Individuals who work out west in the oil sands are hard working people, they often times leave their families to work long hours and get all dirty just so a few companies can reap billions from the average consumer. If you think your life would surely change without fossil fuels, well your right, because the tentacles of the oil industry knows no limit within our society. From infrastructure to political donations, you can bet that someone either directly linked or as apart of a subsidiary was responsible for the intervention of some political decision that lead to more oil friendly acts.
Do not get me wrong though, I stand by the belief that energy extraction is not an easy job and resembles an art form almost given the complexities related to it. Lets focus on the art aspect of gasoline and oil in general though...while society relies on this earthly art to keep our economies going, it really pains me to know that every time I fill up, I am literally taking a match to a Mona Lisa. I mean the similarity between your average gasoline and an irreplaceable piece of art really is quite strong. While you may think oil is here to stay, your simply becoming a victim of a well thought out illusion that is killing your wallet and your mind.
I keep thinking about how awesome it must have felt when the first pieces of plastic were successfully recycled and expropriated into something else. That feeling that arises when human technology makes a leap and is able to reproduce an extremely complex natural system with an innate and lifeless object like plastic. And if you listen to a lot of the pro-oil comments, our society relies on oil for a multitude of other items aside from internal combustion. Really, if anything internal combustion is probably the main culprit to climate change, global warming, pollution, whatever you want to call it.
We are creating a problem for not only our current society, but also future ones simply because we allow the problem to exist in our head and within our paradigm of thought. The development of the world is heading in such a drastic and uncertain future and it is all because we as a species cannot come to the conclusion that something really has to be done. Maybe we need a natural disaster to remind us or we need to run out of oil entirely, even though we do not have the time to get that far.
An interesting direction that will most likely become the dominant one is technology. Human beings love technology as it makes the world spin faster and allows us to live longer, but at the same time we are conveniently fed a lot of information that also allows us to ignore the true price associated with technology.
Why must we burn gasoline to make our cars move?
Take a moment and really think about this for a few seconds. Why do we have to rely on taking a fuel source that is not indefinite and burning transforming it into something harmful to us, just so we have the ability to live within a society designed by the very people making their riches from said fuel source?It is not like you can go out and buy an electric car, because we all know the ones that do exist only do so with an unrealistic price tag and any other efforts to introduce them continues to be bought up and put away for an indefinite period of time.
Why can we not continue to do what we do everyday and advance it to a newer and more complex level. Take fossil fuels and transform it, not into fuel for combustion, but rather into something we can hold in our hands and use in our everyday life, but more importantly something we can discard into a system that will break it down and reuse it again. Oil will still be just as important as it is today, maybe even more so as it becomes more complex and widely used, while at the same time our environment is given a chance to breathe, literally.
We recycle various types of plastics currently, which are all in some part products of oil production. Take this plastic recycling to the next level and push for the R&D to not only build more complex polymers or plastics, but also institute systems that recycle them and thus extend their use.
The best example currently is the copious amounts of plastic that the average Canadian has to deal with regarding products from China. It seems like every single cheaply made Chinese product has to be mega wrapped in most useless and frustrating plastic container possible and you know most people end up throwing this stuff out, whether out of ignorance or frustration as opposed to recycling it.
Stephen Harper should not be surprised by the backlash he is receiving from Canadians regarding oil production and this new pipeline. The will to change is very strong in Canada, actually I should rephrase it to the will to evolve. Canadians are progressive in nature, we know when something can be better and we aren't afraid to take the leap and make that better change a reality, but every so often we are confronted with a political party that does not have the will to change, mainly because the status quo is promising them a lot of money like big oil is today.
While oil production will net a huge financial benefit in the short term, the long term chances of contamination, disaster or simply the chance to miss out on an opportunity that someone else grabs is still to much. We need to continue being an example to the world and showing them that change is possible.
If Canadians are showing an overwhelming desire to change the direction of their country, the government should be taking notes and working at the grass roots to accommodate that change.
Forget about offering first nations the chance to be trained in resource extraction, how about redirecting the money already provided into drinkable water, schools or medical training? Is Harper's opinion of them so low that he can only think of using them as pawn within the oil sands?
I simply ask one request of you the reader, if you agree with what I am saying...please share this blog post so others can not only read it, but also get in on the discussion.
The Political Road Map is here to help you evaluate where you are, where your heading and ask if your country is heading in the same direction you are?
We need to have this discussion now, because time is running out, that is all there is to it.
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