I agree, we are all part of this problem. Lets fix it. What each of us can do to affect the change. Average consumer, recycle and keep their phones few years longer. Perhaps not eat bananas. Travel by train. Things like that. Many already do, but more don’t.
Could an average consumer decide that frequently used products come in glass bottles. Say you go and buy Coca-Cola in big 1l glass bottles. Return the old bottle, get a new one. Or for example liquid soap or washing detergent to come in a metal box or glass bottle. Or anything else for that matter. No, everything comes in plastic and if you don’t recycle you are to blame. Can you make the change? No. Because every single manufacturer is doing it. Your only choice is not to buy it, which good luck doing in a modern world. You as a consumer have an option of not buying, buying more expensive alternative which claims to be better but often isn’t and is just charging you premium or just buying whatever is available.
We all know consumption creates demand and demands need to be filled. That’s all great and logical. Then could you buy a TV whose materials have been ethically sourced? Made locally so there’s no pollution for shipping and delivery? No you can not. Your option is not have a TV or have a TV. But you are to blame for wanting a TV.
My point here is, corporations don’t give a fuck about climate. They will happily sacrifice current and future generation’s entire heritage if they can earn 0.1$ on their next sale. That’s all they care about, that next quarter they have more numbers on their account. Want proof of that? Just look at what CocaCola did. Their drinks use to come in glass bottles, switched to plastic. It’s cheaper and if you don’t recycle it’s your fault. What’s that there’s no where to recycle and majority of plastics can’t be recycled. Well that’s governments problem. In fact CocaCola has spend a significant amount of money advertising exactly this. Source. And even when they get pushed for a change, they claim it’s what people wants. It’s never their fault, always yours.
In reality it’s not only CocaCola, but all of them. You could go now, live in wild like an animal wearing nothing but skirt woven from grass and you could not offset for your entire life what they pollute in an hour. If you were born in the 90s, your expected lifetime CO₂ footprint is 150t. That’s it. Flying round-trip London to New York… 986 kg CO₂. More than 2 years of your existence, including breathing, is negated by Elon flying to Paris for a lunch and then got back the same day. You think he recycles 100x more than you?
Want to save the planet, force corporations to use glass instead of plastic. To use paper instead of plastic. To pay for recycling themselves. Prevent the rich for polluting and hold them accountable. Kill coal based everything.
But that’s not happening. Ever. You want clean air, someone is lobbying for “clean coal” even though there’s no such a thing. You want climate change to be stopped but super rich shitheads takes 10 minute flights because traffic was annoying that day.
You can do nothing. It is what it is and it will all go to hell pretty soon. Worrying about it pointless. You claim people are to blame, but people have given up. People need to worry what they will do tomorrow to survive because majority now lives from salary to salary. From an armchair it’s all doable and plans can be made for a better future. But reality is cruel.
Hypothetically, if everyone decided right now to stop buying as much as possible, it would take years of companies continuing to manufacture and try to push these items on us. that’s also a lot to consider that everyone could drastically change their lifestyle like this. What would an in-between look like? If we are currently buying phones as they come out, and on the other extreme, we could just all use ham radio to talk to one another using a station that we maintained over our lifetime, I imagine an in-between might be buying a phone and using it well past it’s planned lifetime if possible via rooting and trying to install a light-weight OS.
People need to eat and live in shelter to survive. Living off the land requires owned land to live off of. Some of the things we want to buy and use are the things that make life easier or worth living.
I’m very well aware of what people need to survive, having lacked all of them individually at times…
it would take years of companies continuing to manufacture and try to push these items on us.
Their valuations would tank after 1 quarter and demand reorganization or bankruptcy. I know I would pull my money out asap - it would be a race to the bottom. They also wouldn’t be manufacturing stock for years and years when they can’t even get stock off the shelf. The only major exception to that is the MIC.
What would an in-between look like?
An exodus from cities, adoption of traditional farming methods decentralizing the food supply chain, housing detached from markets, the end of bullshit jobs, end of consumerism, free family planning services.
I’m pretty far on the doomer side of things lately, but iirc I used to link this to help people break free from capitalist realism when it was published 8 years ago: https://crimethinc.com/tce
I think it can be a valuable starting point for these thought experiments.
Plastic packaging has issues but climate change is not one of them.
Shipping also isn’t impactful at all. Most shipping emissions happen when the product moves to the store, not when it sails in a container ship.
Based on your post, the main evil of the corporations is manipulating the media, confusing people with things like abolishing plastic straws (which are very efficient at what they do).
Eating beef, owning a car and buying unnecessary stuff (for example those bottled drinks) are huge. They easily make up half of a persons emissions. An accurate measure is hard because of secondary effects like needing less road with fewer cars.
Consumption of everything is the problem. More people means more pollution. Plastic is a side product of oil. Cement is one of the big players and it’s used everywhere.
Eating meat on the other hand is not as bad of a reason as you’d think. People often think that cattle feed comes from same fields as out food, but that’s simply not true. For the most part it’s leftovers from food we consume, plant matter from corn and wheat for example, and from fields that would otherwise be unused due to low fertility. If you remove meat from the diet only thing you are left with is excess plant matter.
I agree, we are all part of this problem. Lets fix it. What each of us can do to affect the change. Average consumer, recycle and keep their phones few years longer. Perhaps not eat bananas. Travel by train. Things like that. Many already do, but more don’t.
Could an average consumer decide that frequently used products come in glass bottles. Say you go and buy Coca-Cola in big 1l glass bottles. Return the old bottle, get a new one. Or for example liquid soap or washing detergent to come in a metal box or glass bottle. Or anything else for that matter. No, everything comes in plastic and if you don’t recycle you are to blame. Can you make the change? No. Because every single manufacturer is doing it. Your only choice is not to buy it, which good luck doing in a modern world. You as a consumer have an option of not buying, buying more expensive alternative which claims to be better but often isn’t and is just charging you premium or just buying whatever is available.
We all know consumption creates demand and demands need to be filled. That’s all great and logical. Then could you buy a TV whose materials have been ethically sourced? Made locally so there’s no pollution for shipping and delivery? No you can not. Your option is not have a TV or have a TV. But you are to blame for wanting a TV.
My point here is, corporations don’t give a fuck about climate. They will happily sacrifice current and future generation’s entire heritage if they can earn 0.1$ on their next sale. That’s all they care about, that next quarter they have more numbers on their account. Want proof of that? Just look at what CocaCola did. Their drinks use to come in glass bottles, switched to plastic. It’s cheaper and if you don’t recycle it’s your fault. What’s that there’s no where to recycle and majority of plastics can’t be recycled. Well that’s governments problem. In fact CocaCola has spend a significant amount of money advertising exactly this. Source. And even when they get pushed for a change, they claim it’s what people wants. It’s never their fault, always yours.
In reality it’s not only CocaCola, but all of them. You could go now, live in wild like an animal wearing nothing but skirt woven from grass and you could not offset for your entire life what they pollute in an hour. If you were born in the 90s, your expected lifetime CO₂ footprint is 150t. That’s it. Flying round-trip London to New York… 986 kg CO₂. More than 2 years of your existence, including breathing, is negated by Elon flying to Paris for a lunch and then got back the same day. You think he recycles 100x more than you?
Want to save the planet, force corporations to use glass instead of plastic. To use paper instead of plastic. To pay for recycling themselves. Prevent the rich for polluting and hold them accountable. Kill coal based everything.
But that’s not happening. Ever. You want clean air, someone is lobbying for “clean coal” even though there’s no such a thing. You want climate change to be stopped but super rich shitheads takes 10 minute flights because traffic was annoying that day.
You can do nothing. It is what it is and it will all go to hell pretty soon. Worrying about it pointless. You claim people are to blame, but people have given up. People need to worry what they will do tomorrow to survive because majority now lives from salary to salary. From an armchair it’s all doable and plans can be made for a better future. But reality is cruel.
For closure. Here’s Doug Stanhope
J
Hypothetically, if everyone decided right now to stop buying as much as possible, it would take years of companies continuing to manufacture and try to push these items on us. that’s also a lot to consider that everyone could drastically change their lifestyle like this. What would an in-between look like? If we are currently buying phones as they come out, and on the other extreme, we could just all use ham radio to talk to one another using a station that we maintained over our lifetime, I imagine an in-between might be buying a phone and using it well past it’s planned lifetime if possible via rooting and trying to install a light-weight OS.
People need to eat and live in shelter to survive. Living off the land requires owned land to live off of. Some of the things we want to buy and use are the things that make life easier or worth living.
I’m very well aware of what people need to survive, having lacked all of them individually at times…
Their valuations would tank after 1 quarter and demand reorganization or bankruptcy. I know I would pull my money out asap - it would be a race to the bottom. They also wouldn’t be manufacturing stock for years and years when they can’t even get stock off the shelf. The only major exception to that is the MIC.
An exodus from cities, adoption of traditional farming methods decentralizing the food supply chain, housing detached from markets, the end of bullshit jobs, end of consumerism, free family planning services.
I’m pretty far on the doomer side of things lately, but iirc I used to link this to help people break free from capitalist realism when it was published 8 years ago: https://crimethinc.com/tce
I think it can be a valuable starting point for these thought experiments.
Plastic packaging has issues but climate change is not one of them. Shipping also isn’t impactful at all. Most shipping emissions happen when the product moves to the store, not when it sails in a container ship.
Based on your post, the main evil of the corporations is manipulating the media, confusing people with things like abolishing plastic straws (which are very efficient at what they do).
Eating beef, owning a car and buying unnecessary stuff (for example those bottled drinks) are huge. They easily make up half of a persons emissions. An accurate measure is hard because of secondary effects like needing less road with fewer cars.
Consumption of everything is the problem. More people means more pollution. Plastic is a side product of oil. Cement is one of the big players and it’s used everywhere.
Eating meat on the other hand is not as bad of a reason as you’d think. People often think that cattle feed comes from same fields as out food, but that’s simply not true. For the most part it’s leftovers from food we consume, plant matter from corn and wheat for example, and from fields that would otherwise be unused due to low fertility. If you remove meat from the diet only thing you are left with is excess plant matter.