Why Godzilla matters

[Larkspur]

59. Loved the old Godzilla movies too. Godzilla, King Kong and other monsters are modern day Titans

wrecking ruin upon civilization but they are not doing it out of spite or even out of psychopathic urges. They’re doing it because they are just following their nature, even if it was modified by human design, and they are so massive that they don't notice us puny humans. To them, we are like ants.

While, I know that Godzilla represents nuclear power and its unpredictable and destructive power, you don't need nuclear power to destroy our planet. Fossil fuel consumption is literally damaging our planet at a faster and more massive rate today than nuclear power.

The real Godzillas in our midst today are the mufti-national oil companies, like Exxon Mobil, BP, and Shell. Their vision of the future is to maximize their profit margins even if that means burning our biosphere to the ground. That narcissistic view isn't much different than the primitive reptilian intelligence displayed by the rampaging Godzilla.

The fact that these behemoth oil companies won't spend even a sliver of their billions in profits in researching new ways to improve cleaning up oil spills that poison our water and land and finding new ways to extract or reduce carbon pollution from our atmosphere is equivalent to Godzilla wrecking havoc and ruin as he strolls through a major city and nation.

One of the morals of the Godzilla movies, is that even if our elites unintentionally create Godzilla, the monster affects us all. Climate change will imperil all of us and all living creatures who share our world. Godzilla, a creature originally from a primitive world, is a reflection of our primitiveness and our hubris, which leads us to think that we can plunder and pollute our world with impunity.

The way to defeat Godzilla is to cut off its food supply. First, recognize the monster within us and make life changes accordingly. While we do that, network with each other to find ways to make our government restrain the unbridled avarice of behemoth companies, like Exxon, and their giant financial backers on Wall Street.

Monsters have been defeated before. Our ancestors passed the Sherman Anti-trust Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the income and estate taxes, the Clean Air Act and other safety regulations to defeat or restrain past Godzillas. We can do it again. Like Excalibur was to King Arthur, some of those tools our ancestors created are still with us, waiting to be used.