I don’t really see your point. Oil companies jack the price of oil up anyway, regardless of subsidies. The subsidies seem to only allow oil companies to expand their enterprises on US citizens’ tax dollars (apologies if your in a different country, just change “US” to wherever you live). We’re literally funding the expansion of industries that are actively killing our planet.
From another perspective, the only reason everything rises in cost when oil prices raise is due to oil dependance. It would be a momentary hardship, but oil prices rising would be a strong incentive for individuals and businesses to become oil-independant, which would mean using greener means of transportation, lowered plastic use, etc. It’s actually long-term the best thing we could be doing right now.
The issue is that the working class people who are already living paycheque to paycheque don’t wanna hear about austerity. It’s hard to give a fuck about the next generation when you can’t even afford the next month.
We need solutions that also improve the monetary stability of working class people, or else they will never be popular in election campaigns. These things are doable, but not through the current political dynamic in North America, and places in Europe like the UK.
Nationalizing Oil is also not going to be appealing to Americans. Moderate liberals and everyone right of them will parade such efforts as Communist and/or facism. Those efforts will die before they even make it to the table
I would say even eliminating oil subsidies would be an insane fight to take on at the national level.
The more realistic fights are most likely going to occur at the local level, with workplaces unionizing, pushes in cities and towns to move away from car-centric urban design, and various other efforts which whittle oil dependance away.
It’s only when those local fights are widespread that we’ll start seeing national changes, and those changes will more than likely revolve around how taxation is distributed than around subsidies.
It’s this comment here that makes me think of how naive some people are when they say that solutions to problems mostly described by “tHe ToP 100 cOrPorAtiOnS PolLuTe thE mOst” talking point have to be addressed by government action and government action alone. Republicans at the top are so deadset on anything anti-change to where national politics are super volatile and hardly something to bet the direction of the country on.
Local level politics allow for more stable growth in change, such as how we’ve seen with marijuana laws.
I mean, as a progressive I still want to vote for the most progressive candidates that can represent me, which often leads to blue over red, but that doesn’t mean we the citizens can’t contribute local government as much as more regional or national governments.
I don’t really see your point. Oil companies jack the price of oil up anyway, regardless of subsidies. The subsidies seem to only allow oil companies to expand their enterprises on US citizens’ tax dollars (apologies if your in a different country, just change “US” to wherever you live). We’re literally funding the expansion of industries that are actively killing our planet.
From another perspective, the only reason everything rises in cost when oil prices raise is due to oil dependance. It would be a momentary hardship, but oil prices rising would be a strong incentive for individuals and businesses to become oil-independant, which would mean using greener means of transportation, lowered plastic use, etc. It’s actually long-term the best thing we could be doing right now.
The issue is that the working class people who are already living paycheque to paycheque don’t wanna hear about austerity. It’s hard to give a fuck about the next generation when you can’t even afford the next month.
We need solutions that also improve the monetary stability of working class people, or else they will never be popular in election campaigns. These things are doable, but not through the current political dynamic in North America, and places in Europe like the UK.
Nationalizing Oil is also not going to be appealing to Americans. Moderate liberals and everyone right of them will parade such efforts as Communist and/or facism. Those efforts will die before they even make it to the table
I would say even eliminating oil subsidies would be an insane fight to take on at the national level.
The more realistic fights are most likely going to occur at the local level, with workplaces unionizing, pushes in cities and towns to move away from car-centric urban design, and various other efforts which whittle oil dependance away.
It’s only when those local fights are widespread that we’ll start seeing national changes, and those changes will more than likely revolve around how taxation is distributed than around subsidies.
It’s this comment here that makes me think of how naive some people are when they say that solutions to problems mostly described by “tHe ToP 100 cOrPorAtiOnS PolLuTe thE mOst” talking point have to be addressed by government action and government action alone. Republicans at the top are so deadset on anything anti-change to where national politics are super volatile and hardly something to bet the direction of the country on.
Local level politics allow for more stable growth in change, such as how we’ve seen with marijuana laws.
I mean, as a progressive I still want to vote for the most progressive candidates that can represent me, which often leads to blue over red, but that doesn’t mean we the citizens can’t contribute local government as much as more regional or national governments.
Top-down & bottom-up ftw
Well Americans can wallow in their own self made mess. The rest of us, in other countries, can still push for oil nationalization.