What an extraordinary horror our rapacious need for cheap, endless energy hath unleashed

[kpete]

Behold our dark, magnificent horror

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, June 4, 2010



..............

What a thing we have created. What an extraordinary horror our rapacious need for cheap, endless energy hath unleashed; it's a monster of a scale and proportion we can barely even fathom.

Because if you're honest, no matter where you stand, no matter your politics, religion, income or mode of transport, you see this beast of creeping death and you understand: That is us. The spill may be many things, but more than anything else it is a giant, horrifying mirror.

Do you wish to try and deflect it? Lay responsibility elsewhere? Really? We can't quite blame an "act of God," as we would for some sort of hurricane or tsunami inflicted upon meager humankind by an angry deity, punishing us all for being too war-like, violent or perhaps naïve enough to want to enjoy the sunshine for five goddamn minutes before He decided He'd better kill some people lest we forget who's in charge.

We cannot blame evil terrorists, some cluster of swarthy foreigners who hate our shopping malls and secretly envy our Porsche Cayenne's. Nor can we blame the spill on some sort of nefarious conspiracy, a secret act wrought by devious agents in black helicopters designed to destabilize the U.N. and induce universal mind control -- unless, of course, you're getting a little desperate and don't get outside much, in which case, you absolutely can.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/06/04/notes060410.DTL#ixzz0ptgyHCJV

[el_bryanto]

1. I wish we would get serious about public transportation

But Morford is right - weaning ourselves off of oil would dramatically change how we live.

Bryant

[The2ndWheel]

2. What I keep wondering, is

if regulation by an independent body is the key, why do we, as a species/culture, not allow ourselves to be regulated by nature/the planet/whatever you wish to call it? We write our own rules, the same way that corporations either wish to do or do in relation to the government. We don't seem to be able to live within limits. Humans aren't built to travel 60 mph, for example. Screw that though. We don't have the body for flight? Get the hell out of our way.

Hell, the kind of regulation that we want isn't even by an independent body. We want humans(the government), regulating other humans(corporations). Yet those same humans can't stand being regulated.

[murray hill farm]

3. 48,000 other drilling platforms in operation now??????

This same thing will occur again..and it could and probably will at any time. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week or month.

[nichomachus]

4. What do you mean "we"

I am not the one who created an energy dependent economy. I'm not the one who willfully destroyed the public transportation system in the US. Our oil dependence was created and fostered by the people who stood to make trillions of dollars from it. Why do cars in the US get one-third the gas mileage of the exact same car in Europe? Not my doing. Who allowed the inner cities to deteriorate, while developing millions of housing units in the suburbs for the middle an upper class? Not me. And, I'm guessing, not you either. It was all done by the corporations to satisfy corporate greed.

I'm not taking the rap for this.