title

• Waves of Abandonment
  • The Permian Basin is ground zero for a billion-dollar surge of zombie oil wells

summary

• a story that illustrates the intersectionality of fossil capitalism
  • progress trap
  • exploitation
  • tragedy of the commons
  • fossil fuel industry
  • gold rush
  • externalization
  • fossil capitalism

Comment

• Yet another example of capitalism's tendency to externalize manifests at the most basic level.
• The tendency to treat nature as an inexhaustable garbage dumping ground seems to be built into our culture's economic norms taught to us by most parents and society at large.
• There are not enough parents that teach their children to love, respect and feel that they are an intrinsic part of nature.
• The externalization our society teaches us in the form of destructive, widely-accepted social norms of waste such as::
  • having the concept of waste and garbage
  • garbage taken out once a week
  • waste bins everywhere
  • keep our backyard clean, but at the expense of trucking out our garbage to some unknown place
• has been enculturated into us from early age