Almost every post or comment I see that is about global warming or the environment seems to blame individual consumers. People say things like – you shouldn’t be eating meat, you shouldn’t drive as much, you should drive electric, you shouldn’t use single-use plastics or plastic water bottles, you need to trade in your gas oven for an electric one.
That is incredibly intellectually lazy. Rather than actually going after the root causes of pollution and environmental degradation, they turn and cause infighting amongst regular people.
I don’t see many blaming the US military, which is arguably the largest polluter in the world. One small forward operating base overseas can consume 800,000 water bottles in a month. Massive amounts of equipment have to be shipped all over the world, on ships That in one trip and make more missions than millions of cars put together. And don’t get me started on international shipping, global corporations, and public policy that can affect corporations.
Also these are the same people who say the reason they don’t talk about India or Asia is because they’re not over there and can’t affect policy, so they focus on the US where they’re from. Logically false because these are the same people that support Greta’s message and keep talking about the Paris Climate Accord and American and European standards both. So then why exclude Asia? You can’t have a serious conversation about pollution and global warming without including the top polluting countries in the world.
You’re not going to get anywhere blaming individual consumers and telling them not to use a plastic straw. That’s not the damn problem and subconsciously I think they know it. “Oh but if you stop consuming the company will be forced to lower demand.” Maybe in your econ book, but on the aggregate, in a global market place, that’s not how this works. Most people don’t give a shit, and rightfully so. They use the what is low cost that is most convenient for them. You’re not going to reach these people, you’re not going to make a dent. Trying to change human nature is like trying to make water not wet. But it’s far easier to blame people for using a gas oven and calling them irresponsible assholes who hate the rainforest then to think about real policy-based solutions that target the military-industrial complex, the top international players, and corporations. Not at the individual consumer level, but at the nation policy level where it might actually make a spit of a difference.
TL; DR: I think people who call themselves environmentalists who do this, do it for an ego boost. They give themselves a pat on the back, thinking they’ve done something by rabidly going after their neighbors for driving an SUV. When in fact they’re just being egotistical dicks alienating the very people they need on their side if we’re going to drive through policy changes in a democratic system.
Edit: oh, and I forgot to add I keep seeing people on Reddit talk about how people shouldn’t be having children and how we should teach people not to breed so much, which is a disgusting view and blaming people for having children as the cause of environmental degradation really is sick. we really are forgetting why we care about the environment in the first place. It’s because of people and their welfare. The planet can give a crap whether there are trees or clean water or not. We’re losing sight of why we want the environment to be clean. It’s for people, so people can live a healthy life.
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Just 100 companies produce 71% of all global emissions.
Honestly it really pisses me off sometimes when I think about just how wastefully our society is set up. Everything’s based around money to the point that it’s actually detrimental to mankind. We grow more than enough food to feed everyone in the world, but 36 million people starve every year.
Everything is commodified including food and housing. They’re not just human needs, they’re also commodities to be profited from. Bernie has a plan to build millions of houses so we can end homelessness, and people are actually complaining that it would mess up the housing market. That’s one of many huge problems with capitalism, it often pits morals against profits and gives people reasons not to do the right thing.
Everyone having food, housing and healthcare is obviously a great thing, but capitalism gives you reasons to fight against it. Healthcare companies literally ask “is curing patients a sustainable business model?”. And the answer is no, it’s not. Under capitalism it actually makes more sense for them to give patients continued treatment rather than curing them, theh can make more money that way.
Right now we’re putting profits over people, and we’re putting short-term growth over long-term benefits. We act as if a company’s quarterly profits increasing somehow makes society better, when actually it’s just shifting money from one place to another. Most money isn’t even real anyway, 92% of U.S. currency isn’t even printed on paper, it’s just numbers in a computer but we’re still destroying the planet that we live on in pursuit of more money.
Global warming is a result of capitalism. It’s a result of putting profits over everything else, and if our society was focused on sustainability instead of endless growth, we would have put a stop to it a long time ago. Oil companies commissioned studies on global warming decades ago, and they proved it was real but they swept that data under the rug so they could keep on profiting from their business. I think that’s the perfect example of what’s wrong with our system right there, a bunch of people proved that what they were doing could literally end life as we know it, but they kept doing it just so they could make profits. Capitalism is all about the bottom line, but the *real* bottom line is that putting imaginary profits over real world benefits is incredibly stupid. We can do better.
sooooo…..keep funding stuff that you know harms the planet because “1 person can’t make a difference” and the big corporations/ countries aren’t trying as much.. how do you think change happens? overnight?
Wait, so you mean that my use of plastic straws isn’t the cause of climate change?
Look up top 10 most polluted cities in the world, most of them are in one country. Haven’t seen a thread in hot talk about that country. Kinda odd
A lot to agree and disagree with, both with the op and the comments but I’ve always thought about it this way. If it’s a problem on a grand scale then it’s not a people problem, it’s a management problem.
People will do whatever people can do because they are all small statistic points on a bell curve of choices. Without a “manager” (the government) limiting what the decisions people can make they will always make all of them.