That's big stuff! He writes for one of the biggest papers in the world. Thousands of avid opinion readers hang on his every word. When he says something, even presidents quake in their boots, as well they should. Because he has a lot of moxie on the ball when it comes to writing. I agree wholeheartedly with his opinions, especially when he's in agreement with me, as he was today.
Check out the following little paragraph, from a little column called "Drill, Disaster, Denial":
For the gulf blowout is a pointed reminder that the environment won’t take care of itself, that unless carefully watched and regulated, modern technology and industry can all too easily inflict horrific damage on the planet.
He's writing about an actual event, something that happened the other day and is still in the process of happening, since they haven't gotten it cleaned up yet. A big oil derrick or oil boom or gas station down there in the Gulf of Mexico blew itself all to smithereens, leaving a lot of spewed oil everywhere, which is proving that oil and water don't mix, since it's spreading far and wide, hither and thither, and making a gigantic mess.
What's the basic problem there? That industry is a rapacious monster, seeking its way at our expense, with no expense spared. The key part of that paragraph, in my opinion, I shall repeat: "modern technology and industry can all too easily inflict horrific damage on the planet." That's what I've been saying for the last (almost a) month!
Industry is bad enough on dry land. We get up in the morning and look out the window. And what do we see? In my town, the smokestacks of a monster truck tire factory, belching out black smoke so much that it blocks out the sun. Then at night they lower the entire works down into a hole in the ground, while men, looking like ants, scurry around mucking it out and getting it ready for the next day. Men are lost on a daily basis, but it's all in a day's work. So that's bad.
Just imagine if we turned over the seas to these greedy, heartless so-and-so's! They'll gladly chew up the land and the sky. You can just imagine what they'd do with the waterways. Well, we don't have to wonder, because it's already been done. They're down there with a big tottering oil derrick. A couple of guys get drunk. They're twisting knobs, taking knobs entirely off the apparatus, and in their drunken condition, they're skimming them across the ocean, seeing how many bounces they can get. Then they go off duty, the next guys come on, the knobs are missing, the thing is overheating, then they can't turn it off, and it blows.
So what do we get? An oil spill the size of a continent, all out of one or more mistreated spigots.
And to think these blasted industrialists have been trying to get me to apologize for "insulting" them! Well, they deserved it! And some of them know it! The ones who've been guarding my house and harassing me, even sleeping in the tress, they've retreated, probably out of shame. So I'm back home, back posting, and feeling quite free to state my mind.
That's what happens when a guy with a massive soapbox like Paul K. starting spreading the gospel of anti-industrialism. People start listening, heads roll, presidents quake in their boots, and I'm back in business!
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