Prologue: What is sosh
sosh is a backronym of sort that stands for Stop Oil Save Humanity. SOS is an International distress code used in Morse Code adopted in 1908. The SOS distress signal actually consists of a continuous audio sequence of 3-dots...three dashes---3-dots...without pausing or spacing. In International Morse Code 3-dots form the letter S and three-dashes form the letter O. The letters s,o and s were not significant as letter forms but only significant because of their convenient combination of dots and dashes in continues stream. This audio distress signal quickly became a formal way to write under distress send help immediately made popular during WWI and WWII. sosh is a twenty-first century distress call for humanity.
sosh is an extension of my photographic work and represents a portal of web related articles, images and links about America’s dependency on oil, the war in Iraq and global warming. My work from the beginning has always been about our changing environment integrating both the conceptual and visual world into works of Art that describe our social and political landscape. There are lots of great well funded organizations today trying to increase the awareness to our dependency on oil, the war and global warming. I am just another small part of that global initiative trying to do my part and connecting the dots between oil, war and global warming.
What makes me really angry today is our political leaders can not see the forest through the trees and refuse to implement a plan that will turn around global warming in a meaningful way. In the meantime we have lost over 3600 American military lives over oil and our dependency on it continues. The first president to surmise that the United States would eventually become dependent on foreign oil was Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930’s and since that time our domestic energy supply has continually shrunk and demand has increased. With this realization Roosevelt set out to establish American influence over a major foreign source of oil for security and eventually selected Saudi Arabia to assume that role.
75 years later we still have what seems to be the same policy, which is trying to establish American control over a major foreign source of Middle Eastern oil. This continued mentality has recently cost the lives of over 3600 military men and women but has become an irreversible cycle. I buy gas every day and heat my house but I would like the option to buy from an energy company who is investing their profits into helping develop an oil free economy because the government will not or cannot.
If Franklin D. Roosevelt said in the 1930’s that in the next 50 years we will become an oil free economy, the last twenty-five years would have been just that - Oil Free! Now try to imagine what today would be like if the last 25 years were based on an oil free economy. Now try to imagine what kind of political will is needed to put us on the path to developing an oil free economy over the next 50 years or by 2057.
As tax paying Americans we are already spending seven to eight dollars a gallon when you consider what percentage of our taxes goes towards the conflict in the Middle East along with other oil subsidies. We are paying twice for our energy needs, once at the pump and again every April 15. We desperately need a plan to stop the military initiatives in the Middle East as well as the oil subsidies. America needs to allow the free market to control the price of energy even if we find ourselves paying seven to ten dollars or more per gallon for gas at the punp. Think of the lives that would have been saved if we had been operating in a free market oil economy without subsidizes over the last 25 years.
Higher energy costs would immediately increase energy conservation, create faster development of new forms of energy, immediately reduce the adverse effects to global warming and rebuild the lost confidence in America, which is now seen as an aggressive force around the world. Everyone needs to do their part if we are going to turn this energy crises around. All that is needed is small steps by everyone to bring energy conservation in to our collective consciousness.
Regardless, which party wins the next national election nothing will ultimately change. The political will is not there to implement the kinds of changes needed to put faith back into our future and humanity. As long as our dependency on energy exceeds the ability of America to support its own needs, Americans will continue to put people in harms way and pollute the planet because both are short-term cost-effective methods. The lack of political backbone from our political leaders and the powerful lobbying groups will ultimately keep this world from developing essential strategies to guaranteed our world’s future. Change must begin now even with small individual steps before humanity dies in its own waste.
