Nahanni Johnstone and her 8-year old daughter Chloe, both covered with oil during a Global Day of Action demonstration in Toronto June 17, 2010. Organized by the At the Table Coalition.

The use of fossil fuels is destroying our home (Earth) in more ways than one.  Maybe it would help if more people thought of the Earth as their home, instead of thinking of it as a giant, endless planet.

Astronauts know the Earth is small and finite, compared to the vastness of space, and even compared to giant planets like Jupiter.  Yet soon the Earth will have to support 9 billion people, many of them people who think nothing of using up whatever they can, as fast as they can.

I heard a talk by Senator Bill Nelson of Florida on EarthBeat Radio this week.  His topic was offshore oil drilling,  and he is against most offshore drilling.  He has a unique perspective because not only is he a law maker but he was once an astronaut,  and has been up on shuttle missions.  He talked about viewing the earth from the space shuttle and seeing the whole earth  as “home”.

From his perspective, there are many reasons for being against offshore drilling, off the coast of Florida.  One of them is that you can’t have drilling platforms out in the waters of the Atlantic, when it’s our biggest military training ground, where things fall from the sky and blow up on a regular basis.  I’m not in favor of the ocean being used as a dumping ground for NASA and the U.S. military, but he has a point.  Nelson is also someone who thinks we need to act on climate change, and get off oil as a source of fuel as soon as we can.   You can hear his talk in the EarthBeat show here, in the second half of their podcast.

Here is the statement Nelson has on his website on the climate bill (I presume he’s referring to the big, official  one written by Kerry and Lieberman):

WASHINGTON – Following are Nelson’s comments about the new climate bill:

“Florida’s vulnerable to rising sea levels, so we’ve got to do something about climate change.  We don’t, however, need to be drilling for oil right off of Florida’s beaches.  I’m glad the climate bill includes my proposal for a moratorium on any new drilling, until we know what happened aboard the Deepwater Horizon.  Also, they had their eye on expanding drilling into new areas of the Gulf of Mexico near Florida, and I told them to stay out of it.  And I’m glad they listened.  If you remember, we passed a law in 2006 that keeps drilling well offshore in the Gulf.  And the climate change bill doesn’t touch that.  But we still need to do something to protect the Atlantic coast.  We’ve got the Kennedy [...]