GREED! ISN’T IT GOOD?
By Dogfish
Our recently gone independent Governor Charlie Crist declares Pinellas county along with much of the Florida Gulf Counties a disaster area, in anticipation of the worst environmental disaster in the history of our country coming ashore and ruining our beach, killing our wildlife, and basically ruining our way of life, just so you can drive your car and BP and other oil companies can make huge profits.
No this is not going to be a rant against those that think drilling in the Gulf is a great idea, although they should be sticking their heads in the sand and concentrating on how they will recover from this disaster to our economy, our way of life and our environment.
It’s all about greed. Your greed, my greed, the corporation’s greed. Your and my greed is parked in front of your house. It’s that gas guzzler, it’s those lovely little petroleum operated conveniences that has brought us a foreteller of doom. And if you are reading this on a computer, it’s the generation of electricity by our power plants that run on Natural gas. We can’t conserve, why? Cause we are greedy, we’ve always had these conveniences, why should we cut back on their use or heavens to Betsy, give them up. Well it appears that the planet is going to force you to give them up. Or God if you are so inclined. With record profits by BP and the other oil companies being reported, the oil companies have no intention of cleaning up their act or I guess I should say cleaning up our act and our planet. Until they can make a buck, there will be no incentive in this country to clean up our act by using solar power, wind power and other non polluting sources of energy. Is it fair to the rest of us? Letting them make the big bucks while we the rest of the citizenry live with the consequences of their greed. And the way it looks to me, making less of a better life then we had in prior times.
Now its time to ask yourself, what is the benefit of ruining our planet for the almighty buck. Well short term it has allowed us to double the population of the earth’s human population since 1974. This has provided those that furnish goods and services to have an increasingly expanding market. In addition those that provide the goods have found that with an increasing world population, labor costs go down, simple supply and demand economics. Now we go to war for resources, we practice unsafe mining and drilling practices to get to those ever decreasing resources that an expanding population demands.
But back to locally. What are we facing?
Our fisheries, our wildlife, our shore birds, all are headed for a rough time, because they don’t know, can’t know its coming. Already the shore bird sanctuary’s are gearing up for the disaster.
How will it effect humans. Headaches, nausea, something like the cold. It’s all what we will experience with the exposure to the fumes that our oil slick, yes it is ours, will subject not only to the clean up people but to the population at large.
People involved in the cleanup will be affected for years to come, if the people that helped clean up the Exxon Valdez oil spill are any indication. And BP’s liability? Under an oil act of 1990 BP’s liability in addition to the cost of cleanup is limited to $75,000,000 (75 million dollars). How far do you think that will go in compensating the ill health that thousands of us will experience for the rest of our lives. How far do you think that will go to compensate all of us in Florida whose incomes goes down as the tourists find other beaches to go to. How much money do you think the oil companies had to pay in lobbying fees to get that sweet little deal in the bill.
I think I have said enough. But I have to wonder, when will you get mad enough to do anything?
I’ve attended a Hands Across the Sands meeting just recently and there will be another tonight, May 7th 2010 at 5:30 PM at the Pavilion next to the Gulfport recreation center. Phil Compton phil.compton@sierraclub.org from the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations will be there. There will also be a Table set up at Peg’s Cantina for interested parties. http://www.pegscantina.com
Personally, I’ve been a member of the Appalachian Mtn Club http://www.outdoors.org for over 40 years, I am also a member of the Nature Conservancy http://www.nature.org . On a local level we are sponsors of the Great Backyard Bird Count http://www.allaboutbirds.org and have transformed one of the worst properties in the City of Gulfport into a balanced eco-system and garden http://www.gulfportinflorida.com as a part of the 49th Street Redevelopment plan. We have also made many trips to the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary http://www.seabirdsanctuary.com with injured or poisoned birds.
With a few exceptions I may have more miles on bicycle than most of the US population, having been a sponsor and guide for the BikeCentenial project from it’s inception in 1972 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikecentennial my last national tour was 5000 miles across America. I was also privileged at an early age to have seen portions of the Whole Earth Catalog being assembled and have friend included in the publication.
How about you Mr. Dogfish, have you kissed a bird today?
The question might be rephrased, “What have you done?” Nice to get highly charged about the near inevitable oil spill of world class magnitude. But how about all the folks who bleed green in our fair town who only this week saw the city council vote approval of installation of a non-permeable surface when they could have done the simple and right thing and required the particular applicant, and all to follow, to put in a permeable surface. What’s the big deal? Well, a non-permeable surface stops absorbtion of rain water and accelerates the the movement of stormwater into what is referred to as sheet flow. The result is huge transfer of surface contamination to wetlands, bayous and bays.
Gulfport, a waterfront community, shows little respect for water and land and continues in the face of scientifically confirmed levels of pollution and toxins to act against the health of the water, the land and the public. Check out Gulfport’s gutters. Watch the rate at which stormwater runs in the streets during and after a rain. Look for an anti-litter sign and see if any restaurants post signs to remind folks not to litter. Ask if they can provide you bio-degradable go boxes and utensils.
For all the posturing by council and our more enlightened citizens for green stuff, alternate energy, white roofs and concern for mountain tops in West Virginia, there is little demonstrated concern for dealing with the obvious root causes; both environmental and cultural.
By a lot of measures this is a shabby little town with a rather inflated view of itself. When one rails about the consumption of hydrocarbons it would be useful to check one’s filing cabinet to see how many non-emotional, well thought out, documented and substantiated written efforts one has prepared and submitted to media, government and credible citizen groups with proposals of feasible, affordable solutions to our shared problems.
I’ll go with the greed concept. That is not enough, however. There are also large ego and political survival matters involved. No politician, especially a couple of the local hacks, want to miss out on the green salad bar of votes, grants and personal profit. The ward 4 guy talks a good game; but check his “professional” accomplishments and measure results against words for a sample of typical political posturing full of everything but substance.
You can put your hands across the sand and pick up surface floatables in Clam Bayou for all your mortal days and the end will never be in sight…oh, you can feel good about it, maybe even be declared a hero of conservation, but when the agencies funded and empowered to protect the environment are free to use your money to implement their agendas with no accountability for cost, time over runs or failure, you can pray to the sun god and the Chicago AerMotor company for a coal, oil and gas free life to little avail.
Don’t waste your time on BP; focus on the local problem which is rooted in 20 years of total lack of concern by the guy in charge. What he is not hand fed, he does not do. And when the pressure is off, he withdraws from the field of battle.
It is hard to fault a jellyfish for lack of a spine, but Gulfport had related problems long before the oil disaster. Check the records and see how many times Mr. Worthington attempted to get Gulfport to clean up its act, and how little support he got from mayor, the real boss and the ward 4 person.
We need alternate energy and conservation in many forms. Even so, for a long time we will remain hooked to the oil I.V. drip.
How about moving away from the beach, put down the kum by yah songbook and show up at city hall to tell the folks that you don’t want to live in a sea of trash, streets that run in litter and you want those who pass through the town to not treat it as an ashtray? You will most likely find they do not care to hear bad news and that other than their opportunity to get face time they will do nothing to help.
Look at this place after 20 years of the same mayor. Does he not notice? What have the Vice-mayor and ward 4 guy done other than find excuses for SWFWMD action to degrade Gulfport waters.
Do you think for a minute if Representative Kriseman thought he could get more votes by hyping near shore oil drilling than oppossing it that he wouldnt have shown up on the casino shore with a shovel and bucket to be the first to dig for the stuff.
Now for the good news; every environmental tragedy must have a bright side. With luck, when the bay and bayou become a quagmire of oil clots clogged with the remains of what few critters had been able to survive our own toxic challenge, maybe the tax subsidized trolley could suck up the surface slime to mix with the Council Bio-Que therefore recycling the spill by burning it in the engine and spreading equal amounts of fumes between Gulfport and St. Pete Beach as an expression of environmental justice.
If you really want to deal with slime, you need go no farther than a beer with the council member you love…
Florida is in no credible position to point the finger elsewhere on abuse of nature.
Oh, more good news; the latest Gabber “Hard Candy” seems to infer that, a) oil is no big deal, b) that fisherman don’t seem to mind and that, c) it is just a matter of media need for some sort of tragedy, real, imagined and contrived. More good news is that the reporter reminds us not to believe anything we read in the Gabber…She got that right!
What you have done in the past is all well and good. Or as Aardvark points out what you haven’t done in the past is not all well and good. How many of the “hands across the sand” people used petroleum products to get to the meeting, are they not hypocrites in some sort of fashion? No they are addicted, like you and me to the products made from Petroleum. Remember when milk came in glass returnable bottle? Since the advent of cheep plastic, our drinking containers have been made of petrochemicals. Some shown to leach out dangerous substances from the container, which in some cases the manufacturer of the containers knew in advance of letting you buy the product. It’s all about the money, when it comes to whether you make a decision upon how you will treat the environment or make a few extra bucks.
So while I commend you for your contributions 2iveiw, I feel that I must point out that I too am doing my part for the environment. Most know that I drive an all electric car, which courtesy of the oil companies, is years behind in development. Only now are the big car companies working on an all electric car, again like our city council, 20 years behind when it was really needed.
I myself deal with some of the environmental disasters that our species, Homo sapiens have caused on this earth. I keep fish, some might call them aquarium fish. The fish I keep are more then just aquarium fish, and generally you won’t find them in an aquarium store for sale. I keep and breed endangered and extinct fish. I have a fish that is from Mexico, totally extinct in the wild, due to man’s overuse of its habitat. I seem to have a wet thumb when it comes to this species and I probably have the largest population in the country. I have a pretty little fish that only comes from a single crater lake in the Cameroons, again its environment being a closed system, finds itself along with the other inhabitants in danger of extinction due to the invasion of man to its environment.
We all have seen the fish Tilapia on sale at markets and restaurants. Twenty years ago, Tilapia were being raised to be fed to the poor, so that the wealthier citizens of the world could eat tuna and sea bass. Tilapia are bottom feeders and knowing what they eat, I have a hard time eating them myself and have been disappointed with the few times I had tried them. Well now Tilapia is featured in every restaurant, finally filling in for the fish that are no longer plentiful in fisherman’s nets.
As more of us have to turn to home farming to supplement our food sources, I foresee where you can raise fish in a pond, along with your small farm, to add to your protein. I have been working with what some scientists believe will be the next “Tilapia” A Tilapia type fish from Central America, which tastes better, because of what it eats and that can be put in a backyard pond because it is a gorgeous yellow fish.
But no matter what I do myself, I can’t get the city council to put up more trash cans at the beach, nor along the main though fare of Beach Blvd. Sam Henderson would rather pick up 25 pounds of cigarette butts along our shore then lobby for a single butt container that our city workers would have to service. Our city council will pass a resolution that they are against off shore drilling, against mountaintop removal, and overlook the environmental degradation that we suffer every rainfall from the up bayou trash that washes in from St. Pete. It’s been going on for years and they’ve been talking about it for years. SO WHAT?
””Government is the Entertainment Division of the military-industrial complex.””
-Frank Zappa-
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It has been our culture to be excessive, promoted by industry and advertising that brought us bigger, faster, shinier and instant gratification, which has served capitalism well, never taking full measure of the impact.
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“”"Unless you become more watchful in your States and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges you will in the end find that the most important powers of Government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations.”"”
-President Andrew Jackson-
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Let us not forget that it was an extremely reckless situation that brought us the Clean Water Act. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Erie and it will be another extreme or reckless event that embarrass the people and consequently the politicians into action.
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What is the profit margin when you’re forced to pander to the marginalized?
-Coldcut-
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In a different Region I was faced with Acid Rain as a youngster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain and learnt a thing or two about emissions. At the same time (1969) an Oil Spill in Buzzards Bay (Cape Cod) destroyed fisheries near our summer camp. All efforts, both professional and voluntary were in vain as the impact can still be seen today. At a job site a hot water spill from the Yankee Nuclear Plant had killed many fish in the Connecticut River. None of this had an impact on Gulfport which will go to my point. Babblefish being a life long resident of Gulfport has little personal experience with pollution. Kong thinks it’s all about the money, and the Cigar Salesman thinks he’s Napoleon when faced with women on a swing.
There are no environmental principles rooted in these 3 Political Oil-Slicks, they will need to be embarrassed into seeing the light.
Being an entrepreneur I want to capitalize on all the free tar balls floating in the Gulf, so I’m going to start a TAR-Ball Barbeque & Smokehouse™, right here in Gulfport.
I can solve two problems with this new business, first, I can supply the best tasting Tar-Ball Barbeque that you have ever tasted and create a market for unwanted oil spills around the world. This City cannot let one business capture the whole toxic smoke market; we need to have some competition. I’m sure you won’t find any laws or regulations in Tallahassee restricting Tar-Ball Barbeques, but for safety sake we should send our local Cigar Salesman and authority on Barbeques to the State House to investigate.
I wrote an email to: Noah’s.Aardvark@GulfportBayouDump.com to thank him for the DVD on all the locations that will supply my Tar-Ball Barbeque enterprise, but the email bounced. My smoke may not be able to fill the elementary school corridors as was observed just recently in Gulfport, but I should be able to change the air quality of Stetson University from this local. I hope you will support me in my venture to pollute the clean air of college students as you have supported the asphyxiator of the elementary school children. I suspect there are fewer toxins in Tar Balls than there is in wet oak wood so I may need to add some polymers.
Your help would appreciated.
..and I’d remind all that the King and her Prince didn’t seem to have a problem with littering the public right of ways with obnoxious advertising!
On a serious note Dogfish, take photos and post them online to point to the local problems, one section at a time. If they ignore you print T-Shirts with the problem on it.
For 15 years Jane and I have walked our dogs and picked up trash in this area. Whether there are trash reciprocals or not, the trash is on the ground. Some blows in from St. Pete, some blows out of the laundromat, some falls out of vehicles and some is just tossed by the ignorant and indifferent. Ask Dawn Fisher, we use to meet out on the streets with bags in our hands. No matter how much we picked up there was always more the next day.
I’m not trying to convince you that I’m living like an Apache in the Superstition Mtns. nor do I have any desire to at this stage in my life, I do as I please with the environment in mind, and wish sometimes I had bottles of non-homogenized milk. You can buy them at the health food store on Central Ave. We used to acquire our Beef and Pork from Bill Love’s Ranch, he had fresh eggs as well, but storage and travel time was always an issue since his ranch was 100 miles away.
We have a mircro irrigation system and use rainwater when we can. We have been successful raising some crops here, as has my Iowa neighbors. Through the years I’ve passed out bags of groceries to an assortment of folks when our harvests were abundant. This property was a dump site and we had to dig up truckloads of old bottles, car parts, and anything you could imagine before we ever were able to grow a thing, the disgraceful way people treat property never fails to disappoint me.
I’m aware of your electric carts and wanted you to be able to have access to the City roadways, feeling badly that you were unsuccessful with that plan. We actually considered purchasing a cart if the plan was passed.
I’m somewhat familiar with the Tilapia program, we called the Sunfish up north. I’m encouraged to see that you are stewarding rare species, one never knows who’s doing what, when or where but so many do so much here and there, quietly and in the own way. Many of the folks that attended the Hands Across the Sands Meeting were well informed and entrenched in preservation, they weren’t just Johnny-come-lately’s. Each in their own way did what they could and were looking for a part to play in this most recent assault on our water. 88 folks was a good turn-out and the subsequent meetings seem to be productive so maybe their efforts won’t be fruitless.
I’m sure we could all do more, and yes to a degree we’re all addicted to our culture and the energy that powers it but if the oil is turned off, something else will take it’s place. We have to turn it off first.
Reading Tom Frredman today I caught this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/opinion/05friedman.html?em
“”"As the energy consultant David Rothkopf likes to say, sometimes a problem
reaches a point of acuity where there are just two choices left: bold action
or permanent crisis. This is such a moment for our energy system and
environment.
If we settle for just an incremental response to this crisis — a “Hey,
that’s our democracy. What more can you expect?” — we’ll be sorry. You can’t
fool Mother Nature. She knows when we’re just messing around. Mother Nature
operates by her own iron laws. And if we violate them, there is no lobby or
big donor to get us off the hook. No, what’s gone will be gone. What’s
ruined will be ruined. What’s extinct will be extinct — and later, when
we’re finally ready to stop messing around, it will be too late.”"”
Also
Here’s something that you can appreciate.
Viruses harnessed to split water
A team of MIT researchers has found a novel way to mimic the process by which plants use the power of sunlight to split water and make chemical fuel to power their growth. In this case, the team used a modified virus as a kind of biological scaffold that can assemble the nanoscale components needed to split the hydrogen and oxygen atoms of a water molecule.
http://web.mit.edu/mitei/research/spotlights/split-water.html
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm—- Acid rain,SO THATS WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?
Since we have went there before, is there any reason we should aready come someplace else? I have no doubt we can settle our indifferences. What’s wrong with a graduation rate of less than 50%? Is that banjo music getting louder?
The preceeding is offered as a means to prepare for the next City council meeting. There will be a quiz later.
Well that’s another way of thinking about things. It’s great to have ones views shaken up now and again so you’re able to re-examine your own bias and habits in thinking. I may not go along with almost everything, but I appreciate your individual insight.