Biodiversity or Brutal Drilling
Ecuador
allows big oil's exploitation of the Amazon after being widely
neglected for their environmental support by the "civilized" world. In a noble attempt to keep drilling off this pristine forest, President Rafeal Correa vowed to halt polluters if half of the would be profits from drilling the region ($3.6 billion) were raised by the international community. When only $13 million was raised, Correa said "the world has failed us"; and allowed for drilling to start potentially as soon as 2016. @http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/23/ecuador-amazon-yasuni-national-park-oil-drill
It's a tragedy to look at what the oligarchs decide we can and can't afford today. We can "afford" grotesque international and state surveillance systems, expanded military bases, hydraulic fracturing, dangerous nuclear and coal energy and health eroding subsidies to Big Agra & Big Pharma; yet it's considered a waste of one kind of green (money) to protect the far more important kind (the environment). A quote from the ever- insightful intellectual, Noam Chomsky sums it up best "Throughout the world, indigenous societies are struggling to protect what they sometimes call “the rights of nature,” while the civilized and sophisticated scoff at this silliness."
If we are to make an attempt at minimizing the widespread catastrophe climate change is and will be causing, a sincere effort must be put into diverting funding away from the harmful programs listed above and towards conservation and living with less. The illusion that we are entitled to mindless material possessions has wrought much havoc on our ecosystem on which all life relies upon. Too often, in the name of Free Trade or Free Enterprise, we abandon our essential connection with the Earth. It is time for a change of priorities to make us more at ease.
It's a tragedy to look at what the oligarchs decide we can and can't afford today. We can "afford" grotesque international and state surveillance systems, expanded military bases, hydraulic fracturing, dangerous nuclear and coal energy and health eroding subsidies to Big Agra & Big Pharma; yet it's considered a waste of one kind of green (money) to protect the far more important kind (the environment). A quote from the ever- insightful intellectual, Noam Chomsky sums it up best "Throughout the world, indigenous societies are struggling to protect what they sometimes call “the rights of nature,” while the civilized and sophisticated scoff at this silliness."
If we are to make an attempt at minimizing the widespread catastrophe climate change is and will be causing, a sincere effort must be put into diverting funding away from the harmful programs listed above and towards conservation and living with less. The illusion that we are entitled to mindless material possessions has wrought much havoc on our ecosystem on which all life relies upon. Too often, in the name of Free Trade or Free Enterprise, we abandon our essential connection with the Earth. It is time for a change of priorities to make us more at ease.
Comments
Post a Comment