Fill ‘er up! ……

bristol | the environment | opinion/analysis Wednesday November 12, 2008 14:07 by Mell O

................ but with what exactly?

I just got myself a ‘new’ old bike, well recycled actually, but I am scared shitless about mixing it again on the car-clogged streets of Bristol with all those fossil-fuel burning, oxygen consuming, atmosphere polluting climate-changing heavy lumps of metal driven by dangerously unthinking drivers!

What is the relationship between a car and its driver exactly?
Is it simply a metal – glass – plastic box with a wheel at each corner with the global oil-industry going in to the fuel-tank at one end and Global Warming Climate Change coming out of the exhaust pipe at the other end, with the driver being merely the idiot in the middle, or is there more to it?
There is an unimaginable amount of Environmental and Human Rights damage done where-ever oil and gas is prospected for, located, produced, transported, and processed, especially to the Indigenous Peoples who have lived sustainably in such places for centuries.
In such oil and gas rich countries, which are mostly run by un-democratic ‘governments’ propped up and armed, and oftentimes put in place even, by consumer states like ours.
Fossil-fuel consumers - polluters all seem unable to comprehend, or perhaps prefer to remain ignorant of, the damage done to either the land, to the air, or to the water, to the local populations, to the web of life generally around the oil – gas fields themselves and their necessary pipelines, infrastructures and processing installations, or through the transportation of those fuels over-land and over-seas.
Fossil fuel consumers - polluters are ignorant of, or uncaring about the human-rights aspects and abuses committed against local Indigenous Peoples on the ground in such places, peoples who in the main get beaten off their ancestral lands by ‘security forces’ armed and trained by consumer-states like ours, and of the damage done to cultures and to the psychological well-being of millions of people - which is never taken into account at the pump when the fuel ‘end-user’ fills up at the filling station.
All of the ‘environmental and human rights implications’ of the fuel they get for their money is seemingly beyond most consumers ability to conceive of, but if they were more aware, I would like to think and hope that their ‘consciences’ would overwhelm their insensitivity and ignorance towards our planets environment and life itself everywhere, and perhaps cause them to re-examine their thoughtless consumption of fossil-fuels, and its attendant polluting effects.
But if the Indigenous Peoples living on the land in places where the fuel is found and produced from are oppressed - repressed - suppressed - depressed, have their land stolen from them and then polluted, are jailed or worse, or genocided against, what do the likes of people like consumers and polluters care? - not a lot evidently.
It is not just about what exits out of any gas fueled vehicles exhaust pipe, it is also about how it was gotten out of the ground, whose land it was originally, the damage done to water-courses, flora and fauna, sources of drinking water, as well as fertile growing land being contaminated and polluted.
What happens to the Indigenous Peoples - locals who may have lived sustainably on their land for centuries? - consumers do not like to think about such stuff, the last thing fuel consumers and polluters to be confronted with is their own hypocrisy after having been made to think about all facets of the global oil - gas industry that which they unthinkingly take for granted.
Some of us are caring enough and open-minded enough to see the big picture, from the initial exploratory Geophysical surveys, through drilling, pipeline building and use (and leaks) and transportation generally.
Drivers and fuel consumers polluters have no regard to the displaced costs their activities have on others all around the world, or on our environment or to future generations.