Here is one aspect of resource extraction vs. climate & environmental destabilization I don’t understand why nobody is focused on: preserving resources. Keeping resources for the future rather than using them up seems to me such an obvious choice: if you use up resources now, you won’t have them in the future, when you may need them more & they are likely to be more valuable, & you’d have them available in case of an emergency. You lose resource security by consuming them now. Unbridled greed for fossil fuels & minerals & reckless disregard for the health of water supplies or ecosystems has prevailed over our nation & world for the last several decades. Resource extraction or consumption should not be considered a plus in any way to our economy, & therefore should not be part of any measurement of prosperity like GDP except negatively. The amount of resources you maintain shows the true wealth & economic security of your country – that is what needs to be considered in measuring a nation’s prosperity. Therefore, what we need to do is develop as quickly & as massively as possible clean alternative resources & less wasteful ways of living so that we can greatly reduce resource consumption & preserve such wealth.
A second issue that we should be proclaiming is that our resources are ours – the nation’s resources, the people’s resources – & not energy, mining or timber company’s possessions, just because they may have the equipment to extract them. This means completely changing our attitude towards them, which at present is to basically roll over & let them do & take whatever they want with our resources & environment. We the people could, if we choose to, pay such companies with the equipment necessary to extract & refine these resources for these services, so long as we find it necessary or beneficial, but let’s remember that these resources are part of the Earth, part of nature, & not possessions of the companies, & therefore we the people should have the power to stop them or prevent them from mining, drilling, cutting or burning down these resources when we see that it’s causing more harm than good, & have these companies pay prohibitive fines or face criminal prosecution when they poison streams, pollute air, contaminate aquifers, scorch land, etc. In other words, we should treat companies like Exxon, Chevron, BP, Koch Industries, Weyerhauser, Alcoa, Alpha, Peabody, etc. as industries that we pay for the service of delivering these goods to the public, but the goods they extract are the nation's, not their own. We should control how they conduct their work, not allowing mountaintop removals, widespread forest burns, the entry of dangerous effluents into bodies of water, etc.
These are our resources. Let’s work on preserving as much of them as possible, so that they will still be there in the future when they may be more valuable & perhaps more necessary. Presently the resource extraction industry is causing so much destruction: poisoning our water, endangering our health, ruining our agriculture, destroying our land, extinguishing our wildlife, damaging our fisheries. We need to get these corporations under control, get them out of our government, & stop giving them outrageous subsidies & tax breaks, & not be afraid to terminate their charter as a corporation when their conduct becomes egregious as many of them have.