Oil Money is Spilling, Everywhere
It's all perfectly normal, just carry on and don't think about it.
I’m in Australia, it’s been freakishly hot.
I’m not trying to imply this is due to climate change. I’m in Queensland, it’s subtropical, it’s always hot in the summer.
But every local I meet, from my extended family who live here to a woman at the supermarket this morning, they are all complaining about the heat and specifically the humidity. Yesterday that sticky, dripping humidity reached 92% . I’m not complaining, it’s a huge privilege to be here and escape the cold dark European winter.
But every now and then I will see a regular broadcast TV station and when the weather report comes on, it’s hard not to notice the tag line in the bottom left of the screen. The weather report is sponsored by a global fossil fuel company.
A tiny bit of research reveals there are more than 500 sports, community and education organisations in Australia that directly benefit from oil, gas and coal company sponsorship.
(https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/27/fossil-fuel-interests-revealed-to-have-signed-more-than-500-sponsorship-deals-with-australian-bodies)
That’s not bad right? I mean they are handing out money all over the place, for good causes.
If you run a charity to help disenfranchised young people develop and gain confidence, and someone from a fossil fuel company comes along offering a serious dollop of money in return for plopping a sticker on your mini bus, are you going to turn it down?
Some might, but I would never blame anyone who did say yes. The point I’m trying to make is we all live in a world where one huge industry, 90% of which is run by countries, not listed companies, has a staggering amount of leverage on what we think, believe and accept.
The only way an individual can truly live on this planet and have no relationship with the fossil fuel industry is to have enough money to buy a fairly big farm, only use animal, human or solar/wind powered mechanical power, grow everything you need, I mean everything. Never rely on any medicine of any sort, never buy anything in a shop, make you own clothes from wool or cotton you grow, never travel anywhere off the farm, roads are made of oil and ground up rocks, and don’t ever use the internet.
I’m not saying it would be impossible, but I think we can all accept it would be very hard. And only a tiny proportion of us could a) afford to buy the farm and b) have the incredible skill set to do so.
One of the first socio-political movements I became aware of in the early 1970’s was the notion of ‘the alternative society.’ The idea being that modern capitalism was so screwed up and brutal that the only solution was do build and develop alternative ways of living.
Ways that didn’t require us to endlessly consume and desire to have more and more. The dream was to live simply and sustainably off the land, sharing things instead of hoarding, living happily and healthily as capitalism died around us.
I don’t think I need to describe what happened in the 1980’s and 90’s to make that gently deluded dream turned out to be fairly ineffective on a global scale.
So what is the most effective way of countering the incredibly well funded deluge of nonsense supporters of fossil fuel can spread like crude oil on a beach.
We have all grown up in what I think is the middle of the era of fossil burning. We are in a pivotal period, I know that the folks, companies and countries who benefit from the magnificent profits the fossil fuel industry generates are aware that something big is shifting.
Hence the huge increase in activity, spreading stories to slow down the transition, to reassure people that they don’t need to change, that actually, seriously, any alternative to drill and burn is actually worse ‘for the planet.’
And anyway, people are stopping buying electric cars and it’s all over. Clean diesel is the future. If there’s any doubt, check this screenshot:
Just a quick explanation of why this unsubstantiated opinion piece is such dross. Global sales of EV’s are at an all time high. Never in human history have so many people bought or leased new electric vehicles. The shift is unprecedented, I’m not even trying to claim this is a good thing, (okay, it is) but it’s happening.
So this ‘story’ is from Marketwatch, part of Rupert Murdoch’s extremist, pro fossil fuel News Corporation, the folks who helped bring us Trump and Brexit.
Now that there are over 150 million electric cars in daily use and 250 million electric mopeds, scooters and motorbike, there is a measurable drop in global oil consumption, his pals in the various petrostates and oil companies are feeling a little uneasy. Call EV’s a fad, maybe that’ll stop people buying the damn things.
Historians in 500 years time will look back on this era with fascination. While we can only guess at the developments of the next 100 years, they will know what eventually happened.
Hopefully there will be museums with a petrol pump and a combustion engine on display, with images of 5 lane highways blocked with tens of thousands of stationary poisonous gas belching machines. I hope they include that fact that in 2024 we all thought this was normal and totally acceptable, in the same way people in 1124 thought burning women at the stake for being ‘witches’ was normal and acceptable.
I’m sure we won’t manage to transition away from fossil fuel in my lifetime, it’s going to take another 50 years, but seriously, the writing is on the wall. The petrostates and oil companies are screwed. The intelligent ones are already trying to find alternatives, but many very rich people who currently have enormous power and influence will see it slip away. This will make them very aggressive and increasingly dangerous.
I believe we will reduce burning this toxic substance to such a degree that it becomes irrelevant, which brings me back to Australia.
Only this beautiful country and Russia have such low regulations regarding the quality of the petrol they burn. Emissions regulations are at least 10 years behind Europe and the USA, again, on a par with Russia.
To be fair this is changing in 2025, but as I sat at a red light on a busy road this morning, (I was in an electric car) around 100 petrol and diesel vehicles were waiting with me, and all their engines were running, and it was 32c, and it genuinely stank. I had the windows up, the car has filters on the air conditioning system, and I was still breathing this filth in.
It’s normal, we’re all used to it. Don’t think about it, don’t ask about the estimated 5.3 million deaths a year directly attributed to burning fossil fuel.
No one wants to buy EV’s. It said so on my news feed.
Greenwashing by these sorts of companies is common place. We might notice it, but we can't stop them doing it. I have an EV and do what I can regarding recycling, but I don't feel there seems to be any businesses or industries that aren't incentivised or subsidised to change things like their manufacturing processes.
And I bet the general public wouldn't like to give up consumer goods made from plastic which is fossil fuel derived, and I don't see any research into alternatives. What about tarmac, the roads are made from the stuff and that's fossil fuel derived. From what I can tell, many things are and it's work like this that will make the difference, but it will affect people's lives and I doubt people will support it.
Plus, where's the money coming from when nobody has a pot to piss in, and no government wants to lose power trying to implement it when they know it'll be unpopular, especially with people like Murdock's shoving articles into the public's faces deriding most efforts?
I don't know how long it'll be before real changes are made, and what will have to happen first to the world before something forces it to happen, despite the massive changes and costs necessary.