Who is to blame for the oil spill?
Who is to blame for the oil spill?
This is a very simple question and surprisingly, the answer is equally simple. I am.
I live in a world where almost every aspect is dominated by oil and its products and I have become part of the enormous problem that now afflicts our entire world. When get up in the morning, I turn on my coffee maker, the lights, open the facet for water for my toilet and showers. I consume power that comes from oil, belching acrid, brown effluent into the air that surrounds Halifax from three huge, red and white smokestacks at Tuft’s Cove.
When I have my breakfast, I use my juicer to pulp oranges flown in from Florida, California or Argentina, toast my bread that is shipped via truck, fry my eggs and bacon on the stove again using electricity, diesel and jet fuel.
After my repast, I take my morning constitutional with my two pampered, four-legged friends. We all jump into my car and skedaddle through the traffic to the wilderness reserve where they get to chase, hunt and otherwise irritate other four-legged creatures trying to eke out a forest life, while I huff and puff over hill and dale.
An hour later we drive back home using more black gold to make the wheels roll. Once at home, I settle down into my mostly plastic and metal hi-tech chair in front of my multi-screen computer, peruse the comings and goings of the world from my basement office sanctuary, heated, powered and manufactured from good graces of an oil-powered economy.
As I type on my keyboard and send missives like this all around the world on the internet, the electricity metre attached to my home goes round and round and round. When I break to refuel with more coffee, fair trade and otherwise, I again tax the planet I live on with more power demands. The food I eat, the work I do, the recreation I partake in, the environment I live in all come from the good graces of the planet. But my planet does not get a say. It creaks, groans and suffers under the weight of my demands. Most days I take it for granted. But not today. Today, I look in the mirror and see the face of what I am. I am the bane of this planet. My needs and those of my almost 7-billion other fellow human beings, have condemned countless birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, crustaceans, molluscs, kelp beds, just to name a tiny fraction of plants and animals, who also had no say in how their lives would look. Their lives will end and in the worst way imaginable, in a toxic soup of pain death and destruction, just so I can fry my eggs and walk my dogs and write on my computer.
Sorry does not even begin to describe the responsibility for this travesty that I created.
5 Responses to “ Who is to blame for the oil spill? ”
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May 4th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
True enough. This is just another reminder that we need move, and fairly quickly, away from the fossil fuel addiction. We all need to be taking this seriously, it’s NOT going away, the 1970s are gone. While research goes on for alternate energy sources, we all need to find ways to ratchet down our energy consumption. Good piece Richard, people tend to blame others for the world’s problems but this one falls right in our laps.
May 5th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
What a great way to live your life – full of guilt. Guilt is the worst emotion, and only destroys. Richard, I don’t know if you’re recently divorced or had a loved one die, but you really need to lighten up and abandon the negativity. I mean no disrespect by that – there is obviously something missing in your life. I’ve given you a hard time in the past about your unjustified overreaction to the non-existent threat of global warming, but there are indeed many other looming ecological disasters. If you feel guilty, you need to eliminate the source of that guilt, which could be one of two things – taking responsibility for things over which you have no control, or continuing to do those things which you know you shouldn’t be doing.
A solution to your problem would be to quit your job and use your savings to buy a little piece of land on which you can be 100% self-sufficient (Google Dick Proeneke for an example). I personally would choose a more temperate location than Alaska. Given your preachiness about the environment, I am shocked to find out that you aren’t a vegan, but still, it shouldn’t be that hard. Raising chickens for eggs and meat is easier than caring for your dog, and it doesn’t take much space to raise enough food for one. When you aren’t busy in the garden, you can work on your cabin, cut firewood, or just sit by a stream and listen to the sound it makes. It will be a challenging and rewarding life, and you will have nothing to feel guilty about. I am not being facetious, people do this all the time and end up happier than they ever thought possible.
May 31st, 2010 at 11:19 am
We are responsible in other ways as well. Our NIMBYism prevent the oil companies from land based drilling in many areas, forcing the companies to drill offshore. I’m sure this spill would be much easier to contain and stop in a field.
June 3rd, 2010 at 12:11 am
Richard, your sagacity knows no bounds. Thank you for so eloquently putting this into perspective.
June 15th, 2010 at 7:52 am
I agree that we are all to blame for the consumption. There is far fewer who actually profit, Unfortunately I feel that the few who profit make the decisions for the vast majority. I reuse and recycle, I try to save energy where I can, I try to make the best decision with information that I have. I refuse to feel guilty about driving my car to work alone. Early hours and an interuped work hours prevent me from carpooling, plus no public transit to Lunenburg. My partner does carpool into Halifax. So I go 45 km in one direction and she goes 45 – 50 km the opposite direction.
It just seems helpless, although I think you won’t agree but I do think that greed for the profit far outways anything I or you can do to help.