“Don’t give me that intelligent life crap. Just find me
something I can blow up!” When those words came out of Lt. Doolittle’s mouth in
John Carpenter’s DARK STAR it seemed to capture so much of our foreign policy,
not to mention our treatment of the environment.
Recent footage of dolphins stranding themselves
(energetically) on the beaches of Barbados leads to an educated assumption that
they are committing suicide as the result of being deafened by manmade acoustic
assaults. A deaf dolphin is doomed to a grisly end at the hands of predation
and/or starvation. “What in the world could deafen them?” you might ask. Aside
from naval sonar blasts there is a worldwide underwater acoustic assault that
is the product of extensive oil exploration. Ships trolling for oil deposits
emit loud blasts and analyze the acoustic return in order to find deposits. The
result is an auditory assault of unparalleled magnitude.
It’s not like the Koch brothers wake up in the morning
plotting the deaths of sea creatures. It is merely the side effect of their
corporate activities. They have to put up with the occasional protestations of
pesky “environmentalists”, but at the end of the day profit motives rule.
The mission of the scout ship DARK STAR was to make space
travel safe by blowing up unstable planets. It will be a dark Earth if we don’t
stop blowing up this formerly stable planet.
