Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues. I feel like this is exactly what's wrong with the western society - never mind just the United States, although it's easy to point the finger at them and safeguard our own superiority. 

Oil companies have manipulated legislatures, pressured and bought politicians in order to relax regulations intended to safeguard the common good.  That's what's really at stake here, some sense that the Gulf is important enough to belong to everyone - the people who depend on it for fishing, tourism or making a living, the marine life it contains, the birds that stop there along their many thousands of migratory miles. 

All of a sudden, we have a legal/political system that says that drilling for oil (and making profits for oil companies) is more important than safeguarding a body of water that controls a large part of the climate in the North Atlantic.  We're drowning in our own arrogance, to think that these kinds of policies are in our "best interest." Everything is connected and we've blown a large hole right into one very important link.  And judging from the latest reports, it's unlikely that the gusher will be silenced before August - after several hurricanes have likely had the chance to stir the oily ocean and wash it half-way to kingdom come. You're right, I'm mad. 

I'm mad because we live in a society that refuses to restructure itself away from oil dependency because it will be "too slow" or "too hard" or "too painful."  I doubt our grandparents who lived through the Depression or the World Wars were this wimpy and selfish. And I'm also upset that each person who drives everywhere, buys food shipped from the other side of the world, and can never have enough "stuff" doesn't want to admit that their personal choices are part of what created the demand that put the Deepwater Oil Rig in the Gulf to begin with. We can continue this kind of denial but the people, birds, animals and marine life off the coast of Louisiana are now paying the price for our actions.

One final thing - and I'm sorry if you find this depressing but it's the reality we have created for ourselves - if this crisis had been a crisis of public finance, or healthcare, or transportation, corporations would be banging down the doors of government demanding we privatize those resources.  If you don't think that's true, look at the recent IMF bailout of Greece, or read Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine."

If people and environmentalists are smart, they will use the current ecological tragedy to implement stiff environmental laws.  If you have a rig like this blow up, you should lose your drilling license in the U.S. for at least five years.  That would be the kind of deterrent big oil understands - a threat to the bottom line.  But of course, society is too addicted to oil to restrict our own access.  Will we continue to act like junkies who let their dealer burn down their house and ruin their neighbourhood, or will we see what's really coming down the pipeline if we don't change our ways?