A lot of “we” talk. I don’t run a lot of industries, so I don’t think we’re equal levels of culpable
Yeah I don’t remember spilling 50,000 tons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico
You are right, but if it weren’t for the amount of consumers and our growing appetite for conveniences the world would look hell of a lot differently.
Now we’re at a point where meaningful climate action would be a sacrifice so big not many of us selfish little pieces of shit would take. No more plastic, no more meat, no more cars, no more global overnight shipping for items you don’t even need. We’ve grown very accustomed to things we only just recently realized are extremely expensive and we cant afford them. Too bad that the people who make those things are even less willing to stop selling them to us, than we are to buy. We really are screwed, because one day it’ll all abruptly stop. There will be no gradual progression into the climate extinction. We will be pretending we’re not at fault until our dying breaths.
You’ll never convince these people to take some responsibility. Billions of people are living obscenely wasteful lives whilst believing nothing they do matters. It’s like voting, ‘my vote doesn’t count therefore I shouldn’t bother.’ And then they all complain about the government. Money talks and if consumers actually worked together we would have an enormeous amount of power.
Every one of my efforts could be wiped out by a single stroke of a pen, and they have been thousands of times over by billionaires making decisions that affect all of us.
“We” aren’t to blame because “we” aren’t running the show.
This is a stupid argument. Even ignoring the obvious whataboutism, it’s like arguing peasants were responsible for the Norman conquest because they didn’t ’advocate for Harold hard enough’, or because they ‘didn’t convince Edward the Confessor to have a child’.
What whataboutism?
The general public have known about climate change for decades and made little to no effort at doing anything about it. We have elected climate change deniers, made Bezos a billionaire and bought bigger and bigger cars all whilst claiming it’s all completely out of our control. Grow up and take just a little responsibility for your choices.
Meh I don’t think you have a very clear understanding of this topic. The American public voted for gore, the British public voted for corbyn. Both elections were stolen. Oil companies spent vast unimaginable sums of money popularising the terms ‘climate change’ and ‘carbon footprint’ to minimise public conception and maximise the concept of personal responsibility. Global climate disaster is not a personal problem, it’s a systemic problem of governance, and it needs systemic governmental solutions.
Ok, so we’re not responsible for anything we do. We are completely controlled by our government and corporate overlords. We are incabable of thinking for ourselves or making any decisions not dictated by marketing and anyone daring to suggest we should consume less is asinine. Maybe we really deserve what’s coming to us.
I mean, people in the U.S. have the largest impact on the environment compared to other first-world countries. And first world countries have a much, much larger impact on the environment compared to the rest of the world. It’s not linear, either. I agree with the argument that much more culpability rests on those with more power, but I think that also translates into socioeconomic power individually.
I also agree that there is a blame-shifting propaganda campaign, but I think that also includes a point about not blaming consumerism, which also is a huge determinant in the status quo.
Personally, I think as usual, complex topics will have complex solutions; I think you’re both right up until the point where it excludes each other’s points. No-one is forcing anyone to choose only one thing to work on.
It turns out it’s beef, not donuts.
While I’m a nihilist at heart, I can’t righteously shift the blame on to the average, dying-from-poverty < 38 year old. For decades, we’ve known that corporate interests are what drives the largest amount of climate change (and that it’s the engine that will likely kill all of us before a changing climate does). Not since the 90’s (arguably earlier) has it been an individual and his dollar.
Grow up and take a little responsibility in your communication.
“His dollar”? Responsible communication lol
There’s plenty of blame for everyone in western countries at least. Profit drives corporations and those profits come from people buying their crap without caring about the consequences. Blame business all you like but corporate profits don’t exist in a vacuum.
While I appreciate the comparison, don’t downtalk voting. Local laws are made and broken by small margins.
I did not mean to discourage voting, on the contrary, i think the people who don’t vote are the problem. We have compulsory voting where i live and i think it keeps things a little saner as the parties don’t need to spend so much effort making people angry or afraid enough to be motivated to vote.
Why… Fuck, you’re not from the States.
I still have a stale taste in my mouth for our conflicting opinions, but I can’t deny a different take on Capitalism from another country.
Edit: though I hope our communication was thoughtful and stimulating in spite of being down-putting.
No, without the profiteers capitalizing on our desires the world would look a lot differently.
I think people would feel a lot more responsibility if they actually had a decent say in what goes on. Our individual actions do so little to change things relative to the actions of corporate goliaths and governments that it kind of makes logical sense to just give up and try to enjoy your life.
When our “democracy” (speaking specifically to the US here) essentially amounts to voting between two shitty options nobody likes and having to wait four years to remove them if they do something you don’t like, you can’t really call that a system that gives power to the people. We need more direct democracy imbedded in these systems so that we can quickly reverse bad decisions and implement new laws, directly. Otherwise, why should people feel responsibility?
‘We’ can’t address climate change because the global elite are dependent on the profits from harming the environment to fill their money banks, and it turns out they have all the power.
I do not need to rewire my brain, I need to build power structure so that I can eat the rich w/ that donut
Do you not believe that in a functioning democracy, such as some found in europe, you could simply vote to address climate change?
I live in Germany. People here could easily vote to “eat the rich” and to reduce emissions. But they don’t, and they won’t. Voluntarily.
In the usa we did vote for AL gore, who campaigned pretty much solely on stopping climate change.
When it became clear gore would win, the Supreme Court stopped counting ballots and gave the win to Bush, an oil tycoon who went to war for oil. Later Kavanaugh, who worked the case for Bush, was given a lifetime appointment to the same court for their effective cronyism
So yes, the global elite are the reason here.
When saying “global elite”, are you refering specifically to the USA elite?
The global elite buy the USA politicians. They are for sale internationally
In Bush’s case, the family is owned by the Saudis. And the Saudis couldn’t have the USA president going after oil.
Right? You could use this argument for why all delayed gratification is essentially impossible (but also something people regularly do), or why it’s impossible to stop murder or other illegal activity. Some sort of police force would just be impossible in an ancap world after all…
Our failure to act isn’t just short-sightedness; it’s willful ignorance. This may be the result of another flaw in human wiring: We tend to assume the future will look a lot like the present, so even if the present is slightly worse than the past, it’s hard for us to imagine things could get even worse still.
Well obviously the people in this bloomberg piece have to talk to the nyt piece’s scientist.
“This is not a science problem; it’s a political problem,” Dessler said in an interview. “If we don’t solve it, it’s because we chose not to solve it, not because we didn’t have the solution.”
Ah. They’ve read that report. They’ve read it and realize that what might be done is not going to be done unless we install lawmakers who force solutions down our collective throats.
