2,012 Challenges in Modern Times: “Let’s flaunt our clean oil image?”

[“It’s a good start toward reversing the push by the zealous but grievously under-informed environmental lobby to stop oilsands bitumen production.” Feb. 25, London Free Press]

Word is spreading. Coal is the dirtiest fuel on the planet, and it’s so dirty that some people now want people across the globe to believe that tarsands oil is squeaky clean by comparison.

Cigarettes don’t kill people, proclaimed tobacco producers and cigarette manufacturers not too many years ago. And their bogus claims ruled for decades while lung cancer and respiratory illnesses shortened and ended lives around the globe.

DDT is great for killing weeds, proclaimed chemical producers in the 1940s and ‘50s, as post-war agriculture boomed. And their claims about DDT’s benefits and their accompanying silence concerning its ill-effects resounded for decades while the land, lakes, rivers and streams, and upper atmosphere stored its poison for future generations to deal with.

The list goes on, and today the common man must deal with headlines in local papers that read ‘(It’s) Time for Alberta to flaunt its new, ‘clean’ image’ and accompanying articles that hold out good news concerning the multi-billion dollar oil industry on the one hand, and hold out no information on the other about the industry’s ill affects upon the land water and atmosphere, as if to say ‘it’s all good, all the time’.

In other words, the truth about the oil-industry comes up half-empty, and business-as-usual becomes the order of the day. About the environmental lobby being “under-informed” (as reported by the Edmonton Sun in the Free Press article): It’s no wonder the lobby and the rest of Canada doesn’t know everything about the oil industry, especially the harm done. It is never fully reported for common consumption!

And that is but one challenge of many to deal with in modern times. (We’re really not so modern as we think, are we).

In my opinion, to combat the ‘oil is good, business-as-usual' approach to life, we must adopt the following principles:

Reduce spending

Pay down debt

Save money for tough times ahead

Replace shopping skills with social and survival skills

Consume less, commune more with others and nature.

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