Boobies

I used to participate in Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count in Billings, Montana each year. Our group of three or four would walk the Yellowstone river from Huntley to the Exxon refinery, and part of the route was a narrow passage between the river and hillside that had a railroad track running through it. When trains came we had to stand aside and watch the massive engines and listen to the deafening roar. I remember one time thinking of the stark contrast, maybe even the absurdity of counting little gray rosy-crowned finches and nuthatches while feeling the massive power of the industrial system that so taxes our environment. I realized then, as a wilderness advocate, that I depended on those trains to support my lifestyle. I thought to myself “I am part of this.”

There’s been a pipeline leak under the Yellowstone River near where we counted dicksissels, godwits and peewees. (We never saw those particular birds – I just like the names.) ExxonMobil is a massive state-supported capitalist enterprise that operates against nature to provide for my lifestyle. It has fouled Prince William Sound and was surely in on the meetings wherein the invasion of Iraq was planned. It has financed the junk science that has led to climate change denial. But it is hard to grasp the notion of “massive” in our finite brains. People who work for Exxon, all the way up to Rex Tillerson, current CEO, merely occupy slots. He is as much guided as he guides. If he were to say tomorrow morning that climate change is real and human-caused, the word “former” would precede “CEO” tomorrow afternoon.

These people know what’s up, and cannot stop it. Capitalism is a seed-eating enterprise, and the motives that drive it are impervious to rational behavior. The choice of the CEO’s and Wall Street types is either to participate or not, to accumulate wealth and power to to elect to be powerless. They internalize the contradictions as they must to prosper, and their glorification of the system is a form of denial.

The matter of a small pipeline spill in the Yellowstone River was not intentional, and the people who built and monitor the pipeline are not political hacks going through the motions. While ExxonMobil is powerful enough to control government, it is also concerned about public opinion to a degree. It is not in their best interest to be cavalier about transport of oil. The company is many things, but the tiny people at the bottom of the ladder in Billings, Montana, are neither evil or incompetent.

What we have here is an accident. Time to say “Oops!,” and clean it up and get on with our lives. The sneering and moral indignation that I see from the pwoggies and Democrats is quite distasteful and unintentionally revealing.