Reclining on your couch, 36 years from now and 360,000 Chinese yuan in debt, you learn that the oceans have accelerated their flooding of coastal regions across the world. Suddenly, a deafening roar shatters all of your windows and throws you from your couch. A few miles away, a dark and expanding nuclear mushroom cloud beckons for your life.
Sounds pretty extreme, right? Considering the unsustainable domestic and foreign policies currently practiced by our Big Oil-sponsored government, this nightmare could one day become our reality. Today, our economy violently stumbles as if hit by a bullet. Once-great banking institutions such as Washington Mutual and Wachovia mustered their last breaths of independence as they were brought to their knees and bought out to avoid collapse this past week.
As shocked party leaders watched the "no" votes trickle in on Monday afternoon to the $700 billion behemoth of a rescue bill in Washington, investors collectively handed Wall Street its worst day since the crash of 1987. The broader market, measured by the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index, fell by nearly 9 percent - its third-sharpest decline since World War II. The Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 777 points - the greatest single-day point drop of all time. Although these markets have since rebounded, such dramatic nosedives are disturbing, to say the least.
It is almost impossible for us to fully understand the sources and solutions to intensifying U.S. conflicts involving energy, national security and the economy. Even so, we still can seek to identify and eradicate elements that are undoubtedly toxic.
There is a specific collection of corporations that, for some time now, has muted the voice of the American people in their government. By fueling the destruction of our ecosystems while simultaneously inhibiting the application of modern science in order to remain a premier energy source, the oil industry has become the most vicious parasite on our planet.
The rising costs of energy is a wet blanket on the economy that both science and capitalism would like to have removed. More efficient sources of energy are presently available - they simply require a public investment in modernizing our energy infrastructure. Nearly 80 percent of France's power is derived from nuclear energy, giving it the cleanest air of any industrialized nation in the world. Companies within the automobile industry, such as Honda and BMW, are rolling hydrogen fuel cell powered cars off the assembly lines at this very hour. Google recently invested $10 million in geothermal energy, and General Electric provides energy from solar, wind, nuclear, hydroelectric and natural gas sources.
Make no mistake - technology is ready to save the world. It is the politicians we elect to office who don't seem ready.
In contrast to the alternative energy entrepreneurial endeavors struggling to receive financial support in the form of government subsidies, the oil industry is set to receive at least $33 billion over the next five years through tax breaks and loopholes stipulated by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The fate of our world is determined by the decisions we make today.
Tell our congressional representatives that their votes on bills will determine whether you let them keep their jobs. I'm not interested in seeing a mushroom cloud any time soon.
Lance Legel is president of The Dynamo for Environment & Humanity Inc. as well as a UF physics and astronomy junior.
