In the Gulf of Mexico that is. The oil currently spilling from a deep water well into the Gulf is a massive disaster--gigantic and profound, difficult to get one's head around. The main thing each of us needs to remember and understand though is that each gallon, each barrel, each poisoned fish or shrimp or other form of aquatic life, belongs to us--to each and everyone of us.
Sure we can blame BP, and the deregulatory frenzy of three decades of Reaganism (I predict that Ronald Reagan will go down as the worst president in history--worse even than GW Bush-- the anti-FDR.), and these were certainly factors, but the main factor rests in the heart and the hearth of each and every American: our insatiable desire for cheap energy. Sure, our politicians have been corrupted by the massive amounts of money that the energy industry has poured into Washington and state houses from Maine to California, but all the politicians were doing was enabling the addiction of the American people to cheap oil-based crap. Big cars? Gotta have 'em. McMansions? How could one do without all that closet space? Cheap food and plastic stuff and beauty products and worthless mall stuff? Absolutely essential to the lifestyles of the superficial and financially incontinent (i.e. to all Americans).
British Petroleum can and must be held accountable for the profound sin against the earth and all its people that it has committed. But such accountability does nothing to expiate the sin that stains the soul of each and every American. We are the ones who enabled these rat bastards. And this latest outrage is merely one of many, and mainly distinguished by the fact that it succeeded in getting our attention. The fouling of our planet has been going on for a long time and with our consent (if also with our willful blindness). We are small evil people who are only beginning to pay for our perfidy.
Even if the current oil disaster could be cleaned up (and it cannot be) our earth has already been ruined for future generations. Our love of petroleum has fundamentally changed our environment and our climate and it's too late to turn it around , though we might be able to affect it a bit at the margins if we were willing to alter our lifestyles, which we are not.
We had an opportunity to change, back in the '70s. After the oil shocks of that decade the president (Jimmy Carter, who may have lacked the charisma of Reagan but at least understood policy) and the congress actually invested in alternative energy in order to try and wean us off oil, Middle East oil in particular. The American people fixed all that though--we elected Reagan and voted for less regulation and cheaper stuff and the right to put ourselves in thrall to banks--we gave control of our economy and our politics to the oligarchs ('business') who understand how to get things done. And boy did they get some stuff done.
Our planet has been ruined, irrevocably so. Those of us alive today may not notice it so much, but two or three generations from now I promise you our grandchildren will look back on those who are alive today with dismay and disgust. Those to whom we will hand over control of the earth will never have the opportunity to live the cheap and easy lifestyles we live today. They will know the truth about us that we refuse to admit to ourselves: we are pigs, selfish stupid pigs, snouts deep in the trough of worthless material ephemera.
And what of the Tea Party? Where are the tea baggers now? All across the Gulf States of the South (Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas), land of the Tea Bagger, home of the extreme right, where are the cries of "get out of our bidness, big guv'ment!"? No, all one hears from the Republican governors who run the South is "we need mo' o' that big guv'ment! Help us clean this mess up--we didn't have nothin' to do with it!"
What utter and complete hypocrites. What selfish liars. What perfect Americans.
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Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
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