Redundant Redolence of Societal Decay

Another spill how much oil must cover the ground until we realize the time is now? Green technology exists but the corporations are unwilling to stop the drilling cause they’re making a killing. Organizations and people on the sidelines with too few resources, too little time, not enough lawyers, lawsuits and court rooms to mete justice to the machine which continually consumes. Fined a billion here a billion there, what do billions mean to trillionaires?

Species die off from fossil fuel run-off, barely warrants a batted eye or an errant cough, let them eat sludge says the CEO ensuring top stock holders have dividends from which to fund exotic drugs . . .let the planet die, to Mars we’ll fly . . .but before the spacecraft can burst free of the gate the earthquakes swallowing the scheme, it only takes an electro-magnetic pulse from the sun to set us all back to square one . . .you’d think such awareness would be numbing yet our hubris is so numbing, drunk on excess we can not see what planetary pariahs we’re becoming

Video of Oil Spill in China

Rally to Stop Keystone XL Pipeline

Rally at Canadian Embassy, Wash. DC

As the US east coast bakes in triple digit temperatures Friends of the Earth, Corporate Ethics International, Friends of the Earth, Indigenous Environmental Network, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club joined together to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. Yes another sexy name applied to a project which has the potential of furthering the devastation of land, wildlife and other natural resources such as clean water.

The Keystone XL is proposed to take oil from the Alberta, Canada tar sands down through the central US to the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of over 1,900 miles. States to be crossed by the pipeline include Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Of course the multi-billion dollar oil industry is trying to save a few bucks by getting Congress to allow the use of pipe which contains less steel in certain areas. Seems like we heard this same tune when it came to BP’s blow-out prevention technology in the Gulf. Our addiction to oil, as admitted by GW Bush, is obviously clouding the minds of politicians.

This is why we the people must cry loud and spare not. If our elected representatives continue to forget who they are paid to represent we must speak up for ourselves, organize and change the direction this nation is headed in. Events like today’s rally are keys towards realizing a sustainable future guided by engaged citizens.

How Long is Too Long, How Much Too Much?

The BP well flows into the Gulf nearing month 3, how many have stopped to ponder how we can live without pumping oil constantly? Utah’s Great Salt Lake almost becomes another oil-bath, causes unknown, results devastating to the innocent. Nature pays for our addiction and we continue on as though there’s no other way but business as usual.

Bill McKibben laid it out plainly in his newest book Eaarth, ” . . .we’ll need to change to cope with the new Eaarth we’ve created. We’ll need . . .to get smaller and less centralized, to focus on growth but on maintenance, on a controlled decline from the perilous heights we’ve climbed.” pg 204

Oil companies quickly assume full responsibility and say whatever the cost they’ll pay, mostly because the obscene profits they’ve accrued make paying easy as —-pumping more crude. The President postures like a tough guy on tv, while being fully aware of the political expediency of pay to play politics determining energy policy. His hands are tied until we the people apply pressure. The pressure may come in the form of turning off the AC and using fans, switching from the dryer to clothes lines, biking a few days a week to work rather than driving or car pooling. Such small steps when expanded to the community level mean a lot.

As we seize our own power to live on less, the influence wielded by the mega-corporations diminishes and our representatives can get back to the job of representing we the people. A wise man once told me, “Inch by inch anything’s a cinch, by the yard it’s hard.” Let’s make the switch to living in harmony with earth one step at a time.

A Planet Money Can’t Buy

Green-Wash This

Pres Obama’s declaration that BP will pay for clean-up efforts in the Gulf of Mexico is symbolic of capital’s hubris and naivete based on the idea that cash can solve all problems. The magnitude of the ongoing BP Gulf gusher is beyond a payment plan. The long term degradation of the fisheries, the die off of animal and plant life, effects on the tourist industry along Alabama and Florida’s panhandle will be irreparable. How big a check will BP write? Why is Pres. Obama still wedded to the idea of drilling even in the wake of this cataclysm? Isn’t it time we come clean to the fact that fossil fuels are inherently unclean? How many lives human and otherwise are worth our lust for bigger, better, stronger, faster, newer, next new things?

The western world is always touting our technological advantage our prowess in the realm of thinking and engineering but when it comes to cleaning up after ourselves we’re infantile at best. Taking a shit on the planet with no clean-up plan beyond the cheapest of baby wipes. The best minds at BP never dreamed of a disaster of this magnitude. The machines created by their engineers have failed. Yet we still call ourselves advanced? BP, and the other petro-chemical and mining companies would do well to adopt the “Leave No Trace” motto of hikers, campers and naturalists. If it isn’t already too late.

I hope the new found interest in extra-terrestrial life culminates in true intelligence teaching us how to live in harmony with the planet rather than functioning as parasites who trail waste behind them.

Call In the Experts