BP’s Invisible Damage Is Killing Us
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”-Norman Cousins
Week before last, a fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico took his own life. It was the first reported suicide in this unending and unfolding BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
William Allen Kruse, 55, a charter boat captain recently hired by BP as a vessel of opportunity out of Gulf Shores, Alabama, died Wednesday morning before 7:30 a.m. of a gunshot to the head, likely self-inflicted, authorities said.
There were dozens of suicides resulting from the stress of the Exxon Valdez. The unseen depth and despair in the Gulf of Mexico is taking it’s toll.
We’ve received many requests to post the radio segment where I talked about this.
The entire first hour of that show can be downloaded here.
I’ve listened to Shannyn’s piece on this issue twice now and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s absolutely powerful, and speaks to the heart. I hope you isten.
“The suffering of the people does not matter:copper executives need this sacrifice:facts are facts…”
“In this way they decide from above, from the roll of dollars…
and the trunk of the tree of the country rots.”
Pablo Neruda
from They Receive Instructions Against Chile
———
We are here.
We mean it.
We are with our neighbors.
We are the trunk of the tree, we are strong.
We will not rot, we will not fall…
Coming from the lower 48 this is important I can tell you what happened in Alaska in 1989 is important – we need to hear more of this…
Please go to digg.com and spread the word…
http://digg.com/political_opinion/From_The_Mudflats_Bp_s_Invisible_Damage_Is_Killing_Us
This just did me in. I am nowhere near the oil disaster, I am in Pittsburgh, but when I try to talk about it with people, to hear people say, “well, at least it wont affect us” I want to start screaming. For one, who cares if WE are not affected, a whole bunch of other people are, and how about a tear and a helping hand for your fellow passenger?
And number two, the environment is being murdered, and if you think it is not going to affect you, you are just….I don’t know. I have just started keeping my mouth shut, I cannot bear to hear the denial.
I am so full of rage and grief – I have been trying to get down there to volunteer to help, I have tried to find somewhere trustworthy to send money, and all I run into is a lot of finger pointing, politicizing, and buckets of bulls**t.
Thank you Shannyn and Jeanne for spending so much time on this – since you have first hand experience, and you know damned well that yes, oh my yes, it is going to affect us, how can it not?
Thank you for speaking and writing tirelessly about it, giving someone like me a place to scream and not be looked at like I should be in a psych ward.
Thank you for that information. Powerful and informative for me. The Gulf hemorragh seems to be Valdez 2.0 (but on an unending and possibly infinite scale). We should take every step to learn and apply the lessons that were offered with that disaster to consider mitigating the toll for wildlife, humans and the environment for this current disaster. You are so right about there being no end in sight.
Lessons can be learned from history, but unfortunately, history often repeats itself with no regard for change and innovation. I hope this will not be the case.
Thank you Shannyn. AKM is right, it is powerful. We can’t afford the time it takes to blame, file lawsuits, create impotent regulations that won’t be in place for years. This is happening NOW. All of humanity only has this one earth. Can’t we learn to protect it and it’s inhabitants before it’s too late? We can’t even get facts from the oil companies on the severity of this disaster on our environment; how can we start fixing it? The entire world should be involved.
oops, meant to say, we can’t afford the usual, drawn out time it takes to investigate the problem behind the disaster, but the changes and regulations need to be made. Now.
Thanks, Shannyn. This was the first thing to hit me at the start of this spill. Anchor Point beach was only oiled once and not heavily. I’m still heartbroken over it and hateful toward Exxon. God died for me on that day. I think people go down the “save the environment” road so quick that they forget about the human costs. Maybe because humans are responsible but we have to remember that only SOME humans are responsible. The rest of us are responsible for helping and caring and trying to make it stop.
Save the humans! (And the rest will follow…)
Trying to set aside for a brief moment the environmental and wildlife disasters in the Gulf:
Human adaptation to despair, hopelessness, and loss is well catalogued and studied. It includes suicide, depression, domestic violence, alcoholism/drug abuse, and similar behaviors.
Unless mediated by the larger community, these behaviors spiral .
We all want to believe we are a transcendant creature, but by and large, we are not.
We need a place in the world and each other.
Our neighbors in the Gulf have lost their place…
When the cameras are gone, we’ll still be here for them…
All this is true, Alaska Pi. But there’s more. There is a huge, gaping hole where the mental health professionals should be. Many in the community (especially in Louisiana) are Vietnamese, and speak very little English. They do not have the means to seek help (including filing claims) without translators, and their culture equates seeking help–especially with mental/emotional/spiritual issues–with weakness. Many of New Orleans and southern Louisiana’s mental health workers left during Katrina, and never returned. No one has come to take their places. A few dedicated professionals remain, but they are far too few to deal with the crisis. I would not be surprised to see Medicins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) show up.
I have asked a mental health care professional in my family ( who has a brand new baby and thus is distracted ) for help in trying to figure out what substantive mental health help is or is not shaping up for our neighbors in the Gulf. I will share if they turn up something useful.
I email friends in the gulf almost daily…
My heart hurts for the Vietnamese Americans who face extra trials. I am part Aleut.The often dark road walked by my mother’s people has made me very aware of cultural values which can exacerbate suffering in times like this. She told me once her people are like the grasses on the Aleutian Islands, small and tough, straight and strong in the sun, well able to bend and hold themselves safe as storms race overhead , but lost should their roots come loose…
There’s enormous work to be done…
Thanks to all of you, Alaskans & others. I really can’t begin to describe my feelings reading the caring support, info, everything. It’s overwhelming.
Peace,
Gulf Shores, AL
Just curious… what with the daily –seemingly, unending– reports out of the Gulf, are there any (coordinated and concerted) mental health efforts to help AK residents who’re experiencing flashbacks/re-living the Exxon Valdez all over again?
The reason I ask is: I’m pretty sure I’ve heard more than a bit of ‘serious down’ in some of the AK pup’s voices of late — a ‘serious down’ that seems to be the result of deja vu … a feeling of, again, soul-crushing helplessness.
To be sure, I hear anger and frustration and pissedoffidness in all the on site voices about the devastation in the Gulf, but some of the AK voices seem to have something else, something really big and overwhelming, going on…has the Gulf spill opened for them feelings they thought they’d dealt with and had finally laid to rest?
Is the very real, very painful, very unwelcomed PTSD rearing its ugly head and smacking some of my favorite AKans around?
I’m not so much thrilled with the resurfacing pain I’m hearing — at all! And, yes, I hurt for ‘my’ AK pups who’re having to deal with these feelings all over again; I’m concerned for them. Thus, I ask. beth.
I just found out that Senator Begich, Iraq vets, and retired military officers are speaking at the Denai’na Center in Anchorage tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. (Tuesday)… It’s Operation Freedom, whereas the military are getting on board to promote Clean Energy for national security. (Yes, President Obama!! -and maybe why Sarah is quiet?
http://www.operationfreedom.net
CORRECTION!
Website is:
http://www.operationfree.net
Beth- I don’t think that the trauma is Alaskan only. I was not here in 1989 but I feel it just the same. Others may be more able to speak to the PTSD.
I have many friends who were here, fishermen and others (many of whom paid their mortgages off with “clean-up” money). I think that Alaskans are unique in that many of us know what it is to see the land and environment that still has not healed as well as knowing people whose lives were forever changed by Exxon-Valdez. (There is nothing more powerful than a pissed off fisherman.)
The other part of this, for me anyway, is the sadness at the inability for so many in this petrocracy to seem to learn ANYTHING from the mistakes of the past. My eyes are daily assaulted with HUGE political signs (all Lisa, Parnell and the teabagger guy) to the point where my eyes are bleeding. Not one of our representatives (including Mr Begich) seems to be able to see beyond continuing to rape this earth until they are forced to (thinking–when the oil runs out…). By then, everything may be gone.
I, personally, have had to limit my exposure to the news as I feel physically ill when I see what is happening. And it is compunded by the fact that my husband works on the slope. He feels so bad that he will not talk about it to anyone other than other folks who work in the oilfield (they share a unique bond of anger over this as they are privy to far more than we are). We are bound to the problem in a way that many others are not and it makes things very hard.
I would, however, like to echo AlaskaPi’s sentiments that we are here. And you bring up an important point, that should, perhaps be shared with BP executives, President Obama and any other powers that be, that mental health services will be just as important for the people of the Gulf as they were after 9-11.
If you live in the Allegheny Basin/Appalachian Region, please see Josh Fox’s documentary, “Gasland,” currently airing on HBO (the boyfriend has cable, & it was too hot to hike this weekend, so I indulged). I’ve been writing to my state senator, governor, etc. to prevent hydrofracking in the NY section of the Marcellus Shale, because I’d heard the horror stories about contaminated water out west, but had no idea it was happening already in PA, just across the Delaware from upstate NY. I watched in fascinated horror as homeowners set fire to the water coming out of their taps. Bush era laws EXEMPTED the oil and gas industry from compliance with the Clean Water Act. In an excellent first step, Lisa Jackson, Obama’s EPA director, ordered the coal industry into compliance, putting an end (for now) to mountaintop removal mining, but the agency has yet to do the same with the natural gas industry. There is nothing natural about hydraulic fracturing. Please see the documentary if you can, and take action at any of the many environmental groups I’m always listing here. Natural gas may be a clean BURNING fuel, but there is nothing clean about its extraction.
Zyxomma –
I have been howling about Marcellus Shale since I read about it, and the whole hydrofracking issue about a month ago. It completely freaked me out, and I have been all over every PA state officials e-mails and voice mails, on an almost weekly basis.
And I have not even seen the documentary – I do not think I can handle it. I have already read enough and seen enough to make me enraged and in complete fear for the beauty of the state of PA.
Why can’t this be stopped? All of it regulated properly? I am at a loss as to what the people in power are thinking. They have kids, don’t they? DO they even stop for a moment to think about their own kids, grandkids, and what poor ravaged little earth is going to be left for them?
I guess not. It is all about the almighty dollar, right here, right now, for them. To hell with everyone else.
Not just the beauty of Pennsylvania, but it’s health, both human and wild.
BP OIL DISASTER! DR. RIKI OTT TALKS ABOUT DISPERSANT AND WHAT BP IS HIDING!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS66fomgWFI
ProjectGulfImpact | July 04, 2010
Dr. Riki Ott talks to Project Gulf Impact about the AWFUL health risks that Corexit and the oil spill impose on the mass population.
Kindra is back, with more info as to how BP is messing further with the fishermen:
KINDRA ARNESEN EXPOSES BP! CLAIMS LOOPHOLE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh_ESQj1gkI
ProjectGulfImpact | July 04, 2010
Kindra Arnesen explains what she discovered in a BP loophole that could cost fishermen thousands of dollars!
Thanks for putting this up. I’ve been a talk radio junkie for a while now, and this is probably the best/most powerful radio I have heard.
I have the privilege of sitting in the booth and pushing a few buttons to allow Shannyn’s voice to heard and it’s days like this that I know there is nothing else I would rather be doing. I don’t think that there is anyone else who can do what she did here. So many days, on so many issues she gives a voice to people who might not otherwise be heard, and hopefully with this someone else will know that they are not alone; their voices are being heard.
Thank you Shannyn.
Just how anyone in the sciences or government, currently dealing with the huge environmental disaster occurring in the Gulf of Mexico, can intimate all is well with the air we breathe, the food caught in those waters and eaten and the rain falling from the sky, is beyond my comprehension.
http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/07/toxicologic-synergy.html
Even worse is how much work there was already left to do in the wake of Katrina, and now this. THIS is an ongoing nightmare of generations yet to come.
I found this today. I am not surprised, but it still elicited a gasp of horror.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZGRmYTI0ZWVhZTA0Y2YyMGE4NGIxZGUyZDhmZThhZDE=
An Idea for the RNC: Dump Steele, Hire Palin [Kevin D. Williamson]
Re: Steele and the RNC: Allow me to chime in with my usual observation on this subject: This is a job for Sarah Palin. Palin would be a much better RNC chairman than presidential candidate or freelance kingmaker. She’d raise tons of money and help recruit good candidates, i.e., she’d excel at doing the things Steele should have been doing instead of appointing himself Republican pundit-at-large.
A Chairman Palin would help set the right tone for the Republican party without having to get herself entangled in the minutiae of policy-development, which has not been her forte. Sure, she’d be polarizing, but so is Barack Obama, and these are polarized times. And it’s one thing to have a polarizing party chairman, another to have a polarizing candidate.
Anybody disagree?
Blessings to you, Shannyn.
I listened to the radio show yesterday and read the post last night. I still can’t find the words to express how this has impacted me or how important I think it is. With little attention paid to the physical safety of cleanup workers, it’s hard to imagine there is any effort at all to monitor the psychological impact of the BP spill. I hope your post and broadcast will lead to some action and safety for those trying to find their way through the devastation.