Blood for Oil (Fuel-Mad Americans)

http://bzfd.it/1GUWZmk

The one weapon worldwide that warring people always reliably count on against "evil" America is our supposed lust for oil and petroleum products. Speaking as someone who walks downhill daily as part of her commute, I can assure you that there is no such person, at least not how it's portrayed overseas as an excuse for violence and murder.

Americans use transportation regularly because one of our states, that land called "Texas", may be the size of your entire country and then some, which is difficult to envision if you've never been. When I lived and worked briefly in Germany, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a newly-elected Californian governor. The next day, my studio-mates in the atelier tried to use it against me, which was baffling, because I lived in New York City. I tried explaining it to them, but without an illustration like the one you see below, it's almost incomprehensible to a Euro.

The distance from Berkeley to New York City is 2,900 miles—driving time of 42.5-48 hours.

It felt like my time in Denver, when I tried (in vain) to explain to the designers and editors around me how many people we watched die, live on t.v. during the 9/11 attacks, because they also tried to dismiss it immediately. America is so vast, it is a state of mind that's much bigger than other countries on the globe, which makes it unknowable to anyone who hasn't seen it or tried to travel across it. Freedom, like being American, isn't a state or ethnic group; it's a choice.

When I explained to my German co-workers that I would have to fly on a plane (or two, or three, depending on fares and airline hubs) for SIX HOURS just to reach California from New York, I could see an "Aha" moment spreading through the group, which was solidified later on in  my trip when an editor and I blithely mentioned we were driving to Amsterdam for the weekend. They were shocked and scared beyond belief by such a journey as ours (and by beautiful women, too!), until we once again mentioned that we could drive for hours in New York and still remain in our home state. 

To us, driving a mere 2-3 hours to be in another country is so easy and ridiculous a hurdle to accomplish, we cannot imagine NOT doing that regularly. Same thing with the English language: if you had to fly for 10 hours just to get to another country, you'd probably use less languages, too, Euro. Trust me on that. Anyway, English has become the lingua franca for world business and trade, which makes sense to me, because New York City is the capital of the world. 

Writing that is still no excuse for gluttony, just because you may like shiny new things. I love good design and classic American cars as much as the next person, but to pull ourselves out of this mess, we have to buckle down and conserve. This means you! I really liked the German system of limiting car usage and petrol to orderly days of the week divided by neighborhood, like so: on Mon-Weds., these streets conserve fuel and cannot drive, so my co-workers biked as part of their daily commute instead, to a train equipped with bike racks. 

"Petrol" is considered a very expensive luxury in Europe overall, which is the right idea to have, because the cost of using too much gas is a price we can't afford to pay anymore. Think about the melting of the polar ice caps, and you're already there. Same with your air conditioning running at full speed whenever you feel like it, because you're overweight and always overheated. Fuck that! Staten Island has already experienced crippling power outages and it's not even August (the hottest month here), yet.This world needs to go on a diet, and not a Texas-sized one either. We need to change the world.

As We Know It

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2626412/NASA-spots-worrisome-Antarctic-ice-sheet-melt.html

The day that has long been foretold is now upon us; the harmful change to our natural world, as it has existed for millennium, has begun, and will move swiftly towards us all. We have artificially warmed our world to such a degree that we have destroyed one of the last great wild spaces on our planet; one of our polar ice caps.

It is with a heavy heart that I also write to inform you that our race has sealed the death warrant for millions of species and fellow inhabitants on this planet. No longer can the powers that be, (who reaped the earth for gain and profit, with the intention of passing on their sins to someone else to figure it out and clean it up), hide behind their profits, lawyers, paid government officials, and corporate-sponsored specious reasoning. 

As dire as this expected news is for us, I also found a bright spot amid all my depressed thoughts, while fretting about the impending changes that have been irreversibly set in motion. Those who counted on thriving under the cover of dark will now be exposed to the light. No longer can someone "accuse" someone of "making up" Global Warming under the guise of some weirdly vague hippy, meddler, do-gooder type of argument, nor can the evil forces of the world point the finger at a scientist for falsely "twisting" the facts (and why someone would do that is still open to debate, because it was never a real question to begin with), because that part of our world is gone now too; the wrong with the right.

It is not whether have you enough information to move forward, because many, many others before me have told you the story of our planet's sickness long before it flashed onto your screen in a brief one minute spot during the evening news, but this: what will you do today, and from now on, to make the changes needed to save our planet and the species that still have a chance of making it out alive from this worldly mess? 

If your spot on the globe is coming under water (and for sea-level dwellers and coastal inhabitants, it most certainly will be, with the expected 4-12 feet of melt water that's expected to hit the planet soon), it should not be about me, (and people like me), who know the problems and have the answers, but rather this: how will you and your children and grandchildren and elderly, along with the sick and the vulnerable in our population, survive under the new climate? Because it isn't me, or people like me, you have to fear. 

It is yourselves. 

Good luck out there,
Your Sister in Christ

http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/antarctica-ice-sheet-disintegrating-n103731