06.25.08 - 11:30 pm

drill here. drill now. pay less.

short term thinking. present tense rhetoric. a complete lack of forethought in exchange for applause and book deals.

yes, we are heavily invested in our current infrastructure. but when its becoming increasingly hard to deny its obvious impacts economically and environmentally, why are so many people desperate to keep it going, to keep this sinking ship afloat?

nuclear power plants. are you kidding me? seriously? just what the fuck do you plan on doing with all the nuclear waste, you fucking idiots? where will we stock pile it, how safe will it be, and what will we do when we run out of room? what third world country will we decide to dump it on?

drill off the coast. drill the rocky mountains. drill the alaskan wilderness. outdo brazil in gallons per day. out do the saudis in our own oil reserves.

great ideas. fabulous ideas. for right now. they sure seem like they make sense. i mean, no one lives in alaska anyways. the ocean is big and empty, isnt it? we have lots of oil, maybe 50 more years of it left, thats plenty of time to procrastinate. to deny the smog, the pollution, the chemicals, extinctions, rising sea levels and temperatures, melting glaciers and famines. plenty of time to come up with a solution. you know, just...not right now.

there is nothing to be gained from environmental exploitation.

we rape the alaskan wilderness, we lose a valuable part of our aesthetic landscape. drilling and exploration is never clean. never pretty. never noninvasive. how many saudi arabian palaces are within a shout of an oil refinery?
dont drill in the ocean, because frankly, when im sitting on a white sandy beach, looking off at the horizon, i want to see nothing. i want to see a vast open space. i dont want to see the silhouette of a massive oil derrick. i dont want to see large oil tankers. i dont want storms or accidents to billow that black shit all over my white sandy beach.

drilling here now reduces us to barrel scrapers, desperately trying to hold on to a failed, finite policy. it was great while it lasted. let them drill and ruin their ecosystems over there. lets keep our country as breathtaking as we can. just as oil will inevitably run out, so will all the empty and available land also be consumed with infrastructure. i want it as natural as possible, for as long as possible.

it would be nice if the policy makers, the investors, the governments all stopped and realized how much money could be made by shifting the course of human history. if our country switched to using more solar or wind or hydrogen or some other not-yet-invented power source, took our entire country off the grid and showed the rest of the world just how innovative we really are, not only would we be back on top again, but the rest of the world would be forced to follow. it just wouldnt make sense to continue on with their primitive methods of energy. its too bad greed has such a regressive personality. it doesnt need to be transitory. it needs to be a direct switch. adaptation. its how the world works. americans can adapt. we adapt to problems all the time.

right now the entire world is in a transitory period with a shit storm being the end result.