Did you hear the fairy tale about the Princess who killed endangered whales?
Princess Cruise Lines paid $750,000 Monday to settle charges it failed to operate one of its ships in a slow, safe manner near Glacier Bay National Park where a humpback whale was found dead of massive skull fractures.
The body of the 45-foot, pregnant humpback whale was found floating in Icy Strait near the mouth of Glacier Bay in Southeast Alaska in July 2001. Humpback whales are an endangered species.
The CEO of Princess, Peter Ratcliffe, went on to say, “We take our responsibility to be good stewards of the environment very seriously.”
You know, during the recent State of the Union speech that Bush gave, he also used the word “steward” to describe our culture’s role over the environment. Who decided this was the appropriate word to use? Did I not get a memo? Do we really believe it is our responsibility to take care of the natural world as though it were passengers on a boat?
Outside of the boat reference, the dictionary defines “steward” as “a person whose responsibility it is to take care of something.” The example given is: “farmers pride themselves on being stewards of the countryside.” This definition still implies that we must have control and power over the environment and make decisions on it’s behalf…as if the natural world were something outside of our own selves and the choices we make FOR the environment have no effect on our lives. It still conceptualizes the natural world as if it were a charity case.
The second somebody realized “hey, we need to care for the environment” is the same moment that person (or that culture) should have realized there was a problem. The word “steward” is simply reflective of that mindset. Either way, the steward let the passengers drown in this case.
Explore posts in the same categories: environmental injustice, animal rights
July 13th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Three days of a serious volcano erupting can cause more damage to enviorment that 100 years of automobiles.
Think about it. All the crap talked about man made emissions problems is really just enviro wacko crap.