The Enemy Within

As i read more of the blame game about the Deepwater Horizon conflagration and blowout, I thought of the famous quotation of Pogo by cartoonist walt kelly which ran on Earth Day back in 1970. The cartoon is shown above.

The Gulf Coast beaches could easily be substituted for the T-rashed forest. The beaches would be covered with a stinking slurry of dead fish, birds and axle grease along with the aroma of sour gas topped off with an assortment of plastic water bottles.

"The more things change the more they stay the same" crosses my mind, a quotation as old as time, attributed to many, but first seen by me in french as a student and I thought how we seem doomed to repeat history.

Because of voter fixation on emotional wedge issues to the exclusion of serious problems, Americans elect fools instead of statesmen. Not surprisingly, our elected official allow corporate CEO's to walk away with the gold mine, leaving us the shaft. But Americans love it until tragedy strikes. Even then, they continue to sink deeper into the abyss as they plunge down the primrose path of deregulation and anarchy.

You can't have cheap gas and sun on a clean beach and eat the fish simultaneously.

Americans will decide at the poles soon.

So this Memorial Day, consider how much oil and mercury you want to feed your kids at the cookout and how many eyes your grandkids might have at birth and where they may be located, not to mention the diminished size of their brains.

We can have hydrocarbons, but we might have to pay more to avoid being destroyed by the industry that provides them.

unc steve