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You know, as I read the various posts here on DU regarding peak oil, environmental issues caused by global warming, shortages of fuel, the conversion of corn into ethanol and how we are to get our food when oil does skyrocket in price, I think about the poor in our society. What becomes of them?
It's nice to say, "I'll just get a hybrid" or "I'll just buy my food now from a local organic grower" or "I'll convert my home into a more energy efficient type" or something as simple as "changing all my light bulbs to florescent", but the reality is: all of which I mentioned above is beyond the reach of the poor in this country.
I look at photos and video from various third world nations, Mexico, Nigeria, Bangladesh, you get the idea, and I think, what will happen to them? Then I ponder the poor in our own nation. Think of that one part of your city, that certain section that no one goes into after dark, those "questionable" neighborhoods. What will happen to them?
They certainly can not afford any of the things I have mentioned above. If any of you are poor or know someone who is poor, then you have a very intimate idea of what the face of poverty is like in this country.
Think one moment of that single mom with two kids that depends on a crappy car, and prays every day that it doesn't break down and how she stretches the food bill each month to feed her two kids and nothing for herself. Think about that job she works at, the one that is barely above minimum wage.
Now, with all that in mind, now add into the mix, gas prices going up. That strict budget she has maintained for the basics of survival, will now be cut into because of the rise in fuel. Well, you ask, why doesn't she just take the bus? Exactly, why doesn't she? Because like most cities in this country, public transportation is grossly underfunded in the inner city. Bus routes that once served huge communities and depended upon them as their life blood to the outside world, have been cut for budgetary reasons.
With the price of gas going up, so will the cost to transport food. How will she feed her kids? How much less will she eat, so her kids can live?
We as a nation are facing a truly gigantic problem of unbelievable, inconceivable epic proportions. We have completely failed the poor in this nation. What happened to that war on poverty? What happened to the outrage in this country after Katrina showed us how we as a nation choose to look the other way on the reality of poverty in this country? Damn it, what has happened to us as a nation?
Now, once again, think of those images of those third world countries with the poor living in garbage dumps, with houses made from case off pieces of wood, that steal electricity in a haphazard dangerous fashions, that light fires in their tinderbox "homes" to cook their meals.
What happens here if a gallon of gas rises to 5 dollars due to some fucked up middle eastern pissing match between two nations that need to grow the fuck up, how is that person, these people, countrymen, going to survive?
We live in a nation that provides billions of dollars to a defense industry to take over nations based on lies, yet that same nation cuts back on what very little it had provided to the poor.
We are facing something that not one of us can possibly define. People write how we have to change our neighborhoods to fit this new utopia of a oil free world. How we have to work in various community based organizations to survive the oncoming peak.
That crap just looks damn lovely on paper, but let me tell you something very simply, try telling that to the people of say, of south central L.A. or some of the truly impoverished areas along the Mexican border or the rundown areas in the Bronx or the poor neighborhoods of Detroit, they will look at you as if you were crazy. They already live a life of survival from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour.
The various idyllic options that are presented on here and other websites about how we have to confront peak oil are based in a fantasy. We would all love to have these fuel saving, energy saving, local food opportunities open to everyone. I think at the base of it all, everyone wants to save the earth, improve their lives and eat better, but that just doesn't exist for a huge portion of todays society.
Many of these folks, live their entire lives without even seeing a life beyond their city street.
Katrina showed us in an in your face way, that the level of poverty in this nation is blinding. When people in New Orleans didn't leave their homes because they didn't have the means, aka 1)a bus 2)an available car 3)or the financial means, something is truly screwed up in the system by which we help the poor.
Given this, how, as a nation, are we to expect that they will do what needs to be done to help defeat global warming or reduce their energy needs?
When they are just trying to survive.
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