BP, Dominance and the Environment
Author, historian and partnership expert Riane Eisler talks about seven key relationships to evolve with the partnership model in her book The Power of Partnership. She begins with our relationship to ourselves and moves outward to intimate relations, family and friends; to the workplace and the community at large; to the nation and international relations; and to the natural world that we share with all the other beings on the planet. One of the facets of many dominance theories is that dominance-based behaviors tend to bleed over from one aspect of life to another. The holistic way of viewing ourselves and the world seems to be affirmed in this tendency.
The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, now touted as America’s greatest environmental disaster of all time, is expanding ever outward from its point of origin to threaten vast regions of wetlands, fish and aviary species (to begin with), and the wide varieties of land and water-based vegetation in the area. Most of the stories in the news focus on the costs of living affected by the spill: tourism down; economic impacts multiplying; the oil industry in the region suffering while offshore workers are laid off.
Much of the rhetoric regarding the oil spill attacks British Petroleum for its lack of sufficient safeguards and protocols in deepwater drilling and disaster management. A recent snippet from a congressional hearing talked of other oil companies ‘cutting and pasting’ the details of a disaster management plan created shortly after the Exxon Valdez disaster in Prince William Sound on the coast of Alaska into recently produced plans. The cut and paste scheme included providing disaster management for walruses affected in any region impacted by a large oil spill. The absurdity was made poignant by the congressman who noted that walruses had not been found in the Gulf of Mexico for millions of years.
Many blame President Obama and the US government—the Minerals Management Service and the Interior Department’s leasing program in particular—for the excruciating and cataclysmic debacle. One way we might gauge our ability to inhabit a sense of partnership with the Earth is to acknowledge what feelings we have for the enormous populations of wildlife and plant life that have been affected by the 30 to 60 thousand barrels of oil a day (at latest estimates) that have been flowing from the open well beneath the Gulf. Some reports have noted the drop in the bucket the leak represents in relation to US consumption. The US Energy Information Administration reported consumption for the country at 19,498,000 barrels of oil per day based on 2008 statistics. That’s less than ½ of 1 percent.
Many of the above statements represent popular thinking on the oil spill, dovetailed with a few statements that lean towards partnership thinking, a biocentric worldview and the like. Very little of the news has focused on the lifestyles of even relatively modest Americans, who still tend to own cars, tend to buy large quantities of manufactured goods and value convenience and a multitude of choices from all over the globe over sustainability by a longshot. I felt honored to have a president who in a recent address prioritized the shift to sustainable sources of energy over the usual blame game that most of us are—by way of being socialized to its dominance—hooked on.
With an ear to the ground, I have heard few of us talk in detail about our responsibility in the Gulf oil disaster. Unsustainable economies, unsustainable lifestyles and the blaring dominance of social pressures aping consumerist lifestyles and demanding—if passive aggressively—conformity make up the overwhelming picture of our world. Sustainable options remain quaint and trendy compared to the dominant worldviews we live by.
Rhetoric from news and media to most of our government representatives obscures like flag burning our overwhelming complicity in human-caused catastrophes such as the Gulf oil disaster. Our dominant way of thinking, socialized further by what is polite, politically correct or socially popular to talk about, deters real and meaningful inquiry and commentary on the root cause of such disasters, our addictions.
As partners with the Earth as well as citizens in dire need of a sustainable world, we owe it to each other to take responsibility for these kinds of disasters and initiate further changes towards sustainability, whether by meaningful conversations or by actions and example, by hook or by crook, to foster a more sustainable world.
