I've been pondering and fuming over a quote I read in the article, "Canada Is Unlocking Petroleum From, Sand", in last Tuesday's NYT: 

"We don't know if oil is going to be in vogue 50 years down the road," said Mr. Carter, the Syncrude president. "For Canada's benefit, we should develop it now. If it is replaced with something else in 50 years, this would be just dirt in the ground" 

It is difficult not to just scream at the man - and at the NYT for quoting him with such uncritical and dispassionate objectivity - for being so criminally stupid. 

Instead of investing the billions of dollars at its disposal in developing sustainable, environmentally friendly sources of energy, his company is going to put them into global warming and a looming global catastrophe, in comparison with which, those of the 20th Century will pale into relative insignificance. 

Why is Syncrude investing in global disaster rather than in sustainability and survival? 
For the seemingly harmless reason that there is more money to be made from the former.

In Nazi Germany too, billions were invested in catastrophe.

On Saturday we remembered the evil that resulted in the Holocaust and 10s of millions of dead; At the beginning of the next century there will perhaps be a day commemorating man's stupidity and blindness, which, the way things are going, will result in 100s of millions of dead.

God forgive America.