Everything about energy production and storage.
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I've been yelling this at the top of my lungs forever. No amount of cardboard straws are going to stop corporations from polluting the fuck out of things.
Yeah, I absolutely agree with this sentiment. The whole plastic mess really grinds my gears.
The straw thing is classic "industry reference group consultation" stuff. Regulators asked the companies that manufacture stuff wrapped in plastic what they should do, and they said "no more shopping bags!" and "cardboard straws!", and now consumers feel like they've endured some hardship and solved the plastic problem. Meanwhile the assholes can keep selling everything wrapped in plastic because that's the cheapest way to sell it.
About a year ago I noticed plastic products at the shop like wraps and bin bags with "50% ocean plastic" or some such. They define ocean plastic as plastic collected from communities within 100km of the ocean which have no other plastic reclamation facilities. In Australia 99.99% of the population lives within 100km of the ocean. City Councils pay companies to process waste. If you take the plastic from those companies then it meets their shitty definition of "ocean plastic". So in summary, they're not saving any dolphins, but using the plight of the dolphins to sell more plastic. Assholes.
Regulators need to regulate these cunts. Add a levy to any product that includes plastic. Start at 1% and increase by 1% each year forever. I have absolutely no doubt that within just a few years your local supermarket will be awash with products enclosed in amazing polymers comprised of frog spit and corn starch that were invented 80 years ago.
Agree a gazzillion percent!! On the plastic front, there's some progress being made towards a UN plastics treaty which would legally bind countries to legal targets for plastic reduction. It's not perfect at all, and it's likely the US under Trump will ignore it, but would be a big win for plastic regulation (Green Peace and a bunch of other groups are campaining for its support- worth searching for local petitions if you're interested)
If every person in the world stopped emitting gases, and polluting, the world would still be heading towards disaster because corporations aren't people, and they polute more than all of us put together to the tune of 9x more.
Thing is these corporations don't emit in a vacuum, they emit to fill demand for their products, demand that comes from people.
If people stop traveling all over the world and ordering shit to be delivered the next day they won't keep the planes flying for no reason, but that's something that's 100% in regular people's hands. Boeing can use more efficient engines, it's still not sustainable to use them, but they won't stop using them if there's demand.
This is just blaming consumers again. Which doesn't work, as we keep saying. There's no way to disentangle yourself from globalism, so everything you buy is going to massively contribute to carbon emissions. The only solution to a systemic problem has to be a fix to the system, not victim blaming.
No, it's not about blame. That's playground logic.
It's about action. It's about what we can do. What we can do is both vote, do direct action, and be political consumers.
Drag ranked those three in terms of efficiency in effort to change. Voting is the easiest. Being a political consumer is the hardest. But it is possible to do all three.
The fossil companies want activists to waste our effort by doing 3 without doing 1 or 2. Do 1 first, then 2. But if you have willpower left over after 1 and 2, then stop giving money to megacorps.
Didn't know it was mandatory for me to travel to Punta Cana twice a year, I haven't done my mandatory air travel in... 33 years! Oh shit! What about the majority of the world's population that never took a plane, what are they gonna do? 😱
To reduce my carbon footprint I just stop buying BP products.
Be a political consumer, and you'll reduce the pollution right now, this minute, 100% certainty. But only one person's worth of pollution.
If you vote and protest, you can take away other people's ability to pollute, and do more than one person's worth of work. But it'll be slow, and it might not work.
Vote, then protest if you can, then go vegan if you can.
I hear this all the time but I don't personally see it that way. Just because I do my best does not mean I absolve companies or other individuals for not doing as much as they can. I don't think people are walking around thinking its all their fault on not industry as well as legal incentives/disincentives.
If you want to stop fossil fuel driven production of green house gases, stop traveling, reduce energy use, AND STOP USING PLASTIC. Good luck on that cabin in the woods. We're addicted and withdrawal isn't going to happen willingly. Hang on for the worst hangover in history.