We deserve everything that’s coming We took this world to our graves, We made its creatures our slaves Shattered the hourglass, an un-erasable past Humans, Demons, deranged and depraved
No, actually, we couldn’t, and those are the hard facts you didn’t want to hear because you cared more about punishing humanity just for existing in the industrial age than on moving forward like you should have been doing.
We only have 80 years’ worth of uranium on the planet, so nuclear, our best chance of on-surface clean energy, won’t last much longer, certainly not after the end of the century. Alpha-gen’s grandkids will needlessly suffer if that’s the only or even the primary route taken.
On surface green energy require rare earth metals mined using slavery primarily in the Congo Basin where the fucking rainforest is being dug out so we can all have cheap cell phone and electric car batteries. Is that really what you want? 90% of the world’s supply is controlled by China; do you want them to be able to use their near monopoly on the stuff to dominate everyone else?
Or, we could go out into space and mine near-Earth asteroids or the Moon for the stuff, and build space solar power stations which governments have been experimenting with for decades, and have near-unlimited access to 24/7 solar power and rare-earths for thousands of years, drop the prices of all metals so low that all construction and manufacturing costs tank with them, making housing much more available for everyone else than it ever has been including the global south, take advantage of space’s powerful psychological effects to end conflicts and foster international cooperation the likes of which have never been seen so we don’t nuke each other to kingdom come, and actually have some peace?
Also industry can and should be moved up there too so large swaths of the Earth can be rewilded and allowed to heal.
When the shit really hits the fan, the only safe way to geoengineer ourselves out of climate catastrophe will be to construct a solar shade that can be taken down whenever we want instead of letting idiots in the U.S. and EU spray sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere like they’re planning to do.
There are a multitude of reasons why we need to go to space to solve climate change.
My parents always act surprised when I tell them I don’t think I’d want to have children… Maybe I’m being negative, but if I had to guess this is only going to get worse and will never be fixed. I genuinely don’t believe the next generation is going to have a decent future ahead of them.
As soon we start worrying about things other than money, we might actually have a chance, but as I get older I have more and more doubt that’ll happen.
Yup - the overwhelming odds say they’ll both contribute and fall victim to the problem, not solve it.
We have ~7bn people alive today, and we can’t muster the will to do what we know we is needed in order to survive. Instead, we’ll refuse to make comparatively small compromises, and sign our children’s death warrants.
What an abhorrent take. That’s an insane set of expectations to place on someone who doesn’t even have a say in the process of coming into being and, frankly, gambling with another person’s life. “Welp, we couldn’t fix it but good luck kiddo.” Disgusting.
See, there’s also a good chance that a random child might not be that person, and then that kid now gets to deal with all of this, despite having absolutely no input or fault in it. So, for me, it would be weighing the likely options.
A) Your child is luckily the answer to these problems
Or:
B) You’ve guaranteed that an innocent person has to deal with the effects of generations ignoring societal problems and climate change.
I can’t say that I really blame young people for not wanting to create more people who would have to struggle with that life. I don’t blame them for feeling insecure in their housing situations or for worrying about their finances, either. If they do anyways, they just get told that they should have thought about this stuff before having kids. Respectfully, fuck that noise.
WE need to make a solution. Continuing to cross our fingers that the next generation will fix things could easily kill us all. We have to actually start doing stuff ourselves. Previous generations also hoped for a future genius to solve climate problems, and look where that lands us today.
What will be do if there isn’t a magical scientific answer, and we have to actually start living differently at all levels of society? Hypothetically in that situation, we’d be screwed if we put all of our eggs in the “next generation” basket. How can we know for certain that that won’t be the case eventually? Global warming is already starting a feedback loop.
And who exactly did oil companies sell their oil to? That’s right. We. The stuff we buy the miles we travel the lives we live collectively are what creates greenhouse gas emissions. Can’t blame an oil company for wanting to heat your home in winter or cool it in summer.
What’s the alternative? I am genuinely curious. It’s not exactly by choice that I can’t afford an EV, ignoring the fact that my city does not the infrastructure to support EVs…
I wonder if there are any greener alternatives to oil that can be provided by the companies that currently use oil? Perhaps ones that might incur a bit of a hit to those company’s profits? And that hit to profits being the only reason those company’s havent shifted to the greener alternatives?
But no. Its my fault that i have no choice but to fill up my shitty diesel engine to get to work. Because i can definitely swap to a bicycle to make me already 40 minute at 60mph commute…
It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. We’re all out here living our lives with the hands we’ve been dealt. I’m only pushing back on the feel good take of “80 companies responsible for most emissions” or whatever the stat is. It’s a blatant attempt to deflect feeling any kind of responsibility or agency or having played a part at all. We all do what we do, and we’ll feel the consequences collectively.
My whole comment was sarcasm. I k ow its not my fault. I have contributes and i wish i had a way to not do that. But this is the world we live in. If big companies were so profit driven then we would already be alot greener and the planet wouldnt be spiralling into heat death.
We’ve likely kicked ourselves from a path where we would see 4C of warming by 2100 with further warming thereafter to one where we see about 3C of warming by 2100 with further warming thereafter. That’s an improvement, but not what we need, with is actual stabilization under livable conditions.
And who bought the gas? Who bought the oil? Who bought the plastic made from the oil? Who bought the food grown from the fertilizer made from the oil?
If you don’t live on North Sentinel Island your entire life relies on the products of the corporations that have destroyed the environment. You are complicit. Your parents were complicit. Your children, if any, will be complicit.
Blaming corporations or capitalism or “big oil” is just a way of dodging personal responsibility. It’s an excuse for not making inconvenient personal changes in your own lifestyle. It lets you tell yourself that when big corporations consume so much there is no point in you lowering your standard of living to consume less.
The fact that corporations are worse than you does not absolve you of your responsibility for your own decisions and your own environmental sins. We all have to do better.
Systemic problems need political fixes. Political fixes require collective action. And collective action is the sum total of individual lifestyle choices.
If you want government to act on the environment you need a critical mass of voters who put the environment first and punish politicians at the ballot box if they don’t.
If you want corporations to act on the environment you need a critical mass of consumers who refuse to buy from corps that don’t.
And you get to that critical mass by living your values and converting other people to those values.
So yeah, your asking for a paper straw doesn’t make an impact. You being part of hundreds of thousands of people all asking for paper straws tells Starbucks they better pay attention.
There are plenty of alternatives to oil that dont require destroying the environment. We as the consumers cant really force them to stop using oil. Theres plenty of groups out there dedicated to stoppi g the use of oil but they are mostly ignored.
You cant say we should all stop using oil and then they will change, because we rely on oil to live our lives. The change has to be made by the corporations. Like the change to EVs that will help with carbon emmisions.
Frankly if the only reason a big company wont switch to greener alternatives to oil is a hit to their profits then i have absolutely no sympathy. They can get fucked. Greedy fuckers.
Big oil companies witheld critical data on impact of fossil fuels on climate change. Source
You go ahead and use paper straws all you like if it will give you a moral high ground and let you shit on people like you just tried on me. It will clear your conscience and will help you consider yourself soo much better than the rest. The fact remains - massive corporations do the most damage and will do fuck all to fix it up by, oh, I don’t know, changing their production methods, switching to renewables etc. But yeah, sure, it’s my fault.
I feel it’s time for people that care to start moving on the the acceptance phase of our future. Whether that is beginning to accept austerity in what we eat/wear/do and wait for the collective “we” to join us when they need to adapt more rapidly than we chose to, or if we give in and join the “it’s already too late, let it burn” side.
I try to stay positive, because I’ve always tried to conserve and be responsible, so it isn’t too bad, but I feel bad for the next generation or 2 at least. They asked for this even less than we did. But I feel the sooner we get on acting like this is a done deal the better, because most people aren’t going to care until they’re hurting.
I feel it’s time for people that care to start moving on the the acceptance phase of our future.
I’ve recently started to feel this way as well. One need not look any further than this thread itself to see that we’re fucked. The discussion here is a perfect example of how we seem to be frozen in some sort of complex “prisoner’s dilemma” between the public, the media, the politicians, the industry, etc. All this finger-pointing going around, when the reality is that most people AND (especially) most companies in the entire developed/industrialized world shares a large part of the blame for this, and because of the mentality (human nature) and manipulations (capitalist nature) at play, nothing will be done in time before our species starts to be completely decimated.
I’ve been recommending this article to people who seem to share this realization, because it not only describes what we’re thinking, but it also provides some resources to help us process this.
Edit: At the same time, I still would like to fight like hell to change our course. But I just don’t want to fight alone, and I fear that that’s what it would mostly feel like. Alone, or very, very few people by my side.
The prisoners dilemma seems an appropriate analogy. Business doesn’t want to budge first and commit to a giant investment that isn’t profit driven. It commits then to us and other businesses can eat their lunch while they sacrifice profit to help society. Government doesn’t want to move first and drive business or if the county. And selfish people are just going to be selfish.
For your edit comments, just keep living by your principles. Share with others who want to listen, but don’t force anyone. Just be you. If you’re reading things like this out of curiosity, you’re on the right side of things already.
The prisoners dilemma seems an appropriate analogy. Business doesn’t want to budge first and commit to a giant investment that isn’t profit driven. It commits then to us and other businesses can eat their lunch while they sacrifice profit to help society. Government doesn’t want to move first and drive business or if the county. And selfish people are just going to be selfish.
You got what I was driving at. I don’t even think that it takes people being particularly selfish either. I think it just takes human nature. Most people want to have nice things and very few want to be the first or only one to make a sacrifice. So people in general are involved in this prisoner’s dilemma too, along with business, government, and media. It’s like a 4-way prisoner’s dilemma from hell.
For your edit comments, just keep living by your principles. Share with others who want to listen, but don’t force anyone. Just be you. If you’re reading things like this out of curiosity, you’re on the right side of things already.
And how many in their voting lifetime? About 25% according to that site.
Now how many were in their country? Surely a much smaller portion.
But we're all to blame really, because we all take part in the system. The only way to escape blame is to not live. Although, to be clear, blame should not be evenly distributed here.
I dont think we are not all to blame. We are forced to be part of the system, as you mention, the only way of "escaping" the system is by not being alive. How can we be blamed for something that was imposed on us?
Are we forced to take a flight across the world and a cruise in a ginormous cruise ship every year? A lot of people do this. I totally agree that we’re forced to be part of the system, but that excuse only goes so far. A lot people go way, way, way beyond what we’re forced to do. Granted, we keep being told by the media and politicians mostly that it’s no big deal, but even what little they say already gets a lot of people riled up. Imagine what would happen if they told the full truth and told us the true extent of the measures that were required?
I dont know about you but im 36 and ive been on 1 boat and 4 planes in my entire life. And those planes flew from the uk to france.
I think the demographic for going on cruise ships is more the people over 50. amd flights every year? Well how about private jet flights multiple times a day.
We may not be helping that much but we arent the main cause of the problem. Thats the mega rich and the corporations.
Im ot shirking responsibility but it helps to aim at the root of the problem if you want to solve it.
I actually used to fly for vacation about once a year for several years before COVID, but never taken cruise. However, my feeling now is that air travel for leisure should be banned outright worldwide because it’s low hanging fruit to reduce human carbon output. This says that aviation is responsible for about 2.5% of total carbon output. Heck, ban private jets at the same time!
As much as I love to dunk on mega rich people and corporations as much anyone else, we will never handle the issue of airplane pollution if we focus only on them. There are only so many people who fly in private jets. They are vastly outnumbered by middle class people who combined take millions of flights a year. This FAA document says: “The number of passengers flown by air carriers increased by 55 percent, to 917 million in FY2022 (Section 1). This remains below the pre-pandemic (FY2019) level of 1,057.6 million passengers.” That’s around 1 billion passengers every year!
Unfortunately I couldn’t find actual figures that compare total fuel consumption of private jets vs commercial jets in aggregate, but according to this article, 1 out of every 6 flights handled by the FAA is for a private jet, and a private jet emits at least 10x more pollutants per passenger than a commercial plane. Do you see the problem? Private jets probably carry an average of 10 passengers and commercial jets probably carry an average of 200 passengers (both of these are complete guesstimates). 10 passengers x 1 flight x 10x pollutants (total: 100 pollutant units) vs 100 passengers x 5 flights vs 1x pollutants (total: 500 pollutant units). In other words, just going by these completely thrown together numbers, it would appear that commercial flights produce at least 5x more carbon in total as private flights, and I feel that I was very conservative in my estimates. I suspect that commercial airlines produce much more than 5x the pollutants of private jets in total.
Bro, did you really just decide to erase my comments and ban me instead of engaging with me? Just like I’m sure you’ll erase this one once you realize there’s nothing stopping me from commenting from other instances.
I won’t, because it’s not worth my time. I only came back here to say that you’re a coward, and pushing your head in the sand doesn’t solve anything.
Have fun banning the people who you don’t agree with.
A single cruise ship does more damage in one day than 50 people who drive a car every day of their life until they die of old age. The idea that any one average Joe has had a hand in this is a massive and intentional corporate driven fallacy to keep the public unaware of just exactly what magnitude of damage a very small percentage of people are doing to the environment.
You’re conflating greenhouse gas emissions with particulate pollution. Particulates damage lungs and drop temperatures, but fall out of the atmosphere within a few weeks of emission into the troposphere.
I get what you’re saying, that heavy fuel oil is much worse for pollution, but I don’t think that the difference between the carbon emission rate between heavy fuel oil and gasoline is enough for an accusation of conflation when my initial point was that a single cruise liner burns 150 metric tons of fuel in a day.
Can you visualize 150 metric tons of fuel? Cars measure their intake by gallons.
That 0.05 difference is the discrepancy between saying that’s only 49 lifetimes worth of car driving vs 50.
The very first sentence of the article reads “calculating CO2 emissions” and doesn’t mention or convert to sulfate emissions at all. What are you even talking about?
What I’m doing is pointing out that change has to start with the most damaging factors in our society. I’m not discouraging action, I’m only revealing the scale of the contributors.
I mean in defense of the other person. It sounds more like the argument is trying to encourage a bigger action. Like don’t just do your part, vote/participate for what actually changes things in a larger scale.
“We can’t make our own phones, so there’s literally nothing we can do!”
Do you have a plant based diet, or try to reduce meat consumption to the best of your abilities?
Do you walk or take public transport when you could walk?
Do you avoid buying things you do not need?
If you answered “yes” to all that, then congratulations! You are part of a different 1%, and you are also just arguing for the sake of arguing.
If you answered “no”, then you’re part of the problem. You can pretend otherwise all you want, but you are one cog that keeps the system going. The system isn’t magical, other wordly, or some fundamental law of the universe. The system is people and their choices.
However, I wasn’t intending to argue with someone with such a simplistic view of how the system works, anyway. If you think it’s all up to the customer and the corps nor the system have no blame in comparison, it’s just a lost cause, so sort yourself out.
It’s not shifting blame, it’s pointing out they do not exist in isolation. You can put blame on the companies and still recognize that most people make no effort to avoid them, even when they have a choice.
I’ll add on what someone said further above:
what would happen if everyone turned around and said ‘you know what, fuck companies that sell drinks in bottles i’m never going to be without my refillable bottle’ how long would coca-cola keep producing 100 billion plastic bottles a year? what would they do with them?
But if James Quincey said ‘fuck it, I’m not producing plastic bottles anymore they’re bad for the planet’ but 8 billion people said ‘oh ok, well we’re still going to regularly buy drinks in plastic bottles’ the numbers of plastic bottles being made would dip slightly but only while Ramon Laguarta rushed to spend the flood of money now coming in to scale up production at pepsi co.
Yes, those people are part of the problem. But reality is that those people don’t need to lead the change. There are too many literal individuals involved. Tackling the problem from the head down with regulations is much more efficient.
Blaming individuals for climate change is incredibly naive. Doesn’t help anyone. No vegan will save the world. And no omnivore will destroy it.
what would happen if everyone turned around and said ‘you know what, fuck companies that sell drinks in bottles i’m never going to be without my refillable bottle’ how long would coca-cola keep producing 100 billion plastic bottles a year? what would they do with them?
But if James Quincey said ‘fuck it, I’m not producing plastic bottles anymore they’re bad for the planet’ but 8 billion people said ‘oh ok, well we’re still going to regularly buy drinks in plastic bottles’ the numbers of plastic bottles being made would dip slightly but only while Ramon Laguarta rushed to spend the flood of money now coming in to scale up production at pepsi co.
Yes. There’s the possibility that people will actually change by acting in unison. But the probability for society to act in unison isn’t really high. Just look at the world now. Some people can’t even agree on weapons not being something you need to carry around 24/7. And you want them to agree on something that’d actually affect their daily life?
i could say the same thing about regulation, you really think if we can’t even restrict guns you’ll magic up the political will to ban something that would actually affect their daily life and earns so many companies so much money? coke pulls in 25b a year, they can afford all the lobbyists.
We need as many people as possible to have already moved away from them before we have the slightest chance at legislation.
The difference is that it doesn’t need everyone to agree on one thing to make changes. “Boycott coke” requires a substantial mass to boycott one specific company. Demanding change from politics is much more broad and targets whole industries instead of specific things. Like bans on single use plastic, or pushes for EVs.
Apart from that, you most often have to create alternatives before people can abandon bad products. Could everyone stop using cars? Sure. Will it happen? No. But if we start to expand railway through politics, will more people abandon their car then cause they get around by train much more efficiently? Way more likely than without it.
I recommend Kurzgesagts video on the topic whether we can stop climate change. It goes exactly into this.
Who is consuming their products? I’m doing my damn best not too while striving for structural change, and I’d bet the other user is too. What about you? People taking your stance are usually the ones trying to make excuses to keep consuming mindlessly.
That’s a pretty absurd generalization. I live off grid and get my power from solar, food from my garden and foraging. I compost all of my waste, consume as consciously as I can possibly achieve as an average individual, and I refuse to accept that this is some regular person’s fault.
Rugged individualism and shame will not change the world positively, some fucking accountability on the part of the few people causing the damage (corporations etc) might. It is willful ignorance to say that it is just everyone’s fault.
Almost everyone is just trying their best, save for a small number of incredibly rich people+the entities they run ruining everything.
Idk here’s a quote from The Good Place
"I want to tell you about a guy from my dance crew in Jacksonville called Big Noodle.
I used to yell at Big Noodle 'cause he always showed up late to rehearsal. Then one day, the swamp under my house flooded. I needed a place to crash, so I slept at Big Noodle’s house. Turns out that he had to juggle three jobs to take care of four grandparents who all lived in the same bed just like in “Willy Wonka.”
I never yelled at Big Noodle for being late after that 'cause I knew how hard it was for him to be there. And he definitely didn’t have time to research what tomatoes to buy. Even if he wanted to, possession of a non-fried vegetable is a felony in Jacksonville. The point is, you can’t judge humans 'cause you don’t know what we go through"
That’s a pretty absurd generalization. I live off grid and get my power from solar, food from my garden and foraging. I compost all of my waste, consume as consciously as I can possibly achieve as an average individual, and I refuse to accept that this is some regular person’s fault.
Then why do you do all that? You are contradicting yourself. Clearly you believe the average person has an impact, which is what I and others are saying. That doesn’t mean it’s all the average person’s fault, or that there aren’t powerful people leveraging that power to try to keep this system up. But “the system” isn’t something magical or a law of the universe; “the system” is people and their choices.
Almost everyone is just trying their best, save for a small number of incredibly rich people+the entities they run ruining everything.
Come on, you know that’s not true. Just go outside and talk to the average person, or even go on a more popular and less closed off social network.
I’m not saying life is easy right now, but most people could do a lot more than they do. Most people eat more red meat than is even healthy for them, never mind the environment, and never mind other meats or animal products in general. Most people will buy bottled water (and other beverages) even when they have access to clean tap water (and I’m not saying everybody does have access to it). Most people will make excuses to use a car, no matter how good the public transport is, or even if they could use a bicycle. Most people will still choose to use plastic bags for groceries instead of reusable ones, at least until a store stops supplying plastic bags.
To expand a bit more on this and not have to do much typing, I’ll just a leave a couple of comments from else where on this thread; the first one is mine and the second is from another user:
Though experiment:
Tomorrow is election day in your country. The stout environmentalists win control of the government and proceed to make the following changes:
Carbon tax, which increases the price of gas, which itself results in an increase in shipping anything. It also directly raises the price of anything that produces carbon in its manufacture process, such as anything made of plastic.
An end to meat subsidies - maybe even a tax on it - and an increase to subsidizing other types of farming.
A ban on single use plastics.
And anything else you think might be necessary.
Now the questions: How long until they get kicked out? How long until the protests and riots? How long until a new government undoes it all?
I’m assuming you’re not naive and you don’t live in a bubble. You should know the majority of people will not be fans of any of that; and with the way it usually goes and the pendulum swings, the government that follows it will be a far right one.
what would happen if everyone turned around and said ‘you know what, fuck companies that sell drinks in bottles i’m never going to be without my refillable bottle’ how long would coca-cola keep producing 100 billion plastic bottles a year? what would they do with them?
But if James Quincey said ‘fuck it, I’m not producing plastic bottles anymore they’re bad for the planet’ but 8 billion people said ‘oh ok, well we’re still going to regularly buy drinks in plastic bottles’ the numbers of plastic bottles being made would dip slightly but only while Ramon Laguarta rushed to spend the flood of money now coming in to scale up production at pepsi co.
You seem have an incredibly narrow view of what is “right” and are willing to dole out judgement based on your beliefs. I do truly believe that everyone is doing their best with the tools that they are given, and I cannot discount their efforts. It is not my place to talk shit idk.
I live the way I do because I am uniquely able to, most people are not. I cannot fault others for not being able to live this lifestyle because it takes MONEY and TIME that most people do not have. I don’t think your solutions are necessarily the solutions we need, I personally live in a state where taxes on the individual are the answer to every problem and it only makes it even harder for people to survive? Not great.
The world is complicated and very hard, obviously the system is not “magic,” but I don’t accept that consumer gas, meat, and bottled water is entirely the problem here when most of the Pacific Ocean garbage patch is commercial fishing nets (just one example). We need corporate accountability before anything else.
Igss I’m just here commenting to let you know that I don’t think it’s these Lemmy users’ faults that shit is shitty, and that I am not a “mindless consumer” or whatever.
This will be my last comment because I don’t want to keep bothering you, especially because I know I write too much, but feel to reply and I will read it.
most of the Pacific Ocean garbage patch is commercial fishing nets (just one example)
But who eats the fish? It’s not the companies. The companies are just enablers. I’m now not sure if you read it, so I refer you back to the last part of my comment (last 2 paragraphs).
I personally live in a state where taxes on the individual are the answer to every problem and it only makes it even harder for people to survive? Not great.
It seems you don’t realize it, but you’re agreeing with what I’m saying. Studies/polls have shown the majority of people would be in favour of a carbon tax. But as you said, high prices/taxes don’t really help and can make life terrible for the average person. Yet, that would be the result of a carbon tax. But people don’t think about that; people just think about how the world is going to shit, and someone should do something and when they hear “carbon tax” they think “great!”, because they think it’s a way to keep their lifestyle and comforts and don’t realize it would necessitate a life change anyway. The question is whether you do the change now by reducing your consumption, or wait until you’re forced to do it due to regulation and prices hikes you can’t afford.
I do truly believe that everyone is doing their best with the tools that they are given, and I cannot discount their efforts. It is not my place to talk shit idk.
I really don’t want to be rude or mean, but I have no other way to put this: if you really think that, you really are naive and living in a bubble. Which I guess isn’t surprising if you do live off grid and have enough room to grow your own food and you can compost all your waste, while also being on the Fediverse and especially from beehaw (very leftist leaning and environmentally aware places); but take it from someone living in a very large city and who frequents very diverse online places: that’s not true.
Just from the most environmentally “aware” people I personally know: a lot don’t bother recycling, or didn’t until very recently; they don’t think twice about single use plastics; most of them have meat as the stable of their diet, especially red meat; one of them insists on drinking bottled water despite have clean tap water, and a lot of the others buy quite a bit of plastic soda bottles. Oh, and something about my neighbours: some of them throw plastic take out packages out of their windows and into the street.
And also, finally, if what you say is true, then environmental parties would currently be in government in most places; after all a vote is tool everyone has and it costs nothing. But that’s not the case. In my country, the two most environmentally aware parties are currently the 2 smallest parties in the parliament; the second biggest one is a far right party; the third party are somewhere between liberals and right wing libertarians who have said there is no climate emergency; the leading party is a liberal party who talks about the environment, but doesn’t actually do shit about it. And that’s with a 60 to 70% voter turnout.
Do you really expect me to believe that “everyone is doing their best with the tools that they are given”?
I’m from Portugal btw, you can see here how many tons of CO2 per capita we were responsible for emitting (from production and consumption in 2018 and 2016 respectively). We’re not even top 50 in either list; USA is 17th and 7th, for reference.
Whether you do or not, other major corporations do, and while the money changes hands between a few dozen rich assholes, the planet burns and they laugh while you blame me.
I'm sorry, I can't stop using electricity or gas to go to work because I need to eat and pay rent to live. Because that's the world those rich people made for everyone else.
You mean the products they designed to be as cheap as possible with no care on their impact on the environment, and then brainwashed the population through marketing to make us think we actually needed them?
You don’t even need to brainwash. Just make sure their wage stays at a level where their survival depends on buying the cheapest of cheap, necessity will do the rest.
What I, an individual, can do. And don't say: consume less. I need to eat to live. And don't say: vote for politicians. We're doing that and it isn't fast enough. So, what can an individual do to stop this? Go on. We're all waiting.
You probably can’t stop but you can reduce your power consumption. There’s a lot of studies suggesting if Westerners stopped eating meat and shifted to a plant based diet that we could reduce a lot of our climactic shift.
The West going to plant based diets would significantly cut emissions.
Nowhere near enough to matter. I mentioned wealth because the vast majority of people are not "rich". And it's the rich who own the corporations that make these decisions that affect the climate and how fuels are used.
I.e. you are proposing austerity for the masses that will NOT stop climate change. You are the problem as you are shilling for big business. My point is there ISN'T anything individuals can do to stop climate change. We have to hold the rich and corporate owners accountable.
There's very little, without systemic change. But blaming the 7 companies is too easy, as well. Imagine, if you will - what happens if the 7 companies tomorrow simply say 'you convinced us - we will completely cease operations tomorrow'. Lots of dead people.
This is a black and white fallacy. The truth is that scaling down operations is much more effective and feasible than anything any one average person could do. Those 7 companies don’t have to all shut down to achieve a fraction of the capacity that they produce emissions at.
It’s such a bad faith take to say “oh yeah well if they just stopped millions dead”. They don’t have to stop existing to cut down the damage they’re doing.
It absolutely is a fallacy - but then I think the "its just 7 companies" is a fallacy too. It gives the false impression that CO2 emissions can be tackled trivially simply - just sort those companies out, and we are sorted. We aren't. Setting aside for a moment, the criminal lobbying they have been doing, those companies are meeting current demand. Let's say they don't shut down - lets say they halve capacity tomorrow. What happens, in your opinion?
ok play it through a bit, so we shut down those 7 companies - i’m not sure which seven companies people are talking about but i assume it’s related to this statistic Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions so let’s just shut them all down…
mother nature breaths a sigh of relief as billions of people die because of the collapse of global infrastructure, world governments collapse, desperate conflicts erupt around the world with warlords taking over oil reserves and production facilities… the handful of dictators with working tanks and who only care about wealth and power subjugate the helpless and starving masses promising food and prosperity when victory comes…
Now the planet has been purged of everyone who actually cares about the climate, every available source of food and energy is stripped in a frantic battle for survival - how many people do you know that would let their kids freeze to death and how many people do you know that’d go out and chop down a tree to burn? A couple of months of winter and every tree in every city would be felled.
And there it is. That’s the problem with the sort of naive idealists that frequent communities like this, fuck_cars, etc.
Their concerns are valid but their own ideas for how the world should work, how the problems should be solved are just as dangerous as the root of the problem. Maybe even moreso, in some cases.
it’s not entirely irrational though, if you’re convinced you’re in a frying pan and doom is imminent then it can feel like your only option is to jump out into the fire - and maybe it will work out better, maybe we’d land on a recently added log and spring to safety… personally i’m more about doing some parcour out the pan and along and the wooden handle or jumping onto the hand holding the spatula and burning through the flesh of the beast that got us into this dire situation.
By that i of course mean developing a powerful open-source movement and an educated community which is able to transition to better ways of living without hurting anyone, it’s harder and far more complex but something we absolutely must strive for.
Hey bud, I’m the guy you asked what in my opinion would happen if companies halved their consumption over night. I just wanted you to know that I replied, but due to the fact that the mod of this place disagreed with something I had to say about cruise liners, I got banned and all my comments erased.
Good luck, and try not to disagree with the power tripper here.
I do not. The gist of my reply was just that cutting production by half doesn’t have to happen over night. Setting a scaling goal of five years, for example, would give ample time for people to adapt and less environmentally strenuous alternatives to arise.
Anyway, I’m not trying to say that change doesn’t have to come from the bottom as well. I’m also not super keen on continuing this conversation in the wake of being wholesale banned for talking about corporate interests. It just kind of left a bad taste in my mouth.
Thank for taking part. I appreciate it - and I would have like to have explored this with you. I do appreciate batting ideas about with pople of differing viewpoint. I think we botgh have the same goal in mind
We do need to talk about power but we also have to stop pretending individual sacrifice especially in the West is not required. For example we should all be going fir a plant based diet ASAP
And then others will rise to take their place. If the demand is there, someone will try to meet it. All long as the vast majority of people are not willing to make changes in their own life, then everything else is pointless, and it will all fail.
EDIT: Stealing another comment to add to this:
what would happen if everyone turned around and said ‘you know what, fuck companies that sell drinks in bottles i’m never going to be without my refillable bottle’ how long would coca-cola keep producing 100 billion plastic bottles a year? what would they do with them?
But if James Quincey said ‘fuck it, I’m not producing plastic bottles anymore they’re bad for the planet’ but 8 billion people said ‘oh ok, well we’re still going to regularly buy drinks in plastic bottles’ the numbers of plastic bottles being made would dip slightly but only while Ramon Laguarta rushed to spend the flood of money now coming in to scale up production at pepsi co.
All long as the vast majority of people are not willing to make changes in their own life, then everything else is pointless, and it will all fail.
The “vast majority” can’t make big changes in their life because they cannot afford to. The vast majority live either in poverty or paycheck to paycheck. If you live paycheck to paycheck, you are going to buy the cheapest stuff because that’s all you can buy. And the cheapest stuff is usually that which is produced by the worst companies. “Voting with your wallet” is fine and dandy, but it doesn’t work at all if there are not equal opportunities both for new businesses to flourish as healthy competition (without being squashed or bough by the already stablished corps) and for the customer to choose.
If we want to introduce actual change, it’s faster and more effective to regulate in some manner the behaviours of those companies and the system that enables them, but of course, that is no easy task either.
I’m copy pasting something because it’s easier than writing it all again:
Though experiment:
Tomorrow is election day in your country. The stout environmentalists win control of the government and proceed to make the following changes:
Carbon tax, which increases the price of gas, which itself results in an increase in shipping anything. It also directly raises the price of anything that produces carbon in its manufacture process, such as anything made of plastic.
An end to meat subsidies - maybe even a tax on it - and an increase to subsidizing other types of farming.
A ban on single use plastics.
And anything else you think might be necessary.
Now the questions: How long until they get kicked out? How long until the protests and riots? How long until a new government undoes it all?
I’m assuming you’re not naive and you don’t live in a bubble. You should know the majority of people will not be fans of any of that; and with the way it usually goes and the pendulum swings, the government that follows it will be a far right one.
Most people can definitely afford to eat less meat and consume less in general, even if they can’t afford to buy the most environmentally friendly things. And if they can’t even afford that, they won’t be able to afford the environmental policies either; you would need much deeper change than you would get by voting for a major political party.
also we need communities already experimenting with living like that or it’ll be a mess, for example I’ve never eaten meat in my life and as a kid people couldn’t even begin to grasp that it was possible - i’d constantly get asked ‘what do you eat then?!’ but I haven’t heard that question in years, closest to it is likely to be ‘what do you have at Christmas’ then when i say nut roast they no long say ‘whats that?’ they say ‘oh i had a great nut roast once…’
As a kid family holidays used to involve stopping at the only cafe that had something without meat on the menu, now even McDonalds has a wide vegan selection (in the uk). If someone had come out in the 80s and ended the meet subsidies then it would fail instantly, if it happened now there would certainly be a large backlash but the majority of people would be able to shift their consumption patterns without many problems - the policy might have a fighting chance. Even the meat-and-two guys that i know regularly have meet free dinners, it’s really common to only eat meat once or twice a week.
Of course if i was made dictator for life i’d bring in sweeping changes that ban all the evil practices which make the meat industry possible, but that’s not going to happen - what is going to happen is it’s going to continue to get easier and cheaper to eat plant based diets, we’re going to see endless headlines like ‘largest dairy producer announces closure amid increasing popularity of oat milk’, it’ll shift from the beef industry having a hugely powerful lobby backed by billions of dollars to the beef lobby being Joe Rogan and Liverking yelling at clouds about how they need to consume flesh to feel manly. When someone suggests banning an awful and disgusting practice within the meat industry the general consensus will be ‘yeah i can go without that if it’s damaging to the environment and cruel to the animals’ so policy change will actually be possible.
Just shrugging and saying ‘it’s not going to happen overnight so i’ll just keep eating meat until it does’ is absolutely mindless, the bath is never going to fill if the tap isn’t turned on - eating without meat helps fund and sustain the systems which makes it possible, it helps make it easier for other people to also eat without meat – even if it’s only dropping meat where it’s convenient it’s helping take power from the meat industry, by making a conscious choice to avoid meat you’re joining an increasing number of people who do the same which represents a sizeable portion of the market - the more that gets catered to the large it grows.
Yes it’s true that no one person is going to change things but when we start to move in the right direction it makes it easier for others to move that way also. This is the same with reusable bottles, using public transport, refilling containers at the store instead of single use plastics…
Then congratulations! You are part of a different kind of 1%, and you perfectly understand what the other user is saying and are just arguing for the sake of arguing.
The reality is, most people don’t want to make any changes. You can’t change the system if the people themselves are not opening to change.
Though experiment:
Tomorrow is election day in your country. The stout environmentalists win control of the government and proceed to make the following changes:
Carbon tax, which increases the price of gas, which itself results in an increase in shipping anything. It also directly raises the price of anything that produces carbon in its manufacture process, such as anything made of plastic.
An end to meat subsidies - maybe even a tax on it - and an increase to subsidizing other types of farming.
A ban on single use plastics.
And anything else you think might be necessary.
Now the questions: How long until they get kicked out? How long until the protests and riots? How long until a new government undoes it all?
I’m assuming you’re not naive and you don’t live in a bubble. You should know the majority of people will not be fans of any of that; and with the way it usually goes and the pendulum swings, the government that follows it will be a far right one.
I find articles like this so frustrating. It feels like it is aimed at being a wake-up call to the reader, but at the same time offers no solutions, no advice and still lays the blame at the feet of the average person for not doing enough. “What we have done to ourselves” is not advocate enough I guess?
Perhaps I’m not the target audience for the article. I grew up in an environmentally conscious home we’ll before it was trendy and have been worried about climate change for as long as I can remember. It’s hard to see an article like this as anything other than an effort to drive traffic…
I’d be happy to hear what others got out of the article if it was more positive than my read of it.
Not all doomers are oil industry shills. The collapse community has known for sometime that the data suggests we are fucked. But I’m not supposed to say that because it makes others feel sad. We may be fucked, but we can still fuck the people who fucked us. We should fight back because we’ve got nothing better to do.
Dead on accurate. These oil execs know they’ll be dead before there’s any significant impact to them. They justify it as the cost of doing business and ensuring they continue to get a fat paycheck. There’s clear evidence of major corps like the tobacco industry seeding doubt and spreading misinformation when it came out how dangerous their product was. Hell even look at things like the corporate influence in the creation of the food pyramid. Really? Everyone needs a giant fat serving of carbs?? They sure do when there’s money to be made.
It’s no different with climate change. Spread misinformation, seed doubt, when that doesn’t work pivot and play on the despair as your angle. Whatever keeps the paychecks flowing and people focused on anything but the truth.
The greed of humanity will ultimately be our undoing.
I’m honestly super sick of this take. I keep seeing people say that the oil industry is responsible for doomers, and it’s as bad as climate denial.
Is it though? Of all the people I know, the only ones that take the situation at all seriously are the ones that actually truly believe we are in serious trouble. Only those people are voting primarly based on climate issues, taking part in protests, or making changes to lifestyle. The vast majority of people don’t actually believe we are in serious trouble. The vast majority of media is still feeding us the line that things are basically going to be fine with some incremental changes.
Oil companies are advocating for market solutions to the problem and continuing the status quo as long as possible. The idea they are trying to cause the greater population to actually believe they are doomed is insane. A population that actually believes they are doomed might take drastic action.
I dunno, I have the unfortunate experience of association with a lot of libertarian types. All of them believe we’re in serious danger, all of them believe it’s too late, and all of them are leaning hard into that “fuck you I got mine” mentality because it’s too late for anything else.
They do nothing to help except vote libertarian or green.
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