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this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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I don't know why these discussion are often met with "if you're not ready to lose your car you're the problem" narrative.
I might not be ready to lose my car but I sure as hell am ready to lose coal based electricity, the military complex, single use plastic, billionaire who prefer to let a train derail than spend money on regulations, and a shit ton other things that wouldn't even affect my day to day life other than make it safer.
I don't know why, in these discussions, "it's all the fault of corporations!" is treated as though it was a serious argument.
Corporations do one thing: they give us what we want. What we demand, a lot of the time. The fundamental problem is us, corporations are just the abstraction we use to fulfill our needs and desires. Before there were companies, people fought and scrambled for wealth and then displayed it as lavishly as possible, it's just that the means of acquiring and then using that wealth were different. Read up on Romans hosting banquets where slave boys were fed to eels for entertainment while guests fed on flamingos stuffed with hippo brains with a garnish of tiger testicles or whatever, or the Chinese or Indian or Mesoamerican equivalent, and then explain again how all our problems are due to modern corporations.
Yeah, no. When you go to the grocery store to pick out the lettuce for dinner, did you specifically ask for the single use plastic it’s wrapped in, or was that the only option presented to you?
The idea that we as consumers are choosing the only option available on the market is flawed. This extends to the times another option is available, but is two to three times as expensive, such as milk being available in glass but even after factoring out the deposit the milk itself costs double.
When you hook your house up to the electricity grid, are you given a choice of where your power comes from? No. Hell, the majority of the time you’re not even given a choice of what company you get that electricity from.
And before you go in on the “there are other options” I’m just going to flat out ask you what the cost difference is. If I’m living paycheck to paycheck, there’s no way in fuck I’m buying solar panels, or collecting and processing my own rain water, or buying the expensive foodstuffs wrapped in the sustainable packaging.
Pretending the consumer has a choice is a bullshit narrative pushed by corporations that want to pass the blame down to the people who really have no direct way to effect things beyond recycling what they can. Hell, some communities don’t even have recycling.
I chose to go to the grocery store rather than a farmers market.
Farmers markets are not universally available. The closest to me is a 40 minute drive, and while the prices are… usually good, what exactly am I to do during the winter?
It’s a good solution, when it’s available, but by no means is it a silver bullet against the issue of corporations taking shortcuts to save money in the short term, and costing everyone in the long.
Are you kidding me? Not have crops from a country 10s of thousands of miles away deliver deliver super cooled fresh produc at the cost of our planet.
You eat the preservatives like we used to. We should absolutely be getting more produce as locally as possible and as in season as possible.
We live in a collective society so trade and import is totally fine and will happen but everything we want all of the time is not currently sustainable.
Farmers markets don’t operate during the winter months here. Not using a crop for thousands of miles away has no bearing on the fact that I literally can’t utilize a farmers market for 4+ months of the year.
And if you’re really suggesting I buy and preserve/store 4 months worth of food you truly don’t understand what it means to live paycheck to paycheck. You’re essentially saying to throw money at the problem.
You're seriously claiming that doing some pickling or salting in the fall is just too hard and expensive, when people have been doing it for millenia? Salt is under $1/lb in the US, and you can get next-day delivery of pickling jars to your doorstep. Your ancestors would be rolling on the floor laughing at you.
Some pickling and salting? I support a family of 4. Some anything isn’t going to last 4 months, good god. I literally need over a years worth of preserves to last between farmers market availability in the winter. Not to mention the time it would take to process it all.
Look, I’m glad you live in a self sustainable world where you can get months of food for cheap, and have the time to preserve it all. Good on you, you’re doing great.
The idea that millions of people are in the same position is just… insane.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't pickle everything I need for the winter. That's a shitload of work. I go to the grocery store and buy food like everybody else, and just try to make reasonable choices while I'm there.
I just don't fume the whole time about how Safeway is destroying the planet, and suggesting that everything would be great if only they were gone. I deeply appreciate the fact that we've built such an incredibly efficient system of food distribution, and that I can get all the calories I need and more in the form of fresh fruit & veggies even in the middle of the winter, even if I also acknowledge that we really need to tweak it to reduce the damage it's causing.
Point is, corporations aren't generating 99% of global emissions. We are producing 99% of global emissions, by choosing to buy mangos and pineapples from Whole Foods in January instead of pickling carrots and asparagus in September. You can't get rid of the corporations and then live off of tropical fruits without generating any CO₂.
Also, for the record, my grandparents supported a family of 10, and they lived through the winter largely on pickled and canned foods. In the fall, all the wives would get together and pack vegetables into jars every weekend. That was already a huge improvement, because a lot of what they pickled came from the grocery store: their grandparents could only pickle what they could grow. There was a whole room in the basement full of pickles & canned food. It was totally doable then, and it's only gotten easier in the intervening decades.
I mean, here you go: reusable produce bags for you to bring with you to the store, provided by a corporation.
Yes, milk in glass bottles is more expensive: those bottles are expensive to produce, heavy and delicate to transport, and they need a whole infrastructure to collect and return them to the plant. If we insisted on glass bottles instead of cardboard or plastic, things would be more expensive. The problem is that we, the customers are cheap motherfuckers and will, on aggregate, always go for the cheapest option. So that's what companies offer us. If the government banned single-use plastic or cardboard milk cartons, corporations would shrug their shoulders and offer that: they don't care, they make a profit either way, but as long as plastic is an option, corps know that's what we're going to buy because it's $1 cheaper...so that's what they offer us.
Yeah, I'd be totally fine with the government finding ways to break up monopolies like this--including natural monopolies, like power and internet (where infrastructure requirements limit competition). Here's the thing, though: if hydro, wind and coal were all options, and coal was 20% cheaper, what would people pick? We're the problem. Luckily, we're getting close to solar being more efficient than any fossil fuel for power (thanks to greedy corporations rushing to develop the tech for sale).
Right. And in a world where those were the only options, you'd eat less food or live in a smaller home. Making them the only options doesn't make them cheaper, and in some cases, where supply is limited, it will dramatically increase prices.
You want to main exactly the same quality of life you have now, make no sacrifices, and for that to somehow be totally green and sustainable. That's not realistic.
Blaming companies is lazy and self-serving. We're the problem. We've always been the problem. Corporations can't make minor adjustments, at no cost or inconvenience to us, and save the planet. That's ridiculous, and it's a self-serving myth, making them a scapegoat for our sins.
The irony is, it’s exactly the opposite: https://harvardpolitics.com/climate-change-responsibility/
Yes consumers do in fact add to climate change and pollution, of course they do. They still drive their cars, they still take long showers, they still run the AC with a window cracked because reasons.
But the idea that the corporations are just innocent little victims being forced to do bad things with a gun held to their head by consumers is bloody ridiculous.
I'm not saying corporations are innocent. I'm saying they're doing what we demand.
Corporations are just a bunch of people working together, seeking profit. That's it. They're not more moral than the people who work there--and if they're too moralistic they'll fail, because people aren't willing to buy their more expensive products.
I have a lot of problems with corporations, how they're structured, the laws that apply to them (and more importantly, don't). But they're not the core problem, and blaming them is a cop-out. It stops us from taking responsibility, and in the end we're the program: corporations can't even exist unless we're enthusiastically buying and using their products.
I agree with you up to like 80%. We absolutely are the problem. We want produce you can't get in the winter, we want specialty fruits and crops at nearly impossible times, we want and want and want.
And so yes a lot of this current hell is a misery in our own making that we refuse to put down all the things we have collected and decided makes our existence that much better.
But also corporations are also run by people with wants and not all of those decisions are being made with consideration of what the masses want anymore but what the people at the top want. More money, more of the profit share, more cheap labor.
Yeah. Everyone wants stuff. And the masses won't accept the ideas of less easily. But it doesn't help that the top doesn't want equal or fair rules for what they want to do anymore either. So society does what the people want but it doesn't mean that there isn't also a small group doing specifically what they want with a lot more power and no fucks to give about how they do it.
What the people at the top want is money, and the way to get it is by giving the masses what they want.
I agree it results in weird incentives. But blaming corporations exclusively (which is a popular opinion these days) is beyond stupid. We need to acknowledge that we are the root of the problem. The solution to corporate abuses is just for us to make laws to reign them in. In the end, they're just an abstraction.
I'm very suspicious about the motives of people who act like corporations are the only problem. Either they're incredibly naive, or they're just looking for an easy way to ease their own conscience.
They think they solved the singular truth to problems. We secretly suck at problem solving whole being really good at pattern recognition as the hairless apes we are.
It's just an easy wrong answer to come to when you want it to be an easy answer.
But just assuming you could regulate the companies after getting the people to agree is singular focused too. Things are a complicated mess of everyone wanting something different. And using what they have to do it.
And that's so tough to comprehend. No easy answers.
That's bullshit, corporations sell you what they tell you you need, and convince you that you need to change the phone every 2 years, that you need anew car every 5, and that you have to eat the new organic bullshit nutrient rich superfood.
you are not as free to think as much as you think you are (and neither am I... I am not cooler than you)
All of those things are things that are very easy to say no to? I swapped the battery on my phone, I don't have a car but "my" car at my parents house is from '99. I eat food that I like. I'm not saying I'm impervious to bad decisions, or even that these are always bad decisions, but the people who buy a new phone or car every few years its because they like to.
Exactly. It's just people don't want to take responsability for the decisions they are able to make.
That's great, but EmperorHenry said regulation would stop 99% of emissions. I can assure you that personal vehicles and animal agriculture represent more than 1% of emissions. If we're talking about a 20%, 50%, maybe even 70% reduction, then your argument is fine. But we need a 100% reduction in order to save the species. I'm ready for 100%, are you?
Can we hit 100% if we sacrifice annoying pedants like you?
No, because we have lower emissions than annoying car drivers like you.
Look dude it's awesome that you like your rural town and the big truck you probably take to grab a big mac from the nearest McDonald's and all and there is nothing wrong with you personally liking that, but I like big cities. I like having everything I need, plenty of diverse entertainment and new friends to make, all within a 15 minute walk from me; being able to hop on a bike, tram or train to get anywhere further than that; the livelihood of living amongst other walking, talking, living, breathing humans; living amongst green spaces that people actually use and that I don't have to personally maintain, that exist for a reason other than being a non-location that you pass through and don't really think about on your way from a to b. I currently can't have that at a reasonable quality without either having a damn near million dollar salary, moving several states away from my friends and family, and/ or just leaving the country altogether.
Nobody is saying towns that need cars to get around can't exist, we are saying that walkable cities and towns are actually really good for our society and small business and the fucking tax revenue keeping your beloved money-pit suburbs and rural towns afloat. We are saying that there should be more places where humans come before cars, made available for the people that want them; just as badly as you want your free space between every home; rather than owning a home and a car in a bleak patchwork of corn fields, manicured bluegrass, and crumbling asphalt being the only real option for the vast majority of the country.
Heck, I'm honestly not even asking for big cities or any crazy amount of density. Americans have a hard time conceptualizing this before they travel and see it for themselves, god knows I did, but I'm not talking Manhattan. Literally just take any historical district of 1-over-1 or 3-over-1 mixed-use buildings in an American town (usually all that remains is a single block but they do still dot the country and are beloved places of commerce and leisure), expand that by a radius of 10 or so blocks, slap a tram, a couple buses, plenty of bike lanes, and a pedestrian-only zone or two in the middle of it, and boom you have yourself the lively and functional cross between a suburban town and a densely populated city that worked in America long before everyone was convinced they needed a car, and has adapted well to cars in Europe.
You see, we deliberately killed our cities when we flattened huge swaths of them to build freeways, parking lots, and arterial roads through them in order for whites to move somewhere that blacks were priced and redlined out of. We cut off our nose to spite our face and as a result, a lot of the issues we see in this country today are symptomatic of that era of government subsidized suburbanization.
This is not the natural order of things, we did not get here by suburbia and rural towns with their car-dependent lifestyles simply being superior in some way to cities and moderately dense towns, and we won't go back by forcing people out of their homes and into tenements and taking their cars away. We simply have to fix what was destroyed and give people a choice and if they want to, they will move on their own. Many of those people will likely find that a car just isn't worth the investment anymore. I would bet my life savings that a good chunk of people would choose that over the suburban sprawl that is currently the default.
“We can’t do 100% so why are we talking about 20%?”
We can do 100%. You pessimists need to start thinking bigger. We can do it.
Personal vehicles and animal agriculture are responsible for way more than 30% of emissions, it would be impossible to get 70% reduction without touching them. 100% reduction is not possible, necessary, or desirable, some industry is necessary to maintain basic necessities.
I think what you're trying to say is that it's necessary to address personal vehicles and animal agriculture to adequately address climate change, which is true and valid. But the way you've phrased it comes across as unreasonable.
Neurotypicals are so picky. I deliberately tell them 70% might be possible just to seem extra reasonable and concilatory, and it's still not enough.
I'm not NT but maybe I can give some advice, constructive criticism as someone who agrees with your overall point.
I think being generous on that point backfired because it made the other changes seem less necessary. It meant being more insistent on other points, which are more subjective, like, "exactly where do you draw the line between sacrificing for the environment vs maintaining quality of life?" It's better to be generous on questions like that while sticking to your guns on facts you can support with data.
It could also help to point out that lifestyle changes are something people can do right now, while regulations have to go through political processes with lots of money working against them.
Also I just realized you may have been referencing carbon neutrality when you say "100% reduction." The way I (and I think others) interpreted it was not "net zero emissions" but just "zero emissions." The planet removes some carbon naturally, so it's ok to have some pollution, we don't need to go back to living in mud huts or anything. The question is, where can we get the most bang for our buck in reducing overall emissions to bring us closer to net zero, and the answers are the things you mentioned.
Yeah, I meant carbon neutrality. Carbon neutrality is the first step to preventing runaway climate collapse. When we reach carbon neutrality, it'll keep getting hotter, but the rate at which it gets hotter won't be increasing anymore. We need to be carbon negative in order to prevent further warming.
We're still going to need to have some emissions, like from farting, but meat and cars are easy to get rid of. Those changes actually have a negative cost, because cars and meat are already bad for reasons besides climate change. I got rid of them and it was easy and it made my life better.
I would want to get rid of meat and cars before we get rid of things like intercontinental container ships. Those ships are actually super efficient for the amount of cargo they carry, and I think intercontinental trade is an absolute necessity. The main problem with container ships is just how much disposable garbage we're shipping and how much we've moved away from local industry. But intercontinental industry is definitely going to be a necessity in some ways if we want to have an advanced society. Cheeseburgers? Not so much.
Based. I've also cut out meat and got rid of my car (have had to rent/borrow bc reasons) and yeah I agree with you 100%.
Whatever it is you're ready to lose, there are people out there who aren't ready to lose it.
Fuck right off, there are entire countries who would be completely at a loss without coal-based electricity. Countries which would rather you lose your car.
Everyone working in the military complex would rather you lose your car than they lose their jobs. It's you and your car vs millions of people all over the world specifically trained to identify threats to their security, find them and shoot/cut/drone/nuke them. Good luck.
I mean you wanna fight all the corpos involved with single used plastics, I'm sure having your car will keep you from being suffocated with a plastic bag for like 2 hours.
You're unwilling to allow for changes in your personal lifestyle to globally change things for the better, so why the fuck would anyone else? Just nuke the planet from orbit at this point, we're all egotistical shitheads and there's no way to convince Jimmy McFuckface to give up his 1994 truck, we're done here.
That's not what 15 minute cities are.
You're getting surveillance regardless of walkablity. Amazon is happy enough to hand Ring camera footage over to authorities no questions asked.
You said you can't use public transit twice but neither time did you specify why.
Someone has been feeding you some weird bullshit about 15-minute cities. The concept of 15-minutes cities has nothing whatsoever to do with the things you wrote.