As a scientist I am not a very religious person, but when huge, huge catastrophes hit it is hard not to get just a little biblical at times. The flood of oil from BP’s monumental fumble has reached beyond the 40 days and 40 nights mark, and is just such a calamity. But unlike Noah, we are not likely going to get needed respite anytime soon.

The oil is still coming in spite of the fact that BP’s engineers having smote it soundly with mud, shredded tires, golf balls, “top hats,” “junk shots,” and “top kills.” The only thing they seemingly have not tried is an amalgam of Jiffy Pop, Pop Rocks, and the public’s favorite solution: A select assortment of BP executives and Mineral Management Service employees. But I digress from by my original theme. Sorry.

While I do not buy into biblical offerings in a faith-based context, I do occasionally value the opus for its allegorical wisdom. And this BP episode reminds me of a coffee shop discussion that I had last year with a small collection of priests, pastors, and rabbis who were pushing stewardship of God’s creation and reduction of carbon footprints to their various flocks (www.interfaithpowerandlight.org). After a lengthy philosophical discussion, I asked my table mates: What if the “forbidden fruit” of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for modern times was something other than the traditional—but never mentioned in Genesis—apple? What if it was oil?

Although I was only half serious at the time and just testing the messaging waters, the idea of items that are both good and evil and can lead to our doom keeps coming back to me. What if the Genesis story was urging caution about the seductive and lethal nature of items that appeared beneficial but were also bad? Oil certainly fits that construct. (I guess that I could also argue that nuclear power fits that bill as well, but that is another digression.)

Am I off-base with this line of reasoning, maybe, but I am not alone in my musings. In fact, some biblical scholars think that the Garden of Eden story is really about the switch from a hunting and gathering existence to one driven by agriculture. This camp believes that humans lost their innocence when they gained the ability to live beyond the limits imposed by nature. And, in truth, human populations exploded with the domestication of plants and critters.

If these deep thinkers are correct about agriculture being humankind’s loss of innocence because it allowed an initial break with the laws of nature and an associated population expansion, what would they make of our adoption of a fossil fuel driven existence? Is our dive into dependence on the dark and buried forces of coal and oil and the Industrial Revolution population boom our second and perhaps final loss of innocence? Heck, I do not know, but it bears thinking about, particularly as we are wobbling from being sucker punched and humbled by the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

To be clear, I am not a biblical scholar and am not looking to be one. I am also not interested in being stalked and picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church or others of their ilk. I am an ecologist and sustainability scholar and my reason for writing this piece was to provoke thinking and positive action not ire or indignation.

I am hoping that readers see the core message of this piece, which is: The clock is ticking and we are about to lose our innocence again. Further, I hope that folks actually become introspective and feel that repeated loss and look for ways in their own lives to regain that innocence by adopting lifestyle choices that recapture bits and pieces from our two falls from nature.  

I hope that when people see an image of an oiled bird or sea turtle that they put down the car keys and grab a bike or sensible walking shoes. I hope that when they are feeling despair over the peril of the blue fin tuna or Gulf coast watermen (and women) that they recycle more, line dry their clothes, or replace their lawn with native plants or a vegetable garden. And, above all, I hope we as a society work collectively and materially to end our addiction to fossil-fuels.