Oops, it's all dead now, let's drill!

From a comment on ClimateProgress.org:

“If BP can “accidently” kill off most of the life in the gulf, then there would be little life to protect from future drilling in the area. So it would in the long run be easier to argue for more drilling in the area because there wouldn’t be much environment left to impact.”

I’m quite sure this thought has occurred to oil executives and their K street buddies. Can’t we send these people out on little boats to the Gulf so they can fully appreciate the splendor they have caused?

The Taliban and Al Qaida terrorists, even if they should build an A-bomb, can never hope to equal the sheer destruction that BP and their corporate partners have caused. These terrorists are sitting on their hands, eating sugared dates and figs, laughing at us and our corporatist system that does their horrible work for them.

Dear Kerry-Lieberman Apologists

The macro-economic birds-eye view says that it doesn't matter if we give billions in subsidies (free allowances) to BP and Exxon (or utilities that are burning coal) rather than to the American people. This is looking at "costs" but not "transfers." I think it is stupid to pre-distribute 40 years of allowance value. When Congress created the Federal Reserve, they didn't pre-set interest rates for the next 40 years. Anyway, the political alliances are too fragile to last, and the edifice will crumble under its own weight. And I won't cry for you, Economists. It's time to value people, not corporations. Three cheers to the Nobel committee for recognizing this with the recent award to Elinor Ostrom.

Our goal is to drive up the costs of fossil fuels, but Exxon and BP will invest the ridiculous windfall profits in climate denial and purchasing Congress following the "Citizens United" ruling. We may need to form a Citizens Energy Consumer Cartel to bargain with OPEC and Exxon and BP. This new cartel will say, we'll let you have rising prices in the face of our falling demand for fossil fuels, but we'll need to divide the windfalls and much of it will return to the people to help us make the changes we need to make.

Sure, they won't like it. They may scream socialism, etc. They may flood the airwaves and fund retrograde candidates. But this is a battle for democracy, the Earth, and civilization.

The Last First Past the Post

The only thing I really know about Nick Clegg, the 3rd party candidate in the UK, is that he is asking for the UK for change to proportional representation in order for him to agree to form a coalition with one of the two other parties. And I think that's great. Most Americans don't know that only a few countries still have first-past-the-post elections. Most countries in Europe and elsewhere have proportional representation. And if the UK switches, in this very public way, it would help educate many Americans about electoral reform. Sad that the 2000 election came and went and the only thing people remember is butterfly ballots and blaming Nader, when they could have seen that a real solution exists, an instant runoff voting system, where you rank your candidates 1,2,3.

PR is just better than FPPE. I won't explain all the intricacies other than providing this link to FairVote. Those guys have been working at this for years, and the Nick Clegg situation must be seen as a huge opportunity for education. Not that anything can really penetrate the Freedom Fries eating USA #1 minds of Amurkins. But who knows, maybe Simon Cowell will start making fun of Amurkins for being the only democracy without PR, and we'll eventually expand our electoral choices beyond McDonalds and Burger King.