Jim Brumm: Long-Term Thinking for a Short-Sighted World

While the world watches in horror as the oil spill in the
Gulf begins to ruin one of the most ecologically important regions on the
globe, I am hearing lots of comments from people about the shameful business
practices of BP, the corruption of government in bed with big-oil lobbyists,
lax regulations, and so on.

That outrage is understandable, but the event is not
surprising. This spill is the result of the way many major, global corporations
run. With billions in ready cash, they are able to influence our congress to a
point where executives from these companies are actually put in charge of
oversight committees as a regular part of doing business. This is true across a
wide array of businesses, including agribusiness, oil, mining, nuclear energy,
manufacturing, and finance.

It was never a question of “if” a spill would occur. It has
always been “when.” This is the same in every dangerous enterprise run by
humans. Recall the chemical leak in Bhopal,
India, in 1984.
Eight thousand people were killed right away, with thousands more dying over
the succeeding years. Recently we saw a mining disaster here in the United States.
All of these share a common theme: After the accident, investigations revealed
a staggering lack of regard for safety measures and regulations. All were a
result of cutting corners in the name of profit.

When corporations are left to their own devices, they tend
to take shortcuts and get lazy on those things that will protect lives, because
they will affect short-term profits. This morning an article in the New York
Times had this headline: “Oil Companies Weigh Strategies to Fend Off Tougher
Regulations.”

Really? Right now in the middle of this mess, that’s what
the oil companies are doing? Wringing their hands with worry that they might
have to actually be accountable and follow some rules? The article went on to
cite concerns from oil execs that regulations would have a negative impact on
jobs and profits.

It’s always jobs. That’s the flag they wave when anyone asks
corporations to rein themselves in, to take a little more time and a little
more care to make sure incidents like the Gulf spill don’t happen. They
immediately start screaming that it will affect jobs. And I say, so what?

That’s right, so what? As long as we have one yardstick with
which to measure all decisions—profit—we will continue to destroy our planet and
hurt people. When we find ourselves having conversations about the corruption
of our government and their corporate cronies, it’s time to stop and reflect on
our complicity in this mess.

Today, Governer Jindal of Louisiana called on President
Obama to lift the temporary restrictions on new drilling off the Gulf coast,
saying it will “kill thousands of Louisiana jobs." He added, "The
last thing we need is to enact public policies that will certainly destroy
thousands of existing jobs while preventing the creation of thousands
more," I’m sure he has plenty of supporters in this, people worried about
their livelihoods and their bills.

But what good are a few thousand jobs when the very earth we
live on is turned into a seething cesspool of pollution, with no fish, no
birds, no plants—no life. Nothing, that’s what they’re worth. Without a
nurturing, healthy environment in which to work, we are finished.

We say we want a clean environment and a government that
works for the common good of the people, not corporations, but even as we
complain about their misdeeds our thirst—our gluttony—for oil and petroleum
products continues to increase. We are fighting two wars and no one is being
asked to give up anything except the soldiers doing the fighting and their
families. The rest of us keep buying cars, sucking up oil and gas as fast as we
can. What gives?

If we ever want or expect to get out from under the
nightmare of oil, we must start changing our lifestyles and our mindsets. This
oil spill is both a tragedy and an opportunity, an opportunity to stop, once
and for all believing that we can just continue living the way we do, ignoring
the hard fact that not only is the oil economy killing us, literally, but it’s
also rapidly reaching the point where there will be less and less oil available
to us, and to the rest of the world. As supplies wane, more conflicts will
arise, the economy will plunge into a depression such as we’ve never seen, and
our society will collapse.

Twenty years ago it occurred to me that if we put our
collective minds to it, we could recreate our society into one that is free of
oil dependence. Truly, actually, free. Experts will say that it will take time,
that technologies need to progress at their own speed, that we need more
drilling and nuclear power as “bridge” technologies until we’re there. But
nuclear power is run by corporations too. Remember Three-Mile Island and
Chernobyl. If we get enough nuclear power plants operating, is there any doubt
at all that eventually one will have a catastrophic problem that will kill
people and possibly render the land unlivable for thousands of years? Like the
oil spill, it isn’t a matter of “if,” but “when.”

The problem is that as long as we embrace the status quo, we
will never do a thing to change it. As long as we let short-term considerations
put a stop to this progress, we will never muster the political will to make it
happen. As long as we are not willing to sacrifice anything without acting like
it’s the end of the world, politicians will continue to support big oil,
because they know that’s where the money and the votes are.

The most used example of the power we can summon when we
want to is our response to the threat in World War Two. Together, as a nation,
we rallied and did what we needed to do to overcome the challenges we were
facing globally. We refer to the people who did that as “the greatest
generation.” Now it’s our turn. We just need the motivation. If we truly
believed that unless we became oil independent we would all die in fifteen
years, I’ll bet we could figure it out. We have the money, we have the brains,
we have the talent. What we lack is the will. Our politicians are weak. They
are selling us out to corporate interests every day of the year. They are
afraid of losing votes, afraid of losing their jobs so they take the path of
least resistance, accepting money from their corporate sponsors and selling the
people they represent down the river by scaring us with the boogeyman of having
to change our lives a bit to save the future. They are borrowing from the
future to pay the present, and that is not sustainable.

The writing is on the wall. The oil economy is killing us,
causing misery, conflict, and death worldwide, and in a short while—within a
century—the oil will effectively run out anyway. Wouldn’t it be better, in the
long term, to start now to prepare for this, instead of waiting until the last
minute, when our economy will collapse and global war will ensue?

Let’s not squander this opportunity. Let’s act now, while
peoples’ attention is riveted on the wreckage in the Gulf. Let’s not let
short-term considerations such as jobs or votes stop us from leading the way to
a world free of oil economies and the pollution, and wars they bring. Let us,
for once, consider the long term and do what it takes to end this, so we never
have to see another environmental disaster like we’re seeing now.