OIL
by Alex Symington…….
The ongoing protest of the Bakken Oilfield pipeline by Native Americans in North Dakota is especially significant and highlights much of what is wrong with our fossil fuel dominated energy policy; wrong as in the House and Senate’s unwavering servitude to the interests of Big Fossil Fuel to the detriment of the people and the environment. The Standing Rock Sioux Indians are rightly concerned with this pipeline so close to their land rupturing and poisoning their water supply. Oil pipelines have a documented history of spills, leaks and explosions a mile long*, but Big Oil unabashedly insists otherwise. The protest has been joined by many different tribes in solidarity not seen since the Little Big Horn. “No water, no life” is the people’s message to a government that is beholding to the very corporate interests the protest is focused on.
As demonstrated by the US government’s historic contempt for this land’s original people, the oil pipeline was to cross under the Missouri River near Bismarck, but the powers that be decided it should be father away from the capitol and closer to the under-represented Indians and their land. As with Flint Michigan’s poisoned water supply and toxic waste sites placed near poor minority neighborhoods all over the US, our Corporatocracy chooses to put the poor and powerless at risk. Another equally distressing factor of this invasion of Indian land is the bulldozing of sacred burial grounds for the pipeline. To put this in perspective for the non-native, it would be as if Arlington Cemetery was bulldozed and dug up for oil.
The recent hiring of a private security team, by the pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, armed with mace and attack dogs, has escalated the confrontation at the site to such a level of barbarity it reminds us of 1963 Birmingham, Alabama where fire hoses and attack dogs were loosed on defenseless African Americans protesting their lack of fundamental civil liberties. A federal judge has placed a temporary stop work order on the project near the reservation, but construction still continues elsewhere on the line.
As the easy to extract oil and gas sources dry up and the “demand for energy independence” grows (an absurd fallacy) the oil barons are using riskier, more desperate methods of extraction in the form of off shore drilling, fracking and processing dirty tar sands. Because of this obsession they are lusting after pristine federal land and in a sick ironic twist, as global warming melts the ice cap, the artic is a target as well.
If one stops and thinks about it, almost every ill on the planet is either directly or indirectly caused by the oil industry. Wars to control the stuff, bloody regime changes to install puppet governments to protect our stash, being in bed with the barbaric Saudis, bank rolling an apartheid government in the region because we need friends there, in supplying weapons to other “friends” we are supplying weapons to terrorists (the weapons dealers are very happy) and we create the conditions for terrorists in the first place.
Those are some direct causal results. The greatest indirect result of the insane pursuit of this unsustainable existence is global warming. It’s real, it’s not a belief, but a fact.** In a world rapidly and unnaturally heating up animal species are dying off at an alarming rate. Global warming has caused drought which in turn is causing untold misery and starvation. Researchers have linked the Syrian conflict to drought made worse by climate change. The oil bi-product, non-degradable plastic, is choking rivers, killing sea life and sea birds. As oil spills and fracking poison our very limited supply of clean, fresh water, ghouls like the Nestle Corporation swoop in and buy up water supplies and put it all in PLASTIC bottles at an incredible 2000% mark up over tap water. Two thousand percent!
Enough!
None of these horrors being perpetrated, most recently upon the Indians of North Dakota and the planet at large need happen. Alternative renewable sources of energy are real and available right now. The US is utilizing the technology now, but to increase that use is the goal. All that is lacking is the political will. The old ways of doing things, the things that used to serve us have become our masters. We don’t have to go to our deaths clinging to archaic behavior just because it’s “how we’ve always done it.”
Countries as diverse as Costa Rica and Sweden are getting almost all their energy from alternate renewable sources. Scotland is getting almost 100% of household electricity needs from wind generated power. Solar power has been utilized to great success in, of all places, Germany! 78% of household electricity! Uruguay, 95% from renewables! The secret? “Clear decision-making, a supportive regulatory environment, and a strong partnership between the public and private sector.”
Thousands of alternative energy jobs, cleaner air and water and fewer reasons to kill each other. What are we waiting for? Check out thesolutionsproject.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
More from other sources:
https://businessconnectworld.com/2017/11/16/water-scarcity-problem-thats-destroying-countries/
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/a-pipeline-fight-and-americas-dark-past
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/01/18/368559990/broken-promises-on-display-at-native-american-treaties-exhibit
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/20/465545378/lead-laced-water-in-flint-a-step-by-step-look-at-the-makings-of-a-crisis
http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/23414-targeting-minority-low-income-neighborhoods-for-hazardous-waste-sites
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pipeline_accidents_in_the_United_States_in_the_21st_century
https://studyclerk.com/blog/birmingham-campaign
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/
** https://thinkprogress.org/satellites-confirm-global-warming-ce6d636c469f#.3ng4bxmgd
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/earth/study-links-syria-conflict-to-drought-caused-by-climate-change.html?_r=0
http://www.moneycrashers.com/bottled-water-vs-tap-water-facts/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strong-future-forecast-for-renewable-energy/
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/01/23/solutions-project-139-countries-can-hit-100-renewable-energy/
https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/follow-leader-how-11-countries-are-shifting-renewable-energy
yes, the fascist elements of the world continue to rape us all, native Americans included. there is no news there. the continued brutalization of people by the elites also continues unabated whether by state agents or private mercenaries with dogs (tho it was very gratifying to see the thugs beaten back into retreat and withdrawal). no news there.
what is news, to you probably, is the role “global warming” plays. try to open your mind to the fact that global warming is NOT real in the sense that it has been presented to you, and is in fact a political consideration and not an environmental one.
“global warming” is in fact another scam. it is just another ruse to transfer, and transform, wealth and power on a global scale through the carbon credit markets. it has been admitted to by the U.N. it has made Al Gore, the poster boy of climate change, a very wealthy man through his company Generation Investment Management. imagine that….making money off fear mongering…
oh, and go revisit his highly entertaining movie ‘an inconvenient truth’ and see how accurate it was.
as always Mr. Symington, you have just got to use better sources…
When I was at MIT in the ’60’s we wished oil would rapidly deplete. Later we were glad it got expensive, hoping for $500/barrel. Because there are so many ways to make clean energy.
That 50 years later we still rely on coal and oil is a discredit to our species.
But….hooray, Sweden and Costa Rica, and GO SIOUX!
when i was at UCLA in the 70’s, i was waiting in block long lines, based on my license plate, to fill up with 10 gallons of gas because the world was running out of oil. now, 40 years later, as recently as last week i am paying less than $2 per gallon and told that the world is awash in oil with ever deflating prices per barrel. surely it must occur to you that manipulation and corruption feed the calculus of economics, and organic markets are as fictional as the Easter Bunny.
Hi Alex,
I read an article yesterday arguing that
unfettered capitalism is the new Christian
religion. It seemed quite valid.
It’s an odd irony that the original nations of
the mostly immigrated Europeans who stole
this land, are now the nations who are most
maturely responsible for hopefully leading
the world into total clean energy. Changing
times?
Building from the previous, were most of the
immigrants [after the ones seeking religious
freedom] who came in an extended second
wave [seeking riches] the more aggressive
souls? Thus, the USA becomes a more ‘type A’
nation, leaving the more cooperative types
to procreate, populating the European nations
with more community minded people?
Couple ‘all of the above’ with what I believe
is an established fact [from recent studies]
that conservatives, and thus Republicans,
are much more authoritarian, judgmental
and punitive-minded. This would leave them
naturally much less open minded to any
modern ‘freedoms’.
Looking at who we seem to be dealing with,
how do we persuade these folks to listen
to reason? pip
And, I see keysbum is still at it. Which Disney character sang, “wishing will make it so”? Or, in this case, ‘not so’? Such a shame he cannot wish away global warming, and it’s cause – carbon based fuels. Makes me wonder how much oil stock he owns.
LP [not liquefied petroleum]
welcome to the world of progressive Marxism…..lets have a drink with al gore on his private jet burning all the fuel he wants and travel the world selling global warming while his mansion in Tennessee burns enough energy to fuel a small 25 home community! but of course this is just a rumor so I called rumor control but the line was busy! must have been a right wing conspiracy I think?
cheers 😉
ahhh Pipster…. you’re back. i must say i envy you; to lack the intellectual acuity, curiosity, and comprehension to actively engage in intelligent discourse and ingest even the most banal of information, must make life so easy and calming for you. blindly swallowing what is force fed down your throat without so much as a single brain cell firing off in contemplation or analysis must provide a most serene existence. i have often wondered what a parrot thought about as it blindly repeated words it didn’t understand…. i guess i could just ask you.
wank and keys – hi fellas,
Rather than disturb your fantasies further, I’ll just agree with you. You’re right in everything you say. Which must mean, the rest of the world is wrong. So be it.
hahahahahahah… 🙂 pip