To The Last Drop

So, let's look at how desperate our country is for oil. We've invaded one country to get their supplies. There's sabre rattling over Iran, and I doubt its because of their nuclear program (which all the intelligence says can't make a bomb anyhow). There's a move to drill in the most environmentally sensitive areas of the world, where the slightest mistake (perhaps even just the mere presence of such equipment) would be an utter disaster. We've created an ecological nightmare out of Alberta and some want to repeat that in North Dakota. None of this even takes into account the disaster (and ecological travesty) that is ethanol, both sugar and corn based. And for what? A thick black liquid that is the biological remains of long-dead algal blooms.

A liquid which is also poisonous, which heats the planet, which destroys the enviornment whenever it gets loose and is just nasty in every sense of the word.

Can anyone say addiction? This is the classic behavior of an addict. We will do anything we need to -kill, destroy property, sell off everything we own, even foul our own nests -just to get another fix of this nasty black liquid. What is wrong with us? Can't we see what we are doing?

I have to get to work. I have to go to the store. I have to take the kids to soccer practice, or band, or ballet. And all of that requires that I use gasoline made from oil. That is the refrain we tell ourselves. And yet -look at the results of this lifestyle that is 'non-negotiable'. This lifestyle is destroying the very planet on which we depend for our lives, and our children's lives.

But it is non-negotiable? Again, I bring up the addiction argument. Only an addict would risk their children's very lives for their own selfish short-term comfort. For that is, in the end, what we are doing. When our actions are phrased in such a fashion, it is hard to argue that going to the store everyday or band camp is a requirement. It is hard to see what we are doing as anything but a crime and a sin. I do not use those labels lightly, as I have been accused of "sinning" so many times for doing nothing to hurt anybody that I could vomit. In my book, the only 'sin' is something that harms another. And that is just what we are doing. We are harming ourselves, our planet, our children, by this addiction to oil. And when someone points out that we are addicted we act like spoiled children and scream about our 'right' to use the oil, how we 'need' it, and how no one should be able to say otherwise.

Nor am I any better than anyone else in this race. I too am still addicted to fossil fuels. But its time to break the addiction. Its time to stop this madness. For ourselves, for our planet, and for our children. After all, in the final analysis it will be them we answer too. How are we going to explain this to them?