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They are polluting on our behalf. Saying it’s entirely their fault is like blaming China for plastic pollution. They are producing that plastic for the world.
on our behalf
Show me where they give us OUR part of the profits, if not I’m going with greed.
If you don’t personally benefit from pollution, then junk your ICE, never eat meat again, and stop buying plastic crap.
(You should do all those things anyway, but I’m making a point here)
“and yet you participate in society, hm, curious”. You’re doing the meme, my man. You’re doing the entire meme that is also making a point.
You should move to a mixed use walkable neighbourhood.
You should learn more vegan recipes.
You should buy durable goods and learn how to maintain them.
Doing these things will make your life better in many ways. And you’re going to have to do them anyway after the revolution comes and bans oil and habitat destruction.
And I don’t want to hear the poverty argument. Rice, beans, pasta, bread, and potatoes are the cheapest foods. Not meat. Get your protein from legumes and your B12 from tablets, it’s cheaper. I bought a sewing kit for 3 dollars and hair scissors for 7. Now I buy less clothes and no haircuts.
The lifestyle of fast cars, red meat, and cheap junk is convenient and fun, it’s not responsible. Choose responsibility. Don’t pay oil barons thousands of dollars for garbage you don’t need.
How about other meat like chickens? I raise my own and kill them when they get old. I feel pretty vindicated in that my little system is pretty sustainable. I do sometimes supplement it with store chicken, but try to go for locally sourced meat when I do.
You buy chicken feed?
That chicken feed grown on farmland that used to be woodland and is now sprayed with pesticides to increase yield?
Is it shipped to the store on diesel trucks?
I don’t want to judge you, this isn’t about any one person. It’s about how all of us are part of the system. We all benefit and we all suffer from it. No ethical consumption under capitalism.
I joined this conversation replying to someone who said they don’t benefit from the capitalist pollution system. They do, I do, you do. None of us is independent.
Sooner or later we’re going to have to give up these capitalist luxuries. Only then can we experience the riches of socialism. They won’t be the same riches. We’re going to need to change.
We were buying feed, but we are working on a formula for a mash-feed based off grain and grass we grow. I know it is just an example of the larger problem you mentioned we are all living through, but all of us can refuse to partake by buying second hand and growing what we can ourselves. Small animals are a very effective source of protein and don’t have nearly the same carbon footprint that beef or pork has. Just here to offer a different perspective on the issue we both see/acknowledge.
My other comment is beside the point. The person I’m replying to is literally arguing that they don’t participate in society.
The companies spend money to make consumers believe that the consumers are the problem. That propaganda works to suppress as many environmental standards as is cost-efficient for their stockholders. Regulations need to address the cause/solutions to the damage being done to life.
Corporations benefit if people think climate change can be solved with individual action, because they won’t organise.
Corporations benefit if people think climate change can be solved without individual impact, because they won’t change society.
We all need to work together and we’re all gonna make sacrifices. It has to be both. One or the other are both corpo propaganda.
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Daily reminder that these same corporations pump obscene amounts of money into funding what is essentially highly sophisticated, precisely targeted and near constant psychological warfare to deliberately induce feelings of insecurity, fear, addiction, isolation, inadequacy and emptiness in billions of people and then convince them that buying their product is what will relieve these feelings. Simultaneously, they set wages so low that junk that breaks easily and can’t be repaired is all that many people can afford. They create the junk, the desire for it and ultimately the necessity for purchasing it. There are entire industries built around sparking and maximising that desire and necessity.
You aren’t wrong, but it also isn’t the whole picture.
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Hey, this moustache isn’t going to twirl itself
Yes, yes they do. People don’t want junk as it is, people desire their wants and needs met. If for example a human wants a piece of clothing that looks good, but the corporations setup the world in such a way that most people can only afford junk clothing that looks OK and disappears after two wash cycles, a human will buy endless amount of junk clothing.
Of course by keeping your lights on you’re contributing to these companies emissions because they’re fossil fuel and power companies lol
Edit: To clarify, I’m not trying to absolve fossil fuel companies, or their lobbying departments, of any of the blame here. The simple fact is that we don’t get much choice in our energy sources. However, the whole “x companies produce 80% of the CO2 in the world” narrative draws a dangerous parallel to the personal responsibility/carbon footprint narrative. One tells you that individuals are at fault (so get angry at your neighbours for not recycling, rather than getting angry at the government for not doing anything about it) whereas the other tells you to stop trying to even do anything about it personally, because it’s all huge megacorporations at fault and there’s nothing we can do to affect them. The simple truth is, if everyone in the west stopped buying cheap plastic shit from China, MANY of these companies would take a nose dive in their revenues and pollution. China Coal is usually listed as THE top polluter. Well look at China’s energy statistics. 58% of it is industry. In comparison for the US on the website, it’s 21% industrial usage. Why is China’s (total) annual CO2 output going up at the same time as their % of electricity coming from renewables is going up? Maybe because they’re the factory of the world. They make everything we consume and renewables just can’t keep up with the demand we all put out there. So buy less, buy more local, educate your friends and family, and don’t forget that political action is still THE key. Ironically, if the Trump tariffs on China really go through, this MIGHT have some effect on Chinese pollution - at the unfortunate cost of increasing American pollution.
Don’t forget the O&G lobbyists bribing the government to not fund public transit, build roads over rail infrastructure, push for the creation of suburbia and the American dream which are known as the single biggest wastes of resources in modern civilization, dismantle or repeal any green initiatives, destroy any environmental legislature, force pro O&G curriculums in schools, pay for pro O&G advertising and marketing targeting children, fund pro pollution disinformation campaigns, bribe pro pollution scientists to hide or discredit real science, etc etc etc
Look, it might not be the consumer’s fault that these companies pollute and yeah, most of us barely get a choice in where our energy comes from, but I really find that it’s a bit disingenious to just say these companies do all the pollution so the rest of us don’t matter, we’re innocent in all this. These fossil fuel companies are actually happy if you go “oh well nothing I can do about it”, because then you keep indirectly buying their products. Literally the opposite of the carbon footprint campaign, but similarly positive effect for them.
Really, we need a carbon tax, but guess what, that makes things expensive for end users when produced with a lot of pollution. So that’s unpopular too. Turns out we’re really addicted to cheap and dense energy sources. In any case, the only way for this to change is for as many people as possible to 1) reduce their own consumption as much as reasonably possible, 2) educate friends and family and 3) do whatever possible to shift winds in any government levels they can affect.
Stop blaming ignorant consumers for the actions of irresponsible suppliers.
Look, it might not be the consumer’s fault that these companies pollute and yeah, most of us barely get a choice in where our energy comes from, but I really find that it’s a bit disingenious to just say these companies do all the pollution so the rest of us don’t matter, we’re innocent in all this. These fossil fuel companies are actually happy if you go “oh well nothing I can do about it”, because then you keep indirectly buying their products. Literally the opposite of the carbon footprint campaign, but similarly positive effect for them.
Really, we need a carbon tax, but guess what, that makes things expensive for end users when produced with a lot of pollution. So that’s unpopular too. Turns out we’re really addicted to cheap and dense energy sources. In any case, the only way for this to change is for as many people as possible to 1) reduce their own consumption as much as reasonably possible, 2) educate friends and family and 3) do whatever possible to shift winds in any government levels they can affect.
My city just sent out a notice telling people to turn off their lights, meanwhile the city does nothing about the hundreds of office and corporate buildings with all the lights on all night. All the notices do is piss me and reminds me that we have two sets of rules
Glass building with giant A/C units, like cooling a greenhouse
Also think about how many of those products you personally buy that produce those greenhouse emissions. I mean, it’s not like the responsibility ends with making the stuff.
Source for those numbers?
The data comes from here I believe:
https://carbonmajors.org/briefing/The-Carbon-Majors-Database-26913
You can download the data after free registration.
Probably, yes. Which means, this post is quite misleading.
Carbon majors is about fossil fuel producers. Drilling oil, mining coal. This is the first misleadioning: Big and popular companies like Apple are not covered. They also count whole national sectors as one producer, like “China (coal)”. Not what the average reader might think when reading “company”. Misleading.
Further, the report includes IIRC 3rd phase emissions. Meaning emissions caused by end consumers using the product. Meaning you burning coal to use electricity, or fuel to run your car.
That doesn’t mean these companies (producers, sectors) are guilt-free. But we should hate them for the right reasons, of which there are plenty.
For sure it’s a little misleading but that is where the number comes from for the “57 companies produce 80% of the greenhouse gases” quote. Whether it’s accurate or not, up for debate like you said.
A debate between people who read the source and others who project preconceived narratives onto facts. Before this sadly popular meme, I thought the latter was a misdeed of climate “skeptics”. It’s quite painful to see how long-lived this meme is. It makes us look as bad and post-factual as the opposition. What do we do about this? Accept it as human nature? In consequence, stop blaming “skeptics”, and people who rather believe what they want and don’t look up, because we do exactly the same? I think we can and should do better, hence my effort here.
The core point people make and take away from this meme is “It’s not us, it’s them!”. Meaning, consumer emissions don’t matter, because corporate emissions are so much bigger.
And in exactly this core point, this meme is misleading. Because “our” emissions are included in “their” emissions (that’s what
phasescope 3 is about). It’s like a child blaming their parents that they spend so much on food, while living off their purchases.I think if we remove humans from the planet (preferably send them to the sun), the problem will correct itself and misinformation will also disappear with them.
I’d love to be able to walk to work. Right now, it’s 1h bus ride there, roughly 30km. Biking is not an option either, a good 10km are highways, no alternatives
Lot of people in this thread with “There’s no point in trying to do something about the companies selling DDT because consumers want their gardens pest-free so we should just talk more about personal responsibility instead” energy.
Sure, companies are providing things that people want, but the way and quantity in which they produce those things is atrocious, and ultimately those companies are the source of the vast amount of the pollution.
We can and should tell people to eat less meat, but telling people to exercise that level of self-control while at the same time leaving systems in place that make the meat economy otherwise the same isn’t going to do a damn thing. Conversely, you could tell end consumers virtually nothing while at the same time passing and enforcing actual environmental regulations that slightly increased the cost of a hamburger, and you’d see a real decline in demand.
You’ve got to focus your efforts on where they can do the most good, and focusing on forcing a handful of companies to change is more likely to show results than politely asking billions of people to change their lifestyles.
Individual responsibility for the environment is a myth invented by lobbyists.
Not a myth, but a distraction. Personal responsibility is good for the environment, but stopping companies from employing environmentally unsafe practices comes first.
Why can’t we make laws requiring noffices to turn off their lights after office hours? Can’t be that hard
Be sure to be mindful of the vampire energy, unplug anything you’re not using. Oh, and turn off your lights for an hour on earth day!
So if I don’t walk to work I don’t have to turn the lights off
