America's Gasoline Dangerously Inexpensive

Oil's true cost: cheap gas kills the Earth and diminishes society

Gasoline in America is dangerously inexpensive, threatening the ruin of society and the environment.  Consumers generally have little idea how much fueling their automobile actually costs, or the impacts it has on national security, the environment, their health, and their quality of life.

America's current national outrage over gasoline prices that remain historically low is ill-advised.  Car owners must recognize that government subsidies to petroleum companies and users, and environmental, health, and social costs associated with gasoline use, place the real cost of gasoline at around $10 a gallon - or at least five times current prices. 

Factors not reflected in the price of gas include the destruction of 60 million year old rainforests and other ecosystems during exploration and drilling, military adventurism to secure supplies, marine oil spills during transport, unprecedented climate change as consumed, and political corruption throughout - to say nothing of crashes, pollution, noise and congestion. 

Energy prices, climate change, terrorism and childhood asthma are all symptomatic of the same problem - overdependence upon oil, a polluting and finite resource.  And oil is simply not worth killing for - yet this is precisely what is being done in Iraq. 

American over-consumption of artificially cheap oil and other sources of natural capital - notably water and land - has fueled a huge and precarious bubble economy that will eventually unravel.  Implications of the bubble's burst will depend upon actions taken now to reduce and eventually eliminate petroleum products as the basis of our society.

America and the rest of the industrialized world's prosperity are based upon unsustainable rates of energy consumption.  Americans are 4% of the world population, yet consume about 25% of the world's petroleum - much going towards feeding their automobiles.  Oil provides transportation, grows our food, and provides warmth and cooling - though there are alternatives.

Europeans and others have routinely paid twice the amount Americans pay for oil.  Are Americans so exceptionally noble of mind and character that ever cheaper oil in real terms is our birthright - while the rest of the World must be content as lesser beings using less energy for which they pay more?

Many Americans have become lazy and addicted to mechanized mobility, believing it their right to drive a small room sized vehicle whenever and wherever they wish, and at the expense of massive government subsidies and the natural ecosystems upon which life depends.  And as a result, the American government has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil oligarchy - government for, by and of the petro-pigs.

If Americans are unwilling or unable to come to terms with their petro-addiction, they deserve the profound societal ills that will follow the bursting of the petro-bubble economy.  If every last bit of oil is to be ripped from the Earth and burned before alternatives are seriously pursued, large natural ecosystems and the global atmosphere will cease to function in the manner they have throughout history.   A post-petroleum World will face widespread poverty, persistent environmental problems and a dearth of energy adequate to meet basic needs.

Breaking the deadly addiction of cheap oil will require that consumers eventually see the entire cost of burning gasoline reflected in the price they pay at the pump.  Only then will it prove more difficult to ignore the harmful effects that their addiction has to the Earth, society and their children's prospects.  Only then will alternative means of energy be competitive and flourish.

Clearly gasoline prices can not immediately rise to their true cost to society and the Earth.  But rise steeply they must.  An initial 50 cent a gallon increase in the federal tax on gasoline would result in more conservation and decreased oil consumption.  Carbon and other energy taxes need not increase the overall tax burden - as income taxes should be reduced by an equal amount. 

A steady, incremental incorporation of external costs into energy prices is exactly the stimulus needed to promote conservation, energy independence and renewable alternatives.  And a whole slew of other benefits will follow such as less international conflict, more intact ecosystems, and more livable communities.

Though only a few generations old, not many Americans can imagine a non-automobile centered society or community.  It is time to take back our cities, by designing people centered communities, where the needs of roads and cars are secondary.  Americans must set an international example of moderation in the use of petroleum resources - striving for efficiency - before the rest of the World mimics our gross wastefulness.

Sustainable living is about reducing your energy use: live close to where you work, travel using your feet and bike as a first priority, buses and trains when possible, and a rented fuel-efficient car when necessary.  Kill you car while coming alive personally.  If America can not learn to live as though oil is dear, our addiction will soon cost us our and the Earth's future.

Living as if the Earth Matters

Why you are responsible for Climate Change and the Western drought, and what you can do about it

Think environmentalists are a bunch of whacked out hippie communists?  Perhaps some.  However, if you eat, drink, breathe or crap - what they know and espouse has importance to you and your children's lives, indeed, your very existence. 

Dark Greens realize that the Earth's processes and life diversity are required to maintain ecosystems and all aspects of human life.  Forests, water, the atmosphere and oceans remain in a delicate balance that provides the conditions for life. 

Perhaps nowhere are failing ecosystems more readily evident and acute than the western United States.  The region, including California, is in the grips of a severe drought and annual large forest fires - the result of climate change, poor land use, faulty water management and over-population.

The response thus far from the Oil Presidency is to heavily log the forests so they don't burn - his "Healthy Forests" initiative, and to propose massive rollbacks of air pollution rules - the likewise Orwellian "Clear Skies" program.  And he has turned his back on climate change by rejecting the Kyoto Treaty while offering no alternatives. 

President Bush has no grasp of ecological fundamentals, and rules as if the Earth has no value.  These programs are a fraud being waged upon the American people and environment for the benefit of industry.  How could fragmented, over-managed, dry forests that are fire adapted do anything but burn? 

The not so Wild West's ecosystems have been severely degraded and are nearing collapse.  It is wrong to spend millions of dollars to fight fires every year.  When possible, let them burn.  Fires are an integral part of the region's natural history and are responsible for ecosystem regeneration including making healthy, natural baby forests.

A more effective approach to Western drought and forest fires would emphasize land use planning, reduced logging, restoration of old-growth forests, and an aggressive national climate change policy.  Residential sprawl into forested areas must be restricted, fragmented landscapes reconnected through targeted restoration activities, and degraded forests allowed to regenerate - thinning and burning naturally as they mature and acquire late successional old-growth characteristics.

Solutions exist.  All Americans and other affluent nations are going to have to change the way they live.  Sprawling automobile dependent suburbs will give way to compact walking communities - with smaller houses and cars, but a larger sense of community and well-being. 

There are a myriad of personal actions all persons - particularly the affluent - must take to achieve personal ecological sustainability.  Choose quality over quantity of consumption.  There are many ways to consume wisely including buying compact fluorescent lightbulbs and using 100% recycled paper.  Have fewer children, no more than two.  Buy and love a piece of land, and help it to rest and restore itself.

Our cumulative actions have caused climate change and fragmented forests, leading to the present crisis in the West and elsewhere.  Only immediate remedial action on all of our parts will repair failing ecosystems.  These and other measures can be taken now while affluence is relatively high and sustainable options to achieve a comfortable and meaningful life abound, or they can be made under duress as ecosystems fail in times of great scarcity, limited options, and civil strife.

It is not simply whether our civilization survives.  How will we do so?  Will it be through imperial militarism and pillaging of other countries, or by reforming our excessive consumption and becoming more efficient?  Will we restrict freedoms, or enlarge them?  Will there be prosperity for the few, or the many?

Global ecological sustainability depends upon diffusion of a new code of conduct.  Respecting and caring for the Earth must become the highest judge of an individual and the merit of their actions.  Living for and of the Earth must become the foundation of an honorable new way of life. 

The Earth is truth and beauty and sacred.  The Earth is God.

As the West and Earth burns, the Emperor fiddles and bombs.  Failure to recognize, acknowledge and reform your life's impacts upon the Earth makes you the petro-bomber's second fiddle, and implicates you in the burning and demise of Gaia.

Living as if the Earth matters, indeed, is worthy of reverence, must be your code of conduct and become the fundamental organizing principle of society.

Today in America - Conservative Fascism and Environmental Decline

Key American Ideals Are in Conflict with the Earth and Other Nations

America - land of plenty as well as the free and brave - is pursuing military solutions to environmental scarcity.  The American lifestyle depends upon tremendous resource inputs from the rest of the world.  Accessing these resources; i.e. oil, timber and minerals, while marketing the American lifestyle, products and morals - including cars, Coca-Cola and Britney Spears - is a major cause of global conflict.  America's war on terror has become a masquerade that seeks to maintain a level of affluence at the point of a gun that the Earth cannot sustainably provide, and does little to identify and address the most serious underlying threats to global security. 

For example, four percent of the world's population cannot consume twenty-five percent of its oil without conflict.  Some one billion humans live with chronic hunger, while being bombarded with American marketing/propaganda that highlights the good life to be found in democratic consumption.  Billions more eke out a meager living in landscapes scarred by industrial capitalism and terrorized by American corporate client governments. 

It is far from certain that democratic capitalism can provide plentiful, equitable, just and sustainable livelihoods to the world's teeming masses.  Islamic and other revolutionary responses capture well the frustrated aspirations of those that know only grinding poverty, violence, environmental damage, and life outside of the American safe zone of conspicuous consumption.  Unmet human need, environmental decline and an absence of justice in the face of American opulence and power fuels criminal acts of terror.

The American lifestyle is not currently sustainable - nor can it ever be universalized to the global population.  Institutionalized over-consumption has caused looming ecological crises of mammoth proportions - including collapse of terrestrial ecosystems, water scarcity, climate change, and ocean dead zones - that threaten the existence of key human habitats and thus the very ecological foundation of being. 

Perspective is dreadfully lacking in post-911 America.  Loss of life in the attacks upon New York by a band of Islamic criminals, while horrific, is less than how many humans die each day from lack of clean water - a situation that is easily reconciled with modest investments.  This is an example of environmental failures that are killing now and will do so more in the future.

American style liberal democracy - one of the greatest political philosophies of all time, particularly in terms of individual and minority rights - has been nearly totally usurped by conservative fascism, an unholy alliance of government, business interests and Christian fanatics.  Islamic and Christian fanaticism are two sides of the same coin - forcing ones spirituality upon others, and seeking power to do so.

In particular, outdated resource oligarchies responsible for so much environmental and social damage (big oil with a Bush mouthpiece) have successfully lead a coup de tat to gain control of America's federal government, and have preemptively launched an imperial war under false pretenses to protect their narrow interests.  America's military adventures may keep the oil spigot flowing a bit longer, but at the cost of 1) continued global economic inequities which breed terrorism and 2) further pushing the Earth's environment past its capacity to support humanity well. 

How then should America address the connected issues of conservative fascism, ecological sustainability and criminal terrorism?  First of all, the body politic must come to terms with the war criminal George Bush.  One act by a bunch of lunatic thugs does not legitimize further crimes against humanity including unilateral perma-war, erosion of civil liberties (spying on citizens and indefinite detentions), nor corporate welfare at the expense of environmental protections. The reign of a tyrant must be ended and America's recent past critically examined, as many nations including Germany, Japan, Italy and France have done in the past.

America's future freedom, material well-being, and safety from a world that hurts, depends upon dramatic political, economic, social and environmental reform.  The following agenda would provide a start towards a demilitarized and environmentally sustainable future, devoid of both criminal violence and shocking human misery:

* Immediate military withdrawal by the United States from Iraq, the Middle East and elsewhere.

* Major investments in energy conservation and renewable alternatives; including doubling energy taxes and new car energy efficiency requirements.

* Renewed vigorous support for international legal institutions and tribunals to punish criminal acts of terror, genocide and military adventurism.

* Launch major international initiatives to support community based sustainable development, and to slow and then reduce human population growth through non-coercive means.

* Eliminate corporate subsidies and gradually reduce military expenditures, channeling these resources towards conserving, protecting and renewing the land, air, water and oceans.

At a personal level, in addition for advocating for the above, there are a number of things each American can do to build a plentiful, just, equitable and sustainable future.  Americans must be challenged to develop a personal notion of enoughness.  Such voluntary simplicity distinguishes between consumption for consumption's sake and human needs and reasonable wants, focusing upon quality rather than quantity. 

American citizens' dreadful detachment from the World, as evidenced by lack of geographic knowledge, must be redressed.  The world is a village - and reasonable aspirations of other peoples for a fair share of the wealth, and freedom from the American cultural monolith, are ignored at all our peril.  America must engage with the World non-militarily.

And finally, the author challenges all Americans to reexamine their relation with the Earth.  Human societies and economies are entirely dependent upon the Earth's ecosystems for our biological needs.  We can no longer live as if the air, water, land and oceans are garbage dumps; but instead, must recognize them as human habitats required for life.  Our life.  As goes the Earth will go humanity.