Letterbox-Our Petroleum Addiction Secrets

To the editor:

Experiences as chemical dependency councilor to addicts hooked on controlled substances is basis for my observations as to petroleum in our culture.

Ask a chemically addicted person what they’ll do without their next “fix” and they’re silent, as their personal world does not allow that concept, for to answer it is to then reveal their reality: cheat, steal, lie, even kill, for their “fix.” Ask the average American what they’d do without their next tank of gas and I’ll wager getting the same response, that same silence, as dealing with an absence of that “fix” is too culturally catastrophic to consider. And are we as a nation, fighting ongoing oil wars, cheating, stealing, lying, killing for our “fix?”

Our nation is addicted to petroleum! Verification lies in what’s going on with our environment and society. We’re acting as other addicts when in total chemical dependency, our world’s crashing down around us as we secure our next “fix.” What ever is noted about irresponsibility, criminal negligence or crimes against nature to get our next tank of gas, responses to the horrendous damage to our society, climate and environment lack ethical, rational address. Rather, “theater of the absurd” justifications sustaining the status quo which petroleum provides are offered.

Our Gulf of Mexico coastline, Alberta, Canada’s Boreal Forest and African villages are being destroyed along with thousands of other areas where petroleum spills occur in shipping and extraction processes, as the cost of our “tank of gas.”

News of global warming and CO2 exceeding 350 ppm continues unabated, and it seems accepted as “background noise” by our nation’s leaders in all spheres of influence, who remain oblivious out of cognitive necessity to protect our petroleum “high.”

Interventions occur in addict’s lives returning them to “clean and sober” and what’s needed for America and the world about petroleum dependency. In an addict’s life, there is a place in which to return, family and civil society. As for humanity, with oil wars destroying nations and cultures, gas and diesel engines our global environment, to where does humanity return?