[since I’m at it — posting about tv that happened oh, a year ago…see June 1 post]
About a year ago, the weather reports became dramatic. Forecasters started talking about “extreme weather events” with voices and gestures that rivalled sports game commentary, making droughts, wildfires, floods, tornados, and high temperatures all so—exciting. My god, I realized one day with horror, they’re making the evidence of our imminent death into entertainment.
There was no mention of short-term, let alone long-term, implications for things like, oh, food and water… There was no mention of why our weather is changing. No mention of who’s to blame. (The oil industry for providing the supply, and not telling people about the consequences of use. The media for agreeing to censorship on that point [whenever any public interest group tries to put out an advertisement informing us, the media refuses to sell them airtime]. And most Americans and Canadians for allowing their worldview to be formed by forementioned censored media.)
I imagined the world actually ending as people continued mainlining television, utterly oblivious. And that was bad enough.
Then I saw the trailers for the new tv series, Blood & Oil. Oh my god.
They’re making oil sexy. They’ve got Don Johnson, they’ve got two bare-backed supermodel female bodies, they’ve got a phallic fire-gushing oil rig. They’re making it exciting (at least to the male brain), what with the sex, the fire, and the blood.
Why? Why have the oil companies commissioned a tv series that makes oil sexy and exciting?
Do they think too many of us are limiting our fossil fuel use? Carpooling? Reducing air travel? Turning down the heat during these colder winters? Not turning on the air conditioning during these hotter summers? (Like residential resource use comes anywhere close to the unbridled industrial use…) (Just for example, it takes 4.3 barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil from tar sands mining, and once the water’s used, it’s radioactive, toxic, pretty much useless.)
This is decade zero. We’re halfway through. Decade zero. And we’ve already pretty much eliminated the possibility of staying under two degrees. Given what we’ve already done, we’re certain to reach 1.5 degrees. Certain. Cause and effect. It’s a done deal. (To stay under two degrees, we need to limit our carbon dioxide concentration to 450ppm. We hit 400 ppm in 2013. And we’re adding 2-3 ppm every year. Do the math.)
So what’s the point, now, of encouraging us to maintain, even to increase our use of fossil fuels?
Are they trying to distract us, play a little pretty music on our way to the gas chambers? (No, that’s the least plausible explanation. They clearly don’t care about us. And there is no need for oil in that pretty little music.)
Do they really not know they’ve already guaranteed the end of the world as we know it? (According to Naomi Klein’s research, if we don’t get our emissions under control by 2017, “our fossil fuel economy will ‘lock-in’ extremely dangerous warming” [This Changes Everything, p.23].) (And “under control” means leaving 80% of the claimed oil where it is. Underground.)
Are they trying to hasten our death? Move the predicted date of extinction from 2100 (we’ll be at five degrees by then) to 2050? (Watch the insurance companies. Watch what riders, exclusions, they start attaching to our policies. Refusing to insure for damages and injuries resulting from nuclear accidents will be the least of it.)
Are they trying to rush the return on their investment so they can buy one more company before we all die? Guarantee their ticket to ride on the shuttle to the new world—on Mars?
Have they forgotten that the free trade agreements they paid our governments to sign guarantee that their profits trump the planet? (Never mind that the $775 billion in subsidies that they’ve received from taxpayers make their profits ours.)
Or are they trying to minimize the likelihood that someone, someone, will eventually go all vigilante for justice and target them with a semi-automatic.
Or did Hollywood come up with the idea all on its own? Could they really not know what they’re doing? (Just like they don’t know they have single-handedly desensitized millions of people to violence, to harm, injury, pain, death.) (Ah.)
Given the facts, Blood & Oil is the equivalent of making heroin or the plague exciting. And making vomit and pus sexy.
