Friday, November 6, 2015

TAR SANDS OIL AND INDIVIIDUAL GREED

The editorial published by the Calgary Herald and reposted on Facebook this morning is a classic example of what is wrong with the right-wing view of climate change. The article centered on the “unbelievable” economic significance of tar sands. The accompanying note with the reposting, challenged the new Prime Minster of Canada to take note. The writer of the editorial and the individual reposting it misses the entire point of the argument about climate change. We as a species are using all available resources and are soiling our own nest. Human history, like all other living things, is a story of people doing just that; they exhaust the resources, soil their nest, and move on to a new place, and allow the old folks Mother Nature and Father Time to undo the damage they have done. What has changed is that the population on earth is 7 billion and growing. The cold fact is that the earth measures about 25 thousand miles at the circumference. We know some of it is too cold, other places are beautiful but hard to plow, and still other places are desert or open ocean. We are consuming all the fish in the sea, using turning the iron ore in the crust of the earth into steel, farming all of the arable lands, and using all the fresh water. At the same time, we are contaminating the air we breathe and the water we drink. The simple old solution no longer works. We cannot just move to a new nest, a new place because there is no new place to move. I live in North Carolina, a Republican controlled state. The governor and state legislature think the same way as the editorial writer thinks. Natural gas is there so use it. In their eye, not to use it is the same as seeing millions of dollars in a gutter and leaving it there. It makes no sense to them—none. I am also a citizen of Belize. In Belize, we have a beautiful coral reef. To the conservative mind, it makes sense to drill for oil offshore. Like the millions of dollars in the gutter, if there is oil or gas under the ocean bottom, it is just going to waste. Some of us can argue that we do not want to damage or destroy the reef. We all know that can happen and probably will happen, but it makes no difference, a dollar is a dollar, which is an empty argument just like not using the tar sands in Alberta; it misses the point. Tar sand oil is valuable, the reef is valuable, but the point is the earth is even more valuable; it is our only nest. It is where we live. Even with a pocket full of money, we can die because we cannot breathe. Unfortunately, like an ant colony, collectively, individuals will exhaust the natural resources and the colony will die in the waste, because that is the how individuals think. Like ants, individual greed is what drives people. It is time for us to think of the colony. URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated

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