Thank god for oil

It is not often that I, an old, long haired, bald headed, scruffy bearded, freaky person, gets to spend an hour and half in conversation with a past middle age, evangelical, harper-conservative, who, now struggling to adapt to his newly found and forced, entrepreneurially focussed future, one that in part was brought on by the very failure of the neoliberal economic policies that he and his faithfully worshipped party leader, continue to embrace and endorse, but as happens more often than not, due to my expertise in an obscure, financial management software, solution, I found myself riding shotgun on the way to the falls.

That said, the encounter surprisingly left me, not so much questioning his political beliefs, beliefs that are spewed daily by the AM talk radio prophets and regurgitated every weekend, as the true believers gather around the ever increasing, number of evangelical water coolers, but instead questioning how these beliefs have taken on an uniquely, Canadian, hydrophilic, characteristic, successfully mixing the apocalyptic interests of bitumen mining, with the reborn, millenarian cheerleaders.

Thank god for oil has become their new mantra. Global warming is really climate change, caused by the sun, not the actions of mankind. Transporting corrosive, ashphalt, thousands of miles by pipeline, is the same as transporting crude oil or other liquids, which we all know is safe. The oil sands production has not caused a noticeable increase in carbon emissions. The real danger is the increase in methane gases produced by gaseous cattle, and my personal favourite, the oil sands is the engine, for our economic recovery, which of course has never been backed up with statistical analysis or explains why Alberta is running a deficit.

It appears, not to be that great a leap of faith, to move from believing that the long dead son of your god, will return to earth, floating down from the sky, followed by an apocalyptic, army of angels, to blind faith, that the hourly televised messages from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, professing the greening of the oil sands and the safety of their pipelines are true.

It all leaves one wondering how grown, educated. people can turn out this way? Is it some one time visit to a Calgary, cowboy wanna hump-hump,  bar, or is it like the Mormon getaway days, when the faithful are allowed to go nuts and will drink your last shot of whiskey?

Well they can all go and sell crazy someplace else, I'm all stocked up here.