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Oil industries have the financial resources to influence policy, public opinion, economics and business practices. Individuals do not. Blaming the consumer for

by cazum 8y ago

Oil industries have the financial resources to influence policy, public opinion, economics and business practices. Individuals do not. Blaming the consumer for buying bad shit when there is not only no equivalent on the market, but an active campaign to supress any alternatives is simply being dishonest. And I am forced to buy their products. I need my car to get to work. I can't afford an electric vehicle. If I don't work, I can't have a home or eat. Thus my choice becomes: consume oil or die.

jcranmer 8y ago
> I need my car to get to work. For the past 7 years, I've been able to walk/bike/take the bus to work instead of the car. And this isn't even in a walkable urbanist utopia. You chose to live and work in places that require a car to get to work. You probably eliminated all the options that would have enabled you to not use a car, and society does not make it easy to make that choice. But that choice still does exist. This is the problem with the rhetoric that seeks to place the entire blame for our fossil-fuel dependence on Big Oil: it ignores the fact that most of those lifestyle decisions were made without the influence of the oil industry, and often in pursuit of other goals. It wasn't Standard Oil who said "gee, let's decamp people from the inner cities into these large sprawls of white-picket-fence housing tracts"--that was real estate developers who pushed for that. Nor did Standard Oil cause the decline of streetcars, commuter rail, and interurban rail service: that was a vicious ridership/profit death spiral, somewhat helped by GM specifically but more heavily caused by an overregulated rail industry in comparison to the underregulated private automotive transit. There's a lot of blame to go around. Don't pretend that we, as a general society, deserve none of it.
- cazum 8y ago
  You being able to take a bus to work does not mean that the majority of people in America can as well. A large number of jobs are filled by people who cannot afford to live anywhere but in a different city than where their employer is located. This was not their choice, because they didn't choose to layout housing and real estate markets in a way that causes this. You're making my point for me. The individual has little culpability in oil consumption when their homes are built far away from their jobs due to real estate developers. Nor are they culpable for not taking public transit when those systems are utterly eroded by private interests. It may not have been big oils direct actions that led to these conditions, but that doesn't change the fact that the individuals who live under them can be blamed for living under them. Sure, I guess we can give them some flak for not changing the conditions by rising up and seizing control of the resources that make their conditions so existentially dire, but then, that's exactly what the original op was saying.
- normal_man 8y ago
  Individual actions like driving or biking to work are drops in the bucket, basically insignificant. We know that 100 companies cause 70% of the pollution on this planet. We know their names, and the names of those who decide their strategies and policies. There's no need for this amorphous "its all of society" crap.

by cazum 8y ago

jcranmer 8y ago

> I need my car to get to work. For the past 7 years, I've been able to walk/bike/take the bus to work instead of the car. And this isn't even in a walkable urbanist utopia. You chose to live and work in places that require a car to get to work. You probably eliminated all the options that would have enabled you to not use a car, and society does not make it easy to make that choice. But that choice still does exist. This is the problem with the rhetoric that seeks to place the entire blame for our fossil-fuel dependence on Big Oil: it ignores the fact that most of those lifestyle decisions were made without the influence of the oil industry, and often in pursuit of other goals. It wasn't Standard Oil who said "gee, let's decamp people from the inner cities into these large sprawls of white-picket-fence housing tracts"--that was real estate developers who pushed for that. Nor did Standard Oil cause the decline of streetcars, commuter rail, and interurban rail service: that was a vicious ridership/profit death spiral, somewhat helped by GM specifically but more heavily caused by an overregulated rail industry in comparison to the underregulated private automotive transit. There's a lot of blame to go around. Don't pretend that we, as a general society, deserve none of it.

cazum 8y ago
You being able to take a bus to work does not mean that the majority of people in America can as well. A large number of jobs are filled by people who cannot afford to live anywhere but in a different city than where their employer is located. This was not their choice, because they didn't choose to layout housing and real estate markets in a way that causes this. You're making my point for me. The individual has little culpability in oil consumption when their homes are built far away from their jobs due to real estate developers. Nor are they culpable for not taking public transit when those systems are utterly eroded by private interests. It may not have been big oils direct actions that led to these conditions, but that doesn't change the fact that the individuals who live under them can be blamed for living under them. Sure, I guess we can give them some flak for not changing the conditions by rising up and seizing control of the resources that make their conditions so existentially dire, but then, that's exactly what the original op was saying.
normal_man 8y ago
Individual actions like driving or biking to work are drops in the bucket, basically insignificant. We know that 100 companies cause 70% of the pollution on this planet. We know their names, and the names of those who decide their strategies and policies. There's no need for this amorphous "its all of society" crap.