Burning Up Planet Earth

EXTRACT: "BP and the Gulf disaster offers us a perfect snapshot of the irrational and contradictory nature of actually existing capitalism. So we have the awesome and marvellous - if not near miraculous - technology needed to extract oil thousands of feet under the ocean. Something, just like the moon landings, that gives us a flavour of human potential - of what is possible. On the other hand, all this science and technology is used to extract a relatively rare resource, oil, and then ... burn it in car engines, power stations, etc. Last year the world consumed 3,882 million tonnes of oil and has proven reserves of some 181 thousand million tonnes. Such squandering of this non-renewable energy source not only allows people to move from A to B and to keep the lights on. Its use is bound up with capitalism’s need for constant self-expansion for the sake of self-expansion. In other words, the creative and transformative power of science and technology is deployed in the destructive service of capital."