Rights Please, No Responsibilities

Today is National Holiday in Luxembourg. And it's pouring. People complain about the 'stupid weather'. 'You'd think someone does it on purpose,' the lady at the petrol station said this morning (my wife and i had taken the bus there to buy some food, since all other shops are closed). It's a typical reaction: we tell each other that the rain is 'stupid', the heat is 'terrible', the climate is 'crazy'. But we never say, 'Well, we made it that way' or 'We are responsible'. We are the ones who are stupid and crazy, because we keep on driving about in wasteful four-wheeled CO2 factories and flying to and fro in climate-wrecking Jumbo Jets. We don't accept the blame. If we are even aware of a human connection, we think that it is the politicians who should 'do something about it'. But of course we oppose any restrictions on individual transport or rises in fuel prices. The same thing happens when mighty corporations play around with genetically modified food or destroy the last remnants of rain forest for cheap wood, palm oil plantations etc. They oppose any interference with or regulations concerning their activities, but afterwards when it's too late and natural disasters ensue they will refuse all responsibility and claim they didn't know better. It's mad. (picture: 'Global Nightmare' by Diana Calvario)