My praises to Jeffrey S. Young for his masterfully written article " Oil Companies Admit to Contributing to Climate Change — and Blame You ," and many thanks to the Independent for publishing it.
Clearly, as the article elucidates, if the oil companies, themselves, are acknowledging that fossil-fuel combustion is largely causing global warming — along with all its attendant disasters — we citizens, too, need to begin facing this increasingly undeniable fact. Moreover — as the oil companies also point out — if we were not constantly demanding their products, they would not be producing them.
Blaming the oil companies for our environmental cataclysm is like blaming the tobacco companies for our lung cancer. We, as citizens, need to start assuming individual responsibility for our own greed, indolence, and ignorance. This awakening would entail not only driving less, but also reducing our use of all unnecessary petroleum-based products, such as plastic packaging.