Oiled Again

     so here we stand, splattered in gooey oil -- and here also, the innocent ones lay; those plants and animals who lack the cleverness and resources to make it out of harm's way. sick, angry, and frustrated beyond measure, we point our fingers in outrage at the oil corporation responsible for the spill.....

     just playing devil's advocate for a bit here. are we certain that our fingers of blame are pointed in the right direction?

     should we suppose that any bp and transocean employee desired to work in an unsafe environment? any of us who've worked out there know that that cannot be true.

     if i've got my information correct, seven years ago bp and transocean co-presented a paper at a society for petroleum engineers conference in which they expressed concern that the failure rate of sub-sea blowout preventers in deepwater drilling operations was far too common of an occurence. bottom line: pressure to drill drill drill prevented them from allowing enough down time necessary to properly investigate and research the causes of these blowout preventer failures. instead, the rig hands were directed to simply replace the failed unit with a fresh one.

     put yourself on that tansocean rig for a minute. and again i ask, should we suppose that anyone on the operations end of these companies desired to work in an unsafe environment?

     so who gives the orders to drill drill drill? the company executives, who are in turn directed to do so by the corporate board of that company. Some refer to this little arrangement as corporate greed: the drive for short-term gain, fired not so much by any individual, but instead by a group of individuals whose sole goal is to maximize profits for....shareholders.

     aha. now it gets personal. shareholders. folks like, uh, you and me.

     by now, are any of you hollering, "not me! no sir! I don't own no shares in no stinkin' corporations? well, take a seat and hear me out.

     i'm gonna use myself and my household for an example here. like most u.s. families, lydia & i own two vehicles (a four cylinder and a 6 cylinder). we fill them up once a week. that's about 32 gallons of gasoline per week, or about 1,280 gallons per year. throw in a few more gallons of motor oil, transmission/brake fluid, etc. Now then, i'm sure some of you out there already know how many annual barrels of crude oil it takes to provide us with those products. and what about the 15,000 kilowatt hours of grid-supplied electricity that lydia and i use each year? in a 1,200 square-foot house? how much fossil fuel does that equate to?

     inside and outside our home, at least half of everything we own is petroleum-derived and/or petroleum fueled. our weedeater, riding mower, and push mower alone probably suck down a barrel of gasoline (55 gallons) each year.

     uh...seems like lydia and i have a bit of a petroleum habit, eh?

     here's another bottom line: it is our outrageous, unmitigated, way-over-the-top appetite -- DEMAND -- for petroleum products which drives the corporate boards to holler 'drill drill drill -- at any cost, damn it!'
 
     and gosh, i've even heard some national-level polititians taking up the same bannner. "DRILL DRILL DRILL!" they jubilantly declare.

     we wonder what's wrong with our government. it's broken and no one has any idea how to fix it.

     huh?

     are you tellin' me that you cannot see any way to fix a government whose lawmakers base a substantial portion of their decision-making on bribery? legal bribery?  does anyone suppose that the billions of dollars being poured into our, uh, governmental leaders' pockets (they would refer to them as "campaign chests") by the lobby industry would have no effect upon their judgement and decision-making whatsoever? and -- for cryin' out loud -- who allows this blatant, unjust, liason between business and government?

     we do.

     we demand petroleum products at a level that stupiefies the rest of the world. we support an overwhelmingly corporate climate -- personally, collectively, media-wise, etc etc -- which has succeeded in sinking its teeth into our very government. in some nations, it's the military that controls the government. we privately snicker at that, thinking, "how crude."  meanwhile, we in the u.s. allow the corporations of business and industry to toss our legislators into the bed, and holler "spread 'em, baby!" as a matter of routine, even convenience. you know? i mean, what a convenient way to stay in office. forget the nickles & dimes of your constituents at home. hell no, gimme the Big Money to float my campain armada.

     my beef is with neither corporations nor our democratic form of government. my beef is with the incidiously evil processes by which they are run.

     me & lydia gotta change. we've got to do better. i don't mean, change the world or anything. we've got to change our own ways. i'm going to look into solar power this year. we've already been talking about ressurecting our vegetable garden. we've got to stop or at least substantially mitigate the madness of "modern life," much of which we've been duped into perceiving as more convenient, more time-saving, more civilized, more sophisticated.

     we are not kings and queens. we don't possess an innate right to demand a superfluous life style. we are humans, living on this planet of riches, in the company of gorgeous, inspiring, and life-giving, fellow-creatures. we don't spout out the poetry of the self-entitled. we spout out thanksgiving for these riches, and a pledge to value them, consider their best interests, and to avoid deprioritizing their needs and safety in the blinding glint of short-term personal gain.

     thank-you God for this brand new day; and for another chance at doing it right.