“State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security;
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.”

Initially, it was a challenge to understand the context. Unfortunately, the “education” we get now is job training, thanks to the forces we decry. A classical education would have left us better prepared.

“Free market?” If Mr. Berry had chosen to talk about neo-feudalism, few would have made the connection. Those are in some other country aren’t they? Again this is a defect in education which we must correct without official help.

These vast forces of trade agreements, international corporations, “economic necessity,” and news adapted to entertain and make money, rather than inform, threaten to subvert the nation states presently making the rules we call government. “Big business” wants to make them.

Finally, we don’t need burning hydrocarbons for our life style. We need energy. Some hydrocarbons are needed for synthetic chemicals, but most is burned. One ton of carbon burned pulls enough oxygen from the air to make near three and two-thirds ton of carbon dioxide.

Market forces should be used to encourage the change-over. The existing U.S. energy industries — oil, coal, gas and nuclear — have received during their lifetime an estimated $630 billion in subsidies from the U.S. government, i.e., from taxpayers. This kind of money should be spent investigating something better: solar, wind and fusion (not fission), which will produce the energy we need at far less cost to the surface and atmosphere.

Thanks for your consideration, Tom Bond

Free markets? What free markets? Where do you, in the world, have anything that gets even close to a “free market”? Yes, we have global trade and it’s a scourge in many ways, but it is not supported by free markets; no, it is supported by crony capitalism, which is a perversion of true capitalism, true free markets and everything related to liberty, and shames any individual who does not want to live the life of a slave. There is nothing wrong with carbon; carbon is the stuff of life. But there is everything wrong with the way crony capitalists and the (not free!, but rather) slave markets supported by tyrannical fascist, communist, socialist regimes (the US of A included!) exploit, market and profit from the available resources the earth invites us to use without abuse. I am not a greeny, tree hugger or even environmentalist (the word has been pimped for far too long to mean anything decent these days); “sane ecologist” would define me best.

I own farm land and I want it preserved for my children, grandchildren, and their children. I want it managed and maintained and protected – by myself, not some government agency or regulatory body or inane law drafted by some ignorant albeit maybe well intentioned politician who never got his boots muddy or his hands dirty, bathed in a creek, milked a cow or collected poop covered eggs! I can do a better job than anyone else, because it is my land. I worked all my life to be able to own it. I want it free of chemicals and contaminants of any and all kinds. I want the springs to stay clean and the wells too. I have been fighting pipelines to keep them off my property for a long time, so I have a vested interest in protecting my land, not only because I have invested in it financially all I had, but because it’s my posterity’s inheritance and because I believe in good, solid stewardshiping principles. Not because the DEP, EPA, or NY city half naked green paint covered crazy “sensitive” tree hugger says so or thinks they know better.

Now, the Questionnaire that Mr. Wendell Berry drafted falls short. It is missing the million dollar questions, so that the fallacy and hypocrisy may be called out.

So, here are my question to the greenies and the tree huggers who bark up all the trees, regardless of them being the right or wrong trees and who claim for more laws and more control from above when all we need is less of all that and more personal, individual responsibility: Where do you live? How do you get to work and how do you get home? How do you get your food? How do you cook it? How do you warm your home? How do you get on the internet and post your comments on this and every other website? Do you drive a car? Do you ride a bus? The underground? Do you open a water tap to shower? Do you flip the switch to turn on the lights? Do you enjoy any of the conveniences of modern life that are in any way dependent, in any form – any form at all! – on energy that is harvested, produced and distributed by conventional means, i.e, coming from fossil fuels? If you answered yes, then you either are a hypocrite or haven’t got a clue! If, however, you have given up all these things, moved to your own piece of land, live off it, grow your own food, never set foot in [youNameIt]MART or never hit the gas to go to the next green protest meeting, you may complain and have that right because you are already part of the solution. If however you do support, by our demand, any of this, then you are sponsoring the problem. We simply can’t have it both ways.

Don’t forget that even solar panels are produced in factories that use energy that’s fossil fuel based; same with any recycled product or material, etc. It is a fact there is no such thing as 0% footprint in anyone’s life. All things are interdependent. If you are here, you leave a footprint on the planet, and that’s ok.

We all have been changing the planet since we first started to walk on it. But then again, so do all other things and animals and plants. “How do we balance it all out?” is the million dollar question, and the right answers are priceless. I have a few, stop cronyism. Stop manipulating the markets. Cut big oil, big gas, big pharma’s (and etc., the list is endless,) access to politicians and lobbying. Stop passing inane laws that control people but do not provide solutions to any problems.

Respect the inalienable rights of each individual on this planet to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and respect private property rights, and things will take care of themselves, because Life has a way of its own, and human beings are amazingly creative. Our ingenuity, free from constraints, will come up with the solutions. Free markets (TRUE free markets, not the pimping and whoring imitations that abound these days, supported by corruption at all levels,) will get rid of everything that is not viable, healthy and solid. Utopia? I don’t think so!

He is asking, “When do the escalating costs of energy development become too much?”

Tom Bond

How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy

In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security;
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

“Questionnaire” by Wendell Berry from Leavings. Counterpoint, 2010.