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The US no longer supports capping plastic production in UN treaty (grist.org)
submitted 6 days ago by solo@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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Environmental advocates understand the announcement as a reversal, calling it “absolutely devastating.”

The Biden administration has backtracked from supporting a cap on plastic production as part of the United Nations’ global plastics treaty.

This represents a reversal of what the same groups were told at a similar briefing held in August, when Biden administration representatives raised hopes that the U.S. would join countries like Norway, Peru, and the United Kingdom in supporting limits on plastic production.

Nearly 70 countries, along with scientists and environmental groups, support the latter. They say it’s futile to mop up plastic litter while more and more of it keeps getting made.

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[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 44 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I noticed something weird about the comments here.

20 minutes after the post, treefrog posted his comment defining a "Fuck the Democrats ... I'm done voting for them" narrative. I've noticed that a lot of topics on Lemmy get tied back to not voting for the Democrats.

There then followed about an hour of, basically, silence, with that "Fuck the Democrats" comment as the top comment. Then I posted my response, disagreeing with treefrog.

After that, the next hour or so featured, not 0 comments like the previous hour, but 4 different comments. The only comments that got made, outside of my discussion with treefrog, were:

  • A top-level comment saying "Fuck the Biden administration" which took over the comment top spot
  • Other replies to treefrog's top level comment, pushing my response down

The total result is that the top two comments say "Fuck the Biden administration" and "Fuck the Democrats", and then there's general less focused conversation after that. The narrative is back, in these comments, that the right response to this is not to vote for the Democrats.

Maybe this sounds like conspiracy theory rock, but I've noticed this pattern before, where there's a "fuck the Democrats" narrative in the top comments, with the comments otherwise being quiet, and if something changes that narrative among the top comments, there's a little flurry of activity until the narrative is reestablished, and then things quiet down again.

Maybe I'm nuts. It definitely was notable to me, though. Especially given the weirdness of reacting to this particular story by instantly reaching for "Let's not vote for Democrats anymore!" as the solution to environmental problems. Like... out of all the strategies or reactions you could have, that's the first one that comes to mind?

Edit: Clarifications

Edit 2: The person who reported this for "incivility"... lol.

[-] abies_exarchia@lemm.ee 3 points 6 days ago

The democratic party establishment failed us in this last election and the wound is raw. OP’s post demonstrates further actions of the democrat leaders that are maligned with a just and livable world, and it feels like rubbing dirt in that wound. I think it’s pretty expected to see these ‘fuck democrat’ comments in response to this

[-] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 10 points 6 days ago
  • Raw emotional appeal, themes of betrayal
  • Tying everything back to not voting for Democrats as the most important thing
  • No real engagement with anything I said, the whole comment was just about the suspicious timing of comments. I wasn't trying to say it's weird that someone would blame something the Biden administration did on Biden. That part makes sense to me.
  • "Democrat leaders"

Yeah, sounds about right.

[-] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)
  1. Is an explanation for people posting angrily about democrats
  2. No they didn't? What?
  3. C/climate is the most active community on slrpnk.net and gets many more passerby comments from other instances. The timing isn't terribly unusual, especially considering the little preview text for the article explicitly mentions the biden administration dropping the ball on the environment again. Most people aren't going to read the article and only respond to the title/preview.
  4. The corporate democrats are clearly the ones who hold the reins in the DNC (hence how Bernie got fucked over), why is it odd to say that?
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this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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