Bookthumping

It seems to me that in our effort to affix blame and responsibility, to reassure ourselves that the Deepwater Horizon incident represents something incidental rather than fundamental to our civilization, we engage in a grave and ridiculous misapprehension about the nature of the world we've made for ourselves. Does it ever strike you as odd that the extraction of a toxic and flammable organic substance from deep beneath the crust of our planet is our society's most essential activity, that without it we couldn't support our numbers--grow our food, power our industry, make our construction materials, travel, etc. etc.? It strikes me as a little odd. The fact that we've "spilled"--isn't released a better word?--enough of this stuff to remake ecosystems just doesn't suggest to me that we have a problem with BP, or a problem with the Coast Guard, or a problem with the Obama Administration, but rather that we have a problem with industrial civilization, namely, and I hate to repeat myself, that its most basic and necessary activity involves poking holes in the Earth to get at this stuff in the first place. I know that environmental types like a story in which technology and moderation first stem and ultimately reverse the changes we have wrought, but--those of you in recovery can bear me out--addicts cannot moderately imbibe. So what does that tell you about "reducing your carbon footprint", mes potes?