This is my big criticism of these claims, because it really seems like the latter.
Yeah, it’s a disgusting mess. Yeah corporations are given far too much privilege. But if Shell weren’t around, there’d still be demand for oil that would be met by someone else.
The problem there isn’t Shell…not directly, at least (they’re certainly guilty of a lot, including lobbying to protect their position)…the problem is the oil. Redirecting to “the corporations” just ignores that.
You could say the same about the meat producers and the people who are clear cutting the rainforests and planting alfalfa in the deserts of Arizona to feed cows in the Middle East. Some seriously fucked chain of events must’ve happened to make that the logical and profitable choice yet, here we are.
If someone says “fuck oil companies” and they drive an ICE car, then their argument had better be “I wish the government would make the thing I do every day illegal”. If they want their car to be legal, then there is no possible way to satisfy their demand that there be no oil extraction. And that means nobody is going to listen to their nonsense, because nobody can. I say “fuck oil companies” and I ride a bicycle. I actually want to make cars illegal. I’m actually making demands that a politician has a hope in hell of satisfying. But there’s no legislature change that can make anti-oil car drivers happy.
That’s because it’s impossible to just rip out oil our cars from the current economy and city design. It can’t be a bandaid that gets ripped off.
Getting rid of ICE cars is the easy part. All we gotta do is ramp up electric production and distribution. Decades of neglected maintenance and upgrades. And hopefully done now using cleaner fuels like solar/wind/nuclear.
Getting rid of cars…well, that’s gonna take massive redesigns of suburbs and cities. Can’t let perfect be the enemy of good here. Gonna have to build up intra-city mass transit as well as increase park-and-ride availability and utilization for the suburbs. But even then, nobody in the burbs is gonna ride their bike 3 miles to the grocery store with two kids in tow to be able to carry home maybe two or three days worth of groceries.
But nearly every suburb was designed, or spent the majority of its incorporated days, around personal cars. Thats gonna need a lot of unfucking.
I’ve stayed at not one but two different beach houses, in different towns, that look on paper to be really close to the beach. But due to no cut throughs, private property, fences and culs de sac, what should have been a 5 or 10 minute walk to the shore became a 20 minute walk to the edge of the beaches sprawling parking lot. With two little kids and a beach cart, a 5-10 minute walk along backroads, totally easy. A 20 minute walk, half of which along busy streets (which, when there are sidewalks, they’re overgrown with prickly bushes and poison ivy, pushing you out into the shoulder) before even getting to another 10 minute walk across a parking lot before you touch sand, does not a good vacation make.
I prefer to put the goal first and let people’s ingenuity take care of the solution. If I had a fleet of battleships in orbit of earth, I’d start by saying “every car is getting blown up with plasma guns on 1 Jan in five years, with or without people inside”. Then I’d watch everyone with a shred of self preservation do whatever needs to be done to fix the problem. It’s just a matter of willpower and determination, it’s not like these problems can’t be solved in a few short years.
This is my big criticism of these claims, because it really seems like the latter.
Yeah, it’s a disgusting mess. Yeah corporations are given far too much privilege. But if Shell weren’t around, there’d still be demand for oil that would be met by someone else.
The problem there isn’t Shell…not directly, at least (they’re certainly guilty of a lot, including lobbying to protect their position)…the problem is the oil. Redirecting to “the corporations” just ignores that.
You could say the same about the meat producers and the people who are clear cutting the rainforests and planting alfalfa in the deserts of Arizona to feed cows in the Middle East. Some seriously fucked chain of events must’ve happened to make that the logical and profitable choice yet, here we are.
But don’t use plastic straws.
💯
If someone says “fuck oil companies” and they drive an ICE car, then their argument had better be “I wish the government would make the thing I do every day illegal”. If they want their car to be legal, then there is no possible way to satisfy their demand that there be no oil extraction. And that means nobody is going to listen to their nonsense, because nobody can. I say “fuck oil companies” and I ride a bicycle. I actually want to make cars illegal. I’m actually making demands that a politician has a hope in hell of satisfying. But there’s no legislature change that can make anti-oil car drivers happy.
That’s because it’s impossible to just rip out oil our cars from the current economy and city design. It can’t be a bandaid that gets ripped off.
Getting rid of ICE cars is the easy part. All we gotta do is ramp up electric production and distribution. Decades of neglected maintenance and upgrades. And hopefully done now using cleaner fuels like solar/wind/nuclear.
Getting rid of cars…well, that’s gonna take massive redesigns of suburbs and cities. Can’t let perfect be the enemy of good here. Gonna have to build up intra-city mass transit as well as increase park-and-ride availability and utilization for the suburbs. But even then, nobody in the burbs is gonna ride their bike 3 miles to the grocery store with two kids in tow to be able to carry home maybe two or three days worth of groceries.
But nearly every suburb was designed, or spent the majority of its incorporated days, around personal cars. Thats gonna need a lot of unfucking.
I’ve stayed at not one but two different beach houses, in different towns, that look on paper to be really close to the beach. But due to no cut throughs, private property, fences and culs de sac, what should have been a 5 or 10 minute walk to the shore became a 20 minute walk to the edge of the beaches sprawling parking lot. With two little kids and a beach cart, a 5-10 minute walk along backroads, totally easy. A 20 minute walk, half of which along busy streets (which, when there are sidewalks, they’re overgrown with prickly bushes and poison ivy, pushing you out into the shoulder) before even getting to another 10 minute walk across a parking lot before you touch sand, does not a good vacation make.
I prefer to put the goal first and let people’s ingenuity take care of the solution. If I had a fleet of battleships in orbit of earth, I’d start by saying “every car is getting blown up with plasma guns on 1 Jan in five years, with or without people inside”. Then I’d watch everyone with a shred of self preservation do whatever needs to be done to fix the problem. It’s just a matter of willpower and determination, it’s not like these problems can’t be solved in a few short years.