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this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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A lot of the initiatives are ineffective by design because the real goal is to give the consumers agency over the problem. Corporations have known that individual effort is a drop in the bucket but by framing the problem as not not a "corporate" problem but a "society" problem, they can keep not fixing it, for profit.
BP created the concept of a carbon footprint to make customers feel responsible for climate change. The reality is that consumer choices make no difference in the face of China building a dozen new giant coal power plants each year. This needs to be tackled diplomatically, and nations need to be willing to negotiate with much more force. China emits more than double the CO2 of the U.S. That’s just CO2. There’s PFAS, methane, plastics, and hundreds of others pollutants. They’re destroying whole oceans with their huge bottom-trawling fishing fleets. It’s time we get serious about tackling the major polluters first.
A corporate problem and a societal problem are two sides of the same coin. Corporations don't make money in isolation, they make money because they sell things that (directly or ultimately) are bought by consumers.
You could choose to imagine a scenario where the CEOs of Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, etc just voluntarily decide to stop extracting oil overnight, and think that would be more impactful than billions of individual consumers slashing their demand for carbon-intensive products and fuels. But if the consumers don't change their behaviour and continue to demand this stuff, other companies would just step in to fill the gap, takeover the old oil fields, etc.
The sustainable way to change corporate behaviour is through changing their end-consumers' behaviour - i.e. if end-consumers stop directly buying carbon-intensive products and stop buying from carbon-intensive companies.
The MOST sustainable way to change corporate behavior is to make it prohibitively expensive for them to engage in behavior that is bad for the environment by levying major financial penalties and taxes on the offending corporations.
Corps frame it as an individualist problem because they don't want regulation, which is really the only viable way to attack the problem (and regulations needs to be backed by treaties with teeth since it is a global problem).
You can't expect every consumer to research every product and service they buy to make sure these products were made with an acceptable footprint. And if low-footprint products/services are more expensive or somehow not quite as good, there will be a financial incentive to use higher footprint products (if individuals acted "rationally," this is what they would do).
Consumers are also voters. Corporations are not. Whether through the products we purchase at the shops or the politicians we elect at the ballot box, it will be the behaviour of individuals that creates the incentive set within which corporations profit-maximise.
Telling ourselves that this is a corporate problem and our individual behaviour doesn't matter is a comforting fairy tale but it will accomplish little.
That's frankly idiotic, since lobbyists, corporate donors and pressure groups have far, far, far more power to affect policy than voters.
You're comparing the collective influence of lobbyists, donors and pressure groups with the individual influence of a single voter - no shit the former looks bigger.
The collective influence of voters in choosing (say) Trump over Clinton, or Biden over Trump, or Macron over Le Pen, or voting for Brexit, has influenced the direction of these Western democracies in recent years dramatically more than any group of lobbyists could dream of.
You're telling yourself a comforting fairytale that society is directed by some powerful secret cabals pulling the strings so you as an individual are absolved from having to do your bit with how you spend your money and how you vote. If everyone thinks like you, nothing will improve. So fucking irresponsible.
Please don't invent strawman arguments. I haven't compared collective influence to individual influence, and I haven't mentioned any hidden cabal or fairytale story. Everything is out in the open and I'm happy to provide my source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379421001256
Corporations are financial supporters of politicians, though, and they do a good job of making sure any viable political choice is on their side.
It's false choices all of the way down.
Capital has already shifted toward green energy and renewable systems. Capitalism is way ahead of any other process in terms of fighting climate change
https://www.strategy-business.com/article/A-rising-tide-of-green-capital
I think there is two important points that you haven't considered:
Information asymmetry: in economics, this is the situation where one party has more/better information than the other. Of course a big corporation will have more information about a product I'm using that I would on every product I use, especially given that they can hire as many specialists as they want. Because of this, consumers should not be expected to take care of all societal change through their choices
You seem to imply that these companies only exist to satisfy a customer need. While this is partially true, this completely omits the fact that since 15 years, every company has a marketing department, whose sole purpose is to suscit this need in the consumer mind. Company are not just need-fulfilling machines, but also self feeding systems. You can't talk about the fact that renewing your phone emits a lot of carbon without talking about the fact that every phone company spends millions at making you want to renew it
Those companies pollute to produce goods and services that individuals buy.
What does holding corporations accountable look like if not refusing to give them our money while advocating for regulation?
Throwing your hands in the air, doing nothing to change your destructive habits and just saying "but corporations" isn't gonna help anything.
Indeed
Claiming that oil companies are to blame for producing all that oil seems stupid. If you use less oil, they make less oil
The amount of profit and money in the oil industry will ensure that it's product remains relevant for as long as possible. If it's not through gasoline, it will be something else.
Meanwhile they'll be doing their best to sabotage and lobby against any competition to make it harder for individuals to even have the opportunity to do the right thing. The change has to come from the top (government mandates) in order for it to have any meaningful impact any time soon.
It’s borderline impossible to use less oil in increasingly car-centric infrastructure systems.
Maybe in US, but in Europe the trend is towards more public transportation.
People boycotting certain products only really works if an alternative is available and attainable, or the demand is elastic.
For example, if I go to any grocery store, all the pasta, rice, buckwheat, bread and other staples are packaged into single-use plastic, as are hygiene products like toothpaste and shampoo. I have no choice but to be part of the plastic waste problem since there is no alternative and the demand for food is not elastic—I literally can't go without food and basic hygiene.
But I can and will avoid buying problematic products like teflon cookware, fast fashion, ICE vehicles, tech products with severe privacy/ownership/repairability issues since there are alternatives available and if not, I can go without since eg Alexa smart speakers are not essential for life.
Hence, we need to hold companies, whose products are problematic while not having alternatives and that are essential for life, responsible and force them to change to less problematic practices. In short, eg single-use plastics should be regulated out of existence wherever possible.
And for products that have better alternatives, we need to raise awareness about them and raise their social acceptance/desirability (make them cool). Plus we need to increase their availability and attainability—what use of is an ethical alternative product if it's not easily available in my country or if the price is not affordable to everyone who can afford the "normal" version?
That's not really what OP is saying though? They're talking about corporate efforts to make it seems like the consumers are the problem, not them, and many are still falling for it. As long as the awareness of this is not raised and more people aren't pointing fingers at the corporates the whole don't buy their product is never going to be effective, same for advocating for regulations (rather, especially the regulations). You're assuming everyone knows the root of the problem already, but that's just not the case here.
This is a frustrating kind of defeatist attitiude I'm finding is getting more and more common.
It comes from a place of unwillingness for personal and habitual change. It's hard to accept that we all have to change our lifestyles and accept that how we're living is going to have to change. That there is exists some scenario whereby we all continue living exactly how we're doing now with the same consumer behaviour and expect a bit of regulations to change everything. Or delay changing until after these regulations are in place, when in reality BOTH needs to happen.
What's the point in sitting on your ass complaining about the behaviours of other individuals and organisations when the only thing you have direct control over is your life.
I'm not challenging you on the "sitting on your ass" part because that is true. But I promise you the Earth getting hotter and more polluted is going to exert "direct control ...over your life." And the only real way we can change this is through some kind of political process.
Where did I say it shouldn't be a political process? It isn't an either-or. How many people online who are saying "oh why should I consume less when corporations emit the most CO2, there's no point I'm not going to bother" is politically active outside of voting? As in, physically - attend climate rallies or petition their local representative. I'd wager it's a slim minority. Signing an online petition or tweeting does not count.
If people honestly cared so much that they're doing these things anyway, then changing themselves and their consumption habits should be dead easy. So why don't more people do it?
My point is this isn't an excuse to not take any actions locally within your life, which is something you can do RIGHT NOW.
I assume that folks are just looking for a way to keep their comfort zone the same. Finding an excuse is simple, even without blatant logic errors.
It is textbook cognitive dissonance.