It’s Mother Earth’s battle cry inspired by the world’s dire climate crisis that has been sung by many for years yet still hasn’t yet resolutely been taken up by the world as a whole. So the cry remains: what ultimately is more important: Water or Oil? The Human World is starved for both. But which of the two will ensure the ultimate survival of life on this tiny orb commonly called the Blue Planet? The dilemma of modern human civilization and plight of our Mother Earth are one and the same. The lack of water eventually will kill both, while the abundance of oil eventually will also kill them both.
There’s a very real, simple reason why every aspect of the planet’s corporate world order – and especially its corporate mainstream press, governmental bodies, political parties and energy sectors – refuse to truthfully air what underlies such a climate crisis in the first place, and what actually would have to be done – not by the year 2030, 2040, 2050 or 2100 – but Now – Today – to lower the world’s toxic emissions that are inexorably creating ever-greater planetary climate change imbalances.
Too many elitists and liars simply exist among the corporate press, its political realms and unsustainable energy sectors. They’re all part of a closed system mentality involved in the conspiracy of an entire civilizaton’s refusal to resolutely address the current magnitude of the climate crisis in the world. For a multitude of political, economic, financial and ideological reasons few will ever state for the record the magnitude of this crisis, because the basic problem lies in the fact that nothing really ever will work short of a complete revamp of modern human civilization.
But the handful of Global Power Elites at the top of the world’s heap who control everything like the current set up just the way it is, thank you very much: all the constant wars, unequal distribution of wealth, rigged elections, carte blanche control of all the monies and straight jacket on everything else. Real change can only come about once indigenous and non-indigenous peoples collectively begin to work together to pool their ancient knowledge and wisdoms to address a world that’s out of control and continues to run amok.
Yet the disinterest and contempt shown by society’s gatekeepers of consciousness to those indigenous and non-indigenous people who do make the attempt to speak truth to power about the causes and solutions to these crises too often receives in response the same deathly sound of silence as that which comes from the grave. Massive scar tissue can be seen on the heads, hearts, minds and bodies of all those who have ever tried or continue to persist in beating themselves against this unresponsive stone wall. This is the nub of the real crisis that exists within the modern world’s many closed systems.
As a result, deep, unresolved, free-floating anxiety continues to everywhere exists about so many related pressing issues: the election of authoritarian-dictatorial leaders in whatever upcoming future national elections; what some meekly call climate change, yet others deem a crisis that threatens the very continuation of life for all human and non-human species; not to mention a wide range of violated historical promises made to indigenous, aboriginal peoples to honour and respect their unique contributions to world society, as well as; the many similarly violated historical false promises that have been made by governments to non-indigenous peoples to show their citizenry that a concerted move is indeed being made to bring about the many possible creative, innovative changes that can already be realized in the near and distant future for a petroleum-free, lower emission way of life:
Yet all such promises are patently false ones and impossible to accomplish when, for instance, the world’s masses are constantly bombarded by pop-culture celebrities and society notables who demonstrably flaunt, 365 days of the year, 24/7: on every TV drama or commercial on every channel, especially during every major sporting and cultural event, or during every pre-show in every movie theatre; while heralded, as well, in every newspaper and popular lifestyle magazine; the need to buy ever-bigger, flashier, gas-guzzling automobiles and petrol-fueled products. Every day, as well, ever more gigantic cruise ships and cargo ships, poorly-regulated and unnoticed, ply the oceans of the world, each equivalent to hundreds of thousands of polluting vehicles on land, that silently poison the air and seas, killing all manner of denizens of both the earth and the deep. Such realities make a mockery of what all the children, as tomorrow’s future citizens of the world; are absurdly told what to believe it means to live “The Good Life”.
Ever since those early days of the Paris Accord Agreement it’s clear the world at large is far too embedded in its old petroleum-fixated way of life to make any significant changes beyond the half-hearted, piece meal, lip service changes that thus far have been made to dramatically change the direction human civilization continues to take. The modern world is just too deeply hooked on The Black Crude Sludge that represents the decayed detritus of a prehistoric past that existed long before humans were even on the planet.
But if the gate-keepers of the Human world truly had the will to do it, and decided to make the necessary sweeping changes required to address the existing climate crisis, it could literally be done almost over-night. Once they’d put their best and brightest minds to the task, they could mobilize the world’s resources to re-tool its entire industrial might as it once did to meet the dire threats posed by WWII, or likewise when the challenge was accepted to put a man on the moon in ten short years. As daunting as the challenge now may seem to make the monumental corrective measures needed to reshape and redefine modern human civilization’s entire raison d’etre to address these severe planetary climate imbalances, it isn’t impossible. It could be done again. If the collective will was there among the world’s all-powerful gatekeepers among such organizations as: the Bilderberg Group; World Economic Forum; The Forum of Young Global Leaders, Council of Thirty, Trilateral Commission, European Round Table of Industrialists and; the Atlantic Council it could be as easy as flipping a light switch. Were an emergency meeting of all the best and brightest in these key organizations to be held, the same truthful, sober, creative dialogue that addressed World War II or the Space Age could also come up with the same kind of immediate, dramatic, creative, workable solutions so desperately needed to finally bring about a true reconciliation with the earth – Our Mother Earth.
But to get the world’s titans and their juggernaut to move so much as even a few degrees to avoid the fatal calamity that lies ahead, though it may seem all but impossible, must be done or passively wait until whatever calamity will happen, finally happens, which it will to be sure.
Until that moment of conscious critical mass of will power and undeterred focus occurs, humanity’s modern civilization will continue to whistle in the dark, espousing whatever hypocritial doublespeak, applying whatever band aids to wherever the hurt is greatest while paying lip service to all the rest; hoping in the meantime that some monster asteroid, packing the wallop of 50 or 100 nuclear bombs, doesn’t suddenly just appear out-of-the-blue, from the blinding direction of the sun, and smack into our Blue Planet, instantly changing the whole reality of life on the planet whether we like it or not.
Meanwhile, a fatal disconnect still exists in Canada, as indeed it does everywhere else in the world, between an avowed desire to protect and care for Mother Earth’s fragile natural world, her finite resources and the opposing reality of mankind’s greedy, desperate, ever-burgeoning political-corporate-societal needs. Ever more copious amounts of oil and fossil fuels will simply be needed to continue: to run all the vehicles, planes, trains and ships; grow all the food crops for an ever-exploding population, while continuing to manufacture and sell every petroleum starved man-made thing in the modern world’s endless inter-woven, ever-expanding array of Chinese Silk Road’s that keeps the ever-burgeoning masses busy while the whole business of life continues to proliferate, however greedy, unbalanced and suicidal that may be.
This is why countries like Australia, Canada, the United States and so many others still refuse to fully and openly discuss the climate crisis issue and ongoing degradation of their nation’s pristine habitats and finite natural resources, even though in places like Australia’s New South Wales a recent report revealed that the destruction of its natural habitats, forests and woodlands have increased five fold from what the crisis was only a few short years ago, with its iconic Kaola Bear on the verge of extinction. While in the United States, ever since the violent debacle of its Dakota Access Pipeline ensued, the need to further expand the amount of barrels of petroleum flowing through that pipeline maze continues to increase with no end in sight. While in Canada’s Alberta Tar Sands, that province’s devastated region already has been turned into a virtual national sacrifice area.
Yet to keep mankind’s unparalleled world of greed and madness running as it is means ever greater amounts of the planet’s pure, precious, finite waters must, knowingly and willingly, continue to be consumed, polluted and destroyed to perpetuate human civilization’s hellaciously-addicted fossil-fueled way of life bent on its own self-destruction and that of all life on this, our exquisitely beautiful, Blue Planet.
It’s a trite cliché to say the time has long since past the critical tipping point when humanity can no longer have it both ways. Every human must, sooner or later, once and for all, choose which side of the debate they’re on and then accept the consequences of whichever side is chosen.
One prime example is Canada’s decision to continue to choose this fatal addiction to oil and fossil fuels by its latest decision to continue building a Trans Mountain pipeline from the Tar Sands of Alberta to the coastal waters of British Columbia. Canada’s decision to increase the flow of toxic bitumen – one of the dirtiest of all substances known to exist – to a world hopelessly hooked on yet its next fix of the deadly black stuff flies in the face of whatever constantly re-adjusted Paris Accord Agreement or proposed grandiose Green Environmental Plan to help humanity once and for all kick this fatal attraction. Every new scheme in this direction, whether it’s a so-called aboriginal/First Nation ‘Reconciliation’ Pipeline, to get them their own ‘tiny cut of the economic pie’, or whatever other spinoff plan of the same thing boils down to a falsehood of perpetually trying to have one’s cake and eat it, too.
it’s always a curious fact to note that oil is what remains as a by-product of one of Earth’s most primitive epoch’s in its evolutionary journey yet also is perhaps the main cause of what scientists now refer to as the Anthropocene Epoch in geological history that is in the process of repeating yet the sixth great extinction of all of life on earth.
Human society must keep reminding itself that it’s by-products like bitumen that are fueling this epoch extinction and literally every aspect of the human world’s modern civilization, and that such decisions are bringing about, if not speeding up, this fatally destructive geologic epoch that, to continue to do so, must knowingly and willingly consume and destroy ever-greater amounts of the earth’s precious, finite natural sources like water that, literally and figuratively, is the very essence of life.
Water is the only real lifeline that sustains all of earth’s living things as we all travel together safely through time and space on our tiny, resilient blue orb through an incredibly harsh, unforgiving, hostile universe. One could even go so far as to say that the ancient waters that daily course through all our bodies is a holy communal fluid full of the actual hosts of ancient ancestors of all manner and kind going back to the very beginning of creation. Therefore, no matter how else one may put it: Water is the Most Sacred Substance of all that not only Protect’s but Inspires the Journey we’re on Together.
Of all the holy mantras ever sung, this should be the single-most one the people of Canada and everywhere else in the world chant to themselves as they awaken each morning to greet the new day. It’s a mantra to be repeated as a ritual on the full moon of each month as the waters in our bodies, mystically, are pulled this way and that in the same way the currents and tides cause the planet’s own waters to ebb and flow. It’s a truly sacred mantra to be repeated everytime we turn on a tap to fill up a glass of water to quench our thirst and then mindfully pause for still a moment longer to give thanks and ponder this whole wondrous story of our Mother Earth’s endless journey through time and space and her ability to sustain the thirst of every one of its lifeforms with the same waters that literally and figuratively always have been here since the beginning of time and, in some form or another, always will be to its final end.
Such awareness should give every human cause to pause for one moment longer still before quenching one’s thirst to consider how wondrous this precious, finite substance is that already has been in the bodies of so many famous or infamous humans, or taken such an eons-long circuitous journey through so many other innumerable sentient beings and lifeforms going back to the dinosaurs and beyond, and yet continues to enrich our lives as it did their’s.
Before Canadians and other peoples of the world give any further support to a woefully-disrespecting corporate world order that denies this reality they should use this daily water mantra, and the ancient indigenous adage, “Keep it in the Ground!”, to call their mind to the destructive fossil-fuelled way of life that, through the daily primitive, brutal mining and extraction of countless dirty, toxic ores and minerals poisons and destroys forever colossal amounts of this precious, finite, substance that without it our earth no longer would remain blue but instead become yet another brown lifeless hulk endlessly hurtling through space.
In a National Observer article (“The Juggernaut of corporate oil must be stopped” June 18th 2019), Giindajing Guujaaw, an Hereditary Chief Gidansta of the Haida Nation, who is an advisor to British Columbia’s Coastal First Nations, spoke out in response to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to approve the extension of the controversial Trans Mountain Pipeline from the Tar Sands of Alberta to the coastal waters of British Columbia and beyond.
The words of Guujaaw – a Haida activist, leader, visionary, drummer, dancer, carver among his people – hereditary leader of the Gakyaals Kliqawaay, a Haida family of the Raven Moiety, protector of Gwaii Haanas (South Moresby), who was instrumental in the renaming of the Queen Charlotte Islands as Haida Gwaii – is one exceptionally inspirational First Nation man who represents a centuries old battle cry that has been sounded in every corner of the earth, by a multitude of fine speakers who have ever come and gone upon our earth. His lofty words should be taken as a renewed living retort to all the world’s politicans-indian leaders-energy CEO’s and voters alike who consider themselves to be part of the corporate world order as they willingly and knowingly continue to support the sacrifice of so much of the earth’s precious finite resources to be further misused to satiate whatever humanity’s immediate selfish needs rather than treat them as a sacred trust to be bequeathed as a legacy to future generations.
In light of Canada’s proposed concept of a so-called First Nation Reconciliation Pipeline, Guujaaw has taken it upon himself to call to all our minds what those basic responsibilities are that those of us of this living time in the earth’s and our own evolution now must do:
“Through the years”, Guujaaw says, “of legal battles and a very measured examination of Aboriginal issues, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has given well-considered definition to Rights and Aboriginal Title in the context of Canada in the modern world.
Aboriginal Rights are a far-reaching right of the collective, held not only for the present generation but for all succeeding generations. The rights also include an economic component coupled with a very deliberate and appropriate “inherent limit,” which requires that the land “not be used in a way that is irreconcilable with the attachment an Aboriginal group has with the land” nor shall it be encumbered in ways “that would substantially deprive future generations of the benefit of the land.” This is, in fact, a limit that, if applied to all, could go a long way in looking after the earth.
In difficult times, our people stood to look after our land and restore our rights leaving us a solid legal base from which we can uphold our responsibilities. This changed the legal and political dynamic requiring governments and industries not only to consult, but to make accommodations, while the Supreme Court also called out for “reconciliation.”
And so it began: out of the sacrifice and efforts of our champions to look after the lands when came the attention of Corporate Oil, with the tried solution of simply buying its way.
Regardless of owner or name, a pipeline and all that comes with it crosses the “inherent limit” and certainly does not carry any Aboriginal Rights. There is none amongst us of any colour or creed that can claim a right to disregard the neighbour downstream, or who can claim a right to neglect life. There is none amongst us with the right to harm the great killer whale or the little barnacle.
An Indian pipeline would be a business venture as any other and is not “reconciliation”; rather, an infringement and a threat.
Be certain that the apparatus killing this planet is a nasty one and it seems intent on finishing the dirty deed. It gains strength through violence with the jack-booted obedient servants at its beck and call. It is commanding enough to recruit our cousins if not you and me. Though it is tough as hell, it’s not that smart.
Left to its devices this Juggernaut will continue killing our planet, and without intervention our fate is sealed and we may as well prepare a dignified exit, but that would be irresponsible.
While it must be stopped, don’t wait for the Indigenous people to lead. The Indians are few in number, battle-weary, and, along with the multitudes, distracted by the ballgames and trying to pay the bills. We are too easy to imprison, too easy to kill, and as you see, as fallible as any.
Be assured, however, that on the front lines the Indigenous people are already standing up for the health of the planet, already standing for basic clean air and water. Most of us love this planet and respect life before money.
Children all over the world are calling out for us to stop this careless behaviour and fix this disorder. The grown-ups still ignore the symptoms and avoid the cure.
Reach out across the chasms to your fellow earthlings and devote some time to figuring this thing out. In each of us is some measure of good and understanding of truth, and somewhere in there is the solution. There is no need to put anyone in harm’s way.
We, the multitudes, allowed it to come to this. We, the creators of the Juggernaut, have got to fix it together.
So with Guujaaw’s wise words, there should be nothing more left for the rest of us to say or do but for each human being in Canada and every other country to follow what their individual conscience and morality directs them to do to stop all the dirty deeds of the nasty oil Juggernaut and its jack-boots in the world that daily, steadily, are killing all our lives and that of our crystalline Blue Planet.
Each human being now must simply open up and speak truth to power every which way they humanly can in the face of whatever the next wave of propaganda yet to be unleashed that will seek to convince us all of how right or just is the adequacy of whatever niggardly actions thus far have or will be taken to reduce the world’s climate crisis while, still in denial, will yet continue to suck Mother Earth dry of all her last precious finite resources
Postscript
The prize-winning author Darren Dochuk, in his book “Anointed With Oil; How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America”, documents how oil literally has transformed virtually every aspect of American religion, business and politics, turning countries like the United States into an endless horse race for preeminent global power while, at the same time, has shaped Christianity’s modern evangelical movement and its radical Alt-Right movement. The Petroleum black stuff continues to fuel literally every major right-wing political-religious power in countries like the U.S., Isreal, Saudi Arabia and China, who also continue to be driven by a quasi-theological imperative and virtual quest for terrestrial supremacy on the planet. This same sinful marriage that exists in the minds of many world leaders, and embedded within the very fiber of their country’s make-up, between God and Petroleum is an unholy alliance that most probably never will be broken short of some catastrophic event. This means that Mother Earth’s struggle for her very survival, and need to preserve her precious dwindling supply of water, will only worsen over time as humanity’s desperate need for still more of the toxic black stuff steadily increases.
Nevertheless, even when the heaviest of headwinds might be too big to buck, it’s still possible to do some creative tacking! And it has been the idealistic youth – our own children of mere school age – who have taken upon themselves to tack any way they can in staging climate strike actions around the world to stop all the insanity. Now we, the cynical adults of the world, must join ranks with them because we all are the people who happen to be briefly alive at this moment when our choices will determine the future for tens of thousands of years ahead: how high the seas will rise, how far the deserts will spread, how fast the forests will burn. Our work, beginning on September 20th for a Global Climate Strike Action Day, now must be to protect that future.
