Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine "Getting oil from libya is like getting blood diamonds from Africa."

A friend of a friend made this comment on Facebook and I was struck by the truth of it.

But it's easier to take the moral high road or be shamed into refusing to buy a luxury like diamonds than it is a "necessity" like oil, I think.
Certainly, emerging markets like China aren't going to balk at buying from a producer regardless of the circumstances, I don't think...

*Your* thoughts??

The biggest issue is, how do consumers know? Crude passes through many hands after it's extracted, then goes through any one of hundreds of refineries and then out to different gas stations or home heating oil distributors.

The average consumer isn't going to know where exactly their Irving, Esso or Ultramar gas comes from (or whatever the equivalents are in your area). Due to my proximity to a large refinery, I happen to know that most of the local gas, regardless of the chain, is Venezuelan in origin, but who knows what else is mixed in there?

They certainly won't advertise ("our gas is made from 100% Canadian crude"), because the industry is so insular and frankly, doesn't give a s***.

Your only real choice is reduce as much as possible your consumption of petroleum products.

Bananas are a similar product where the consumers have no idea of the atrocities comitted to keep that industry vibrant.

Yeah, it's almost impossible to avoid buying products that come from dubious places, if only for the fact that, quite frankly, most governments in the world are pretty much corrupt and evil.

Every industry has it's inequities. Everything you buy has something distastefull attached to it by someone. Whether its the product, the labor, the marketing, the transportation. Nothing is clean. That's not to say that "nothing should be done, and its wrong to never do anything", just that it's a fact. Everything is tied to everything in one way or another.