Thinking about this oil spill, Douglas Adams was right...

[FLPanhandle]

"The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically that not one of them is worth all the bother. On Earth, the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm’s way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to the other - particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e., covered with tar, full of smoke, and short of fish."

— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

[callous taoboy]

1. Great quote from a great book by an extraodinary genius.

I got Mr. Adams to sign my Hitchhikers gold leaf edition. A friend and I had picked him up from the airport to take him to a speaking engagement in Angchorage, and he asked us to pull over so he could see comet Hale-Bopp. That was a neat evening.

[MorningGlow]

2. +1--He was the greatest guy

Met him many years ago (I was in high school!) when he came to my city to do a reading. He was so thrilled that people came out to hear him speak--spent lots of time after the reading signing books and towels. I must get mine (towel) framed...it's squirreled away in a cedar chest, but I'd rather preserve it better.

[Mother Smuckers]

3. Good one...and it made me think of a bit from a very different source

"Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain. You've got to pay for it. Sometimes I think there's a man behind a counter who says 'All right, you can have a telephone; but you'll have to give up privacy and the charm of distance. Madam, you may vote; but at at price; you lose the right to retreat behind a powder puff or a petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air; but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.' Darwin moved us forward to a hilltop, where we can look back and see the way from the which we came. But for this view, this insight, this knowledge, we must abandon our faith in the pleasant poetry of Genesis."

--from Inherit the Wind

[zeemike]

4. that is indeed an accurate and scary assessment of our problem.

But the scariest part is that it must grow each year is size and quantity like a cancer on the earth or our economic system collapeses...
will we as people ever overcome our fears of change enough to stop the growth and find better and sustainable ways to live?
that is the question.

[FLPanhandle]

7. I don't know if it's a fear of change as much as our not wanting any personal inconveniences.

Sustainable practices would work however might require a changes that most people might find "inconvenient".

[pansypoo53219]

5. oil will soon be

the whale oil of yesteryear.

[Martin Eden]

6. Not to mention 40,000 traffic fatalities every year ...

... and the cost to own, maintain, & insure a car
... and the amount of prime real estate consumed by roads & parking lots
... and the taxes to build & maintain all that infrastructure
... and the taxes & human suffering in wars to gain control of and profit from the resources overseas

But we Americans really do love our cars!!!

[Codeine]

8. "But we Americans really do love our cars!!! "

The whole world loves their cars, actually. This is hardly an exclusively American problem.

[taterguy]

10. Lots of Europeans use mass transit, walk or bike places.

When we built our current transportation infrastructure we thought oil was limitless.

Turns out we were wrong.

Is it too late to change?

[voteearlyvoteoften]

9. rec