The Real Picture: The Plot To Put The Environment On The Back Burner...For An Oil Pipeline And More Big Business

The fossil fuel industries gained far too much influence, went on an unregulated and destructive rampage for eight years, yet still fights to suppress alternative and competitive technologies, all for continued and gross self enrichment.

The traditional oil and gas industry either should have started transitioning to investment in green and alternative power a long time ago, or the industry should have been a dying industry. America would not still be getting drawn into a terrible and never ending series of quagmires in the Middle East.

There is no reasonable justification for fighting against innovative green technologies, riparian and land protection programs, energy saving technologies, better product packaging, and better waste management technology.

It makes no sense that the traditional industries demand subsidies for outdated and extremely unsound technologies, business schemes, and policies when their excessive profits could have gone to developing alternative energy and environmentally sound programs.

Instead, the propaganda machines have become rude and obnoxious. The noise machines never shut up with the sneering and jeering and throwing labels like "tree hugger" and "liberal".

As if hugging a tree or being a liberal is a bad thing.

Why is there pressure to put more of our coastlines, precious open spaces, and priceless waterways at risk of more BP Oil Spills and more flaming water taps?

Why is there a push for what is a clearly environmentally unsound and economically unfeasable oil pipline from Canada when that same investment of time and money can go into vastly improved alternative power, waste recycling, and land management programs?

Those projects are far more likely to create lasting jobs, opportunities for developing even more effective alternative power systems, and the probability of a great repair to the damage that has been done to the economy.

And who did that damage? The same entities that are demanding even more subsidies, influence, power and deregulation now. They have the nerve to demand that the American people kill their competition for them and that we pay for their never ending greed and ambition.

America is ruled by our outdated coal, coal oil, natural gas, and fossil fuel based business model. This is a business model that that should be in retreat while alternative energy models should be advancing.

The corporation as a person needs to be extincted, and the B-School tactics of the past twenty years need to be whacked.

The question rises: What else should be working its way toward the front burners during hard economic times?

Should the environment be in the forefront of new development, or should America keep up with the business-as-usual approach? The answer is a resounding NO! (This is not a typo. The answer is just not that simple.)

New and alternative technologies are no longer a luxury to be enjoyed by well financed research and development cabals or the academic crowds who never get the funding to actually do anything. Progress, not more theory, is needed and it is needed now.

America and the industrialized world is in dire need of advancement into alternative power infrastructures, vastly and rapidly reduced dependency upon fossil fuels, and progress toward building the nuclear and coal oil free utility infrastructures of the future.

Old school business models have us stuck with oil and gas extraction, nuclear power production, crude oil refining, and combustion engines. All of this continues to threaten the air, land and water, yet the producers get richer and stay free of major liability for the true damages that they cause. British Petroleum will never pay the full costs that will come up from the BP Oil Spill.

This is because the full consequences of the BP Oil spill have not yet come up.

The power grids are a horrific mess. Tens of thousands of quasi government mini empires butt up against each other with little logic or sense beyond the artificial boundaries of municipality, regional expediency, and political power.

The national power grid does not really exist and what there is could never be repaired if a major accident or incident were to occur. No one has millions of transformers or spools of cable, nor is there an army of skilled electricians standing by in the event of a massive grid failure.

Something has got to give and that something should not be the nation or its collective of people.

For-profit industries either create waste or encourage waste generating habits, and they are doing so without contributing to the costs of waste prevention and management solutions that the taxpayer has to finance.

Just look at the shelves that bulge with more and more individual service packaging, thick shoplifting proof plastic, and other grandiose dressings. Nowhere are consumers being encouraged to develop better habits when it comes to purchasing and disposing of the mess.

It might be fun and easy to hand over a quarter cup of applesauce that comes in its own container, but that container has to go somewhere after the applesauce is gone. Incredibly dense plastic might prevent shoplifting theft, but that incredibly dense plastic has to go somewhere once the product is removed. Styrofoam does not degrade, so why is there not more investment in recovering and using Styrofoam after it is no longer useful as packaging?

The product manufacturers need to do a better job of reinventing their packaging programs and they need to spring for innovative and incentive bearing packaging return programs.

Product manufacturers could not care less, especially since they have staffs and servants to hide the mess from their sight. They should each be forced to work in a landfill and to clean up a river bottom or freeway several times a year. Then they can get as up close and personal with their own product packaging as we do.

Another vast problem is that garbage is too mixed for landfill operators to sort it out. As a result, a lot of waste does not get recycled, and landfills can add massive bulk in just weeks.

Give consumers an incentive to return all kinds of washed plastic to recycling centers. If millions of people collect soda bottles and return them, then why can't those people also collect that horrible plastic packaging that comes with cakes and earphones and jewelry, and turn it in by the pound for the recycling payments?

Invest in businesses that are better at bypassing the landfills by sorting, managing and recycling clean plastic and Styrofoam waste. If homes can be built out of discarded tires, Styrofoam and soda bottles, then why not take the process farther and subsidize some industry?

If a decent little garden can be planted in a used warehouse pallet, then what about other containers that could be repurposed for personal and urban farming?

It is possible that landfills will be far less bulky if better sorting and recycling can be incentivized. But nothing good will happen until the "little guy" gets a workable set of rules, some opportunities, and a modest financial incentive.

Feel free to write about or comment about any suggestions or ideas that you have!

Here are a few priorities for the next two decades:

Whack the idea of an oil pipeline that would stretch from Canada to (guess where?) Texas. The nation must grow up and stop diverting our national treasure to Texas oil and gas interests. There is no way that all of the land between Canada and Texas should be put at risk, just to enrich Texas.

Restore government oversight, research, development, and regulation of industries that pollute or create waste.

Do not let the corporate proselytizers repetitively chant us into "less government" so that they, themselves can become the government! This has been going on for decades and it is time for the backwash. The rest of us are finished if that ever happens, and it could happen this year.

Chant something back. Put your ideas in the comments and they will be added here if they are serious.

Restore the best riparian, wild land and cropland preservation programs. Hire the thousands of bright and unemployed American college graduates who are perfectly qualified to run those programs.

Create long lasting and career jobs that get necessary things done. Stop pushing temporary, low skill construction jobs that are geared toward building oil pipelines. Those temporary jobs will only enrich you know who at the expense of you know who else.

Let the fossil fuel industry go into decline. Free the nation and the world from dependency upon and embroilment in wars and support for brutal and unstable middle eastern oligarchies.

Design and build those solar and wind powered electrical grids. Grow that silicon. Build those solar panels large and small until as much power as possible is cheap enough to be clean, mobile, and locally or privately owned.

Establish a new infrastructure that will provide clean and massive power on a regional and national basis. This would put people to work in career jobs, construction jobs and a host of related jobs as a new electronic freeway is built, above ground and under ground.