Don't Blame The Dinosaurs

I didn't spend sixty dollars today filling my car's gasoline tank up with dead dinosaurs. No, that would almost seem worth the exorbitance. At least I could say that I had a remnant of the Triassic period in my tank. That, however, does not appear to be the case. What I have the remnants of in my tank -- and what has informed wars and hostile take overs and unimaginable greed -- are diatoms -- tiny sea creatures the size of a pin head. More than three hundred million years ago, it seems, oil was first formed when these unicellular folk died, fell to the bottom of oceans and lakes and were buried under sediment and rock. The unusual thing about diatoms is that even though they aren't plants, they can convert sunlight directly into stored energy. Dead and buried under water the energy inside their bodies could not escape. And to make a really long story short, the carbon eventually turned into oil under great pressure and heat. The earth changed and moved and folded and pockets of this oil collected. These pockets of oil took thousands of years and millions of dead diatoms to become even sludge. Given sufficient time and heat and continued collected sediment and we have a movie starring Daniel Day Lewis and not enough money to get us to work and a complete dependence on the long ago deaths of a life form so tiny most of us wouldn't be able to see it if it sat next to us at the kitchen table. It should come as no surprise that the birth, life and death of the diatom cannot match the world's insatiable appetite for oil. Forget that the very engines powered by the oil upon which the world depends are destroying the planet. What's important here is that I don't really have a tiger in my tank nor do I have a tyrannosaurus in my tank. I have millions of dead creatures smaller than grains of sand. It's good that Chevron posted an 18.7 billion dollar profit. It's even better that Exxon Mobil made 40.6 billion dollars in profits in 2007 because those people still have some clean up to do. And the oil companies doubtless need the obscene subsidies they receive from the federal government -- subsidies estimated to be as much as 28 billion dollars over the next five years.
Down here in the real world, though, my diatoms and I are looking forward to our two hundred dollar tax initiative go spend yourselves silly check from the federal government so we can fill up the gas tank three or four more times. Then my dead diatoms are on their own. And based on the amount of actual assistance our government seems inclined to give to us or to the environment, it looks like I'm on my own, too.