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“We’re trapped in the belly of this horrible machine and the machine is bleeding to death.” –Godspeed You Black Emperor off the album F#A# (Infinity)

Tuesday, April 22 will be Earth Day. It was certainly nice of someone to decide that alongside Christopher Columbus the earth should also have a day of recognition. I’ve always been confused as to what the people who get Columbus Day off do to celebrate. I’m also confused as to why he even gets a day, because Vikings were coming to America long before he ever did. Out of curiosity, I called up a bank and asked if they’d be open on Earth Day, and indeed they’ll be open. So the guy who is credited for bringing over the foundation of life as we know it today is a little more important than the earth, apparently. He was looking for Asia and found the Americas by mistake, so he did pretty well overall for failing his actual mission.  Is this shocking? No, not really. It’s the way things are and have been ever since 1492.
When looking at Earth today, the mindset is very similar to back then. Why did Columbus pack himself and a bunch of hapless sailors into a few boats and head out into the unknown? He wasn’t being funded to take a pleasure cruise; gold and resources were top on the list of priorities. Making sure that the indigenous people of the new land found religion would come a little later. The second Europeans set foot on the shore, the land was no longer the land—it was a commodity ripe for the taking, and we’ve been taking from it ever since.
The primary reason “we” collectively have been taking from the earth is because we don’t really have a choice in the matter. You, I, and everyone else in the United States must be part of this system. Living “off the grid” is increasingly becoming illegal. There are organic farms being raided by SWAT teams such as in Arlington, TX, in August of 2013, when the police seized blackberry bushes, okra plants, and other naturally grown food products. The raid was held under the guise of a suspicion that there was marijuana being cultivated on the premise, although none was found. In February of 2014, a judge found that a woman who was not connected to city utilities and instead was cooking with propane and getting electricity from solar power was in violation of city code, and her lifestyle was therefore illegal. Everything from collecting rainwater to hanging out laundry to dry is becoming illegal, and the possibility of fines and even imprisonment is very real.
While laws are being made to ensure that we are forced to live within this system, how are the laws on the corporations that provide us with what we’re forced to consume? This question is sickening because corporations are people, except with far more money and rights than you or I will ever have. The same people regulating our food and energy used to work with or are still involved with the companies they are in charge of regulating. If something goes wrong, there will be some fines and penalties, but no one goes to jail. The system is rigged so they can act with impunity, and we will become criminals for doing anything they don’t want us to do.
You could go out and protest and use your First Amendment rights, but who’s going to care? If the police beat you in the middle of street for pointing out that the system is out of control, who’s going to care? The person filming the beating is at risk of being beaten as well. They want you to protest so they can film you, arrest you, put you into the system so it will be easy to identify you because you disagreed with the capitalist structure. The police were hired to serve and protect you, but when the choice is between you and a corporation, they’ll choose or be ordered to side with the corporation.
Finding examples of this isn’t difficult. In fact, it’s happening in our own backyard. It was back in 2010 that a Superior resident, Jeremy Engelking, was arrested for trespassing on his own property when he was on his land hunting and came across a team of Enbridge workers there to install pipelines across his family’s property without their approval. Despite a “no trespassing for any purpose” sign, Judge George Glonek ordered a temporary injunction allowing Enbridge access to the property. The somewhat ironic thing about this is that Engelking is a Republican and the pipeline itself was being backed by the Koch brothers. For those not in the know, the Koch brothers have backed pipelines that span all across the country as well as Canada, including pipelines in the Great Lakes region. The Koch brothers are also big backers of Republican politicians such as Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.  
While the world is going to hell in a hand basket, we at least live next to a bountiful and beautiful fresh water lake. Though some may be able to get through life without ever needing to pump their car with a tank of gas, one thing that cannot be avoided is the body’s need for water, no matter what species a being may be. The Great Lakes may seem like they’re safe from corporate plans, but nothing could be further from the truth. Those who say different haven’t looked at the track record of sulfide mining or may not be aware of the recent oil spill in Lake Michigan. Yes, this is happening, and it’s not going to get better at the rate we’re going. Want to protest it? Have fun. If your protest even makes the news, there are plenty of people banking off this environmental destruction who are going to have themselves a good laugh watching the police clean up anyone who stands in their way. If you question what is happening, you’re bound to be looked at as a criminal eventually.
If corporations cannot get the police to protect them, then they will hire on paramilitary protection to make sure that what they’re doing is carried out with as few distractions as possible. This is already happening at the Gogebic mine sites in Wisconsin. It was a little bit of a mess-up when Bulletproof Securities out of Arizona was found to not even be licensed to provide security with assault rifles in the state of Wisconsin, but rather than being jailed and booked like most people who are walking around with assault rifles without proper licensing, they were allowed to leave and then get the proper licensing and come back. The best thing about it is that Gogebic Taconite was nice enough to provide jobs to people from out of state rather than providing jobs to a more regional security firm. Providing local people jobs is the last thing on these companies’ minds.  
The thing is, incidents like the Lake Michigan oil spill hardly even make the news. Who was behind the oil spill in Lake Michigan? The gas giant BP, the same company that spewed 4.9 million barrels into the Gulf of Mexico, is responsible for the spill, which pales in comparison to the Gulf spill with an estimate of around “15 to 39” barrels, according to BP. A barrel is 42 gallons and this is BP’s estimate, which in all probability has been minimized. Exxon Valdez back in 1989 was ground-breaking news that was covered continuously. There has been a cap placed on media coverage of environmental problems to give the appearance that things aren’t as bad as they seem, but pipelines are bursting, trains are derailing, and oil is getting thrown all over the place. This isn’t to mention the methods by which they are extracted in the first place. In reality, the energy used to get energy is practically equal to the result and is in no way sustainable.
There are big plans for pipelines surrounding the Great Lakes. Recently Duluth mayor Don Ness has pledged his support of Enbridge pipelines, mostly for the sake of jobs in the area. During a public conference where Ness stated his support, people who were attending began to ask questions and Ness backed off and let a spokesperson answer. He leaned against a table with his head lowered, his legs and arms were crossed, and he stood in a defensive position until the discussion ended and left without answering any questions. Later, Ness admitted to having no actual pull in the matter. It seems all right to be disappointed by the stance Ness took, but it’s hard to be angry about it because what companies are doing is authorized from the highest levels, and at those levels are people who have worked with those companies. You can either play ball or be a nuisance to the endeavors of “job creation” and “progress.”
While terms like “climate change” and “carbon emissions” have become fairly commonplace and accepted by scientists, despite Republicans’ and corporations’ insistence that it’s all a myth and everything is doing just fine, it’s not just the atmosphere and toxic run-off into the land that are concerning anymore. Enter fracking. This is the process of hydraulically fracturing the earth, below the bedrock, to obtain natural gas. The state of Ohio has sought to place regulations on drilling companies because of the risk that fracking near fault lines could cause earthquakes. Fracking is already under scrutiny because it involves injecting massive amounts of water and chemicals into the ground to release oil and natural gas, which potentially could contaminate ground water. In March, Ohio was hit with a 3.0-sized earthquake and several smaller quakes, which increased the awareness of the dangers of fracking.
We’ve essentially created a toxic dump of the earth, stripping it of every natural resource we can in any way that we can. Lawmakers support it; law enforcement will beat down anyone who says or does anything against it. It’s almost embarrassing to hear on the news that while looking for Malaysia Flight 370, which recently went missing with no explanation, search crews were frustrated by the amount of “garbage vortexes” that are in the Pacific Ocean. This floating waste is said to be around the size of Texas. This isn’t really anyone’s fault, exactly—it’s just the way our throwaway society has been created from the beginning.
If you’ve read this far, I realize that things are looking pretty bleak on this planet that we will most likely be living on for the rest of our lives. We can recycle, use public transportation more, and drive fuel-efficient vehicles, but none of this is going to negate the fact that war and a consumer society are eating through resources at a rate that Earth won’t be able to supply for much longer. There was one article I read recently that does shine a gleam of hope. The U.S. Navy has announced that it has the technology to convert salt water into fuel. The new technology has already been used to fuel an aircraft and is estimated to cost $3-$6 a gallon. Since this technology is very new, it’s possible that between this, solar, tidal, and wind power, we may be able to continue and thrive as a human race for a while. Don’t expect those who control the oil industries to go out without a fight, but oil will one day become something we can longer afford and rely on. All of these wars to control oil were paid by you through your taxes and then again at the pumps, while those on top pocketed the money and laughed all the way to the banks you bailed out. Someday the dependence on oil will end, but they’ll be sure to own the patent on whatever is new, and you’ll be forced to buy it.