wed 03 sep 2008 08:17:44 — witte de withstraat
they should stop blaming the consumer
these days when i see a tv spot teaching me to conserve energy, i give my tv the finger.
i'm sick of media campaigns trying to convince us that we consumers are to blame for the energy and climate change problems. of course we should all be careful about our consumption. but to pretend that solves the problem -- or that we caused it in the first place -- is an insult.
the idea that we must stop burning fossil fuels and start using renewable energy didn't just dawn on us last week. we have known this since the 1960s. over forty years i'm pretty sure they could have developed good technologies for making the transition -- if only they had tried. the fact that the energy and transportation industries chose *not* to do the right thing can't be blamed on the poor consumer.
and now that the price of oil has slipped slightly from its all-time high of a few weeks ago, the professional analysts on tv are talking like everything's gonna be fine now. great, why don't we bring back the sport-utility vehicle?