Everything about what's happened in the gulf is tragic, and it drives home how much we depend on a healthy environment, just as each of us -- athlete or not -- depends on a healthy body. Sadly, we take our shared natural resources for granted until it's too late, even though they are the foundation of our local and global economies, jobs, national security, social justice and quality of life.
Too few of us understand this connection, and that's got to change. It's why I started Athletes for a Healthy Planet, an organization for athletes to draw attention to the special relationship between our health and the health of our planet.
John Gress, Getty Images
To end America's addiction to oil, the writer says, "it's time for some leadership and this, of course, begins with each of us."
When we launched Athletes for a Healthy Planet this spring, the oil had already been gushing for three weeks. The images from the gulf tugged at our hearts and made us sick to our stomachs, but seeing it with our own eyes was even worse.
Our addiction to oil sends billions of dollars overseas, enriches unsavory regimes and releases millions of pounds of cancer-causing chemicals into the air each year. And perhaps worst of all, our reckless burning of oil and other dirty fuels like coal is filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and warming the planet.
Melted hockey ponds or canceled ski vacations are the least of our worries, but they are instructive: Climate change negatively affects every aspect of our existence, from matters as important as sending soldiers to fight a war to the ability of children to play a game.
It does not have to be this way. We have alternatives. It's time for some leadership and this, of course, begins with each of us. Yes, we all need to do everything we can in our personal lives to make a difference, but more important than changing light bulbs is changing our mindset. We need to absorb the real lesson of Deepwater Horizon: that the costs of an energy system based on fossil fuels are just too high.
Most of all, we need President Barack Obama to take charge. This terrible disaster can be a turning point for our nation, if we can commit now to end our dependence on oil during the next two decades.
An impossibly short time? That's what they said when President John F. Kennedy vowed in 1961 to put men on the moon by the end of the decade. Neil Armstrong walked there in 1969. In 20 years, we can achieve a clean-energy future with clean air, pure water, good jobs and the safe, healthy ecosystems on which every aspect of our society depends. President Obama, this is no time to sit on the bench: Your team needs your leadership.
Michael T. Richter, a founding partner in Environmental Capital Partners LLC and Athletes for a Healthly Planet, is a former goalie of the New York Rangers, a three-time Olympian and a member of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.
