oil addiction (an extended rant)

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy

--- John Verity <verity at technologicp.com> wrote:
> >would  all of "those people" in the middle east really be better off
> if
> >we'd never bought their oil?
> 
> 
> yeah, probably. and us, too--less addicted to a substance that has 
> helped, through the automobile, to choke our cities and create the 
> suburban wasteland. too late now, though--we're hooked, bigtime.

I repeat: How would "they" be better off, exactly? I understand fully
how *we* would be better off.

And again -- that horse (our oil dependence) has left the barn. We
cannot go back in time, and I'm afraid that since cold fusion was a
bust moving beyond oil will mean nuclear power, which y'all don't like
much either... We can't build anymore hydro-electric dams because they
are ugly and kill fish.  Though it should be tapped for all it is
worth, solar power isn't going to juice the grid. Windmills won't turn
the trick either. Moving forward will eventually mean a) nuclear power
with attendant waste and risks; b) fusion if we can ever get it to
work, maybe; c) turning off all these computers and working the land
for a living while our surplus population dies off for the good of the
planet. Oil ought to be saved to be made into non-biodegradable (and
therefore carbon-sequestering) plastic, not burned.  Burning this
precious and truely priceless stuff is criminal.

For what it is worth, Iraq, even under the U.N. sanctions regime, "is
now the world's second largest exporter of oil" (or so I read in The
New Republic -- TNR 8 Oct 01 pg 8) and still the Iraqi children are
said to starve.  If we cease to buy their oil, will they have more to
eat? Will they have better health care? How will their lives be made
less unpleasant? Will the bad men leave the weak men in peace if only
U.S./Big Oil would butt out? 

Mayhap we ought to return to an economy based upon subsistence
agriculture? We shall all work the land in our 'autonomous
anarco-syndicalist communes' and never be trouble by violence again.
Thomas Pynchon will of course have to stop behaving like a glittering
social parasite and get to work "raising protein quota", so we'll have
a lot less to think about, or enjoy.

***

What must be done *now* with the terrorists who threaten, and
successfully attack *us*? Arrest them ("It's a fair cop but society's
to blame") and clap them in irons and look sternly upon them as they
make brooms and baskets in a prison somewhere? Is that really the
Humane and Moral thing? I think they ought to be treated like the
honorable warriors they believe themselves to be and *terminated*. Full
stop. We will know them by their deeds, and they will know us by ours.
Then we help the survivors rebuild.

Mark



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get email alerts & NEW webcam video instant messaging with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com