If we HAD trains and public transit, I would LOVE to take them!
Yes, the US has abysmal public transport (at least in houston, tx in my case) compared to even third world countries like Egypt. It’s downright embarrassing.
This is all by design of the oligarchs and their puppets in Congress. Democrats and Republicans are against progress.
Yep America was torn down and remade for cars and not people.
In Egypt, a large part of public transport is from private entities, the people driving the microbus and tok tok own those vehicles. In the west, these services are expected to be funded by the government for some reason
I live inside the 275 loop around Cincinnati. My work is 11 miles away. In order to get to work via public transit I’d have to walk 3.5 miles to the closest bus stop, take a bus the wrong direction, wait for a transfer to another bus heading closer to work, and then walk 2.5 miles to my job. The schedule is so sparse it would take me 3-4 hrs one way and I’d be walking more than half of it. No bike lanes or sidewalks either, and the roads are so dangerous that in almost 20 years of working there I’ve never seen a bike attempt any of my possible routes. I have seen memorial bikes on the roadside where someone got hit.
I live in Germany and while not perfect, I’m glad we have such a thing.
The problem is when a 10 minute car drive takes an hour with public transportation
Next problem is surge pricing and general ticket prices. I recall one city I was living in a few years back having advertisements for taking the train. And I was like “Yeah sure. It’s just double the price and triple the time”.
To me taking the train (at least for long distances) is a luxury thing.
For me, it’s both more expensive and takes longer, to take the train.
Ok. If you don’t? There’s still countless aspects of your life that you interact through the economy to fulfill that have the potential for change and improvement.
Still buy new clothes from Old Navy or JCPenney? Maybe think about going to your nearest GoodWill or local thrift shop(s) (and on a regular basis) to see what gems pass by now and again. College towns right after the end of the semester are ripe for this, and I would wager that you have a college town somewhat closer to you than any kind of public transit. Not saying that you have to do this for your entire wardrobe, but choosing used over new means that resources are avoided in making that new garment, such as all of the fuels needed to move resources to and from each factory along the value chain, all of the solid waste destined for landfill or incineration from the scraps of cutting-and-sewing that new garment, all of the water pollution associated with dyeing or printing your new garment, or the potential human rights violations that could pop up throughout the value chain. A lot of these can be mitigated by buying more sustainable brands that seek to minimize these things, but a cheaper alternative is to buy used too.
Still have an air conditioner? Maybe think about hooking up a smart thermostat or equivalent and enrolling in peak-load demand response initiatives so that your AC or furnace works a little less hard in exchange for the entire grid not having to provide as much power (the alternative is blackouts or brownouts where everyone turns their AC on blast but kills the grid so no one has power anymore). Doing this means that demand curves by customers don’t reach as high of historical peaks, which allows utilities to avoid using peak response assets like Combined Cycle Combustion Plants that use natural gas to operate. You in turn create a greener grid, that’s also better for the climate. And if having a warmer house isn’t enough for you, there are other ways of mitigating this, like setting up phase-changers directly to your bedroom so that it stays cool, unlike the rest of the house, or buying ice vests that you can wear on your person, or going to a public facility like a library or mall and centralizing cooling loads to there instead of decentralized cooling loads via everyone’s homes.
How old are your assets like cars, AC units, furnaces, fridges, etc.? Perhaps if it doesn’t break the bank, look into purchasing models that are more efficient, as in those cars that have better mileage and/or that are hybrids and can be plugged in to a normal outlet to charge, or fridges and AC units that use coolants better and that have better insulation to keep things cooler for longer. These choices don’t necessarily have to be accompanied by the insane bits of technology and information that bigger companies want to shove down our throats with these newer, smarter devices.
Does your local grocery store carry organic goods as opposed to conventional ones? I know that ALDI near me carry those, and I’ve had to shop there for years thanks to the low prices they offer. If you minimize your costs while still going organic, maybe consider shifting your diet away from red meat and pork towards other options like chicken, fish, or straight up whole food, plant-based ingredients like vegetables, fruit, legumes, grains, nuts, seeds, mushrooms, etc. Or, if you’ve gone that far, have you considered seeking out local farmer’s markets near you that often offer these goods both organically (or “organically” since the official label is so expensive), in season, AND locally. A good resource for finding farmer’s markets near you is https://www.localharvest.org/.
Getting back to the public transit problem you bring up:
Is there public transit near you? Do you know for sure? Most major cities like Houston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and even the smaller ones like Cleveland, Oklahoma City, Las Vegas, etc. do have some version of public transit, whether that’s via subway, rail, tram, or bus, so perhaps there are more options near you thank you might think. And do you use these when you have the opportunity to? All of these services are offered via companies that use metrics like ridership and rider time to gauge how they might want to invest in these services into the future. If you start engaging with more and more public transit when you can, every human adds up on their balance sheets and can impact what happens with public transit in the future. I know that in my area, the public transit corp running our interurban train is constructing a new service line South, when it traditionally only extended East & West, which will capture an even larger portion of the market and make the service even more financially lucrative over time, leading to even more expansion and coverage. But I do agree with you on the lack of other interurban solutions like Amtrak. That service is downright terrible, and we as a country (assuming you live in the US) need to start demanding better service, as well as less of a grip on the railway network in this country by the railroad tycoons.
There are changes that can be made all around us that involve the economy and a corporation on the other side. All of the above examples I listed do. There are two sides to the economy, that economists tell us: Supply and Demand. Just because we can’t control supply outside of efforts like political action doesn’t mean we can’t control demand too. Little changes that every common person makes over time one way or another add up and show up on these corporations’ balance sheets.
Hope is not lost. Stay focused on sustainability and making what changes you can make in your life right now and into the future, including political action. All of this adds up.
Oops, there’s been another oil spill caused by a multi-billion dollar company shirking regulation and safety, all your effort is now void and moot.
Short-term catastrophes don’t negate long-term habit changes though. That oil spill doesn’t impact all water bodies across the entire planet at the same time. While I think more developed nations should introduce more punishments to prevent things like this from happening, we have technologies that can mitigate these things once they do happen.
Progress may be up and down, but as long as the slope trends upwards, it’s better than nothing.
Message stays the same: do as much as you can when you can in the specific ways you can.
No, but it does more local damage than 100,000 people do.
So, what are you saying, exactly? That the individual shouldn’t take any responsibility for their own behaviour?
I’m saying that the scale of individual effect to corporate producer effect is so large that your individual responsibility even pushed to it’s maximum will have zero meaningful impact. Not just that, but the combined individual responsibility of the majority of citizens is not something you can magic into existance especially when most are too poor to seek or have access to alternatives.
To give you an idea of the scale, the ~90,000 container ships that are transporting daily use twice the amount of fuel as the ~1,450,000,000 cars on the road globally. You could make every single land based personal vehicle in the world use zero fuel, and only remove 30% of the global fuel usage. Keep in mind that includes land based commercial transport, and doesn’t even touch aircraft.
Plastics make up 4% of global oil use, you not using products because they were made with single use plastics doesn’t stop them being made, but if it did, would still account for just about nothing.
This reply misunderstands the fundamentals of market economics. If we, the consumers, start making the global climate more of a factor in our purchasing decisions, that will directly affect what gets produced in a capitalist system. Not trying to absolve these corporations of responsibility for the problems they’ve caused, just saying that if enough people start taking the bus/train instead of driving or substituting meats for plant based foods, we can have a significant impact. Of course the best thing we can do is vote to get ignorant climate science deniers out of office.
Choosing what to buy is a luxury most people don’t have. Companies need to be forced into changing because the market proves time and time again that it can’t regulate itself
Chosing to eat chicken instead of beef impacts the whole chain from fertilizer to animal feed to clearing the Amazon for pasture to methane produced by cows.
You have more choice than you think, like which meat to pick or to use more eggs and cheese as replacement instead. This is just one of the obvious everyday choices. Not all fish is equal too, with sustainable aquaculture being the best choice for the world.
If the oil majors, or just one of them switch off the taps tomorrow we will just get Russian gas crisis x10 and make OPEC and friends insanely rich. We need to transition to something else, that’s for sure, but blaming them for everything is super naive.
The issue with that logic, voting with your money, which I once used as well, is that richer people get more of a vote than poor people. And as a bunch of the issues with global warming didn’t really hit rich people, we shouldn’t depend on them to fix it.
In order to make an actual impact on the environment, we’d need to all go back to living without electricity in stone houses. Everyone in the world could take the bus and it would do fuck all. Society needs to change how we produce energy and how we construct things. That’s stuff consumers cant do by changing their habits.
Here’s a great video by Kurzgesagt
That’s a 2 hour video from a guy with 35k subscribers and it starts off with Chad memes and an ad break for an alpha male bro podcast…
Do you have any response to the substance or is the style the only thing you want to attack?
The video does not “debunk” kurzgesagt" but disagrees with who to blame. It’s the same conundrum that is happening in this thread. When telling individuals to do what they can to protect the environment you aren’t telling them that they alone are responsible. I don’t understand how people so regularly make this jump.
This Video is badly researched and the worst you could accuse Kurzgesagt is that they have sloppy research on sponsored Videos. Which in my opinion is also not correct.
the worst you could accuse Kurzgesagt is that they have sloppy research on sponsored Videos
Oh boy. If you think that’s the worst thing you can accuse Kurzgesagt of you must have entirely missed the whole Coffee Break drama, where not only did Kurzgesagt reveal himself to be a complete dishonest arsehole in his private commications with Coffee Break, he also stood by while a whole heap of his fellow large creators sicced their audiences on a small-time creator who was putting out really interesting stuff.
Plus, unrelated to all of that, his former business partners at Standard/Nebula do not have positive things to say about how he completed himself there. Supposedly he and CGP Grey saw Standard as a way for those of them who got in early to essentially leech off of the newer creators as Standard expanded, and when the other creators wanted to keep expanding it in a way that way mutually beneficial to all, those two creators tried to shut down the whole thing. It only survived because the others agreed to buy them out.
Can’t buy what doesn’t exist, can’t buy a healthier option if one isn’t produced, can’t buy a more sustainable product if one isn’t produced, can’t buy a solar powered utility vehicle if one isn’t produced, can’t buy wind power if it isn’t produced, can’t buy items without single use packaging unless they’re produced.
Needs and wants may drive a market, but nothing is consumed before production.
It’s both really.
Finger pointing at corporations while doing nothing may not be as bad as corps finger pointing at us while doing nothing. But it’s still bad.
Everyone needs to make an effort on this.
Hoping corporations will somehow grow a conscience isn’t accomplishing anything.
Imagine if nearly everyone was using public transit instead of voting out politicians because gas prices got a little too high. That might make the corps think there was more money in green energy than drilling up more oil.
Corporations are not going to fix the problem out of the goodness of their hearts no matter how much people whine about it. It’s only going to happen when voters (and consumers) demand it.
Most voters support climate change policy. The problem is the select few that block everything (mainly due to corporate lobbying).
This is more of a case of our leaders not listening to those they represent
To add to this, corporations are made of people and selling to people, and most of us are either working for them, buying from them, or both. Everyone needs to change and put social pressure on everyone else to change, this is how groups of people will change, including companies and the governments that will only change as the result of the voters’ pressure.
It feels criminal, like a gang initiation. You work for an oil and gas company? You’ve got blood on your hands now, too.
Agree that we all need to change and pressure each other to change.
You’ve got blood on your hands now, too.
That’s the idea yes, anyone who lives with modern comfort is guilty, of course some are more guilty, especially the ones who have the money and the education to reduce their footprints but don’t.
IIRC the study that the “X% of companies are responsible for X% emissions” is somewhat misleading. For example they use the combined output of everyone’s car exhaust and attribute that to the major oil companies since they provide the gas. Not saying that large corporations and the wealthy in general contributing to climate change exponentially more than the average person, but its misleading to say that as an individual it doesn’t matter if we try to use less energy.
This exactly! We need to go after the corporations with policy changes but that doesn’t mean that we, as individuals, are completely blameless or that individually actions are inconsequential. If nobody chooses to drive less or to take the bus then collectively we’re telling the major oil companies to continue with business as usual at if nothing’s wrong. The corporations are to blame but we’re all active participants!
I have some troubles with this line of thought.
For a big majority of people, there isn’t simply a lot of options, or any options at all, to take the car less, or buy less over packaged items, or reduce the pollution footprint.
The corporations won’t offer any alternative unless legislations make these alternatives the right choice business wise.
So toothless legislation is a problem and the governing bodies absolutely have the lion share of responsibilities and the personal efforts are worthless without the support of the governing bodies.
For many people, there absolutely is an option and they refuse to take the mild inconvenience.
This 100%
It’s so strange to see all the comments here defending CNN of all things.
Imagine a game where you can buy sustainable, ethically sourced resources for $5 and unethically sourced resources for $3. The manual tells you it’s nice of you to buy ethically sourced but there’s no governmentally enforced consequences. Which ones are you going to buy as a consumer?
Now worse, which ones are you going to buy as a downstream corp CEO? Your shareholders demand maximum profit and you are required to give them maximum profit. Justifying that you’re “doing your part” for the environment gets you thrown out as CEO.
At the end of this game, it’s cheaper, and necessary, to buy the shit that kills us all.
People unironically saying we’re all to blame. No shit, the system is designed so we are all complicit. It takes authoritative intervention to prevent corps from using and selling unethical and unsustainable products. You could also tax it for things like carbon emissions
I heard with some things it’s actually becoming cheaper to be green, as a result of engineering innovations leading to improved efficiency. Hopefully that trend continues.
Especially when some geniuses finally work out viable nuclear fusion. Real Engineering had a video on a US company working on some next-level fusion reactors, that seem really close to being actually ready.
Edit: of course, at the end of the day, the big oil companies won’t go out quietly. So in addition to all that wholesome stuff, maybe we should partake in some classic literature, such as How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
The fact that clean energy is cheaper without subsidies makes the whole corrupt apparatus even more apparent. Oil and gas beg congress to end subsidies for cleaner solutions because they’re having to compete which is a bad woke thing.
Just look at how long it took coal to die. And now we have “cleaner” nat gas which turns out causes more acute warming than CO2. And rather than convert to a sustainable solution they double down and green wash.
Removing pipelines would just let them raise prices and get richer but honestly if it curbs consumption it’s a net positive.
I mean, did coal die though? Germany basically runs on coal since they shut all their nuclear power plants down (AAAAAAAAAAAAAA FUCKING WHYYYYYYYYY), and the US still has a fair few places that use it as well. I don’t know what the situation is like in developing countries, but I wouldn’t be surprised if at least some were reliant on coal.
Yeah sorry I really meant just look at how long it took for coal to START to die.
Nuclear is such a no-brainer I can’t really understand why we don’t have more development. I assume its lobbying and initial investment costs but I don’t know for sure.
What happened is nuclear reactor failures at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima caused a huge public backlash, resulting in an actual mass anti-nuclear movement. Like I mean protests, political parties, the whole deal.
There was a huge popular push to decomission existing nuclear reactors, and in Germany the relevant political party became hugely successful and basically closed all their nuclear plants.
This is a big part of why the green energy movement, while enthusiastically endorsing solar/wind/hydro/geothermal/etc, doesn’t really support nuclear.
Aside from all that stuff, the economics of nuclear fission reactors are just much more long-term than those other kinds of energy generation. Nuclear reactors take a lot of time and resources to build. Both in and of themselves, and to make sure everything is properly up to safety standards. That initial investment will of course be recouped as the power plant keeps running, but it takes years and years. Of course, this is mainly a “downside” because of our definitely very rational economic system, which is obsessed with quarterly profits and is apparently allergic to these kinds of longterm investments.
There is work being done on developing smaller scale fission reactors with fewer up-front costs, but public sentiment still seems to be against it. Research into nuclear fusion seems to be going pretty great (the stuff Helion’s been working on looks promising), so if that comes through maybe we won’t have to fight a tide of stupid public sentiment to get proper, stable renewable energy.
Exactly, corporation and individual behavior is predominantly emergent of the system. Theres some blame that can be passed on to the consumer or the corporation but only so much, it’s not my fault I can’t afford an electric car. It’s not my fault installing solar panels on my house won’t recoup the cost by the time I leave/sell.
If you want people to eat less meat you need to make it worth people’s while to eat less meat. You don’t need to outlaw meat, you just need to make it less attractive from a financial perspective.
If you want people to use less gas you don’t need to outlaw gas cars you need to make it less attractive.
You could write individual incentives and disincentives but a carbon tax is simple and hits at the crux of the problem. Remove beef, oil, gas, solar, wind, hydro subsidies and implement a carbon tax. Boom, meat alternatives are now cost comparable. Green energy is now handily cheaper than oil and gas. Theres also a sizable amount of conservatives who are for a carbon tax since it’s a “free market” solution instead of picking winners and losers.
Yep. Taxing is the logical solution that fits within capitalism, and yet corporations are so vested in the machine they realize it’s cheaper to spend money to lobby and advertise against it.
It’s a busted system that needed correcting decades ago, and here we are.
I mean… I’ll contribute and do my part because I do care, and that’s the type of person I am, but we do need regulation in place for the top contributors to global warming and pollution, which are corporations and celebrities.
Plus, it’s bullshit to say that you should take a bus or train or bike or whatever instead of a car when you have disgusting car-centric infrastructure that forces you to drive.
I’d be happy to switch to a smart thermostat if they weren’t all so privacy-invading. Nest, the most popular one, is owned by Google, and there’s no Google in my home. I’m completely deGoogled and will keep it that way.
I live in a city where the train passes once every 55 minutes, and the bus has a very high chance of skipping runs and feel like its going to dismantle with a breath of air.
They’re not just wrecking the environment for no reason, they make products people consume
The average person isn’t wrecking the environment for no reason either, and yet they always appear to be the target for “environmental sustainability” snipes presented by mainstream media as fact. There are an innumerable number of practices that large industries can practice to limit their carbon footprint, but it is never a priority.
I like the whole “save water” bullshit. like in california. Or anywhere else being fed by lake mead. Like, “You need to take shorter showers! conserve water”. the ten minute shower they’re berating consumers for… is literally nothing compared to the water straight up wasted for California’s agriculture. (and by wasted, I mean water lost before it even gets to the plants.)
Most of Lake Mead and the Colorado River aren’t used by people. it’s used by corporations that don’t give two shits because nobody gives a damn about them wasting water- can’t harm the jobs, now.
Private companies aren’t going to do the right thing just for the sake of it, because any moral sacrifice on their part will give ground to other companies that won’t do the right thing. It has to be fixed through regulation, ushered in through representatives elected by average people.
But most average people don’t care. They want lower taxes and cheaper gas.
I mean yeah for a whole host of reason we should shut down animal agriculture. But until we can make that happen people shouldn’t support it. People don’t support it for no reason but they do almost always support it for bad reasons like habit/tradition and sensory pleasure
yes i think this goes both ways, both producers and consumers should be responsible. but we shouldn’t forget shell wouldn’t continue selling gas and instead shift their operations if gas wasn’t in such a demand.
also if you’re littering you can’t blame corporations for that lmaoPublic transport probably isn’t a viable option in some cases, so I’m hoping EVs do catch on for this reason. Reducing or eliminating meat consumption, or at least finding more sustainable ways to provide it (i.e. lab-grown meat) also would definitely play a significant role. I am not advocating for eliminating all responsibility from the consumer side
It is a viable option in about 90% of cases.
your statement is highly dependent on where someone lives. I wonder what percent of people live within about ten minutes’ walking distance from useful public transportation. I bet it’s not 90% or even anywhere close. most people on Earth do live in cities now though, so maybe it’s ~50%…?
I meant in general, not just with the current infrastructure, sorry for a late reply
It’s largely a problem of government that is exacerbated by the influence of the businesses themselves. It’s the governments job to enact policy change that force business to address these issues and develop more sustainable production process and product offerings, but since the government has essentially been bought out by those same businesses, nothing happens at all.
We can’t decouple business from government without policy changes that would place limitations on such influence, and we cannot enact those policies because of the influence from businesses. I don’t see a solution unless people wise up and elect a lot of people in the same election cycle not beholden to these groups, but I don’t know how that can be accomplished.
Whoo, you saved me the effort of typing out a response!
Exactly. Saudi Aramco is wrecking the environment because (among others) Dow Chemical keeps buying their oil. Dow Chemical keeps buying their oil because Sterilite keeps buying the plastic that Dow makes. Sterilite keeps buying Dow’s plastic because people keep buying Sterilite bins to store all their junk. Ultimately if there wasn’t a person consuming things at the end of the chain, the oil wouldn’t be removed from the ground in the first place.
Ultimately it all comes down to people’s lifestyles. When you buy something that’s made of plastic or transported on a container ship, you’re giving these companies money they use to wreck the environment. If instead of kiwi fruit, you buy melons from an Amish farmer who brought them to market using a horse-drawn carriage, that lifestyle choice has an impact on the environment.
Having said that, it’s true that companies use lobbying to twist laws in their favour, and use sales and marketing to drive demand for their products. It’s hard to know whether a product you’re buying is damaging to the environment because the companies that damage the environment don’t want you to know and will oppose any law that makes it clearer. It’s hard to choose to purchase a less environmentally destructive item if you don’t know it exists.
But, it’s just ridiculous bullshit to pretend that nefarious companies are out there burning coal just for fun, while cackling evilly. Everything companies do is in service to making money, and virtually the only way they make money is to sell things that people want to buy.
Ok CNN. I’ll follow your lead and start using public transportation.
That just involves me leaving my house at 4am and driving 9 minutes to the local bus stop, then take a bus ride for 37 min, transfer from there to another bus for another 19 min ride, transfer to another bus and ride for an hour, then either call an Uber for a 3 min ride or I can walk for 30 minutes to reach my workplace.
Or… I can just drive and reach my workplace in 40min.
I would love to use public transportation, and when I lived in Japan that’s all I ever used, which I much preferred to a car.
America first needs to get serious about establishing actual reliable and accessible transportation in order for more people to use it.
To be fair the big three (Ford, GM, Chrysler) made some politicians very rich suppressing light and cross country high speed passenger rail, also public transit all across the nation.
The US (through its deeply corrupted electoral system) totally bought that ticket to ride that train… so to speak.
Please, think of the oil companies and quit being selfish! /s
Flying pigs are actually carbon neutral, lets just use them
The 100 corporations include oil companies you rely on to put gas in your car, so it’s not like they are the one polluting directly.
nah, sorry, we’re on Reddit, so capitalism is to blame for everything and we individuals cannot do sh1t.
I mean, how stupid do you have to be to shift the blame for pollution from cars on car manufacturers and oil companies. But, no, no. It’s corporations polluting and I as an individual cannot do anything about it.
Capitalism IS to blame for everything and we individuals CANNOT do sh1t.
Firstly, capitalists have convinced everyone they need to buy a lot of stuff.
Secondly, humans are selfish and in a capitalistic system it’s difficult to achieve your goals without money. Imagine you’re a young person, say late 20s or early 30s, who makes some money, but isn’t rich by any means. Are YOU going to pay twice or thrice as much for everything you consume just so it’d be carbon neutral? No, because you’re probably saving up for something, whether it’s a home (because, y’know, capitalism - you need to pay out the ass for a place to live), retirement (because with the aging population in most western countries, the national pension schemes can’t be trusted long term), or that foreign vacation you feel you deserve after 10 years of hard work.
Say you DO cut your carbon footprint by 90% or even 100%. I have bad news for you. 98-99% of the rest of people didn’t, because they want to go on with their lives instead of worrying about the future, so your changes are meaningless. What’s more, BP execs will smile at you for believing the whole carbon footprint thing they spread. Now you’re living like you’re in a 3rd world country, but everyone else around you keeps up their expensive polluting lifestyles, making your sacrifice meaningless. You can’t have a negative amount of cars, but someone else CAN have 5.
The only thing that can change anything is political change - tax the companies to oblivion for CO2 production. Watch them scramble to reduce their CO2 footprint in any goods and services where it’s possible, and stop offering goods and services that can’t be optimized. The individual carbon footprint was invented precisely to prevent this - make climate activists blame other civilians (who for the most part won’t stop consuming, thus having no negative effect on oil company profits) instead of politicians (who could actually effect some change). Yes, a carbon tax would affect end users and particularly poor people. But that’s the only way forward, and government programs can help those who are affected the worst.
Individuals can NOT bear the full responsibility for something that affects all of us. It simply doesn’t work, because humans don’t work that way. There has to be government level effort. It’s also why libertarianism doesn’t work. “The free market will regulate itself, you can vote with your wallet”. Well, if 99% of people don’t care about being poisoned by their food, or their video games being overmonetized, or the planet dying… Guess what, the free market doesn’t regulate itself, and no amount of awareness is going to make a dent in it.
So sure, make changes to your lifestyle. Tell your friends and family about the low-hanging fruit in their lives to reduce consumption, educate them. Spend tens of thousands on solar panels if you can afford it. These are all good things to do! But don’t blame the individual for the failings of society. We’re all playing the hand we’re dealt, and unless you’re born a millionaire, that hand is “shit is expensive, shit that pollutes less is even more expensive, I’mma do what I have to”.
PS: Ya know what is the worst part? Capitalists want worker drones back in offices so that people would consume more and office space values wouldn’t drop. 2020 was the ONE time in history we managed to curb our emissions, but that doesn’t jive well with capitalism, so working from home is now considered “immoral” by billionaires.
Don’t forget that the biggest greenhouse gas produce is China which last I checked is not capitalist.
china is capitalist, also they produce less per capita than the US, this is silly
Oh what’s that, the party calls themselves communist? Guess north korea is a democracy now cause they call themselves that, this totally makes sense
Around 1/3 of GDP is from state owned businesses. They definitely have a strong market economy there but my point was that capitalism causes greenhouse gas emissions like the guy I replied to stated is not true.
State owned doesn’t mean not capitalist. This is silly.
No but state owned is the exact definition of communist. China has a communist government which allows a high degree of market/capitalist activity.
The original definition of capitalism used to be an economy where 90% of businesses and property are privately owned. And while I admit that the meaning of words tend to change over time I think that the meaning of capitalism was deliberately changed so that the Soviet Union doesn’t sound as insane as it was to future generations. L
No, it’s definitely capitalist, even if not by name. And it produces a bunch of goods for a bunch of other capitalist countries, for profit.
Say you DO cut your carbon footprint by 90% or even 100%. I have bad news for you. 98-99% of the rest of people didn’t, because they want to go on with their lives instead of worrying about the future, so your changes are meaningless.
This mindset of defeatism is EXACTLY what is holding us back. “Either we get an instant 100% perfect governmental solution or everything is meaningless anyway”. You’re letting perfect be the enemy of good. Cutting back your consumerism of oil and meat or atleast being mindful is not useless. It is creating new markets. The meat substitute market saw a growth of 8-10% annually worldwide for the past 6 years. Are you telling me a market that grows at 4-5 times the average typical inflation rate is “just useless”?
If you buy a soymilk pack instead of a pack of milk, you’re helping. That’s less income for the dairy industry. Sure it’s not as efficient as it could be if if soymilk and -use would be perfected but it’s still better than subsidizing the dairy industry. And you are not alone. Sure maybe you’re not in majority but there are a few millions Americans that that are also doing this. That is atleast a few millions a year that are going to different markets than the dairy industry. Where I currently live in Switzerland among my friend group we have all drastically cut down on our meat consumption. Sure it’s not 100% but I consume on average about 100g meat per week and get my “easy” protein from substitute products, which are cheaper and more environmentally friendly. Am I privileged? Sure. But just throwing in the towel and going on eating meat and driving cars because “it is meaningless anyway”, will doom us all much more than atleast trying.It’s not defeatism. It’s identifying the problem, and identifying that political change should be the priority. When liberals are out there deregulating this shit, subsidizing the industries that contribute to the issue, and then saying it’s the fault of the consumers, you can start to see why just telling people to cut down on their carbon footprint and leaving out that we should be advocating for environmental regulation, walkable cities, etc. might be an issue.
TL;DR Saying that corporations are the primary ones at fault isn’t “defeatism”, it’s saying we need to do something about them. If you’re such a doomer that you think corporations are invulnerable, that’s on you.
Ah, you’re doing the bidding of the oil companies I see. Shame the consumers, and nothing will happen. But you will feel good about your changes, at least.
If you want to stop climate change, it needs to be not 2%, not 5% of people, but more like 90% reducing their consumption to near-zero. But without government intervention, you can’t get much. Matter of fact, shaming consumers alienates a lot of people. There’s a pretty large “Fuck Greta” movement in many countries, because people are idiots.
nice mental gymnastics. Capitalism simply enabled free will of the people. Who want to consume no matter the consequences. It doesn’t bother them either if the goods they’re buying were made by starving children. But hey, blame the system.
That’s the problem with the system. It comprises of PEOPLE, which is why everything that people arguing for capitalism say about capitalism regulating itself, is bullshit. Not only do masses of people not care about intangible effects of their consumption, capitalism makes it profitable to advertise to people to make them consume more, and a lack of carbon tax makes it more profitable for companies to pollute a lot of the time. The will of the people (aka car company propaganda) is the reason Americans pollute so much. It was advertised to them that driving is the only true freedom, in the 1950s. And now 70 years later there are nearly no walkable cities left, because Americans demanded wider roads.
It doesn’t bother them either if the goods they’re buying were made by starving children. But hey, blame the system.
The system is what makes it profitable to abuse straving children. Also, thanks to the system, it is ridiculously hard to save up for things like, idk, housing, because it’s all being bought up as a speculative asset. So if your average person buys a 5$ t-shirt made in Bangladesh instead of a 50$ sustainably sourced one because they can’t afford the latter on their budget, can you really blame them, or has the system failed them?
Milk is way cheaper than oat drink and if I go to a gas station, they charge me more for the burger to have a meat substitute, which doesn’t feel much like meat.
Most people will never get past the “okay, this might be bad, but everyone else does it too, and if I don’t, I’ll be at a financial disadvantage” mentality about buying cheaper products, because capitalism is a competition for resources, and we can’t afford to give up the advantage of buying cheaper foods, cheaper (ICE) cars (where public transit isn’t an option), etc.
Bottom line is, you can get your friends and family to forsake themselves for an intangible goal, maybe you can convince some strangers, but there’s no way to get 8+ billion to stop doing what’s convenient for them with just propaganda. You need regulations. And that’s why any system that depends on the will of the people to achieve intangible goals DOES NOT WORK. It’s super easy to get the majority of 8 billion people to start consuming more with just advertising and propaganda. It’s impossible to get them all consuming less. I said it before too. Oil companies realize this and that’s why they invented the carbon footprint, to keep the people who do care fighting those who don’t - that way nobody has energy left to lobby for real, regulationary change.
So sure, maybe capitalism isn’t at fault. Maybe the fact that humans exist is. But the goal should be to design a system fit for humans, not to kill all humans or whatever it is that is required to fix capitalism.
-
We’re not on Reddit.
-
Those same manufacturers don’t give a flying fuck if you drive. They’ll still make fuel for airplanes, ships, industrial machinery, etc., and will still continue to blatantly ignore regulations in pursuit of profit.
-
If you’re gonna gargle corpo dick like bulldog on a firehose, at least be honest with yourself, son.
Well, keep driving your car while blaming big corpo for the climate change. Surely you’re not the problem. Everyone else does the same cuz they’re not the problem either. And oopsie, somehow the planet is in fire. Quick, hang some car manufacturer CEO on the tree, that will solve the problem.
Honestly curious, why did you call this place Reddit?
It’s kind of ironic, considering your username.
Good catch. Report the account as bot. 🤌🏼
There are a lot of bots getting through and they make these kinds of terrible bad faith arguments. Just report them and don’t engage imo
because the comment section felt exactly like reddit. Your usual whining about the world with a zero willingness to take any responsibility or do anything. I always said reddit revolution will never happen. Recent events have proven it perfectly.
Well, considering the irony of your username and the dumb mistake you made, I do appreciate your self-deprecating entertainment value.
whooosh!
-
Exactly! It just takes everyone to choose to not murder people, then murder is not a problem. It is all a question of individual responsibility.
I abhor those leftist communists who always aim to regulate matters to death, when it’s just so simple: Just individually choose to not murder people. Then we don’t need all this communist “laws” and “regulations” crap! Because individuals have the power to do everything. Everyone just has to be a good person, and do the right thing! The solution to every problem in society is so simple! America! Fuck yeah! /s
You’re right, individuals can do a lot. We can take all of our politicians, CEOs, and corporate shareholders, and throw them out to one of their private islands that they love so much. Then, build a society where you aren’t pressured or even forced to drive, to replace tech every 3 years, or have a logistics system reliant on fossil fuels. Oh was that not the kind of public action you were talking about?
Sorry about the other tangent.
Rebuilding the society from scratch is very utopic. Everyone stopping to eat meat, or at least reducing it consumption to once a week is a very realistic action plan. It only requires individual willingness and action. Given how current agriculture works, everyone switching to a “meat once a week” diet will completely solve all the draught problems. It will also cut down greenhouse effect by 20% or so (methane bad, kids). There is a very realistic action to climate change, that doesn’t require any sort of revolution. But hey, I’m sure Pepsi is to blame for this not happening.
Now, where I live it’s also very realistic to cycle everywhere. And it’s not Ford or Volkswagen who are to blame that almost no one does.
I realize it sounds utopic but it’s not nearly as insane as people think it is, especially when compared to mass boycott proposals.
To illustrate this point I will use meat because it’s probably the easiest to ditch of all major environmentally irresponsible behaviors. You first need to have a public where ~40-70% of the population is passionate about ditching meat, with most of the rest not caring and so falling into line. You then need to make sure that people who depend on the meat industry one way or another(which includes farmers/ranchers, fast food workers, people who cannot easily access vegetables, etc) are taken care of or understand that the overall social benefit to them outweighs the individual cost of ditching meat. You also need to have some way to coordinate this action to happen reasonably synchronously so that societal ideas about meat aren’t reinforced. This level of public organization and power is more than enough for things like general strikes or even regime changes.
I have electric though. Worst case is the pollutants gone into the mining of the lithium and manufacturing of the vehicle. But how much of that can be controlled for mining and manufacturing?
Where’s the electricty from your car coming from? Where does the lithium for the battery come from?
That’s what I’m asking 🙂
This is a bad take. The EPA has a list already made because these lies keep going around. It is better for the environment through out the entire life cycle of a car, from raw material mining and processing to manufacturing and use, to be Electric than use an Internal Combustion Engine.
It is less bad, but still pollutes a lot, especially in countries with high-carbon electricity production.
Sure. But the guy above me is implying that at worst, EVs pollute more, and at best, the two are just the same in terms of pollutants.
The reality is harm reduction. It would be better to take a train or bus than drive any car. Better still would be to ride a bike, even better would be to just walk. But that is not feasible. Instead we just do what we can and make marginally better choices.
Don’t let perfect get in the way of good. We’re after incremental changes.
Oops, didn’t catch that part from the parent comment. You’re right, it breaks even in most if not all cases.
A side note : EVs are and will be needed for a long time, but an important reduction of personal vehicle use will be needed as well. Shifting the same usage to EVs will surely not be sufficient.
Are you dumb on purpose?
Why are you insulting me?
What a low-effort bot you are. 🤦🏼♂️
wtf? Why are you calling me a bot? It’s either a joke I don’t get or a low-key insult just because you don’t agree with me.
You are correct. I think that a substantial portion of people don’t connect the dots and understand that companies only produce goods that consumers want/need.
Swap your car or plane ride for a bus or train
Kinda hard to do when there’s nowhere near enough investment in public transit
Yeah where I live, there’s a bus every 2 hours that needs ~30 minutes to get to where I work. If I took that, I’d have to walk an additional 15 minutes to my actual workplace and I’d still be an hour too early.
And after work, I’d have to again walk 15 minutes to the bus stop and wait another 30 minutes for the bus home.So between leaving my house and coming back home, there’d be ~11.5 hours. When I use my car, that’s ~9.5 hours.
My old job was located out of the city and the times I worked there were no busses running (4am til whenever we were done) so I drove ~30 minutes to work, then work between 12 to 14 hours then drive back, which can take between 30 minutes to an hour if there was an accident. Then only being able to sleep like 3 hours a night then repeat the process was torture.
I’m so glad I was able to get a remote job where now I actually have time during my work days to do other things like actually go to gym everyday and be able to see my family more rather than just work and sleep.
So I replaced my car with a train, but now it doesn’t fit in my garage. Am I doing this wrong?
You need ultralightrail, and rolling stock from your house to wherever you need to go.
Corporations create the heat and cooling, build the cars and airplanes, and raise the meat for… wait for it… consumers. These things go hand in hand. Asking people to make changes to their lifestyles that will help the environment IS demanding the corporations to stop producing so much pollution. No one wants to take the blame.
When the world is on fire, no one will care, but the idea that corporations are somehow a separate entity from the consumers/individuals that line their pockets with profits is equally irresponsible. It does come down to daily choice, because the corporations follow demand. But no one wants to suffer the inconvenience of changing their lifestyle, so we blame the corporations that we then buy gas, electricity, meat, and cars from. It’s blindingly dumb from either direction.
Spiderman points at Spiderman.
Note that the IPCC acknowledges that no one is paying the true cost of energy or food. You could decapitate all corporate executives, and, if we truly wanted to pay the environmental costs of heating, cooling, and food, all prices would go up. If you think things are hard now, give it a decade. Prices for everyone for everything will go up. You could kill all the rich people on the planet, and it wouldn’t change that fact, and it wouldn’t suddenly make the environment sound. It truly does come down to fundamental lifestyle changes that none of us want to enact.
You cannot eat money.
I agree with this entirely. Of course there are corporations responsible for way more than myself. But using it as a means to justify myself doing nothing to reduce my own consumption is just backwards and stupid. It’s comparing a bad thing to another really bad thing but they’re both still bad things. Should they stop doing what they’re doing to contribute to this, yes. Should I also? Also yes lol. Plus like your comment said. These companies are driven by our own demand. It’s our fault for supporting and relying on the way things are for sure.
Thanks for your reply. I think the hard truth that we all need to look at is, regardless of who is to blame, we all need to make daily choices that work towards a common goal of salvaging this planet. And I think often those choices are annoying, inconvenient, or expensive. Some of us can shoulder the expense portion easier than others, but until we start acting every day like the world is worse than it was 100 years ago, we’re only going to make it worse in the future. Things are not going to be easier going forward. The more of us that make things harder now, the less hard things will be in the future for the young. It truly is a daily choice.
This is classic dog wags the tail and vice-versa. Is it the demand causing these corporations to make the product or are they creating the demand through plentiful supply and marketing?
If these entities were to make something with lower emissions and marketed that as a better alternative will nobody buy that something? I highly doubt it…
I remember when the things we bought were extremely durable and could last for decades if taken care of, I’m talking about anything, from tools, to cars, to clothes.
Now, from the 2000s to present day, everything is made to be consumed extremely fast, products are made with cheaper materials and most likely designed to fall apart sooner, this increases consumption by A LOT on a shorter span of time meaning more money in less time, something corporations just drool at.
With things being replaced on a shorter span means more energy required for the factories, more materials, more waste, and yes, way more pollution.
A lot of the times the “consumers” were created artificially with this tactics. Many things that lead to the current state of nsumption by the common folk is engineered.
TL;DR:
Consumer choices can influence industries, but it is impractical to solely rely on this to drive ecological change due to factors such as lack of awareness, inconvenience, habits, price and limited to no alternatives. Government subsidies for ecologically detrimental industries and the lack of subsidies for ecologically beneficial industries worsen the effect. Improved legislation is necessary to address these issues by enforcing ecologically beneficial industry practises and guide consumers.
Verbose:
I agree with you partly. Yes, consumer choices do affect which companies get money and which don’t. But I would say that consumers are not completely responsible for the practises of a company. If a company chooses to power their production based on fossil energy carriers there’s not much a consumer can do about it. Sure, they can stop buying from them. But for that a lot of things must happen. First of all they must know about it. And if it’s not printed fat on the packaging or news are screaming about it, there is a high probability that they will never know about it. They could ask the companies themselves. And even if companies would be transparent and honest about their response, there’s only a small fraction of people who would do this. That’s because it’s inconvenient. As ugly as it sounds, people hate inconveniences. A lot of people don’t want to spend their precious free time with writing or calling the hundreds of companies, whose products they use, to ask about their production practises. Finally, if consumers eventually learn about the ecological impact of their products, they still need to collect a significant amount of mental energy in order to make the conscious decision of not buying them and possibly looking out for alternatives. That’s difficult, because people easily get used to stuff and it’s psychologically hard to change habits. And they’d need to do this for every single product they use. Even worse, in a critical amount of cases there aren’t even alternatives available to consumers. If you continue buying the wrong products (in an eco sense), because you don’t have access to an (affordable) alternative, that will send the wrong signals. The market won’t see an increased demand for ecologically friendly products in these (significant amount of) cases, but quite the contrary. I don’t say that it’s impossible, clearly humans seem to have the capacity of intelligence and can be educated to do better, but I claim it’s impractical for the everyday life of the masses. Especially, we don’t have the time to wait until the majority of people is able to change their consumption behaviour. That’s why we need laws, such that law makers do the hard work of paving the way for ecologically beneficial industry practises, so the Jon or Jane Doe going to the grocery store after a long day of work doesn’t have to worry about which products to buy.
Besides, in a lot of countries fossil based energy carriers are still cheaper than environmemtally friendy alternatives, sadly. If companies start to completely switch to green energy, this would increase the price. Increasing the price can lead to less consumers buying the products. Either because they can’t afford it or because they want or need to save money. This again would turn the circle of environmental destruction once more, since the cheaper alternatives, which consumers are looking out for, are usually less beneficial or even detrimental to the environment.
Also let’s not forget that also a lot of countries subsidise industries which are major contributors to greenhouse gases, e.g., the meat industry. Meanwhile there is a lack of sufficient subsidies for ecologically better industry segments. I live in a world where an organically grown cucumber is much more expensive than a pack of meat. That can’t be right.
We need good laws and can’t rely on the behaviour of consumers alone. There’s no way around it.
I’m glad someone else understands this. Everytime I see the statistic about corporate emissions, I can’t help but think about how it’s so misleading. Exxon et al keep polluting because we keep collectively buying their product.
That doesn’t absolve them from their efforts to discredit climate change research, but to suggest they are just some evil entity polluting at will is just ridiculous.
I think it’s hard to estimate how much effort corporations put into getting us to do what they want. If you’ve ever looked at why the public transportation in the US is shit you’d know there’s something suspicious going on with it.
US used to have cities that are great for public transportation, the grid design of the 1920s is excellent or public transportation. Some cities like NY still have that but cities like Detroit spent decades destroying that to build a highway going straight through the city. Suburbs in America are being built in a way that only suits car travel. And not just that, people have been conditioned to think that only poor people would use public transportation. Not only have been people made to believe they don’t want public transportation, they couldn’t have it even if they wanted to because it would be horribly inefficient.
Who benefits from those decisions? Definitely not the people who are now dependent on owning cars. But I’m pretty sure car manufacturers and oil companies are pretty happy because they get to sell more cars and oil. Now I can’t point the finger at that those companies because there’s no evidence they influenced this, at least none that I know of. But it’s awfully convenient for them that when the car boom happened in the 50s the US government was happy to spend money literally rebuilding cities to make them more car dependent and keep at it, while the same thing was stopped in Europe pretty quickly.
I don’t mind giving off some conspiracy theorist vibe, but I don’t think it’s far fetched that corporations are entities that put money above everything else and if needless polluting let’s them make more money they will do it without hesitation. I wouldn’t put it past them to deliberately build the narrative that somehow the people are to blame for this polluting. After all EXXON started the “is it even real?” and “is it even man made?” arguments that regular people used for decades to derail the climate change discussions, all with the purpose of shifting attention away from them. It’s literally their MO.
You can’t expect someone not ride a car if they need one for survival.
The same is true for the fast-food industry: a lot of people dont cook anymore and just go to McDonald’s. Hell, a lot of people don’t even make their coffee in the morning anymore.
If we want to get back on track, make a law that reflect this otherwise, fuck off.
Admittedly part of the issue is that huge parts of many cities, especially in the anglosphere, are designed in such a way that living there without a car is impossible, because they’ve been built too spread-out and too far away from anywhere people want to go
And remedying this would basically require densifying everywhere close to urban centres, up to 5 stories in most places, then fucking razing the suburbs to the ground and making it abundantly clear to anyone who wants to live at that old suburban density or lower that the price will be having a septic tank and dirt roads
Electric cars won’t change this, btw. Mass adoption of them is not practical due to their weight, strain on the grid, tendency to catch fire in a way that takes 1 entire tender per car, and use of finite lithium, and should be reserved for those with a very specific set of disabilities that make walking difficult while not impairing driving abilities, or those who actually want to live out in the country and put up with aforementioned septic tank and dirt roads
People demand goods and services. They very often do not care how those get to them. If they did, most corporations would go out of existence for using child and slave labor.
Your average person is not the one fighting against climate change regulation. It is the corporations throwing billions at government officials to not regulate them.
Shortest answer to the problem. Corps would LOVE if they could charge some people more for environmentally friendly shit while shoving more plastic in the ocean and carbon in the atmosphere for everyone who doesn’t and will never give a shit.
Not would, do. Energy providers, for instance, will often charge extra if you want to only use clean energy despite renewables being cheaper for energy production. That extra money subsidizes their failing coal contracts and investments.
Yeah you’re right, didn’t mean to say that doesn’t already happen. Even Amazon has made it an option to have your delivery be delayed to be more “green” while they pocket the cost savings themselves.
Please remember that the corporations are polluting to provide services to the populace at large. You might as well accuse your pizza delivery driver for polluting after he gives you your order.
Thing is, it’s not like consumers choose to use plastic packaging. It’s not like we choose to release forever chemicals into the water supply instead of dealing with them responsibly.
Let the person who has never improperly disposed of their batteries throw the first stone.
I mean, in a city it shows up on a bike or scooter. I think Amazon is a better example. They provide a great service that is nothing but fast delivery and wasteful packing because that’s what we want. My answer is that it should be regulated and taxed to show the real cost this convenience has on the world. Another instance is single use utensils. They should not be so cheap to produce that they are being practically thrown away with takeout. Major polluting items need to be artificially made more expensive so that culturally it makes sense to carry our own for or chopsticks with us. That’s what regulation is for, creating parameters that companies need to work within, because their motivations are to give us what we want as cheaply as possible to gain market share
Let’s start on pushing for thermally neutral building materials and reducing food waste. If buildings weren’t concrete heat sinks it wouldn’t take so much energy to keep them cool and food waste is a large contributor to pollution and spreads disease.
This is one of the most shittiest takes I’ve ever seen, trying to absolve oneselves of taking responsibility.
Yeah, there are those companies that produce the bad shit but this tweet is right. If you stop eating meat, the companies that produce meat will produce less of it and there will be a real impact.
I don’t know what the fuck the OP is thinking. Like, do they think that the corporations just produce pollution for fun? No, it’s because you buy that shit. If you stop buying that shit, pollution will go down. CNN was 100% right and that fucker that responded is retarded at best, but probably just braindead because what he posted doesn’t make sense at all.
Bro the big oil corporations spent decades at the beginning of the 20th century creating and forcing the demand and dependency on oil. Watch “How Big Oil Conquered the World” from James Corbett.
It’s not like WE chose this to be the way things are. The people who control industry, and marketing, and media and THE GOVERNMENT, all MADE us and it all this way.
right but if you keep participating in broken systems you’ll just perpetuate them. gotta find ways out and take them… or make them.
I travel as little as possible, I’ve been attempting to grow my own food in my apartment, I’ve rarely bought clothes and never bought furniture. A roll of paper towels lasts me months and I eat meat a couple times a week (I sprained my ankle stretching in bed before adding meat back in)
My carbon footprint is way too large, and IDK what to do about it. All I want is to buy a mountain and fill it with fruit, but it’d take a decade of destroying the world to get there
I’m a damn good programmer, and open to suggestions… This is a constant weight for me. IDK how to not make things worse
Have you assessed what makes up your carbon footprint? What gets measured gets improved
This is such a fucking stupid argument to make.
The reason airlines make x% of CO2 emissions is because people want to fly, they’re an airline, and there is no emissions free way to power a plane.
The reason the plastic company makes x billions of plastic sporks every year is because I want a spoon to eat my Taco Bell Nachos in my car. They’re not making all the plastic pollution because they just hate the Earth.
They’re not cartoon villains like in Captain Planet that pollute just to make pollution.
If it’s that bad, then let’s make a law that fixes the problem.
You can take this and just welp, plastic spoon is cheaper and all my concurrent are doing it so fuck it.
We want a greener industry? Make the fucking law reflect that otherwise, fuck off.
Which is how this ends up being a chicken-egg problem.
Are people driving plastic usage or is capitalism driving policies that drive people to use more plastic?
And if so, why is industry writing policy instead of the public, or agents that are supposed to work for the public’s interest?
None of this ends until enough “regular people” coordinate to take power back from industry so that we operate like an actual democracy again. If you want to preserve an environment on Earth fit for human habitation, you have to get loud about… Campaign finance reform : P. And then realized that as boring as that sounds, that that will be when things actually would get violent and scary bc real power would be threatened.
I am not optimistic we’ll even get that far. Our population probably will take some very severe hits in our lifetime though. I’ll cut down on meat where I can, but I am mostly just enjoying the good times we have left.
From what I understand, a lot of corporations have power over the options consumers have, the market isnt as free as this argument implies. For example, coal and fossil fuel lobbies do a lot to prevent sustainable alternatives from being adopted.
The US doesnt rely on oil and coal because thats what consumers want, or because its necessarily the cheapest, its because the people that run those corporations have the means to subvert democracy. They are not cartoon villains, but they are absolutely villains.
What you are saying is true for plastic straws and airlines, but I would guess it doesnt really apply to many of these 100 corporations
You’re absolutely right. They aren’t cartoon villains. They’re just rational agents acting according to very real incentives.
But where do these incentives come from? They depend on how we choose to organize our economy, what guiding principles our society follows in how to distribute resources, and harvest them from the environment.
They come from our economic system. Our economic system is capitalism. And one of the many, many problems with capitalism — it can’t fucking slow down. In the eternal chase for greater and greater quarterly profits, there is no room for questions such as “is this growth sustainable?” or “I know there’s demand for this, but should we really be doing it?”.
Pointing fingers and blaming people is, indeed, a waste of energy. Instead, it may be better to ask: “How do we incentivise people to change their behaviour? What about our system needs to change? And how quickly can we dismantle the oil companies?”
We can’t incentivize people to change their behavior because no one is going to deliberately lower their quality of life.
What politician is going to win on a platform of…
Let’s make air travel so expensive that normal people can no longer regularly fly!
Vote for me I’m going to double your electricity bill!
You know that big SUV you love that is entirely impractical but you just like it because of how big it is… If you vote for me I’ll make gas $7 a gallon so that you can’t afford to have a giant SUV anymore.
You know how you like to eat your Taco Bell nachos in your car with a plastic spork… If you vote for me I’ll replace the plastic spork with a cornstarch spork that starts to melt when you use it.
The only thing that is going to save us is technology. Like air travel being fueled by biofuels, electricity costs kept somewhat normal by building new nuclear generation, giant SUVs being powered by batteries charged by nuclear/renewable energy, actually recycling the plastic spork.
there is no emissions free way to power a plane.
You can run it on biofuels. This is how Gates excuses his private jet, conveniently ignoring the possibility of combining biofuel AND comercial flights.
I’m sure tons of voters are going to be happy and will reelect the politicians that make air travel 2x to 5x more expensive.
The proportion of politicians running on green agendas is increasing year on year. Younger people vote green.
