Live With Your Answers – “Occupy” A World Without Oil

Written on Sunday, March 24, 2013 by Michael McCarthy

My hometown newspaper reported on local college students who traveled in a van (oil fueled) for ten hours over highways of asphalt (made from oil products) to protest in Washington D.C. against the Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada into the US.

A picture showed them warmly clad in fleece and nylon jackets (both petroleum products) smiling for the camera. Of course this was a big party that enabled them to “feel good” about “doing something” about the environment and global warming, without actually making any sacrifice themselves.

Tellingly, many signs reading “StOp the Pipeline” used the Obama symbol for the letter O.

Of course, these students and the professor who drove them to the protest do not have a clue about what it would be like to live without oil for fuel, products made from oil (like their warm fleece Polar Bear hats), and oil and coal for electricity. They haven’t studied enough history to know that the average life span in the Middle Ages (before industrialization and fossil fuels) was 30-35 years. If disease did not kill you early, your body was literally worn out from the overwork required just for daily living. Without fossil fuel, your body became a fossil.

So, I hereby offer a “LIVE WITH YOUR ANSWERS” challenge for students who want to block the Keystone XL pipeline:

Create an “OCCUPY A WORLD WITHOUT OIL” encampment in the center of campus. The challenge would be to live for one week without the products of our hydrocarbon world:....To Read More....