A Report From The Valley

The optimism of the rosy glow of the last vestiges of dusk over the distant mountains to the north belied the grittier scene in the valley below. We were back in the Coachella Valley, Palm Springs of course, a gauntlet run of typical point-and-shoot, overconfident drivers who deserve more accidents than seem to actually happen. The innate oblivion of the freeway driver symbolises the unconscious complacency with which a great but overdrawn nation is speeding towards the inevitable end of conspicuous consumerism. The first tremors of the socio-financial 'big-one' have been felt on the gas station forecourts where even the most inward looking of urban backwoodsmen have noticed the $4.20 a gallon tag. Most everywhere else though, life is lived as it has been since the Marshall Plan baled out war-crippled Europe. There are messages of necessity which have rippled throughout most of the western world but have failed to penetrate the force-field of neo-isolationist ignorance which stretches between two great oceans. A very simple example of this is how the sub-mininum wage, irrelevant packing drone in the supermarket just stuffs your groceries into as many carrier bags as come to hand. In 10,000 years time when cockroaches are the dominant life form on this planet, they'll still be munching the decaying remains of a long forgotten oil industry. At the tills (registers) they still don't take Chip and PIN, preferring instead to sustain the inevitable fraudulent losses of a signature based system. Can no-one teach America anything?

So much for the macro-view. Down at the human level, there is always an air of unspoken desperation in the listless movements of fast food employees. They know, however hard they work, however pleasant they are to customers, they'll still be making $7 an hour (or whatever) and taking the bus home. Surprisingly, I feel sorry for them. It shouldn't have to be this way. But they are part of a system which is killing itself. When they give you two pots of honey mustard where only one is needed, the momentary gratification of the individual is overshadowed by the loss to the planet. When, a half hour later that pot, unopened, is in the trash, another dolphin dies. This is a chaos theory for Gaia; a story of unintended consequences, but, in the internet era, is there any excuse for ignorance? These dark ruminations do not require tumultuous events across the world to change what is mostly good but a million small thoughts and consequent kind actions to remove what is bad from that greater goodness before it is too late for our children..........and the dolphins.

PS: yes, I did come here Club Class but surely my APD paid the environmental cost of that. I feel certain that my government properly directed the revenue to appropriate green issues rather than replenishing stocks of cruise missiles recently depleted by not targetting Colonel Gadaffi.