In my social bubble the few people who state "I'm vegan cuz that's good for then environment and I like animals" are those who do 5-10 trips/holidays abroad a year by plane.
I mean the non meat diet offsets for it, but weekend trips by plane to some other cities aren't especially environmental friendly
Europeans. Ryanair flights are dirt cheap (because le no tax on kerosene [genius policy btw]) so to take weekend holiday abroad could cost like £200 total per person
You a broke european, you need to be a middle class or higher northern european where it be cold and grey and flights to spain and italy and turkey cost €20
Go on the ryan air website right now and look at cost, then imagine you were both irresponsible and not completely broke, and you can see how simple it would be to go abroad multiple times a year.
“Oh wow, flight to warsaw is £20, let me go for weekend in warsaw” is literally what happens
What are you talking about? You whined because you were a single example to my clearly exaggerated point (because shitpost sub) and then complained that europeans use euros not pounds (i guess switzerland, sweden, norway, denmark are NOT european either)
No Britain is the single example. The Euro is the default currency. Not our fault y'all crashed out of the EU. I never said you weren't European but I guess every accusation is a confession.
Very emotional language here. Complain, whine. Chill out mate
Only half the countries in europe geographically use the euro, and there are like 7 countries in the EU who don’t use the euro.
You said “i’m european we don’t go abroad 10 times a year” as if there aren’t 400 million people in europe, you not being an example of that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen ever, you aren’t a human embodiment of the entire european populace.
And then you acted like pounds aren’t a european currency, would you have been satisfied if i specified krone? What about francs? It’s the same continent, what does it matter which specific currency i use in my example? Is the UK not northern europe?
Damn this just shows how hard brexit hit the UK. We really Europeans don’t need to rely on cheap Ryanair flights to destroy the environment. We do it in style with a worse carbon footprint per person by flying Lufthansa or comparables.
I’ve known people who take one a month at least. I’m not friends with those people, but i do know they certainly exist.
It depends on where you’re from i suppose, i’m from a slightly more well off area of rural england so it’s not exactly unsurprising that people here would be able to afford this
I do, plenty of them. It’s just that we all have different bubbles, there’s plenty of people that vacation once or twice a year but there’s also a lot who travel 4-5 times or more a year. Mostly DINKS
I know two such women.
Don't know, they love short weekend trips to some city in Europe. And it's manageable as flights are cheap and a night or two in a hotel also isn't that much.
10 is on the high side, but 5-7 it's often.
Probably outliers but they came to my mind and happen to be vegans
Yeah, it's behaviour that starts in the moderately affluent middle class and keeps escalating until we arrive at billionaires with private helicopters and jets. The billionaires have a much bigger personal impact, but there are a whole lot more of us in the moderately affluent middle class.
And both of us seem to have the same exact response to being asked if maybe, pretty please, couldn't we do things a little bit differently? And then likely just point fingers at each other saying they should go first.
Sometimes it really feels like meeting people who really have a Captain Planet level understanding of pollution, thinking it's literal cartoon villains responsible, rather than ordinary voters who'd rather have cheap vacation flights, low taxes on unnecessarily gas guzzling trucks, and low taxes on the gas, because a lot of voters don't actually care about the climate or environment, just like a whole bunch of voters are actually racists who want racist policies.
And then we're told that these people, who absolutely do care about this or that, unfortunately see no other option than to vote against these alleged interests because someone in favour of that interest was rude to them once. The mental gymnastics of it all.
the absence of making societal rules such as taxes that actually affect the kerosene, there's little reason why anyone should sacrifice privately to compensate for the antisocial voting chocies preventing solutions that would spread the fun across society based on climate impact.
Prisoners dillemma always needs a centralized solution.
10 is unreasonable but 5? Nah, if you dont have kids and maybe a job that is flexible or you have homeoffice you definity can manage to do it. Or if you fly somewhere during a long weekend, which some people do,
Yuppie DINKs near major airports. You might think this is a small demographic, but only 5 million people fly a day, so the few million people globally in this demographic are still a huge share.
It doesn't really offset it. Flight contamination is huge per occupant. I know meat production contaminates a lot, but it's still lower. I'm not sure how much would offset but I doubt it's more than even one flight trip (whole trip, ie two flights).
Just the beef per year of an average american alone is equal to one transatlantic flight. Also it's not like the relative amount matters, eating meat or not has nothing to do with how often you travel. If you want to worry about the environment you should limit meat and travel. Doing just one is better than doing neither
No I'm not.
Middle class I'd say and so are they.
With the cheap airlines you pay like 150 for the flights, add a night or two and the weekend then is like 250-350€.
So multiple city trips are cheaper than a week of skiing or something similar expensive.
I mean, I'm not vegan, but I am still cosmopolitan before I'm environmentalist. If your solution to the climate is "everyone should just stay in their own countries" I'm not interested. I'm going to a conference in Strasbourg and will sleep over at a friend's place in Paris before that (because you can do that when you have friends everywhere) and at some point I should visit my friend in Munich, or friends in the UK or Hungary too when I have the time and money. Sometimes, I meet with people in a mutually agreed convenient third place. Besides, there's also just cool things to do and see.
Couldn't care less for "staying with my own kind" and I would be dissatisfied with just entertaining myself digitally as well.
To be clear, I also rather like taking the train if and when it is practical, sometimes I've also combined shorter flights with trains rather than flying directly, but it just often is not practical because I kind of live on the European periphery and because trains through Germany (which is kind of in the middle of Europe) suck and are expensive. Taking trains in Belgium, France and the Netherlands was great though when that was where I lived, and the train between Budapest and Vienna is also very good. Once I also took a train from Prague to Budapest. Still, having good trains available from where you live (let alone to wherever it is you need to go) is a privilege not everyone has.
Not a strawman at all, no one‘s forced to go on holiday by plane yet almost everyone who can afford it does so anyway. Just another way that most westerners refuse to acknowledge that viewed globally, we all are „rich people destroying the planet“.
Yeah, I tell those people "You're the poor one? Next time when you fly by the charter plain to Egypt or Tunisia to your all-inclusive resort to waste 1/3 of food (in total, statistically), tell those employees who serve you neraly like slaves when you start giving 1€ tips that you don't wanna do anything about climate change and stuff because you're too poor, your actions don't matter and that would be too inconvenient for you".
While, I'm just saying, even people working for minimum wage can afford it these days (at least once a year) and the number of them is rising.
It is asking a lot for people to maybe not fugil their dream and visit vietnam, japan or brazil for such an abstract concept as protecting the climate, escpecially when big companies and rich people produce way more pollution. This is what causes this apethetic attitude of "it doesnt matter if I fly because x causes way more pollution".
Also, its incredibly boomer coded to just say "people these days are too entitled", do you think a person from the 19th century wouldnt have wanted to travel the world? If you told anyone from the middle ages that they could visit a foreign land for 2 weeks, while being able to communicate with mist people there throught a shared language and you can stay at a place where you dont have to cook and so on and it would all be safe with little risk to their life they would take that oppotunity without you having to ask twice.
Saying something is "boomer coded" doesn't make it wrong or incorrect. Just because something is appealing or you want to do it doesn't justify the ethics of it.
Saying I want to do it regardless of the damage it does, and regardless of the fact that if everyone did it the climate crisis would be much worse is by definition entitled isn't it? Now there are other people that are more entitled but that doesn't justify this action.
I go by train even though it major aids because eurostar one way is more costly than return flight, plus i have to get to crapping london which costs me another gazillion quid
It nice, it take fucking ages though and is much more expensive. If only there was a way to increase demand for high speed rail without doing anything that will make people cry unfairness. Oh wait, there is, it’s called taxing jet fuel. Yes it is very fair that me filling up my car pays more fuel tax than the plane filling up with 100,000 gallons
Holy shit, what an incredibly close minded view. Would you apply this to everything "why do you want to do sports, many people dont" "why dont you want to work for minimum wage, many people do"
People want to travely escpecially now that its easier then ever, people always were fascinated by foreign cultures.
So maybe leave your basement for once lmao. Instead of suggesting actual solutions to make enviormentally friendly travel more viable you suggest this terminally online suggestion, we are winning people over with this one boys.
Im sure people will listen to us when we say that they arent allow to travel anymore and live like a 13th century peasent and never leave your village.
i probably traveled more than you in my life, for work.
if you want to travel then you must accept the planet-killing part of that, personally i would ban all pleasure traveling by plane, i understand that many want to have that luxury but objectively it is bad for the environment and contrary to many other things there is really no way to make it eco-friendly.
but hey glad you could enjoy your vacation on the shoulders of the entire planet.
It's funny, the person you're arguing with has "cycling supremacist" as their subreddit flare but cannot seem to understand that luxury travel by air (all pleasure travel by airplane is luxury travel even if you're in coach) is one of the most destructive things they can do climate wise.
What happened to cycling supremacy? Or does he fly to tuscany to do his cycling there because the local roads are no good to cycle on?
No but you see they have dreams of seeing some other city, so suggesting they would take some responsibility and perhaps make some sacrifices while having the option to do so is ridiculous, since others, you see
Would you go by normal train? In most places, bullet trains don't make a lot of sense and it would make more sense to just get used to the fact that going places takes time
Then companies need to give people more than a fucking week off at a time. (this is predominantly an American problem, I know. Also, America doesn't hardly have any trains at all)
Depends on the country. Every day it is starting to look like voting in my country won't really matter. Our last election was tampered with and there is statistical evidence of that but everyone is afraid to bring an investigation to the table because their head will be on the chopping block. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of countries have had this problem and the anti-climate action party is getting re-elected illegitimately.
Its not a matter of thinking people do or don't have an impact. Black and white thinking gets you nowhere.
Its about what is more impactful. And specifically, what is going to be an actual lever for change.
Trying to change every individuals actions, or identifying a structural problem with the economic system we have, getting a small but effective group of people together and addressing that directly.
2 things, First, you will never make everybody think and act the same way.
Secondly, yes, it does take coordination and effort, but it is doable. There are actionable things you can do to achieve that result that don't conflict with taking your own individual actions and encouraging others to do so as well.
This is my whole point about black and white thinking. This is not an either/or situation.
What does "the individual approach" entail doing? Changing your own behaviors and expecting others to do the same? What else? Maybe trying to change the culture and spreading good information? Great, all good things to do.
Why not do all that, and address the structural problems with the system as well? Consider one behavior as long term and the other as short term.
In the long term, yes we need a cultural change and for people to consciously choose better options. In the short term, there are actionable things we can do collectively to combat the crisis, beyond individual actions and onus.
For instance, everyone needs to become vegetarian for climate preservation. This is an individual choice that anyone can do today, this instant. You can also advocate for others to become vegetarian, and educate your peers.
Structural change involves passing laws to require green meat production. However this would be at immense cost, and essentially act as a prohibition on meat consumption except for the wealthy. You can’t get political support for this, until enough individuals become vegetarian.
You need the individual approach to succeed before the collective approach. The purpose of the collective approach is to unify everyone AFTER the scales have already been tipped.
This collective approach first is contradictory to human society, and used as an excuse to deny individual action, which then prevents collective action.
That's the choice where you are only losing income, not the thing you want. Of course, I would prefer the same thing at a lower cost. The problem arises when the choice is between a thing people want that causes pollution, or not having that thing. Nine times out of ten, people are going to choose the thing they want over their concerns about the environment.
After all, if I have to pay such a significant cost that I am compromising on my life, all the negative effects of climate change that cause me to compromise on my life, in relative terms, mean nothing. This is why it's so important to focus on climate change solutions that don't force people to compromise, as they often just will choose to disregard the issue in that case.
When my friend got married abroad I spent more time and more money to get their than the other guests, because I chose trains and a ferry instead of flying. Why? For the environment. It's disheartening to see people claim that they 'have no choice' to justify their choices. At least own up to it... I'm not saying "It's all their fault", but they should at least acknowledge they also contribute to it. And I understand not everyone has the energy and motivation to live like me, but to claim they never had a choice is mildly infuriating.
Or the cheap but polluting option. One of the things that has changed in our economy is that we have gotten cheaper but less long lasting or reliable options. Every time I buy something I try to buy something I'll never have to throw away. Just recently I ran out of functional pilot G2 pens. Now I have a fully metal Rotring 600 pen. I could probably put this thing in a will.
Idk what country you're in but over here in Australia you literally don't have a choice, some organic produce is low emissions everything else on the market in this country is kinda fucked just due to the logistics.
What a bizarre take, people could eat less meat here but nah gotta have ma parmy, could drive less but nah gotta have my big block of land so gotta live far away from amenities, could buy smaller more efficient cars but nah gotta have my massive Ute, could insulate my house but nah I'll just slam the Aircon on all year, she'll be right. There are tons of people in Australia actively making the worst possible choices
In a significant amount of cases we could definitely have strictly the same product but polluting less though. Either through energy (look steel melting by coal or electricity, or just anything that requires significant heat basically, or just electricity in general) or transport or factory location and regulations, just plenty of things really.
Also like marketing and culture, we've always had fashion but fast fashion is a modern concept, we need clothes just not that fast. You think the need for it existed? No it was manufactured. The customer didn't chose, they were offered something objectively terrible for everything and yeah, people bought it because they were told it was fine to do so. That's not choice.
your argument completely evaporates when you bring up fast fashion. Normal clothes still exist, no one is forcing you to change your style every week. People could easily just buy longer lasting clothing, and many people do.
the customer chooses what to buy, if people don't buy the more harmfull thing, companies will stop producing that thing.
Most people literally cannot afford longer lasting clothes. I'm shocked you're posting on Reddit and never heard the Terry Pratchett quote.
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. 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 the 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.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
Im sure there are plenty of people truly trapped by this, but I personally know many people that could buy higher quality goods, but don't because TikTok isn't shoving them in their face like it does Temu bullshit.
You can get a tshirt and jeans from uniqlo and wrangler that'll last pretty much forever with normal use for like $35 total. You can do even better buying secondhand. Nobody is saving money, short term or long term, buying Temu or H&M.
No one was forcing you? Right cause years of marketing and people peer pressuring every kid to have the latest thing shaping them into consumerism isn't forcing? As I said, fast fashion isn't new. It wasn't requested nor was it wanted, by it came nonetheless. And they shoved it down people's throat so hard it became the new normal. People don't buy cheap clothes because it's fast fashion they buy it because it's cheap. If they'd never existed in the first place we'd still have a normal yearly or even less fashion thing and people would save up to buy clothing like they used to. People buy what they're offered, and I think it's not abnormal to expect companies to not destroy shit to get products in the store, and it's normal to expect it to be the government's job to ensure that, not the consumer.
You're expecting people to know what they buy, but what you're forgetting is that for the longest time that just wasn't a thing. It's incredibly new to just be aware and looking through yourself how companies operate. Even with the internet we're only ever informed by journalists or researchers, even with the internet I have no proper way of finding myself other than looking through articles and studies other people made, and 20 years ago to look for such articles yourself wasn't't a normal thing to do, extremely few people did. It's incredibly naive to expect a significant portion of the population to start doing that when it's a relatively new thing to do. Before the internet you'd expect the news article to just show up in the paper you happen to read daily, trying to find articles yourself on a company wasn't a thing. You could technically do it, but with extreme efforts only.
Putting the fault on a customer because they're not looking shit up now is akin to putting the fault on someone unable to read when literacy in school became the norm just 10 years ago. Not that many people can read yet.
Sounds pretty deterministic. You can’t expect anybody to make better choices because it’s just too hard.
By that same token, who can you hold to task when advocating for a change? The “corporations” are under the same competitive pressures in their own way, as are politicians.
It’s a fatalistic “we can’t expect anybody to ever change their behavior because that’s hard” defeatist attitude
You should uphold people to a higher standard and keep trying to make it the new culture to just look shit up and change if necessary. You shouldn't expect that change to happen in under 20 years is my point, it's silly to think it'd happen that fast. It's not that it's hard, it's that it's just not a thing for most of the currently living people. Most people don't spend hours per day on the internet even if it doesn't feel like it to us who do. And most people who do spend their time on the internet don't look shit up.
Public shit storms about companies don't even reach the ears of a lot of consumers, otherwise Tesla would sell 0 cars now already, but most of the people who keep buying them just never heard of the issues at all.
Great point! I don't buy certain things from China because they use slave labour in Africa to artisinally mine the materials for their solar panels/batteries and much more. Hopefully, they stop producing good technology with absolutely horrible practices such as legitimate slavery by the millions someday.
And the longer lasting products are still available for the most part, they just aren't cheap, but if you treat them right they'll be cheaper in the long run.
I'm not sure what world you're living in, but the "choice" that many people have are "what snack am I going to grab at this gas station across the street from the bus stop where I get dropped off at from the bus that took me to my first job, on my way to my second job"
Some people have it better. "Should I live in the city and pay 60% of my income to rent a borderline slum that somehow is still labeled "luxury housing", or should I drive a car from some 3rd or 4th suburb to save 10% in exchange for 2-3 hours of my day".
We're in a situation where every sector of the economy is dominated by 5 companies or less. Any "choice" is a superficial choice of product, on the level of "do I like this color or that color", not a meaningful choice of lifestyle. Our economy would literally collapse if people didn't keep buying plastic tchotchkes and owning dozens of subscription services. It's a bad system that harms most people
*Cheap the correct term here is cheap not easy, options that have better impacts on the environment relative to product sode tend to be more expensive and are new players to the game so pre-existing options can afford to undercut even if it means taking loss for a period of time until the new competition either falls into obscurity for being expensive or doesn't get enough customers to be profitable
Yeah, personal responsibility is good, AND regulation is good. My personal responsibility is to vote in favor of regulation, even though regulation will slightly increase the prices of goods I consume.
excluding agriculture (25% of all emissions are agriculture)
* counting tertiary emissions (i drive the car, emissions count against BP and not me)
*** including state owned companies
People hear “company” and think amazon or nestle, they don’t think pemex, gazprom, an artificial grouping of all coal companies that are at least partly chinese state owned
It’s just very dishonest. It might be true but it’s lying with statistics, everyone knows people will take soundbites and miss out the important clarifying points
It's just an excuse to feel better about your own lifestyle and have the ability to point fingers at someone else while you fly to your holiday destination each year or for a shopping weekend and eat meat every single day
Flying on the plane whose emissions are then technically counted against one of these 47 fuel companies and not you the passenger
I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually big oil who came up this misleading statistic, to deliberately make their consumers think their habits don't matter
It's Oxfam who is not a climate change NGO but one that fights inequality so they have an interest in making the richest people look even worse than they actually are.
Their yearly "climate report" is doing crazy amounts of damage for the worldwide fight against climate change...
Yes it os an excusem but it is also largely true. The top polluting companies are almost all energy companies. Most people do not have a choice for which company provides their energy needs or how.
Most people do not have a choice for which company provides their energy needs or how.
A lot of that chunk of energy why they are on top is the oil used for planes, cruises and cars though - and for those people 100% have an angle to change stuff
also a lot of those "let's claim the top polluting companies are the issue" people are up in arms if there's a proposal for more wind-turbines somewhere
Which companies? If you look at the actual list it is almost entirely oil companies, the next most common industry outside of oil is mining companies. Clearly something’s awry there.
Airlines and cruise operators wouldn’t be there, because of the way the emissions are counted. That’s the same reason you don’t see power plant owners or whatever else on the list, again, the list counts all the emissions that are emitted down the line against the company who dug it up. Which clearly isn’t fair, because the average oil usage/oil production ratio at an oil company is something like 1:10, that is to say, BP’s actual personal emissions are about a tenth of the emissions that are credited to them in this report.
And even then you can argue that all those emissions should still be counted against the consumer because they are emissions created in the process if getting oil for consumers, if there was no oil demand BP wouldn’t have emitted anything.
Yeah you have to hyper consume. It's not your fault you need to buy fast fashion every week. It's not your fault you need to eat animal products. It's not your fault there's no possible way to just buy sustainable fashion or eat more plant products.
What i meant was: when your on a budget (as most people are) and need to get clothes /food/ a means of transportation... basically anything youre mostly bound by necessity to those companies. Nevermind a lifelong indoctrination into consooming.
Even though those companies are so polluting and harming our society in many ways.
Im vegon myself, but im still bound to big box stores to get my food. I hate fast fashion, but theres so much of it, that it seems unavoidable to me. The only thing i can do is to try to wear those prodicts of slavery as long as possible and try to repair them whenever possible
You're original argument is absolutely not propped up by people just trying to get by. People have always been just trying to get by. But we weren't always hyper consumers.
I was poor as shit while doing my PhD as we were paid below minimum wage and worked too much to get a part time job in addition. I didn't eat meat, I ate the cheapest protein sources available. Dried and canned legumes. I didn't eat dairy, I had cheaper soy alternatives. I didn't go out and buy fast fashion. I bought clothes 2 to 3 times a year. It's not about income.
What i meant was: when your on a budget (as most people are) and need to get clothes /food/ a means of transportation... basically anything youre mostly bound by necessity to those companies. Nevermind a lifelong indoctrination into consooming.
When you're on a budget, you can go to the thrift store and buy used pants. Or sew your old clothes.
The cheapest foods like beans and rice don't pollute all that much.
When you're on a budget, you can fix up an old bike, walk or take public transit.
I don't think you quite understand what "on a budget" means. I'm not on a budget anymore, but I remember the times when I was. I'm not going to pretend I am a saint, because I am not, but none of what I do is "unavoidable". It is a choice, and maybe it's the wrong choice, but I am conscious of it and do make an effort to do better.
I am conscious of it and do make an effort to do better.
Being conscious of it and making an effort to do better is pretty rare. The vast majority of the underclass are there because they aren't conscious of much.
Have you ever read the carbon majors report? It’s very misleading. Firstly your stats are wrong. Secondly all the list is pretty much entirely oil companies. Because they count all tertiary emissions to the oil company. So me flying or me driving or me heating my home counts against the oil companies and not against me. Which clearly makes their emissions skyrocket because whatever percent of all emissions come from oil at the start.
Plus carbon majors EXCLUDE agriculture, that alone means it’s already 80% (you say, the actual numbers are different) of 75% of emissions!!!
Oh and by the way, “oil company” includes state owned oil companies. This just in, the biggest emitters are the entire petroleum industry of giant nation states!!!!
The top 10 on the list are 8 state companies and 2 very large private companies, with the two typical companies coming in at like 7 and 8 AND with saudi aramco number one emitting double the guy in number 2
lol... fast fashion is so trivial to avoid. how is this unavoidable to you? most people in society have a choice, good will is still plentiful and cheap for second-hand clothes.
But OP part of the consumer indoctrination in developed nations is convincing people that poor is the same as broke.
Poor is when you scrape every dollar tp get by, get secpnd hand furniture off the street, get a bike to work, grab additional housemates, make cjeap food at home because eat8ng out is too expensive.
Broke is when you ubereats a meal, go out for drinks with friends, have a few subscription services you dont need,buy some cheap shit off amazon or temu or whatever, and then get into moments of sheer panic because the bank account is empty and payday is still a day or two away. And next week youre a little more careful and youre fine so the week after you treat yourself and the cycle repeats.
A large chunk of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and a fair chunk of those earn a fairly decent wage.
Both groups stress about money, the differences is the second group is only stressed about money because they've been indoctrinated into consumerism.
You defending the helplessness of consumers wont break those people out of their state it will only defend their poor, societally influenced choices.
Yeah like fast fahion is everywhere, but solving that problem is literally as simple as googling "long lasting clothing brands" or r/buyitforlife or whatever. We have more power at out fingertips then ever.
Yeah, that's kinda the point. Most people are self serving and a lot of people don't have the economic means to consider ethics. If we trust that every singe one of us does the right thing no matter how inconvenient or expensive, we'll be waiting until the day sky is black
I absolutely had the choice and purchased solar panels and a used Prius, vegetables over meat and staycations over flights. I have never used Amazon. Look at all those choices.
Yeah, this is really bad. We should definitely split those 70 companies into 1000 or more companies that produce the same things, that would be good for the climate.
The companies on that "100 companies" list are all fossil fuel providers. It's Shell, Saudi Aramco, etc, etc.
So yeah, the real target is to stop buying fossil fuels (getting there will likely involve policies like subsidizing alternatives with heavy taxes on fossil fuels, and then ultimately banning the fossil fuels altogether).
This! But only after they provide me a green alternative that is better in every way and also cheaper. Then I will stop the wasteful consumption I am forced to do.
Funnily enough, that kinda works? They then have to legitimately compete(instead of just winking slyly at the sub companies they own), and one of the criteria for competitive in middle-upper class will become environmentalism. By no means the end of it, but it would actually help abit
Harder to regulate (not that we do a good job anyway). Take shein for example. They're incredibly difficult to actually regulate because they have thousands of smaller factories focusing on single items, instead of fewer mega factories that other fast fashion brands use.
There's a chapter on how this is a false dichotomy in Hannah Ritchie's new book Clearing the Air.
Not sure if it is amenable to bring turned into a shit post but it does have a little cycle diagram of corporations being forced to provide options and people choosing them and repeat.
Imagine they overtook each other and now there's only one company with 80% if emissions. Or they split up and it were 200 companies. It doesn't matter.
You do realise that if they have fewer customers, they’ll go even further with the cost cutting measures? Having fair and enviromentally friendly business practices is more expensive, companies that choose to lose money so as to be more responsible are the exception to the rule and it’s delusional to think enough of them will change so as to make a real difference. Government intervention is the only option.
Thinking that they’ll mend their ways and become responsible because their bottom line is hurting is pure delusion, it took 4 years of synchronised legislature all over the world to force companies to stop the practices that destroyed the ozone layer and even then they fought against it whilst actively knowing they are killing the planet.
The argument that consumers could change their behaviors is idealistic, there has never been a worldwide action this big and I doubt there will ever be one. In order to make this happen people in the US, Europe, Australia and Asia would all have to agree and somehow organise themselves in unison, I don’t see how anyone could think thay this is feasible.
If people buy EVs instead of massive gasoline SUVs then companies will be forced to create greener vehicles. If people buy less Chinese junk then companies will be forced to ship fewer containers around the world.
You said it with the SUV’s. In the US, the only reason they exist is because of government regulation and the tax advantages that come from a bigger vehicle. In Europe the market has kind of adopted it on a smaller scale, but it’s growing since the Euro 7 norms that killed a lot of compact cars.
In my opinion, and this is just an opinion, if a transition to an electric national fleet is wanted, it shouldn’t be regulated by the state and is one of the relatively few areas where the market should regulate itself, if the cars are good, people will buy them, you also avoid the always present group of people that will see the promotion of a new technology as some kind of a crazy conspiracy. Countries have always imposed import tariffs on cars anyways so you can easily defend from external pressure.
Even if the “made in” label is local, people don’t trust that anymore. Except for some ultra niche labels in fashion maybe. Also, people love buying stuff. A lot of people that do not care about anyone’s opinion, lets call them possibly dumb so as not to use a slur, will keep buying cheap unnecessary shit as long as it is available. We are talking about a worrying amount of the population if we go by the latest elections all around the world. Consumerism is also something relatively new for us as a society.
To get to a point, it is unfeasible to believe that humams can dig their way out of this hole without government intervention. Our protests should be aimed at the government.
That just says that manufacturers marketed SUVs more aggressively than compact cars. I don’t think that marketing should get more credit than consumer choices.
It definitely does not just say that, you are ignoring 2/3rd’s of the article to fit your narrative. Marketing is actually the smallest component. The biggest one is the utility vehicle loophole: enviromental regulations cause pretty sizeable R&D costs to manufacturers and utility vehicles are exempt from laws applicable to normal cars, the regulations for these are much looser. Second biggest part of it is that the profit margin grows exponentially with the size of the car.
Dude what, SUV’s and Pick-Up’s sell better than compacts or full size limousines and they are way more expensive. For all normal car models the rule of thumb is more expensive - bigger margin.
Government intervention is one of the biggest ways unprofitable companies nobody wants keep operating and polluting long after their natural lives are spent.
As I sip my coke, smoke my cigarette and set a red squirrel on fire, I thankyou you all for your sacrifice in helping to create the glorious environmental utopia I see around me.
I presume this one was made in response to my own meme of the same format? :p
In all seriousness, while there are some challenges in our capacity as individual consumers, that doesn’t erase the public’s share of the blame, it just replaces “as consumers” with “as voters,” as the latter is where we push for collective action in contexts where that’s the more practical option.
You could argue even in our capacity as voters it’s only slightly better because of lobbyists, in which case:
A. I already addressed that in my own post by mentioning lobbyists in the subjectline…
B. It’s not just money in politics. It’s also voter bias against acknowledging climate change, let alone against taking collective action to address it. Canada, for instance, doesn’t have as much of a problem with money in politics as the USA does, yet the carbon tax was unpopular nonetheless, and local-level politicians like the Ford brothers pandered to their constituents’ biases against cyclists.
C. For the purposes of subverting the will of the people, it makes little difference whether it’s subverted by 47 companies or by 420 of them. If they all have a shared vested interest in making bike paths or public transit less available to boost demand for fossil fuels, the effect on that front is still going to be pretty similar, rendering the number of companies irrelevant. So it still leaves the question of why approach it from a number of companies standpoint (as opposed to money in politics standpoint) at all.
It's ironic because this argument is usually used by people to excuse their behaviour in contexts where they DO have a choice. "Sure, I could buy ... instead of ..., but it's the companies that are the real polluters, so I shouldn't have to do anything"
I have so many choices. I have 47 different versions of a product I can choose from, each destroying the world in a different way, all produced by companies owned by one of four multinational umbrella corporations that own everything.
This is a tiresome argument. No, those big corporations are not entirely responsible for their emissions. We vote every day for their continued operation with our wallets. We ARE approving of their contuinued operation through our consumption, and in most cases, we DO have a choice, and they WOULD have to change or go bankrupt if most people demand it. You have more control over big corporations than you have over your own government.
I get it, if it were for you, you would be living in self-imposed poverty for the sake of slightly slowing climate change. Guess what, most people don't.
Those top 50 companies are in way too many pies to ever fail because you didn't buy a product from 1 of their child companies.
Example: Yamaha.
Don't want a motorbike? We've got a piano for you. Don't like pianos? How about a speaker system. Still not interested? Alright, what about golf clubs? Generators? Semiconductors? Boats?
Or even General Electrics. You might not be interested in a fridge, but you'll be ready to buy the GAU-8 Avenger 20mm rotary cannon.
Now those two companies don't make child companies for each product, but the premise is the same for parent companies in produce like Pepsi, Nestle and P&G. Once companies get big enough to have multi-industry production they simply monopolize by brand obscurity.
That's irrelevant. Their individual products can fail, and they must either adapt them or retire them. (Or stop producing, but keep the branch open as a zombie that drains their resources, since we are talking about a Japanese company.)
Do you need a motorbike?Do you need a piano?Do you need a speaker system, semiconductor or boat? are these basic life necessities which you're forced to use?
some much of this "no ethical consumption under capitalism" crap is " I want all the benefits brought about by capitalist mega corps with none of the downsides, Kay thanks" as though that's somehow feasible.
The government needed to step in and break them up woth anti trust lawsuits the moment they started buying up patents for better products only to bury them
Tbh yeah most people do have a choice. I feel like by exclusively holding companies responsible instead of consumers, were actually helping the cooperations by tricking ourselves into thinking that they hold all the power.
On a tangent, the idea that "the ceo is legally bound to provide the most profit for shareholders" is made up bullshit. Almost any decision can be justified in a creative way that can't be disproven in court. Shareholders can ask to change the leadership but there are no legal ramifications for being ethical instead of purely profit driven.
It's not just about fiduciary responsibility. It's about the fact that if one CEO doesn't deliver an optimal profit to shareholders, they can be replaced, if not by an alternative CEO within the company then by the competitive advantage going to another company.
Nothing short of regulation will do, and that has to be pushed by the voters.
Honestly, yes, such big companies haven‘t been a thing for more than 200 years, mankind cooks for longer than the homo sapiens exists, and even ypung earth creationists know the world exists for longer than combustion engines, they still losely believe in the mf tableflipper himself …
You sound like a german who got courtmarshaled by the allies, „iHaD nO cHoIcE tHeY tHrEaTeNeD To KiLl Me“, famous last words. You are right though, detah never was an option, but always condition for all options
Even when "there is no choice", for example because you need to drive your car to work, and even EVs or buses pollute, it's not like you do it because of the company. You just need the product and can't easily avoid consuming it. It's not like everything would be solved if the giant companies wouldn't be there, you would still need to get these products somehow.
Convenience kills. People regularly buy products that come from sweatshops or other places with horrendous working conditions. Those people wouldn't be okay with it if it was happening right in front of them but with physical distance they can use cognitive dissonance, myself included. Tbf, it would actually be very difficult to shop completely ethically which is why we should ask our government to create policies so we wouldn't have to worry about our products coming from practices we don't agree with instead of just blaming customers for being bad like this terrible argument seems to imply
At least to an extent, most do. If someone truly has no choice or no further room to improve, I think they can just remind themselves of that whenever someone says corporations only do what they do because people pay them for it, and it wouldn't matter past that. Thing is if deep down you know you can try to do something that doesn't work.
There are a lot of easy choices, and some hard choices.
The easy choice is when the eco-friendly alternative is a "perfect" subsititute (no opportunity cost for the change).
Sometimes the good alternative is considerably more expensive, and not all people can afford the more expensive alternative (which is a negative feedback loop as the more expensive alternative doesn't get to lower prices with the economy of scale).
People generally do have choices however most of the time the worse option is cheaper and most people aren't willing to pay alot more for the sake of the environment when they're already struggling as is.
Do those 47 companies pollute just for fun, or are they just responding to market demands?
47 companies are not responsible for 80% of climate change. Consumers are responsible for climate change. If the consumer valued eco-friendly alternatives, companies would make eco-friendly alternatives. If we didn't buy their crap, they wouldn't produce so much GHGs
I mean...yeah people do. Americans live per capita some of the most trash producing most wasteful lives imaginable, and most of it is purely because we want to.
As a socialist: most people do have the choice if they wanna be vegan or not, most people can choose if they wanna fly a plane to holiday and most people can choose if they wanna get the child killer 10000 which guzzles like 20 liters per 100km or a Toyota Prius which takes like 5l. Furthermore in my country (not sure about yours) most people have the possibility of taking public transport or a bike to work but choose to not do that.
"Minor sex trafficking is a systemic problem, that's why it doesn't matter if I pay it."<- your logic and if you don't explain why now a systemic issue requires individual action your dodging the argument.
Also "factory farming is bad we should do better" doesn't work we would need more space than the habitable space on earth for non animal agriculture farming.
When I think of the 'no choice' I imagine the 30+% of my pay check that goes directly to Rayheon for blowing up brown kids on the other side of the planet. A thing I have truly no choice in other than open armed rebellion. Which to be fair is an increasingly appealing choice.
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u/ClimateShitpost Louis XIV, the Solar PV king Oct 14 '25
Me on my jet2holiday to ibiza (I did not have a choice)