From Where I Stand: Step 76

With the responsibility of watching my seven-year-old niece comes the inability to play volleyball this morning. So, while she digests another episode of ICarly on Nick I will attempt to update my readers on the latest status of current events from where I stand. Of course, living in southern California one could sense the communal sigh of relief as the Lakers pulled it together Friday night to quash the upstart Thunder in Oklahoma and move on to the second round. Speaking of Oklahoma what is with a state that decides to protect doctors who fail to disclose fetal abnormalities to pregnant women. Apparently after Arizona pushed through their antagonistic law designed to incite hostility among law enforcement and those of foreign descent, other states such as Oklahoma feel compelled to act in an unfair and out of balance way knowing Fox-news will help get the story right, emphasis on the right. Meanwhile, protesters took to the streets in a May Day celebration of anger over the new immigration law in Arizona and calling for the federal government to take immediate action to bring about immigration reform. Elsewhere these protests are seen as an effort by the well-connected to draw attention away from the battle among senators, members of the Securities and Exchange Commission and New York state authorities over who will be the first to prosecute and convict Goldman Sachs and its executives of not only fraud, but stupidity in the way they brag about their deceptive practices in their emails. Feeling left out after the Southwest stirred up immigration, the boys in OK land thumbed their noses at women, and the Northeast derived a way to undo derivatives, the Southeast climbed on board by having an oil well bust up and blaming London-based BP Industries for the slick that threatens their coast in the Gulf of Mexico. Coming close on the heels of the disaster in West Virginia where twenty-nine miners lost their lives deep below the surface of the earth attempting to provide one of the substances we use to fuel our lives, the explosion, death of oil rig workers and ensuing rupture of another substance we use to fuel our lives, serves as a reminder how important energy reform ought to be. As the layer of black gold draws ever nearer the shoreline with even the greatest doubters of climate change aware of the devastation and ruin this catastrophe will have upon not only the environment but the economy, my mind is clear on why an oil man like George W. Bush supported drilling in the Arctic but completely baffled when a supposed liberal like Barack H. Obama supports offshore drilling. Change does take strength and commitment, and there must be well thought out systematic methods of transition developed, but true reform, especially moving away from oil, which has been the center piece of global conflict, and coal whose dust has filled our air with carcinogens and other harmful substances and sent too many West Virginians to an early grave, requires sacrifice. At a time like this it would be refreshing to hear the president step forward and explain how each of us must take every step we can to reign in our consumption of petroleum and coal based products. In other words, it is time to call for a national effort to walk, bicycle, carpool, utilize public transportation, limit driving, replace incandescent lights, and whatever else an individual can do to change energy consumption and preserve the planet for our children.