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> We are essentially all complicit Empty statement that shirks responsibility when some are complicit orders of magnitudes more than others. Even among those n
by maeil 2y ago
> We are essentially all complicit
Empty statement that shirks responsibility when some are complicit orders of magnitudes more than others. Even among those not directly involved in fossil fuel industries. This matters. In Nazi Germany, someone working at a screw factory, some of whose screws ended up in military devices, was also complicit. Yet the morality is clear - they weren't sent to Nuremberg whereas others were, for good reason. Even though the war would have been near impossible with no screws available.
- jl6 2y agoWhere do you think Exxon sits on the giving-orders to just-following-orders to just-making-screws spectrum? And where do people buying oil products sit?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- maeil 2y agoI consider myself qualified enough to determine there are orders of magnitudes of difference between them, but not nearly enough to place them at an exact location on the spectrum. I'd have to devote months and work with plenty of others to even attempt doing so and even then I wouldn't be the best person for the job. Exxon also isn't a person, but the same would apply if you'd have said e.g. the Exxon CEO. For people buying oil products, again there's orders of magnitudes of difference. Even the average person in Sierra Leone has bought an oil product at some point. I'm sure he's bought magnitudes less than I have though, and I have bought magnitudes less than others again. All of this does place us on different parts of the spectrum and is not to be hand-waved away.
- jl6 2y agoI'm just curious if you think Exxon is the one giving the order to drill oil, or the one getting paid by others to do it. I'm not saying it's OK to do a bad thing just because someone else paid you to do it, but I am saying that a narrow focus on Exxon (and even more generally, a narrow focus on blame assignment) distracts from the systemic change needed across the entire global economy. By all means punish the people who ordered the actual, specific hacking crimes highlighted in this thread, but trying to pin climate change on oil companies ignores the fact that the orders come from civilization at large.
- maeil 2y agoThere's no one-to-one comparison, but a decent one would be a drug cartel making and selling fentanyl. Sure, the orders come from civilization at large, I guess, as if no one were to buy the stuff then they wouldn't produce it. IG Farben also has similarities. I don't think anyone is arguing that economy-wide changes aren't needed, nor did anyone ever propose that if only we took down IG Farben, WW2 would've ended. Correct relative blame assignment is still very important, as the Farben CEO to Nuremberg and the screw factory worker should be rehabilitated regardless of having played a minor (yet still essential) role.