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Big oil quietly walks back on climate pledges as global heat records tumble
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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Seems odd to say
People bringing up the 100 corporations are usually calling for regulations on them, and the "you're the ones buying the goods" people are usually calling for Personal Responsibility and Voting With Your Wallet.
It’s possible to both think those companies should be regulated and that people are doing almost nothing personally to help, including electing people to enact those policies. For most people I talk to the “but 100 corps” is a total deflection of personal responsibility. This crisis will not be solved without a good heaping helping of both personal responsibility and aggressive government regulation. If nothing else because that aggressive regulation will never pass into law unless people acknowledge their personal responsibility and are willing to accept the sacrifices that will come with it.
In the US, unless you are willing to vote third party, you don't get the choice to vote for Anti-Capitalist politicians. And there are millions of liberals waiting in line to scold you for not voting for the parties of Capital.
In the US, 3rd parties effectively don't exist and you're throwing away your vote.
Vote blue. Remember that Joe Manchin of all people epically played the GOP to get us the IRA. Even corpo shills can advance our cause. Throwaway votes cannot.
100%. People usually argue for one to the exclusion of the other but we need both.
Only one actually works.
You can do personal responsibility alone all you want. Nobody will join you. Government regulation affects everyone.
Selling people on personal responsibility is what the oil companies want, because they know it doesn't work. It gives you the chance to be high and mighty, while nobody else reduces their consumption, so their profits stay the same.
Definitely consume less if you can, but don't delude yourself into thinking that individual actions in reducing personal consumption achieve anything. Go out there and vote for politicians who propose better climate policies, maybe assassinate some oil, gas and coal company execs, etc.
Not to mention that we could organise for every one of the seven or eight billion people on the planet to take 'personal responsibility' and it would still leave 70%+ of emissions untouched. Not even close to where we need to be.
That part is not true.
If we COULD organise every single person to consume as little as possible (in terms of goods, fuel, electricity and services), that would mean that all those polluting companies have nobody left to produce stuff for. The 70% number doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's still people who buy all the shit. It's just impossible to get enough people to stop buying stuff without a carbon tax and other rules that increase the cost of pollution.
Good point. They would require an alternative supplier for the means of subsistence, however, which marks the limits of focussing on the consumer as opposed to the producer.
That's the contradiction: you won't get the carbon tax until the masses organise to put pressure on legislators. Politicians aren't held back by a lack of public support (okay there are a few who would take action)—legislatures don't want to implement any carbon controls. They aren't guided by morality or abstract rationality.
First, this means, that one day they will appear to act spontaneously, morally, but this will be to avoid leaving stranded assets.
Second, they take actions that are logical in the context of class struggle. By this, I mean, there's a way of imposing a carbon tax without increasing prices: by taxing the energy companies. That won't happen in a bourgeois democracy without massive public pressure, because the politicians and energy execs tend to be members of the same class.
Did you just completely not read the context of the conversation that prompted my comment? At all? You seriously just pulled my comment out of context, made a straw man out of it, and started arguing. What the actual tittyfucking Christ.
Unfortunately your comment was wrong.
Wow
And you're still refusing to read the context. Impressive pigheadedness
I did, you're just wrong. Personal responsibility stops working at large scales and can not, MUST not be depended upon. The more people you need to be responsible, the smaller the percentage that will be.
That's why we have laws and need to have better laws regarding pollution and consumption.
And now you're LYING about it, that's hilarious!
I'll let you off the hook.
DreamerOfImprobableDreams started it with the "don't @ me about 100 corporations". At which point I called him out by saying the exact same shit you're saying to me now. That's how I know you didn't read the context.
Embarrassed yet?
When I brought up that "personal responsibility" is a propaganda point from corpos, he clarified that he was talking in the context of "policy driven changes that force companies to decarbonize will have a negative effect on people's lives", ie gas prices will go up, oil riggers will lose their jobs, etc. Market friction. It will suck a little bit.
As hh93 said, and I agreed to,
That's "personal responsibility" in the context we were all talking about.
So clearly you didn't read a damn thing from the comment thread prior to my comment, and then you DOUBLED DOWN on refusing to read and lied about reading.
That was bad, and you should feel foolish.
Sorry, I'm so used to hanging out in left-of-center places I make the mistake of assuming everyone understands how BS the whole "personal responsibilty" shtick is and is onboard with strict regulations to fight climate change. So I tend not to explicitly call it out in my posts, assuming it goes unsaid. Which might be a bad assumption to make in more centrist / non-explicitly-liberal spaces.
Will try to be clearer in the future :)