Not In My Backyard

Gas finally got down below $4.00 a gallon in my neighborhood yesterday and everyone rushed to fill up their tanks. All three stations in Angel Fire were out last night.

That got us all talking about Exxon and their extraordinary $1500 per second profit this last quarter. Every time we get on dissing the oil companies for making too much money one of the conservative Republicans brings up that there has not been a new refinery built in the US in 30 years. And then blames the tree huggers for their "not-in-my-backyard" attitude. Like maybe they (the stanch Republicans in favor of big oil) would allow one to be built in their backyard.

I had one in my backyard. I was in the third and fourth grade in El Paso, Texas. The sky was frequently yellow because of the "exhaust" from the stacks of the refineries. I can remember Mom and Dad taking my brother and I over the border to Juarez, Mexico for a bit of clean air because the winds were in its favor. We finally had to move from El Paso. Both my brother and I were in danger of long term physical effects from the pollution. I am allergic to sulfur which was one of the major outputs of the refinery process. Gary just didn't breathe well with the particulate levels.

Dad researched where to move quite thoroughly and we ended up in Albuquerque, New Mexico which in the 1950's had some of the cleanest air in the United States. Sadly that is no longer the case. But the inter-mountain west states were settled by a great many people looking to get fresh air and unpolluted water. Lots of our state laws seek to preserve that.

But then the Environmental Protection Agency is suppose to do that too. Or at least the EPA did before GW and has oil buddies raped it. They would like us to be forced into suspending all environmental protections in the building of refineries, coal generation plants and no doubt nuclear energy facilities. It would of course make the building of these energy providers cheaper as if any company making $1500 a second needs things to be cheaper. But what price will we be paying in quality of life, fresh air and clean water?

It is not just a matter of not-in-my-backyard but the whole concept of pissing in the water we are swimming in on this blue planet. It would be better for all of us if we learned to live without these contributers to global warming. Better if we learned to moderate our growth rates so we could live comfortably on the land we now inhabit (or less of it so some can go back to rain forest, jungles and wetlands). There is quite frankly a lot less open backyards available for building refineries, coal generation plants and nuclear power plants. And before we give these profit generating blackmailers carte blanche to build and explore away we need to look at the damage we are letting us and our plant in on down the line.

I personally am not going to breathe sulfur emissions again just for the sake of getting my gas at $3.00 a gallon again. I am learning not to drive as much and that makes breathing easier. Besides chances are that once they build a new refinery they will leave the gas at $4.00 until they retire that debt. There are no guarantees that letting them have it their way will make it any cheaper for us.

It is All Blackmail

I am particularly fond of this image in juxtaposition with the frog below. Frogs you know are vanishing at a concerning rate. And those remaining on our troubled planet are showing deformities in large percentages to the population. Some scientists are calling frogs our canaries in the mine.

And yet GW and his oil buddies want us to suspend all environmental controls on oil refineries and exploration. When he was governor of the state of Texas he made it the most polluted of the 50 and from the day he took office as president of the United States he has wanted to row back all EPA controls.

I have a friend that works in the Environmental Protection Agency and he says GW has virtually gutted the agency. The super fund that was suppose to clean up the worst of the abandoned mines that are leaking contaminated water with heavy metals into the earth was totally suspended. In my neck of the woods alone there is two or three of these major offenders to clean water that cause humped back fish and sick people. Catch and release in western streams has taken on a totally different purpose. No longer let the big wild fish breed but don't eat contaminated fish.

We gave oil companies major tax incentives for exploration and upgrading of their facilities to meet clean air and water standards. Have they used that or any of the huge profits they are currently raking in to build modern refineries that meet EPA standards? Have they searched for alternative fuels? Have they figured out ways to get the oil out of shale? (Incidentally there was a huge oil shale project in Grand Junction, Colorado which was abandoned because it was too costly. At the time they said if oil reached $50 a barrel it would be doable. Are they doing it at twice that?)

No to all those questions. They just sit and rake in the profits while their elected official (we certainly never elected him) berates congress for not passing his bills that would allow the oil companies to ruin not merely our National Parks, but our air and our water just because they do not want to spend some of that money to do it responsibly.

I lived in El Paso, Texas when I was a kid. It had refineries. They dumped sulfuric gas into the air at an enormous rate. It changed the color of the land around it which seemed to grow nothing. And ultimately my family had to move because of the illnesses it caused with my brother and myself. When mother became pregnant with my sister she put her foot down. She did not care where we moved. Just away from there.

The EPA standards developed for oil refineries and coal generation plants and factories in general is so we can continue to breathe. So we still have frogs in ponds and fish we can catch in a mountain stream and eat. And if GW truly agrees that global warming is an issue then why is he fighting to put more carbon emissions into our atmosphere or cut the number of green, growing and living things down.

The oil companies have not built a refinery in 30 years because they were waiting for someone like GW to make it unnecessary for them to care about their neighborhood and the planet earth.