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Chomsky on Iraq
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grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

Re: Oil War Resistance
Oct 17, 2002, 10:02
Firstly, i wasn't involved in the last protest of the oil depots because i vehemently disagreed with the protesters. They were demanding cheaper petrol, let's remember. Demanding the "right" of inexpensive road travel. Pah! There's no such "right" when it's based upon a finite resource. It's a luxury.

The sooner people wake up to this simple fact, the better.

Secondly, i'm not sure that blockading fuel depots is (a) an effective protest against oil companies in the long run, (b) socially responsible, or (c) ethically justifiable.

Fuel isn't like other "products". In physics, Energy is defined, quite simply, as "the ability to do work". Without energy society is scuppered. As 98% of our transportation energy is fossil fuels (and almost as much of our total energy) this means that without petrol, society is scuppered.

Cut of a society's primary resource and pretty soon people start to go hungry, and eventually they starve. Hospitals cease functioning, public transport falls apart, industry and industrial agriculture grinds slowly to a halt, etc etc etc.

Blockading fuel depots hurts oil companies in the short term by holding all of society hostage. And that's a crap way to protest (in my opinion). In the long run, they've not lost any of their product and shortages just inflate price. So when your protest ends, they'll make larger profits for a time until things return to normal. In the long run, you boost oil company profits with that tactic.

The real protest is to examine your lifestyle and work out where oil companies fit into it. Then slowly start to eliminate them. Reduce your use of plastic (i'm not sure it's possible, these days, to actually stop using it altogether). Buy local products (start with food and work up - i'm almost 100% local these days... but i still get suckered in by tropical fruit). Stop using cars (walk, cycle and when absolutely necessary use public transport). These are first steps.

If you really wanted to stop contributing to Big Oil, however, you'd have to start generating your own electricity (or do without), growing your own food (even the cuddliest of organic farms require some imported oil - if only to transport produce to the market), and changing your life in a thousand ways - large and small.

Oil is the primary resource of our civilisation. Just as wood was to the Easter Islanders (find out what happened to them when it ran out). It is the foundation upon which all else is built. It is our ability to do work.

So this war is being fought to protect your lifestyle (and mine, and everyone who posts to this message board). The effective protest is to cease participating in that lifestyle. We must stop being the root of the problem, before we can effectively solve it.


PS: i am a long way from achieving this goal. Not preaching - just opining.
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