(Long Island, NY) People are freaking out on both sides over the new environmental film An Inconvenient Truth. Global warming, the eventual depletion of fossil fuel reserves, you name it. We’re freaking out about it. This is the Bowling For Columbine of 2006—a movie with a disturbing message everybody is talking about, for or against.
This movie isn’t breaking any new ground though, kids. If you want the full environmental Monty, try taking an environmental biology class at your local community college. There you will learn stuff that will make your head spin like merry-go-round.
Do you know what permit trading is? This is the practice of selling exemptions to environmental laws. Company A has been in business since 1900, and is under a grandfather clause with regard to modern day emissions regulations. The idea is this; the company was in existence long before the new law, so they get a pass on full compliance with the law.
Company A falls on hard times, and has to close up shop in whole or in part. Let’s say they need to close their Chicago-based paint manufacturing plant. Enter Company B, who wants to purchase the operation. Company B was formed in 2001, and as such has no exemptions from environmental law.
When Company B buys out Company A’s paint plant, it also purchases (for an additional fee) the rights to the grandfather clause held by Company A.
This means that Company B has just PURCHASED the right to POLLUTE.
You can learn this in any community college level environmental biology class. It is not a secret, and it happens all the time. Frightened yet? An Inconvenient Truth is only a blip, a mere fragment of information. The avalanche of environmental horror awaits. Once you open the door, you can never go back; your brain will be forever ruined with visions of massive corporate runoff from factories entering streams, lakes, and rivers. Fish with three eyes will haunt your dreams, two-headed frogs and other mutations near factories will keep you tossing and turning worse than a pot of coffee before bedtime.
Those who would rather keep raking in the profits from petroleum wage national spin doctoring campaigns against this kind of information, claiming all sorts of nonsense in an effort to get we, the people, to bury our heads in the sand right alongside the oil barons. The truth of the matter is, experts say the oil supply is not going to last forever. In fact, in the grand scheme of things, it’s going to be dried up fairly quickly. Bury your head in the sand all you want, folks. When it’s gone, it’s GONE.
What has An Inconvenient Truth done? The debate it has sparked is a good thing, but unfortunately it won’t do much to change public policy. Those of us way down here on the political food chain may become more aware, more active an trying to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels; until the entire nation goes through a culture change, we haven’t got a chance. Ask anybody who lives in rural Montana, Texas, Oklahoma, or Florida. Our communities are too de-centralized, public transportation is barely adequate, and cars are practically a requirement to function as a responsible adult.
America could take a major lesson from the United Kingdom, where in spite of the motorcar, many communities still have some kind centralized structure, more dependable (but far from perfect) public transport and services. We need to shift towards a more community-centered town-planning scheme, and start putting out tax dollars to work for US, rather than sending billions overseas for nebulous political objectives. Isolationism is not the answer, but we have a large number of Cold War-era military bases that could be closed in favor of a more America-based defense strategy. Billions could be saved simply by closing the bases and bringing the troops home where they belong.
It will never happen. Sadly, we live in an era where none of our leaders will act to change the status quo until the status quo is impossible to sustain any longer. When it’s too late, they will try to act. They will fail. It’s really as simple as that.
Can we do anything to help ourselves in the meantime? Unfortunately, it will take small pockets of change, independent of any real governmental leadership or assistance. We’re on our own. Forget about the government’s help, they are far too busy monitoring anti-war groups in America to do anything constructive. It’s down to us. In the early days of this country, a group of concerned people banded together to hold the Boston Tea Party. It was an act of rebellion. We need our own, 21st century version of this with regard to petroleum products.
We can’t dump gasoline into the sea, but we can opt to do without it as much as humanly possible. If enough concerned people actively boycott the use of gasoline, we could cause a mini-revolution. It won’t destroy the oil companies; it won’t put them out of business, or overthrow the government. What it WOULD do is get people to stop depending on a non-sustainable energy source and start thinking of new ways to get the old stuff done.
