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What are some oil based products?

Is it hypocritical for people who use oil based products to protest oil spills?

  • It seems odd that people get all upset about what they are funding. The oil companies don't want to make spills. Shouldn't people be protesting against themselves? http://www.upworthy.com/did-you-hear-about-that-big-oil-spill-that-just-happened-no-not-that-one-no-not

  • Answer:

    Oil is an odd product. It's the world's most important commodity, and everyone needs it, but people are furious if it gets anywhere a human or animal can see or touch it. Fundamentally, an oil spill is a failure. We're all in agreement on that. It's ok to be upset about oil spills, because they are environmentally-damaging and economically-costly infrastructure failures. It may be an engineering failure, a human failure, or a policy failure. But something had to go wrong for oil to be spilled. There is usually something we can improve in order to prevent future spills of the same type. I'm very familiar with the reasons for oil spills -- keeping crude oil contained and people safe is the most important part of my job in the Gulf of Mexico deepwater oil industry. We want the oil to be completely unseen all the way from the reservoir to your gas tank. That's how we minimize the negative impact of fossil fuels, which (like it or not) are going to continue to be a necessary evil for many decades to come. Unfortunately, the massive quantity of oil flowing around the world -- billions of gallons per day -- guarantees that even at a minuscule spill rate like 0.05%, a million gallons per month will be discharged to the environment. (Data is sparse but the global spill rate today appears to be less than that figure.) Your local water utility loses to leaks 25-50% of all the water it produces, so 0.05% spill rate for oil strikes me as an incredible accomplishment. But the goal for oil spills is zero. Thankfully, we are steadily getting closer and closer to that target. Oil spill volumes have dropped steadily and dramatically over the past several decades. Even with recent high-profile spills like the Deepwater Horizon accident, total yearly spill volumes are trending down at the same time global oil flows are increasing. We are moving more oil, and spilling less. That represents remarkable environmental progress that, sadly, most environmentalists ignore. To continue making progress on spill reduction, you have to be realistic about which spills matter most, and keep a sense of context for what really causes harm. Putting a 0.25 barrel crude oil spill or 16 barrel spill of hydraulic fluid in a "list of oil spills" (as linked in the question details) is pointless and counterproductive. Far more oil than that is dumped down water drains every day by regular people changing their engine oil without proper disposal. Including this sort of minuscule discharge into a list of "spills" dilutes the impact of real, damaging discharges such as pipeline failures in sensitive ecosystems. I'm not going to really get into the fact that crude oil is biodegradable, or that natural seeps have been steadily leaking crude oil into the environment for millions of years. It doesn't matter, because the industry's goal is zero spills. That is a worthy goal and we are getting ever closer. But treating large spills the same as tiny spills is harmful to the cause. We need to praise successes, in order to incentivize companies to act responsibly. We need to focus on identifying why the biggest spills occur, so we can dedicate prevention resources in the most effective way. And we definitely need to quit making nebulous and hand-wavey demands that we "stop relying on oil." Figure out what the real causes of spills are, and fix them. If you're not willing to do that, then shut up and let me do my job. Telling me my employer is evil doesn't make it any easier for me to keep oil out of the oceans. It doesn't matter of you're pro-oil or anti-oil; we're all on the same anti-spill team.

Ryan Carlyle at Quora Visit the source

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I know this wasn't exactly the question, but it is hypocritical for people who use oil/gas to be hateful toward the industry.

Jackson Rogers

No. People who wear clothes still protest against slave contracts in the manufacturing industry and cruelty in factory farming. Why shouldn't oil users protest against oil spills?   The difference between oil and clothes is that a factory producing a shirt can be linked directly to say H&M and then you boycott, protest or lobby H&M. With oil, it's resold, mixed and refined several times and you don't really know which platform the gas at your gas station came from. Therefore you can't directly apply consumer power. Also, since oil is mostly interchangeable for other oil, the oil simply flows around consumer-level boycotts. In contrast, a Nike shoe is a Nike shoe from factory to street-level shop and consumer boycotts are felt directly at the producer. (It would be hypocritical to protest against Nike while also buying Nike shoes)   For the same reason, criticism of pesticides and genetically modified food, even against specific companies like Monsanto, takes the fom of rallies and petitions, rather than making a choice at the grocery. They are too many levels away in the production chain to be touched by mere consumers. Only through the role as fully fledged members of society do we have the capacity to affect them.   And just as shoe-activism may strive to improve the lives of factory workers, protests against oil spills implicitly try to reduce the number of future oil spills. It's through decades of environmental campaigns that many countries today have a very stringent set of regulations for the oil industry, which believe it or not affects the industry a lot.  I believe that if it wasn't for the protesters, we'd have many more oil spills today.

Anonymous

Yes.  If you use oil, then you should know that mistakes will be made.  Individuals spill coffee, crash cars, stub their toes.  Why would you ever think that errors wouldn't be made? Does a crate of organic tomatoes need to drop on your head for you to see the inconsistency?

Larry Mann

Oil is so ubiquitous in modern society that it's nearly impossible to not be a user of oil. The road those hypothetical protesters are standing on is probably made in part from oil. The media crews broadcasting it are probably using lots of equipment with plastic parts made from oil. It's nearly impossible to protest oil without engaging in some degree of hypocrisy, even for people who try to avoid it. Saying that people must consume zero oil before they're allowed to protest it is basically disallowing protest, something I don't think is good for a democratic society. But I also think protesters lose some amount of moral authority based on their own behavior. There's a big difference between riding a bicycle down to the protest rally, driving a few hundred miles solo in a massive SUV to be there, and flying in on a private jet.  Hence why some people mock Al Gore for jetting about to present "An Uncomfortable Truth", but virtually nobody calls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Begley%2C_Jr.#Environmental a hypocrite. Bottom line, I think it's a matter of degree. People who have made a real effort to minimize their own usage of oil and to understand the issues have every right to protest. People who burn oil like there's no tomorrow but want to tell you how evil it is need to try harder to become the change they want to see.

Brian Reischl

If you're protesting against Oil Spills then it's not hypocritical. You don't buy oil products based on the assumption that they will kill things. However if you protest against oil drilling  in general then you are a hyprocrite.

George Sabonadière

Technically yes. It's certainly okay to be upset and question why such an event occurred. However, every industry has accidents, and to single out oil spills as something special and protest against that is hypocritical and disappointing. None of us would be able to lead the lives we currently lead without oil and its many uses. Not to mention, most of the people protesting probably have no idea what it takes to power modern day society. Easy for them to demonize oil companies (this applies to the nuclear industry also) when they directly consume the important commodity that the companies are producing (pun intended).

Josh Dubey

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