oil
You are viewing stuff tagged with oil.
You are viewing stuff tagged with oil.
Alberta’s Tar Sands and the High Cost of Oil — read this and you’ll feel blinding white-hot rage. Tribal lands, guaranteed for perpetuity, ruined. Sky-high cancer rates. A river made worthless. Wholesale, short-sighted environmental destruction. Half a billion gallons of water polluted daily. A physician trying to alert others to cancers, threatened with the end of his career. Government sitting idly by, interested only in the profits of the tar sands industry. This scar on the land will take hundreds of years to heal, all this damage done for money.
Norway is a huge exporter of oil. Here’s an article about “The Iraqi who saved Norway from oil”
Norway’s state oil company, StatoilHydro, is internationally recognised as a competitive commercial player and one of the most environmentally and socially conscious ones to boot. Since 1996, every krone the government has earned from oil has gone into a savings fund, which now totals some £240bn – more than a year’s gross domestic product and equivalent to about £50,000 for each of Norway’s 4.8 million citizens.
The great thing about the internet (and in this case, twitter) is that it gives folks with grievances a voice. Sometimes a very potent voice:
I’ve read a bunch of articles and blogs about this whole situation by publicists and marketing folk wondering what BP should do to save their brand from @BPGlobalPR. First of all, who cares? Second of all, what kind of business are you in? I’m trashing a company that is literally trashing the ocean, and these idiots are trying to figure out how to protect that company? One pickledick actually suggested that BP approach me and try to incorporate me into their actual PR outreach. That has got to be the dumbest, most head-up-the-ass solution anyone could possibly offer.
James Duncan Davidson, the photographer, is also a good writer. His latest, Surprised about Oil Prices? Really?, has some good (scary, too) points:
$4/gallon gas is definitely here in a big way and that’s going to have major impact on America’s suburban lifestyle. And, as a kicker, the news people are running around talking about experts and ordinary citizens being surprised. Surprised?
How the hell can you be surprised about this? Really?
Hollywood’s commentary on current events is doomed to be packaged into a format that will sell tickets, avoid details required to truly make points, and a feeling of detachment due to the time required to make a movie. Nevertheless, if a standard could exist by which films could model their political statements, Syriana would be a good start. Certainly, I will have to see it again when it comes out on video to fully understand (or at least make a better attempt at fully understanding) what is going on in the movie’s plot.