Who is to blame?

For nearly two months, oil has been spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. We know it started when a catastrophic explosion happened on an oil rig that killed 11 men and opened a direct line from the well to the Gulf of Mexico. It looks like the well will not be closed anytime soon and that it may cause world wide economic, ecologic and human problems. So who is to blame for this epic disaster?

I think it would be easy to lay the blame at the door of British Petroleum. After all, they were responsible for drilling and upkeep of the well. And they were reaping monetary rewards of extracting the oil from the well and selling that oil to the world. Some folks are suggesting that the current US administration is to blame for this tragedy since they were entrusted with over sight of this well and were responsible for making sure the well was properly run and safe. No one has laid blame where blame is actually due, the people of the world who use oil as an energy source.

I am a member of this group. For my entire life, I have been the recipient of energy produced by burning fossil fuels. I drive a car that runs on gas, I light my home with energy partially produced by burning oil, I even cut my lawn using gasoline powered lawn equipment. And before you start to get all high and mighty about how you drive a hybrid vehicle, unless you drive an electric only vehicle that you charge with your own solar cells only, you are also responsible for the oil killing the Gulf of Mexico.

You see, we have all seen the signs on the walls for years. This is not the first time huge amounts of oil have spilled into the seas or oceans. This is not the first time we have watched videos of people trying to save birds and fish from the pore clogging effects of petroleum sludge. And still we listen to oil company driven arguments on commercials and from our representatives in Washington about why solar and wind energy cannot do more than produce a small percentage of our energy needs. We all know better. We hear the voice in the back of our minds telling us that gas is easy and solar/wind would be costly (at first) and we don't want to think about it. And because we allow ourselves to tire easily at the talk of clean energy production, we green light companies to continue raping the Earth and poisoning the air and water.

So who is to blame? Me, you, and everyone who has chosen to use energy produced by oil. What needs to happen for me to finally decide I am tired of risking it all for the convenience of filthy oil? What if all the oil on the Gulf started to catch fire, would that be enough for me to favor clean energy? What if folks living near this spill started to develop cancer in huge numbers, would that be the changing factor? What if the fishing industry that provides a high percentage of seafood to the US was ruined for decades and I could no longer buy safe seafood to eat, would that convince me to demand cleaner energy sources?

We know that the myth that solar, wind and other renewable energy sources cannot produce the energy we need is just that, a myth. It is a carefully orchestrated propaganda machine that the big energy conglomerates propagate. And don't fire back at me that we should go back to nuclear. This could have just as easily been a nuclear power plant that had a catastrophic accident and we would now be talking about how are we going to be able to cut off the nuclear reaction that is happening in some field somewhere and the levels of radiation that are being released into the atmosphere and how that 900 square miles of fertile land will not be usable for the next 100 years. Just like the warnings we have had in the past with many oil spills from boats and rigs, we have been warned with nuclear accidents in many locations around the world.

It is time to make a real change, for ourselves, for our children and for the planet. I am not a tree hugger. I'm a reasonable man who sees the error of his own ways. I want the world to wake up and smell the benzene. We do not have the technology to move everyone on the planet to another rock in the solar system after killing this one. And even if we did, would you really want to move?

Let's be reasonable. Let's open our eyes. Let's demand cleaner energy sources. Let's not do this for political reasons, let's do this for us. Let's do this for the planet. Let's do this for our children. Let's do this because it is the only right thing to do and let's do this now.

The first step...

I've never thought of myself as a particularly good writer nor terribly good at English. In fact, I will often refer to English as my second language even though I speak no other. This may have more to do with my ability to get into trouble easily while speaking and may be caused by my upbringing as the middle child with four female siblings, but more on this another time.

I think the important thing to do today is introduce myself as the voice of reason. Honestly, I am not particularly comfortable with this moniker because it sounds a bit boastful, but I do think my view may be different from the normal ranting extremists and I do think I come from a place that may qualify me as a bit more open minded than those on the far left and right.

You see, I grew up in a lower middle class home. My father worked in the Post Office for 27 years and my mother occasionally worked as administrative help in banks and small businesses. The work ethic was strong in our home and I picked up my first job selling vegetables through the neighborhood that my father grew in a large garden in our field. I was 8 years old. By the age of 10, I had already been delivering newspapers for nearly a year and by the age of 12, I was carrying golf bags at local country clubs. In high school, I worked after school (evenings and weekends) at the local mall for Gimbels and paid my parents rent to live at home. I attended college (paid for myself) and when I graduated in 1982, I returned to my home town where there was no work (anyone remember the early 1980s recession?). At one point, I lived on the street for a few months (a very humbling and eye opening experience). No, I had no parental home to return to since it had burned down while I was in college, but I digress. I finally was able to secure enough part time work to pay for a room in a rooming house and from there I slowly and steadily increased my income to the point where I started my own business. The business ran successfully for nearly 20 years before I made the change to work for a local school.

So here I am. I lived in a lower middle class home where we always ate well and had a roof over our heads. I lived on the street and struggled to keep moving in a positive direction. I built a business that allowed me to afford a middle class life, get married, buy a home and have a son.

Politically, I consider myself a fiscal conservative and a social progressive. I guess that makes sense since living on the street and building a business only on the effort of my own capitol building makes a person very fiscally conservative. In addition, having lived both on the street and in a comfortable home makes a person open to all manner of lifestyles, hence my socially progressive views. I think many folks think is a similar manner. So this is why I have named my blog, The Voice Of Reason. Sadly, folks like me believe the old concept of "Live and let live". and as such are not particularly vocal in our beliefs. I guess this is what you would expect of reasonable folks.

Maybe I can help speak for those folks who are tired of the extremes driving the press. Maybe I can help speak for those folks who are sick of the corporations spreading propaganda so that we will continue to by their products even when those products poison governments, people and the environment. Maybe I can just be another voice of reason. Maybe...