The Industrial Revolution is getting a bad name--especially since it really took off with the burning of fossil fuels. It made us so many inexpensive products. Heavy labor got lighter as energy gave our shovels a boost and electricity spun our lathes. We got fresh food from halfway around the world, kept it cold in the fridge along with the ice cream and life was just grand--not just for us but for generations to come--we thought.
Now we see the price for heated water, for toast and light, and all those little knickety-knacks we thought we just must have and could buy for cheap. All that powerful burning went up into the air and collected--and collected--and collected--and now come the days of reckoning. Even if we stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, the atmosphere will stay loaded for centuries as the effects grow more and more severe.
You'd think we would have listened years before "An Inconvenient Truth" finally made it clear for most of us that we were walking on a track and could see the locomotive of disaster bearing down on us ever faster.
Because we are running out of the "easy energy" that puffs and gushes from the earth and since we are still in thrall to oil (hey, I'm no better--I've got gas in my car and I'm not planning to walk to work any day soon), we are now looking for more of that poison that is harder to get. The recent promise of "We have a century of energy beneath our feet," has enormous problems that none of its promoters is telling you about. Witness, the oil-friendly state of Louisiana:
The motto of this ominous age should be: "Don't curse the darkness, but don't go lighting any candles either."
James Manista
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