"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention!"

In the summer of 2000, I took a month-long vacation.  On the first day, I stopped off in Eugene, OR to meet up with a gal I met online for lunch at the Saturday Market and a bike ride.  She had a sticker on her bike's rear rack with the quote in the title.

Last night, my wife had the video below show up on her Facebook feed:




The video's ending statement got me thinking.  When it comes to our environment; the effects of our dependence on oil and our problems with pollution, we focus on cars (or our use of them) as the cause of the problem.  Simply stopping driving is not going to solve the problem.  It will not magically plug the well that's shooting oil into the Gulf of Mexico.  It won't heal or bring back all the marine and avian life destroyed by the spill.  It will help lessen the need for the gas and motor oil and tar for roadways that comes from this oil.  What of commercial farming that depends so much on petroleum and its by-products for fertilizers (not to mention to fuel tractors for working the farms and trucks to get the goods to market)?  What of fishing industries that need to fuel their fleets of boats to bring in their catches?  What of our use of plastics and other products made from that same petroleum that we use and dispose without a second thought.

Are we really paying attention?

Are we outraged yet? 

More importantly, what are we going to do?

Being aware is good and being moved is better, but without action, they are pretty impotent.