This is fine, we just need to switch from plastic bugs and make caps attached to bottles and everything will be alright! Together we can fight at least 1% of the carbon emissions from top 100 corporations in the world :)
we have the 80% solution and it’s nuclear power, but whatever y’all keep wailing and gnashing teeth and denying the obvious. I’m just gonna keep on living I guess and hope my house survives the shitty weather.
We have what, 10 years to try stop the planet to get over 1,5ºC? 20 over 2ºC?, that’s pretty much the time it takes to build a new nuclear power plant from 0.
I really think this narrative is counterproductive. It’s not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it’s fun. They’re doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.
No corporation is going to choose more environmentally friendly practices out of the goodness of their own hearts unless those practices are cheaper. And given that that is very rarely the case, we have to look at things like carbon taxes to actually price in the externalities of climate damage. But that is going to increase the prices of some goods, and that requires a level of political will that has proven very difficult to come by. “Just make corporations pay” to fix things, whether that’s a carbon tax or taxes on oil company executive pay or dividends or whatever else the proposal may be is always going to mean “increase prices to compensate for climate-related externalities”.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that all costs of addressing climate change must directly fall on consumers; government subsidies to reduce the costs of environmentally sustainable practices can also be extremely beneficial. But ultimately, this is a problem that we’ve all created, and we’re all going to have to be part of solving it. Blaming corporations, even if partially accurate, doesn’t actually get us any closer to solving things.
You mean this is a problem that the boomers and gen x created. THEY are the generations that controlled the corporations whose only concern was profit. THEY are the generations that pushed consumerism with no regard to the natural world. THEY are the generations that elected the politicians that allowed this all to happen. So here come the millennials and zoomers to clean up their mess, just like everything else they fucked up for the rest of us.
Looking at the voting results for younger generations, this isn’t even close to this simple. Yes, there is a slight shift towards more environmental policies/parties, but it is far from a majority even in the youngest age bracket that is allowed to vote (looking at voting results from the last general election in Germany).
Sure people spending all day on TikTok and playing with cryptocurrencies are actually solving problems created by people who worked in the mines and watched TV.
The truth is, across all generations, everyone is doing anything to live the most confortable life possible according to their convictions, and YouTubers today are not better promoting their shitty gamer drinks or VPN services than a 1980s vendor trying to sell as much diesel engines as possible.
It’s even more true when it comes to corporate, or you’ll have to tell me what’s is Zuckerberg doing for the planet that Bill Gates is not.
At any given time there were people willing to change the world, trying to make it more fair. We’re just never enough. And being a millennial I can assure you it’s not changing anytime soon, even tho things are getting shittier and shittier.
Playing with cryptocurrency (monopoly money/disney dollars) is an incredibly energy intense process. Extremely wasteful and damaging just to play with some made up money.
Yeah, don’t put the blame on us. In all my 29 years of life climate change has always been a big topic no one has done anything about.
We’re living in this ridiculous gerontocracy where old lizards bought by corporations are making decisions to benefit said corporations for the next couple of months, all the while the coming generations suffer.
At this point it’s too late. It’s time to owe up, apologise for being so greedy that you used up the world, leaving nothing for coming generations.
If you’re 29 that means you’re borderline millennial/gen z. Definitely not blaming you here. You are correct, this has been an issue for our entire lives and the generations before us have done exactly nothing to curtail the destruction of our planet
although it’s very common for the earlier generation to blame the later generation for the world sucking (or what they percieve as “sucking”), in this case it doesn’t work because not every boomer and gen-x-er is a CEO or past CEO
like they’re wrong to blame the later generations for this, but that’s because it’s not mainly a generational thing
Yes and No. Yes, it’s not only corporations and we must act ourselves.
No, it’s the rules that set the game. Corporations play within the rules. Politics is owning and can change the rules. The society and corporations will follow accordingly.
If we really want to change we can. Look what happened during Covid. In retrospect, some insane rules (eg Germany kids not allowed to enter playgrounds. Kids couldn’t play to save the elderly). However, society obeyed to those rules.
It’s not us, it’s the rules that must change. In my view this should be the priority.
We did but we’re paying for it now with the rise of “-isms” whose values are built on stifling change. 2-3 years of rapid change might have helped redefine an era of politics for the contrary. TBD I guess.
Indeed. Go out at the street and show you want change. Politics fear many people on streets fighting for their rights. Look at France, Israel. When was last time you fight for your rights?
At least here in Australia parents were using the kids at the playground to socialise (standing right up in each other’s space, holding empty coffee cups to justify no mask), and so there were multiple vectors of infection. That and multigenerational households are more common in some parts of the world, so if the kid brings it home, whole family gets sick, hospital system overloads.
It wasn’t specifically kids suffer so oldies don’t die, but the continuation is that if the oldies are healthy, if anyone needs the hospital, there’ll be staff to look after them.
TL;DR people are taking the piss and making the jobs of HCWs harder… Not like that’s anything new 🙄
Don’t know about your country. The bigger goal in Europe was to keep hospitals working. Goal was not to Triage people cos hospitals were crowed. That happened in the beginning in Northern Italy. At Triage you look at who has biggest chances of survival, who is worth to invest your effort. Guess if it’s the elderly or the younger.
Just to make it clear. It’s fine for me how it worked out in Germany. China is the blue print how it worked bad. But want to make my argument that all that rules were on the shoulders of the younger generation to safe the elderly.
Right now in Germany, we have an insane political discussion about carbon reduction. It’s about actions. Being active. So, your heaters need to be replaced from oil and gas to renewables. Yes, it will cost some money.
Do you think people are following that goal to safe the younger generations? I‘m pretty pissed about my and the older generation. And concerned about the reality for my kids.
yeah it was obviously the same on any playground so the above comment saying it was “to safe elderly” is just very short sighted. Additionaly implying that this was the case in whole of Germany is again wrong. Each federal state had it’s own health regulations in place but yeah some of those were kind of mediated by the ministry of health. Anyway it was a lot more complex than what this comment suggests
Sure it was more complex. Not going to write a Phd here.
My point is, the society accepts rules even tough rules if it’s for everyone. If it’s fair. So, at Covid times younger people, who are less likely to get serious sickness were accepting being „caged“ for two years (exaggerating a bit. If you are 5 years old. 2 years is half of your life!)
I strongly miss this generational fairness when it comes to climate change. Not seeing any step back in terms of carbon consumption/ consumption at all from the older people.
It’s not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it’s fun.
I think we can agree on that corporations are aimed at cheapest way to produce most popular goods at the biggest scale they can achieve for, in the end, produce the biggest possible profit. Thats what corporations are made for: money.
In the end, rich guy gets a yacht, bunker for apocalypse and private residence with AC, private kitchen stuff and anything they want so he will be fine even if its 60C outside. If it will get unbearable, they’ll move to something like Norway and will be fine.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people who live in hot countries will die and millions will be climate refugees.
All that, because producing iphone with coal electricity (simplification, albeit I feel like its close to truth) is 10$ cheaper.
Blaming corporations, even if partially accurate, doesn’t actually get us any closer to solving things.
Swapping to paper bags will not help either. There are only two options to solve the issue:
Government forces corpo to stop wasting our planet (because we don’t have a spare one)
People get torches
1 is impossible because gov will never cut the feeding hand and 2 is just a matter of time until we will get couple hundred millions migrants from Aftica, India, Pakistan etc.
1 is still possible. But, we’re at a tipping point between ending up in some Cyberpunk corporate-ran dystopia and one where the general public actually has the upper-hand and can fend off governmental corruption.
but the thing about voting is that basically every politician is either:
In the pocket of one or more corporations
Literally part of a corporation (or outright owns one)
A politician at who doesn’t have as much power as the former two or is in the pocket of one of them
so we could vote for John StopClimateChange, and then find out that every single thing that Mr. StopClimateChange said about his crusade to stopping climate change was not at all true or was so utterly miniscule in the long run as to be meaningless
This is a defeatist and authoritarian position that the rich and powerful want you to have. They want to feel like you can’t win, so that they vote behind you while you sit at home. Until eventually, they just dismantle democracy altogether and we go back to fiefdoms.
There is clearly one party that is more in line with the goals of fighting climate change than the other. Vote for that group. Vote for that group twice a year.
Blaming the public over corporations is the #1 reason why we are in this mess in the first place. For decades, the narrative has been “it’s your fault and you need to change your habits”. It is a pointless and useless narrative because nobody is going to actively change anything like that until they are forced to. Even when we make moderate, easy efforts to do stuff like recycling, the recycling companies bitch and moan about how they can’t ship this shit off to China to let them do the work, and then throw away most of it, anyway. We PAY recycling companies to recycle this shit and they can’t be bothered to figure out how to recycle it. We PAY THEM to take away materials to use in new products, not the other way around.
In every aspect of people’s lives, you will find that corporations use up 90% of the resources that the general public use because corporations deal in economies-of-scale far bigger than anything a person or even a country can do. Corporations have been pushing the “blame the public” narrative to shift focus away from the decades of abuse they will continue to inflict on the planet. Corporation shit all over everything, and they will continue to do so in the name of profit. That is exactly what they are designed to do.
It takes governmental effort and regulations against the corporations to stop this sort of thing. They do it for clean water, and CFCs, and automotive design, and architecture, and many many other things. Why? Because a minority group of people who are struggling to make a living is never going to have enough power and clout as a large corporation or a government.
They produce like double of what we need, it’s not only what we need and buy, capitalism is extremely inefficient in the usage of resources, which brought us into this mess.
Yeah. Anything that isn’t consumed is destroyed. Case in point, dumpster diving at grocery stores is illegal. Fast fashion companies destroy clothes that don’t sell.
I really think this narrative is counterproductive. It’s not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it’s fun. They’re doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.
No corporation is going to choose more environmentally friendly practices out of the goodness of their own hearts unless those practices are cheaper.
I didn’t get past you contradicting yourself in the first three sentences. Sorry.
Yes! If we’re expecting corporations to grow a conscience and “Do the right thingTM” then we’re doomed.
Though I do think the corporations are somewhat responsible for the narrative that everyone is powerless except for them. People pushing the “but the corporations!” while being unwilling to make any changes themselves are actually just carrying water for them. Promoting malaise and doomerism is just letting them have their way.
At any rate trying to appeal to the corporations to do the right thing is a complete waste of time. We need to make more effort ourselves. Which means making an effort to reduce our own carbon emissions as individuals. While also participating in the political process to create regulations that force the corporations to do the right thing. Because they sure as hell won’t do it on their own no matter how much people whine about it on the internet.
I think as someone who did “the things”, and that’s how I live now, it’s hard to look around and see basically no perceptible difference. The incentive is slim for the individual. The bulk of the population is never going to make those changes.
That’s what I was going to suggest but then I always feel this is a complicated problem and it’s not just one thing. It’s a lot of efforts on in different areas, but regulation is certainly one. It shouldn’t be that hard to do considering it’s one of the main responsibilities of government.
Have you seen how much CEOs get paid?
Corporations can switch to greener alternatives AND pay workers a living wage AND make a profit, without having the consumers pay the price.
All it takes is the willingness of politicians to force them to. Corporations raise prices because they’re allowed to, and they’ll take any excuse they can get to get more money out of people.
Gas prices have skyrocketed. First it was covid’s fault. Then it was the war in Ukraine. All the while gas corporations have been seeing record-breaking profits. It’s all just greed.
They’re doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.
And there are portions of people in our society that will pay for those minimal prices either because they can’t afford anything else, or strictly because it’s convenient for them to spend that little so that they have more money left over to do more stuff in their life elsewhere.
But there are also people that are willing to sacrifice and make changes to their lifestyles and spending practices to accommodate the impacts of their actions.
The same is true with corporations. Some large corpos in the world are actively trying to move towards sustainable, circular economies. I’m doing a lot of research right now into the textile industry, and two of the biggest corporations in that space that I’ve seen are doing decent work on the two fronts I previously mentioned are Lenzing (TENCEL™) and Aquafil (ECONYL®).
Lenzing uses wood of various species from places in Europe, all managed well and FSC/PEFC controlled, to draw out fibers and filaments that are just as fine and useful as polyester fibers/filaments, yet with the added bonus of biodegradability. They also recycle cotton clothing from collection centers in Spain and some larger textile service companies in southern Europe and mix that in with their wood-based feedstock to produce the same rayon fibers.
Aquafil runs on a similar model to Lenzing, except they base theirs on nylon instead of rayon. Aquafil collects ghost nets from around Europe and South America, along with other corporations’ scrap nylon (pre-consumer waste) and post-consumer waste from a number of brands (e.g. sunglasses, jackets, etc.) to regenerate nylon back into the same quality as you would find in virgin materials. Now, I don’t think that plastic is sufficient anymore thanks to the non-degradable waste associated with it, but it’s better than nothing.
Are there flaws with those 2 companies: of course. Their chemical processes might not be 100% closed loop and their claims might be overexaggerated in ways, but it’s better than nothing.
Anyways, what this examples shows is that there are corporations and even people on the ground that are willing to make more sustainable choices because they legitimately see the benefit of doing so compared to convention. Someone else might describe this as a form of an adoption life cycle, where you have those more willing to change and those less willing to change as practices and habits shift over time.
Could government help with that? I believe so. I think that’s just one lever of change though. If you’ve been following solar PV growth over the last decade and a half, then you know about the “contagion” phenomenon: some early adopters pick up solar, only for considerers and even late adopters to do the same as word of mouth and other social drivers influence decision making at a people level.
Could the same happen with other sustainable choices in the economy? I fall more into the early adopter camp, so I would say yes. I think corporations spend a lot of time and marketing convincing their customers that said corporations are the best and only options and that no other alternative exists out there: when there absolutely is or might be. Perhaps all it takes is demonstrating to people, doing, not talking, walking the walk, to change their minds. I think the same tactics could be used, in addition to government intervention.
Bottom-up + top-down is the strategy I’ve heard described by many proponents of sustainability, most notably Al Gore, and I’m all for it too. Luckily humans, at least in some countries around the world, live in free societies and can divide and conquer to work on both of these fronts to affect change.
Apparently there are still loads of people who don’t understand this simple fact and think everything that is done to make the world a better place is for climate change.
I mean, they both show a callous disregard for the fragility of life on this planet, and a keen disinterest in anything but short term convenience and comfort? Oh and profit, can’t forget about MONEY
This argument keeps coming up as an excuse to do nothing.
It’s not my fault but theirs!
Why should I change when they won’t?
I’m just one person against all these big corps, why try?
Even if I stopped, it wouldn’t make a difference.
Pure defeatism neglecting even any bit of responsibility.
Yet people who say this will put another child on the planet, buy yet another product from Apple on release, love fast fashion, buy the cheapest goods possible, toss their meal as soon as they’re full, vote egoistically, take the cheapest trip to wherever, drive a car, toss cigarette butts on the ground, and so much more.
It’s always easier to blame others. Yes, corporations are shit, but remember, they are made up of people like you and I.
WE work there.
WE buy their crap.
WE vote for the same politicians over and over again (or don’t vote at all).
WE put another child on this planet to go through this shit.
WE as humans are the problem.
I feel the need to remind people that the concept of the ecological footprint was invented by BP to direct the focus of climate fears away from large corporations and onto individuals.
What has that to do with anything? Reducing single use plastics is environmental protection which is not the same as fighting climate change. No one who fights against plastics does so for climate change. Stop spreading such nonsense. Not even your linked article claims something like that.
Why would that be orthogonal? Most plastics are created using crude oil and natural gas feedstocks - the creation of these single use plastics directly impacts climate change.
Energv wise plastics are often super cheap to produce especially compared to their reusable and non plastic alternatives. IIRC the CO2 footprint is drastically lower for items like bags and straws made of plastic.
Go look at your local Walmart and it’s bazillion products. They expect to sell almost everything in that store multiple times within a month. All that generates enormous waste on a scale that’s literally impossible for the earth to sustain for another 100 years without total ecological collapse.
We’re living in the single most polluting decade in human history, every decade, since all of us were born. Even if the entire Lemmy user base become subsistence farming monks, the factories would just keep churning out poison unphased.
I’m not saying it’s bad for people to try and consume more responsibly. I’m just saying it doesn’t make a difference over any meaningful time period until there’s a radical change in how our global economy functions.
Environmental catastrophe will continue until we literally cannot ignore it, only then will we do anything substantial about it. Unfortunately that’s just how our society works.
I don’t agree with you. Many individuals changing their behavior is what it takes for an economic shift in our society. By thinking that we don’t have an impact we loose motivation to change our behavior. So if you say you are annoyed by big supermarkets filling our planet with waste that’s fine, I agree. But this needs to lead to a change in behavior, first of yourself, then for those who notice you haven’t died from eating mostly vegan products and buying from local farmers markets and then hopefully for most people in our society.
Companies produce as long as people consume their products. If commnsumers switch to sustainable products (quite different from products advertised as sustainable) companies will have to follow
This is fine, we just need to switch from plastic bugs and make caps attached to bottles and everything will be alright! Together we can fight at least 1% of the carbon emissions from top 100 corporations in the world :)
we have the 80% solution and it’s nuclear power, but whatever y’all keep wailing and gnashing teeth and denying the obvious. I’m just gonna keep on living I guess and hope my house survives the shitty weather.
“No need to change, NUCULAR will save us.”
deleted by creator
We have what, 10 years to try stop the planet to get over 1,5ºC? 20 over 2ºC?, that’s pretty much the time it takes to build a new nuclear power plant from 0.
We are too late.
We had that 10 years ago, now it’s too late to prevent a cascade of collapsing systems. It’s already beginning with insect deaths
I really think this narrative is counterproductive. It’s not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it’s fun. They’re doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.
No corporation is going to choose more environmentally friendly practices out of the goodness of their own hearts unless those practices are cheaper. And given that that is very rarely the case, we have to look at things like carbon taxes to actually price in the externalities of climate damage. But that is going to increase the prices of some goods, and that requires a level of political will that has proven very difficult to come by. “Just make corporations pay” to fix things, whether that’s a carbon tax or taxes on oil company executive pay or dividends or whatever else the proposal may be is always going to mean “increase prices to compensate for climate-related externalities”.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that all costs of addressing climate change must directly fall on consumers; government subsidies to reduce the costs of environmentally sustainable practices can also be extremely beneficial. But ultimately, this is a problem that we’ve all created, and we’re all going to have to be part of solving it. Blaming corporations, even if partially accurate, doesn’t actually get us any closer to solving things.
You mean this is a problem that the boomers and gen x created. THEY are the generations that controlled the corporations whose only concern was profit. THEY are the generations that pushed consumerism with no regard to the natural world. THEY are the generations that elected the politicians that allowed this all to happen. So here come the millennials and zoomers to clean up their mess, just like everything else they fucked up for the rest of us.
Looking at the voting results for younger generations, this isn’t even close to this simple. Yes, there is a slight shift towards more environmental policies/parties, but it is far from a majority even in the youngest age bracket that is allowed to vote (looking at voting results from the last general election in Germany).
What an awkward speech.
Sure people spending all day on TikTok and playing with cryptocurrencies are actually solving problems created by people who worked in the mines and watched TV.
The truth is, across all generations, everyone is doing anything to live the most confortable life possible according to their convictions, and YouTubers today are not better promoting their shitty gamer drinks or VPN services than a 1980s vendor trying to sell as much diesel engines as possible. It’s even more true when it comes to corporate, or you’ll have to tell me what’s is Zuckerberg doing for the planet that Bill Gates is not.
At any given time there were people willing to change the world, trying to make it more fair. We’re just never enough. And being a millennial I can assure you it’s not changing anytime soon, even tho things are getting shittier and shittier.
Playing with cryptocurrency (monopoly money/disney dollars) is an incredibly energy intense process. Extremely wasteful and damaging just to play with some made up money.
Yeah, don’t put the blame on us. In all my 29 years of life climate change has always been a big topic no one has done anything about.
We’re living in this ridiculous gerontocracy where old lizards bought by corporations are making decisions to benefit said corporations for the next couple of months, all the while the coming generations suffer.
At this point it’s too late. It’s time to owe up, apologise for being so greedy that you used up the world, leaving nothing for coming generations.
If you’re 29 that means you’re borderline millennial/gen z. Definitely not blaming you here. You are correct, this has been an issue for our entire lives and the generations before us have done exactly nothing to curtail the destruction of our planet
although it’s very common for the earlier generation to blame the later generation for the world sucking (or what they percieve as “sucking”), in this case it doesn’t work because not every boomer and gen-x-er is a CEO or past CEO
like they’re wrong to blame the later generations for this, but that’s because it’s not mainly a generational thing
You get that nuance out of here, young man/woman! We won’t have that kind of thing round these parts!
Can we please leave these canned responses on reddit
Can we leave simplistic, reductionist arguments on reddit?
Yes and No. Yes, it’s not only corporations and we must act ourselves.
No, it’s the rules that set the game. Corporations play within the rules. Politics is owning and can change the rules. The society and corporations will follow accordingly. If we really want to change we can. Look what happened during Covid. In retrospect, some insane rules (eg Germany kids not allowed to enter playgrounds. Kids couldn’t play to save the elderly). However, society obeyed to those rules.
It’s not us, it’s the rules that must change. In my view this should be the priority.
We did but we’re paying for it now with the rise of “-isms” whose values are built on stifling change. 2-3 years of rapid change might have helped redefine an era of politics for the contrary. TBD I guess.
and guess who lobbies a ridiculous amount to either keep the rules the same or bias it further towards their interests
yep, corporations once again
Indeed. Go out at the street and show you want change. Politics fear many people on streets fighting for their rights. Look at France, Israel. When was last time you fight for your rights?
At least here in Australia parents were using the kids at the playground to socialise (standing right up in each other’s space, holding empty coffee cups to justify no mask), and so there were multiple vectors of infection. That and multigenerational households are more common in some parts of the world, so if the kid brings it home, whole family gets sick, hospital system overloads.
It wasn’t specifically kids suffer so oldies don’t die, but the continuation is that if the oldies are healthy, if anyone needs the hospital, there’ll be staff to look after them.
TL;DR people are taking the piss and making the jobs of HCWs harder… Not like that’s anything new 🙄
Don’t know about your country. The bigger goal in Europe was to keep hospitals working. Goal was not to Triage people cos hospitals were crowed. That happened in the beginning in Northern Italy. At Triage you look at who has biggest chances of survival, who is worth to invest your effort. Guess if it’s the elderly or the younger.
Just to make it clear. It’s fine for me how it worked out in Germany. China is the blue print how it worked bad. But want to make my argument that all that rules were on the shoulders of the younger generation to safe the elderly.
Right now in Germany, we have an insane political discussion about carbon reduction. It’s about actions. Being active. So, your heaters need to be replaced from oil and gas to renewables. Yes, it will cost some money. Do you think people are following that goal to safe the younger generations? I‘m pretty pissed about my and the older generation. And concerned about the reality for my kids.
yeah it was obviously the same on any playground so the above comment saying it was “to safe elderly” is just very short sighted. Additionaly implying that this was the case in whole of Germany is again wrong. Each federal state had it’s own health regulations in place but yeah some of those were kind of mediated by the ministry of health. Anyway it was a lot more complex than what this comment suggests
Sure it was more complex. Not going to write a Phd here.
My point is, the society accepts rules even tough rules if it’s for everyone. If it’s fair. So, at Covid times younger people, who are less likely to get serious sickness were accepting being „caged“ for two years (exaggerating a bit. If you are 5 years old. 2 years is half of your life!)
I strongly miss this generational fairness when it comes to climate change. Not seeing any step back in terms of carbon consumption/ consumption at all from the older people.
I think we can agree on that corporations are aimed at cheapest way to produce most popular goods at the biggest scale they can achieve for, in the end, produce the biggest possible profit. Thats what corporations are made for: money.
In the end, rich guy gets a yacht, bunker for apocalypse and private residence with AC, private kitchen stuff and anything they want so he will be fine even if its 60C outside. If it will get unbearable, they’ll move to something like Norway and will be fine.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people who live in hot countries will die and millions will be climate refugees.
All that, because producing iphone with coal electricity (simplification, albeit I feel like its close to truth) is 10$ cheaper.
Swapping to paper bags will not help either. There are only two options to solve the issue:
1 is impossible because gov will never cut the feeding hand and 2 is just a matter of time until we will get couple hundred millions migrants from Aftica, India, Pakistan etc.
1 is still possible. But, we’re at a tipping point between ending up in some Cyberpunk corporate-ran dystopia and one where the general public actually has the upper-hand and can fend off governmental corruption.
Choose wisely. Vote every year, twice a year.
but the thing about voting is that basically every politician is either:
so we could vote for John StopClimateChange, and then find out that every single thing that Mr. StopClimateChange said about his crusade to stopping climate change was not at all true or was so utterly miniscule in the long run as to be meaningless
then what?
This is a defeatist and authoritarian position that the rich and powerful want you to have. They want to feel like you can’t win, so that they vote behind you while you sit at home. Until eventually, they just dismantle democracy altogether and we go back to fiefdoms.
There is clearly one party that is more in line with the goals of fighting climate change than the other. Vote for that group. Vote for that group twice a year.
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Blaming the public over corporations is the #1 reason why we are in this mess in the first place. For decades, the narrative has been “it’s your fault and you need to change your habits”. It is a pointless and useless narrative because nobody is going to actively change anything like that until they are forced to. Even when we make moderate, easy efforts to do stuff like recycling, the recycling companies bitch and moan about how they can’t ship this shit off to China to let them do the work, and then throw away most of it, anyway. We PAY recycling companies to recycle this shit and they can’t be bothered to figure out how to recycle it. We PAY THEM to take away materials to use in new products, not the other way around.
In every aspect of people’s lives, you will find that corporations use up 90% of the resources that the general public use because corporations deal in economies-of-scale far bigger than anything a person or even a country can do. Corporations have been pushing the “blame the public” narrative to shift focus away from the decades of abuse they will continue to inflict on the planet. Corporation shit all over everything, and they will continue to do so in the name of profit. That is exactly what they are designed to do.
It takes governmental effort and regulations against the corporations to stop this sort of thing. They do it for clean water, and CFCs, and automotive design, and architecture, and many many other things. Why? Because a minority group of people who are struggling to make a living is never going to have enough power and clout as a large corporation or a government.
They produce like double of what we need, it’s not only what we need and buy, capitalism is extremely inefficient in the usage of resources, which brought us into this mess.
Yeah. Anything that isn’t consumed is destroyed. Case in point, dumpster diving at grocery stores is illegal. Fast fashion companies destroy clothes that don’t sell.
The entire system is fucked.
I didn’t get past you contradicting yourself in the first three sentences. Sorry.
Yes! If we’re expecting corporations to grow a conscience and “Do the right thingTM” then we’re doomed.
Though I do think the corporations are somewhat responsible for the narrative that everyone is powerless except for them. People pushing the “but the corporations!” while being unwilling to make any changes themselves are actually just carrying water for them. Promoting malaise and doomerism is just letting them have their way.
At any rate trying to appeal to the corporations to do the right thing is a complete waste of time. We need to make more effort ourselves. Which means making an effort to reduce our own carbon emissions as individuals. While also participating in the political process to create regulations that force the corporations to do the right thing. Because they sure as hell won’t do it on their own no matter how much people whine about it on the internet.
I think as someone who did “the things”, and that’s how I live now, it’s hard to look around and see basically no perceptible difference. The incentive is slim for the individual. The bulk of the population is never going to make those changes.
That’s why change needs to come from the corporate level through regulation.
People generally just want food, shelter, health, and comfort. And most people in the world are struggling to maintain food and shelter.
Their evironmental footprint doesn’t even register as an afterthought.
That’s what I was going to suggest but then I always feel this is a complicated problem and it’s not just one thing. It’s a lot of efforts on in different areas, but regulation is certainly one. It shouldn’t be that hard to do considering it’s one of the main responsibilities of government.
Have you seen how much CEOs get paid?
Corporations can switch to greener alternatives AND pay workers a living wage AND make a profit, without having the consumers pay the price.
All it takes is the willingness of politicians to force them to. Corporations raise prices because they’re allowed to, and they’ll take any excuse they can get to get more money out of people.
Gas prices have skyrocketed. First it was covid’s fault. Then it was the war in Ukraine. All the while gas corporations have been seeing record-breaking profits. It’s all just greed.
And there are portions of people in our society that will pay for those minimal prices either because they can’t afford anything else, or strictly because it’s convenient for them to spend that little so that they have more money left over to do more stuff in their life elsewhere.
But there are also people that are willing to sacrifice and make changes to their lifestyles and spending practices to accommodate the impacts of their actions.
The same is true with corporations. Some large corpos in the world are actively trying to move towards sustainable, circular economies. I’m doing a lot of research right now into the textile industry, and two of the biggest corporations in that space that I’ve seen are doing decent work on the two fronts I previously mentioned are Lenzing (TENCEL™) and Aquafil (ECONYL®).
Lenzing uses wood of various species from places in Europe, all managed well and FSC/PEFC controlled, to draw out fibers and filaments that are just as fine and useful as polyester fibers/filaments, yet with the added bonus of biodegradability. They also recycle cotton clothing from collection centers in Spain and some larger textile service companies in southern Europe and mix that in with their wood-based feedstock to produce the same rayon fibers.
Aquafil runs on a similar model to Lenzing, except they base theirs on nylon instead of rayon. Aquafil collects ghost nets from around Europe and South America, along with other corporations’ scrap nylon (pre-consumer waste) and post-consumer waste from a number of brands (e.g. sunglasses, jackets, etc.) to regenerate nylon back into the same quality as you would find in virgin materials. Now, I don’t think that plastic is sufficient anymore thanks to the non-degradable waste associated with it, but it’s better than nothing.
Are there flaws with those 2 companies: of course. Their chemical processes might not be 100% closed loop and their claims might be overexaggerated in ways, but it’s better than nothing.
Anyways, what this examples shows is that there are corporations and even people on the ground that are willing to make more sustainable choices because they legitimately see the benefit of doing so compared to convention. Someone else might describe this as a form of an adoption life cycle, where you have those more willing to change and those less willing to change as practices and habits shift over time.
Could government help with that? I believe so. I think that’s just one lever of change though. If you’ve been following solar PV growth over the last decade and a half, then you know about the “contagion” phenomenon: some early adopters pick up solar, only for considerers and even late adopters to do the same as word of mouth and other social drivers influence decision making at a people level.
Could the same happen with other sustainable choices in the economy? I fall more into the early adopter camp, so I would say yes. I think corporations spend a lot of time and marketing convincing their customers that said corporations are the best and only options and that no other alternative exists out there: when there absolutely is or might be. Perhaps all it takes is demonstrating to people, doing, not talking, walking the walk, to change their minds. I think the same tactics could be used, in addition to government intervention.
Bottom-up + top-down is the strategy I’ve heard described by many proponents of sustainability, most notably Al Gore, and I’m all for it too. Luckily humans, at least in some countries around the world, live in free societies and can divide and conquer to work on both of these fronts to affect change.
Is there a bracelet I can wear to show my solidarity with the people dying of heat stroke, or perhaps an instagram filter.
These two things have no relation. One is about climate change, the other one about (micro)plastics in the environment and our food chain.
Apparently there are still loads of people who don’t understand this simple fact and think everything that is done to make the world a better place is for climate change.
I mean, they both show a callous disregard for the fragility of life on this planet, and a keen disinterest in anything but short term convenience and comfort? Oh and profit, can’t forget about MONEY
This argument keeps coming up as an excuse to do nothing.
Pure defeatism neglecting even any bit of responsibility.
Yet people who say this will put another child on the planet, buy yet another product from Apple on release, love fast fashion, buy the cheapest goods possible, toss their meal as soon as they’re full, vote egoistically, take the cheapest trip to wherever, drive a car, toss cigarette butts on the ground, and so much more.
It’s always easier to blame others. Yes, corporations are shit, but remember, they are made up of people like you and I.
WE work there.
WE buy their crap.
WE vote for the same politicians over and over again (or don’t vote at all).
WE put another child on this planet to go through this shit.
WE as humans are the problem.
See, that’s your point of view. My point of view is that people who are all doom online are the problem.
you can count the owners of the entities that produce the most greenhouse gases within 3 digits; it’s not “everybody”
I feel the need to remind people that the concept of the ecological footprint was invented by BP to direct the focus of climate fears away from large corporations and onto individuals.
Also if you only eat meat in the weekends then the rich peoples private jets will suddenly have no environmental impact
What has that to do with anything? Reducing single use plastics is environmental protection which is not the same as fighting climate change. No one who fights against plastics does so for climate change. Stop spreading such nonsense. Not even your linked article claims something like that.
Why would that be orthogonal? Most plastics are created using crude oil and natural gas feedstocks - the creation of these single use plastics directly impacts climate change.
Energv wise plastics are often super cheap to produce especially compared to their reusable and non plastic alternatives. IIRC the CO2 footprint is drastically lower for items like bags and straws made of plastic.
I wish our choices had a 1% impact… That seems extremely generous.
For example…
Go look at your local Walmart and it’s bazillion products. They expect to sell almost everything in that store multiple times within a month. All that generates enormous waste on a scale that’s literally impossible for the earth to sustain for another 100 years without total ecological collapse.
We’re living in the single most polluting decade in human history, every decade, since all of us were born. Even if the entire Lemmy user base become subsistence farming monks, the factories would just keep churning out poison unphased.
I’m not saying it’s bad for people to try and consume more responsibly. I’m just saying it doesn’t make a difference over any meaningful time period until there’s a radical change in how our global economy functions.
Environmental catastrophe will continue until we literally cannot ignore it, only then will we do anything substantial about it. Unfortunately that’s just how our society works.
I don’t agree with you. Many individuals changing their behavior is what it takes for an economic shift in our society. By thinking that we don’t have an impact we loose motivation to change our behavior. So if you say you are annoyed by big supermarkets filling our planet with waste that’s fine, I agree. But this needs to lead to a change in behavior, first of yourself, then for those who notice you haven’t died from eating mostly vegan products and buying from local farmers markets and then hopefully for most people in our society.
Companies produce as long as people consume their products. If commnsumers switch to sustainable products (quite different from products advertised as sustainable) companies will have to follow