Ahem, Cough, Cough...

(Cartoon by Tom Toles, 11/25/12, and found here.   Click on image to enlarge and then please return.)

I've been a whiny-ass titty baby for the past week to ten days, primarily because I've been fighting off another infection, which increased my need for drugs which, in turn, required going off ice cream (my favorite food group) until the antibiotic regimen ended.  Then I fell into some financial difficulties which required me to haul out the begging bowl, always a blow to my ego.  And then ...

This news didn't exactly cheer me up:

In a Louisiana swamp several miles upriver from the Gulf of Mexico, about 3,000 construction workers are building a massive industrial facility to liquefy natural gas, preparing for a new era when the U.S. will begin exporting energy around the globe.

The $12-billion project is one of the largest single industrial investments in the nation, part of a massive transformation of the energy sector that has led to a boom in drilling, transportation and refining from coast to coast.

Five years ago, the idea of exporting U.S. gas and oil was not only unheard of, but, in the case of most U.S. crude oil, illegal. At that time, the United States was facing a future of dwindling domestic supplies and vulnerability to foreign producers. It was anxiously building facilities to import natural gas, worried about ever-higher prices and building much of its foreign policy on the need to secure energy supplies.

But U.S. energy production has boomed with the technological revolution of hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, and the ability to tap newly accessible massive reserves. The nation surpassed Russia in 2009 as the largest producer of natural gas and is expected to zip past Saudi Arabia next year to become the largest oil producer in the world.

Now, the U.S. energy industry is pushing for a new era of exports.   [Emphasis added]

What the frack??!!!??

I mean, really.

Here in California we're in the fourth year of a drought because the jet stream has been pushed northward, sending our badly needed precipitation eastward.  Folks in the eastern half of the country have had a brutal winter, with snow and ice storms as far south as Atlanta, and that weather is freaking continuing even as I pound on my poor laptop's keys.

The UK and parts of Europe have been hit with similar disastrous weather and Beijing China has had several bouts of smog radiating out for over 400 miles which amounted to at least ten times the particulate level marking extremely unhealthful air.

The whole world and all of the living things in it are suffering because we continue to use carbon-based fuels for energy.  And now we've found a new way, a dangerous way, to pump even the most difficult-to-reach pockets of oil and natural gas, so that our water supplies are even more directly affected.

For what?

So that a few rich titans, like the Koch Brothers, can get richer and richer as the rest of us die off.  And our government is going to help them do it.

Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy
Lord have mercy

I have none to spare.