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4.22.2004
Is the Sky Falling? ... or will we switch to a lower cost alternative once we run out of sky? While posting some comments on a earlier post I found I had lots to say on the subject of environmental doomsday-ism. I try to stay optimistic, but at the same time I don't wish to bury my head in the sand and pretend there isn't something wrong. What's wrong? From my perspective, what's wrong is our basic assumption regarding resource availability. The way we are running things now we seem to be deliberately ignoring the fact that we are building an infrastructure based on a finite resource. Which is all fine and good as long as you take the view that we'll (the current generation) all be dead and gone long before it ever starts getting ugly. So we can keep filling up your SUV's and building more and more strip malls out into precious open space and with any luck we'll die while things are still pretty good. I find the current lack of motivation to wean ourselves off of oil pretty frustrating. It doesn't take much to see the basic problem with our current system. Primary among them is the scary fact that a resource that we depend on is buried under a bunch of people that mostly hate our guts. They hate our guts because we've (first the British, now us) been screwing them over because they had the misfortune of being born on top of a precious resource. They should talk to the Africans and Latin Americans, I bet they'd have a lot in common. Secondly, we are using up resources faster than they are being produced. oops. After 9-11 it became pretty obvious what the problem was, but our dumbass president blamed it on people that "hated freedom". What a crock, because sure, there are people that hate freedom, but they are the same as the small group of wingnuts that think the 700 Club is the word of God. In general, people (and this is the optimist again) are pretty cool on the notion of freedom. This "freedom hater" rhetoric is a shell game to distract us from the real problem. The real problem? For reasons of political expediency and money we are not addressing our problems as a society. We are not taking responsibility for our own needs. We have tremendous material wealth, some due to our own hard work, political climate, freedom and natural resources. I'm not above tooting our own horn, BUT, I don't stop there like some many others do. I accept that our material wealth is dependent on others. Yes, we are dependent. Now more than ever. Fuels from the Middle east, labor from the Far East. Its hard to make the case that we alone are responsible for our own wealth, even though that's not the message that we get from right wingers. For them, WE are the ones holding up the world. Not true. Without the labor and resources from elsewhere our standard of living would drop precipitously. It seems fashionable to assume that our material wealth means we are blessed, if not by "the almighty" then by our own cleverness. I have a real love/hate relationship with capitalism, mostly hate. Its a reactionary system that tends to undervalue the intangibles while it exaggerates the material. If we had a real functioning democracy instead of this corporate run charade we might have a chance of diverting our own destructive tendencies with good policy. But as its stands we seem to be in the position of electing a national Board of Directors that do the bidding of their corporate masters. As a result we get all sorts of distorted policies that should make any "invisible hand" types squirm. Instead of looking our problems square in the face we invade an oil rich nation for the (intended or not) goal of securing our own dependency. Its like watching an alcoholic buy a chain of liquor stores. "Its an investment" he might protest. Sure. Is the sky falling? Maybe, as long as we let the current political climate continue. If we let the current mythology of our own righteousness reign we will surely drive blindly down a dead end. If we start looking at our own faults and start asking hard questions, start putting resources into real solutions then we have a chance. We have wealth. Our choice is to either squander it to preserve a dying lifestyle or think ahead and plan for better days ahead. In the end it falls down to whether you believe that human beings can think beyond their own present comfort and do what's best for people in the long run. So why am I an optimist again? | |
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