THE ENERGY

How many dead men does it take to heat the average American home? How many cancer patients does it take to operate a plasma television? How many dead fish, and birds, and squirrels, and turtles, and whales does it take to power a car's engine? These are not questions that we usually ask ourselves, but ones we answer unconsciously in the way that we live.
We know that coal mines are dangerous. We know that miners die quite often in them. They die while making their living. They die so that we can have a less expensive form of energy for our homes and businesses. Apparently though, we are fine with the amount that are dying every year. For we still use coal in this country.
Radiation has shown to cause cancer. Nuclear power plants are capable of, and have been known to be, leaking radiation into the ground around them. We must be willing to sacrifice a few more people to cancer, though. For we still operate nuclear power plants in this country.
Oil spills and oil run-off kill countless fish, waterfowl, and aquatic mammals. If we added up all of the animals that were killed by oil pollution every year and divided that number by the number of miles driven in cars in America, we could actually figure out the number of needless animal deaths per mile. It can't be that high, though. For we're still out there driving.
If we can't, as a nation, figure out a way to get our energy without pain and suffering and death, maybe we can at least make it more efficient. Maybe we can figure out how to get energy DIRECTLY FROM THE PAIN AND SUFFERING AND DEATH. We could cut out the middle-man. We could figure out how to run a car on the poisoning death of a duck or otter. We could extract the electricity from the pain caused by a malignant tumor. Maybe we could heat an entire office complex for the winter with one human corpse.
Don't blame me. I just have the ides. You’ll all have to implement them.