Get Your Head Out Of The Tar Sand
… and make a difference today
About our counter-productive use of dirty fuel: It’s dirty and sexist, but you can change that today
In more ways than one, we are all conned into being complicit in the trashing of the world. We have been lied to so effectively and continuously about what the highest profiteers in the world continue to sell us, that we have largely given up. Like the tobacco companies before them, fossil fuel giants have muddied the already dirty waters, and hi-jacked those who want to think that dirty does not mean bad.
Trumpeting the juxtaposition of nature’s need versus our energy needs, the argument has stuffed many heads down in the tar sands where nothing is clear but a stated path toward more pipelines, more pollution, more smog and natural disasters.
There is no “our needs versus nature’s needs.” We can have clean energy, innovation and healthy environments. As a matter of fact, protecting land and water from filth is entirely in our best interest, as is keeping the biosphere diverse and thriving.
And, allowing women and girls to have all the same free choices in health and reproduction will insure that healthier world most of us want a hand in building. Because the exploitation and over use of the Earth is very much based on an entitlement world view.
Do you personally feel a very rich person has more right to pollute than you do? Do you feel that justice for any marginalized person or biosphere should wait until the oppressors offer it?
Like the civil rights movements before that where justice was only served on demand, people have to attend to this reality. Like the women’s liberation wave of mid 2oth century, we have to admit something unfair is happening and we will not let it go.
We have to get our heads out of the tar sands. The poor, the ill, the people of color, especially those from overly exploited *$%&-hole countries, already pay the highest price for our dirty habits. But we can empower ourselves, demand clean governance, and reduce our carbon footprint with every daily decision we make.
People want empowerment. People want to end exploitation. People want the assault of the Earth to matter. People want to openly embrace the good, the beautiful, the decent and the life affirming again. Like the many good people saying Me too to protest bad behavior toward girls and women, people are also finding more voice in defense of our mother Earth, the ultimate target of sexism and exploitation.
Don’t think the drilling of Earth is a sex crime? Maybe learn about the fate of millions of hens (mostly hens) sows, (not just pigs) and cows, all of which died in huge numbers during the latest hurricane season. But we don’t even need hurricanes to blow the lid off of the facts. Animal consumption as it now stands is brutally cruel, inhumane, beneath us, and most of all hidden from public view.
Lab meat is coming, but consumers have to demand compassion because profiteers will not. Healthy food is not a realistic choice so long as food giants keep us addicted to trashy food that further trashes the human body and the Earth body.
Climate change is here. It gave more force and water to Katrina, Super storm Sandy, Hurricanes Harvey and Maria, the drowning Carolinas. It helped keep the west aglow with fires all summer, It fueled the Syrian war, and continues to fuel famine, kill economies, spread pandemics and raise all your power bills.
More people than ever have snapped out of denial. After a certain point, no one can pretend that what their ears, eyes and floating homes or burning barns tell them is real.
Although many wish to make this a partisan issue, it is not. Our clean air, water, food and soil has been fought for over the decades by republicans, democrats and independents. We need that alliance to get strong again.
People who are just tired of being told they are the problem need to stand up and shout that in fact, we are the solution. Guilt invites defensiveness, whereas empowerment invites belonging, community, and joy.
As President Trump and his groping little twitter fingers attest, there is money in fossil fuel jobs. Guess what? There are even more jobs, millions of jobs, and much more health, wealth and pursuit of happiness in clean energy, infrastructure, manufacturing and agriculture. As deregulations run rampant, we are allowing big problems to get much bigger than we need to allow. Mercury and coal ash do not make your children stronger. Lead in your water does not make act as an inoculation.
So stand up and be counted, shout Me Too and lives matter, life matters and we matter. We only matter when we come up for fresh air, and then make that air happen as a result of our shared humanity.