They had to use sunlight from the sky not the ground. When you take millions of years of condensed energy and blow it back into the system in two hundred, wild things are bound to happen. It’s changed they way we live, the way we eat and the way we think. They say oil is like billions of working slaves. Get ready for one ugly revolt
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2019/04/09/Notley-Kenney-Hiding-From-Cleanup-Problem/
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/03/14/Fracking-Disaster-Polluters-Not-Paying/
https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/05/20/Shell-Game-Sour-Gas-Wells/
And for those who want to see modern slavery in action (aka oil sands workers), read this gem: https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/10/05/They-Call-It-Wapatraz/
Making big bucks in the Fort Mac oil patch sure could line one’s pockets, but at a pretty steep personal price…
no further words needed…
Are you the handsome man at the 2:14 mark? 
hee hee
Jan
Years ago maybe.
Jan,
This seems to be an old stand-by from the energy producers playbook. Sort of a “jet fly” for environmental damage. Catch the regulators leaning one way and then sneak out the other side for a quick getaway. 
There is a similar site right outside of my hometown a couple mountains away from my farm. The place was stripped and completely wrecked from an environmental standpoint. A beautiful little hollow transformed into an arsenic laced desert with house sized boulders scattered about. In short a mess.
The owner of the mining company came in, got the rich coal that could be easily gotten, and then walked off. When pursued he declared bankruptcy and then renamed his outfit and kept trucking. There are bonds that must be posted now (and even back then when it was done) but they are tiny. Our corrupt state government does not help things any.
They sent a federal grant our way to clean it up. That consisted of dressing up the haul roads, smoothing out the landscape a bit, and reinforcing the heavy metal laced drainage ponds. And as you could probably guess all of this is just outside the view of the road leading out of town. If there were any justice the government would put his mansion on a truck and move it from its current location in a nearby small sized city into this disaster area and make them all live on it the rest of their lives.
Alas it’s just another Appalachian parable.
Will
Rape & pillage of resources & screwing over of employees by corporations with limited if any real skin in the game, no accountability to anyone but shareholders, all done with the conscientiousness of sociopaths, while bought and paid for government lackeys look the other way while simultaneously handing out grants from OUR tax dollars to bail them. Wash, rinse, repeat. How many times have we said this kind of thing here…
I personally would love to see all those responsible forced to permanently live in the horrible wastelands they have created across the globe. It will never happen of course but it is nice to think about. I will NEVER in a million years be able to understand or relate to that kind of greed and selfishness. I am so glad that I was hiding somewhere when that particular gene was passed out…
I would recommend the ‘Gaia theory’ an old book by Lovelock. Our human timescale is so limited, wastelands from my youth are now lush forests, and buildings have become part of the earth (really, I am only 72). Most people can remember Mt St Helen’s eruption and the moonscape, that is now forest.
@2retired
…and yet, unlike Mt. St. Helens, Easter Island remains largely desertified.
What do you imagine accounts for that?
Rats may end up ruling the world, then again, maybe we are the rats. My current book ‘Apocalypse Never’ is a chronicle of unintended consequences, misunderstanding cause and effect, and banal arrogance, written by an (disillusioned) environmentalist. An antidote to despair.
There will be arguments about what happened on Easter Island but Chris is right about our unsustainable path and our worship of economic growth. However, I’ve yet to see a suggestion about how we should live that is truly sustainable. Sustainability requires (to put it simply) us to not use resources at a rate that is higher than the renewal rate and this applies to renewable resources as well as to non-renewable resources. Maybe the best we can do is give ourselves far more time to figure this out by markedly reducing our resource use, as suggested by Chris.
Having said that, humans are a species and all species have a characteristic behaviour for the environment they are in. Humans are no different other that, supposedly, having some modicum of intelligence and the ability to determine the consequences of their actions. However, I’ve seen no evidence, over the last few decades, that humans, collectively, have the ability to voluntarily alter their characteristic behaviour. That is the basis of my “glass half full” outlook that some have noticed.
No aspiring political leader would dare suggest that economic growth must stop or even reverse; they would never be elected. So even Green parties have either explicit or implicit economic growth policies and the UN’s supposed sustainability goals still includes economic growth. People just don’t get sustainability and I doubt whether, even if they did get it, they could alter their behaviour (collectively).
I just glanced through a review of the book and it starts with, “The way to a cleaner, sustainable planet is not to eliminate fossil fuels and nuclear power, but rather to expand their use, especially in developing countries to bring economic growth and prosperity, the way such sources did for the developed world.” Is this a fair reflection? If so, isn’t this what we’ve done since the industrial revolution? How has that worked out?
That quote may be to try and get people to buy it (mine is from the library). I won’t describe it that way particularly; he is more along the line of what is counter productive and what seems to work, and what is just misguided self interest by someone; and that there seems always a way that could work.
https://www.bayer.com/en/stories/digital-farming-smart-fields
Brought to you by the same people who bought Monsanto. BTW Bayer has its roots in IG Farben. Yes that IG Farben.
At the present time 1.3 % of the US population farms. That number will decrease drastically with digital farming. Your morning corn flakes will arrive unseen by a human being, delivered by an Amazon drone.
Welcome to the future.
…I am so juiced at the idea that I can begin something so interrelated and important. My plans are as all inclusive a deal as I can think of. In every system that Barb and I have worked on is a back up system to the back up system. We have implemented or will implement all the resources so that the cheapest fuel for instance is used as an option to the other system. If it’s cheaper to run propane to heat and cook that is what we will use. If electric then no problem as well as wood. Even our two mobile and large generators bought on the cheap and I restored are tri fuel systems. Not always do we have power at the source of our project(s) so it’s nice that propane, gas and natural gas hook ups can be used without loosing any power for the project being done. What’s so nice too is that if all systems fail then just one generator can be used to run everything we need ran. The excess power is stored in battery’s. We did this for the most part over the last 10 years and now get to connect all sources to a main location then run to the Cabin or keep isolated in the barn.
We should be able to produce most all our own high quality foods and so will only need to add to what we have the grains and rice we won’t be planting. Sugar, spices and other condiments.
Yes!, in all of my/our life this is the most exciting and happiest times to be challenged and work out all the errors of our way to create something very special, together and inclusive of our family.
I am so looking forward that I have no time to look back.
I wish you all well and if I was to offer any advice it is to say: stop worrying about what others do and do what you know is right for you. I could care less if someone is carving stones (except for the perspective it gives), I only want to try and conserve what I can, store energy on my own so I have the BTU’s to get the must have equipment in that makes life worth living. I will always plan to have too much of something rather than not enough. In my world it’s better to have too much than not enough. To be looking at it than for it. Nothing worse than not having factored enough 2x4’s or gallons of paint because it’s better to have an extra gallon on hand than to delay a project because the high dollar employee has to stop and go get another gallon that may or may not be available.
Whatever our fate is it will come headlong into my resilience and I believe, I hope, my firewalls are secure enough to give me time to adapt.
Chris, you make too much sense…Thanks for that…Peace
Just found another review of Apocalypse Never. I don’t think this will be near the top of my books to read. I’m more likely to get “Less is More” by Jason Hickel.
the book is not the best writing but an alternate perspective and pokes massive holes in the self righteous environmentalists successes; if you can stomach optimism, the ‘Abundance’ by Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler, is better reading
Here’s a handy guide, so you can be sure of which situation you’re facing.
The comment of a negative review of ‘apocalypse never’, has niggled at me and reminds me of a negative review of “the Shallows” that put me off reading it, for a few years. When I did read it, most of its prognostications and assessments had happened(!), and it became clear that the reviewer had not liked the message, so slighted the book by associations and judgemental assessments. That same thought applies to ‘apocalypse never’, which highlights the perverse corruption and hypocrisy behind the progressive environmental crowd. On the subject of books, “how to have impossible coversations” is a book that should be mailed out with all voter info!