Another Thought Coming: Earth, wind, fire, water

By Medicine Hat News Opinion on March 23, 2021.

Hardly a day goes by where I don’t see something about people using oil and gas for energy, and how wrong it is to keep using that industry for energy. Surely we must realize this is not acceptable. We continue to take from the earth, and one day we shall deplete the earth of this energy-providing substance. Won’t someone please think of our children and those cute little Dawn-sudsed birds? How dare we continue to use this industry for our own purposes.

Until I scroll down a little further. What do we find there, but the problems with wind energy. People have serious issues with these giant wind mills, standing tall and proud on the horizon. I get it, a bird could fly into the big fan blades and die. In fact this may have actually happened. I mean, Facebook says it happened, so it must have right!? Facebook is always right, sometimes. Also, those wind mills require that evil oil to run and create energy. How dare we as humans use the wind to create energy.

If you change the channel on the television, you will find that people are back on the hate wagon against coal. Don’t we know that coal burns dirty fire? It is dirty and one day we could run out. How dare we use this fire to heat the homes we live in. The sun is clean fire, let’s use solar energy please. But, sometimes that doesn’t work. I have actually read where people are complaining because the solar panels are covered with snow, so solar energy is also no good. Plus, what if it is cloudy!? How dare we use the sun to provide us with power.

I have also heard people complain about hydroelectricity, though I am not sure why. Water creates energy by simply moving, you know, as it does. Perhaps it’s the man made dams that are built for the water to flow over, in order to create that energy. It is true they are damn big, and damn ugly, and use a lot of damn energy to build them. Well those dam jokes are going to make my daughter roll her eyes. If you don’t like coal or oil and gas being used, because our earth will run out of it, then you should want people to use it, when we run out, that should make you happy right?

How about we all just get along!? Let’s create energy to heat our homes, run our vehicles, build the many things we use every day, and let’s not be angry with each other.

All or nothing thinking only leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the dark side. Let’s create energy from the earth, the wind, the fire and the water, use whichever ones you want. And, be kind while we do that.

Kenton Shilka has been an active community member for 23 years and counting. His column, Another Thought Coming, will run each Tuesday.