It wasn’t a fuel tanker that spilled the nearly half million gallons of oil that slicked the Mississippi River around New Orleans – but still, it was the fossil fuel economy that bore responsibility. A tanker transporting non-petroleum chemicals split in half yesterday, and released the oil, which it had been using as fuel. Intakes for drinking water had to be closed to prevent residents of New Orleans from drinking the slick.
The incident shows how it isn’t just offshore drilling that threatens our marine and aquatic ecosystems. Our reliance on fossil fuels – even as they’re being used to transport other goods, exposes our waterways to pollution even if they don’t host oil rigs or refineries.
Reducing the price of gasoline won’t fix this problem, and increased drilling or opening the Strategic Petroleum Reserve will only make it worse.
In hard times like these, we need to tighten our belts, not lower our standards. Conservation is the only approach that deals with our economic and environmental problems.
“Conservation is the only approach that deals with our economic and environmental problems.”
It’s a shame our government doesn’t seem to care about the environment or its people, just profits. They won’t back the EPA (and have actually dropped legal cases so as to promote corporate interests) or the FDA (with their hurry up process to get drugs on the market so the guinea pig public – that’s you and me – get to try ‘em out WHILE WE PAY for ‘em, ie. we ARE the research)!
What’s worse is ALL WE DO IS COMPLAIN! They have nothing to worry about, while we have everything to lose AND WE STILL DO NOTHING (but talk, talk, talk)!
i suggested stop paying our taxes. Go to my employer and tell the payroll dept. i want ALL my money and that i’ll pay what taxes i think i should.
Okay, that didn’t work. Now what?
Tom, I understand your frustration, but I think it’s misplaced.
Given what’s going on, TALK is the most important thing we can do.
This is a democracy, and that means that if the American people are wimpy, apathetic, and ignorant, that’s exactly what we’re going to get from our government.
The reason that our government is not providing us with responsible representation is that the American people are for the most part NOT demanding it. I’ve been watching Congress, and the public’s interactions with it, fairly closely, and I have yet to detect any genuinely focused attention on any issue at all. All I see the public doing on the whole (there are, of course, notable individual exceptions) is grumbling with a kind of uninformed feeling that things aren’t going right.
Most Americans aren’t getting information about particular laws, or about particular legislators. Furthermore, they aren’t seeking this information out.
The TALK that you deem to be insufficient is the best that I can do to try to bring important issues to the attention of voters in a way that almost never occurs on TV or other mainstream media.
You want action? Try to rouse your fellow citizens into specific, directed outrage at Congress. That’s why I write about specific legislative activities in Congress.
If the American people refuse to be roused, because they care more about issues like rumors that John Edwards is having a sexual affair, then, because this is a democracy, we can’t do anything but keep on trying to change their minds.
Persuasion, when you’re talking to people who seem determined to live like sheep, is frustrating, but it’s the only fair course there is.
I’ll quote an article just published at our sister site, That’s My Congress: “In order to prevent this constitutional erosion from continuing, responsibility rests with the American people to ensure that their representatives in the House and Senate reassert congressional authority over the Executive Branch. If the American people don’t care enough to demand that their representatives show a backbone, then Congress will continue to mimic their apathy, and do nothing to interfere with the growth of American autocracy.”