Underscoring once again the dangers of America's unreliable fossil fuel infrastructure, a significant U.S. oil pipeline has been shut down after a leak was reported Monday morning.
People should quite referring to spills and leaks. These are managed terms supplied by major polluters in order to diminish rank destruction of mother Earth by companies that require tax subsidies from regular citizens to make a profit.
Fifty thousand gallons of gasoline gushing into a river is not a child’s spilled glass of milk or leaking bicycle tire.
We know that the endless growth touted as economic progress is unsustainable, but why does no one ever talk about population growth, the driving force of endless growth? The cause of rising demand for resources like oil and the leaking pipelines needed to transport it.
After virtually every one of these spills it announced “There no danger to the public” . How I come to loathe that expression. Birds by the thousands can be coated in oil and killed. Fish and clams and all manner of plant and animal species contaminated and their existence extinguished and ecosystems devastated but all is fine because “there no danger to the Public”.
What Hubris .
Population growth is not the driving force of endless growth. That idea is part of the brainwashing by corporate america to blame environmental destruction on decentralized mostly very small polluting individuals.
Blaming the people rather than those addicted to infinite growth on a finite planet is a ploy to confuse the issue.
Americans and Europeans account for 70% of the world economy, which operates at a 1.5 Earth consumption rate. USers consume at an almost five Earth rate. That means if everyone on Earth lived like USers, the world economy would require almost five Earths for pollution recycling, water table, fish and forest regeneration, etc.
If one examines the US and Europe it is quite evident that only a thin slice of the population are responsible for a vast destruction of earth. Population that consumes at the less than one Earth level can grow in quality of life. Populations that live as the 1% are committing crimes against nature. The 1% who are ghoulish servants to a capitalism that cannot stop growing to infinity on a finite planet are the problem.
BDS all corporation that are destroying Earth. Don’t eat beef or pork. Take the bus or train. Turn your thermostat down. Does the product you are about to buy have any connection the US military, the #1 polluter on Earth? BDS
If this statement from the pipeline company is not an oxymoron, spoken by morons; then I do not know what is!
" The company did not provide the volume spilled, but said there was no danger to the public."
But pipelines make it so much easier to control supply.
More people mean higher demand for cars, food, energy, marine resources, etc., things many want but whose excessive demand destroys our environment. Today products for the masses are provided by large corporations with economies of scale. Which makes me question: are corporations and capitalism the problem, or (aside from the junk they sell and people buy) is the problem the way their profits are distributed to the very few?
“Don’t eat beef or pork. Take the bus or train. Turn your thermostat down. Does the product you are about to buy have any connection the US military, the #1 polluter on Earth? BDS”
Some things would improve if we did that, but others like loss of species diversity from habitat loss from human overpopulation would worsen. And it would take a dictatorship to force people to stop eating beef, pork, take trains, etc. Park biologists understand what happens when for example, there are too many elephants, or rats in an ecosystem. Aren’t humans part of our ecosystem?
Direct Democracy
44 gallons = 1 barrel
There are thousands of animals and birds killed in wildfires and floods, but the television “News” shows end their story with “Thankfully, no one was killed”.
I realize that “pigs” is metaphorical here - but awareness of the inaccuracy relative to reality provides an example of linguistically embedded “externalization of costs” - by rendering an actual creature nothing more than an (inaccurate) instrument of human emoting. You might laugh, but think about this the next time you watch any clips from mainstream media.
Otherwise - can’t fault your argument.
True. Even though the Exxon Valdez spilled millions of gallons of toxic crude into the water, in Prince William Sound, in Alaska, a long time ago and was and is still devastating to the wildlife, and the lively hood of many, never saw where it was deemed a danger to the public!
We all know it is time to end our addiction to fossil fuels. Will we act or will we continue to allow ourselves to be abused by the monied powers that be? Power to the people, power to the tribes on the front lines. Don’t kid ourselves this is war, fought with peaceful protests, strikes, consciousness raising, boycotts and votes.
Every degradation of the environment is a threat to people.
I’ve often wondered if humanity is an infestation on what would ordinarily be a Garden of Eden. Consider, if every human disappeared tomorrow, how many years would it take for the Earth to completely heal?
Of course they break !
All man-made structures deteriorate and eventually fail, from skyscrapers to bridges to hydroelectric dams.
This is a childish headline.
How do we expect to be taken seriously when we talk like children?
We lived in relative harmony with the earth until money was invented.
Protesters think in GENERATIONS.
Corporations think of quarterly ROI.
What you say is very true. Even so your conclusion that population is the problem can only be accepted if one makes an economist’s assumption — Assume the free market is not affected by hundreds of billions of dollars worth of the most professional brainwashing the world has ever known and that each atomized individual is at all times fully aware of every possible alternative choice.
Alternative choices include healing Earth and figuring out how to do autonomous democracy well enough to focus distributed human intelligence and tell very stupid governments that believe their own propaganda exactly what to do.
The world economy requires 1.5 Earths. If everyone lived like USers, the world economy would require five Earths for recharging aquifers, forests, fish stocks, pollution recycling and etc. That number must go below one Earth so that Beaver, Hawk, Elephant and Lyon have a place to live.
So, we get treated to yet another chorus of:
“Don’t Worry, Be Happy, it’s ONLY OIL Gushing out of that pipeline.”
