JULY 4, 2010
Declaration of Oil Dependence
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political and economic bands which have connected them with one type of fuel and to assume among the powers of the earth, separate and equal fuels to which the Laws of Physics entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the change.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are subject to the costs of pollution, high and rising prices, regional wars for control of oil fields, despoiling of the mountains and waterways, and that They are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Light, Heat, Energy, Transport, and the pursuit of a nice clean beach next to clean water with fish you could actually eat.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, not the energy company lobbyists and their corrupted legislators and officials. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to demand new forms of energy and the infrastructure to deliver them safely, cleanly, and economically. Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for solely for lightbulbs and light transit causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of price rises, cartels, shortages of supply, coal slurry and petro-chemical spills, potentially-deadly climate change, and ruinous, horrific, endless wars, pursuing invariably the same Object--an addiction to hydrocarbons--reduces the people to absolute desperation, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such an energy system, and to demand new sources for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of the people (and, frankly, wilful collusion in the problem); and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former energy systems and to drive out the pollution of corruption which lies at the heart of Government.
The history of the present King Carbon economy is a history of increasing injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the retention and extension of an absolute Tyranny over our wallets—even at the cost of our entire Southern coastline and a Trillion dollars in extra military spending.
Enough! We deserve better, cleaner fuel that does not cost lives here or in other countries. We deserve better, cleaner fuel that does not destroy Nature. We are creatures of the Earth just like the marine and bird life of the Gulf of Mexico. Enough!
