It was in 1968, when in what many consider to be his seminal acting job, Dustin Hoffman's character, Benjamin, "The Graduate," is drawn aside by a friend of his parents at his graduation party and told those now-famous words: "Benjamin, let me say just one word: 'Plastics.' Think about it."
It was an era before we became conscious of things like the biodegradability of plastic garbage bags (we even used paper bags for some garbage), and when tent pegs were wood or metal, laundry soap was powder that came in cardboard boxes, and we had clothespins that were still made out of wood. Since then, the marketing wizards at Standard Oil have found ways to make it more acceptable, even desirable, to put things in bright, shiny, transparent, plastic coverings on store shelves, the better to tantalize the perusing customer.
Now, there are whirlpools of plastic in the oceans of the world where plastic grocery bags, garbage bags, other plastic containers, and all manner of flotsam and jetsam whirl in shiny profusion. In an era of mergers, acquisitions and consolidations, Standard Oil was absorbed by British Petroleum (BP). Deregulation became the gospel of business, and nobody seems to be asking about the biodegradability of bags any more. Maybe that demonstrates the power of marketing.
People even argue that wars should have been fought over the main ingredient of these bags; a former president was great friends with wealthy sheiks with great access, and our current president proposed expansion of offshore ocean drilling to "reduce dependence on foreign oil."
Some 40 years ago we became conscious of what we were doing to Mother Earth. Pollution in Cleveland, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and London prompted us to do something. Development of alternatives to internal combustion engines became subsidized.
Yet once Jimmy Carter left office, much of the interest in these alternatives left with him. A glib president said the nine most dangerous words in the English language are "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help," and he led us to unleash business, and become comfortable once again with the fuels for it all, coal and oil.
But it seems oil companies got too effective at making money. They apparently began to believe their own marketing. Because America is a place that is now quite deregulated, BP failed to put a half-million-dollar safety piece on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and the rest is history. Looks like unleashed American business, whether headquartered in London, the Bahamas or Switzerland, may not be the benevolent regime we hoped.
In the last six weeks, we've seen 29 lives lost in a coal mine that disregarded safety in favor of its owners' main priority, profit. And we've seen the power of oil companies, who might be quite comfortable with a decision to pursue off-shore drilling, despite the explosion and leak we've had in the Gulf. And their money-laden work with members of Congress helps their cause.
