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Originally Posted by Amputate Your Head
I blame the corporations, not the public. Like you said, we are born into this system and born into debt. We are born 'consumers' and bombarded with advertising our entire lives. The corps could have come up with better alternatives for nearly everything along the way. Instead, everything is based on oil. And most certainly, the negligence of a massive oil company resulting in a disaster like this falls on the greed of the corp.
If, as a parent, I feed my kid nothing but sugar filled candy his entire life and his teeth rot out of his head by age 5, who is responsible? The kid for wanting the candy pushed on him? For being told "this is what you need!" Or the parent doing the pushing.
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I blame everyone (consumers and corporations). But I blame the corporations more. Corps control what is produced and what is not produced. The public can only put pressure on them or force them out of business (boycott or gov action) but cant directly force them to produce what the public wants.
For example, GM produced the EV1 in late 1990's. Many us automakers developed hybrid cars back in the late 90's too but they cancelled them because they claimed "they wouldn't sell enough".
It wasn't until Toyota took a gamble and started mass producing the Prius, then everyone accepted that hybrids can be profitable to sell. I dont fully understand why the other companies did not sell hybrid or electric cars sooner. I know that electric cars have limitations but I suspect there *was* bias towards non-combustion engines. Or there was a fear of the unknown (electric motors). I am convinced it was not simply because of "lack of demand".
GM could be leading the world now in electric vehicle mass production. GM could be a huge successful company now. They could have at least, kept the EV1 alive with a few million per year on development. Right now, they could pull out the old schematics,plans,drawings and retool their assembly lines and start building EV1's again but they dont do it. I seriously dont understand what is wrong with them.
Instead, they beg for government handouts while the executives and managers dream at night about the good old days of oil burning, high pollution cars.