This bird is dying for our sins

AP Photographer Charlie Riedel
at The Boston Globe

Our desire for an endless, cheap supply of oil leads directly here.

Our abandonment of the Red Car in Los Angeles to build freeways for the benefit of Standard Oil leads to this moment.

Our refusal to design cities where effective public transportation meets most needs and you have neighborhoods where you can obtain most of what you need in a reasonable radius... leads to this disaster.

Our lack of political will to shift to renewable/sustainable energy... leads here.

Our not forcing Congress to raise the CAFE standards on mpg in vehicles over decades... leads here.

Our indifference and unawareness as a philosophy of government that believes government is bad and, when in power, proves it, has left us uninvolved as lobbyists wrote laws, regulations were defanged, and greed and corruption could proceed without interference until it all... leads here.

Our acquiescence while Dick Cheney convened an energy policy team the very membership list of which was secret... leads here.

Our not going on a general strike and shutting this nation down when Bush led us to war in Iraq with lies - so that four western companies could control almost all the oil in Iraq (oh yes, we divvied it up nicely, we did)... leads here.

We are complicit at every turn.

Which is not to say I will let BP, Transocean, and Halliburton off the hook for proceeding in haste when there were multiple warning signals and safeguards were ignored. Some BP honcho[s] ordered this affair to proceed and on his/their head[s] must lie eleven human deaths and all this devastation.

But we do not get off the hook either.

--the BB