The Gulf Oil Spill

This is my take on the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico: We are all to blame. Yes, BP is the devil incarnate -- all oil companies are. And BP needs to be held fully accountable for its actions. But none of the oil companies would exist without a consumer base. Let me repeat that statement: British Petroleum would not exist without a consumer base. Therefore, all oil-consumers are to blame for this disaster. That means all of us. Everyone. Everything each of us purchases on a day-to-day basis is to some degree reliant on oil, whether it's gasoline at the pump, a bed that has been transported to the store, vegetables that were grown with fertilizers, or anything made of rubber or plastic. There are degrees of guilt, to be sure. But to focus on BP as the sole cause of this problem is to reduce this situation to an oversimplified farce. This is what the Age of Machines comes down to: In the end, WE, the consumers and peoples of the world, must realize that WE are responsible for the degradation of the planet. WE could put all evil corporations out of business today, if WE stopped playing the consumer game. The oil companies are proxies for our own greed and ignorance.

Let me add that industrial disasters of this magnitude are logically bound to happen, and statistically probable, with the amount of oil drilling going on in the world today. We all know this. Unfortunately, we pretend that they are unexpected and unlikely occurrences, because we get away with industrial murder day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, without suffering the true consequences. Time to wake up.

The Hopi prophesies contain a vision in which the oceans turn black and some kind of death - a virus? - emerges from them. I can't help but wonder if this disaster portends their vision.

Eek.

Back to the garden!