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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Communism
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Because the sad truth is that to get ahead of climate change we must comsume less. And that is one heck of a hard sell. Drive less, eat less meat, local vacations etc. So far been seen as a manic arguing for reduction in consumption. Along with a non healthy does of "why should we do when them over there wont?"
The last point is just chauvinistic crap. Ask those people to get a few random objects in their house to see where it is made. 'Them over there' don't do it because they need to make our products for dirt cheap wages in horrific conditions.
Also, individual reduction of consumerism is going to do jack shit when the top 100 companies produce 70% of all global emissions. And I say this as a person who DOES reduce as much as possible.
I agree with you. Except that if enough individuals cut their consumption it will make an impact. Less demand so less would be produced and less corporate emissions. But individuals in general aren't inclined to do that. Exactly because each individual's contribution is so small. So it has to be done on a large scale.
But then I've given up hope that climate change will be stopped with manageable impact and all efforts to that goal is pretty meaningless. Instead we must work to handle the impact of climate change. Making sure that for example water will still be available where it is needed, that water wars won't happen. Change of crops for new climate, better drought/flooding resistance for example. And peoples' habitation and lively hood when sea levels rise. How to handle periodic flooding of river deltas and their increased salination.
That discussion I feel often is overlooked.
Don't give the capitalists money for crap you don't need, it only inflates their profits. Sure, that is fine for you if you are not so poor that you can afford the more ethical option.
To whatever extent you can make a choice to do something good on a small scale, is that good, probably. However an even greater good would be to seize power from the capitalist forces of planetary destruction to build an ecologically sustainable economy.
Let Mother earth speak to us in the howl of the hurricanes, the dry heats of the summers and the strange destabilization of the polar vortex. Use what she says as a point to build an ecological economy or she might not let our species survive.
ethical costing more than unethical is simply not always true. A bicycle is cheaper than a small car. A small car is cheaper than a canyonero. I'm in the US, I know bicycles aren't feasible in most parts due to car dependent design, but nobody is forced to commute to an office in the suburbs in a monster truck.
Poultry is cheaper than beef. Rice+beans+lentils is cheaper than meat.
A reasonable house is cheaper than a mcmansion.
It's not wrong to do any of those things, however systemic change would have a larger impact. I'd rather have stricter laws making it illegal to have factory farms and all beef be grass fed to better use the land to produce food rather than growing crops to feed them. That would be an efficient means of turning grasslands into food without exhausting the water supply. Yes there would be less beef, but this would be a net positive for the world if we did this.
Its not wrong to try do do these little things yourself.
It's honestly rather silly that you think the solution for it is "consuming less" when some 30 million people on the richest country in the world rely on food stamps, and some 60% live paycheck to paycheck. Do you honestly think there's any more "fat" to cut for those?
It's seen as disconnected from reality because it actually is. The problem is not that all (or majority of) people consume too much, but that the production itself (and the waste disposal aftwards) is the most climate-inneficient it could ever be. How is one to "drive less" or "eat less meat" when those are the only ways they could afford to live?
"Local vacations" lmao
What's wrong with taking time off and not going anywhere?
What's wrong is assuming people even have the means to travel in the first place. Next time you take the bus to work, ask yourself how many of the people in that bus could afford to travel on their vacations, both financially and time-wise. You act as if the bottom 75% of the population of whichever country you're talking about (I assume USA) live luxurious lives of overabundance, when in fact a majority of people in capitalist countries have basically no choice on what they consume, let alone what they could abstain from.
Waste isn't high because of individual lifestyle choices or "carbon footprint" or whatever else, it's because the ruling classes have engineered highly profitable societies with complete disregard for their wage slave wellbeing or the environment that sustain those same wage slaves.
As two other exercises, how would somebody in a city with no public transport be able to drive less? And how would people with no time to cook and no access to affordable organic food be able to eat less meat from those cheap industrial foodstuffs? If you wish to prescribe actions to people, you should first learn about their material conditions.
First, I don't completely disagree with some of your points about problems in the US. I think you are infantilizing people to an extent by ignoring the agency they do have and what they can control.
I never made any of the claims you are arguing against. Please check usernames.
I never made that assumption.
All I did was ask what is the problem with not traveling when taking time off work. The person I responded to sounded like not traveling was somehow problematic. I just wanted clarification.
I couldn't agree more. Car dependency is the cause of sooo many of our problems in the US.
Yes and no. E.g. A large segment of the US have CHOSEN to drive around in monster trucks and canyoneros instead of more reasonable vehicles. A large portion vote for politicians (GOP) who refuse to even acknowledge it is a problem.
I think the paycheck to paycheck claims are somewhat exaggerated. There are a lot of people with good incomes that this applies to because of bad choices like the aforementioned vehicle choices, buying larger houses than they need, hiring out every simple job that 99% of people could easily do with a 2 minute video (like replacing the flap in a running toilet), annual extravagant vacations, etc. I think the paycheck to paycheck claims need to be calculated by household size, local cost of living, and income. These people would both reduce their contribution to GHG emissions AND be in a financially better position if they made better choices.
As far as food choices, non beef options are available pretty much everywhere food is available. Beef is generally more expensive than other meats. Beef is the biggest contributor to GHG emissions. A person of limited means could easily choose the cheaper AND environmentally better options.
Not entirely true. I can choose to buy a monster truck to commute to work or a small car. Ideally that choice would include transit, bike, etc. I can choose beef, pork, chicken, or lentils for my protein. Even at corner stores, fast food, etc, it is pretty easy to avoid beef. Sure, there are problems like car dependency and the ideal choice would include transit, bike, etc. To claim no choice isn't really true. The kicker is, the greener option is often the cheaper option.
Its not that people have to make new choices it's that the general patterns of how goods flow under capitalism require the resource consumption we see now. Food in general is a huge one, but also disposable items, the length of work, cars, housing patterns, etc.
Everyone (will say in the us for simplicity, but most industrialized places) is going to have to live differently if you stop those 100 companies from polluting. It takes effort to upkeep non disposable items, to live in a world where objects have purpose. Change must take place in how people live if you remove capitalism to remove pollution.