The Cost of Living

Nothing is free, even though we all like to think that there is at least something out there that has no price tag. The air you breathe? Companies spend countless millions to make it as clean as possible, which you pay through higher costs as consumers. What about love? Surely love is free. Sorry, but love is one of the most expensive "things" that this world has to offer, whether it be in the form of gifts or the emotional costs of offering your heart to someone, knowing full well that they may hurt you at any time.

Nothing is free.

Yet we all act shocked that an oil company had a rig explode and that same oil line has/is pumped/pumping millions of gallons of crude into one of the most important bodies of water on earth and there is nothing (to date) that we can do to stop it. The cost of this environmental disaster is unknown, even in monetary terms. It will cost British Petroleum hundreds of millions of dollars in clean-up, fines, and lawsuits. It will cost the costal states billions in lost revenue and unemployment. It most likely will affect parts of Mexico and perhaps even the western fringes of the Caribbean.

And then there is the environmental damage. We have no idea how the oil will affect wildlife, the water supply or the damage done by chemicals used to clean up the oil. How far will the oil sink? How long will it linger in the marshes? How long before the toxins are removed from the seafood so that fisherman can harvest them once more? The honest yet painful answer is that we have no answers at all.

And of course the blame began to flow as quickly and endlessly as the oil gushing from the gulf floor. Conservatives called this Obama's Katrina, as if ineptitude by the current administration could somehow take back the snails pace set by the Bush administration during the flooding of New Orleans. Liberals blamed the mess on Bush or, oddly enough, Dick Cheney, simply because their hate for those two is still an open wound. BP is the latest despicable example of Big Oil and Big Government once again proved to be impotent and useless.

Might I humbly suggest an alternative? If you want to see who is at fault, simply look in a mirror, or at anyone else for that matter. All of us are at "fault" for all of us use electricity and many other petroleum- based products. We all drive cars or ride motorcycles. Some of us own multiple mansions, fly around the world is gas-guzzling private jets and putt about town in stretch limousines, but enough about Al Gore. Think of how many products in our homes and at our jobs contain plastic. The need for oil is everywhere.

It is the cost of living a modern life, and it is the cost we all willingly pay.

In every venture there is risk, be it loss of money, limb or even life. Coal gets very hot and is plentiful, but it is also buried deep underground. So we send men down hundreds of feet to extract the item, even though there is a risk of collapse and death. Just as excellent and safe drivers sometimes get involved in car accidents, coal mines, regardless of excellent safety standards, sometimes have accidents. Sometimes methane bubbles explode and sometimes passenger jets slam into the ground because of mechanical failure.

Sometimes people get cancer, even the ones who take good care of themselves. Sometimes our children get bullied and sometimes our teams lose the big game. Sometimes we don't get the promotion we deserve and sometimes, despite our very best efforts, we come up short.

It is the cost of being alive in an imperfect world.

Maybe someday there will be enough power generated by wind or solar or hydrogen engines that we will no longer need to drill a mile down or dig out coal 500 feet below the surface of the ground, but those days are still in the future. But you know what? People will still die harvesting wind and people will still get electrocuted from the electricity generated by solar batteries and you don't want to know what would happen if a hydrogen facility has a mishap.

And it will simply be the cost of living a life with power.