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I love this narrative of EVERYONE in Lemmy being so smart to not fall into the clutches and delusions of capitalism and at the exact same time, claiming to be a powerless entity, without any intellect, swayed away by the world, having no responsibility whatsoever in the decisions they make daily
It's truly fascinating
I can't find the quote but don't expect poor people to want to stay poor. They will do whatever it takes to rise out of poverty. This privileged and naive attitude of 'don't do that it's bad' won't work.
We technically do. The day we don't need to buy their crap is the day we are free from our chains.
Don't let your dreams be dreams and just do it
We give them the ammo, they pull the trigger. We basically just choose the type of ammo. Buying from Nestle? That's a .50 BMG. Beyond Burgers? .22 LR
If only it was that simple. We still have to eat, drink, clothe ourselves, get around...
I mean, we were not born into the universe having stuff
Uh, sure, I suppose not. But you won't last long after birth without some amount of stuff. Even if you go feral in the woods, you'll need to eat. You need some way to keep warm. You can try to consume thoughtfully but you can't just stop consuming.
If only we had recycled harder
Honestly I'm starting to hate this narrative
For one, by far the most polluting companies are state owned coal companies in China and India. Then other state owned fossil fuel companies and then private fossil fuel companies.
So all those companies are just power generation. So it's not like they can just stop, people need the electricity.
And it's not like nothing is being done either. Like by far the biggest polluter is China's coal industry, making up 25% of global emissions, but China is also THE global leader on clean energy investment. They are currently building more nuclear power plants than the entire rest of the world has, they are making the biggest most powerfull wind turbines in the world, etc.
And if people would stop consuming cheap, disposable shite from China, then they wouldn't use so much electricity, so would burn less coal and also you wouldn't make a bunch of shit that's just going to end up in a landfill.
Power companies in Georgia, US are building more coal power plants. Consumers in Georgia, US don't have a lot of choice in how the electricity they can buy is produced.
What kind of politicians are people voting for at the state level in GA? Separately, they're also blowing ass loads of money on nuclear.
Why are the people not on the hook for electricity usage but they are for cheap crap? The corporations reselling the cheap crap are far more culpable. The problem is still capitalism.
Okay, we've identified the problem is capitalism. Now what? Are you not at fault when you buy cheap crap from China you don't need or take your car somewhere you could have walked, because the problem is capitalism?
When crops are failing due to drought and kids are starving to death is pointing the finger at capitalism going to save them?
I agree so very much.
People around me fly on holidays by plane like two, three times a year, still eat meat, shower twice a day and buy shit they don't need from Amazon, because they can. This needs to stop! Will it save us? Of course not, but who else is going to stop the global suicide machine? Trump? The fossil destroyers? Do you want to protest another 70 years or go blow up a pipeline?
We are billions, we have the power of "No, thanks, I don't want that" every fucking day but the endless consumption of stuff is too tempting. Instead, we sit at home, comfortably warm, well fed and lonely, in front of our seethrough plexiglas RGB LED computers and point fingers at corporations that are exactly as greedy, selfish and irresponsible as every single one of us.
NO THANKS! This could be the easiest global movement, no violence, no riots, yet corporations would be powerless. But you'd need to change, and you don't want that.
Edit: If you downvote, please tell me where I'm wrong and what's your counter-proposal in this actual situation right now.
Where you are wrong is that the majority of humans don't have access to those luxuries of choice since around 50% of the world is still below the extreme poverty level. Where else you're wrong is people like me that have solar panels, and electric transportation and access to mass transit that I use regularly. We also don't have much of a choice, because we don't make the markets those companies do.
Those companies are the only ones that have a choice because they control so much market share that no one else has enough power to make a change.
I already eliminated my carbon footprint, and it hasn't done shit, because Starbucks has their own private jet that the CEO is using 3 times a week to fly between San Francisco and Seattle, because fuck the plebes.
The only solution I see at this point is mass protest and starting to assassinate CEOs, shareholders, and boards of directors, in self defense.
9% of the global population is in extreme poverty not 50%
The point is that if everyone did what you (and I) do, we'd actually get somewhere. Seems like we're in the minority though, unfortunately. That doesn't make the person you replied to wrong, it just means most people continue to just blindly consume, and when they can't consume as much as they want they blindly vote for asswipes promising them even more. That's the cultural problem at the heart of this all. I'm running out of individual actions I can do too, but that doesn't mean those were not helpful.
People aren't blindly consuming though, they're consuming mostly as a necessity, without much choice in the impact of what they consume. Us down here at the bottom of the class hierarchy don't have a lot of wiggle room. In general, the lower and middle classes much more rarely consume for pleasure, but even still, why shouldn't I get to take a plane for vacation once or twice a year, sucking the farts of the 300 other peasants in the economy class seats, while CEOs take single-passenger trips in their private jets every day? Do you see how that's frustrating? My footprint is already incredibly low because on top of just not consuming all that much in the first place (compared to a billionaire), I do try to be as responsible as I reasonably can. Billionaires aren't even trying.
I think the big point is, it would be magnitudes easier to get the 100 richest people to lower their carbon footprint than the 1 billion poorest (do you understand how monstrously difficult it is to convince 1 billion, or even 1 million people to work towards some common goal?), and it would probably have a bigger impact on the environment to boot. I'm getting tired of people continuing to advocate for individual action when actions by billionaires would be so much more impactful, for so much less sacrifice on their part. Work smarter, not harder, you know?
Obviously, the best solution is to do both, to tackle the problem from both sides. But in my personal opinion, I think we should start with the billionaires and see where that gets us first. They owe us at least that much.
We're talking about two different groups of people here. The working class trying to survive get a pass on individual actions because they have no means. They should probably vote and organize and get engaged to better their outcomes.
I'm talking about the millions of people that have the means, but just don't because they quite literally don't care. I see them every day. It's the millions of people buying new $60k trucks and SUVs every few years, and large suburban homes, and who have trash cans that are 5x the size of mine that still can't contain their mindless shopping detritus, and spend tons of money on trendy home furnishings but "don't think solar makes sense" or don't bother trying literally anything that reduces carbon.
I'm saying that giving millions of these people a pass because a billionaire is worse isn't helpful, and expecting these folks to magically work towards sustainable collective action when they spend their entire lives living the opposite of sustainability is simply not going to work. If you can convince neighbors to get heat pumps solar and give them a test ride on your ebike and show them how easy it is to live without gas you can probably get them to vote for someone that is focused on the climate. Sitting around you and your neighbors matching F150s blaming China and Bezos and speaking in abstract terms about "collective action" seems less effective to me.
Sorry for the rant!
Yes, there is a difference between the elite and the lower class, but it's only in resources and opportunities. If both sides switched positions the lower class people would go for exactly the same fun as the elite is having right know. Because that's the way we are born and raised, greedy and selfish. Purging a couple of assholes and replacing them with fresh soon-to-be assholes won't solve this. Our mindset needs to change. We need to agree on what is important, what is enough and what's obscene.
If both sides switched positions the lower class people would go for exactly the same fun as the elite is having right know.
Then it seems to me that the real problem is the capacity for damage that being a billionaire grants you, not the people involved. Maybe we need to start looking at ways to limit the damage billionaires can do, instead of focusing so hard on changing the behavior of the masses.
Purging a couple of assholes and replacing them with fresh soon-to-be assholes won't solve this
I'm not suggesting a purge, I'm suggesting we change the behavior of the billionaire class. That can be achieved with taxes, policy, and financial incentives just as easily as with violence (probably easier tbh).
Our mindset needs to change.
Dawg, we've been trying to change the mindset since (at least*) the 90s, and it's just not enough. You and I can reuse our sustainably sourced reusable hemp shopping bags all we want, reduce our consumption all we want, recycle all we want, it doesn't change the fact that Kroger is shipping in produce from half a planet away on a daily basis. We need to go further, and make the upper class take their share of responsibility for the damage they do to the environment.
We need to agree on what is enough and what's obscene.
Agreeing on what's enough is hard, but agreeing on what's obscene is much much easier, and I think it's safe to say that nearly every billionaire in the world exceeds what we can agree is obscene. That's a much easier problem to solve, one we have the tools to solve now. Let's tackle that first, while we work through the harder problem of figuring out what's enough.
I agree again.
It's a multifaceted issue, but don't kid yourself
China weighs in at 14.5% for coal. Another 1-point-some-odd for their Petro Chem. The issue is that there are a lot of companies that make up the remainder.
Demand definitely plays a role in all of this, but I don't think pushing green initiatives is a bad thing from the consumers and one of the only ways we can encourage these companies to do their part