Paving Over Paradise (for the Man)

Were Joni Mitchell dead, she'd be turning in her grave. Well, make that her urn.

After more than 9 months of unemployment last year, ironically, I have been working overtime for the past 3 weeks. It's not pleasant work. It's construction. It's dirty, it's cold, it's fast-paced and the porta potties are a 7-storey walk to get to. And not too pleasant when you get there either. But it's a job and its good union money and I'm starting to build up my health benefit bank. In a few weeks I won't have to pay for my family's health insurance out of pocket.

What we actually do at work is not our decision. As drones we do the work that the market demands. And the world goes on, tobogganing towards an ecological dead end. And the job I'm on is not improving the chances of humanity's survival.

I'm helping build a $100 million multi-storey Parking Lot. Yes, making the world more car-friendly and less public transport friendly. But it's worse than that. The carbon foot-print is way bigger. It's a parking lot at an airport, so that people can drive their individual cars and then cross the country in the most energy inefficient means of transport developed: by big jet planes.

The madness of the market in the current scenario includes the fact that I drive 80 miles-a-day to this job. When my buddy told me he drives an hour and a half each way to this job, I was surprised but not stunned. "Shit. Dave drives an hour more than me," he added. Dave lives in the central valley, two and a half hours from the job. With overtime he was leaving his house at 2.30 am and getting home at 7.30 pm. And he has kids. WTF is this world coming to. Well, it's always been this way.

Surely they could have spent $100 million on light electric transport. Oh, I forgot, the political will does not exist for that. Or to put it another way, the Republicans and Democrats are happy being paid to facilitate all that is good for business and f*** the environment and the people.

So they paved over paradise. They put up a parking lot. And now we have to pay a dollar and a half to see the trees in the tree museum.