Sometimes I take a long look at my fellow Americans and wonder how we became this nation of hateful, self-centered fools. Of course, the nation was founded on entitlement, beginning with Columbus. The Europeans felt they were entitled to land already occupied. Now people think they are entitled to cheap energy - gas, oil and electricity. They complain about regulations driving up the cost of energy. The "cheap" and easy energy has been consumed in decades of gluttony and glorious waste. We have poisoned the air, water and soil. We are creating a stock pile of millions of spent nuclear fuel rods across our nation, leaving a legacy of danger and death for a thousand centuries so we can wastefully light every conceivable mile of urban street and empty shopping mall, and undeservedly live like the only kings and queens on the earth.
We have built machines to literally destroy mountains grubbing for coal and other treasures. We have strip mined vast areas of our planet in a terrible cancerous blight that even the miraculous healing properties of nature will never be able to restore. We continue to spill our crude oil into the seas thinking the ocean and all of its creatures are disposable and certainly not as important as cheap gasoline and cheap electricity. It is because we believe we are entitled to "drill, baby, drill" but I do not know why. I guess manifest destiny still poisons our blood.
We will pay the price one way or the other. We can either pay rather modestly now for regulation and oversight aimed at cleaning up the environment, and possibly teaching us to conserve, or our children and grandchildren can pay the deferred costs. And they will pay a far dearer price. I do not think anyone cares.
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/razingappalachia/mtop.html
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