Everyone is making Bush a patsy for the oil companies, but we still buy their oil?
When most of us need a means to get to work, and all the products we consume make use of it, and when industry pushes for oil-intensive agricultural practices to boost profits, much of what is occuring is outside our realm of control.
Up until the 1940s, America had an extensive mass transit system. Car use was a luxury instead of a necessity for most. The auto, oil companies and Federal Government dismantled it, seeking to encourage auto consumption and grow the economy out of the depression. There were riots in many cities over this. he people wanted one thing, and government and industry wanted another. Throw in artificial subsidization of suburbs to the expense of city dwellers, and a huge propaganda campiagn, and the people eventually gave in. Fast forward a few generations later, and people see this as normal.
We buy oil because alternatives to its use aren't made available. Not all of us can commute to work via bicycle or change job locations, even if we did make major lifestyle changes. Finding a job with a livable income now days alone is difficult, imagine finding one elsewhere that offered similar income. The survival instinct for many outweighs the desire to reduce consumption for obvious reasons.
Our consumption habits have been moreso manipulated than they are voluntary. The average American should take much blame for hypocritically consuming these products, but there are factors outside of their control that influence what they do.
When hemp started to threaten the cotton, wood paper, petroleum, and petrochemical industries in the 1920s/30s, the government gave us the war on drugs and marijuana tax act. When Americans wanted to keep their mass transit in the 1940s, industry and government still destroyed it. When Americans became outraged at the use of pesticides in the 1960s, industry never changed its ways; they had basically gained control over food production with few alternatives available. When wind electricity got cheaper than coal in the 1990s, the coal industry got to lobbying to slow its adoption, and we use far less of it than we have the potential to. When GM crops and factory farms became the norm in the 1990s and Americans grew outraged, industry had pretty much wiped out the family farm, and people again kept buying their products given the copious amount of time and money required to find alternatives. When many Americans wanted electric cars in the 1990s, industry refused to meet any demand outright.
We live in a society where entrenched industries are protected and subsidized, and allowed to make our public policy, regardless of what the people really want. The people merely go with the flow, not having much else to do.
The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the old growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~Thomas Jefferson
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