So now that microplastics are the new hotness, industry is going to run the same plays they did when climate change became critical: blaming and shaming us for their mistakes, and trying to sell us more stuff to work around the problem they created.
I’d love a new washer and dryer, but I live in an apartment and don’t get a choice and I can’t buy a house because housing is now an investment vehicle. I’d love to hang out my clothes to dry, but because we’ve gutted healthcare, social services and housing, they get stolen by homeless and/or addicts. I’d love to not have to wash clothes as often, but I have to go into the office and look “presentable” because we can’t have commercial real estate lose value by having people work from home.
How about we stop shaming people and bust the proverbial balls of capitalism instead?
I get the sentiment, and you’re not wrong! Just wanted to point out that you don’t need a clothes line, a collapsible drying rack will work great! You can also avoid synthetics when possible, and more people should. Not saying you have to, but synthetics tend not to last as long because they shed so much, among other reasons. Most synthetics are some derivative of plastic, and others are awful environmentally at production. Plenty of alternatives feel nicer and last longer than polyester for example. Avoid a synthetic blend flannel or sweater, buy 100% cotton or another natural fabric. Or try a tencel/cotton blend for softness if you want! Your clothes will last longer, look better, and fit nicer. There’s a reason that jeans from the 70s are still wearable while the $300 designer stretch jeans from Nordstrom start to pill after a few wears/washes and lose their shape and form. Real Denim is just tightly woven cotton yarns.
You can also avoid synthetics when possible, and more people should.
The same issue applies to this as it does to most things, groceries springs to mind.
Just like with food where the fresh, healthier food options are often more expensive, the same goes for better made and single material made clothing.
The boots theory is a great example of what I mean.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
That’s not necessarily true though when it comes to single material fabrics these days believe it or not! You can buy 100% cotton at a lower price point than lots of synthetics. Pick a store really. For example Old Navy is pretty cheap - they sell 100% cotton shirts, denim, shorts, etc. they also sell synthetic blends, and the pricing is more a function of style than anything. Jump to a higher tier like JCrew - same is true. Nordstrom. Bloomingdale’s. Designer boutique. Hell look at jeans. You can get full denim 501s and wrangler on the same shelf as synthetic, same brand and price point. You can get incredibly well made Flanels that are cotton/tencel blends from brands like Patagonia, kuhl, or Fjallraven, or you can get a 60/40 poly/cotton blend from faherty for more money. And in all these cases, what holds true is they’ll last you longer, no matter what price point you picked.
It also swings the other way where you can buy much more expensive 100% cotton items at a huge markup over synthetics. Look at reigning champ as a good example - same cotton everyone else uses, huge markup for reasons that their customer base feels are fair enough to keep paying for their stuff. You can also buy synthetics at a huge mark up way over those already marked up cottons. Many designer brands want you to wrap yourself in a 35% polyester, 30% spandex sweatshirt for $400.
One caveat is that in general, finding single material fabrics is all around more difficult for women than men, mainly as a function of style trends. But even that’s swinging the other way currently.
You not believing it doesn’t make it untrue. Where do you shop? What do you buy? Find me a reputable store that doesn’t carry non-blend fabrics, and I’ll find you one around the same price point that does. Nobody suggested you had to go to Old Navy, in fact I used it to demonstrate that even cheap places (Old Navy is all about cheap) have non synthetic options. They’re a baseline that holds true as you advance to just about every price point.
Wow, you like being wrong huh? A circle is defined in mathematics as a type of line which is composed of infinite number of points that are equidistant from a given point.
Pedantics, actually. Much like this comment. Semantics would be applicable if you weren’t trying to be superior by dropping a single ambiguous sentence.
Since you left the meaning of your comment ambiguous I interpreted it as your lack of understanding what the mathematical definition of a circle is.
Based on the comment thread it seems like you need all the help you can get. I hope you find it!
You applied a mathematical definition to a common lingual term, which was used in the exact same fashion in the response as your original use. That’s using semantics, as you’re arguing about the lingual definition as it applies to a phrase.
The pedantic part is you using a semantic argument just to be a cunty little shit head on the internet.
It does not, we’re both sharing anecdotal information.
Where do you shop? What do you buy?
I don’t buy a lot of clothes now, most of my clothing is several years old at least. I buy what feels comfortable, that I like the look/design of and that seems to be well made.
Find me a reputable store that doesn’t carry non-blend fabrics, and I’ll find you one around the same price point that does.
I never said d stores don’t carry non-blend fabric clothing, simply that disadvantaged portions of the population often don’t have the luxury of choice others do and that they are stuck in a system designed to keep it that way.
Nobody suggested you had to go to Old Navy, in fact I used it to demonstrate that even cheap places (Old Navy is all about cheap) have non synthetic options.
You did not, and I never said you did. I pointed out that the cheap example you used was fast fashion, which many cheap stores are. Which was an ironic choice on your part because fast fashion could be a poster child for the boots theory.
They’re a baseline that holds true as you advance to just about every price point.
Yeah, I saw your other examples of places like Patagonia which, again, is ironic because that could be the other side of the boots theory representing what “rich” people would buy.
It’s like you didn’t even read what I posted originally. I think you should check your privilege.
We are not, yours in anecdotal, mine can be verified and duplicated.
disadvantaged portions of the population often don’t have the luxury of choice others do and that they are stuck in a system designed to keep it that way.
And I pointed out that every price point has these options, and offered to demonstrate it. Again not anecdotal. Unless you cannot buy clothes at all, this is not an honest assessment. You “don’t believe it”, but it is true. If you cannot afford to buy clothing at all, this entire thread doesn’t apply to you.
Yeah, I saw your other examples of places like Patagonia which, again, is ironic
That is not what irony means. Saying that a brand where the average price of a new item is $20, and a brand where the average price is over $100 both have single fabric options is not ironic. It’s data validation.
You’re complaining to complain and/or arguing to argue.
You’re complaining to complain and/or arguing to argue.
No, I was engaging you comment to point out your singular perspective and privilege and now you’re upset about it.
I’m done now though. You’re either a corporate shill who’s literally doing what the original commenter stated or someone who just has this need to feel superior. Either way I’ve spent enough of my time on you.
Oh so you came in to argue an incorrect point on fabrics being attainable at any price point, specifically to privilege shame? And your definition of privileged is anyone that can buy clothes, regardless of frugality, and asserting that buying lo get lasting clothes is a good thing (which I did) just re-emphasizes how overtly privileged I am?
More people need to read the millionaire next door. It applies to health as well. Spend a little more on real cuts of steak, chicken, pork, etc and you will be healthier and eat less. Don’t have time to cook you say? There are these wonderful thing called an instant pots and crock pots. They can do the cooking while you do other stuff. Hit the clearance rack in the meat department and/or pay $60/year for Costco where that $60 will save you more money than you can imagine.
Those "peasants" are responsible for the remaining 60 percent. And since those "peasants" also give these wealthy individuals money by buying useless stuff from them, you could even say that it's higher than that.
A valid critique, but also worth mentioning, as discussed in the article, much of the GHG emissions for the top 10% (which includes households down to ~$200k) comes from passive income.
Friendly reminder to check who you bank with and what’s in your 401k if you find yourself in that group.
Basically money is energy. You are using money to buy things which uses energy, stuff produced by machines which need something to run of, not from horses or ppl, but from oil and coal.
If you invest in companies that emit GHGs, then you are helping finance their pollution, and profiting from that.
If you keep your money at a bank that does business with major polluters, your funds are being used by the bank to back loans to those polluters to help them pollute.
Spare change invested in GHGs contributes to climate change.
https://youtu.be/NJ7W6HFHPYs - This video from Climate Town explains how the bank or credit union only keeps a fraction of your money in reserve when you deposit your money in a savings account, certificate of deposit, or other bank account. The bank/CU is investing the majority of your money, and ecological harm is not a consideration when they are choosing investments. When you deposit money with a financial institution it is almost certain that some portion of your money is being invested in ecologically harmful organizations.
Similarly, your 401k funds are likely in index funds or mutual funds that hold significant shares in ecologically and socially harmful companies like ExxonMobil, Nestle, Chevron, Coca-Cola, et. al.
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investment funds exist that ideally exclude ecologically & socially harmful industries, but every ESG fund I have ever encountered is not nearly exclusive enough and has significantly higher fees.
For example - the Vanguard ESG International Stock ETF VSGX excludes adult entertainment, recreational drugs, gambling, weapons, nuclear power, and fossil fuels, yet Nestle is the second largest holding in the fund, and many of the other stocks in the fund likely contribute to environmental and social harm indirectly.
Consider investing in small-businesses and organizations in your local community instead. It is truly bizarre and unique to our time that investing on Wall Street is more accessible than investing on Main Street.
It means nothing to the actual company other than a scoreboard they can point to, as the stock should reflect the performance and outlook of the company.
Except that scoreboard is exactly what they point to when they need a loan or other capital investment to grow their business. Better stock value = bigger/better loans.
Oh, and also the companies are able to release additional stock to raise capital outside of their IPO.
And their executives are rewarded for having high stock value.
This is about collective action, not just one or two people. You seem to be leaning heavily into the same excuses everyone uses when they don’t want to do the right thing if it’s even a small inconvenience. “Why should I do X when there’s a bunch of other people doing Y? It’ll never make a difference.”
would you rather invest at a valuation of $20B or $75B. You’re saying $75B, but the answer is $20B.
I’ve got no idea where you went overboard here, but what I’m saying is, if the company in question is doing significant harm to the planet, don’t invest. Not sure why you thought I meant invest later.
And if the moral argument against profiting from harmful industries isn’t good enough for you, financially you’re introducing risk to your portfolio by choosing to invest in companies that are at high risk of running into regulatory challenges and lawsuits globally.
Boy you sure are acting incredibly dense. You’re acting like I’m implying normal investing guidance doesn’t apply. Please stop making up worst case scenarios to try and justify supporting climate damage. I’m not saying dump all your money into a single solar stock somewhere.
There’s literally hundreds of ETFs & mutual funds focused on avoiding the major polluting businesses. For example, just look at things like SPYX instead of SPY, etc. (Adding an extra bit to emphasize I’m using this as an example, not telling everyone to only invest in SPYX, because I can already see your response coming in laser focused on that one example). There’s countless options, do some homework if you’re investing, as you should be doing regardless of whether or not you care about the climate.
The one that’s currently hardest is target date retirement funds which many use for their 401k. Not because there aren’t enough options, but because many fund managers don’t include those options in their offerings. Your hands may be tied but at least you looked. Contact your fund manager and let them know you’re interested in ESG investing.
I’m not saying dump your money down the drain, but check if your investments can be moved somewhere less harmful.
By contributing to demand for a stock you increase the valuation of that stock. Securities Based Lending is often how companies and executives secure loans and avoid taxable events. By contributing to demand for a stock we facilitate additional funding for the issuer of the stock and it's largest shareholders.
I absolutely agree, cash flow is a much more immediate concern to any company, but one wealthy shareholder divesting can have the same financial impact as ten thousand average citizens boycotting. Local investing is more difficult and risky, but also more rewarding and necessary. It is not just about a monetary return, it is about building social capital and local resiliency.
You're arguing that people should give no consideration to the long-term social and ecological harms of their investments beyond what will make them the most money. By directing our actions in that purely incentivized way we sacrifice everything unprofitable, and that alienation is exactly what causes so many chronic societal issues. I agree that an individual can have very little impact alone, but capitalism places this burden at the individual level.
One of the high-growth sectors in most american’s 401k’s is “Energy”. This is a euphemism for fossil fuel companies, such as Shell, BP, and the various supporting industries. Another high-growth sector is “home construction,” which is literally an industry that exist to pave over paradises and put in parking lots creating sprawling suburbs in it’s wake that are owned by companies like Blackrock.
To be fair, you can’t really get away from that, especially since you don’t really have the ability to manage your 401k that way. But passive growing investments absolutely feed Capitalism and directly contribute to the massive polluters.
Hard to say what the motivation of this article is, but yea I agree. The article seems listless. They make a grand claim “10% is responsible for 40%!!!” but they dont’ really examine the claim. I absolutely think it’s a true, but without further analysis and a conclusion to be drawn, what is the point? The point of the article as far as I can tell is to advocate for a market based solution that somehow a carbon-based tax will magically make share-holders stop destroying the environment? It’s drivel.
Probably has to do with the investments themselves. You may not be personally ‘picking’ the investments, however, most target funds include investments that have such investments. Source: wife works at a financial institution. Also I’m drinking so Google it ontop of it or something.
Having not read the article, I would wager a guess that because 401k balances are invested in diverse funds, and if the fund composition includes corporations contributing to emissions… and you are making money off their profitability… you are therefore contributing to those emissions. Pick other things to invest in.
I’ll make sure to only invest in hippy communes that are self sustaining and use indigenous clothing and tool making techniques.
Every company on the stock market contributes to GHG emissions. Every company is using electricity produced by fossil fuels, or produces or uses plastic products, or has vehicles that consume fossil fuels.
Companies you invest in benefit from your investment in a variety of ways. Your investment provides the financial resources needed for the company to grow and expand. Your investment helps companies develop new products, hire more talent, expand into new markets, and improve their overall operations. Your investment essentially contributes to the company’s success.
Not really. Share price has no bearing on financial health. Sometimes share prices have no connection with reality. Tesla is a perfect example. It has a market capitalization of 720 billion. Market cap. Is just the number of all classes of stock multiplied by their respective number of shares. I.e. how much it would cost to buy the company in it’s entirety. General motors has a market cap of 45 billion. Toyota, the world’s largest auto maker by sales, costs 264 billion. Without getting into P/E ratios and book values, stop to think about this. Tesla would have to sell more cars than Toyota, Volkswagen, GM, and Ford, COMBINED to be worth 720 billion. That is after a substantial drop in share price.
The way security analysts and prudent investors evaluate a company’s financial health is by looking at the financial statements they have to file every quarter with the SEC and make publicly available, calculating ratios, and comparing them to prior reporting periods, other companies in the same industry, and the overall market of the industry they are in.
As far as reputation, it probably doesn’t matter. The only shareholders anyone cares about are insiders and large shareholders (big enough to file a form 4) actively managed funds, and super Investors like Warren Buffett.
But paying stock owners their share of the profits is, when you get right down to it, the reason BP exists. Maximum profit for a company like BP, and their shateholds, means minimizing their expenses and maximizing revenue. So sell as much gas as possible, and pay as little to offset the CO2 as possible. I don’t think it’s grasping at straws.
Well 401k’s specifically replaced Pensions that were a much better bet for workers and required companies to fund them etc. Now all those other things exist so that people rich enough to leverage them all can minimize their tax burden. They are just Tax Shelters.
Pensions did go insolvent and laws were changed so that companies could include their pension fund as assets and leverage against them, also other companies could come and buy the fund and then claim that since they don’t offer a pension to their employees none of those pension protections applied.
Those situations could have been resolved in a way that was pro-worker, instead pensions were dissolved and all workers are encouraged to tithe to wall street since that is the “right way” to do things in our shitty society.
I do grasp writing, that is specifically why I asked this question, because the headline framing it as a loss is negative to people who aren’t already supportive of climate action.
I do grasp writing, that is specifically why I asked this question, because the headline framing it as a loss is negative to people who aren’t already supportive of climate action.
That’s a lot of sentence. I would’ve used em dashes or maybe a semicolon to break up those thoughts.
Asshole replies aside: I took a technical writing course in which we learned that people struggle talking to Americans because we are obsessed with using negatives as a form of emphasis. How are you doing? Not bad! Thank you! No problem. Do you mind doing me a favor? Not at all!
This is especially difficult who already struggle with affirmatives and then need to translate the negative. Combine this with Americans’ constant need to appeal to power, you get headlines like “Goliath Loses Battle to David With a Stone,” or “No one saw This Heat Coming,” or “What You’re Probably Doing Wrong With Your Used Toilet Paper.”
Fascinating. NGL it’s really gratifying to learn how openly the rest of the world notices America’s cultural detachment. They think they can hold onto a global monopoly of culture, while having the social skills of the average 9 year old. Things are clashing and friction is mounting, as it should.
Huh, I know people make a lot of assumptions online, but I hadn’t felt that myself until now realizing you assume I learned this recently. I took this class nearly 15 years ago. You put some respect in your tone when you address your elders, you little bastard!
I’m calling it now: we early-phase millennials are gonna be real cussy old folks. Telling harrowing tales of tubgirl, jumpscare videos, and 90% of our celebrities being pedos or cultists.
Except for " Do you mind…" I see you point and never noticed it before. I’m guilty of most of these.
However, the polite response to “Do you mind?” is “no.” Otherwise you would mind, and if you do mind, you wouldn’t want to do the favor. It’s actually a weird question because it basically flips the meaning of “yes” and “no” you usually expect.
You’re correct, yet still just agreeing with me. You’re trying to establish if someone would be comfortable performing a task using a negative. You’re not asking “would it be convenient for you to pick up milk on you’re way home?” Instead you’re forcing someone to consider reasons why it would not be convenient to perform a task.
To you and I, “why don’t you” is a direct request, but only because we understand the colloquial meaning. This is a really tough request for English language learners because it combines a negative with what is technically a rhetorical question and can sound like an accusation. Example: in college, when my roommate who’d been outside of China for the first time in his life and was now living in Texas left our dorm door open for a friend (unbeknownst to me), I requested of him, “why don’t you close the door?” This visibly confused him and he told me that he closes the door. He closed it this morning and yesterday. He always closes the door.
So “why don’t you close the door” is only understand to be a direct request, but it’s really a rhetorical question turned on its head and abused by English speakers everywhere. “Please close the door,” is a far more clear example of a direct request.
The sad fact is the best use of used plastic is probably burning it to create electricity.
It likely won’t be recycled or reused and even if it is, it’s likely that will only happen once (as recycled plastic is low quality).
So the option is bury it so it can outlast humanity underground or burn it to free up the carbon for hopefully regular consumption in the carbon cycle.
The only way plastic makes sense, then, is if we start using Carbon extracted from CO2 to create plastic.
The vast majority of plastic is carbon, hydrogen, oxygen chains. You can burn those completely such that the only thing released is CO2 and water vapor (just need a hot enough temperature). A scrubber can easily catch anything that breaks that assumption.
If you do an incinerator and don’t harvest the power, you can even turn it into just a carbon block by filling the chamber with nitrogen and pumping the temp up to 500C. That’ll leave you with carbon blocks and water vapor.
not to create more co2
Plastic decomposes in weird ways that leaving it in the environment is worse than taking it out all together. The reason microplastic is everywhere isn’t because we have been burning plastics, it’s because we’ve been (improperly) burying it. I worry a lot more about a leaky landfill letting it’s pollutants seep into local water systems.
Further, part of plastic degradation is into those more toxic carbon chains and methane. It’s frankly better to just bite the bullet and turn it into CO2.
1, there’s no burning plastic completely. We can’t even burn real fuel completely.
2,
Incineration of plastic waste in an open field is a major source of air pollution. Most of the times, the Municipal Solid Waste containing about 12% of plastics is burnt, releasing toxic gases like Dioxins, Furans, Mercury and Polychlorinated Biphenyls into the atmosphere. Further, burning of Poly Vinyl Chloride liberates hazardous halogens and pollutes air, the impact of which is climate change. The toxic substances thus released are posing a threat to vegetation, human and animal health and environment as a whole. Polystyrene is harmful to Central Nervous System. The hazardous brominated compounds act as carcinogens and mutagens. Dioxins settle on the crops and in our waterways where they eventually enter into our food and hence the body system. These Dioxins are the lethal persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and its worst component, 2,3,7,8 tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), commonly known as agentorange is a toxic compound which causes cancer and neurological damage, disrupts reproductive thyroid and respiratory systems. Thus, burning of plastic wastes increase the risk of heart disease, aggravates respiratory ailments such as asthma and emphysema and cause rashes, nausea or headaches, and damages the nervous system. Hence, a sustainable step towards tomorrow’s cleaner and healthier environment needs immediate attention of the environmentalists and scientists. This review presents the hazards of incineration; open burning of plastics and effe
Your first point is not a complete thought; disregarding the extreme vagueness of the statement unto non-relevance (seriously, share what you’re smoking).
Your second point is about open field incineration, something the other poster never advocated for.
If you’re being disingenuous it’s done poorly. If not, you read like a loon talking to himself and quoting about clouds when folks are discussing gaseous containment.
If you don’t understand my first point, you’ll have to explain what you don’t understand for me to help you out instead of being snarky
My second point is not “about open field incineration”, the first sentence of the abstract of the paper includes that phrase, but it’s a whole damn paper. It’s about how the plastics are not just simple bonds of carbon and oxygen and have a lot of really quite bad chemicals you don’t want to throw out into the atmosphere, which op wad claiming was fine.
For anyone who doesn't read the article but gets upset at the title because climate friendly meat actually exist. It's about a new label for meat that says "Environmental Friendly". Similar to the certificate for "Organic" or "GMO-FREE".
And the certificate is bullshit. Even in it's strictest form you only need a 10% reduction in CO2 production to the industry standard to qualify. Which is nothing.
But it gets worse, the rating is done by third party companies who have leeway in setting the industry standard. One company even has the industry standard set higher than the actual industry average.
So overall the certificate is bullshit that makes people feel better but doesn't actually do anything.
I would argue lab grown meat is fine, but afaik it is still more resources intensive to produce than, like, tofu. And it's not like it's going to be available in appreciable amounts in the near future.
Efficiency of calorie acquisition is not the same as sustainability though. Culling an overpopulation of deer that keeps a forest from developing or an invasive species that is wreaking havoc on an ecosystem can both be a net positive on the ecosystem and in terms of sequestering carbon. Meanwhile growing crops on former rainforest land is a clear net negative.
Those are edge cases though of course and with your average store selection, going with plant-based will just about always be more sustainable.
you have to ask, why are they becoming overpopulated though? And the answer is, because animal ag. Farmers kill the natural predators because they fuck with their animals that we eat.
The reason those predator species got killed to near extinction is probably a bit more broad and ugly than just concern for lifestock.
But you’re correct of course that the main reason for the current overpopulation of many non-invasive species is a lack of predators and they should be reintroduced. But that’s also not a thing that can happen from one day to the next, so even in the most optimistic scenarios some degree of human wildlife management still has a purpose.
Of course it exists. There is venison and other wild hunted meat. In many places these animals have to be shot anyhow for population control. Overhunting would be the only issue here.
Then there are purely pasture fed animals. Especially with goats this is common . But there are also some cattle and pig farms. As long as the land itself wasn't deforested and is given enough time to repair itself, it's perfectly sustainable.
Then there are things like keeping chicken in your garden that are only fed kitchen scraps. Depending on your household size you can even keep 1-2 pigs that way.
If any of these options are available to you, they can be more environmental friendly than some plant based foods. Locally sourced version is definitely better than having plants shipped across the globe.
As you said the only issue is the quantity and also the desire for premium cuts. A lot of meat is currently wasted because it's "undesirable". Some parts will find their way into animal food but a lot also just gets thrown away.
At the end I said at the volume of consumption we have. If everyone switched to wild game we’d instantly go from over population to over hunting and that’s not sustainable. You wouldn’t be able to support the volume with pasture raised without deforestation either. Raising your own animals also wouldn’t match the volume that people eat meat currently either. Even if we were more efficient with the meat we use I still think we’d be orders of magnitude off. I’m not totalitarian anti meat, I just don’t see any path to sustainability without huge decreases in consumption. The things you pointed out are great, but I think we can’t mislead people into thinking that will be enough for them to not have to change their eating habits.
Do you vote? Because it’s the same principle - how one person votes might be irrelevant, but millions of people voting is powerful. This is true even though corporations have outsized influence on the political process.
Likewise, a single person deciding to not eat meat one day a week or replace one car journey with cycling is nothing in the global scheme of things, but a billion people all doing it will have more impact on the environment than any corporation ever could.
I see your point, though I think the comparison isn’t quite accurate. My one vote doesn’t get canceled out many times over by the vote of a billionaire (though I suppose you could argue that lobbying by that billionaire could indeed cancel it out.
I guess I’m just growing pessimistic. For as much as I personally do, I feel its a drop in the water that is negated 1000 times over by corporations and wealthy individuals. I’m also tired of the narrative being focused on individual effort instead of pressuring corporations etc. to take more responsibility. But both individual and corporate/government action are needed, I suppose, if we’re going to save ourselves…
That billionaire doing the right thing is going to force the same lifestyle changes anyway. Meat tycoon shuts down operations. Now no meat is available for purchase- vegan is the only option. Coal plants shut down. Blackout hours are enforced while battery infrastructure catches up. Auto makers shut down operations. Public transit is clogged until capacity increases, more people start biking. Airlines drastically cut available flights. No long distance travel for you until high speed rail can be built. Shipping magnates vessels are decommissioned. Many goods are either more expensive or entirely unavailable.
I keep reading that. But it’s not that simple. Corporations provide what individuals want. Their exploitation of the world’s resources and the damage to the climate is a side product of that. They aren’t a completely separate entity that do what they do just to be evil.
Governments need to heavily restrict corps and how they operate. Which will come with increased prices and limitations to the people. Which is unpopular and will mean that those politicians won’t get back into office…
Which is why nothing will happen and we are all fucked
How about instead this “personal responsibility” bullshit we focus on the actual causes of global warming, I.e. massive corporations that create the majority of greenhouse gasses
Why has it to be either, or? We need both. Systemic and behavioural changes on all levels. And we need it now. We no longer have any time left to shift the blame back and forth! I’m getting so sick of this blame game!
It’s 100% personal responsibility, it’s just that part of that responsibility is to vote/convince others for more systemic change. All the kids just blaming the “biggest 100 companies” while not voting and making no lifestyle changes are just as bad as the people they critizise.
If you put it this way: sure. And those famous “biggest 100 companies”, which are constantly used as a cheap excuse to not do anything on a personal level, are run by maybe 1,000 or so individuals. And employ a few 100,000 individuals.
All decisions are 100% personal responsibility, because entities like corporations or nations can’t decide anything. It’s always individual people.
Yeah I mean I agree with you. Most people who won’t even take basic personal actions like not flying on vacation twice a yeah and not buying a stupid oversized car. If those people were put in the same position as these CEOs you can bet your left buttcheek that they would maximize profits in the exact same way. We need to both take individual action and also hold each other accountable by changing the law and applying social pressure.
You didn’t. My point was more that voting isn’t enough. Just because there are worse people, that doesn’t mean that we are free of blame. The entire west is living very unsustainable lifestyles. So we both need to stop the big polluters by voting and we also need to do our own part to strive towards reaching sustainability.
If everyone suddenly changed their lifestyle to be more sustainable, world would still go to shit. Because again, individuals combined contribute minimally compared to corporations individually.
Not to mention, “carbon footprint” is a myth made by british petroleum and spread by big oil. It is made exactly to scare people like you, making them think responsible for problems not caused by individuals.
Only way to combat climate change is systematic, not individual. You can do you and be more sustainable if you want, but don’t spread lies made by the ones actually responsible.
If everyone changed their lifestyle the we would solve the climate crisis. It’s not like the big corporations release co2e because it’s fun, they do it because the people want the products (and they want them at a cheap price). Corporations are no angels by any means but they are directly downstream from the people.
It’s obviously more complicated than that but the idea that big corporations have the sole responsibility is just shifting the blame. You are still responsible for the portion that you put into the atmosphere.
@Anemia@TheBlue22
It's not quite as simple as that. There are the carbon emissions we actively produce such as fuel in motor vehicles. Then there are passive emissions from transporting items such as foodstuffs which we are not directly responsible for. So changing lifestyle can only achieve so much. Feedback mechanisms such as carbon sequestation through planting trees needs balancing against additional gasses from melting permafrost etc. A global government level effort is what is needed
I absolutely agree that a global political effort is required to force companies and people to make the required changes. Even if the transportation is an indirect emission I would still say that the consumer is largely responsible. Like if I buy an avocado that is flown from South America to Sweden then I ought to take that emission into account when considering the purchase.
The only emissions that i would fully ascribe to the companies are the hidden emissions that the consumer cant be expected to know of. An example would be a big swedish meat company selling meat as “swedish meat” but in reality they took swedish raised animals, transporting them to poland for slaughter and then back to save a bit of money.
@Anemia
I agree that there is a lot consumers can do through personal action, companies and corporations too. It needs a big all round effort. But many people on low incomes have difficulty in making environmental choices through no fault of their own. This is in part why I feel it is better to focus on Governmental action while encouraging personal action.
Sure, it absolutely varies from person to person. A poorer person probably isn’t flying around on vacations and eating lots of steak so they aren’t producing that much co2e anyway. So for some people it could be that the only action of any significang impact would be to vote and push the government to force everyone else to stop being so selfish.
The fact that you don’t even realize that capitalism is the problem and then you think voting for one of the two capitalist parties will fix anything, shows you don’t care about the problem enough to think deeply about it at all.
Even if I agreed with you, voting is still important. We need to do what we can in the current situation even if you don’t think it is the full solution.
These actions shouldn’t be discussed on public forums as they are the only actions that can threaten the status quo in anyway and thus are highly discouraged.
How do you think those companies pollute? Are they burning fuel at Shell’s headquarters? Or do they have lots of customers who think their personal behavior doesn’t matter?
If they existed to feed people, not to maximize profits, there'd be no issue. But like so much else that has emerged in the last 15 years, they came to be because money was free and the people with it were taking bets on "disrupting" technologies. Now that money has a cost again, investors are unwilling to wait on the tech to mature, or on the existing markets to crumble.
But… Being more green requires buying and using less things, which is bad for the economy. Unfortunately we cannot just switch to green energy, we have to drive less, consume less, etc.
And who do you think is going to push back on that? How about the people who sell us stuff…
And how much money do you have to donate to politicians? Because it’s probably not billions of dollars… but they have it, and they will use it.
I am not saying we should not try, but I am saying that we shouldn’t ask, we should demand, that things change. But when politicians won’t listen to you because of the fat stacks of cash stuffed in their ears… We will inevitably be closer to step 3, and if that happens, we’d better be organized and ready to build something better.
Totally! Living a less consumerist lifestyle is excellent if that’s your preference - and I think there are serious mental and emotional benefits from trying to live a life aligned with your values. But to build a climate movement, making people feel guilty for individual choices isn’t a winning strategy. People need hope to sustain themselves for the long battle. We need to keep the pressure on governments that can make the policies and regulations that will hold the real sources of emissions - massive businesses - accountable for the harm they’ve done and force them to make the kind of systemic changes we need to draw down emissions as fast as possible.
Another attempt to take a problem that huge corporations are causing and trying to push it on people. This is like the whole “turn your thermostat down X degrees to go green” when like 10 companies are responsible for killing the planet.
Im bored at work, and you’ve given me a mathematical itch to scratch.
A quick search tells me that a liter of gasoline being burned emits 2.3 kg of CO2. Another quick search, after digging through a few weasel words, tells me a liter of jet fuel emits 3.16 kg of CO2 when burned.
I ride a motorcycle (975 Nightster for reference) to work most of the time, and it gets 100 km on 5 liters pretty easily. Riding to work and back is about 40 minutes, and a total distance of about 33 kilometers round trip.
For me to ride to work, I use ~1.65 liters of gasoline which works out to 3.8 kg of CO2.
A single four-hour flight on the aforementioned private jet is 2,320 liters of jet fuel, which is 7,331 kg of CO2. To offset that, I’d need to ride my bicycle or walk to work for 1,929 days or approximately 7 years.
Some things that are needed to exist in a society are created in a very environmentally unfriendly way. People don’t have the choice to just not participate in the economy.
Who has money to pay for name brand anything these days. It also doesn’t help that their product sucks. Seriously I had to buy a bag of their chicken wings the other week and the product was mostly breadcrumbs and tiny little chicken drumsticks. These companies practice the worst sort of shrinkflation and then act surprised when people stop buying their product.
For some people they need a sufficient meat replacement to be able to give up meat. People with ARFID for example who already have very limited food options and have a preference for meat can find it very difficult to just have vegetarian meals
Many (probably most) vegetarians or vegans didn’t start that way, so having the option to have some familiar foods without the meat is nice, beyond stuff for example is not cheap where I live, so it’s a treat to have one, but sometimes you just feel like a greasy hamburger that tastes like beef
Because selfish humans love their fucking meat and they don’t care that animals are locked into prisons where they can barely move or clean themselves, generate massive acres of literal shit pools that pollute large areas, the impact that kind of farming has on the environment….
THAT is why there is motivation for replication. Without it how do you shut down these disgusting cow/pig/chicken torture facilities
Hard agree. People will call you an extemist like child free communities that hate kids, as if the state of the fucking world is reason enough to chill on the kids thing
If you had to choose between being vegan and the environment going to shit, or eating meat and the environment getting figured out, which would you pick?
I find a lot of vegans have a really inaccurate view of non-vegans wrt eating meat. It’s not that we selfishly choose to eat meat despite feeling animals dying is a bad thing. It’s that we don’t think it’s a bad thing that animals die in a farm for food.
And if you realize that, you might find you have things in common with non-vegans. I fight for free-range laws, anti-farm-cruelty laws, etc. I just think you’re morally in the wrong about everyone stopping eating meat. Oddly, a lot of us non-vegans see vegans to be selfish. But we try not to use that to be uncivil towards them.
One thing many vegans don’t get about non-vegans is that we’re frustrated at veganism for the same “reasonable if not valid” reasons. I’ve had some vegan family/friends have serious health issues directly related to their refusal to eat meat. Yes, there’s a lot to that, and it usually spawns from people easily prone to PTSD being made to watch some disgusting documentary about the meat packing industry and going full starvation on and off until all their hair fell out. Is it veganism’s fault? Not directly.
It’s kinda like the Catholic Church. There’s SO FEW pedophiles in the Catholic Church, but for anyone who has been touched by that, the Church itself is tainted far worse than the facts allow.
Agreed, meat serves a specific role within traditional dishes. I find well cooked mushrooms to be one of the better substitutes in most sauce based dishes, though it lacks in protein. If we are going full vegan I believe South Indian to be some of the best cuisine in the world.
There is so much flexibility in cooking. I got some beyond meat Jamaican patties this week and I just genuinely wasn’t impressed with the flavor and texture.
I’d argue that bad implementation of substitutes is generally the culprit here. Meshing well with the cuisine is a better move. I’d rather have a curry rice with herbs filled patty.
Anyway I guess my point is that making meat replacement options just taste “OK” isn’t doing a lot of favors.
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