Driving causes oil rigs

Monday, June 14th, 2010 | Uncategorized

Sorry, this isn’t a technical post. I have to say something about the oil spill instead.

If we don’t have the technology to stop a spill at this depth, why are we drilling there?

Well, the government told the oil companies they weren’t allowed to drill near land after the gusher off California, so they needed another place. So we gave it to them, cause hey, we gotta have the 100M barrels a day needed to make America run the way it does.

The hard question, really hard for Americans to face is: what if America shouldn’t run the way it does? What if we just can’t have the oil forever?

I hope you guys are paying attention to Obama right now. Tomorrow in his first oval office address, I think he’s going to basically break the news to us: it’s true. We can’t operate this way, climate change is real, and to fix it, we have to change. His ambition is back, like early in Health Care. And this time, he’s learned some things. He’s not going to compromise away the barn. And he’s going to drive, and quickly. David Cameron asked him to stop, but he just pushes harder – diverting dividends isn’t enough anymore to let BP off the hook, and he’s made them disclose their actual, detailed plan for what they plan to do. The environment is on the top agenda.

Why has BP has prevented independent reporters from accessing the disaster sites, by telling the Sheriff to block them unless they’ve been approved? Why are they blocking reports from the mainstream media, until they’re reports of tourists on the beach getting slicked? BP has been treating this as a PR nightmare, which it is, but not also as a bona fide disaster, as in, stop drilling at all your other wells, and put everything you’ve got on this. Bring in tankers, rigs, drill more relief wells, everything.

Thankfully, BP didn’t disperse all of it into the water like they hoped, although many people are now hurting from the presence of oil on land like aquatic animals are hurting from it in the sea. But that means the East Coast is going to get it next, and a lot more of us will realize how bad this is. Big Oil, for their part, is in fighting spirit. John Hofmeister even went on Tavis Smiley to fight Obama’s new agenda. They are producing youtube videos.We have to fight too.

What’s our compelling argument, though??

Obama said the country’s continuing dependence on fossil fuels “will jeopardize our national security, it will smother our planet and will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk.”  Tomorrow he’s going to point blame at BP, sure, and demand a pound of flesh – but he’s also going to turn to us, like Jimmy Carter did. And not just say “please wear a sweater and turn down the thermostat.” I hope, at least, he’s going to offer us a new lease on an old way of life, one that worked great.

Because for millions of years, the genus Hominidae Homo has lived here, and lived a good life.

A great life, actually. We were once the “Original affluent society“, says Marshall Sahlins, author of Stone Age Economics. We were the best adapted species on the planet. We didn’t live like animals, we lived like kings of the animals. We got to eat almost any tasty thing that grew. We sweat and breathe independently from our stride, and have an incredibly evolved arch in our foot which let us outrun the other animals, in a long enough race. Really, there’s a race in the US where people race against horses. We then get to ride such animals, to take us to the tasty food, which just grew anywhere. Remember, we didn’t invent broccoli and squash and beans and corn and cucumbers and delicious cherries and peaches straight off the tree. We found them.

As the dominant species, we had it good. We had nutrient-rich diets which kept us healthy. We learned from our elders, even when they couldn’t operate a BlackBerry at all. Why do we now think we know better, and what went wrong? We ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and began the relatively quick, merely 200-generation process of learning the hard way that our judgement isn’t as clear as we think. We are animals, but we think it’s evil to live that way. The story of Genesis tells us all about it, as it’s the story of modern, agricultural man rising from the hunter-gatherer.

You didn’t think Genesis was actually about the first Homo Sapiens, right? We know that’s not it. There were lots of native people around for a couple million years before that. It’s an allegory of when Cain killed his brother Abel because Abel was using so much land for his goats and Cain wanted it to plant crops. Just like European Americans mostly pushed the Native Americans out of the way.

The reason to change

We should give up oil because we will be happier.

We think, the only thing worse than high gas prices would be no gas at all! We’d have to walk or ride bikes or use electric cars! We’d have a lot of trouble in finding tomatoes in the winter, and would be forced to eat roasted squash and preserves and such healthy things. We’d be forced to visit with our friends and relatives in far-off places nearly for free with video chat, instead of enduring the airport to spend a few rushed days with them a year. We’d have to spend time to teach our kids how to cope with a vegetable garden, reducing trash, and have fewer things.

Wait, modern (albeit short-distance transportation), healthier food, better communication with family, spending time with our children, more flavorful, fresh veggies, and less junk piling up? That’s really not so bad. But yeah, it’s different, so get ready to deal with that, and then, to enjoy it.

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I'm Alex Eagle. I live in Sunnyvale, CA and I'm a code monkey.

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