June Second 2014

Ninety years ago, our government recognized the right to citizenship of native born peoples, just at the cusp of a growing trend toward wholesale destruction of their lands, the one hand was giving, while the other was taking away. It has been over five hundred years of genocide, ecocide and extraction that these sacred lands, and her people have endured. The people of Earth have been forced, under threat of extinction, to meld with the "modern world", to become Borg as it were, part of a vast collective groin kick to Mother Earth. My readers understand where the term White-giver comes from. I have spoken on these matters before. The original people, which most tribal names mean in their native language, had no sense of dominion, humankind over nature, we were/are one with all living organisms, our welfare depends on intact ecosystems. Five hundred years plus of abuse and less than one hundred being allowed to "vote", Whoopie!

"What I'm pulling off is slag, impurities in the metal. Sand and investment that has turned to glass and floated to the top. It is the dregs of hell. It is the sins of our forefathers...I saw this at an iron pour. it is part of my testimony.

The hope is, that ninety years hence, people will look back at the train wreck that was kicking the fossil energy habit and understand that we did the best we could under difficult conditions. Those of us who have been around for a while have seen all sorts of snake oil salesmen, flim-flam men and outright hoaxes perpetrated upon the renewable energy marketplace over the years. Nearly every corporate energy giant has had divisions for "alternative energy" study over the years, as long as subsidies and tax incentives were granted. The minute these divisions had to stand on their own, they would be discontinued. Remember the recent BP (Beyond Petroleum) campaign? Oh, yeah, that's right...really? Yet again, the companies come in, buy up the available patents, make a few people redic rich and then shelve the technology. What we need to create is a groundswell of demand for the products that have been kept from us. The high efficiency motors, the peel and stick collectors that were making solar affordable enough to become ubiquitous. The trend is there, but we have no free markets.

Anyone who has ever had to let the car "air out" before getting in on a hot day knows that "Solar will never work". Yet, the reasonably priced alternatives to hooking up to the grid are beyond pricey, thanks to the mega energy giants and continued government subsidies. No native person would vote for any strategy to sell out the land for something as vile as profit, yet that is what we get from our leaders most of the time. The claim is always the same, think of all the taxes that will generate, but on the down side they forget that those people want services and those costs will always rise faster than the ability to tax. Infrastructure, especially for automobile transit,  is a forever cost. It all boils down to what and who we want to invest in. Business as usual uses the term "just" business to indicate that there is no harm meant by their ravaging ways, but another way exists. An intact and sustainable biosphere, providing all the benefits of clean air, fresh water and uncontaminated soils. We are a long way from that now, but more and more people are learning viable alternatives to feeding the corporate welfare machine, that the wheels are having cogs sheared and needing more and more oil to stay at a steady state...without a box tender on every car, this baby is going off the wheels soon. Not in an apocalyptic sense, not in a new world order sort of way, but in a new direction in which the water bearers are the ones who will be followed.