Protest
Mon, October 17, 2022 In the UK this last week there was a big brouhaha over British Cycling partnering, and accepting sponsorship cash from Shell Oil. One would have thought that British Cycling would have at least gone with a British oil company like BP. Shell is an American company, partnered with a Dutch Company.
Perhaps that was the reasoning behind another protest in London when two young women threw tomato soup over Dutch painter Vincent Van Gough’s Sunflower painting. Fortunately, the painting was behind glass, so a quick once over with a paper towel and some glass cleaner, and the protest was nothing more than a waste of soup.
The protest was against the use of oil. I would have thought in the UK above all places, the price of gasoline, (Petrol.) is so high that most people are only using it as is absolutely necessary.
I am sure no one is driving around looking for a Shell Station to buy that particular brand of fuel because they saw a Shell Logo on a cyclist’s jersey. That is the crux of it. We all know burning fossil fuel as bad for the environment, the problem is consumerism in general.
I hate the type of protest that draws attention to a problem but offers no solution to the underlying issue. Throwing soup over works of art or giving British Cycling shit for taking money that the sport of cycling can put to good use, solves nothing.
In the 1970s and 1980s I produced a few thousand bicycle frames and did so with a very low carbon footprint. Here we are thirty, forty or more years later, and people are still riding these same bikes. Most still have the original paint, so they don’t even need a re-paint.
Everything produced today has built in obsolescence, including bicycles, and especially phones and other electronic devices. Most made in China from materials derived from oil, using electricity produced using China’s abundant supply of cheap coal.
I have done my bit for the environment and continue to do so. I don’t eat meat, and I don’t buy stuff I don’t need. I have clothes in my closet that probably older than most of the people protesting on the streets today
And if a large corporate oil conglomerate wants to give me money, they can contribute copious amounts of cash by the cartload. I’ll take it
Thank you in advance 😊
Reader Comments (2)
Dave, thanks as always for your commentary…. I fear that social media, with a big assist from professional media, has allowed too many voices that lack the knowledge to validate their knowledge of the topics they feel so compelled to chime in on. Many of these people have never strung two sentences together prior to having a cell phone in their hands. Those of us that have been around for a while, subscribe to the rule: never put something in writing that you wouldn’t want to read in the newspaper…
Best to you and yours,
Jim
There is a word for protesting without offering a solution,
It is called complaining.
There are synonyms, carping, whining, gripping, moaning, grousing
And I don't need to go on.
This is behavior that we teach our children to not practice.
I guess some people just never learned.