When I was in elementary school, the cafeteria switched to disposable plastic trays because the paper ones hurt trees. Stupid, I know… but are today’s initiatives any better?
A lot of the initiatives are ineffective by design because the real goal is to give the consumers agency over the problem. Corporations have known that individual effort is a drop in the bucket but by framing the problem as not not a “corporate” problem but a “society” problem, they can keep not fixing it, for profit.
Those companies pollute to produce goods and services that individuals buy.
What does holding corporations accountable look like if not refusing to give them our money while advocating for regulation?
Throwing your hands in the air, doing nothing to change your destructive habits and just saying “but corporations” isn’t gonna help anything.
Do not let perfection get in the way of progress.
The embarrassing thing will be that we did nothing to limit private jets.
If everyone but world leaders had to fly with us poor’s, wed be doing a hell of a lot better than we are.
We never address the easy, large targets because those targets are rich people and they pay for it to not be addressed.
It’s embarrassing that we have an Internet and are unable to come together to fight such a small group of people.
Private jets are a negligible amount of emissions. ALL air travel makes up just 2% of emissions.
Honestly, if that was the only embarrassing thing, we’d be golden.
This is one of the reasons Elon is destroying the bird - to ruin our internet and its ability to aid collective action.
The vast majority of these initiatives are just pointless “greenwashing”.
I gave up hope when I learned that the blue and green recycle bins in my area are really only there to make the consumer feel better about how much we waste as a society. A lot of the stuff we put in those bins still just winds up in a landfill.
Also incineration as “energy recycling” - https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/waste-energy-controversial-power-generation-incineration
Some are already being questioned as inadequate. Carbon offsets often times don’t offset much carbon at all. Some of that is on purpose and are just people trying to make a quick buck, but some are actual humanitarian efforts that didn’t take into account all factors and end up being much less effective than initially thought.
Use them in my industry, or rather are starting to, and this is apparent.
John Oliver has a segment on carbon offsets and, yeah, they sound like typical cash grabs under the guise of “green” Vid: https://youtu.be/6p8zAbFKpW0
Today’s initiatives are theater.
100 companies are responsible for 71% of the worlds emissions. The rest is also mainly companies. The idea of a carbon footprint is propaganda invented by BP (this sounds like a conspiracy but I swear it’s true, look it up). Before anything you personally can accomplish can make any difference, we would first have to significantly change society.
It’s just not true that we can’t make a difference though - it’s just easier for people to think that. Even if corporations, China, people on private jets etc. are damaging Earth and its inhabitants, our habits still make a difference also. You know, we can do what we can do personally at the same time as voting, campaigning and protesting for the change we can’t control.
There is no sustainable consumption under capitalism. Most have already cut down on their personal emissions, less meat, less flying. Good luck on trying to overcome the system by participating in it.
What can help is direct action and direct democracy, building resilience in your community. Which is hard.
I don’t think enough people have made enough effort to cut down (or preferably stop) meat, and animal products, and still see incredible amounts of waste, SUVs etc. Admitedly it’s old data, but a minority of surveyed Americans were eating less meat in year 2020 - https://news.gallup.com/poll/282779/nearly-one-four-cut-back-eating-meat.aspx. - not sure if the outlook is any better.
I totally agree with direct action and democracy, though I do maintain that the number one change people can make is to go vegan, as the lead author of the biggest meta study of its type concludes https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-06-01-new-estimates-environmental-cost-food
Importantly, I still agree that you are spot on that voting, complaining to companies and advocacy is incredibly important, but I just also feel that it is people who can choose not to buy the most damaging products (e.g. animal products) from those companies to accelerate more sustainable markets.
You are right in that if the majority would change their consumption, the change would be massive. Seeing that as the best solution overlooks that companies put a lot of effort into marketing, advertisement and interfere in pro-consumer lawmaking. So a large-scale change becomes quite hard, especially for low-income households.
Also, speaking of effectiveness: not having children is one of the best choices an individual can make, followed by going vegan.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children
I do maintain that even if not everybody realises its benefits, is fooled by the terrible marketing etc., going vegan and lowering consumption is still a great solution for those who choose to refuse to be a part of the problem. I think it’s one of those challenges that we have to throw as much as we can at through every angle possible, even while it’s not going to be perfect. Perhaps we can buy some time for other solutions to join the fight.
Also, yes, definitely not having children is going to be the biggest change I expect (unless the child happens to help be a part of a bigger solution of course), but I’d certainly recommend veganism either as a great addition or for parents without time machines or those who have grown fond of their kids. Also, if nobody had kids, it would create other problems about who would look after the elderly etc., but that’s another debate!
Those companies produce the goods WE buy. If we didn’t buy them, the emissions wouldn’t be accounted to that company that sells you the good. Oil, electricity or something else that you use.
Anyways, being fatalist about all that gets us nowhere.
Here’s what you need to do:
- Get informed
- Join organization that aims for change
- Put in work
Or that would have been it if we still had time to prevent catastrophic climate change. We can still try but I’m fairly certain we missed the train and I wish nothing else but me being wrong. I’m still vegan tho and use bicycle.
About footprints. William Rees wrote about ecological footprint in 1992 and carbon footprint was commonly used after 2000. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/095624789200400212
Personally, we can save a bit of resources, provide tiny relieve spots for a wild animals, insects, etc. Its a fact. Physical reality. Just because its not enough by itself, does not mean, we should not do that.
Naturally, not doing anything on a personal level, because “its not enough” is a very much approved way of living by the corporations. Having unhappy, consuming population? Chief’s kiss.
However… its not a good thing, when tiniest acts in the right direction demotivate people to do more. “I am doing my part!” - yes, that is nice, but we need more.
Those companies pollute to produce goods and services that individuals buy.
What does holding corporations accountable look like if not refusing to give them our money while advocating for regulation?
Individual change is changing society.
Throwing your hands in the air, doing nothing to change your destructive habits and just saying “but corporations” isn’t gonna help anything.
Speak for yourself, I’m peeing in the shower.
Yes, we’re basically doing nothing. Then we’ll run around like headless chicken when things will start to get really bad. And when the mass deaths will start, well, we’ll start acting, by killing each other.
I think very soon we’ll look back on virtually everything we’ve done to help the planet/climate as stupid and inadequate sadly.
Anything that’s safe to advocate for in a public forum is inadequate.
I think it’s safe to say the whole climate change episode will go down as this era’s “How could they be so stupid or bad like that?!” Like Germans during the Nazis, slave owners in the US, medieval superstitions during the plague etc. All of it will become a lesson in what not to do and how not to think.
Collectively our generation will be marked as that which had all the means and privileges one could hope for but the foresight and wisdom of bricks.
Ha, look at this optimist who thinks there’ll be people in the future.
I’ve learned that we’re doing an even poor job of handling recyclables, the very thing we’re beaten over the head with to be responsible about.
By oil companies. They pushed the plastic recycling narrative before it was even feasible to recycle it, all to sell more oil for plastics.
You know that recycling logo with the three arrows? It doesn’t even mean that the plastic is recyclable; it simply states what type of plastic the material is made out of.
NPR did a recent investigation in this matter, and less than 5% of recycled plastic, given to your local recycling plant, actually gets recycled.
Not to mention that we didn’t even know if our recycling was even recycled. We used to ship it to countries in Asia, burning bunker oil all the way there, and whatever happened to it happened. Out of sight, out of mind, and likely not recycled.
The best thing you can do is not buy disposable plastics. Even other materials that are very recyclable, like aluminum and glass, still needs to be shipped, processed, melted down, and remanufactured to be useful. It’s better for the environment, but not anywhere close to net zero.
Not to mention that we didn’t even know if our recycling was even recycled. We used to ship it to countries in Asia, burning bunker oil all the way there, and whatever happened to it happened. Out of sight, out of mind, and likely not recycled.
No need to use the past tense, this is still the case in most cases.
It’s a difficult topic, those of us already engaged with the problem are already aware that the current solutions are inadequate, but, every year we are making improvements.
Is that going to be enough? It depends on what you define as enough. I’d describe myself as short term pessimist but long term optimist.
By that I mean, short term there are far too many vested interests (stranded capital, the income of various nation states, nationalism in general, the 8 hour day, our built environment and the car centric nature of its design) to do the sort of immediate changes that we needed to have averted this problem. We needed to have started meaningfully pursuing this in the 70s, not the 2010s.
But that shouldn’t take away from the fact that the ever increasing rollout of renewable energy generation is better than continuing to use coal and gas. Every ton of CO2 we don’t emit is a ton we don’t have to get rid of later. That is as true today was it was 50 years ago, or 50 years in the future.
Long term, I’m optimistic that humans will continue to develop new technologies and the political and economic will shifts to meaningfully tackle climate change and we ultimately will survive, but I am expecting billions to die explicitly due to climate change - ie from floods, droughts, famine, war caused by the preceeding, internment of fleeing refugees, etc - in the interim. I won’t be surprised if towards the end of my life terms like ecocide start to shift to mean genocide of humans via negligent climate policies, eg when Bangladesh goes under water.
The next 100 years is going to be a brutal mix of exciting technological breakthroughs, coupled with soul crushing deaths of people in countries who predominantly did very little to cause the problem.
The paper vs plastic thing sucks because both are bad. Paper needs trees to be cut down and single use plastics are horrible for the environment
At least paper can be produced through sustainable farming practices and any waste is almost entirely biodegradable.
But I do agree that the debate sucks. What we should really be doing is forcing corporations and governments to 1. Adhere to very strict sustainability levels and 2. Pay for clean up efforts out of the salaries of their board of directors. Any corporation that declares a profit or gives a bonus to someone in managment without meating their sustainability requirements results in large fines for the company as well as every individual member of the board of directors. And anyone who claims they can’t pay within 12 months is given jail time and stripped of all assets instead.
Sounds harsh, sure. But till we start holding them accountable, it’s not going to matter how many people are using reusable plastic shopping bags or soggy paper straws. It’s not going to make any difference
I mean, in theory, dumping paper into a landfill is a carbon sink
Which is essentially what happened to create coal in the first place, kinda sorta.
