The Chainlink

Climate Cycle's founder says: "Don't Blame BP" ?!

 A Letter from the Executive Director
Photo: Tricia Koning
Joey Feinstein


Dear Climate Cycle supporter,

As an organization, Climate Cycle is founded on the belief that each one of us can make a difference that benefits us all. As the founder and executive director of Climate Cycle, I consider it important to improve how I align my actions with this basic tenet.

Today, we find ourselves in the midst of what many are
calling the worst ecological crisis in US history, and it's washing up on
American shores. As we call upon BP and politicians for answers, let us
not ignore it is we Americans who consume five times more oil per capita than the average world citizen.1 Although BP negligently ignored safety warnings and took shortcuts, they are filling our demand like other oil and
energy giants
. Much like BP, we too are ignoring nature's safety warnings with our ever-rising consumption of fossil fuels.

Over time, issues like energy have become
Photo: Telegraph.co.uk
BP oil spill
increasingly politically contentious. Yet it was W. Bush's 7th State of the Union Address that he declared "America is addicted to oil." As unnerving as the rallying cry of "drill baby drill" is to many of
us, it is the message that is sent to oil rigs and volatile regimes all
over the world every time we fill our gas tank, whether white, brown,
Republican, Democrat, man or woman.

At 12:40 p.m. today, I am flying to Brussels, Belgium. The arrangements have been made by the
U.S. Mission to the EU so that I can share ideas on sustainability and
education with European delegates in the days leading up to Europe's
Earth Day on June 5th. It is an awesome honor. At the same time, the irony
of traveling in a gas guzzling jumbo jet across the ocean to discuss
issues of climate and energy is an unsettling juxtaposition.
For all I know, this plane could be filled with fuel from underwater wells like the one that is gushing out of control.

Although it is easier to look back 1,000 years than forward 50 years, the oil
spills lining our seas pale by comparison to what catastrophic climate
change could look like within our children's lifetime. Society is
dragging anchor and in danger of ecologically capsizing.
Photo: Tricia Koning
Polaris Climate Cyclists
Where this will exactly lead nobody knows, but we must beware of the rocks. As in times of great crises, it is imperative we each do our part to stem the tide.

To this end, upon returning from Europe, I pledge to donate my car to charity and convert most of my long distance travels from airplane to train. While such decisions require increased travel time commitments, until the crude method of combustion we are reliant upon is rendered obsolete,
time is of the essence in reducing our fossil fuel riddled ways.

Let us not allow the miracles of the modern age we all enjoy become dynamite in disguise for the children we love.
Together, we can ensure that our greatest dangers become opportunities
for a societal renaissance on par with the Industrial, Space Age and
Computer Revolutions.

To refueling our future,Climate Cycle logo
Joey Feinstein                                                                             
Founder and Executive Director


1 WorldWatch Institute - http://www.worldwatch.org/node/808





His e-mail subject was: Don't Blame BP
Many of us got this e-mail.

This guy is suspiciously wrong .
This enormous environmental disaster was not caused the end users of the fossil fuel.
11 workers were killed by BP and it's policies not by the end users of the fossil fuel.
90%+ of the blame clearly is at BP's door.
1 for allowing  the accident in the first place.
2 for lobbying to change  the rules that allowed them to get away with it.
This lame argument is like saying that users of electricity are responsible the the 29 dead coal miners at the recent coal mine disaster instead of blaming the mine operators. Or like blaming children for lead poisoning of themselves, for wanting  toys instead of blaming the Chinese manufactures.
Has this guy turned into a corporate slug?

I say:
BOYCOTT BP -------and Boycott  all it's parts
am/pm mini mart
ARCO

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boycott-BP/119101198107726
http://www.earthyreport.com/site/boycott-bp/
http://www.citizen.org/page.aspx?pid=3311
http://boycottbptshirt.com/
http://www.fubp.org/


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Well, it is better not to drive a car, all else being equal. All else isn't equal for lots of people, and they should drive cars.

For what it's worth I think there's a lot of zealotry of the newly converted in these conversations. My parents raised a whole family pretty much car free and vegetarian and they manage not to harangue people about these topics in every other conversation they have, even as they do try to get people to think about their lifestyle choices. As these things go the guy who's most hardcore about insisting everyone in a car is a murderer is the one most likely to end up tooling around Wilmette in a Ford Navigator, so whatever.
H3N3 said:
I still don't get the desk job/elistism thing, sorry-- it sounds like you're expressing a bitter disdain of anyone who is left-leaning and has quit car ownership, but I still can't figure out exaxtly why.

What your picking up on is not disdain but frustration that some people, such as Clark, feel comfortable telling someone else that they should find a new job. Even the greenest life style has negative impact and there is an essential hypocrisy in telling people who make your lifestyle possible to find a new job. It's much more productive to have a dialogue and lead by example.

I come from an ultra liberal, urban and activist background. My political leaning are borderline socialist. It's because of this background that I've become frustrated with the classist attitudes of so much of educated white America. Racial slurs are unthinkable but people feel comfortable saying white trash. I'm taking this a bit far but I think it's important for people to realize that attitudes like this are alienating potential allies and are ultimately counter-productive. I have no problem with radical environmental messages just don't start the conversation with, "You suck."
Dr. Doom is not a villain.

Dr. Doom is the benevolent dictator of Latveria; his poor public image is the result of an anti-Latveria campaign mounted by the Czechoslovakian Chamber of Commerce and that mangy curr Reed Richards.


Dr. Doom is a hero to millions.
Dr. Doom said:
Well, it is better not to drive a car, all else being equal. All else isn't equal for lots of people, and they should drive cars.
For what it's worth I think there's a lot of zealotry of the newly converted in these conversations. My parents raised a whole family pretty much car free and vegetarian and they manage not to harangue people about these topics in every other conversation they have, even as they do try to get people to think about their lifestyle choices. As these things go the guy who's most hardcore about insisting everyone in a car is a murderer is the one most likely to end up tooling around Wilmette in a Ford Navigator, so whatever.

This is a conversation about an oil disaster on a bikey forum though, so it seems inevitable that there would be some discussion that spills over the line between civil discourse and haranguement.

Your family sounds really cool and you were lucky to be raised by them.

Expecting us to behave here as if we were at one of their parties is not realistic.

I'm already working on a draft of my next self-help book What Would Ma & Pop Doom Do?
Does it make me a total nerd that I want a Latverian flag?
notoriousDUG said:
At this point in my life I only have a work vehicle and no personal car so I am part way there...


Work's got to get done, bikes and tools have to get shipped unless backyard smelting really catches on.
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801/

this article makes a pretty good rejoinder to this kind of claim
Take that straw man and run with it, AC.

Peenworm Grubologist said:
notoriousDUG said:
At this point in my life I only have a work vehicle and no personal car so I am part way there...


Work's got to get done, bikes and tools have to get shipped unless backyard smelting really catches on.
Peenworm Grubologist said:
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801/

this article makes a pretty good rejoinder to this kind of claim


Peenworm Grubologist, Thanks for the great article. It makes the case perfectly. I like this part:
"...The second problem—and this is another big one—is that it incorrectly assigns blame to the individual (and most especially to individuals who are particularly powerless) instead of to those who actually wield power in this system and to the system itself. Kirkpatrick Sale again: “The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them.”
Clark said:
"Yes and this is why modern civilization is doomed...no one wants to change; no one willing to take responsibility. Everyone waiting for the CEO of British Petroleum, and CEO's of other rapacious polluters, to shut down their businesses and go away.
Ain't going to happen... Have we really learned nothing in the last 2000 years? As with the Roman Empire, let's just ignore the barbarians at our gates, and party tonight!"

Clark:
Your pessimistic is somewhat justified, however your claim that "everyone" some how thinks the same ridiculously naive. Despite all the stoics, Nihilists, apathetics, and various obstructionist; civilization will move forward. Civilization may or may not be doomed; that one is up to the rest us.
There is no way you can claim everyone thinks the same on any subject. Obviously many of us have already changed out of sense of responsibility toward a solution.

"Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it. " - James Baldwin
“Those that say it can’t be done should get out of the way of those doing it” - Chinese Proverb

I like your "barbarians at the gate" analogy. Unfortunately they have already seized the center and we are the ones on the outside. The corporate barbarians look over the gate and laugh at us while they have their looting/polluting party.
A quote I just came across that I wanted to use somewhere-- applies to our sorry excuse for a "transportation system" as a whole.

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it." Frederic Bastiat
Good one.

Clark said:
Well as long as we're tossing out favorite quotes, how about Henry Miller's reflections on our noble country...from a hundred years ago:

"...Actually we are a vulgar, pushing mob whose passions are easily mobilized by demagogues, newspaper men, religious quacks, agitators and such like. To call this a society of free peoples is blasphemous. What have we to offer the world besides the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment?"

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