Industry is sabotaging the future of our planet
Dear Editor:
Wake up, America!
Americans waste more energy than most people on this planet use.
We, who are less than 5 percent of the world's population and use 25 percent of the world's resources, could, by conservative estimates, cut our fossil fuel consumption by 25 percent by conservation alone. What a concept!
The Danish Parliament recently agreed to an energy plan that will double, to 50 percent, the share of the nation's electricity coming from wind by 2020, and to be fossil fuel-free by 2050! They plan to decrease energy consumption while still growing economically. Are Danes just innately smarter than Americans?
Agreement — another foreign concept to Americans! It's 2013! Every ecosystem on the planet is stressed and we can't get a clean energy policy out of Congress! We should keep ravaging the planet, devastating the very water, air and land we need for life, so we can waste and squabble? People are sick, our planet is sick. Our planet is FINITE — how hard is that to understand?
One example of why we are in this crisis — this became known as the "Great American Streetcar Scandal." For several years a number of large corporations, including General Motors, Fire-stone Tire, Standard Oil of California, and Phillips Petroleum, operating secretly through front organizations, conspired to purchase streetcar systems in 45 major U.S. cities. The consortium proceeded to completely dismantle the trolley systems, ripping up their tracks and tearing down their overhead wires.They were indicted in 1947 on federal antitrust charges. Eventually they were found guilty. Amazingly, the executives who secretly contrived and carried out the demolition of America's light-rail network were fined a grand total of one dollar each. Having destroyed the mass transit network, their competition, the auto and oil companies quickly acquired dominion over the transportation policies of the country, and thus rose the car culture and the abandonment of public transit in the U.S. That was a black event in a long, ugly list of continuing collusions to derail alternative energies and prevent us from being an efficient, conservative people on this planet. The fossil fuel industry got $20.5 billion in federal subsidies in just two years, 2009 and 2010, during the 111th Congressional Session. At last count, I believe there are six fossil fuel lobbyists for every congressperson.
We are being destroyed by the false notion that we cannot do without fossil fuels. This is so much bigger than our valley; this is a world crisis. There is not time to squabble, we need to be pulling in the same direction. It doesn't matter if you believe there is a human component to climate change or not — our air is polluted, our waters run with oil, pharmaceuticals, fossil fuel agricultural pesticides and herbicides, radioactivity. ... Isn't that enough to understand that it is time for unprecedented change? This is not about fossil fuel necessity, this is not about jobs — of course clean energy would create jobs! If we don't save this planet who will? Shell Oil, ExxonMobil, BP, SGI, Gunnison Energy?
Let's get the arrogant industries that have sabotaged our clean future out of the driver's seat and place the bar high for what is possible for future generations on this beautiful Earth.
Phyllis Swackhamer
Paonia