Water not oil: Battle cry of the blue planet    

It’s Mother Earth’s battle cry inspired by the world’s dire climate crisis that has been sung by so many others for years yet still hasn’t had the intended effect because it still hasn’t resolutely been taken up by the world as a whole. So the cry remains: what ultimately is more important: Water or Oil?

The Human World is starved for both. But which of the two will ensure the ultimate survival of life on this tiny orb commonly called the Blue Planet? Jerome Irwin, a freelance writer, for decades, in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, has sought to call attention to problems of sustainability caused by excessive mega-developments and a host of related environmental-ecological-spiritual issues and concerns that exist between the conflicting philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. Water not oil: Battle cry of the blue planet is a thought-provoking report in this regard by Jerome Irwin.

The dilemma of modern human civilization and plight of our Mother Earth are one and the same. The lack of water eventually will kill both, while the abundance of oil eventually will also kill them both.

There’s a very real, simple reason why every aspect of the planet’s corporate world order – and especially its corporate mainstream press, governmental bodies, political parties and energy sectors – refuse to truthfully air the ramifications that underlie why there exists such a climate crisis in the first place. And what actually would have to be done – not by the year 2030, 2040, 2050 or 2100 – but Now – Today – to lower pollution emissions that are inexorably producing ever-greater planetary climate change imbalances. The reason is simple.

No truthful dialogue is occurring to come up with the kind of immediate, dramatic, workable solutions desperately needed for any true reconciliation with the planet because it would require a complete and utter re-definition, re-calibration and re-tooling of modern human civilization’s entire raison d’etre. To get the world’s titanic energy juggernaut to move even a few degrees to avoid the fatal calamity that lies ahead is all but impossible. It won’t ever happen until whatever calamity will happen, finally does happen. Until then humanity’s modern civilization will continue to whistle in the dark, espousing whatever hypocritical doublespeak, while applying whatever band aids to wherever the hurt is greatest while paying lip service to all the rest.

As a result, a fatal disconnect exists in Canada, as indeed it does everywhere else in the world, between an avowed desire to protect and care for Mother Earth’s natural world. This is also regarding her finite resources and the opposing reality of mankind’s greedy, desperate, ever-burgeoning political-corporate-societal needs for ever more copious amounts of oil and fossil fuels needed to continue: to run all of its vehicles, planes, trains and ships; grow all its food crops for an ever-exploding population, while continuing to manufacture and sell every petroleum starved man-made thing in the modern world’s endless inter-woven.

This is why countries like Australia, Canada, the United States and so many others still refuse to fully and openly discuss the climate crisis issue and ongoing degradation of their nation’s pristine habitats and finite natural resources, even though in places like Australia’s New South Wales a recent report revealed that the destruction of its natural habitats, forests and woodlands have increased five fold from what the crisis was only a few short years ago, with its iconic Kaola Bear on the verge of extinction. While in the United States, ever since the violent debacle of its Dakota Access Pipeline occurred, the need to further expand the amount of barrels of petroleum flowing through that pipeline maze continues to increase with no end in sight. While in Canada’s Alberta Tar Sands, that province’s devastated region already has been turned into a virtual national sacrifice area. What is everywhere going on in the world is nothing more nor less than a form of sheer madness matched only by unparalleled greed.

Yet to keep mankind’s world running as it is means ever greater amounts of the planet’s pure, precious, finite waters must, knowingly and willingly, continue to be consumed, polluted and destroyed to perpetuate human civilization’s hopelessly-addicted fossil-fueled way of life hell bent on its own self-destruction and that of all life on this, our exquisitely beautiful, Blue Planet.

It’s a cliché to say the time has long since passed the critical tipping point when humanity can no longer have it both ways. Every human must, sooner or later, once and for all, choose which side of the debate they’re on and then accept the consequences of whichever side is chosen. One prime example of that is Canada’s decision to continue to choose this fatal addiction to oil and fossil fuels by its latest decision to continue building a Trans Mountain pipeline from the Tar Sands of Alberta to the coastal waters of British Columbia. This plan will only further increase the flow of toxic bitumen – one of the dirtiest of all substances known to exist – to a world hopelessly hooked on yet its next fix of the deadly black stuff.

Canada’s in–between a rock and a hard place decision flies in the face of whatever constantly re-adjusted Paris Accord Agreement or proposed grandiose Green Environmental Plan it may design to help humanity once and for all kick this fatal attraction. Every new scheme in this direction, whether it’s a so-called aboriginal/First Nation ‘Reconciliation’ Pipeline, to get their own ‘slice of the pie’, or whatever other spinoff plan of the same thing boils down to a falsehood of perpetually trying to have one’s cake and eat it, too. It’s always a curious fact to note that oil is what remains as a by-product of one of Earth’s most primitive epoch’s in its evolutionary journey yet also is perhaps the main cause of what scientists now refer to as the Anthropocene Epoch in geological history that is in the process of repeating yet the sixth great extinction of all of life on earth.

Human society must keep reminding itself that it’s by-products like bitumen that are fueling this epoch extinction and literally every aspect of the human world’s modern civilization, and that such decisions are bringing about, if not speeding up, this fatally destructive geologic epoch. If continued, human society knowingly and willingly consume and destroy ever-greater amounts of the earth’s precious, finite natural sources of water that, literally and figuratively, is the very essence of life.
Such awareness should give every human cause to pause for one moment longer still before quenching one’s thirst to consider how wondrous this precious, finite substance is that already has been in the bodies of so many famous or infamous humans, or taken such an eons-long circuitous journey through still so many other innumerable living beings and lifeforms going all the way back to the dinosaurs and beyond, and yet continues to enrich our lives as it did their’s.

Before Canadians and other peoples of the world decide to give any further support whatsoever to a woefully-disrespecting corporate world order that perpetuates this reality they should use this daily water mantra to call their mind to the kind of destructive fossil-fueled way of life. Through the daily primitive, brutal mining and extraction of so many countless dirty, toxic ores and minerals poisons, they destroy forever colossal amounts of this precious, finite, natural substance that without it our earth no longer would remain blue but instead just become yet another brown lifeless hulk endlessly hurtling through empty space.

Aboriginal Rights are a far-reaching right of the collective, held not only for the present generation but for all succeeding generations. The rights also include an economic component coupled with a very deliberate and appropriate “inherent limit,” which requires that the land “not be used in a way that is irreconcilable with the attachment an Aboriginal group has with the land.” Nor shall it be encumbered in ways “that would substantially deprive future generations of the benefit of the land.” This is, in fact, a limit that, if applied to all, could go a long way in looking after the earth.

In difficult times, our people stood to look after our land and restore our rights leaving us a solid legal base from which we can uphold our responsibilities. Regardless of owner or name, a pipeline and all that comes with it crosses the “inherent limit” and certainly does not carry any Aboriginal Rights. There is none amongst us of any color or creed that can claim a right to disregard the neighbor downstream, or who can claim a right to neglect life. There is none amongst us with the right to harm the great killer whale or the little barnacle.

Be certain that the apparatus killing this planet is a nasty one and it seems intent on finishing the dirty deed. It gains strength through violence with the jack-booted obedient servants at its beck and call. It is commanding enough to recruit our cousins if not you and me. Though it is tough as hell, it’s not that smart. Left to its devices this Juggernaut will continue killing our planet, and without intervention our fate is sealed and we may as well prepare a dignified exit, but that would be irresponsible.

While it must be stopped, don’t wait for the Indigenous people to lead. The Indians are few in number, battle-weary, and, along with the multitudes, distracted by the ballgames and trying to pay the bills. Be assured, however, that on the front lines the Indigenous people are already standing up for the health of the planet, already standing for basic clean air and water. Most of us love this planet and respect life before money.

Children all over the world are calling out for us to stop this careless behavior and fix this disorder. The grown-ups still ignore the symptoms and avoid the cure. Reach out across the chasms to your fellow earthlings and devote some time to figuring this thing out. In each of us is some measure of good and understanding of truth, and somewhere in there is the solution. There is no need to put anyone in harm’s way. We, the multitudes, allowed it to come to this. We, the creators of the Juggernaut, have got to fix it together.

There should be nothing more left for the rest of us to say or do but for each human being in Canada and every other country to follow what their individual conscience and morality directs them. They are directed to do something to stop all the dirty deeds of this nasty oil Juggernaut and its jack-boots in the world that daily, steadily, are killing all our lives and that of our crystalline Blue Planet.

Each human being now must simply open up and speak truth to power every which way they humanly can in the face of whatever next wave of propaganda yet to be unleashed that will seek to convince us all of how right or just is the adequacy of whatever niggardly actions thus far have or will be taken to reduce the world’s climate crisis. This is while, still in denial, it will yet continue to suck Mother Earth dry of all her last resources while pumping yet more bitumen throughout the world for British Columbia, Canada and the world at large. Our beautiful Blue Planet needs to cool down! It’s time for we humans to switch back and move forward to a new-old natural way of life!

EA/MG