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The Oscar's Speech

Have you ever dreamed what you'd say if you won an Oscar? Here is a first draft of mine.

I would like to thank all the people that made it possible for me to be here. It is through your effort that we share this award. I promised myself I would not miss the chance to reach such a broad audience and simply express my gratitude to the wonderful people I will name backstage. People whose own accomplishments speak to their greatness and need no one, not me to validate them on this stage. They are wonderful people in their own right.

We have a pressing moral issue at hand that has been ignored for much too long. The Earth, our Environment, is being ignored. For too long the environmental issue has been portrayed as a fight between ecology and economy, between trees and jobs. This is not true.

The moral issue is theft and whether you are okay with it. I don't have children or children of children and I am pissed off at the wholesale theft of the environment; theft from future generations. The Earth does not belong to us. It does not belong to this generation alone. 

We can not justify this theft on the basis of jobs either, for the jobs we create are temporary not ones that will build the economy for the future. What will be the down the road benefit of creating oil-rig jobs? When the oil stops flowing the job is gone.

It is time we re-framed this debate. It is time we stop obscuring the moral issue so we can justify our stealing. This is a nation built by do-it-yourself-ers. We are an enterprising nation. We don't need to steal from future generations to solve problems today. We can do it ourselves. Now.

[As the Native America Proverb says: "We don't inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children." 
                                   -- added 4/22/11 from Felix Arroyo's Facebook Status]

Thank you.
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