President Obama, the Great Compromiser, will approve the pipeline through America's heartland. He might couch his approval with some kind words for environmentalists, but the fact is he's thinking so much about re-election that he can't even see the right thing much less do it. No Democrat will rise to challenge him for the 2012 nomination, so we'll be faced with Obama or a Republican who will be only too happy to sell our nation's future to the moneyed few to the detriment of everyone else.
The pipeline will be built, temporary employment will be provided for some construction workers and engineers, but afterwards they'll be cast right back into the pile of the unemployed, and any real effort to wean us from reliance on the slippery fluid will be postponed.
The price for our short-sightedness and outright greed will be paid by baby Violet and her many contemporaries, who will come to maturity as the oil runs out and no provision has been made for their future except an impoverished landscape and people without hope.
I salute the brave few who have put their bodies on the line, accepting arrest in front of the White House to dramatize our opposition to this fiasco. It almost makes me wish I still live in Virginia, so I'd be close enough to make my way to the capital and get arrested too.
But it will make no difference. Political power in this country is now wielded in boardrooms and fueled with campaign contributions from our newest citizens, our corporations. Any politician brave enough to contradict their plutocratic agenda is buried beneath an avalanche of unfair advertising, and President Obama knows it. So he will not, cannot, be bold.
To add insult to injury, the egregious editor of my hometown newspaper, noting that eight of the hottest ten summers on record here have occurred in the last ten years, now admits to global warming but claims it's all natural and therefore there's nothing we can or should do about it.
DOOM, DOOM, DOOM.
Pete,
ReplyDeleteI've read both posts about Canadian oil. I actually DON'T have a big problem with doing this project, but I truly like your idea of refining it just over the border (first piece) and not piping it all the way to Texas. During my life, I've gone from very liberal and very Democrat, to far FAR right wing Republican, to conservative Republican to moderate (but leaning right) Republican. I have seen that people of ALL stripes can get too crazy over this stuff and drive themselves and everybody else crazy. Obama HAS caved time and again, you're right. And, I fully admit the Republican field is NOT great. But try not to "go crazy" over this stuff. I'm no Professor Roper. I DO think there is a patter of global warming over the past 125 years and esp. from 1975 to the late 1990s. Frankly, some scientists DO believe it's sunspot activity and the sun is putting out more heat (Mars is also warming). Does man's activity play a role in it. Ironically Pat Robertson and Al Gore each believe it does. Honestly I don't know. Sometimes, I think we just have to pray, do the best we can, and trust God. Admittedly, I'm in a very dispassionate mood today, so maybe I am in a mood that is affecting me, too!