this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
680 points (99.6% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
5289 readers
529 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Corporate pollution and your pollution are the same thing
Say there is a manufactured necessity. One cannot reasonably make it themselves or go without it. The manufacturer chooses to skimp on pollution controls or illegally dump so that the owners can make more money. How is that my fault?
big oil literally destroyed public transit so we'd be dependent on their products. believe me, living without a car is hard and I'm lucky enough to make it work. and the situation is artificially created for the benefit of the oil and auto industries
Yep, I went without a car for several months in a large US city that theoretically is decent for public transit and my life became much more difficult. I was able to make it work, but it has seemed barely sustainable. Now I live somewhere (not by choice really) that is completely impossible without a car/delivery... unless I spend hours a day walking, which would be very hazardous due to everyone else's cars.
indeed. we need to dump money into transit construction in big cities
I mean this more literally than you think. What youre thinking of as pollution isnt as prevalent as you think. Its not a lot of ghg's emitting from factories themselves, and its not factory waste filling dumps. What you throw out as pollution is also the bulk of corporate pollution. Plastic packaging in plastic trash bags in their own packaging to throw out, all of it needing gas burning to ship around. The gas itself being another major "corporate" pollution that oil companies produced but is being burned in your car and the trucks delivering goods to you. You demand all of this pollution.
I don't agree with those metrics, and also the main response I could give is pretty much exactly the same as what I just said. Perhaps one of my problems is your phrasing: "You demand all of this pollution.". No, I sure as hell do not. If you were to say "consumers demand all of this pollution." that would be less confrontational, but still incredibly incorrect. Do individuals consume the products of industry? Yes, amazing conclusion you have there.
I personally didn't design the city in which I live to have no reasonable public transportation and it's fairly bizarre and insulting to say that the average person did. I was born into this insanity. Saying that I 'demand pollution' because the fossil fuel industry suppressed renewable energy while investing in polluting sources is similarly so wrong that it's insulting. I never at any time said "you know, rather than cloth diapers, people 40 years before I was born should start using weird plastic diapers they just throw away!" High-level people who operate companies absolutely choose to skimp on pollution control for their profits and convenience, not that of the public or their customers. Take mining waste for instance. Do consumers use the products? Yes. Do consumers choose personally to abandon mines and allow them to fill full of toxic acidic water and pollute the nearby waterways? Uh, no, the owners of the mines do.
I never at any time went to a grocery store and said "you know, when you sell a single banana, it sure would be nice if you put it on a styrofoam tray wrapped in plastic". I never at any time said "you know, rather than invest in solar, we should frack the shit out of eastern Colorado and SE New Mexico" or "tar sands oil is a really, really good idea!". And personally, i do seek to reduce my consumption and be efficient.
So for some reason you're blaming every individual for society being set up in such a way as to benefit oil and gas companies. Guess who arranged that: people who profit from and operate petroleum companies. Essentially your claim is that since all industry exists to benefit the end user (ignoring the owners/executives/employees benefits) that consumers are 100% responsible for everything. It's a ludicrous and highly confused way to view the world.
Alright, you might be more personally aware than others. You also gotta be aware of the responsibility of most consumers. Sales of large trucks and SUV's are on the rise. No one's electing people to design less car centric towns, most people want more car focused transportation. Renewable energy has not been supressed at all, in fact its cheaper and more efficient than ever and available for anyone to buy. I think consumers are the only ones that can stop this
I think you're wrong. Renewables were suppressed for a very long time by companies who stood to profit from them being suppressed. I think you're vastly underestimating the amount of political sway large corporations can have on politics.
Where I am we have two parties with near identical climate policies who both receive the majority of their funding from coal and gas companies and who both choose to debate about any other topic.
People have also been flooded with so much disinformation that even now some people still think climate change isn't real. Putting the responsibility on individuals instead of on the actual perpetrators of this mess is kind of ridiculous.
I do agree we're the only ones who can change it but we're not responsible for it.
https://www.eco-worthy.com/collections/100w-195w/products/100w-12v-monocrystalline-solar-panel
This doesnt look very suppressed to me. People just arent buying em.
We'll just forget all the misinformation and climate denialism these companies have funded for decades that stopped solar panels even being a thing until just recently.
But they're literally not. I have no way of controlling or even knowing about what corperations emit
Thats whats tripping everyone up, thinking these corporations are off isolated somewhere just producing climate change gases.
No, what theyre producing is what you're buying. When someone says an oil company is responsible for however much greenhouse gas emissions, what they mean is the greenhouse gas emissions when you the customer burn that gasoline in your vehicle. Plus gases emitted processing the oil and getting it to the store for you to buy it.
These companies "taking responsibility" for their emissions would mean halting production of most things you go and buy.
this is a systemic issue, not an individual one. I can't control what a company does, weather they choose to buy 100% renewable energy or not. and what about their suppliers? how could a consumer possible know about their business practices, let alone influence them? this isn't about people buying the wrong products. the rich are lighting the planet on fire for a buck, and they must be stopped.
How did you read what i wrote and get controlling companies? Its your own damn car, im accusing you yourself of emitting the greenhouse gases youre trying to pawn off on someone else.
my personal emissions are a flea's fart in the wind compared to the oil empire of BP or shell
They are literally the same emissions. If you ever see numbers associated with oil company emissions, the gas burned in your car makes up part of that number. Multiply that by everyone else burning gas in their cars, and you have the emissions associated with oil companies.
So, theres two ways to stop those emissions. If you think the oil companies themselves are responsible for those emissions, then they stop emitting, which means they stop producing gasoline, you go to the gas station and no one can get gas anymore. That's oil companies taking responsibility.
Or, the consumers take responsibility by no longer buying gas. Switching to electric cars or electing people to design less car centric towns.
I think a good way to look at this is to see just how many fingers are in how many different pies. You seem to be looking at the fossil fuel emissions problem 2-dimensionally when it is much more nuanced than that. Off the top of my head, you have to consider not just the consumers emissions or the manufacturing of the oil and gas, but the fracking, the constant construction of new oil pipelines, refineries, oil rigs, coal burning power plants, the emissions from all of those after completion, deforestation, then last, but probably the worst of all, the plastics industry which is intrinsically linked to the fossil fuel industry.
This is still probably missing a lot of components, but the point is, the individual pales in comparison to the amount of emissions that these companies are responsible for and it makes it worse when you consider that if they were to have a change of conscience and pivot to renewable they would still be mega profitable.
All of that pales in comparison to vehicle emissions. Its the single largest source of emissions in the US. Also, all of the other stuff is still at your demand, to produce the gasoline. Like i said, if you want those emissions to stop, all of them, that means they stop producing gasoline. They wont frack anymore, no more oceanic oil spills, no more pipe bursts.