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It Is No Longer Possible to Escape What We Have Done to Ourselves
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars of propaganda are just a coincidence.
And a century of research into more powerful and crushing propaganda. Just a coincidence.
I did make the changes personally. Everything must be perfect now in the whole world! You’re welcome!
How ridiculous. We need to be honest about power.
It would be easy to sacrifice those rich assholes in a slaughterhouse
And then others will rise to take their place. If the demand is there, someone will try to meet it. All long as the vast majority of people are not willing to make changes in their own life, then everything else is pointless, and it will all fail.
EDIT: Stealing another comment to add to this:
what would happen if everyone turned around and said ‘you know what, fuck companies that sell drinks in bottles i’m never going to be without my refillable bottle’ how long would coca-cola keep producing 100 billion plastic bottles a year? what would they do with them?
But if James Quincey said ‘fuck it, I’m not producing plastic bottles anymore they’re bad for the planet’ but 8 billion people said ‘oh ok, well we’re still going to regularly buy drinks in plastic bottles’ the numbers of plastic bottles being made would dip slightly but only while Ramon Laguarta rushed to spend the flood of money now coming in to scale up production at pepsi co.
The "vast majority" can't make big changes in their life because they cannot afford to. The vast majority live either in poverty or paycheck to paycheck. If you live paycheck to paycheck, you are going to buy the cheapest stuff because that's all you can buy. And the cheapest stuff is usually that which is produced by the worst companies. "Voting with your wallet" is fine and dandy, but it doesn't work at all if there are not equal opportunities both for new businesses to flourish as healthy competition (without being squashed or bough by the already stablished corps) and for the customer to choose.
If we want to introduce actual change, it's faster and more effective to regulate in some manner the behaviours of those companies and the system that enables them, but of course, that is no easy task either.
I'm copy pasting something because it's easier than writing it all again:
Though experiment:
Tomorrow is election day in your country. The stout environmentalists win control of the government and proceed to make the following changes:
Carbon tax, which increases the price of gas, which itself results in an increase in shipping anything. It also directly raises the price of anything that produces carbon in its manufacture process, such as anything made of plastic.
An end to meat subsidies - maybe even a tax on it - and an increase to subsidizing other types of farming.
A ban on single use plastics.
And anything else you think might be necessary.
Now the questions: How long until they get kicked out? How long until the protests and riots? How long until a new government undoes it all?
I’m assuming you’re not naive and you don’t live in a bubble. You should know the majority of people will not be fans of any of that; and with the way it usually goes and the pendulum swings, the government that follows it will be a far right one.
Most people can definitely afford to eat less meat and consume less in general, even if they can't afford to buy the most environmentally friendly things. And if they can't even afford that, they won't be able to afford the environmental policies either; you would need much deeper change than you would get by voting for a major political party.
also we need communities already experimenting with living like that or it'll be a mess, for example I've never eaten meat in my life and as a kid people couldn't even begin to grasp that it was possible - i'd constantly get asked 'what do you eat then?!' but I haven't heard that question in years, closest to it is likely to be 'what do you have at Christmas' then when i say nut roast they no long say 'whats that?' they say 'oh i had a great nut roast once...'
As a kid family holidays used to involve stopping at the only cafe that had something without meat on the menu, now even McDonalds has a wide vegan selection (in the uk). If someone had come out in the 80s and ended the meet subsidies then it would fail instantly, if it happened now there would certainly be a large backlash but the majority of people would be able to shift their consumption patterns without many problems - the policy might have a fighting chance. Even the meat-and-two guys that i know regularly have meet free dinners, it's really common to only eat meat once or twice a week.
Of course if i was made dictator for life i'd bring in sweeping changes that ban all the evil practices which make the meat industry possible, but that's not going to happen - what is going to happen is it's going to continue to get easier and cheaper to eat plant based diets, we're going to see endless headlines like 'largest dairy producer announces closure amid increasing popularity of oat milk', it'll shift from the beef industry having a hugely powerful lobby backed by billions of dollars to the beef lobby being Joe Rogan and Liverking yelling at clouds about how they need to consume flesh to feel manly. When someone suggests banning an awful and disgusting practice within the meat industry the general consensus will be 'yeah i can go without that if it's damaging to the environment and cruel to the animals' so policy change will actually be possible.
Just shrugging and saying 'it's not going to happen overnight so i'll just keep eating meat until it does' is absolutely mindless, the bath is never going to fill if the tap isn't turned on - eating without meat helps fund and sustain the systems which makes it possible, it helps make it easier for other people to also eat without meat -- even if it's only dropping meat where it's convenient it's helping take power from the meat industry, by making a conscious choice to avoid meat you're joining an increasing number of people who do the same which represents a sizeable portion of the market - the more that gets catered to the large it grows.
Yes it's true that no one person is going to change things but when we start to move in the right direction it makes it easier for others to move that way also. This is the same with reusable bottles, using public transport, refilling containers at the store instead of single use plastics...
Most reasonable viewpoint, but it requires something of people, so of course it's downvoted.
We already are making individual sacrifices.
The problem is that the big polluters are not doing so.
Then congratulations! You are part of a different kind of 1%, and you perfectly understand what the other user is saying and are just arguing for the sake of arguing.
The reality is, most people don't want to make any changes. You can't change the system if the people themselves are not opening to change.
Though experiment:
Tomorrow is election day in your country. The stout environmentalists win control of the government and proceed to make the following changes:
Carbon tax, which increases the price of gas, which itself results in an increase in shipping anything. It also directly raises the price of anything that produces carbon in its manufacture process, such as anything made of plastic.
An end to meat subsidies - maybe even a tax on it - and an increase to subsidizing other types of farming.
A ban on single use plastics.
And anything else you think might be necessary.
Now the questions: How long until they get kicked out? How long until the protests and riots? How long until a new government undoes it all?
I'm assuming you're not naive and you don't live in a bubble. You should know the majority of people will not be fans of any of that; and with the way it usually goes and the pendulum swings, the government that follows it will be a far right one.
Cue that "badass" bird from Kurzgesagt 'voting with their wallet'.
Neoliberalism put us in this situation, so you know what will save us? More neoliberalism!
Show me how to stop using oil. SHOW ME.
What I, an individual, can do. And don't say: consume less. I need to eat to live. And don't say: vote for politicians. We're doing that and it isn't fast enough. So, what can an individual do to stop this? Go on. We're all waiting.
As an individual? Not much. As a small group of co-conspirators? Nothing that can be advocated for on a public forum, but there are a few options.
Wow you're so edgy
So your solution is: austerity for the poors. Not for the rich. But we can slightly reduce our carbon footprint by not eating meat.
OK. This doesn't stop climate change. This just makes life harder and less pleasurable for the majority of people. This is what the rich push.
Nowhere near enough to matter. I mentioned wealth because the vast majority of people are not "rich". And it's the rich who own the corporations that make these decisions that affect the climate and how fuels are used.
I.e. you are proposing austerity for the masses that will NOT stop climate change. You are the problem as you are shilling for big business. My point is there ISN'T anything individuals can do to stop climate change. We have to hold the rich and corporate owners accountable.
There's very little, without systemic change. But blaming the 7 companies is too easy, as well. Imagine, if you will - what happens if the 7 companies tomorrow simply say 'you convinced us - we will completely cease operations tomorrow'. Lots of dead people.
It's easy to blame them because it's true.
At this point, many of them are too stablished to just go away with the power of the wallet.
So, once again. If it's 7 companies to blame - do you think shutting them down tomorrow is the simple solution?
It may not be simple, but I'm sure nature wouldn't mind.
ok play it through a bit, so we shut down those 7 companies - i'm not sure which seven companies people are talking about but i assume it's related to this statistic Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions so let's just shut them all down...
mother nature breaths a sigh of relief as billions of people die because of the collapse of global infrastructure, world governments collapse, desperate conflicts erupt around the world with warlords taking over oil reserves and production facilities... the handful of dictators with working tanks and who only care about wealth and power subjugate the helpless and starving masses promising food and prosperity when victory comes...
Now the planet has been purged of everyone who actually cares about the climate, every available source of food and energy is stripped in a frantic battle for survival - how many people do you know that would let their kids freeze to death and how many people do you know that'd go out and chop down a tree to burn? A couple of months of winter and every tree in every city would be felled.
And there it is. That's the problem with the sort of naive idealists that frequent communities like this, fuck_cars, etc.
Their concerns are valid but their own ideas for how the world should work, how the problems should be solved are just as dangerous as the root of the problem. Maybe even moreso, in some cases.
it's not entirely irrational though, if you're convinced you're in a frying pan and doom is imminent then it can feel like your only option is to jump out into the fire - and maybe it will work out better, maybe we'd land on a recently added log and spring to safety... personally i'm more about doing some parcour out the pan and along and the wooden handle or jumping onto the hand holding the spatula and burning through the flesh of the beast that got us into this dire situation.
By that i of course mean developing a powerful open-source movement and an educated community which is able to transition to better ways of living without hurting anyone, it's harder and far more complex but something we absolutely must strive for.
Hey bud, I'm the guy you asked what in my opinion would happen if companies halved their consumption over night. I just wanted you to know that I replied, but due to the fact that the mod of this place disagreed with something I had to say about cruise liners, I got banned and all my comments erased.
Good luck, and try not to disagree with the power tripper here.
Annoying. If you still have a copy - could you DM me?
I do not. The gist of my reply was just that cutting production by half doesn't have to happen over night. Setting a scaling goal of five years, for example, would give ample time for people to adapt and less environmentally strenuous alternatives to arise.
Anyway, I'm not trying to say that change doesn't have to come from the bottom as well. I'm also not super keen on continuing this conversation in the wake of being wholesale banned for talking about corporate interests. It just kind of left a bad taste in my mouth.
Thanks for listening.
Thank for taking part. I appreciate it - and I would have like to have explored this with you. I do appreciate batting ideas about with pople of differing viewpoint. I think we botgh have the same goal in mind
It absolutely is a fallacy - but then I think the "its just 7 companies" is a fallacy too. It gives the false impression that CO2 emissions can be tackled trivially simply - just sort those companies out, and we are sorted. We aren't. Setting aside for a moment, the criminal lobbying they have been doing, those companies are meeting current demand. Let's say they don't shut down - lets say they halve capacity tomorrow. What happens, in your opinion?