CHEAP OIL IS KILLING US

"This is a sign to Louisiana. This is a sign to the entire Gulf. It is a sign to all humanity.

We need to get back in harmony with God's Creation.

We were meant to coexist with and live off nature -- not treat it as the enemy, not annihilate it (in the name of short-term profits).

Nowhere in America was as contaminated.

Now it reaps what it has sown. I remember the eerie feeling, watching helicopters lifting off pads on the delta to head for the offshore rigs, which have no place there.

This is a moral issue. It isn't a political issue. It is not a tree-hugging issue. This isn't a liberal issue. It should be a conservative (conservation) issue. It also should be a pro-life issue. A recent study startled the nation by saying that we have no real idea what the tens of thousands of chemicals we now use may do to us because few of them have been tested before companies were allowed to go ahead in the name of the economy and disperse them. The lowest estimate is that they cause at least six percent of all cancers (the figure is undoubtedly far higher).

Just think a moment (and pray for more than a moment) about the cancer rates."
Spirit Daily

I agree with the sentiment above. We must exploit nature to live but we don't have to work against it or destroy it. The question though is how we disentangle ourselves from the life we've built?

We can live like the crazed tree huggers would like us to live by going back to our caves, teepees or log cabins in some sort of idealized Utopian existence that never was and never can be. Or we can continue to live in a false, oil driven world of cheap energy and disconnect from our nature and nature itself. We can continue to pretend that somehow a system that causes the average meal to travel 1500 miles to reach the plate of the diner is sustainable. We can pretend that supporting slave societies in places like China is justified as long as we can buy cheap shoes. We can agree that a constant state of war is a good thing as long as the oil flows and the jobs in the defense industry are available.

Or maybe there's a third way, a way that makes sense on a human scale. Maybe we can use technology and combine it with sustainable activities and choices ordered towards local economies. Maybe if we would start to think about our families, communities, counties, states and federal government, in that order, and focus on fixing the problems closest to us, maybe we could find solutions to the larger problems created by globalism and oil.

Disconnect from the system as much as possible. Make your family as independent as you can. Then help your neighbors do the same thing. Create neighborhoods that can stand by themselves, islands of independence that don't rely on the outside world. This won't be easy and we may never completely unhook from the grid (I define the grid as something more than just power but all the controls placed upon us by governments that violate our basic individual rights) but to the extent we can we gain freedom for ourselves and our neighbors.

We need energy, period. The thing is, oil isn't the only or best source of it. We need to join our independent little communities together in our counties and states and push for the use of nuclear, natural gas and coal. I know, they all have some downsides but there isn't anything that doesn't. We need energy to cook and heat our homes at the very least. I don't know about you but I kind of like electricity, too.

Nuclear has a long record of safety. It is clean and we ain't going to run out of it. Natural gas is abundant, really, really abundant, clean burning and it wouldn't take that much effort to convert our cars and trucks over to it. Coal is the bald headed step child in this trio because it is dirty and it is the old technology. However, we can burn it cleanly and it does produce a lot of energy and we've got more of it than any other place in the world. And it won't leak out and destroy the ground it's mined in.

We need to take advantage of our technology and use it wisely. Why do white collar workers that sit at computers all day long to perform their jobs have to drive to an office? With broadband internet they should be working from home. Think of the energy that would save. No commute and no office building. Of course this would cause a massive shift in our economy. If everyone stays home we won't need all the restaurants. People won't buy as many clothes and shoes. Starbucks will get killed. Car sales would drop.

However, local communities would get a boost. There would be a demand for local merchants to supply the items that we need since we wouldn't be traveling around town all the time. The money saved by staying home could be spent on something besides energy, helping to create new jobs to offset the ones that were lost.

And most importantly our focus would be on our communities, the places that most affect our lives and where we have the most control. If we strengthen our families and then our communities everything else will fall in place. Regardless of what our political leaders would like us to believe, power comes from the bottom and flows up, not the other way around.

Cheap oil has ruined families, communities, countries and now with the leak in the Gulf it has the potential to ruin the very system that supports our life. We need to bear whatever the cost is to break away from it, if not for us for future generations.