There are waves of public protest
over increases in fuel prices throughout many regions of the world.
If such action doesn't raise the question of alternative energy
resources for the future, then the scenarios we are now witnessing,
will repeat themselves more periodically and perhaps in more violent
ways in the future.
We are fast reaching the end of
the planet's oil supplies, and as usual, human complacency half
ignores such situations until the obvious consequences slap us
in the face with a not-so-oily rag.
Sad but funny, it's interesting to observe the ant-like mentality
of panic drivers during an impending fuel shortage, queuing by
their thousands, for petrol… and not only that, but with their
engines still running.
The public like to "display" concern towards the environmental
damage to the planet through the use of fossil fuels, but hypocritically,
they will rarely stop to review their dependency on personal transport
and consumer gadgets powered by it or made by its derivatives.
So much for resolutions, particularly when you see mums taking
their kids to school in huge gas guzzling four wheel drive off-road
vehicles - that have never been off-road.
In the UK for example, the government are milking fuel prices
through excessive tax, but surely this situation must effectively
switch on the light bulbs (or not) for many citizens; Modern society
is totally dependent on oil and that's a very dangerous state
of affairs. This creates a very powerful political correlation
between government / energy suppliers who control the welfare
of whole nations.
Air pollution, emitted by internal
combustion engines, and industries which pump out similar garbage
not only hangs like a shadow of death over cities but settles
in pockets of rural areas across the countryside. It also travels
across continents, destroying trees and forests, settling on snowbound
terrain - layers of poisonous chemicals eventually melting into
once fertile soil and into rivers.
But who cares? ... It may not be affecting your back yard ...
and a slight haze in the sky above your city doesn't mean you
can't see enough to get around in your daily life. You probably
haven't even noticed that the earth has dimmed by 10% in the last
thirty years because of pollution. The public are more concerned
about their immediate needs, and so the effects of ozone depletion
and chronic respiratory diseases are irrelevant until such horror
strikes on a personal level.
The demand for a comfortable drive to work is greater than a concern
for the long term damage to the integral structure of life as
we know it. Governments depend on the greed of "must have"
consumer mentality to politically engineer a social framework
which allows them full reign and manipulation over what we now
consider as life's essentials. If,
by now governments had forced more research and development into
alternative clean energy, the politics of an oil crisis and control
over it would have had very little or no consequence… in fact
it wouldn't have happened. But in the UK for example, the government
is making such profits on taxing oil, they are certainly not going
to risk loosing that revenue.
- If the same amount of money had
been spent developing a high performance solar powered small
family car (or travel pod) as has been spent over the last ten
years in new petrol models (and the accompanying advertising
promotions), then the world could, by now be transporting themselves
using free, non pollutant energy. (See
also "solar power" GGL)
What
you are voting for...
The
GGL suggests that through global government agreements, production
of all pollutive modes of transport should be completely phased
out by 2015.
