Oil spills, SUVs, RPGs and Tea party poopers.

The BP oil spill of 2010 could be the greatest thing to happen to us…if we were really open to change. Changing our minds, our priorities and our government. Unfortunately, we didn’t learn from 9-11, we didn’t learn from Katrina, we didn’t learn from Vietnam or Afghanistan, we didn’t learn from HIV/AIDS or Rwanda…and we probably won’t learn from this.
The spill is just too small. It’s been about 3 weeks from the initial pipe burst and the amount of oil released is still less than that lost by the Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Alaska 20 years ago. BP’s disaster may soon exceed it, but even if it’s capped tomorrow and all other offshore drilling efforts around our nation remain safe for the next 100 years catastrophic oil spills will continue to occur beyond our visible concern. According to Time magazine “Nigeria …has spills equal to that of the Exxon Valdez about every year.”
We’re only concerned about oil spills in our yard. Real change is needed. Consider that China is now spend twice as much as the US on research and investments in clean energy ($18 billion vs $34 billion). What are they thinking? Oh yes. Ahead. The problem isn’t faulty shut off valves…or poorly regulated drilling. It’s our addiction and dependence on oil, and our collective disregard for our own health, economy, national security and environment.
Does our involvement in Iraq and the rest of the middle east have much to do with our dependence on oil? Iran’s leadership’s incitement to genocide has Zionists and others rightfully worked up about protecting Israel, but what will be the US consequences if Israel or the US bomb Iran?
Yet every day, we get into our gasoline burning trucks, SUVs and automobiles and drive without concern to places we could have easily walked, bused, biked or trained to. Why? Because we don’t see or feel our dependence. We know it exists. We just choose to ignore it and how it relates to our debt crisis, unemployment lines, obesity rates, national security risk, air pollution and maybe even climate change.
An SUV bomb in NYC gets more attention than our addition to SUVs…and we continue to believe that drone strikes in Pakistan will reduce the number of future car bomb attacks here. Bush once said “we will fight them over there…so we won’t have to fight them here!” WTF? Did he really think they couldn’t find us again? Now, with the assistance of Google Earth they can also locate all of our oil storage tanks near our largest cities which are relatively easy targets for RPGs.
As oil and food dependent individuals we such little concern for how vulnerable we really are. But we feel good that way. And as long we feel good…that seems to be our highest priority. It appears the only time we get off our butts and do something …is when we aren’t feeling good. Ask the Tea party why they are involved? Ask them how dependent they are on foreign oil and their solution. Drill baby Drill. Spill maybe spill. Just pray and pass the ammunition. Free we will stay! Free of rational thought and appropriate action.