Corporations are polluting like nobody's business and ignoring the bulk of the proble, then passing off the responsibility to individuals where they can. Gestures like "use less plastic bags" and "use less straws" mostly help save money, and aren't enough to stop the planet from dying.
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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Back in 2019 I was having a campfire in my backyard with some friends including a retired couple in their late 60's. He had just retired from IBM. We got on the subject of climate change and how terrible it will be for future generations.
"I mean, not like it's going to affect us" he said as they both chuckled uttering that classic line (my wife nor I could believe they said it out loud).
Fast forward a year. He caught Covid from one of their out of state friends who stayed with them for a weekend. And guess who caught covid. He died December 30th 2020 from a disease he very much could have prevented. The irony was undeniable, as he succumbed to Covid-19, a cruel twist of fate potentially amplified by the very climate change he dismissed
Unless big corporations do something about it, we are doomed, individual efforts are going to do no shit We have hit 45C and its not even peak summer
It is not how capitalism works. At first individuals should start prefer local production and production of more green companies. And only after that corporations change their politics. For example, there is a yearly rating of green electronics (how much green electricity company uses, how clean production is, etc.) but customers do not care. And if customers do not care, why corporations should care?
You are not considering that not everybody can know how everything is produced.
I am more than 30 years into this life and don't know exactly how many things that I buy are produced, how the resources are gained, how far parts were shipped, etc.
On top of that companies go far lengths to hide things that would have a bad public feedback. They even do research only to sow doubt in science. And they print fake green labels and proudly advertise with it.
That's why ideally the government steps in to bring transparency and safety for their citizen.
But guess what? Companies are paying nice money and other benefits for politicians to be able to lead the customers by their noses.
That's one way capitalism can work. Capitalism, like anything created by humans, is complex. The way you described how capitalism works seems to put all the blame on the people with the least power or knowledge in the whole process.
Corporations have the money to advertise their products, bribe politicians, lobby governments, threaten or deal with whistleblowers, suppress information and research or destroy foreign environments for resources to continually gain more power. That's not a complete list either. The things these entities would do to exploit everything to increase their quaterly profits is horrifying.
Where I live, our regional government official works hand in hand with businesses and corporations to completely gut health care and education while giving away all our green land to build more expensive homes.
If individuals truly had control over capitalism as you suggest, then they will soon be too tired from being over worked, sick from lack of healthcare, possibly homeless, and under educated to know any better to make better decisions, or fight back.
Corporations have the wealth to change things but it seems ruthless manipulation and exploitation are their favourite tools. I don't see how these tools can continue endlessly on this finite planet. You can't exploit a lifeless planet with dead slaves but they just can't see past their quarterly profits.
At first individuals should start prefer local production track
Let me just buy a locally sourced phone from the local farmers market! Hmm while I'm at it I'll switch my power supplier to one that uses renewable energy instead of a coal fired power plant! And for my business trip I think I'll fly on magic carpet!
Wow! Pollution and global climate change really is the fault of selfish individuals and not unregulated capitalist as I initially thought!
I get where you are coming from, and it’s true, a lot of people just don’t seem to care…
Capitalism also works to keep prices as high as possible and wages as low as possible leaving most of the population not in a position to make ethical desicions over affordability decisions.
How are large corporations going to reduce meat consumption? Or reduce the number of international flights people take for vacation? How will they make entirely unsustainable industries like fast food, fast fashion, and cruise lines go out of business? To say nothing about the rampant inhumane working conditions and cruelty in those industries.
Certainly a lot of the issues are dependent upon the world's industrial infrastructure and that is not something that we necessarily have a handle on. But all the people building the new sustainable infrastructure are just regular people and individuals who decided to do something.
The concerning part is always "it's happening faster than they predicted!" I'm not sure what contributes to the models being so far off.
This is just a guess of mine, I don't know any data for it, so take it with a big grain of salt:
I can imagine that it is in each big greenhouse gas emitter's interest to state a lower estimate for how much GHG are released. Also many plants are reported of leaking gas.
So the data scientist use may not be the complete list of emissions.
Maybe.
They aren't really far off it's just that the models don't show every feature of the climate because they are models, not reality. But regarding the broad strokes the models are accurate and relevant.
Also CNN peddles fear and useless information. They thrive on sensationalism, not by informing people.
Well, that's not great.
Seems like the humans are in a bit of a pickle.
On one hand they can keep using fossil fuels, and that will allow some humans to live more comfortably while they pump so much planet warming gasses into the climate system that it guarantees the future sterilization of the planet.
On the other hand, they could mandate a planet-wide ban on fossil fuels, which would be problematic because their food system is entirely reliant on fossil fuels, without which they could only feed about one billion humans.
Or maybe they will choose to gamble, and attempt to exert their control of the climate system through stratospheric injection of sulphate aerosols. It will be neat to see what possible unanticipated consequences this leads to!
Well whatever the humans choose, just know that we're all rooting for you! 🍿🎉
I wish that for even every 10 alarmist articles about climate change published there was one about the various steps and programs being worked on to address it.
But no. Just more selling of fear and sensationalism.
There is very little information regarding that in mainstream news and it is a serious disservice. People need to understand these issues if we are going to contribute to them or vote for them intelligently.
There are lots of good programmes, of course. But the fact is that global emissions continue to rise year on year. We haven’t even managed to stabilise emissions yet, let alone cut.
Of course not. That isn't remotely possible for well over a decade. That doesn't mean that there is not a massive effort to build new sustainable infrastructure that will replace what we currently have. We spent 50 years building the current infrastructure that depends on fossil fuels. It's not going to be replaced overnight, or even in a few years.
What people don't realize is that when emissions finally start dropping year after year, the reduction will happen relatively quickly after that. That part of the change will be dramatic and observable. The hard work being done right now not so much.
Think about EV cars and trucks; once adoption rises to over 50% a year, the transition to 90% EVs will happen very quickly because no one will want to invest in the old tech and the manufacturing will have scaled up dramatically and be much more mature. What people don't realize is how much of the hard work was done before EVs were being mass produced. Developing and building the battery and car factories and establishing all the supply lines is the hard part, not building cars in the factory.
The same timeline will happen with many other sustainable technologies that are where EVs were in 2005 or 2010.
It's a very lucrative industry now. People are making fortunes and careers on climate change. You can't expect honesty or clear information on the back of that. It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
My take is that a) man-made climate change is happening, and b) it's not nearly as bad as alarmists claim. The global average temperature is projected to increase by 2-4C over the next 80 years.%20by%202100.) I'm sorry, but that's just not an "emergency." You know what is an emergency? The 4.6 million people who die each year because they can't access cheap energy. We should, immediately, work to make energy cheaper and more abundant for more people, even if it increases our carbon output. Saving lives today is obviously much more important than potentially saving lives 100 years from now.
I respectfully disagree.
At our current trajectory there will be mass death and significant swathes of the planet will simply be uninhabitable.
The view that we should release more carbon than we already are doing now is, in my opinion, reckless and selfish.
I’ll have to find the source later, but I read somewhere that each 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature reduces overall crop yields by 10%. Also, tropical forests that rely on high humidity environments will start drying up causing drastic ecological and an increase in fires. Yes, the fear mongering sells news, but that doesn’t mean you can write off climate change as a big deal.
each 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature reduces overall crop yields by 10%.
That sounds on the high side, so I'd want to read a source before I accept it. Let's say it's true for a moment, and crop yields decline by 20-40% over the next 80 years. Take a look at global wheat yields over time. The use of technology to improve yields has resulted in explosive growth to output. Our continued improvements for the next 80 years will more than make up for even a 40% reduction.
I must be clear: I am well aware that there will be consequences to a 2-4C increase in temperature. I'm claiming that those consequences are not as bad as the millions of people dying each year at present because they lack access to cheap energy.