By Bill McKibben
[I am posting this diary because Bill McKibben is right now giving a speech and unable to post it himself - MB.]
The question to ask about the spill in the Gulf is: are we dealing with a one-off accident, a mistake, a bug? Or is it environmental destruction really the essential business model of the fossil fuel industry?
If the answer is bug, then we need to concentrate on one kind of solution: better regulations to make sure oil wells don’t leak, and that if they do companies pay for the damage. And we surely need to do that—it’s a no-brainer (which unfortunately doesn’t preclude the fact that the Congress may not do it. We need a new word for something any other human institution would automatically do, but the Senate will punt). It’s basically straightforward, the kind of thing technologically sophisticated societies are good at.
But what if the BP spill is just one tiny part of the daily ongoing destruction that comes from the fossil fuel business? That’s my contention.
continued at Daily Kos...
