BP In The News

Today I heard that BP filed two separate cases regarding their Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. One was challenging the competency and thoroughness of the person put in charge of the claims made against them. It seems the the pot of money established ran out, or is about to and only a small fraction of the injured parties have had their cases reviewed. Their claim is that since the money ran out so quickly, depleting the money that they were fined and had allocated for "clean up", that there must be some mistake.

They have also made the case for not being required to pay any additional costs toward the satisfaction of claimants against them. They refuse to pay additional fines or levies because as they see it, they have done their part. Remember all those commercials we have been seeing about how great life is again along the coast? Well, the corporate leaders have said in no uncertain terms that they will pay no more, even though the fines imposed upon them represent their profits over a time period, which was also in the news today, of 23 seconds.

My personal pledge is to never, ever spend another dime on products that come from their stores and if there is any way to stop using their products entirely, I'm going to do it. I have been driving my car as little as possible, riding my bike a lot more and walking to place I used to drive to, but until and unless we put these corporados on a strict financial diet, consisting of NO MORE of our money, they will continue to flaunt their immense fortunes, buy the most expensive lawyers and shirk all actions becoming of responible corporate citizens. These were the people who sucked up as much government money as possible when the corporate welfare was flowing for research and development of solar, wind and other alternative energy sources.

Now they have nothing to show for it but a lot of over paid executives who can regurgitate twenty year old data. We the people are left with the interest we pay on the loans that our own government took out to enrich the corporate elite during the economic downturn and they want to reestablish the gravy train as soon as possible so they don't have to do any real work, just produce more high end commercials claiming what great corporate citizens they are and how they have our best interest in mind. We can continue

Lets all think about that for the next twenty-three seconds. Now, let us look at who has been.destroying-gulf-oil-evidence. We can continue allowing corporations to break the law, destroy the environment and to cripple our chances at survival only so long. I have tasted gulf shrimp that tasted like petroleum. I never want to do that again. If we do not stand up soon, our children will have good reason to hate us. What will the world be like when no shrimp are good to eat? Will they still be making commercials that try to convince us that they are doing their best for us?

Please give what you can to help me continue to bring you this blog. The hours I spend are a labor of love. Green energy as the Rainbow Family call it always helps to keep spinnin' the wheel. I promise not to trash the Earth with it and I sure as hell won't use it to defend wrongdoing or obscuring the truth. We are one. As the revolutionaries have said for ages, we must truly stand together or we will all hang separately.

Getting Our Bearings

When we took our first tentative steps into the information age, we brought along with us the baggage and predispositions of a by-gone age. We assumed that knowledge was power and that human beings would do the right thing with the information that was being collected and distributed about us. Although we had no idea of the size and extent of data that would be at our fingertips, we thought we knew everything we needed to know about information. We had a relationship with the press, textbook publishers and the libraries of the world that allowed us to assume that some sort of due diligence and thorough fact check had been performed on the information that was available. Many of us had forgotten about the dark ages, the library at Alexandria and tried not to think of the data collected by the FBI. We also considered that editorial staff would have ejected the lunacy, tightened up the grasp of fact and elucidated ideas that had merit. Many of us assumed that history was correct and that there had been, once upon a time, such a thing as a just war. What has taken place in the information age is that none of these processes are operating and the sieve that we had hoped to capture the most important ideas for distribution has been removed, allowing falsehood and speculation to proliferate. 

I have shared memes that I did not research exhaustively on facebook, but I have worked hard to only re-post things that I am reasonably certain are true. The idea of reasonable certainty has morphed into something quite different over the last forty years and there may be little we can do to get our footing in the flow of current information overload. My concern here is about the rampant use of powerful information management and retrieval systems to bolster our fictional account of the world around us. I have watched hours of footage that supposedly "proves" that 9-11 was an inside job. What I have come to understand is that it was more likely pure incompetence that allowed the structures to be brought down. The possibility of the series of events going utterly perfectly for legions of munitions guys, who supposedly set the explosives for the demolition, seems far fetched, but not inconceivable. That is the foot in the door that is required for uncertainty to get a foothold.

Stories swirl around us as if they are a very part of the air that we breathe. They often obscure more fact than they are based on and the murky waters seem to never be allowed to settle. Before we can take the time required to dispel one myth, several more have come into existence. Often it is better to follow ancient wisdom like, "A stitch, in time, saves nine." If we can get to the bottom of a single modern myth, perhaps we can begin to break the chain of hearsay and contempt that seem to be alive and well within our culture. When working to break the stranglehold that bad information has over our societies, it is well to attack the weakest link in the chain of events that allows us to be taken in by whatever the conspiracy theory of the day is. I have heard hundreds of people dismiss it all as lunacy, but the grotesque and unsubstantiated things they purport to believe dwarf the ones they deny. 

Case in point, the climate change deniers. It has been my experience that scientists do sometimes get things wrong, to be sure. Looking at allopathic medicine we have more than enough fallacies to question the whole assumption that our bodies are like a battlefield and that waging war on "germs" can make us healthy. It has been my experience that our health is a lot more like a good cocktail, it depends on a majority of things we do not normally think of as good by themselves and a small portion of poison just to give them the desired kick. Okay, I'll stop being flip, but don't miss my message here. Just because some scientists initially thought that the greenhouse effect would heat the whole planet evenly, and that has not been the case is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The deniers blame the whole warming of our planet on things like sunspot activity or a "conspiracy of the left". I have even heard that scientists are "making the whole thing up to secure research dollars from the government." The fact that the ozone layer that protects us from incoming radiation has been slowly stripped away by a chemical process proven to be caused by chlorofluorocarbons (man-mad chemicals) in the atmosphere seems to have gone in one ear and out the other with these folks. The fact that we have reintroduced into the atmosphere more CO2 in just the last fifty years than it took hundreds of thousands of years to store up in the geologic deposits that we are trying desperately to eliminate seem to be lost on these powerfully stupid individuals and groups.

It seems that some conspiracy theories pop up like mushrooms, almost of their own volition. Unfunded and as if by magic, they bloom in an instant virtually from thin air. others are continually propped up by well-funded think tanks and almost religious zeal by a few well-heeled interests. It is interesting that in some cases, like those who claim that global warming is not real, we can follow a glut of money, corporate welfare, fortune 500 companies and political might to the perpetrators of the myth. The public is not being told that for every BTU, kilo-calorie or ounce of fuel that is produced from fracking, four are expended to wrest the oil from the tar sands or shale. The massive wasteland that is being produced by these sorts of activities is every bit as grotesque as the deforestation of the rainforest with the added twist of (lime that accompanies great drinks) a toxic legacy to go with the annihilation of native flora and fauna. This past month, the petroleum council, a public relations and industry mouthpiece for the industry has said that of all the gasoline sold in both Wisconsin and Minnesota, 50-80% of it comes from tar sands oil. The irony here is that when a person pulls up to a gas pump, there is no way to know the source of the oil used to make the fuel. Most people do not even understand that for the convenience of fueling up, a series of not so wonderful things have to have happened  to allow that luxury.

This first image is just a portion of the existing Midwest pipelines and refineries. The image is dastardly incomplete because I have personally been to at least one other refinery in Midland, Michigan near Saginaw and Bay City. Also missing from this schematic diagram is the pipeline running into the heart of my city, Green Bay, Wisconsin. The irony of these lies perpetrated by map makers is that petroleum and the petroleum industry itself has special status as a result of the fact that it is a feedstock for the machines of war and has been allowed nearly military intelligence status. we are supposed to remain ignorant about the levels of subsidy, the health threats posed by it and the exact toll that is being placed on the environment by our pursuit of this black gooey gold.

I heard an excellent perspective about the energy contained in a gallon of regular gasoline. Imagine the energy equivalent of 100 people working for eight hours a day for a week. Yes, 4,000 human hours of actual work, that is the amount of energy in a single gallon of petrol. It is nearly unbelievable until you start to do the math. Over half of the energy is squandered as heat. Even the most efficient transportation device, the bicycle can only allow a human to produce about three quarters of a horsepower. Add to these facts the effort of punching a car-sized hole in the atmosphere, pushing half a ton or more of steel along surfaces with bumps and potholes perhaps on under-inflated tires and you begin to see the truth of the matter a little more clearly.

When we add the energy required for our vehicles, imagining every gallon of fuel as an extra hundred people just hanging out for a week, one can see the problem of global warming a little more clearly. Just having that many extra people would choke the air with carbon dioxide from them breathing, but instead of a waste gas that feeds trees, shrubs and plants of all types, these tools that we use to move about the earth exhale poison gas that can kill. We have the tools needed to stop, look around, follow the money and make up our own minds about what is right and good. The time has come for us to use every tolls in our arsenal to wage peace, speak truth to power and to teach the next generation what it truly means to be human. I throw down the challenge to everyone to be the best we can be in the face of the tumult and turmoil that we have foisted upon us each and every day. Be strong, hold tight to your soul, for there are those who would estrange you from it for money out there and they feed on fear and hate. Love them as you would yourself and perhaps we can heal their wounds as well as our own.  

Gulf Oil Distraction

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. That makes it all the more difficult for me to understand why our leaders continue to practice crisis management. We know what the result of doing nothing is and we have seen what is possible if we would just reflect the will of the people in action. For over forty years there has been a public outcry that continues to plead for responsible energy policies, pollution elimination strategy and more humane policies regarding our place on the world stage. Frequently there are protests, boycotts and direct actions to change the course of our government officials, their corporate keepers and the constabulary who are used as tools of their oppression. The problem is that the changes are never enough, and always too late to effect necessary change. When you grow up seeing the farce behind our involvement in Southeast Asia, the fallacious claims about how environmental ethics demand our collective return to caves, that the peace movement is being fomented by criminals or communists and the complete inaction demonstrated by our leaders on pollution and energy issues, it becomes hard to understand what the motivation is to cling to policies and procedures that have yet to solve a single one of these pressing problems. Amelioration of problems after they have occurred is not only less effective and more costly than solving them before they reach crisis proportions, but it shows that you don't care enough, and are not smart enough to reason out what might happen if nothing is done.
As long as our "leaders" refrain from taking action, the forces of greed, expediency and abuse will continue to flex their proverbial muscle. Until we demand that their cycle of power and control be broken, we will have to continue to live with the degraded environment, insane energy policy and "terror" from those who hate us for our "way of life", not to mention the real and present terror of not knowing what part of our infrastructure will catastrophically break down next. Our flagging educational system is failing our students, the air where many of us live is not fit to breathe, the water that many of us drink now contains dilute anti-depressants heart medication and "penis pills". The land in many areas has been so thoroughly sterilized that they are biologically dead. The health care debate has been framed so as to not even mention health, or care. If you believed the BS about how legalizing pot would fund more terror, what do you think our continued addiction to oil does? Just because people who have advocated change often looked like hippies and sounded like intellectuals is no reason to believe that they were not right. We should have all seen, by now, the images of Earth from space that led to the coining of the term Spaceship Earth. There is no "away", we need to find a path to peace. True security depends on making our way forward to a future in which our children are not burdened by childhood cancer, developmental disabilities, and reduced quality of life. The same things that angered me as a child have persisted and intensified. Our mindless destruction of the planet has grown exponentially. As emissions from vehicles have been reduced, we drive more cars more miles. As we take actions to reduce water pollution from point sources, we eliminate more native forest cover, drain wetlands and pave over rich farmland, spreading ever more toxins and persistent chemicals on the land.
How can we respect the system that allows these abuses to continue? How can we facilitate the change necessary to encourage sustainability? How can we ask others to bear the costs of our affluence? By seriously studying and understanding the nature of our shortsightedness, perhaps we can bring public opinion to bear on leaders to help create a more reasonable course forward. There are cars of the future in existence today. Cars that will not rust away, that can be fueled with renewable energy, and that will leave oil behind, but our government will not require them to be produced by publicly held, corpulent corporations feeding at the trough of current policy. Similarly, proven technology exists to make every new home a net energy production facility. Where are the regulations requiring that it be done? Why are there no taxes levied on the giant agricultural water pumpers who drain our aquifers or those who spew carcinogenic compounds on the earth? When something is the "right" thing to do, we should be able to agree that it should be done. As things stand, we introduce ambiguity into every topic, call up Fox "news", have them put their cameras on a gut-wrenching effect whose image cannot, in and of itself, tell us anything about the nature or scope of the problem, then they will find two "experts" on any subject imaginable to fight over the hows and whys of whatever the issue may be. In the end we are either stymied into inaction by the realization that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, or righteously indignant about how wrong-headed the opposition is.
I am not a conspiracy theorist, but it is getting ever harder to fathom why we have sunk to this level of depravity. Is there anyone at the helm? If there is, they have to know that things are not working. Oh, wait, they must be working. The rich continue to get richer and every loyal Calvinist knows that the poor deserve everything they get as well as what they don't, and for the new age mind over matter folks, they certainly do not deserve the things they can't even dream of. Theories cannot, by definition, be proven. This conspiracy of thought seems very well proven to me and countless others who have been demanding real and meaningful change for generations.

Beyond Petroleum

The recent ad campaign mounted by BP would be inspiring if it were not so sad. The bucolic pictures of hard hatted men swinging solar panels into place, climbing atop giant wind powered electric generating turbines, and holding up beakers presumably full of bio-fuels are heart warming. Sadly, each of these technologies is over 100 years old and their effectiveness proven. In the Netherlands, wind power and dikes have allowed them to push back the sea, creating more country. Solar panels have been on most calculators since I can remember, and provided reliable power in virtually all space flights. Bio-fuel has had a proud history as far back as cavemen who used fire to heat their homes. Many of the first steam powered cars ran on wood. It is time non-fossil fuel use. The mess in the Gulf of Mexico just proves what has been said for the last few generations.

I just wish that BP had spent as much on safety as they had on their promotional ad campaign. Perhaps if they had done that, we would not be faced with yet another oil related catastrophe. I cannot understand the big oil mentality of paying lips service to transforming the energy economy, while simultaneously pocketing the largest profits in history. If you take the profits over the last three months alone for BP and the top four US oil companies they made twenty-five billion. Their profit alone was nearly two hundred and fifty dollars per US household. In just three months!

Using this as a starting point, because most of their increased profits were tied to the rising price of oil, which will continue to go up. Every household in the US could be supplied with either a solar furnace (which would provide direct heat in cool climates) or a Photovoltaic system (which would provide electricity in warm climates) Because of scale, approximately one hundred million total units, the cost would be reduced significantly. At current prices, this investment of, say, just a single year's worth of profits could provide half of either home heating costs (in cool climates)or half of the electricity consumed (in warm climates) Even without the benefits of scale, within at least five years, we could have all of our home energy needs met through solar alone. I don't advocate confiscatory tax systems that would make this a government program, I'm just making a point. This is the kind of money we are talking about. Twenty-five billion dollars every three months. Just think what good it could do!