This post is prompted by a comment in Captain Jack’s latest blog regarding the BP disaster.

Have we passed the point of easy oil? Is oil getting harder and harder to extract now that we’re on the falling end of the bell curve?

It’s not really fair to say that we’re half way through the world’s oil reserves because no one can say for sure. But it doesn’t really matter. What really matters is that we have exhausted the easy oil and now we’re having to work harder to extract the oil.

The world’s demand for oil has been doubling every few years. At this rate of growth it’s undeniable that we will (have) exceeded the limits the easy oil drilling can deliver.

We have two choices. We can ride the falling curve as oil gets harder and harder and more risky to drill or we can start, today, to wean ourselves off. The fact is that we will have to get off oil eventually. How long do we want to stay addicted?

So here’s another strange personality defect present in today’s tea baggers and in the typical conservative. It’s called the Lemming trait. Of course, if’ you’re a conservative, you’ll find endless reasons why this isn’t you, regardless of the facts, but do yourself a favor and just think about it.

In the conservative (Authoritarian follower) mind set, being part of and being accepted by his group is as important as life. This makes for some of the most ridiculous behavior.

We can take examples from all around us in every day life, but we’ll just take an obvious one and leave it up to the readers (and commenters) to come up with their own examples or denials.

Example #1: News commentator Joe on one channel says there’s no such thing as global warming. Commentator Sue on another station says the same, and a third. When it is finally so obvious that temperatures are rising that no one can deny it any longer, these three commentators all come back with version two of their denial. Oh, it’s getting warmer, but not everywhere so it’s not getting warmer at all.

Your typical human with a functioning logic processor will say, hum, these people have been wrong and are now making up silly excuses why they’re not. But, everything else they say seems to make sense in my view so I’ll just ignore the inconsistencies.

Well, the next day these same commentators say, finally, oh bugger, I can’t deny it any longer so I guess we’re experiencing global warming, but the new twist is, oh, it’s not man’s fault.

Some even go so far off the tracks as to reverse themselves and say there’s still no warming just because they can find an area that is having a snow storm or because there was one flaw in the reams of evidence gathered.

Most people would quit believing commentators that are this often wrong and who refuse to adjust their positions based on evidence. But the conservative tea-bagger will just continue to follow them as if there’s nothing wrong with being wrong.

Why do conservatives continually follow those who are proven wrong so reliably? It’s because these commentators are their leaders, part of their cult or clan or group or political party. Group affiliation is more important than anything else.

We hear so much about how the global warming disaster is just a hoax. It’s sad to think that anyone really listens to the deniers. Take a look at the big picture.

If the average human has only a small negative impact on the world, let’s say just a small amount of pollution, or a small amount of carbon or a small amount of litter, then the human race is heading for extinction. Let me explain why.

Looking at a big polluter, if we were all big polluters, it wouldn’t take more than a few generations before we polluted enough to destroy our environment. Fortunately, the majority of mankind are small polluters. In fact the majority of people have a negative footprint. In other words, many of the third world countries produce less pollution than they remove from the world. How many people never own a car?

So the smaller footprint mankind has, the longer we can survive, but sooner or later, we will have destroyed more of the earth than the earth can take. Even the smallest negative footprint will eventually produce enough damage to destroy us.

In order to survive as a species, we must eventually reduce our footprint to zero or more likely will be required to reduce it to a negative footprint to avert disaster.

So, if we’re going to have to do it sooner or later, we have the choice. Do we want to continue to do more harm to the earth than we fix and do we want to produce bigger and bigger messes until our grandchildren or great grandchildren are saddled with nightmare of cleaning up after us? Or do we want to start being responsible people and reducing our footprint to a point where we are cleaning up more garbage than we produce?

Eventually we will run out of room for our landfills and run out of room in our atmosphere for our pollution. We will have to reduce our footprint. The only question is, will we do it today or leave it for our kids?