A Response to “Fuck You, Us”.
Sex Pistols, “No One Is Innocent”
Alex: “And fuck you, us. We’re the ones consuming all that oil.”
You’ll have to pardon me for lifting a response I made in comments to a full-on post, but I’ve been seeing this theme going around a lot recently. And while I respect where it comes from, I reject it completely.
Here’s my rationale:
1: Many of us (most of us?) do not remember a time when there was no such thing as an internal combustion engine. We had no say in the decisions that were made in the 1920s and on. So yes, we’re the ones using all that oil, but you might as well blame a crackbaby for being born addicted to crack. It was like this when we got here! I’d love to buy an affordable electric car that generates no emissions. Where can I buy one today?
2: Most of “us” don’t get to set energy policy: the most we can do is harass our politicians to do the right thing. We saw how well that worked out for a public option, for financial reform, and for the Iraq War. We may be a representative democracy, but it’s often not that representative. And when we try to replace bad representatives, we face the full weight and strength of the system: Blanche Lincoln, who helped carve out every good thing about health insurance reform out of the bill was supported by the White House and the entire Democratic establishment in the recent Arkansas primary. Other examples include the Democratic establishment’s support for Ed Case in Hawaii, their support for Arlen Specter in PA, their refusal to step in for Ned Lamont when he won the Connecticut primary in 2006, their opposition to Donna Edwards and support for corrupt Al Wynn in 2008, and their warm welcome to Joe Lieberman after he campaigned against Obama! Many of “us” are doing our damnedest to change the way we live, and many of “them” constitute massive roadblocks.
3: Pursuant to 2, if the government would really get behind energy alternatives perhaps the rest of “us” wouldn’t be so trapped by THEIR choices. Reagan’s the obvious goat for doing away with Carter’s tax credits for solar, and god knows the republicans practically ejaculate petroleum, but the cast of the energy farce includes Democrats like Kennedy (anti-wind power in Massachusetts), Rockefeller (big coal supporter), Dingell (has opposed raising fuel efficiency standards for YEARS), and Landrieu (still shilling for oil drilling despite what’s happened to her state).
3: While all oil production is by definition a dirty and polluting industry, it wasn’t “us” that forced BP to sidestep safety regulations (to the tune of 760 violations in the past 5 years compared to environmental pariah Exxon’s 1), it wasn’t “us” that ,a href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/04/AR2010050404118.html”>gave BP a waiver on an environmental impact study, and it wasn’t “us” that decided that cleanup efforts in the Gulf were better spent on cover-up efforts. That was pretty much all BP, with a helping hand from the US Department of the Interior and the Mineral Management Service. And to piggyback on that, there were plenty of “us” who objected vocally and publicly to the appointment of Ken “industry friend” Salazar to lead the department, but nobody listened. And when Ken appointed BP’s Sylvia Baca to a deputy admin position at MMS, none of “us” learned about it until after the disaster. In fact, Obama AND Salazar told “us” specifically they would clean up Interior, and they didn’t.
And that doesn’t even begin to touch on land use policies (again, set by political elites) that encourage sprawl, the role of various industries in encouraging waste (like when the plastic bag industry managed to kill a proposed anti-plastic bag law here in Philly).
So I agree that the majority of “us” bear no small responsibility in this disaster: but not everyone is a leader either by personality or by election, which is why so many of “us” depend on “them” to make the right decisions moving forward. We are constrained by the choices made for “us”, often by people who have a personal financial investment in the status quo.
We’ve been talking for decades about the need to get off oil, and the people with the power to do something about that have repeatedly punted. No one is innocent… but some are a lot more guilty than the rest of us.
June 30th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
Great post.
Thank you.
July 1st, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Wow. That’s some response to a one line comment. I’ll try to respond.
We (as ‘muricans, and probably the rest of the industrialized world) are some spoiled motherfuckers. Not only do we demand a very good standard of living, we want to be free of the negative consequences. Luckily, we’re really good at ignoring them or inflicting them on someone else. Fuck NIMBY, we want plausible deniability.
When we are forced to recognize a negative outcome from our behavior, we want someone else to take the responsibility, the sin so our consciences can remain clean. Ideally, we’d just push a button or take a pill and our beautiful minds are no longer bothered with the ugliness. Sometimes we need an out-group to punish for our sins. A Jesus that we don’t have to like or think about when we’re not needing instant, convenient redemption.
Now we could examine our lives and see the connections between our actions and lifestyles and their consequences. The use of petroleum is likely unavoidable in our day to day lives- it’s a raw material for the keyboard I’m typing on, it provides the energy for the cheap Chinese chair I’m sitting on and likely powers the computer I’m using and the airconditioning I’m enjoying.
And I know the consequences for my lifestyle. The air tastes like diesel soot, we invade other countries to keep the oil flowing to us. We keep the kleptocracy in Nigeria propped up while we poison the water.
I know I’m culpable because I have eyes, I benefit from the arrangement and I’m not willing to make the necessary sacrifices. I don’t want to blame someone else. I don’t want to blame ‘our leaders’. They’re also benefiting from the arrangement.
If I wanted to be morally pure, I’d live like the Unibomber, in the woods. There’s some sacrifice there. Being pure isn’t just some check-box or a bumpersticker.
But you’re not willing to make the sacrifice either. You like cheap gas more than I do, probably. If you want to blame BP or the elites or whomever because it lets you believe that you’re not like them, go right ahead.
July 2nd, 2010 at 11:10 am
Who’s saying anything about being morally pure? I recognize all of these benefits and costs of oil myself, but I also recognize that my individual choices do not add up to dick-diddly squat when the official policy of our incredibly powerful nation goes in the oppposite direction: it’s like pitting Pee Wee Herman against the Philadelphia Eagles. I am not saying we as individuals should not wean ourselves off plastics and petroleum products or wait for elites to do it for us: like everyone else, I’m using reusable bags, eschewing bottled water, driving an efficient car, blah blah blah. But these market-based, individual solutions only go so far. Even President Hopeful McChange recognizes this:
,blockquote>’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—-ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”
Look at fucking china: they’re a huge polluter, but their government has put massive amounts of money toward renewables. They’re the largest investor in wind and the largest manufacturer of solar panels: new York times says we may become reliant on them for our energy! They have totally outstripped us. Is this because of individual Chinese making choices? Hell no: it’s the government, using POLICY to accomplish a massive undertaking.
You write that “I’m [ie, Alex] not willing to make the necessary sacrifices.” man, the sacrifices you’d have to make are the kind that individuals can’t do unless they have a LOT of money. You can’t afford a wind turbine in your yard to power your house. You can’t afford to build your own subway. Maybe you can afford solar power (my parents installed it this year), but even then the initial outlay is huge.
As for liking cheap gas more than you do, I don’t know about that. I hate driving, and I walk to work almost every day. when Sam isn’t here I only drive when I have to bring my bass somewhere, and I usually only have to fill my tank twice a month, if that. if I had the resources, i’d buy a second upright bass to convert to something transportable, set up one of those super long bike trailers to carry it, and tow it behind my bike. But again, one guy on a bike doesn’t offset a policy that promotes highways and cars over public transit, as ours does.
On the other hand, i certainly DO blame our political elites for a lot of this, and for the reasons I have stated: as the health care bill and financial reforms show, our leaders are much more concerned with what Money says rather than what constituents say, hence no public option and huge loopholes. Neither you nor I set policy: the most we can do is write/call our leaders, and hope they listen.
it’s not a matter of “blam[ing] BP because it lets [me] believe [I'm] not like them”, and it’s not about your “lifestyle” (actually, as a city dweller you use less energy than rural and suburbanites): it’s a matter of recognizing that, while we as individuals are certainly not blameless, we are part and product of a system that was set up long before either of us were born, and that the only way to change that is through massive changes in the policy itself. Other governments recognize this (china, germany) and others, like ours, do not.
this is one of the fatal flaws in the Libertarian point of view by the way. Sometimes, in fact, government DOES have to tell people “no we can’t do that anymore.”