I called my mother last week, wrote to her as well, suggesting that she sell her house in Houston and move inland towards Austin and the Hill Country of Texas. The BP oil spill and the pollution it brings worries me for the health of my family and all of those living beings along the Gulf Coast. I have a horrible feeling that this is truly the end of a way of life, that a dead zone in the Gulf, the acid rain killing crops inland, and the pollutants in the air, water and food supply means it's over and time to go.
Ironically, Houston has one of the most important cancer treatment centers in the world, M.D. Andersen, but it's growing importance is also part of a vicious circle and those who will profit from all of the illnesses caused by pollutants are often those who donate to build medical hospitals, cancer research centers, etc. The Sins of the Fathers passed down for generations as those who have made money for decades off of oil will feel the effects of this the most in places like Houston.
When we arrived in Moscow last summer one of the first things I noticed driving into town from the airport was a big 4-wheel drive truck and on its back window written in English in big letters were the words, "F*#k Fuel Efficiency!" I felt that I could have been back home in Texas, and that these words could have easily appeared on bumper stickers in Houston alongside ones for Sarah Palin and George Bush Jr. The only difference between Moscow and Houston is that the Orthodox churches in the former are replaced by fundamentalist sports-like stadiums of worship in the latter. All the rest is shopping malls, fast food, gambling, advertising, traffic, guns, hookers and hell. In other words, no zoning...no place for human focused sustainability. And this is a place I called home and loved, where people I care about live...
We must have always known intuitively this could not continue. Twenty years ago, when I visited Mexico City and Guatemala City, I knew it would be for the last time...why? Because I could not breathe for the pollution, coughed up black goo, had temporary asthma and ended up ill for weeks after my return. This is where we are headed. Why do you think all of the billionaires own huge ranches in Wyoming and Montana or half of Paraguay? Because Misters Soros, Turner etc. heard what their buddy Mike Ovitz (formerly of Disney) said, "How do you explain the future to people, when the future is Montana?" Or as my daughter, whose 7 year old body had suffered from pollutants and pesticides while living in LA said to me the first day we arrived in Oslo, Norway..."Mommy, I can breathe!" Now extrapolate from that to all of the millions of impoverished children around the world who live in polluted cities, along oil-contaminated deltas...the change begins with us. Too bad it took reaching our own shores for us to perhaps begin to wake up.
But I am an optimist so how can I find some kind of saving grace in all this? That perhaps the Gulf Coast, facing extinction, will have to quickly put in place green non-polluting laws and practices? Are they kidding? These oil rich frogs will boil in the pot first! It has become like Africa, which we use for its resources in our wealthy countries, not caring that the Niger Delta is a dead zone and that thousands of people die from oil related deaths. And those wealthy (European) oops American Yale boys who were sent down to Texas to make their fortunes back in the 50s and 60s from the oil, keep their homes in pristine Maine and elsewhere, while having helped trash what was once a kind of Promised Land. Just as the second and third sons of the wealthy European families were sent to derive wealth from the colonies...
I will end this with a few sentences from the last paragraph of Upton Sinclair's "Oil" which describes what I hope may be the future of my dear Texas...and our oil-addicted world:
"Some day all those unlovely derricks will be gone, and so will the picket fence and the graves. There will be other girls with bare brown legs running over those hills, and they may grow up to be happier women, if men can find some way to chain the black and cruel demon...an Evil Power which roams the earth, crippling the bodies of men and women, and luring the nations to destruction by visions of unearned wealth, and the opportunity to enslave and exploit labor".
Follow Vivian Norris de Montaigu on Twitter: www.twitter.com/vivigive
• World population/global poverty
• Global climate change
• Carbon based fuel energy (peak oil, the Gulf oil release is a symptom).
All else is distraction, just like the Roman Circus. Working on anything else is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Expecting anything useful from a politician, the government, a lobbyist, a big business person, or so
called experts is like waiting for Godot. All they do is screw things up worse than they are now, and
make a bunch of money for a few rich people.
All meaningful change begins at the personal level. The only meaningful action for the individual to
take is to focus on doing what can be done effectively for yourself and your friends/family/community,
and what is best for the world. Don’t be distracted by things that are beyond our control.
Always vote; pick the least damaging politician or policy, but always vote. Even though government is
totally ineffective on these most important issues, maybe the potential for damage can be minimized.
Also, vote with money. I cast my money votes in this order 1) Co-ops & Credit Unions, 2) Employee
owned businesses, 3) locally owned small businesses, and 4) the “greenest” “large” businesses I can
find. (have to do my homework here)
As the hippies used to say, think globally, act locally.
and narcissitic generation in the history of the planet and the best they could give us is George Bush Jr? Those hippies? Yea. That's right. They USED to say that. USED to.
The author's mother should do it right away, oil spill or not.
What a disgraceful lot they are, all the money grubbers who never saw a way of life, just a way to make money. And they'll land in clover. It's always someone else who pays.
The Zero Population Growth idea of the '70s was correct, but not enough of us followed through.
Too many people in areas that are unlivable without air conditioning. Nevada has the fastest growing population of any other state. Arizona has new housing developments spreading out from even formerly small towns into the hideously hot desert.
Too many people living in areas without mass transit. Two or more cars per household.
I'm just glad that I've already had five decades and won't be around for five more.
"Earth Day" was celebrated and the environmental movement progressed along the decades, BUT the essential message of "The Population Bob" has been pretty much ignored even though it holds the key to the whole thing. This is politically incorrect to say, but I'll say it anyway. It is advantageous to corporate (or big business) interest to encourage a still huge influx of immigrants into this country whether farm laborers or H1 visa programmers or whatever to keep labor costs low. I don't care where they come from, we already have too many people. And people from other cultures - especially from non-industrialized nations - tend to still have high birth rates which adds further to the problem. And if this weren't enough, from what I can see, today's young women have largely retreated back to the 50's and are into having babies (and more babies) rather than building careers or doing sometthing else - blissfully (I assume) ignoring the implications of this for their future (and their children's future). Ah, well,
I suppose to each their own but I find myself grateful that I too am of a demographic that probably won't see the results of this.
Too many silly very young women act as though the fight for birth control by the women in my age group and slightly older never happened. Birth control used to be illegal and then was legal only for married women. Today's young act as though there is no way to prevent conception. Some of them are influenced by the Pop Stars who are all showing off their "baby bump" (gag me with that phrase) and they all want to have a baby. WHY? I'll never know. Young women usually end up in poverty when they have children outside of marriage and have had to end their educations. What a waste of potential brain power.
No one I know ever envisioned this sad state of the "future".
And after we accept that zero population growth isn't going to happen voluntarily we can move on to discussing practical solutions, yes?
Although for any you libertarians reading this go reread NoSilly's post again and reflect on something. If Silly is really Al Gore and has access to a lot of money, and if you ever achieve your dream of getting government out of the business of providing water to people, and IF Al, er Silly, is the person who buys the water pipeline to your city when you auction it off ...
Are you completely sure he won't turn of the tap to force people to leave an area he doesn't feel they should be living in the first place?
Cause if he did, your limited government that only deals with military defense and law enforcement will be honor bound to defend his property against the waves of people dieing from thirst. It is, after all, his water works. And he is a private citizen who can do what he wants with his property.
Sincerely,
Al
Reality check, there is no way to support humanity without an impact. We can hope for less polluting and cleaner ways but there will never be a zero impact way. The last century has left us with a legacy of oil. The next century by the end looks to be heading towards toxic sludge from batteries....
We live in a finite place and we harness it to survive. Let us hope we harness it better but get rid of the naivette about it being pollution free. We have to decide where we concentrate the pollutants what pollutants they are and how we protect people and the broader environment from our predictable and innevitable impacts. We aren't giving up the will to live and as a result we will be polluting.
I'll settle for getting off the carbon based energies as a start that'll be an improvement but we'll still be polluting albeit in different ways.
As far as "sustainability" goes you might want to consider giving up the life of an international intellectual elitist and actually put down some roots and develop a personal stake in a piece of ground, i.e. "community". Kind of like the old agricultural people did or even the hunter/gatherers (albeit a "region" rather than a "community"). Your old Mom in Houston may quite possibly be living a more "sustainable" life than the author. I'm assuming that living in Paris the author makes plenty of commercial airline flights which not only is the method of transportation "unsustainable" but also the emissions from the freaking jets are one of the greatest contributors to our ozone problems.
Oh well, she's one of the happy beautiful (and probably rich from inheritance or marriage) people that Ariana loves to let loose on her site though they usually fit the bill of the Hollywood liberal/progressive painfully well.
I am very Liberal in many ways, Conservative in others...stop generalizing and assuming you know more than you do...I am seriously worried for my family friends and the entire Gulf Coast region...and if you can find people who are able to live in Houston sustainably, without a car etc...well show me those people because I have yet to meet one. People do their best, but Houston is a sprawling no zoning polluted city...yet as a native, I still love it and the people there!
I'm a little skeptical on the weather pattern changes from the spill, but we are definitely messing up our climate system in many ways related to emissions and land-use changes.
It takes only a straw to break the camel's back at some point in time. It does not matter where that straw comes from.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2010/07/epoch-of-straw-that-broke-2.html
Pollution is seen as a local event, but we will learn soon enough that we are all in the poison together, and it is one world sickness which we resist.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2010/07/epoch-of-straw-that-broke-2.html