Hello again James >>Hello James >> >>>I like the idea that 'when the people lead, the leaders follow' when >>>contemplating how we are to control corporations. >>>However, even though we now have the power of the internet to unite >>>us, we remain (almost) totally ineffective. >>>Yes, we have Avaaz and similar groups that are succeeding quite well >>>in collecting names, but a list of names alone will not control >>>corporations, however long that list is. >> >><http://boycottbp.org/> >> >>Yes, it's a bit "lite green", like eco-consumers shopping their way >>to a sustainable future when it's consumerism itself that's the >>problem, but BP would hate it. More effective than a list of names on >>a petition I think. > >There are BP stations here. I talked with a few like minded people about >printing and handing out a leaflet along the lines of boycottbp to people >entering the stations - no takers. >They figured that it would be a waste of time.
If it succeeded in persuading even one motorist, would it be a waste of time? How can you know in advance how many other motorists that motorist might persuade, or what else he or she might do? Don't focus on trying to solve the whole problem all at once, just do what you can. It's just a drop in the ocean, sure, but that's what oceans are made of, lots of little drops. "Never doubt that a small, highly committed group of individuals can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead >>You say "a list of names alone", but why would it be alone? >>Everything helps. It needs coordination, but we've coordinated bigger >>actions than this, we can do it again. > >Ok - I'm going to try again. Good, strength to your arm. >>A boycott could easily morph into a general oil boycott - there's a >>rising clamour for a major shift to biofuels, as the George Monbiot >>article you reffed suggested. Hm. George's website is down. Should we >>get paranoid about it, d'you think? :-) > >Relax everyone - it's back. :-) What a relief. >>Pinch yourself James - why would you want to confine yourself within >>a framework of laws, regulations and practices that have been bought >>and paid for by the very corporations you're seeking to dismantle? > >Fair enough, but lest we forget just what we're up against... >Prehistoric humans knew how to kill the largest beasts of their time; >modern humans have not yet learned how to kill corporations. >Individual humans have practically no hope of fighting off a >determined corporate attack. Most confrontations between corporations >and communities of humans end up in corporate victory, with humans >ending up dead, maimed or subdued and domesticated, their human will >broken. >http://www.mail-archive.com/sustainablelorgbiofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg30628.html [biofuel] Mammoth corporations Keith Addison 23 Dec 2003 You're reminding me of that? Well, that makes a change I suppose, but you misread it, your conclusion is the opposite of Roberto Verzola's intention, though he states it clearly. "This is what we need to address," he says - ADDRESS, deal with it, not lie down and accept it. Why the selective quote? Why leave out all the bits that matter? Why rig it to make the case look hopeless? Roberto says "In prehistoric ages, our ancestors learned how to repel, disable or kill an attacking mammoth; the challenge of our age is learning how to do the same with corporations." It's a CHALLENGE, not a prison sentence. Please go back to that url and read the whole thing again: <http://www.mail-archive.com/sustainablelorgbiofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg30628.html> >My >main hope is that peak oil will curtail global trading and therefore kill >the global corporations, though I expect I'm just dreaming again. When do you think that might happen? Did you follow the previous discussions about Peak Oil? Do a bit of digging, see if you can find anything about Peak Oil that you could describe as a fact (there aren't any). See if you can find any dates or even just vague estimates for the onset of Peak Oil that aren't faith-based (you won't). Peak Oil is for true-believers. I said at the time I'd prefer to keep faith for the ineffable rather than for such matters as petroleum reserves, murky waters indeed. If petroleum is a finite resource (there are arguments about that too) then it follows that at some stage it will start to run out, but just when that might be is anybody's guess (and that might include the Big Oil companies). Something else about the Peak Oilers is that if you scratch them a little all this extremely ugly depopulationist stuff oozes out - four or five billion people (all the poor ones of course) are just going to have to crawl off somewhere and die so that "we" (the ones who've wasted all the oil) can continue to live in the style to which we're accustomed, and so on. :-( By the way, if anybody wants to argue about all this, whether Peak Oil or over-population, please don't dredge up all the same old myths that have already been debunked, check the archives first. The main thread is "Confessions of an 'ex' Peak Oil believer", from April 2008. Anyway it seems rather likely (especially at the moment) that even if Peak Oil arrives yesterday BP et al will succeed in killing us and our planet well before any hoped-for collapse in global trading kills them. Can't you find something a little more hopeful to pin your hopes on? The destruction won't stop happening. Indeed, it's likely to get worse. The Gulf blowout has been dubbed the worst environmental catastrophe since the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs, but there'll be a worse one, and then a worse one than that. Global corporations are not creatures that care about anything except money, BP isn't feeling any pain, and we can see how effective a deterrent governments are likely to be. Which leaves what? Or rather whom? It leaves you, and me, and the rest of us, like I said in the first place. >> >We could then start working out the best way that 'the people' could >>>then... >>> 'hold the feet of our noble leaders firmly to the fire, and to be >>>relentless about it'. >> >>Can you remember the last time that happened? I'm sure José María >>Aznar remembers it very well. > >Well yes, but that was more a case of our good luck in that the elections >came at exactly the right time. Well no, IMHO - you can't simply brush aside the biggest mass protests the world has ever seen as just a happy coincidence. Best Keith >>All best >>James >> >>Keith >> >> >>>best >>>James _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
