OIL. From my heart to yours...

So once again, I am compelled to unleash my wrath on an unsuspecting aspect of society. Except this time it probably is suspecting and is definitely more important than Miley Cyrus. SryMilez.

OIL. Three letters that hold the key to wealth. Three letters that inspire trade. Three letters that essentially molded the future of the world when it was discovered that it could be developed into a fuel cheaper than whale oil in the late 19th century.

Oil has catalyzed industries. It has been romanticized in movies and has fed trust funds throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. It has started wars. It has ended them. And now, at quite possibly the worst time in contemporary history that it could possibly happen given the state of international affairs, global trust, environmental health and the world's economy (though there is never actually a good time for such a travesty to occur), the greed, the corner-cutting and the oversight of a multi-billion dollar industry is symbolically bleeding into the one character in human history that has remained constant.

Since man awoke from the garden of life, be it by a Creator's provocation or by a natural evolution of species, our truest friend, the one that has stuck by us, challenged us, scared us, never truly failed us, has been this world itself. Like any good friend this world has allowed us to capitalize on her resources. We have used her many components to network our way through the barriers that had minimalized the possibilities of past centuries. We have discovered elements, we have developed technology, we have learned how to manipulate the environment to further ourselves into new realms of possibility. We have taken much of what our friend has given us without even a second glance. Why? Because she is our friend! Of course she wants to share her mountains so we can break into them and sell their fruits for dreams. Of course she wants us to poke and prod her forests and valleys and streams until we understand her every motion, her every intention. And of course she wants us to drill into the depth of her heart and withdraw the liquid of modern life, the substance that fuels innovation, development and even the most mundane of our daily affairs.

A good friend would not stop you from doing those things. She may warn you that it hurts or is unfair in the subtlest, most discrete ways. She may even reach out and grab you by the neck and beg, beg that you leave her alone. Yet, she would never stop you. So who will stop us? Do we heed her warnings? Do we realize that, like Thomas Friedman warns us, that even a 1% chance that the constant berating and tugging and polluting of our environment could destroy our dear friend, the world, is enough of a chance to act on? Do we watch the blackened tears seer through her cresting waves and dye the feathers of her innocent children and realize that it's a sign? That it's a cry for help? Or do we allow history to continue to repeat itself like any other ignored catastrophe that has failed to be eradicated throughout history like prejudice, tyranny or genocide?

There is no difference between this oil spill and inequality or injustice or mass murder. In fact, this oil spill, or any oil spill, IS inequality, IS injustice and IS mass murder. We have failed to place our world on a pedestal like we do profit, the American dream and technology. We have failed to protect our world through omission; we have ignored her right to be healthy by forgoing extra procedures or reinforcements that could at least distance her from the wretched ambition that plagues her surfaces. We have blindly murdered her lively and her senseless, from the tiniest particles of water that come together to fill our oceans to the largest of creatures that have beached themselves because they just cannot bear the taste of crude anymore. From the young people in classrooms who fail to read about the negative effects of coastal drilling in the newspaper or their textbooks to the lawmakers who refuse journalists access to the death-laden crime scene of their affair with the oil industry... From myself, someone who was completely unaware of how oil rigs in our bodies of water could destroy so much in so little time, to the highest suit in any company that signs off on a new rig without all procedures being followed, all possibilities for security, cleanliness and leak prevention being explored... We are all at fault.

Now as I stand down from my soap box I will have you know that I am the number one advocate of severing our dependence on the Middle East for oil. They have no business having even the smallest bit of control over something that is so integral to daily Western life. Yet, as I witness that black sheet of ruin seep eastward toward the Florida coastline where it will surely be sucked into the Everglades and dragged over to the other side of Florida to the beaches upon which I flourished as a child, I cannot sit silent. I am a victim of my own ignorance, but at least I have realized this while I am still young and motivated enough to take a stand.