This post was originally on May 19 as a speech on the Floor of the House of Representatives.
The Creator gave us a paradise, and we, appropriating the power of nature's god, are turning our planet into a smoking, glowing, oily mess by plundering Mother Earth of her treasures and by refusing to recognize the growing evidence that our reliance on oil, coal and nuclear threatens our health, our security, our economy, our nation and the world.
It is not as though there are no alternatives. Markets and industries have conspired for years to shelve the massive introduction of wind and solar technologies.
Thousands of barrels of oil each day billow from the ocean floor, covering nearly twenty percent of the Gulf, and heading now towards the Florida Keys and the Atlantic Coast. Must we wait until all coastal areas are ruined, all fish, all birds, all animals are injured or killed, before we realize that drilling presents a threat to the fragile ecology of life?
We cannot afford to passively witness the destruction of our natural environment, because written in the oily sands of the Gulf is the degrading of all life on the planet.
Our world exists through fragile, interconnected systems of life. Our survival depends upon reconciliation with, not exploitation of, the natural world.