Waiting For The Time To Come

BECAUSE OF HYDRAULIC FRACTURING, the United States has surged into the top five oil producing nations, thrilling our fuel industry corporate masters, keeping the price of gas below two fifty per gallon, enraging those whose primary concern is the preservation of the planet. Oil pipelines already criss cross freedom's land, and more are being built, despite the strenuous objections of pro environment protesters, who are often set upon by dogs and fire hoses, remindful of the civil rights struggle in the south in the nineteen sixties. social protesters are always on the correct side of history, and they are always vilified and attacked by their society. In the end, their cause always prevails, usually long after they are gone from the streets. Gas is priced cheaply, and the gas guzzling several ton vehicles are making their way back onto America's roadways. It seems like only yesterday, 1973, when lines were long at the gas pumps, the price of gas surged to over a dollar a gallon, OPEC embargoed us into fear and submission, and the sped limit on highways was lowered to a sluggish fifty five. Back then we thought we were running out of oil. We were, and still are, but since it turns out that oil is beneath every square foot or earth, the running out is taking a few decades longer than expected. There will come a time, soon enough, one can hope, when the corporate profiteers among us and their willing customers come to understand that we will simply have to leave a rather vast amount of fossil fuels in the ground. But that time has not yet come. Perhaps, when every summer day temperature exceeds one hundred degrees, and every big city in the world is filled with folks wearing gas masks, as are Beijing and Calcutta already, the time will come.