I spent a year working up north on the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta. It was an alternately eye-opening and amazing experience. The first day I arrived there it was -50°… I have experienced -20 and even -30 but -50 is a whole different thing. There needs to be another word to describe it because “cold” just doesn’t do it justice.
The first thing that happens for new workers up there is an orientation meeting where you watch a couple propaganda movies that are essentially blatant lies about how clean the technology is and how the oil companies are going to restore the environment after they are done. Then you are given a waiver that basically signs away all of your rights as a citizen.
The devastation of the environment is complete. In order to extract the raw tar (bitumen) they first need to clear cut the forest and then dig out the top layer of soil. The chemicals and water needed for the process are dumped into “tailing ponds” that leech into the soil.
One day I chanced to meet a former provincial inspector who told me the oil companies have violated every single environmental code that exists but oil money talks and nobody walks. The power of the oil industry cannot be understated. To say our government isn’t in bed with them would be very naive.
We need energy to power our industrial world. We can’t deny the benefits of our technology — everyone wants a nice car to drive. Modern airplane transportation would be useless without oil. However as we are taught by the wise carpenter “as you sow so shall you reap.” We can’t escape the negative consequences of an oil-based economy.
The Machiavellian oil industry needs to invest more of its enormous profits in alternative fuel technology even if it means a reduction in its power and influence. The greening of our globe is a necessity for the benefit of all. We are all in this together.
Never in human history has such power and wealth been entrenched in the hands of so few and unfortunately the upward transfer of wealth continues. There are consequences to absolute power. The destruction of the environment is the result of unrestricted plundering of the world’s resources.
The good news amidst all of the bad news is that the real-relationship religious experience of the meek shall overcome the empire of materialism and overwhelmingly win out in the long term war of peace. ❤️🌈🙏🏻 it’s going to take time and the efforts of thousands of transformed individuals working together to establish the brotherhood of man and the Fatherhood of God. Peace and Shalom and Namaste ❤️
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