My objection to fossil fuel use is because I have been all over this nation and I have seen first-hand the disgusting tailings of a fossil fuel dependent society.
When I say "tailings" I am not just speaking of the mountains of earthen rock and such that are piled up from mining operations, but I do include those as well.
No, I am talking about all of it, everything that is being cast off or has already been cast off from our disposable fossil fuel powered society.
I am talking about all the disposed of gasoline powered cars that sit now in singular rusting hulks in farmyards and back yards and front yards across the land.
Then there are the thousands of acres of land, perhaps many square miles of space, dedicated to mass internment of battered and forgotten vehicles with their leaking bodies dripping gas and oil and coolant and battery acid into the soil. Those millions of trashed cars and trucks and tractors and forklifts and any number of other machines that once filled the skies with their emissions are now filling the land and the runoffs and the waterways with their seeping fluids and debris.
As bad as that is I have seen the mountains of discarded factory machines idle and rusting away in collapsed workshops from mom and pop sized to sprawling behemoths spanning acres and acres now abandoned to leech their corpses of rust and lubricants and deteriorating mechanics into our ecosystem.
Silent and stark are those machines now, but they speak of a time not that long ago when coal was king and it powered everything no matter how dirty or clean it might have been, cause those factories needed power, and coal was the answer. Deep shaft mines, strip mines gave out tons and tons of the stuff that would go to innumerable plants to be burned as fast as possible to run the steam turbines that powered the grid.
No one then cared what elements of poison were belched out of those power plants to drift across the land and fall into tillable soil or into ponds, lakes, streams and oceans. No, the more smokestacks spewing the toxins out and onto us and into our lungs the more folks thought "Isn't America Great!"
Now so many, too many, of those power plants are shut down, and the places where they stand, empty, are not being reclaimed. No one is tearing down those plants and recycling what can be recycled, no one is clearing off the soil where they stand and removing the cement and turning those spots back into nature places. No, the trash remains, the unused coal piles sit, the coal belt towers stand, the rail sidings sit idle, the smokestacks rise as tombstones; monuments to 'use it up and to hell with tomorrow'.
I have seen the landfills firsthand, deep down into them, to witness the carnage of civilization in its detritus delivered by an uninterrupted stream of trucks bringing unknowable tons of what was once new but is now used up, tossed and forgotten. Many of these landfills had no ecological restrictions, were never lined, did not ask or inspect what was being interred so every dangerous substance was ok then, just dump it and run and cover it up and never worry that poisons would percolate out and enter our waterways or percolate up through the earth as noxious gasses. Who knew?
I hate to admit but I must admit I am fully guilty of contributing to all of that of which I have seen and decry. But I have tried to make amends when and where I can and have been doing that for some time now.
I contributed to that "use it and toss it" society never caring about what I was doing or where my cast offs went. But I do care now, greatly, and I try to tell others that will listen.
If the earth is better served by moving away from fossil fuel use as much as can be done with the inclusion of technologies that can make what fossil fuels, we are using less dangerous and less in direct impacts upon the land and the water and the air I am all for it. If we can find ways to renewable and sustainable energy sans coal or petroleum or natural gas, I am for it.
If that also turns out better for the climate, then that would be sprinkles on top of the icing on top of the cake
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