this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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Why do these evil companies make all this CO2.
What they doing with it? Just burning it for no reason?
Oh wait no they are selling it to consumers because consumers keep demanding it.
Consumers don't really get a choice, I can't choose to buy greener energy from my utility, and solar on my house is both expensive and less efficient than grid scale.
I don't drive but my wife does, and switching to an EV would cost 10s of thousands of dollars, and not even save money because of higher taxes and insurance.
Make no mistake, these are policy issues.
Yet people won't vote for a carbon tax, people don't want more expensive petrol or roads, people don't want subsidised public transport, people don't want ban the suburbs, people won't pay more for insulation, people won't get heat pumps or induction hobs, or eat less meat. People just spend spend spend, consume consume consume. Happily taking whatever is sold to you.
But your right consumers have 0 choice.
In the majority of these cases, it is a small vocal minority that does these things, corporations have spent decades propgandizing that vehicles are the only way to get around, and changing that feels like an attack on mobility.
Also in my country none of these are hardly ever actually put up to vote by either party, so action feels very incremental during optimistic times, and glacial when it's not.
I agree that it's important to understand that companies don't just make waste for fun. They supply a product that people demand. That's not to say those dirty companies are free of responsibility, but rather to understand that consumer choices do have an effect. We, as consumers, can't just throw our hands in the air and say "but I am just 1 person, I have no measurable effect on pollution when we have container ships and oil ops producing 10 million times more greenhouse gas" without acknowledging that the demand for petroleum and ultra cheap widgets is the driver of those businesses. Its a social problem that we need to work together to solve. Honestly, I bet apathy towards the problem by pretending ships and rigs are autonomous wanderers is a viral campaign funded by the offenders themselves. If they're gonna have a bad image, may as well try to keep demand up on a personal level.
It's easy to blame consumers. We have too much junk and get a little endorphin boost when we buy more. But the reality is, evil companies are far, far worse than we know. Here's a few reasons why:
They often lobby to have our choices removed so we need to use their product. Coal energy hasn't made financial sense in a long time, yet we still use it.
Evil companies will do anything to save even pennies. Paper companies dumped pcbs directly into rivers for decades. At the consumer level, we didn't know this was happening. They have lobbied to push back against EPA regulations like CAFE
The recycling logo gets put all plastics... Even though most of it isn't actually recyclable. Again, a mirage from evil companies.
Mergers have shrunk our choices further. Almost everything in the grocery store down to just 10 companies.
I could go on, but the point is that at the consumer level we often don't have a choice. Or there's too much smoke behind the scenes for us to make an informed choice. Companies are polluting because it makes them more money, not because it saves us any.