The BP Spill

The BP Spill

The BP Oil Spill is but the thief that got caught. Oil and other fossil fuels are filthy businesses and the constant seepage, spills, runoff, environmental stripping and small, unreported disasters are ongoing.

This BP Spill is a precursor for the drilling industry that is constantly going deeper, taking larger risks to extract the oil that is further from our more conventional grasps.

One wonders how much truth we are being told. Of course what is being heard is what most want to hear, and what the oil industry wants everyone to hear: that technology saved the day and that all is under control and always will be, as the news media commits to “case solved” and the plight of the fishing industry and the lives of the folks on the gulf gets left behind in their coverage.

Any why do we take such risks? And why do we wage aggressive war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and rattle “our” sabers at Iran? So that we can carelessly glide from destination to destination as our privileged imperial ownership caste where our only real job is to consume what each other own?

Oil is a precious resource and one that should be used wisely. Oil heats our homes, oil would be very useful in a humane agricultural system, oil products can cook our food, oil products can be used to generate electricity which, if prudently used, can add much to the quality of our lives. Oil products are used for the creation of durable goods and as feedstock for other valuable uses.

But, people of the USA squander over 15 million barrels a day of oil equivalent to fuel their mindless forays of consumption in personal automobiles. They know no other way. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We could rebuild our neighborhoods and reallocate goods and services accordingly so that the things that people need are available within walking distance of most. Such a program of building/rebuilding village/community/telecommuting centers could not only contribute to a worthwhile goal of reducing personal automobile usage by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years, thereby greatly extending the tail of post-peak fossil fuels for future generations, but would also greatly add to the communitarian, sedentary, quality of life for all.
We need to commit to this as a nation and commit to it right away.

In addition to improving our domestic quality of life, such a commitment and action plan would go a long way to easing geo-political tensions and allow “us” to cease aggressions with oil rich regions and ease the pressure to extract so much carbon fuels, so fast, thus alleviating the ongoing environmental damaging and greatly reducing the chances of large environmental disasters.

Of course, the momentum of the industrial society and currently accepted "growth" imperative will cause the oil industry to try to maximize oil revenues, therefore production and consumption, and thus environmental degradation and sooner long-term, sustaining fuel shortages. The only solution to this problem, that I can see, is the nationalization of the oil companies and their associated industries, with production scheduling co-ordinated with a full fledge demand side management plan.

The Environment

I'll answer that question about "humans"

Man has evolved, the ultimate here in the State(s), I think, to be the lowest, the most base, most destructive lifeform that ever inhabited this great great great...planet.

I love people, nonetheless, and I concur with the original intentions of Genesis, concerning dominion, yet not to the point that we so terribly squander and abuse. Remember, Genesis also said "replenish the earth". Oh I think the holy rollers, will conveniently (7/11, etc) omit that part.

The environment is everything. The environment is each individual and their relationship to their environment. The environment is not an issue, it is THE issue.

Peace.

Health Reform - Posted to New York Times Blog

(For those of you visiting from the the New York Times blog, there are other posts related to health care reform below).

As a veteran of the health insurance "cost containment" and “managed care” movements and a student of the health care "industry", I have seen from the inside the inefficiencies of the health payment system and the ineffective and bloated bureaucracies of Managed Care (on both the payer and provider sides of the equation)..

A single payer system (a world single payer would be the ideal), with regional administration units, would reduce health care costs by eliminating profit from the system, greatly reduce costs by eliminating marketing costs and by the streamlining of huge redundancies in administration systems. A single payer system would also allow for a capitated non-profit delivery system where Physicians could triage care unencumbered. But this is only a third of the picture.

A second third of the problem is the rampant abuse (perhaps much or some of it is well intentioned) and fraud associated with the profit driven medical industrial complex and the associated revenue and job security needs of the provider community.

Instituting a non-profit HMO system with careful medical protocols, could allow us to slowly, orderly, and healthily bring the leviathan costs associated with medical care delivery way down.

The third piece, and it is a huge one, is environmental and public health.

Thank you.