253
Not my OC but what I've believed for years: there's no conflict between reducing your own environmental impact and holding corporations responsible. We hold corps responsible for the environment by creating a societal ethos of environmental responsibility that forces corporations to serve the people's needs or go bankrupt or be outlawed. And anyone who feels that kind of ethos will reduce their own environmental impact because it's the right thing to do.
Thoughts?
I disagree. It isn't lip service.
It is NOT your personal decisions that are ruining the planet. Only collective action can do that and so only collective action can address it.
The term carbon footprint was invented by British Petroleum to fracture and confuse people who desired a more beautiful and sustainable world. It worked like hell. Insanely effective. Still showing continuing efficacy even when British Petroleum behaves with such ruinous irresponsibility they had to change their goddamn name to try and make people forget who they really are.
You should be a responsible consumer to the degree you can. You should make choices to signal your own preferences to the world, to remind people that a better life is possible, and to reward the businesses that behave well. You should not be shaming and gatekeeping people who fail to behave their best by holding them to incredibly unfair standards like "if you can’t act with any level of personal responsibility, how can you be a good advocate for corporate responsibility". You absolutely, 100% can be an a good advocate for corporate and collective responsibility without having good personal behaviors and we NEED the people who behave exactly like this if we want the planet to have a future. Because we need their votes. And people who gatekeep and shame others for their perceived bad behaviors drive them away instead of calling them in.
Frankly I disagree. Someone like that can say all the right things and vote the right way as long as their personal behaviors aren't impacted. But what will keep them advocating for corporate responsibility once the stuff they want to buy becomes more expensive?
Telling people you can support corporate responsibility and keep consuming the way you do today is a lie. Because corporate responsibility means producing less means consumption becomes more expensive means your standard of living goes down. And anybody who supports good environmental policy as long as their personal behaviors aren't impacted will at that point reverse course.
No, I think a true environmental movement has to start with the personal and moral. People need to believe reduced consumption is a moral good for both people and corporations. And then they vote their values and accept the consequences and the personal becomes political.
It is the opposite.
The way people vote affects the regulations and markets. It directly impacts their personal behaviors.
It's also not something I nor anyone else here has said. It's a total strawman. The point is that you can advocate for systemic changes that will even affect your own behaviors without being a leader in those behaviors.
Yes. To get them to vote and act collectively. You don't need every single person to be a leader held to some invisible and impossible standard and told to GTFO if they can't hit that standard. You need them to vote.
It's not just about this place, it's about the average person. Every time this topic comes up, people always get very defensive and take it personally, often times even going on about "I already do all this, and that, and some other things, what else can I do?". Well, chances are the criticism is not directed at you, then.
The criticism is directed at the people who base a big part of their diet on red meat; it's directed at people who make excuses to drive when they could have easily walked or taken a bike but thought driving was more convenient and comfortable; it's about people who have access to public transports but don't want to take them because they'd have to walk five minutes to or from the station, or don't want to "smell other people", or just want "the privacy of my own car". It's directed at people who could do more, but actively chose not to, and then blame the system and say policy needs to change.
Policy would mean not subsiding red meat, therefore making it more expensive; it would mean raising prices of gas and forcing those people to walk more or ride more public transports; it would mean anything made of plastic would be a lot more expensive, and anything that needs to be shipped somewhere would be too.
How many people do you think would actually be okay with those policies, when they won't even do it out of their own free will when given the option? How long until they regret it and vote for someone who undoes all the policies?
Even if we ignore all that and say that voting is the most important thing, how many green and ecological parties do you see winning elections around the world?
No matter how you measure it, it's clear most people are not pushing that hard for change. The average person is choosing convenience and comfort over everything else, and just hopes someone else will sort out the problems - in a way that doesn't really affect them or their choices. It's also the reason there's such a large push from the average "environmentally aware" person for electrical vehicles (even though they're still bad for the environment) instead of more transports; it would mean not having to change anything in their lives.
More people would walk, bike, or take transit if these options were less shitty. If the car weren't formally preferred by the state and given priority over other options.
More people would eat fresh produce over fast food hamburgers if that produce were available as conveniently as the fast food dive instead of a supercenter you have to drive to at the edge of town.
Fewer disposable plastic goods will be used when the major companies stop handing them out left right and center.
This is all big "YET YOU LIVE IN A SOCIETY, CURIOUS!" energy. People can want to make their world more sustainable without adopting a full-on crunchy lifestyle. People can advocate for change knowing it will help others in the future even if it doesn't match with how they currently live. I'm sick and tired of lefty types and environmentalists treating the "average person" like a simpleton who's incapable of having complex thoughts or feelings. Who's incapable of doing anything but acting in their own selfish, shortsighted interest. It's not individual consumers behaving selfishly that got us here.
No matter how you measure it, it's clear a lot of big capital and corporate interests are fighting hard against the reforms that will make it easier and less stressful for people to adopt better, more sustainable lifestyles. People are being pressured to live certain lifestyles by the fact that our entire society is built on the economic power of consumerism. The idea of personal responsibility has been efficiently weaponized to get people mad at their neighbors for not composting instead of being mad at their city for expanding that 4-lane suburban artillery to "make room" for the expected traffic to another Walmart (that will be getting property tax incentives to build there).
You bring up EVs as if it makes your point, but they don't. EVs make my point. The individually-responsible thing most people can do is switch out their ICE car for an EV. It's the best they can do to lower their personal footprints in a society that requires most people drive for most trips. And even if every ICE passenger vehicle were swapped out with an EV tomorrow, that would not be even close to enough -- not to even mention most people cannot afford that trade and the halo of other hugely negative problems that would come from it.
This is the problem with any focus on individual responsibility. We need to take action collectively. The voices tut-tutting people for eating fast food over growing their own potatoes in a window box are weapons used by conservatives and capital to divide and conquer, even when they're repeated by self-professed progressives.
Full disclosure, I only read the first 3 paragraphs because it seems you missed a key part of my point:
If you have transports close to home that can take you to your work place, but you choose to drive a car anyway, then the problem isn't the state giving it a priority over other options, the problem is you. Clearly, the state improving transports and making them more accessible wouldn't make a difference to you.
And are you arguing that most people east most of their meals at fast food places? Because I'm sure we both know that's not true. Firstly, at least where I live that's not affordable, fast food or not. Most people do their shopping around once a week and cook at home, because that's what is actually affordable to most people. Secondly, most fast food places offer vegan and vegetarian options nowadays, and even before that plenty of them offered chicken or fish, both of which are much better than beef, and even pork. So I really don't understand how this is a reasonable excuse for the incredibly large consumption of beef, as well as dairy products. You can also go on any big forum that doesn't skew left so much and doesn't care so much about the environment, and you'll quickly find out most people's views on vegans and vegetarians, and see that for most people it is not an access issue.
And why do you need disposable plastic goods? I'm sure you can come up with some rare scenario like a 1 in 10000 occurrence that would justify it, but that's very obviously beside the point because of what I said at the start. Do you need to buy sodas, which come in plastic bottles? Do you need to buy water in plastic bottles? Do you need disposable plastic utensils, like forks, knifes, plates, cups? Because all those sell quite well around the world. I'll also add this comment someone wrote in another thread a while ago:
what would happen if everyone turned around and said ‘you know what, fuck companies that sell drinks in bottles i’m never going to be without my refillable bottle’ how long would coca-cola keep producing 100 billion plastic bottles a year? what would they do with them?
But if James Quincey said ‘fuck it, I’m not producing plastic bottles anymore they’re bad for the planet’ but 8 billion people said ‘oh ok, well we’re still going to regularly buy drinks in plastic bottles’ the numbers of plastic bottles being made would dip slightly but only while Ramon Laguarta rushed to spend the flood of money now coming in to scale up production at pepsi co.
It's a two way problem. As long as most people keep wanting those things, then they will keep being produced. And policy will not change it unless you install a dictatorship.
Anyway, like I said, I didn't read the rest of the comment because it seems you missed an important cornerstone of my point, and I'm too tired to keep arguing, so I'm sorry but I'll leave it there. Have a good night or day wherever you are.
If they can't handle it now at least in some degree, then I don't see how they'll be able to handle it in a much worse degree after we make these large reforms and changes. My fear is that these people will turn away from us as soon as things get too hard and run into the arms of the first strongman who tells them they'll make it all better.
I also do not see it as gatekeeping to ask people to do better. Nobody is saying they can't vote with us. We're just asking them to not wait until forced to make at least some changes.
I heard the position many times: Some people would like to use better options, but won't, as long as it's just more expensive and less convenient for them. If it was the general rule, they'd be fine with it. They don't want to feel disadvantaged.
That is a terrible ethos and one that I struggle to imagine being truly compatible with any form of leftism. Yes, unethical behavior typically grants a personal advantage over ethical, but society suffers as a whole because of it; that's ultimately the core criticism of capitalist society that all leftist ideology centers on. I would find it hard to trust anybody who lives their life that way. I would have constant doubts that they would have my back during tough times. After all, it may be disadvantagous to them, and they don't want to feel disadvantaged.
And here's the leftist purity tests coming out. Nothing hurts these causes worse than attitudes like this.
The idea that someone might advocate for a society that makes it easier for everyone (themselves included) to make the right choices is not some absurd, extreme, selfish position. It's a totally normal, mundane perspective. And here you are rejecting anyone who doesn't maintain your highest standard of moral virtue from your cause.
The attitude of "please try to do the best you can, even when it's hard" is an example of unreasonable purity testing? I don't think we're having the same conversation.
Aggregate personal decisions make up demand. Corporations produce goods to meet those demands. While we have to hold corporations responsible, since they're absolutely the lions share of the problem, we also have to do what we're capable of on our end by being responsible consumers.
It sure is working. You're here advocating against me suggesting people put their money where their mouth is. You're doing exactly what those corporations hope for by arguing against people who impact their bottom line.
This is exactly what I'm what I'm suggesting as well.
What a strange interpretation of my comment. You're also advocating for a level of personal responsibility in your own comment.
You have it so frustratingly, exactly, totally, and entirely backwards that I am not sure I should even reply. You're projecting onto me and that sucks for me.
I'm here advocating for change and reform in any way we can get it, but also reminding everyone that we need to focus on the actions that will ACTUALLY stand a chance of fixing problems: top-level reform through collective, political action.
You're saying people who can't "put their money where their mouth is" cannot be considered part of the movement even if they are advocating for change and reform outside of their personal lives. That will drive them away and make the top-level collective political action we need that much harder.
At this point it just seems you're intentionally misrepresenting my position. I'm saying people who CAN put their money where their mouth is need to do so.
Not what you said. Flat out. What you said was:
Either this is a tautology -- you define anyone who advocates for corporate responsibility as having some level of personal responsibility -- or else it's bullshit. If someone has a consumerist, wasteful lifestyle but also is a powerful advocate for change, then that is what they are. A powerful advocate for change, even knowing that change may one day force them to change their own lifestyle.
It's like saying a smoker cannot campaign against cigarettes. It's a load of crap. It comes from a place of wanting to place blame more than wanting to fix problems.
I mean verbatim my statement was probably a bit unclear because I didn't want try to define some level that would make someone be a potential good advocate. If you really want to nitpick, it is a tautology as written. Everyone has some level of personal responsibility. I probably could have worded it better.
The point I was trying to convey was that the more personally responsible an advocate is, the better an advocate they can be.
Nonexistent? Show me some examples. All of the good advocates I'm aware of also make changes on a personal level that are in accordance with their views.
Every time there's a giant environmental summit, the airways will get packed with stories about its carbon footprint. A bunch of smug fuckers on Fox News saying "oh ho ho all these people had to FLY there to talk about trying to save the planet they're such hypocrites GOTCHA".
That's all I can really say to this. The idea that we should in any way dismiss or reject an advocate just because they aren't personally holding up to whatever standard you want to hold them up to... I mean sure, I guess if I found out Bernie Sanders spends his weekends in his lifted truck rolling coal it would change my perspective of him, but most people are just living their lives and trying to avoid unnecessary friction. We aren't going to solve problems by being super judgemental and telling them they suck as people, but we can probably persuade them to vote for the people and things that WILL solve problems so long as we meet them where they are.
I don't know, I think to some degree I agree with their gotcha. Of course their alternative of "why even do anything?" is very different from mine: Why, in the age of the internet does this meeting even need to be in person? Host a virtual event. Now maybe it comes out that the logistics of that would be even worse, but it seems like a reasonable consideration.
In any case, if we do accept that it is in fact necessary, then that should be sufficient justification.
No, I'm suggesting that people need to be more willing to examine their own actions and do what they think they are capable of. I don't know their circumstances, so only they can be a judge of what they are capable of. But to say that they don't have to make any changes because they hypothetically support a policy that would restrict their own actions is disingenuous at best.