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this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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The only good thing about climate change is that nations like the UAE that essentially only exist because of their oil are reaping some of what they have sown.
If you were otherwise dirt poor and you had the opportunity to become rich beyond your dreams selling something that to you is essentially free you wouldn't do it?
It's really easy to be moral from your armchair at home.
I'm not saying that makes it OK, but it's a real moral dilemma and we live in the real world. The UAE not selling oil wouldn't lower the demand for it, they'd still have been flooded, just with no oil money to help fix anything afterwards.
If they didn't sell oil, there wouldn't be a giant, pseudo-city in the desert. Those people would probably build elsewhere, if at all.
Exactly my point.
Well if climate change keeps up, it sounds like they'll be a pseudo-city on the rain forest instead.
Agreed. I dislike these countries because of who they are, not how they got rich.
What makes you think the Sheikhs were dirt poor before the British started pumping oil?
I'm obviously talking about the wealth of the whole country, not just it's richest citizens.
In 2009, the UAEs GDP was 85% based on oil, it doesn't take a triple digit IQ to do the maths here.
Dubai's poverty rate is 20% and a notable fraction of the population (1.5%) is slaves from central/south Asia who got their passports taken away from them, and median salary is USD$4300 (a single person's monthly expenses are estimated to average USD$1000 excluding rent). I can't call them a wealthy country when their citizens are far from it.
20% of the UK live in poverty.
11% of US citizens live in poverty
You can call them not rich if you want but that doesn't change the facts that they'd be so much poorer without oil money
You're being disingenuous. People aren't talking about the poor living in a slum in Tel Aviv when they talk about how Israel needs to pay for its crimes.
Absolutely pointless reply.
You're suggesting that my happy that the UAE is getting some karma for helping destroy the planet is somehow ignoring the fact that there were a lot of poor people that have better lives now because the UAE has been helping destroy the planet.
I'm pointing out that I'm not talking about the poor people.
It's literally only the poor people that will suffer. Do you think any of the oil billionaires in the UAE are going to be finding it hard to sleep tonight?
I'm sure people made the same argument during the bombings of Berlin in the 1940s. The elite were safe in their bunkers or in the countryside.
Not like there is unsavoury alliances ad tendencies associated with this story. It is not just them making money.
Don't forget 'offering a tax haven to drug- and other money'
That's like someone with drug addiction blaming his pusher.
No, it's more like someone with a drug addiction blaming Purdue Pharma.
To the addic it's always someone else's fault.
So you're saying that Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers are being wrongly accused of getting millions of people addicted to opioids who wouldn't have been without Purdue Pharma specifically pushing it onto them through doctors? '
No I didn't say that and you know I didnt, but argue you must.
Sure looks like you suggested as much to me:
If not, then why did you say "to the addict, it's always someone else's fault" after I brought up blaming Purdue Pharma for addiction? And if you wish to remain here, I would advise you not making personal attacks like claiming I have some need to argue with you (especially when you responded to me). I do not moderate discussions I am personally involved in, but I cannot speak for other moderators who see such things.
Forget it, I'm not interested in another person in my life that lives to argue...
Again, you responded to me unprompted.
Don't start arguing with someone and then claim they're the one that lives to argue. Look in a mirror.
Western civilization only exists because of oil.
Oh good, well we better keep pumping it out of the ground then. It's not like that could spell the end of Western civilization or anything.
What I meant is that your schadenfreude is misplaced. Since there is oil in UAE it would be exploited wheter people living there wanted or not. And, well, it will keep being exploited until civilization falls, that's the nature of the economic system we are all cursed to live under.
Oh that's right, there are no alternatives to fossil fuels and there never were. My mistake.
They just want to complain about “western civilization” while also living in it.
Well good luck convincing Exxon, Chevron, BP, Shell et al and all the politicians they bought in the whole world to grow a conscience. Ain't gonna happen.
What does that have to do with your implying that there were and never will be an alternative to fossil fuels?
Those alternatives exist right now.
I did not imply that at any moment. If you take your time re-reading our argument you'll see that. What I've argued is that oil is a substantial backbone of current western civilization, and since oil exists in the UAE it would be exploited wether people living there wanted that or not (and that has been the case for decades).
You are arguing that oil is necessarily a substantial backbone of Western civilization by claiming that it would have been extracted from the area no matter what and will continue to be so in perpetuity. Neither of those things are facts. They are pure guesswork on your part.
No, I'm arguing that oil is currently a substantial backbone of Western civilization. And yes, it would have been extracted from the area no matter what, because if people native to the region refused, some imperalist country would simply bomb those natives or replace their leaders with ones more pliabe to said imperalist demands. It won't of course go on forever because petroleum is a finite resource and when it runs out the UAE will become a unwanted desert wasteland ignored by all except for those still living there.
Again, this is what you said:
That is not about the current situation, is it?
And oil is only discovered where people explore for it. You cannot guarantee people would have explored for it there.
Do you seriously believe that there will be any different outcome while we are all still living under capitalism?
Again, under capitalism, it makes absolutely no sense not exploiting a natural resource you spent money prospecting for.
I do not claim to predict the future.
And again, there is no guarantee that was where prospecting would have happened. You are assuming it necessarily would have happened there. There is no reason to make such an assumption.
Sorry, but right now you're just grasping at straws. But if you have to win the argument no matter what, go ahead and claim to have bested/disproved/refuted me, I don't want to argue this further. Have a nice day.
Uuuuuh...
I think western civilization and its dominamce may have existed for a little while before crude oil.
Modern western lifestyle only exists because of oil...