The Environment

This post was originally written on 3/25/2012

Next up in our series about the issues that are and are not important in the 2012 election cycle, we have The Environment.  This one is pretty broad, but also pretty simple.  As far as whether Government needs to be involving itself in trying to save the environment, the answer is a resounding yes.  The whole point of having a government at all is to make sure that our society has someone taking care of the things that every citizen needs to have that they can't just go out and get for themselves.  Until something comes along and wipes out our country, the whole planet, or all of the human beings living on the planet (whichever doomsday scenario you prefer, pick one) the big four things that every single living person needs are Air, Water, Food, and Shelter from the elements.  In addition to our needs, we have a whole lot of wants and likes that have environmental implications too, primary among which are fossil fuels and the nifty stuff that is made from them.

THE NEEDS

     All of our physical needs are met in some way by drawing from the environment that surrounds us.  Even the objects that are purely man made and have no known counterpart in nature are composed of substances that someone gathered up from the environment.  For human life to continue indefinitely until some heretofore undetermined end point, the planet that we are on needs to be maintained so that it can continue to serve our purposes and meet our needs.  Newsflash- The US is part of a bigger planet.

     No matter how long you personally believe that humans have existed, or even how old you think our planet is, no one can argue with the fact that the ways in which humans use the planet we live on have changed a lot in just a few hundred years.  Up until the discovery of fossil fuels and the invention of inorganic machinery, human beings couldn't do a whole lot of damage to the environment around them that wouldn't repair itself before that person grew old, died, and rotted away.  This is definitely not the case now.

     Just a simple, seemingly harmless invention such as plastic makes a huge difference in the natural cycle that the planet had going on for however long it has existed before men came along and took over.  The drinking containers that were used by our ancestors were made out of substances that, when discarded, would eventually get absorbed back into the environment and pop back up as some other useful thing, like dirt.  What can the environment make for us that is useful out of a plastic Evian bottle, and how damn long are we going to have to wait for that to happen?

     Face it.  Compared to the people who came before us, all of us are slobs.  Your average American has more clothing in their closet in one season than their great great great great grandfather owned throughout his entire childhood.  At least that clothing will eventually rot and become dirt, but what about all the electronics that we have sitting around?  I'm just guessing, but I bet that if we were to just gather up all of the inorganic garbage that is disposed by all the humans in the entire world in just one week, then dumped it all in the state of Rhode Island- well,  the US would be short a state that people could actually live in for a long ass time.

Bye Bye Providence, Nice Knowing Ya!

     I'm not saying that no one should ever do anything that is going to have a negative impact on the environment.  That isn't realistic.  But we do have to keep in mind that just like there were people living here 2000 years before us, there are going to be people living here 2000 years after us too.  Unless the apocalypse happens or we fuck up the joint so badly that humans can't survive on the garbage pile that we leave behind.

     So, what does government have to do with all this?  In short, government makes the laws.  Government needs to make the laws that prohibit people and the businesses that people own from fucking things up so badly that our great great great great grandchildren will have to live inside of little bubbles to survive.  I know, it sucks, and it seems like an infringement upon the rights of every individual to be an asshole who doesn't care about anybody else.   Since the purpose of government is to maintain society, and because our Constitution wasn't written with an expiration date, we're stuck assuming that the country, the planet, and the human race is going to go on without us, and the ones who are coming up after us are the ones who'll be choosing our nursing homes, so we'd better not fuck them over.

     Of primary concern on the Environment front is natural resources and how they should be used and taken care of.  These are broken down into two categories- renewable and non-renewable.  Renewable resources are those that the environment will just keep spitting out as long as we give it a chance to do so.  Non-renewable resources are ones that once they get used, they are gone for at least a long enough time that we might as well consider them to never be coming back.  It just so happens that some of the things we absolutely HAVE to have are affected by the way that we use different types of both resources.

     For example, Air.  Folks gotta breathe, and we gotta breathe oxygen.  Oxygen is a renewable resource, but it takes trees to make it.  Trees are a renewable resource, but they have to be planted and given some space to grow..  There are also a lot of other things that we can't or shouldn't be breathing, and people have to be stopped from putting a bunch of that shit into our air unless they have a plan for taking it back out.

     Another example is Water.  It's nice to wash with and swim in and water your grass with, but we really need to drink it or we'll die.  Takes about 4 days.  Like Air, there are some things that we shouldn't be drinking mixed in with our water, and people have to be stopped from putting that shit in our water unless they have a plan for taking it back out too.

     Number three on our list of needs is Food.  We've all gotta eat, or again, we'll die.  Takes about 3 weeks.  Food grows in dirt, or eats stuff that grows in dirt.  Food is kinda picky about what kind of dirt it will grow in though, and it has a tendency to absorb the stuff that is in the dirt.  Lot of stuff that we shouldn't be eating in our food, because it might kill us, so people have to be stopped from fucking up all the good dirt.

     The last thing that we have to have to stay alive is Shelter.  This means some place to live that will put some walls between us and nature, which is out to get us.  Without shelter, we would freeze to death in the winter, drown during a flood, get carried off to Oz or impaled by sticks during high winds, and burn to a crisp during a wildfire.  Sometimes this happens even if you have shelter, but shelter definitely increases your chances of survival. Shelter is something that individuals for the most part handle on their own, but government needs to make sure that the things that people are doing to meet their shelter needs aren't screwing up any of the things that other people need to keep on living.  Government also needs to make sure that the shelters that people are selling to people aren't screwed up in some way that might kill them.

Now it is time for a little bit about the EPA, or The Environmental Protection Agency.  This is an agency that was created on the suggestion of President Richard Nixon (A Republican, whom most of our parents and grandparents were old enough to vote for back when they were our age) that tries to keep people and their businesses from fucking up our Air, Water, and Dirt That We Grow Food In.  They also try to keep folks from killing off all the critters that also live in this country but that don't get to vote because they don't have thumbs or driver's licenses.


    We've already covered the importance of not messing up the Air, Water and Food.  Why should we care about the critters too?  The short answer to that is that they do some stuff that helps us too.  They are a part of the ecosystems that we've plopped ourselves down in the middle of, and they have a place in that ecosystem to either eat something else, or be eaten by something else.  While they are fulfilling this purpose, some of us like to look at them too.  Evidence exists that some of these critters eat plants that we like to look at, and spread those plants around by shitting out the seeds that the pretty plants grow from in other places.

Not even sure what these are, but look at those wittle faces!

     This answer is extremely simplified, but if you don't like it, then try another one on for size- do unto the critters as you would have them do unto you.  It's fine to eat them if you're hungry and they are handy, but don't wipe their entire species off the planet just so that you can put your house where the view is prettiest.  It's great if you want to wear their fur to make a fashion statement (lay off PETA, I'm not joining your club, but I don't actually wear dead animals either, so we're cool) but don't kill all of them by pouring toxic sludge into the river they take their baths in.  If you build a house and you feel like killing a few spiders that follow the dog in the back door, fine- but don't think that it's okay to build your summer house on top of the den of the last living super special and rare breed of cute little fox.  
THE STUFF WE LIKE HAVING (GASOLINE!!!)

     One of the more popular topics of debate about The Environment centers around oil and all the products that are made from it.  People get all worked up about this one, cause the shit's getting freaking expensive.  Little did Siegfried Marcus know, way back in 1870 when he first used gasoline to fire an engine, that so many people would be using so many different types of gasoline engines 142 years later.  Who knows whether he realized the potential for today's consumption, but it's certain that the profitability of oil did not escape the men who ran around buying up the rights to most of the planet's oil and natural gas reserves.  Those guys understood the value of getting in early and riding the wave all the way to the top.  The dead dinosaur juice and dead plant rocks are a resource that took a really long ass time for the environment to produce, so it's only gonna be good for as long as it lasts.

     Non renewable resources are hot commodities.  It's like a limited edition Star Wars item.  A whole lot of people want them, only so many people will be able to get them before they're gone.  Profit minded individuals have always gotten this, and are usually quick to gain control of these resources before other people even realize what a great thing that resource really is.  Once they have control, and everyone else catches on to the inherent coolness of the thing they've got, they can turn around and sell it to the highest bidder.  This is what has happened with oil and natural gas reserves, and it happened long before the average guy had given up riding his horse to and from work.  Gas prices, and the price of all non renewable resources, are high because the people who own those resources like making a lot of money off of them- plain and simple, end of story.  Not a damn thing that anyone in government can really do about it, unless they happen to own the resource.

     There's a bunch of people who will say- well, the US government DOES own the resource, and they should be pulling it out of the ground and flooding the market with it so that it's cheaper for us!  Drill Baby Drill and all that.  This isn't exactly correct.  The US government doesn't actually OWN any oil.  It owns some land that there is oil under, but it doesn't own any companies that can drill for that oil, or any refineries that can turn that oil into gas and other stuff.  The reason for that is because the US is a capitalist country with a free market system, rather than say, a communist one.  What the US government can do is allow private companies to drill for oil by leasing those companies the drilling rights for whatever lands that the government owns which have oil under them.  The government gets cash for those leases or maybe even a portion of the profits made off of the oil, but the private companies get the oil.  It is up to the companies who are drilling for and refining that oil what they are going to charge people for it once it has been turned into gas and stuff, and just like any other profit driven company, oil companies aren't real interested in charging anything less than they absolutely have to.

     The only place in the entire US where things are a little bit different is in Alaska.  Alaska, by joining our country late in the game after people had started to understand about all the cool stuff that was under the ground, made sure that their citizens were going to get to keep a portion of the profits made off of any of the natural resources pulled out of the ground in their state.  So every Alaskan gets a check each year for their cut of the profits that the private oil companies make off of drilling, refining, and selling Alaska's oil.  What Alaskans have NOT gotten out of this deal is cheaper gas prices than the rest of us are paying, because the companies who are doing the drilling aren't cutting them any more breaks than anyone else.  I'd like to take a moment to point out that the first gas stations in America opened in about 1905. Eight years later, the cost of gasoline was 20 cents a gallon (which equals $4.42 in today's money.)  It has never stayed cheap for very long, even when the price has dropped.

     There really isn't a whole lot that the US Government can do to lower the price that the consumers pay for fossil fuels.  The reason for this is that they do not control the resource and means of production.  People who own parts of the companies that do would like us to believe that government has control of this type of thing, but the reason they want us to think that is because there is one thing that government does have some control of that oil companies don't like- regulation and EPA standards.  These are the laws that government makes that require oil companies to drill for and refine the natural resource (that they bought the rights to and will sell for a profit to us in the form of gas and stuff) in a way that doesn't fuck up any of the other natural resources that people need to keep on living.  The people who own and run these companies would really like for government to let them drill and refine any old way they want to, without restrictions on the way that they do business that might cost them money.  Even if every regulation and fee that the oil industry has to deal with was lifted by government tomorrow, it would still be up to the companies to set the price of the resource they control.

     No profit driven company operates it's business out of the kindness of it's shareholders hearts.  The bottom line is always to make as much profit as you can while people are still interested in buying your product.  Right now, gas and other fossil fuel goods are in high demand because not very many people can get by without them.  People have to work, and unless they are in good shape, they've gotta drive to work.  Not too many of us can just say that we're not going to buy gas for our cars until after the price comes down, so the price will not come down.  Supply and demand is great in theory, but think back to those limited edition Star Wars toys- restrict the supply and you increase the demand.

     Plenty of small business owners have learned the lesson about what happens when you over order your stock of an item.  You can't sell all of them, and you have to offer that item at a discount just to get rid of it.  Smart business owners know to stop ordering that item from their supplier, and wait until customers start asking for it again.  Then they order more, and start selling it at the regular price, or even a little higher if they were smart enough to only order a few of them this time around.  Same situation with US oil- as long as private companies own that oil, they are going to do business in a way that gets them the most profit they can make.

     I think that a lot of people have gotten confused about just how much Government is responsible for fixing the problems that we have because of our dependence on fossil fuels.  To be honest, government doesn't have any responsibility for that, because that is a matter of personal choice.  Government has in the past made it their job to support and promote industries that rely on people being dependent on these types of non renewable resources, (Automotive industry anyone?) but they shouldn't have been doing that.  The first inventions to use gasoline engines were made and sold by private companies, and those companies grew as demand for their products did.  If government hadn't stepped in and tried to help those companies grow to be as large as they now are, then maybe the alternatives to fossil fuel technology would have advanced right along with cars, gas furnaces, and coal generated electricity.  If business had been left to business and simply regulated by government to prevent business fucking up the environment, then it might be a whole lot simpler today for us as consumers to tell big oil and the makers of gas guzzling cars to go shove it.

probably won't happen, but it's cute!

     Now people think "Oh crap, we're in a mess!  Government, save us!"  and that isn't how it works.  Government needs to back off, and people who have a better idea for our energy needs, that doesn't rely on a non renewable resource, need to get to work figuring that technology out, building it, and selling it to the consumers who are sick to death of wondering how much their fill up is going to cost them THIS time.  Free market system baby- let it work.

  Whatever your thoughts on The Environment, this is something that everybody should be worrying about at least a little bit.  Since a whole lot of the individual citizens who live in this country prefer not to worry about it, our government needs to be worrying about it an planning ahead for us and those people of the future.  Lighten up on them a little bit for that, they're just doing their job.