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Nightmare Scene of Oil Unfolding in Wetlands
Oil slick hits wetlands, threatens Florida
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana - Crude oil spread through fragile US marshlands Thursday, a month after a drilling rig blast released a devastating spill that now threatens Florida, Cuba and even beyond.
Greenpeace Senior Campaigner Lindsey Allen walks through a patch of oil from the Deepwater Horizon on the breakwater in the mouth of the Mississippi River where it meets the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana, May 18, 2010. (REUTERS/Sean Gardner/Greenpeace/Handout) Oil has been pouring into the Gulf of Mexico since the massive April 20 explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 and ruptured an underwater well pipe.
While British Petroleum said Thursday that a tube was now siphoning away 3,000 barrels of oil a day from the leak, a nightmare scene was unfolding in Louisiana wetlands.
"The day that we have all been fearing is upon us today," Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said Wednesday after seeing thick oil washing into the state's coastal marshlands.
Crude is also being dragged towards Florida's popular tourist beaches and fragile coral reefs, by an oceanic current that could wash oil ashore on the state's coastline in as little as six days, before carrying it up the US East Coast and even into the Gulf Stream. Related article: Scientists fear oil slick damage to Florida coral
The grim picture produced rare cooperation between the United States and Cuba as diplomats from the two nations discussed potential risks, as well as the cause of the spill and its projected movement.
Oil in the so-called Loop Current could cause tremendous damage to a wide range of marine life, experts warned.
"The Loop Current is a super-highway carrying babies of a wide array of fishes and other kinds of marine life from their spawning zones to the places where they will ultimately grow up," Environmental Defense Fund chief ocean scientist Doug Rader told AFP.
In Louisiana, the damage was already being seen, with Jindal telling reporters that "heavy oil" had entered the marshlands. "It's already here, but we know more is coming."
Louisiana biologists said they had rescued an endangered Kemp's Ridley sea turtle whose exterior was heavily oiled, the first found so far. Oil samples from the turtle, rescued on Tuesday, were being analyzed to determine whether they came from the spill, officials said.
South of Venice, the seaport where BP has established its response headquarters, oil was seeping into the marshes at a rapid pace.
Shiny tar balls were caught in thickets of reeds where crabs swarmed about, their shells painted orange by the crude. In some spots, a thick blanket of oil hung at the bottom of the marsh.
Earlier, European Space Agency satellites showed oil being pulled into the powerful clockwise-moving Loop Current that joins the Gulf Stream, the northern hemisphere's most important ocean current system.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the main US agency monitoring the spill, agreed that a small portion of the slick had entered the current "in the form of light to very light sheens."
But it tried to temper fears, saying the oil may never reach Florida and if it does, it "would be highly weathered" with evaporation and chemical dispersants having "significantly" reduced the volume.
Rader warned it was "inevitable" that the cocktail of oil and chemical dispersants would eventually make it to Florida, washing up on beaches on the southeastern US coast.
Cuba's southwestern coast, home to major coral and mangrove systems, as well as a nursery area that supports much of western Caribbean marine wildlife, is also at threat.
BP, which is continuing its efforts to siphon up as much of the oil as possible via a mile-long suction tube, said Thursday it was recovering some 3,000 barrels of crude a day.
The firm estimates that some 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, a day of crude is spewing from the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon rig, although independent experts warn the flow rate could be at least 10 times higher.
BP, which has claimed the environmental impact of the spill would be "very modest", agreed Wednesday to a US lawmaker's demand for a live video feed of the oil leak, which could help scientists better assess the flow's rate.
BP hopes to stop the noxious flow with a so-called "top kill" operation in about a week, in which heavy drilling fluids would be injected into the well to stem the oil flow, followed by a cement operation to seal it up permanently.
With concerns mounting over lax federal oversight of the offshore oil drilling industry, top US Senate Democrats urged President Barack Obama to order "immediate and enhanced inspections" of drilling in US waters.
"As the Gulf Coast continues to be threatened by the lasting effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, we are deeply concerned that this accident could be repeated elsewhere," they wrote to Obama.
115 Comments so far
Show AllThey play with our world, like it's their little toy.
Joe
Why does that so familiar?
Adapted from Bob Dylan, "Masters of War".
Joe
Thanks,Joe, that's it!
It's from Kant's late essay Eternal Peace:
"Despotism occurs when the ruler arbitrarily executes the laws which it has itself made; in other words, where the public will is treated by the prince as if it were his private will."
Thanks, vox....It seems that everything everyone has ever said, was about this moment.
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul.
And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead.
Americans corporations are now turning on its own citizens.
Mountaintop removal coal mining, ‘fracking’ of earth for natural gas which has contaminated the water table, massive use of oil derived pesticides and herbicides by agribusiness which has poisoned food and water, and off shore drilling with consequent disastrous oil spills.
We now get to experience what Nigerians and others have been dealing with for decades.
The greedy idiot bastards have finally done it! They have released a volcanic eruption of crude oil that will slowly spread and poison all the oceans of the world. They will continue to lie about it, and claim no responsibility, but the truth is they have poisoned the planet and will be responsible for the death of all. The species that will survive will be the species that can evolve to cope with, or take advantage of this new 'resource' in the sea ... bacteria most certainly will survive. What kind of trawlers shall we use to harvest oil-sucking bacteria?
"What kind of trawlers shall we use to harvest oil-sucking bacteria?"
I hear they taste really good with a nice Chianti....thuuuuuuppp, thuuuuppp
The answer is right here on today's common dreams:
"Craig Venter Creates Synthetic Life Form
Craig Venter and his team have built the genome of a bacterium from scratch and incorporated it into a cell to make what they call the world's first synthetic life form"
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/20-6
----------------
All life forms without a corporate ownership stamp right in their DNA are soon to be obsolete and illegal.
And , truenorth, it will turn out that - ironically enough - the synthetic life form will only survive on Monsanto's seeds.
We are 'out of the loop'.............
"Through this prism I am without end hopelessly moved to gaze as a madman, foolishly believing a constant vigil may bring change to that which is now eternal"
Whom are you quoting? Thank you.
That is about the best any words can express what is happening,
Come on, amused. Cough up the source. It's very good. Sounds like Nietzsche.
"The firm estimates that some 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, a day of crude is spewing from the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon rig, although independent experts warn the flow rate could be at least 10 times higher."
Get the bastards back in front of Congress under oath and if they are found to be lying, put them behind bars. One of these days very soon, when the gov't doesn't do stuff like this, perhaps real militias, tea partiers or simply angry Americans will do it themselves.
From: Obama Positioned to Quickly Reverse Bush Actions - washingtonpost.com
Sunday, November 9, 2008:
A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, . . . Obama would be quickly delivering on promises he made during his two-year campaign . . .
"The kind of regulations they are looking at" are those imposed by Bush for "overtly political" reasons, in pursuit of what Democrats say was a partisan Republican agenda . . . the preelection transition team, comprising mainly lawyers, has positioned the incoming president to move fast on high-priority items . . .
May 20, 2010:
Now Barack Obama has been in office for sixteen months. we are facing of the largest ecological disaster in history:
With heavy oil washing ashore in fragile Louisiana wetlands, wildlife and environmental groups accused BP of holding back information on the real size and impact of the growing slick, and urged President Barack Obama to order a more direct federal government role in the spill response.
Salazar said the Obama administration had been aggressive in its response to the spill but had inherited a regulatory system "that essentially was rubber-stamping whatever it was the oil and gas industry wanted."
From: WRAPUP 3-US to check BP spill size, heavy oil comes ashore | Reuters
..."URGED President Barack Obama to order a more direct federal government role in the spill response."
It's been a MONTH. HELLO?!? Mr. President? Are you fucking sleeping??
hamster, actually he's too busy wining and dining Mexican President Calderon to pay attention to what BP is doing. "While Nero fiddled..."
If Obama was doing the job we elected him to do instead of the job the corporations are paying him to do, he would require US agencies to monitor the situation instead of just receiving reports from BP (we've got it covered, everything's going fine, don't worry your little heads").
Meanwhile, BP requires a nondisclosure agreement from the fishermen they've hired. They have the flow of information covered, unlike the flow of oil.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
We are beyond congressional hearings. It is time to prosecute BP executives and incarcerate them or put them in front of a firing squad. It is time to start impeachment hearings for members of the Obama Administration who are helping BP conceal evidence. Let's start with Ken Salazar and work our way up to Obama.
;)
Wonderful analogy.
Excellent!!!! I was going to use the Billy Goat and the cabbage patch, but this is even better. ;-)
This morning I heard a news report that the gusher may be TWENTY TIMES more than being reported by BP. This whole event just sickens me to my bones.
Have you heard the latest?..
BP is now issuing orders to the US Coast Guard!
BP's "Rules" Prevent Journalists From Touring Gulf Coast Damage
http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/bps-rules-prevent-journalists-touring
This is yet another in a long series of stunningly arrogant moves by BP:
When CBS tried to film a beach with heavy oil on the shore in South Pass, Louisiana, a boat of BP contractors, and two Coast Guard officers, told them to turn around, or be arrested.
"This is BP's rules, it's not ours," someone aboard the boat said. Coast Guard officials told CBS that they're looking into it.
As the Coast Guard is a branch of the Armed Forces, it brings into question how closely the government and BP are working together to keep details of the disaster in the dark.
and BP AND COAST GUARD BLOCKING MEDIA FROM PUBLIC BEACHES
http://www.energyboom.com/policy/bp-and-coast-gaurd-blocking-media-public-beaches
CBS has footage of their reporters being turned away from a public beach in Louisiana where they were filming oil washing up on shore.
"This is BP's rules, it's not ours," someone aboard the boat said. Coast Guard officials told CBS that they're looking into it.
According to Mother Nature Network's Karl Burkhart, his contacts in Louisiana have given him unconfirmed reports of equipment being turned away or confiscated.
This should outrage everyone in America and mobilize millions into direct political action..
The first week of the spill I urged photographers to get down there and document the damage, and I would repeat it now. I'm a retired graphic designer and I understand the power of pictures over words to move people. (Abu Ghraib) The release of embarrassing and damning photographs is what these assholes fear most. We have the technology to produce and disseminate these images and to show the ugly face of petro-dependency. If you live near the gulf, grab a camera and head for the nearest "restricted" beach
How the fuck can BP (a British oil company) block Americans from the very beaches *THEY OWN*???
Does anybody have any doubts anymore that we are and have been since 2001 a fascist police state?
Not only that, but since when does the US Coast Guard take orders from and report to BP?
I think this morning's Democracy Now! segment interviewing the guy who investigated BP for prosecution after the TransAlaska Pipeline spill a few years ago gives us a strong indication of what's coming to BP... Nothing!
Obama, that empty, soulless suit, will wag his tongue and honk--oh, sorry--he will "orate"--until it all leaves the ADD-driven news cycle. The Gulf will be as dead as the Ninth Ward, and our attention will be pulled to the next outrage, and then the next, and so on.
Hope wanes...
How many people who are rightly upset and moved by what is happening in the GULF and other areas around the planet that are experiencing the negative effects of oil (Amazon rainforest and the Artic for example) are making a committment to riding their bicycles more, walking more, taking mass transit more and are willing to DRIVE LESS or even abandon their cars??? That would be an interesting poll to see take place. I am doing more bike riding now and am hoping others will do the same. It is only our planet that is at stake.
I favor that at the personal level, but I put zero faith in the possibility of a sea change in our ecological consciousness. It simply is not going to happen as long as suppliers are allowed to feed our habit.
The only faith I have is in human ingenuity under duress. Extreme duress I would say. A cap on energy availability might spur our inventiveness. Oil and gasoline could be capped by either government fiat or by prohibitive prices. We would just have to make do with what we get, as they do in many other parts of the world, and solve our heating and transportation problems some other way. We are a clever species. We need to cut the supply, and life style solutions will follow.
Unfortunately this solution sounds much like the ideology of the war on drugs... or immigration reform. The problem is that where there is a market there is a distributor/dealer/coyote... where there is an unquenchable appetite/desire there will be a market come hell or high water. Our modern lifestyle is unsustainable and gluttonous so it is only individual choices that can make the change to something whole and enduring. Personal accountability is the only avenue to change. To punish fine or condemn may feel righteous but only results in more profits to those who pay to play... There is no real satisfaction when the perpetrators are punished - I want reparation for whatever ill they cause. In big oil's case, they should not be granted a permit for any operation in our waters until they have stopped the leak, developed the means to remove the oil from the sea and cleanse the environment, covered the health care for the thousands who will be impacted by crude petroleum in air, water, and food chain and replenished the natural density of wildlife poisoned by their folly. Punishments and fines are nothing to me. I want reparation.
Live Simply So That Others May Simply Live
It has to be a multi-pronged approach to work. When a majority of people are shopping at Walmart to make ends meet, dramatically raising gas prices will put them out on the street for sure. Mass transit might be part of the answer, but we need more than bikes to thrive and survive. While the great income gap between rich and everyone else remains, along with a huge military budge sucking up what resources remain, the situation with respect to meaningful change does not look promising. Have you ever wondered why more cars like the Tata aren't marketed and sold here? They are much cheaper and much more gas efficient than the ones that are sold. No, no, instead they're pushing the 'hybrid' cars, which are presently double the price of other vehicles. Where is the market for these vehicles and who presently has the money to buy them? My prediction is that whoever markets a car in the $4 to 6K range will clean up the competition. Too bad that it's unlikely to manufactured here. The answer may indeed be to raise the price of gas, but there will be less pain if the vehicles are made twice as fuel efficient as they presently are. Other changes must be made as well, including the transportation of necessities over vast distances. Perhaps food co-ops where many small farms locally participate. Was watching a segment on CBS where a farmer was doing quite well with a modest size green house. People need to get off their antidepressants and back to work.
from the article:
BP hopes to stop the noxious flow with a so-called "top kill" operation in about a week, in which heavy drilling fluids would be injected into the well to stem the oil flow, followed by a cement operation to seal it up permanently.
~ why are they waiting a week? why are they still in charge?
this is agonizing...death is being dealt...
"It's actually the environmentalists fault for forcing the poor oil companies to have to drill further and further off shore."
---- Rush Limbaugh
PS. just wait until Atlantis lets go. (kind of appropriately named too)
The public will end up absorbing the long term costs for BP's criminal negligence in the Gulf.
And 11 oil rig workers have already given their lives.
The Deep Horizon blowout is yet another example of the public subsidizing the corporation.
And on the other side of the world, the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan are to open those regions to western oil corporations.
Afghanistan is better called Pipelineistan as the proposed pipeline crossroads for Central Asian oil and natural gas. Afghanistan also has a variety of natural resources.
And is anyone surprised that ExxonMobil now has contracts in Iraq for cheap to extract (about $3.00/barrel) light sweet crude ? Banking and agriculture in Iraq is also falling under corporate control.
Cost to the American taxpayer for corporate access to Iraq is $3 Trillion in debt plus interest. And we have not seen the end as American forces and private contractors will remain to support pro-American Iraqi officials.
And the diversion of trillions in taxpayer money for corporate imperial wars means that this public money is not being circulated back into the American economy other than MIC profits.
And of course there are many thousands of dead and wounded from these corporate imperial war crimes. Disability benefits paid to the American wounded will be for a lifetime.
The invasion and occupations of Afghanistan is approaching $1 Trillion. If the occupations is succesful, energy from Central Asia will be marketed in Asia, not for American domestic needs. The expanding Asian markets will compensate for declining U.S. demand so that energy corporations may see perpetual growth.
The killing is designed to enhance the bottom line of Big Oil and the MIC.
These are the largest corporations on earth enjoying record profits.
And some of the biggest investment banks in America hold shares in both Big Oil and the MIC as do members of Congress and many of America's economic elite.
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." Ed Abbey
Welcome to Corporate Fascism, American style.
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." Ed Abbey
EXCELLENT quote.
Black empirePie May 20th, 2010
The black gold flim flam baron cysts
slimy looters looking for another tryst
burn babies for back room beacon deacons
the life trade for black water.....
black gold water
bottom line black
mercenary black
Lord Conrad black
Beck hackers Glenn black
underwater black
Gulfs in black
Tar sands black
Hacked up Boreal black
Xe blowback black
spade flushed casino capitalism black
trumped Monroe doctrine black
gansta empire black
Goldman sack black
Black robed supreme black
Pre-rapture Palin black
Abrahamic rocking Cash black
Black wearing black
Black chooses black
Black closes in on life
Profit smiles and waits on strife
reminds me of a song
SO MANY SHADES OF BLACK
this "top kill" could go sideways very quickly with catastrophic results.
if they pump the mud in too quickly they could over-pressure the well casing, which, it has been reported, was not cemented correctly and leaks. if the casing ruptures the wall of the well will frac out. meaning the high overbalance pressure will pry the rock forming the wall of the well appart allowing the oil to flow out of the ground to the side of the well, sometimes many hundreds of meters away. this would result in a proliferation of oil gysers in addition to the main well bore. then,as a roughneck would say, they're really fucked.
its a very cowboy manuever, I hope they have their best men on it. (read with intense sarcasm)
I've looked at the videos. How do they plug it with tubing down the hole?
they are trying to run a packer down the tubing below the bad cement and plug the casing, the outside pipe.
They have engineers galore that solve these problems, smart folks / big problem. Perforate the tubing and pump into the casing? Then how do you keep cement in that zone?
[An Aside: The following, as I reread it, is a Rambling, Redundant Rant to the already-savvy Choir. However, I feel better for getting it out. Forgive. - cm]
+++
Richard Cheney should be waterboarded for the shenanigans at that SECRET ENERGY meeting of top-level corporate [oil, gas, coal et al.] executives he held in the first year [2001] of the GW administration. Cheney absolutely refused to reveal who was there and what was discussed. No power of the law made any difference. Of course, GW was the LAW so that explains it.
ENRON's Kenny Lay was there and still alive at the time. At the end of the crooked ENRON debacle when secrets and hearings and all that were taking place, old Kenny conveniently died of a heart attack. Standard scenario for impending, unpleasant revelations of secret meetings, decisions and the like.
The recent leak from Cheney's SECRET MEETING is about decisions to do away with pesky regulations, such as requiring various safety equipment and shut-off mechanisms for deep ocean drilling. The cost to oil companies doing ocean drilling was $500,000 for the automatic shut-off valves if there was a break or breaks in the lines. BP didn't wanna' pay evidently. And BP and others were accommodated. Likely coal mine owners were let off the hook too for those burdensome pesky safeguards. Same for gas company facilities and nuclear reactors too?
Richard Cheney always seems to disappear from view at these times. Last I heard of him he was praising the torture programs for potential/suspected "terrorists."
Amazing that BP just announced a 6.3 billion dollar profit this last quarter. How astounding that BP's "overseers" objected to purchasing "the safety net" items for $500,000, which are legally mandatory for corporations in other countries engaged in such drilling. Hopefully BP will lose most of its profits trying to clean up its own criminal action and paying many tidy sums at the end of lawsuits regarding their negligence.
How come parliaments or assemblies in other countries are smart enough to pass laws that protect the environment and their people far more than our stooges who are in service to a government of, for, and by the people?
Try GREED, BLINDING STUPIDITY, HEARTLESSNESS, and TAKING CARE OF #1, and the U.S. government being controlled BY and FOR the MONEYED INTERESTS too-long entrenched here.
And also the APATHY and IGNORANCE of our own electorate, conditioned of course to be that way by a Corporate-owned Media and an educational system that sugar coats all of our rapacious exploits wherever and whenever.
HEY, FOLKS -- Turn off your TV sets and stop texting for a few minutes. Life-and-death stuff now coming right to the shores of the Mainland, courtesy of the leadership of our country -- despicable people for the most part, and quite insane, I'm afraid. They seem to totally lack any kind of mature understanding of the nature of cause and effect and consequences and also seem devoid of positive imagination and vision. ... TEXT ABOUT THAT!!!
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY ... Our elected officials are in thrall to the Golden Calf, and we the people are getting crushed beneath its hooves.
Will we wake up in time? or slide on Golden Calf puckey over the ocean cliff and float away on an oily sea texting to Aunt Clara in Idaho?
GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!
/cm
Nice rant, Cee Miracles. I like it.
the spill is 95,000 barrels a day (around 4 million gallons a day)according to independent scientists that were FINALLY allowed to see the video footage that BP and the White House has been seeing since day 1.
that means it passed the exxon valdez at around the 3rd day!
but no worries -
the Coast Guard says the tar balls washing up on the Florida coast ARE NOT from the spill......
and NOAA says the oil will evaporate BEFORE it hits the florida coastline!
i'd say these people are freaking nuts but the truly insane are people that believe ANYTHING these criminals say.....
from the white house, to the the coast guard (didn't know they were experts in oil spills), to NOAA and expecially BP....
hang them all up by their fingernails and waterboard them with oil!
All this finger pointing. But WE demand oil, lots of it, and cheap, so of course oil companies will provide it for us. We have no one to blame but ourselves for our insatiable appetite for cheap energy.
We are all for regulation- to a point. If it actually meant true safety and environmental sustainability, it would mean a halt to all oil (and coal) production- which would of course mean high energy prices, a collapsing economy and there go the jobs. That's what it ALL comes down to- jobs vs. viable natural environment. Its not a pleasant choice, but since we all die without the latter...I suggest we learn to adapt to most of us not having "jobs".
You seem to believe that the staus quo is the only possible way to organize the world. That the only possible source of jobs is carnivorous capitalism and it's destructive ways. And that depriving most of the world of daily meals and security, keeping most people desperately afraid of losing their jobs - even in the U.S. - in order to herd the masses to compete for crappy, exploitative jobs is somehow the only way to go.
The U.S. is the world champion (and enforcer) of this kind of capitalism and it's effects world wide show that it is not viable AT ALL and must be reformed.
Your last line is key: learn to adapt to most of us not having "jobs". Yes! Let's imagine and create a different way.
I think private ownership of land and resources is the root of this system and is the basic problem. Don't know how to overcome that but i do keep trying to imagine it...
Well said!
Live Simply So That Others May Simply Live
There are too damned many of us. We are in runaway expansion in a closed container. When we imagine that photograph of ourselves surrounded by our children and their husbands and wives and their children's children we are pleased to see ourselves as the proud progenitors of all those sweet people. However that photo won't be taken on the front porch of some middle class suburban home, but in considerably more desolate, less livable surroundings, and our children's children will not be smiling or grateful. There will be no solutions until we reduce our numbers.
YES. And that problem, along with many MANY other are directly caused by the availability of cheap energy. Oil and other fossil fuels have allowed us to do years of research, to develop drugs and medical procedures,and to manufacture fertilizers that increased the amount of food we could grow (while depleting the soil so we then must depend on fossil fuel fertilizers)- all this allowed our population to grow exponentially the last 150 years. We mined the benefits of fossil fuels while ignoring the responsibilities that they required- especially population control, as well as equitable distribution of wealth, and only using the most valuable of these (oil) sparingly for the most critical needs.
We prolonged life while not taking responsiblity for then limiting our numbers purposely and humanely (war does not count). We destroyed indigenous cultures (and continue to do so) so we could live like kings (heated towel racks, anyone?). And we used MOST of the readily available, easy-to-get oil for such things as plastic bags, water and soda bottles, disposable razors, disposable computers, cell phones, packaging, containers for billions of disposable products, etc. Now we are faced with the fact that the rest of this miraculous substance is going to be harder to get and therefore come with more risks. Yet, it appears that the hunger for a disposable, high-energy lifestyle is going to trump the very real "need" for a functioning ecosystem.
Even progressives are busy pointing fingers while drinking from a plastic water bottle while idling in traffic. Perhaps its simply human nature to spend our hours satisfying our immediate wants while ignoring our long-term needs for survival. In which case, we had better evolve or we will die out, taking a good portion of the rest of creation with us.