To the Editor:
Re “Prosecuting
Crimes Against the Earth” (Op-Ed, June 4):
David M. Uhlmann writes that criminal prosecution “cannot restore the
gulf or end the suffering of the people who live along its shores.”
While the spill will cause financial devastation for the residents of
the affected states, it is the creatures that are suffering physically.
No amount of criminal prosecution can compensate for the intolerable and
painful suffering of our seabirds and the many animals becoming
ensnared by oil each day, and in the months and years ahead. That their
beauty and innocence are but a memory—as they lay dying, soaked in
oil, immobilized and gasping for breath—should be with us all every
time we fill our gas tanks and through all the air-conditioned miles we
drive, until we become part of the solution.
Tory Bond
Brooklyn, June 4, 2010
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 