In a den of snakes, what side are you on? (Oil)

[skids]

Obvious answer: Your own.

OK, a more modernly applicable situation:

You're in a den of oil shieks, oil companies, car companies, and politicians both national and foreign. Which side do you choose?

I guess the answer isn't so obvious to some. Because today I heard it all. That car companies can't be blamed they are just satisfying demand from a wasteful public. That we shouldn't blame the oil company executives because it's just peak oil. That politicians are powerless and cannot be blamed. That our only hope lies with one or a couple of the abovementioned snakes and if we're just nice to them maybe they'll not bite us.

This one, though took the cake. In a nutshell: if we tell the American public that oil compies are snakes, the American public will then listen to the oil companies and we'll end up drilling ANWR.

I don't know about you, but in my experience, even among some of the hardest-core Rethugs oil companies are not well liked. Only the truly fringe free-market wackjobs buy into that.

The abovementioned essay goes on to say that if we fall for this distraction we won't do what we need to do: conserve, conserve, conserve. I couldn't agree with conserving more, but we shouldn't predicate a call for personal conservation on a tenuously illogical pretext. And we shouldn't conflate believing in price gouging with being insensitive wasteful asshats with no intention to conserve.

I was going to write a rebuttal diary, but I burned up my dkos diary earlier with one of my many diaries about how to conserve, conserve, conserve (and perhaps even produce.)

So here's the stark, commonsense truth which you don't need fancy rationalizations, economics, or geopolitics to get across to any indiviual who has an iota of good sense:

You're in a pit of snakes.

Your only ally is yourself.

No matter how much you like them, your politicians either won't or really can't save you. Your oil companies view you as lunch. Your oil shieks view you as property. Your car companies view you as economic components. And the foreign governments just casually wonder if you are as stupid as your politicians treat you.

Seen this way, conserving is a no-brainer. It doesn't even require being foresighted enough to care about the environment.

And doing so is for sure the one thing that none of those snakes want, but neither can they prevent.