“The American way of life is non-negotiable”. - Dick Cheney


Cheney makes his little secret (except in the small Canadian heavy industrial community they never are) visits to Calgary, and more land is turned into a lunar landscape. This will soon be happening to the oil shale in Wyoming, and other parts of the West.

Do none of you feel any distaste? Or was Cheney right - “The American way of life is non-negotiable”?

All so you can keep using fossil fuels?



Notes From the Tar Pits from McMurray to MacKay

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I was horrified when I first read the quote, which might have been--or at least discussed--in Crossing the Rubicon. The context there was that once the world has reached peak oil, the best government will be the one that takes oil by any means possible to maintain its lifestyle.

I've always believed in sharing; Cheney does not play well with others.

If he can be taken as a representative of Yank energy industry attitudes (and I think he can), then it's "only" a case of doing unto others what we've already done to us.

Take a google at mountaintop removal mining if you want to see what the possibilities are for complete and total destruction.

Grrrr.

Incredible. We spend trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives chopping and dicing Iraq into an Imperialist nightmare in order to gain access to that portion of the American Way of Life that happens to be buried under their sands, and it comes as a surprise that we are doing this with the gleeful cooperation of our dear friends in the Great North Woods?



As a matter of perspective, here's what gleeful cooperation looks like:



Perspective, it's all a matter of perspective.

Life is about choice, Mellowiscious. In the past, environgelicals and other interest groups had the power to make the choice for the rest of us to burn dirty coal, level mountaintops with strip mining, and 'harvest' the tar sands instead of building nice clean nuclear plants. Actions have consequences, and there is always a trade off.
Yours,
Issodhos

That is cute. Just imagine what would happen if we ran out of energy? Imagine what would happen if there was some catastrophy in the ME and the oil we depend on went kaput. It would take 10 years to realize ant benefit from new, US based, oil drilling. Imagine what trhe fallout would be?

The animation you showed implies that all the nuclear power plants on the east coast melted down at the same time, scare tactics. For the record I have to ask, what is wrong with the American way of life? Have you become so jaded that you don't like the standard of living we have achieved? We have low unemployment, very little poverty, nobody dies in the street unless they in effect choose to. I like living here and want the American way of life to continue into very distant future.

There, I said it. I feel like I have just had a weight lifted off of my chest, but the weight was composed of bio-degradable materials that are easily converted to energy and squirrel food.

Ma: I know you weren't asking me, but --- yes, I do have a problem with what some people consider a standard of living. We have a great deal here in this country -- far more than we need, for which I'm grateful -- but we squander resources so stupidly that we will impoverish any number of populations, including our own. If the Hummer goes out of production, it won't break my heart at all. If we get smart enough not to burn fuel to transport tap water in plastic bottles instead of in pipes, I'll be happy. If we would increase our efficiency, our standard of living would not be so endangered.

Non-negotiable? We may have the chance to negotiate now; if we don't take advantage of it, "non-negotiable" may become more true than any of us would like. We will run out of choices.

As for your "nobody dies in the street unless they effectively choose to" --- that remark is not worthy of you. Children abducted and killed on their way home from school (as happened in this city not long ago); children and adults killed by stray bullets (as happens more often than one might think) -- none of these people are "asking for it," and to say that they are, borders on both ignorance and arrogance, and is an insult to any number of citizens in this country affected by violence.

Thousands and thousands of people, many of them war veterans, are on the streets not by choice but because of illness, poverty and decisions made for them by employers and our government. It is an insult to them to contend it is their choice.

Julia, would it surprise to to read that I agree with every word you just wrote? Sometimes, especially when I intend to be flippent, I do not finish the thought I wrote down. You know, fingers faster than the mind?

I drive a 4 cylinder, so does my wife and two sons. The hummer is a large waste of pressed sheet metal and cast iron. But, here in America, it is ok to do stupid things. I will never own a Hummer, but I would never vote to outlaw them either.

When I said that people are not dying in the street, the complete thought was dying in the streets from starvation. Some do, but the percentage of people who live in the street is so small that the percentage who starve is tiny.

I am not a "cause" guy. I do not get involved in either right or left causes. My only cause is my family. Yeah, its a shame that people drive big gas guzzling cars, but we can't do anything about it. I suppose I could get pissed and lose sleep over it, but I just can't whip up the outrage.

Violence is one cause I could get behind, but the solutions I see being suggested just won't work. In Boston, just like DC, there is a ban on hand guns. Guess what, only the dregs have them, so the drive by shootings and stray bullets make the headlines, but the root cause is the advantage that the criminals have over the law abiding citizens. Last week a guy got shot, through the baby he was holding in his arms. Why? Because his brother testified against a gang last year. That situation was caused by the good intentions of gun control. The stray bullets and the robberies are a direct result of an unarmed population. Good intentions gone bad.

I do have a licence to cary, and I do have a weapon in my house. I live in a quiet little town with very little crime. But it only takes one turd with a jones to increase the crime rate. Conversley, it only takes one honest person with a gun to decrease the criminal population.