I have been looking at news, at sites and at blogs, at debates on the internet and at programmes on information channels. And there is a factor that should make anyone sick but I am not sure anyone has noticed it. It is about responsibilities and evasion of a share where it belongs - more than one individually but collectively speaking belongs is the correct form of the verb.
I remember as long as a decade ago or more when the ozone hole was detected for the first time the media turned around and told people not to use aerosols because that was bad for the atmosphere. What no one talked about but was obvious is - people sued them, but the responsibility was with manufacturers who made them, and lawmakers too who allowed it, just as much. No one talked about it because it probably was perceived as of no use - tell individual users, stop them from using bad stuff, and make it unprofitable for makers to manufacture them, and they would go away.
That was the logic of inviting no trouble in form of industries descending onto one. It is interesting that coming from a powerful democracy no media trusted the lawmakers to protect one if that happened.
Then it was about water that California lacked, and again it was individuals who were told to stop watering lawns with water provided for drinking and use instead recycled water to do so. As a house owner made it clear, it was far from obvious how one was supposed to do that, under the existing infrastructure. So the issue probably took a back seat and I don't know if anything ever got done.
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What was achieved by the media blitz telling people - individuals, house owners, women - to do this or that is that people were individually and collectively made to feel not only responsible but also guilty for causing regional and global problems, and so they did not think of who really was responsible - and so there were no protests and no noise against the real huge culprits.
This use of guilt has been learned from past masters of power who have used it for various purposes by insisting everyone is guilty of some crime or sin - and thus gotten power over their psyche, their minds, and used it for their own, generally nefarious, purposes.
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Should individuals not take responsibility? No, that is not the point at all. Whatever little one can one should do and a collective small steps adding up to a significant change for better is always a good idea. What should not happen is forgetting the main agenda in the trivia of small steps and noises about them and everyone pointing fingers at each other and looking down in guilt - while the real huge culprits are forgotten and no one points at them, either out of one's own sense of guilt or forgetfulness or worse, being part of the design that brought this about so the big culprits could get away.
The fallout of this strategy is what is to be avoided - yes, take all the small steps you can and point out other small steps everyone can take but don't forget the big culprits, those that are responsible on a large scale and intend doing nothing as far as possible and going on making money or clinging to power, no matter if you run short of drinking water or whole continents starve or drown due to warming. Don't forget to hold them responsible, especially when your system is not only democracy it is with pain and troubles that it was so established. It is not for benefit of the powerful alone that you have this system, the precious democracy.
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Water in California was wasted on lawns, and so it was on the sort of agriculture that needed intensive irrigation and needed water that the state did not have - but also responsible were industries that used it for various purposes without a thought of if that was in fact sustainable in the state and no one thought about that either, not politicians and not others who could and should have done so.
Industries all over, not only in California, went on not only using precious water resources that they might have done without by invention or at least been frugal about, but also went on polluting with chemical effluents so whole neighbourhoods were sickening seriously and finding it difficult to fight the industries that could always hire some specialists without conscience to testify about "there being a doubt as to the effect of --- on health", and people kept on sickening and dying.
Aerosols were not just from your deodorants, which are still being manufactured and sold since no one went after the makers, and are still depleting the ozone and contributing to the global warming while people are proud of using them and think those who do not "stink", not realising that "stink" is in fact relative while the ozone depletion and global warming is not.
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And now it is about oil - about global warming, about fossil fuels, about renewable resources, about clean energy. And once again the same tactics are working - this time with much less effort from media, who only have to plant a seed for it to immediately grow into whole forests, make storms out of a gentle wave of a fan languidly. Internet and people eager to go put in their two bits and blog and debate on sites provided for that very purpose takes care of the rest.
Everyone is telling everyone else what they could do to help, all good suggestions and some obvious, some hilarious and ridiculous too deliberately put forth; plenty out there to go on the other side too - nothing going on, no reason not to go on playing violin still, would rather not stop enjoying liberty of luxuries (not realising the objects are not luxuries but the thoughtlessness is one and an unaffordable one at that) - and there is a lot of noise, lot of sites, some pretending to straddle the fence and calling it a left verses right debate while some are devoted to deny global warming - just as there are those out there denying evolution, and very likely heliocentricity as well.
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In all this noise of course what is forgotten is the real culprits responsible for global warming and those that ought to be reigned in before it is too late, the industries. While most citizens of the powerful democracy are debating it out on personal levels and enjoying themselves hugely at the new game, they are probably quite proud of their nation's various representatives - politicians and industries and those elected for the purpose of governance - telling off all the rest of the world at every global warming conference, telling them how they do not agree with others who are all more or less in accord with the scientists, and that they will continue the polluting and consuming that is their hallmark, no matter it is due a huge chunk of the responsibility for the looming disaster.
All the rest of us dying in tsunamis and earthquakes and starvations will do no good though to the one nation that refused to see the point when you are left alone on the planet either - the doom this time recognises no isolationist nations or people, respects no nations refusing to take part.
Or differences of opinion, for that matter. Soon it is going to be too late.
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There are a couple of things that are perhaps worse - one, some people, some businesses are trying to make money in this too. Selling "Green gadgets" - especially when they do not work or are not green at all. Proliferating "Green" sites where people go on debating - and uselessly, since a large number are merely there for the nay-saying and trashing every fact and everything true down while a small sincere dedicated number go on earnestly and unaware of there all of efforts being perhaps futile.
And then there are the real shockers, part of those that are proposing replacing fossil fuels by bio fuels, for a clean and renewable, replaceable source of energy. Not the ones who are going with organic manure for fuel - that has been done forever in countries where waste of resources has been avoided and held reprehensible, and is a good idea in fact for a portion of the replacing fossil fuels - but the others, those that are proposing burning wood or corn oil or other green stuff, to be grown for the purpose.
Is it not obvious why those ideas are not only bad they are horrible?
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We need forests, not only the existing ones but more, to take the carbon out of the atmosphere - or else we are on a roller coaster to doom that will be soon impossible to stop much less turn around. Cutting down trees for any reason at all should in fact be banned, that is what is needed.
On face of it corn oil or other vegetable oils sound like a good idea - until one thinks a moment and realises it is about food that could be used for the poor, the starving that are not only predominantly in a huge continent but are everywhere, including U.S., and cutting down on food because they cannot afford it. And every one can see where it will lead - while more and more people starve in every continent corn will be kept exclusively for oil for fuels to replace petroleum for cars and industries.
It will never happen, U.S. will not let people starve, Christians won't allow it, the good people of west will never allow it - that is the sop that keeps consciences quiet in the very people who could help and think they do and will. But what did happen really when African situation first came to light - starving in one country after another? People took up donation drives and went on collecting money and used clothes and sent them, and some went personally to organise the distribution. But there are still starving people - and givers are tired.
Meanwhile, through it all, for the last well over two decades, corn and other perfectly good food of human consumption was being fed to pigs in the same countries where people are more and more Christian, proud of their charity, and so on - the food that could have fed Africa was used to fatten pigs so people in U.S. should not be short of fat in their red meat intake. As if!!
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Was it the fault of people? Individually, no.
Were they aware it was this sort of skewed balance and if they were would they have cared, would they have said "send the corn to Africa, reserve it for whatever people need it next, feed the stalks to pigs and the leftovers form all kitchens of the country, let people eat first"?
The answer can only come from the same people. Would you do it now? Would you vote to reserve food for people, and not use it for fattening pigs or running hummers and other fuel guzzlers?
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What is needed is opening eyes and minds and consciences, to see things for what they are, and to go for real measures, for saving our planet - for your children and their children. Not waste time accusing and guilt and small steps while big ones are still going on the same way forever, not waste human food on pigs and cars.
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As for needs of energy, of renewable and clean energy, we do need to put our force and our minds together with solar and wind and wave and tidal sources of energy - all that our planet has always given in abundance and is unlikely to run out in foreseeable future and is clean and forever there most of the time, if not in one form for a while then surely another - and not allow other distractions in the way.
There is always the other kind of bio-fuel for use - manure - that is a good idea to use up either for enriching fields or for needs of fuel. As long as there is life on earth that is a renewable resource too and much better used this way than polluting our water resources or oceans through sewage and so on.
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Let us not have vultures in the way for once - this is too important, and it is not in anyone's interest to let the ever present grab-a-buck-or-a-million-while-one-can-out-of-this-opportunity get in the way of saving the planet. That really is the key. When it is well and assured we are all going to survive, then one can go back to the opportunistic free for all - but this is too crucial now. It is survival of the planet, not one species or one continent or one race.
So don't encourage the fraudulent green-gadget sellers, the big guys who reserve corn fields of million tons for fuel for replacing petroleum, and their kind rule the day. If there is one way small steps should add up and account and demand the rest of the account, this is it.
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