The Most Eloquent Headstone To Our Age Of Oil
Carved from an old growth tree, this roadside creation sums up how we got to where we are
Photo by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
Set back a bit from the road way, I must admit I had driven by this unique roadside attraction dozens of times before one day snaring my attention. Located alongside Hwy. 42, about eight miles north of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, this handmade work is a grotesque, and fitting monument to our deadly age of oil. The carving of a BP gas pump is hacked from an old-growth tree. It is a grotesque, accidental monument to our age of oil now killing off the natural environment and wildlife species we depend upon and triggering a climate crisis completely unknown to humankind. If you look at the base of the carving, you can see the diameter of the tree from which this headstone for our industrial age was carved.
It is a monument to us all. Hell, I was zooming past at 60 mph when I spotted it. And of course, every day we all zoom past the obvious death of the source of our lives and living, the natural environment.
On several summer time round trips to Green Bay, about 50 minutes south from where I live, there were only three or four insect splotches combined on the windshield. Compared to the past two summers, I had a bumper crop of Monarch butterflies in my garden this summer – ten. Total.
Given its irony, this roadside side masterpiece needs to be standing outside the UN, or – given the article below – the White House.
Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink
Biden Administration’s New Offshore Drilling Plan Decried As ‘Climate Nightmare’
"Approving new offshore drilling is an unconscionable betrayal of future generations who will be forced to live through an intensifying planetary emergency, and will pose direct and severe threats to healthy oceans and marine life. President Biden says that climate change is an existential threat. Unfortunately, this decision is yet another sign that his administration is not willing to take actions that would match that rhetoric." – Wenonah Hauter, executive director of the advocacy group Food & Water Watch
https://www.commondreams.org/news/biden-five-year-drilling
