THE CONNECTEDNESS OF THINGS

WHAT REALLY BOTHERS ME is judging how best to react to a crisis like the great BP Oil Spill. This is a US located disaster and quite a few of the readers of this Blog live far away. Even here in Painted Post, in Upper New York State, it is hard to grasp the gigantic effects of this disaster on the life and ecology this is having and will continue to have. On the other hand, it is hard indeed not to feel some sense of connection to it. Why are BP and similar companies drilling for oil off-shore in the Gulf of Mexico? There some 50,000 drilling sites abound, over half of them capped, abandoned, and un-monitored; only some 600 are related to BP activity. We hardly need to be told this is a risky business in terms of human lives; when I fill up at the local service station it is hard not to think of eleven lives vanished at Deepwater Horizon. In terms of financial risk oil drilling cost billions and only relatively few exploration holes become productive. The per barrel extraction costs keep rising and the amount of oil reserves found keep falling. Yet still we drill for drill we must; and the reason we must is that the demand for petroleum products will continue to rise as more internal combustion vehicles come on the world increasing number of highways.

What can we do? One possible response is outlined in an NY Times OpEd article, This Time It Is Different (June 12, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/opinion/13friedman.html) in which Thomas Friedman quotes a letter to the editor written by a friend to his local paper. In part, his friend says, "Here's the bottom line: if we want to end our oil addiction, we, as citizens, need to pony up: bike to work, plant a garden, do something. So again, the oil spill is my fault. I'm sorry. I have not done my part." However true this may be, it is far too simple a 'mea culpa'. A large proportion of the working population have been seduced into living far from their work place and must rely on owning and using a car to get to and from from work. The construction of modern suburbs prevents students from walking or riding bikes to and from school and recreation. It is far cheaper to buy a tomato at the supermarket that to grow one at home, even including the cost of driving. Besides, what I do or don't do is a drop in the bucket compared with what others don't do and do.

Maybe a growing consciousness about the cost of things is needed. Perhaps I should think about the eleven dead at Deepwater Horizon when I gas up my car, or the 29 coal miners dead in Pennsylvania when I turn on the light. Or the 35 to 47 $Billion the oil industry receives each year so that I can have relatively cheap gasoline that makes it possible for me to make four trips downtown a week instead of three, or two.

Today I saw a documentary ('Blood, Sweat, and T-Shirts') in which six young Brits went to India to work in the clothing industry that supplies Europe's fashion shops, living and working in the same conditions as Indian workers. It was a trying and testing experience in which they discovered the harsh discipline workers must endure, that the 'bargain' costing 15 Pounds at home resulted in 33 Rupees (about US$0.45) to the worker who assembled it and who must make 16 garments a day to scape together enough for the necessities of life. In the globalization made possible by cheap oil, garments purchased on 'the cheap' in the developed world, worn once or twice before being discarded, mean a cheap life for those who make them.

Discovering the world beyond what is under our nose can be a shocking experience. Caught up in the web of our own existence, we struggle to understand how things might be different for others if we changed our own behavior. Things might be worse, not better...how can we know?

A couple of things stand out for me. We need to be a lot smarter about how the world of economics and politics 'works' and those of us who are finding out more need to spread the word so as to influence our 'masters and betters'.

Just now, in Australia, in last weekend's election, the governing party may have lost power because it dropped the ball on action to combat global warming. Here in the US, we face the awful consequences of an oil disaster that could have been prevented by better regulation and administration of the industry. Perhaps we are beginning to realize that, for democracy to appear, citizens need to be well versed over issues, to take time from Fox news and 'reality TV' and get busy 'googling'. Maybe we need a Church of the Environment, a religion of the Internet to rescue us from ageing political slogans, and...who knows what?