Tar Sands coming to Utah

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by iron_jones

I stopped reading there.
I have to ask, how do you expect anyone to take you seriously??

This is the old hypocrisy debate again. I have tried to express the problem with that many times before here. To demand of someone to be "pure and without sin" before calling some behaviour sinful does not make sense. What does the personal behaviour of one person have an influence on the rightfulness or wrongfulness of an action?
Lets try this: Do you, IJ, like it that children are enslaved to make clothes or that people suffer of hunger in some countries or that people die in wars lead by your country? Do you accept it as inevitable or the way life is? Or do you think that maybe this is a bad idea and should stop? Are you then not allowed to voice that opinion simply because you do not wear local made, fair trade, organic clothing, send all the money you can spare to help fight hunger in Africa, eat vegan food only (and refrain from buying cut flowers) so that people in these countries can have more food - or simply because you as a citizen of your country are inevitably benefitting from the wars the country leads?
What I am saying is that yes, we are all part of the problem, but it makes no sense to demand becoming a purist before one can point to the problems that exist! We can try to do what we can and I honestly do. We have presently warm water once a week to conserve oil, my room has 13°C in winter to conserve oil, I have a big red switch in my room to turn off all electricity at night, we are installing a solar warm water heater, there is a water hose in the bathroom to use instead of toilet paper, meat is cooked maybe once a week, most of the veggies and meat is organic and we walk to the supermarket with a cart instead of a car. But yes - I still need to earn money by actually working and unless someone gives me a place big enough to follow SilverStags advice and get a horse, I need to get to work by other means. And yes we also still use oil for heating, though we are planning on installing a wood fired stove and solar water heater. To get off oil is - like getting off heroine - not something that is easy or fast. But at least I am trying and looking for ways out of it instead of saying "oh well, but I NEED oil, so I'll just say yes to all the crap that is done for it".

EDIT: Oh and two more things. One is a question: "What would you demand of me and my personal lifestyle in order to grant me the right to speak up against tar sands oil mining?" and the other is a comment: There is a movie called "No impact man". It is impressive how far he got in reducing impact, but even with all that money and effort he was able to put into this, he quickly realized that the best he can do is "no net impact" and that even that is almost impossible while remaining within society.

Originally Posted by The Silver Stag

No we don't, we need a change in the law that allows horses and wagons on the road.

Yay that - I'd take a horse even without wagon anytime - But as you say - the buerocracy and laws against that are immense - and I doubt if I increase my weirdness factor by that additional element, that I would be able to keep my job. If I tell people I do not have a cellphone, facebook account or wristwatch they already go - I do rarely dare tell them about our warm water policy or the optional alternative to toilet paper and dont want to think about the scene of a horse grazing on the soccer field near the institute during the day

Haha - or explain to my boss that surely I can be at the conference in Spain and give a talk, but that would mean that I have to leave in August to be there in September because the horse will carry me only 50 or 100 km a day or if I walk, it would be more like 20 km a day, so I'd need to start walking in June.

The problem is that we are chained, tied and embedded in a culture that is high on oil. It is basically inescapable except by the most daring or extreme measures - or by earning a lot of money to "buy oneself out". But in the end - I would not mind if there would be less and less oil because we dont touch the tar sands. So what - then at least alternative ways would become acceptable and available... and maybe one day I can live sustainably with, from and as part of a piece of land that would otherwise be destroyed by tar sands mining.