When it comes to Big Oil, what will it take for us to say, "Enough is enough?"

Will it be the devastation of our air and water?  Will it be the extinction of untold species vital to life on Earth?  Will it be global warming-charged hurricanes, typhoons, floods, and sea level rise displacing millions of us from the places we call home?

With nearly 5 million barrels of oil from the BP well now wreaking havoc in the Gulf, we still can’t bring ourselves to say “Enough.” 

        Perhaps we have trouble thinking beyond the moment. 

        Increasingly, oil-driven convenience owns us.  

        This addiction to “faster and easier” came over our society like a wave in recent decades, and we’ve become so swept up in it, we’ve forgotten any other way of being.  Many Bay Area residents only know a life in which our food comes in frozen packages from Costco, our clothes come from sweatshop factories in Cambodia, and our water comes from a pipe, or worse, in plastic bottles.  And while concern is mounting over the crises that plague our world, we still live a lifestyle that we know, deep down, is killing us.  

        If our drive for oil-driven convenience doesn’t lessen, the BP oil catastrophe will one day seem like a minor leak.  In fact, BP is still eyeing the Arctic for new drilling rigs, with the potential to devastate vast swaths of this extremely fragile ecosystem. We can’t afford to let this happen. 

        As we approach the 5^th anniversary of another Gulf disaster, Hurricane Katrina, it’s time to make Big Oil pay for the solutions to oil addiction. With billions of dollars of profits, oil companies can afford to pay fees to fund public transportation and safer routes for walking and biking, as well as reparations for the many communities already impacted by oil industry pollution and climate change.

No longer can we be slaves to oil, nor can we sit back and wait for alternative energy sources to replace them.  We must commit to kicking our over-consumptive habits — for good.  But how do we rise to this challenge?  We must build locally resilient communities designed to meet real human needs while using dramatically less oil. 

Resilient communities can bounce back from crisis, and build on their strengths to create places where we can all thrive in balance with our local environments. To get from here to there, we must localize our lifelines — bringing more of our food, our energy, our manufactured goods, and our social networks back closer to the places we call home.

Bay Localize, a regional non-profit, works to equip local leaders with the tools and resources to create resilient communities.  We authored the Community Resilience Toolkit, which outlines a step-by-step process for communities to grow more of their own food, power their buildings with local clean energy, and organize for more reliable and accessible transit, among other strategies.  A movement is growing throughout the Bay Area — indeed, around the world — to wean our communities off oil dependence, and in the process, to create vibrant, green neighborhoods where all of us can live life to the fullest. 

            The road to community resilience will be challenging, but infinitely rewarding.  Let’s use the 5^th anniversary of Katrina as an opportunity to send Big Oil a message: no more. Join thousands of concerned residents August 29-30 in Oakland and San Francisco for two days of creative performances, workshops, and popular demonstrations to Make Big Oil Pay.

It’s time to say no to Big Oil, and build a better future without it. We owe it to ourselves, our planet, and our future.

Jennifer Perez is a writer and musician in San Francisco. Aaron Lehmer is co-founder and co-director of Bay Localize in Oakland. For info on the Make Big Oil Pay days of action, August 29-30, see the Mobilization for Climate Justice West’s website at http://west.actforclimatejustice.org.