When the Macando Prospect BP Oil Spill was freshly in the news, a student in an Engineering class pronounced “it the worst environmental disaster, ever” and wondered out loud about our conspicous consumption ways, why we need to consume all of that oil that leads to such wreckage of the natural environment, expressing that view if not in an angry manner, at least in an emphatic manner that our society was definitely on a wrong track and that the oil spill was an outrage.
I allowed that it was a “bad disaster, but certainly not the worst disaster.” Of course that was before the end of Spring Semesteer, some weeks before the engineers and technical people at BP let on that it would take into August to control the well and before it was divulged how much oil was gushing out of the well head. At the time I thought it would be much smaller than “that Mexican oil well a couple years ago that didn’t get much press”, but when all was said and done, it was larger than that earlier spill, perhaps the granddady of oil spills. On the other hand, unlike the Exxon Valdez spill, the type of oil was light and the Gulf is warm and humid; whereas there has been considerable environmental damage, it doesn’t seem like it lived up to the dire predictions.
The other remark I made to the student, and this one proved to be a mind-changer, “Why do we consume so much oil? For one thing, it allows women to participate in the work force. Since the 1970’s, our vehicle-miles-travelled as doubled, and we have doubled our labor-force participation. What all of those cars and driving around does it allows two earners in families to work in two separate places. As an engineer, you need to know about the tradeoffs to things. Oil consumption poses environmental risk, but it offers social benefits.”
The student in question is male but having a liberal/idealistic frame of mind, and posing the question of oil, gasoline, and the amount of driving we do as allowing women to hold jobs lead him to pause and think.
As to Kettering, the electric starter prevented disabling, even life-ending injuries (think compound wrist fracture prior to anti-biotics) of men too.
One of my favorite quotes is by Kettering:
“My interest is in the future because I’m going to spend the rest of my life there.”
So. The electric self starter led to more freedom for women. More freedom for women led to more women involved in politics. Women actively involved in politics were some of the prime forces behind the instigation of Prohibition. Prohibition led to the rise in power of the mob, the incomplete repeal of prohibition led to the current drug wars.
There is an interesting extension to that.
When the Macando Prospect BP Oil Spill was freshly in the news, a student in an Engineering class pronounced “it the worst environmental disaster, ever” and wondered out loud about our conspicous consumption ways, why we need to consume all of that oil that leads to such wreckage of the natural environment, expressing that view if not in an angry manner, at least in an emphatic manner that our society was definitely on a wrong track and that the oil spill was an outrage.
I allowed that it was a “bad disaster, but certainly not the worst disaster.” Of course that was before the end of Spring Semesteer, some weeks before the engineers and technical people at BP let on that it would take into August to control the well and before it was divulged how much oil was gushing out of the well head. At the time I thought it would be much smaller than “that Mexican oil well a couple years ago that didn’t get much press”, but when all was said and done, it was larger than that earlier spill, perhaps the granddady of oil spills. On the other hand, unlike the Exxon Valdez spill, the type of oil was light and the Gulf is warm and humid; whereas there has been considerable environmental damage, it doesn’t seem like it lived up to the dire predictions.
The other remark I made to the student, and this one proved to be a mind-changer, “Why do we consume so much oil? For one thing, it allows women to participate in the work force. Since the 1970’s, our vehicle-miles-travelled as doubled, and we have doubled our labor-force participation. What all of those cars and driving around does it allows two earners in families to work in two separate places. As an engineer, you need to know about the tradeoffs to things. Oil consumption poses environmental risk, but it offers social benefits.”
The student in question is male but having a liberal/idealistic frame of mind, and posing the question of oil, gasoline, and the amount of driving we do as allowing women to hold jobs lead him to pause and think.
As to Kettering, the electric starter prevented disabling, even life-ending injuries (think compound wrist fracture prior to anti-biotics) of men too.
One of my favorite quotes is by Kettering:
“My interest is in the future because I’m going to spend the rest of my life there.”
So. The electric self starter led to more freedom for women. More freedom for women led to more women involved in politics. Women actively involved in politics were some of the prime forces behind the instigation of Prohibition. Prohibition led to the rise in power of the mob, the incomplete repeal of prohibition led to the current drug wars.