Earth Equity News

Volunteer Pilots Fly Observers Over Environmental Disasters. By Mike di Paola, Bloomberg, 10/12/10. “The astounding view from 3,000 feet took my mind off the plane’s sickening motion. It was 90 days after the oil disaster began on April 21. Fingerlike tentacles of glistening oil covered the surface of the sea, stretching to the horizon. We could smell the slick. ‘Flying is the most useful educational tool I know of when it comes to environmental issues,’ said pilot Tom Hutchings, who was as awed at the sight as I was. ‘Until you go up in the air and see things in the context of the whole place, you really don’t get it.’

“Hutchings is one of 37 volunteer pilots who donate their time and aircraft to SouthWings, a nonprofit conservation group that arranges flights all over southeastern U.S. for media, policy makers and community leaders. Aerial views expose the eye-popping scale of environmental catastrophes in ways that other perspectives cannot. ‘When we get the news and the facts out on a situation, then people can act and make an informed decision,’ said Hutchings, an environmental consultant when he isn’t flying. ‘Otherwise you’re just listening to the major media outlets, and we all know how much information a sound bite has’… ‘People cry in my airplane all the time,’ [Susan Lapis, another SouthWings pilot] says. ‘Especially in West Virginia.’ Last year she gave me a bird’s-eye view of the coal-mining operations around Charleston, where the devastation, a growing wasteland in the middle of otherwise verdant hills, is particularly jarring.”