Who to blame is a complex question.
Here is my take on it... for what it is worth.
In the 60s, oil companies got the ball rolling when they figured out how bad their product was for the climate, so they prepped for the media fight that was coming... first by hiding the information, then as climate news picked up, they buried it under propaganda.
We bought the propaganda, as we typically do for some reason.
And we kept buying it for decades.
Somewhere during the 2000's, the general population caught on to the lies, a little bit, and the climate situation was coming more topical in the media, the fossil fuel companies, not just oil, all pitched in to up the propaganda game to stall the action for as long as possible.
We bought it again.
Over the last decade, it seems the situation changed somewhat.
People are not buying the propaganda as much and there is a growing movement that we all need to fix this problem.
This is where my head begins to break....
People want to fix the problem but only if it means we keep our way of living, our two cars, our comfort levels, basically, we want to fix climate change but we dont want to change anything in the process.
So, we get tech "fixing" like electric cars, as if that is enough in terms of private transport. We buy into the lie that this is a problem we can fix, without changing how we live, by introducing tech solutions and carbon capture.
Politicians, who are basically bought now, are in a bit of a fix.
They like the money they get from fossil fuels companies, but even when they want to do what is required, we the people vote them out of power.
This is partially to do with the propaganda machine, it is partly to do with hardly anyone wanting to do what is required.
For example, if we are to take this situation seriously, we need to remove almost all cars from the system. We could probably get away with very small electric vehicles, bikes would be better, and cities designed for this approach to transport... ie trains, trams, bike paths, walking cities.
And that is just one example...
Another one would be to eat almost everything local and what is in season.
Less consumerism, less work, more gardens, even public gardens rather than buying from a grocery store.
There are a million things we could do, but we really dont want to do them on a personal level.
And then there is the change of electrical infrastructure from what it is today to what it needs to be.
If we removed cars entirely, this would be far less of a problem, but since we refuse to do that, the power grid needs a radical overhaul and increase in size to cope with the extra electricity required to power up electric cars.
I am fond of decentralizing the power grid, but even that it a massive undertaking.
It is far easier, almost certainly cheaper, to just remove cars from the equation.
It wont happen.
So, now we get to the fossil fuel companies talking about transitions from fossil fuels to renewable.
And, as insane as I feel saying this, given how unwilling we are to stop using cars, or change how we live, they are right.
Politicians can only do what we let them do, so we cant entirely blame them for the stalling game.
The logistics of changing a lot of our infrastructure is huge. I am not sure how it will even get half done even if we went all in on it.
And people, well, we want the comforts that cause the problems and the problems to be fixed at the same time.
Right now, I find it very difficult to pin the blame on one thing.... because the problem is the entire system now.
We need to tear down what we have as quickly as possible, but we all know that isnt going to happen willingly.
Which leave the system being ripped down unwillingly by the environment and climate.
To me, this is no longer an information war because we lost that to the oil and fossil fuel companies.
Admit that we lost it.
The question in my head is what are we going to do about the lost war and to figure out how to prepare for what is coming.
