#111 / drillbabydrill

I try to keep myself informed about the valiant efforts of those environmental advocates in Washington, D.C. who are swimming upstream against the political tides, and who are working as hard as they possibly can to protect our marine environment from the ravages of offshore oil production.

This morning, I heard from one of the persons working on offshore oil issues for The Wilderness Society. His email alert outlined the contents of what he called the "three drillbabydrill bills" currently pending in the Congress.

I had never, previously, seen the "Drill Baby Drill" slogan modified to be an all lower case adjective. Somehow, that designation works for me; it seems to convey the utter thoughtlessness of the push to extract oil resources from any and all locations in the natural environment in which they may be found, from the Gulf of Mexico, to the Florida and California coasts, to the Arctic Circle.

In this case, as in so many others, our world is not made better by our success in plundering the resources of the world of Nature. Quite the opposite. If global warming is real (it is) then every time we find and exploit a new hydrocarbon resource we increase the danger of species extinction, including the extinction of our own human species. This would be true even if the production techniques now being used to produce these hydrocarbon poisons weren't themselves ever more terribly destructive of the natural environment.

drillbabydrillbabydrillbabydrillbabydrill....

This is the way we cook the frogs in the pot.