The Maw of Our Desire

29 April 2010

The television screen sobs with the bereaving families of the workers lost in our industrial accidents; we glance, feel a touch of sympathy, and continue our days. The similarities among the recent hydrocarbon blow-outs bear some resemblance. Just as the voracious demand for drugs in one country fuels a ruthless genocide in another, so our thirst for hydrocarbons prompts this loss of life and habitat despoliation (that would be our habitat, btw.) From time immemorial, peons have been expendable in the service of the ruling classes, and so it remains. The media thrives on soap opera, which allows it to ignore the real drama, and we follow blithely along. We pause briefly in pity for the women in Louisiana and West Virginia, two of the poorest states in the USA, but give little thought to our culpability, or the devastation wreaked on our survival systems.

As I write, a hole on the ocean floor gushes vast quantities of petroleum into that ecosystem, while a “state of the art” robot will try in vain to plug it. Meanwhile, the wind will shift and blow the goo to shore, thus creating, horror of horrors, an unsightly mess. God forbid that we be discomfited by the detritus of our appetites, god forbid our ocean views be obstructed by apparati that might obviate the pollution. We would rather defer payment upon our children than curtail the slaking of our thirst. Like vampires, our consumer society sucks the essence from the planetary systems that support us, without consideration for those that slave to produce the goods or the debt being foisted upon our grandchildren.