On oil consumption

The oil disaster is merely another inconvenient truth to some. Unlike Al Gore, I don't need graphs and scientific evidence to prove that this is a problem. There is oil everywhere. We are seeing the birds, turtles and fish that are suffering. It's blatantly obvious... When we are watching,

"Out of sight out of mind" is a great way to exercise apathy, but the fact remains that this oil disaster is happening every day, all day, even when we turn off the news. There are massive pods of oil underwater that we aren’t seeing. The light needed to sustain microscopic life underwater isn’t getting there. The food chain is threatened from algae to the small fish that eat it, to birds that eat small fish, to big fish... Every "link" in the chain depends on the link below it. I know it's not easy to remember that when we are filling our cars, SUV's and ski-boats with gas and oil. There doesn't seem to be a connection to most people.

Fortunately thousands of people are coming together to do something, anything, within their ability. Coming together as a culture is necessary. Pointing fingers is not. Why is it that only in the wake of catastrophe that we can see that we’re in this whole “life” thing together? Millions have seen James Cameron's film Avatar. It illustrates a valid and timely point about closed mindedness, selfishness and their relation to culture.

What this boils down to is that this should never have been able to happen. We all made it possible. The days of the Beverly Hillbillies praising the "bubblin' crude" are over. The times, they are a changin'. This is serious. People's way of life has been destroyed. Ecosystems we depend on are deteriorating. We've known that something like this could happen. We've seen disasters caused by oil companies before. We know that large corporations sometimes cut corners to maximize profits for themselves and their shareholders. Yet we continue to go through gasoline like it's water. Not to mention that plastics come from petroleum.

It's not the Governments job to drop everything and babysit oil companies. It's not just big business that needs to clean up their act and stop being careless for higher profit. All of us need to play a role. The top dogs have to actually do something instead of playing games. We the people, the ones the top dogs would call "the little people" have to act as well. Our culture and everyone involved will have to make a change here and there if we want a continued quality of life. We demand that they give us oil, this is what happens.