Like Mitch McConnell, Rickie Lee Jones Isn't A Scientist-- But Her Perspective On Energy Isn't Based On Bribes From Big Oil

Yesterday we looked at two perspectives of the issues around Climate Change, one regarding a planet hurtling towards uninhabitability and another, by Jack Hannold, about how current price fluctuations in the oil market will impact supply. Rickie Lee Jones' turn:

The unfortunate thing about states whose economies depend on destroying the land to harvest a natural resource is that the residents will serve the interests of the company with the fury of religion. They don't have to hire anyone, the $15 an hour employee will fight the environmentalist trying to save the local pelican. This guy actually thinks a species of bird matters more than the paychecks and dignity of a few hundred families. It is this complexity that the company exploits. Because down there at the bottom, where pay is low and skills are few, dignity is super, hyper, ubersensitive. I have no problem with harvesting land, and some industry does so without destroying other resources.

Logging sacrifices the infrastructure of a hundred species. Every tree, every forest. When clear cut, the soil is damaged, the entire area must change to an agricultural one. No one asks the thousands and thousands of people if they want to live without forests in order to support this one industry.

We all also battle an ideology that expresses the idea that these maverick men are great Americans, and that someone who fights to save a two thousand year old tree or a little stream by a farm is interfering with the American way. This propaganda is in us, and hard to overcome. But by standing by as it overtakes all common sense, we find we can't buy our own wood; it's too expensive, so we use pressed board containing toxic materials. Oil prices the same worldwide; the idea that oil protects American interests is ludicrous. America protects oil interests, and sacrifices our own young people in order to do it, telling them it's for democracy. It's for capitalism, and, specifically, for one industry and one group of people in that industry. All America serves Haliburton. And, because these industries will destroy anything, any farm, any forest, any ocean, in order to keep us all using oil, we are caught in a web that keeps families barely able to buy the resource they insist we consume. I looked everywhere for an electric Prius in 2001. There were none to be had in Washington. The company did not produce them-- no demand-- the salesman said. The demand is everywhere. Who are you kidding?

Fact is, oil was, or can be, a One-Century event-- the 20th century-- the past, no longer relevant, obsolete. We did not use oil before, we could get by with, comparatively, very little. I understand-- it is the way we bring stability to the world. We come in, take the oil, put in people through elections we control, and maybe inoculate some kids while we're at it. We do not stop the mutilation and stoning of women. We do not stop slave labor of children. We... do the least we can and get the hell out. Why are we still in Afghanistan? The mineral resources and pipeline right-of-way. Thats our democracy, as long as there is oil in the ground people who have jobs around oil will sacrifice everyone one of us in order to keep those jobs. Kill a few cows, who cares? Hey, that village would have died anyway in the next battle.

And these tree huggers, as if loving nature is obsolete. Tree huggers is a term suggesting that, as a nature lover, you don't have a right to a point of view, to a vote. As if it's better to hate a tree than to enjoy it, and want to see it continue. There seem to be human beings whose experience is so different than mine they can stand and give an interview while turkeys are being decapitated in the background. They can talk about their own determination while signing legislation giving up the protection of the land that the first President Roosevelt created with the intent that-- while industry might take it all-- these few pieces of park would remain. How naive, to protect some of the land from industry. She signs that away and the citizens of the state rejoice; they don't have to work and can continue receiving their checks.

While back home people have no health care, yet are compelled to buy car insurance-- then punished when they use it. We live day to day under the dictatorship of a company who owns the 'elected' officials of the democracy that was founded before there was even a railroad. Each president relinquishes a little more of the dignity and stability of the office. Except of course in the case of GW Bush, whose ascendancy to the office was organized criminally. Voter fraud, gangsters, Texans in Florida, missing votes and finally the Supreme Court by one vote, and the entire country has never recovered. The loss of worldwide esteem is just one small fraction of what we lost here at home. We lost hope.

Can democracy function under a thriving economy? Or must the freedom and rights of individuals be sacrificed in order to protect profits.? Is there a New Civil War, for those of us who want to live in a country with less consumption and clean air vs. those who are prepared to sacrifice anything to keep those who are in power in power. It is not only the future we disagree about, we disagree with a basic lifestyle choice. The first choice, to live and let live, and that includes the trees and the pelicans. The second choice, to support the profits of the company, any measure is acceptable. Abandon the rights of anything that is not crucial to that interest. children and pelicans included.

Keeping our people hungry-- hungry for better, or hungry for more, hungry for escape... or just plain hungry-- keeps them willing to work for the evil empire. We have billions of dollars, but it only takes a little bit to save a lot of people. We have to be treated like criminals, or serfs, in order to collect money we are due. SSI for instance. Our money is not accessible to us. And the constant strain makes us turn against each other instead of the government which supports the industry which keeps us slaves. We say hey well we are a lot better off than those slaves, yes? And then solve the problem for our betters ourselves.

A fantastic technique to absolving ones self of the responsibility to the world is to deny that there is a problem. I must confess Republicans stumbled upon this and they do it with great success. They say ' I do not see the wound ' while looking directly at the bleeding, dying animal. In law, you see, the idea is the issue, not the truth. So these lawyers who run the country feel it's totally moral in law to simply deny the problem and argue and see who wins the argument; meanwhile the world moves one revolution closer to annihilation. They act as if they know when and how, and hey are not worried. They scare us with war, take our money to build bombs we don't want, then laugh when we say we are afraid. Afraid of what? Oh yeah, then they remember, yes, yes be afraid. war. They know very well they decide who and where conflict will arise. Meanwhile the Animal, its rivers green, its air poison, its people defeated, is dismissed with those tree hugger 'environmentalists' as being somehow unnecessary to life on earth.

Our right to live among the beauty of the earth is what I take issue with today. As if this is just too quant to consider that a river, it's music, and the bend of the tree to it's surface, does not matter. It matters, matters, it matters. More than your paycheck, more than my right to free speech, more than anything, first and foremost, the planet, the earth, must be protected, cherished, enjoyed.

You cannot behold the spectacle of nature if you are worried about paying your mortgage. Or.. can you? sure you can. People live under the spectre of ruin but we do not hesitate to risk ourselves for the sake of the greater good. I am surprised to see the blatant editing of information to suit the vocation of the local population. I read the news here in Louisiana, see if you don't notice a definite skepticism or simply deletion about, involving information that is against oil policy. I wonder, if these local people had jobs in some other industry, say, music, or ... movies, would they still be inclined to protect the interests of oil to the extent that they allow judges to deny the right to fight arbitrary and questionable arguments against, say, fracking? I have no empathy or sympathy for people who act as if their jobs are more important than anything, anyone else. No, not if they are billionaire CEO's, or loggers, or oil rig workers. We end up working for the devil and then wonder why the waves of our actions cause hell in some other part of the world.

We are engaged in a new civil war. Jesus might have said we must endeavor to protect our neighbors rights first. That's scary, we know our neighbors! But.. If we work for the other guy, we cannot be busy in the business of greed. That makes us unrenderable by the company. They cannot use us if we are not desperate.