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Today the Senate debates
the merits of an oil pipeline disastrous
to the common good. The Keystone pipeline and its
cousins will enable the development of Canadian tar sands, helping to make
catastrophic climate change inevitable
and irreversible. Except for the momentary fever
dream of an ephemeral
energy boom, it offers Americans nothing but the prospect of oil
spills and higher
energy prices. But the fossil fuel companies invested hundreds
of millions of dollars in this legislature, and so we get fossilized
fuel public policy.
Last week's hallucinatory
agreement between the US and China to start considering getting
semi-serious about fossil fuel emissions is already receding into the carbon
dioxide haze.
For those of us who
have hoped that humans might act to ensure our grandchildren's well being,
it's enervating stuff. We almost certainly doom our civilization if
we don't start moving it away from fossil fuels starting . . . well,
starting years ago, actually.
I am no longer surprised. We have a bad habit of
assuming that since individual humans are capable of intelligence, forethought
and planning - that this means we should be equally capable of intentional collective
action. Unfortunately, collectively our species demonstrates the cognitive
abilities of a toxic lichen. Civilizations, perhaps achieve the blind tropisms
of a nematode or a pea plant - sometimes able to evade a fatal obstacle. A
nation or a government can often lurch around with the spastic enthusiasms of a
poorly coordinated toddler . . .
I don't place much hope in the plans of our leaders or their critics, but hey, sometimes yelling at toddlers helps - if only as a personal tonic.
I don't place much hope in the plans of our leaders or their critics, but hey, sometimes yelling at toddlers helps - if only as a personal tonic.
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