the most selfish, gluttonous, self righteous creatures on the planet.", "It make me sick to know that our race has taken this earth for granted.", but also in a comment from today: "Has anyone found an effective way to 'blame' the oil off of these animals? Blame, blame, blame. Bad BP? Bad Obama? So what? Stop blaming and do something. Blame yourself when you leave an unnecessary light on. Blame yourself when you leave your computer on over night. Blame yourself when you buy an unnecessarily large vehicle, drive when you could walk or bike, heat your house to 72 degress in the winter, coolr your house to 70 degress in the summer. BLAME YOURSELF."
wk ]]> http://www.yoursharemakesadifference.com/blog/ysmad_100522-pacman-versus-biodiversity.html Sat, 22 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400 Wolfgang Koch http://www.yoursharemakesadifference.com/blog/ysmad_100522-pacman-versus-biodiversity.html ... [more]]]> Did anyone notice? The U.N. named 2010 the "International Year of Biodiversity"; plus today (as every year on 5/22) has been the International Day for Biological Diversity. However, all concerns about biodiversity have to compete with other topics, like e.g. Beer (see the Beer Day mentioned in the previous blog post), and other notable events.

Google is a nice indicator for events worth mentioning, with their logo on google.com merrily changing.

Today, biodiversity (i.e. the International Day for Biological Diversity) competed against the 30th birthday of Pacman - and lost.

Meanwhile, in between playing Pacman on google.com, I increased our homepage-counter for the oil spill 10-fold to account for BPs likely "inaccuracy" and apparently even REFUSAL to allow accurate measurements. A 10-fold increase is a fair approach I think, as more trustworthy sources than BP (see here a report on cbsnews.com [image]) are estimating a flow between 4 times and 20 times the BP number, and an interviewed scientist on CNN on 5/15 estimated "at least 50,000 barrels with high certainty", 10 times BP's number, which by the way has been estimated by the Federal NOAA and then been adopted by BP without further lamenting. This to me feels rather like "happily agreeing"; wonder why.
wk

First of all, I couldn't write for this year's Earth Day, because I was stuck in the Eyjafjallajokull tumult in Europe during that time. Sorry for the kerosine-waste, at least I brought lots of "green tips" with me, from taking-the-hotel-stairs-instead-of-the-elevator to rejecting-the-3-ounce-airline-water-receptacle - but I'll bother you with that later. Here about "Die Welt": on 4/22, I read in the German newspaper "Die Welt" exactly n o t h i n g about Earth Day - after all the 40th of its kind.

Compared to that, on 4/23 I encountered in the same newspaper a whopping 6 page special supplement about Beer Day; no kidding.

I am still waiting for their feedback on my letter to the editor :) and apologize if I missed an article, but a conclusion you can already derive: to most, beer is more important than our planet. At least for "Die Welt" it seems, and for the world possibly too :(

I.e. today's preachy verdict is: The world missed yet another Earth Day -- and exactly since that day we are celebrating our ignorance with a 200,000-gallon-a-day oil spill from the sunk "Deepwater Horizon" in the Gulf of Mexico (not counting stored Oil and Diesel). We hope BP does not make us speed the oil-spill-counter on our homepage again, after - surprise! - it had been figured out meanwhile the leak is 5 times bigger than initially "expected".

[image]
(a static reminder of today's status quo)
wk

[image]While on a winter walk earlier this year, we saw her with her friends or extended family enjoying one of the first sunny days this year (that's actually also why we were taking a walk :) ) Back then I was already thinking if she will find a male duck for her own family or if she will have a hard time - as she did as a yellow duckling when it always looked like she was a bit separated from the rest of the family).

[image]Now that spring has finally started all ducks are walking around in pairs. And so earlier this week we were able to take a picture of our snowwhite. Don't they look like the perfect couple? :)
I can't wait to see her with some ducklings - hopefully with more yellow ones!
ek

If 911 is called for an alleged fire, they will immediately go out for the call, no matter how likely it really is (in fact, about 1 out of 10 calls are false alarms according to the NFPA).

If there is a no-matter-how-vague bomb warning for an airport or school building, all strings are pulled to evacuate and limit any risk to a minimum.

If there are facts that we destroy food sources by throwing away ten thousands of tons of "bycatch" every day; that we are destroying our life's foundations at a rate of one acre of rainforest per second; that we for-a-fact are the cause of a mass extinction in the ecosystem we live from: nobody seems to care. Why is that?
wk