Greed vs. Green

So, something really upset me today. In fact, I will admit that it angered me to the point of tears. Judge that how you may, but that is how betrayed I felt when I read that the House of Representatives has finally pushed out some paper to extend the payroll tax for you and me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, that extra $30 bucks is appreciated considering the price of EVERYTHING is rising, but at what cost? Well, I shall tell you.

In passing this legislation in the House of Representatives, which now must be approved in the Senate and then pass by the hand of the Veto in the White House, the GOP leaders managed to tack onto the bill NOTHING that has to do with extending the payroll tax and everything to do with fucking the environment and further lining the pockets of Big Oil. Yep, that’s right. We get an extra $30 in pay, and the conservatives get a fast-tracked decision on their precious Keystone Pipeline; 60 days to be exact. (And, is it just me, or could Congress get a whole lot more done if they would deal with the issue at hand in a single, direct piece of legislation instead of wasting time with negotiations and slipping in addendums and caveats to appease those that put them into office by exploiting their greed?)

Now, I am not so blind as to think that this pipeline isn’t also supported by liberals, but I do know that getting a quick and sloppy ‘yes’ on a project that will devastate the ecosystem and grasslands of this country in exchange for the immediate creation of temporary jobs is not good policy. Now if Congress could pull its head out of its ass and really look at this pipeline and actually accept what scientists say as ‘fact’ (which is what we’ve all been taught that science determines, am I right?) and not just a bunch of lofty ‘what if’ scenarios, then they might agree that this is a messy quick-handed and short-lived fix to some really big problems that will still exist and persist even after they destroy the environment.

Not only does the pipeline feed our dependence on oil as an unsustainable energy source, it demonstrates to the rest of the world that we are willing to sacrifice our land, other natural resources, and the health of the surrounding population to fill our need for dead dinosaur energy that when burned eats away at the air we breath thus making this planet inhabitable for human life. MY HEAD IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE. Because their main motivating excuse for this horrible idea of transferring crude oil from the tar sands in Canada to the Gulf Coast through an underground pipeline is the creation of JOBS.

What makes this laughable is that nobody actually knows how many jobs this pipeline will actually create. And I’m sorry, have you been to any sort of manual labor site in America lately? The cheapest labor is immigrant labor, and as long as they are legal citizens then that is fine and dandy and can be considered gainful employment and count toward employment statistics, but come on…is that really the way things play out? Republicans are saying that this will create 200,000 jobs (and buy them summer homes), but according to a recent NPR article, “A recent State Department study said the construction workforce would be 5,000 to 6,000 workers. And once the construction phase ends, almost all of these jobs, however many are created, would go away.”

So we are willing to deepen our dependence on oil for energy even though we could be investing all of this time, money and energy on developing green technology and green jobs and actually climbing out of this hole as opposed to digging it deeper, for the temporary employment of 5,000-6,000 people. I have a better idea – we could train and employ those people to go into that same region and other farm areas of the Midwest and improve the irrigation systems that waste millions of gallons of fresh water in the United States every year because they are faulty, cheap, and unattended. I mean, since fresh water is also running out, unless we want to dispute that ‘fact’ along with observed changes in immigration patterns based on the availability of natural resources and massive climate change on a global scale? Or, we could employ 5,000-6,000 people to plant additional trees to absorb the carbon dioxide that is throwing off the balance of our atmospheric gasses that protect us from being burned to death by the sun, oh, and allow us to breath deeply (enjoy it now kids, because at this rate your grandchildren will be using oxygen tanks as soon as they exit the womb). Or, we could hire them to ransack the capital and oust all of our representatives so we can start anew. We CAN create jobs in other more progressive and productive ways, and we should. What we shouldn’t do is keep repeating a pattern of destructive behavior that we know will end in unimaginable consequences that will haunt us and forsake future generations.