Beyond Petroleum

So Hurricane Katrina has ravaged the southeastern United States. More than one thousand people are dead. Twenty thousand are reported missing. Two hundred thousand homes are underwater in New Orleans. Two hundred and thirty-three thousand square kilometres of land have been declared a disaster zone. Five million people are without power. The poor and black communities are over-represented in the statistics of those who have had their lives either ripped apart or taken away by the flood, leading to allegations that there is racism inherent in the upper echelons of power in the city. It is argued that there was not a proper evacuation plan in place for those who relied on public transport services -- which were severed by the hurricane -- to get around. Also, the media alleges, white people find things, black people loot things.

But it seems that down here in New Zealand -- and, needless to say, in many other countries as well -- our utmost concern is being devoted not to the human beings who have been truely affected by this massive tragedy, but to the rising petrol prices. The average price of gasoline in the States apparently rose by eleven cents per litre within five days of the hurricane reaching American shores. Eleven cents.

Unlike in the case of the Boxing Day tsunami, few of us are even making a token effort to care about the human cost of Hurricane Katrina. I think it would be fair to say that for the vast majority of New Zealanders at least, there exists a much more serious issue; that of being forced to cope with the fact that we're going to have to pull a few extra dollars out of our relatively-affluent car-driving arses each time we fill up at the pump. Worse still, there's that constantly nagging thought in the back of our minds that we could save the money if we actually made an effort and gave our public transport system a chance.

Our lack of emotional response to this disaster is also due to desensitisation. The swathes of misery in which the media constantly engulfs us in a largely-successful attempt to jade us, to get us to accept it as "just part of life," are increasingly beginning to appear to us as nothing but an ongoing drama. The human tragedy that is humanity. It's hard to take it too seriously. The storyline is getting clichéd.