 An #EarthDay reminder that despite what governments, militaries, and oil, plastic and chemical companies would have you believe, you didn't break the world. The treat you bought yourself, your drive to work, the flight to see your aging parents. They didn't break it, and eliminating them will not save it. Individual reduction is great. It feels good, and I would never discourage it for its own sake. But individual responsibility for environmental degradation is an intentional and damaging lie. 68 comments
Some people in The Comments seem to be misunderstanding my point to be that individual actions don't matter. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that actions which influence and restrain institutions are the only ones that matter on the scale of institutions, which is the actual scale of the problem. Your neighbor throwing out a bottle is unfortunate, but every ounce of effort you expend on being mad at them, rather than the company that made a billion bottles last year, is wasted.  Agree on the larger issue of taking the battle to the proper fight. And w/r/t individual choices… Maybe we need to have deposits in containers or all types, packaging, and disposable parts of commodities such that the price to recycle or inter indefinitely (landfill) is fully borne by the consumer. Then and only then will we look at two products and say…I will take the one that is refillable, reusable, refurbishable.  @Anthro @ianrosewrites or we could charge corporations for using non-sustainable materials. the reason so many corporations use virgin plastic above any other material is that, because oil is so subsidized, it's the cheapest option. if they had literally any financial motivation to use reusable containers etc they would. @ianrosewrites we could make the creation of virgin plastic for all non-essential plastics (for medical purposes for instance) illegal tomorrow and all those companies would be forced to either stop using plastic or to re-use the world's existing plastic, but it's cheaper to make new plastic from oil than it is to recover and recycle. Our governments are complicit in that. We could stop this tomorrow but the people in power have no interest in doing that. It's infuriating. Same with renewables  @ianrosewrites This so much. It is frustrating that we are _willing_ to make bigger sacrifices, but we aren't given that option. We need to recognize that many of the options - the big, world-changing ones - we would have picked were taken from us. It is not that the small choices are entirely meaningless, but we can't lose sight of the bigger, more meaningful choices. The sense of scale is important.  @ianrosewrites It's tiring how they've succeeded in making every thread calling for action on climate by multinationals with greater internal economies than most countries, about how individuals must do this or that "too". How come it must always be brought up when the major culprits are mentioned? People got infected by a bad brainworm on that one. Also true. I live in a decent bubble and forget these people exist. We walk everywhere, have farmers markets and co-ops that people shop at. There is definitely a lot that individuals could do... it still pales in comparison to what governments can do though. If they did nothing but bring oil subsidies to 0 it would already be more than all the Earth day activities put together. Good point. I honestly forget how the other side lives sometimes. Visiting friends and family outside of my downtown bubble often causes me great distress. When I visit my cousin in the suburbs of Ottawa, the plastic they throw out during our week long visit is about what we would go through in 6months plus. I often have to stop thinking about this because of the immense stress it causes me and I completely forget that people live like this.  Yeah, I'm sometimes reduced to tears seeing the amount of plastic spilling out of trash receptacles on trash day. Sometimes it feels so hopeless.  @dangoodin @chu @ianrosewrites Well… the good news is that the whole point of this thread is that the trash you see is a tiny percentage of the plastic waste you don’t see, most of which is produced by industrial processes and distribution, not individual consumers. Their propaganda seems to have worked on you. @dangoodin @chu @ianrosewrites Let me attempt to put this a other way. It is impossible for me to care very much about the consumption habits of households when I have seen how much food and plastic are thrown away at the end of every single shift at every single restaurant and grocery store. Capitalist distribution & enforced scarcity are the main drivers of pollution & waste, not individual people making suboptimal decisions. Yes, thanks for that. I'm going to use immense amounts of single-use plastic going forward and feel perfectly fine about it. Thanks for freeing me of the effects of this crippling propaganda. @dangoodin @sidereal @ianrosewrites Hey, we're on the same team here. We have a common enemy. Eat the fucking rich.  @dangoodin @sidereal @chu @ianrosewrites The point isn’t to ramp up your own usage, it’s that the majority of the effort to reduce waste must be focused upon the corporations and governmental processes that produce the majority of that waste. Taking away subsidies for meat and granting them to plant based meats, putting severe limits on plastic usage and breaking up monopolies cuts down significantly on individual use, too. @dangoodin @sidereal @chu @ianrosewrites Yes, which is why the choice should be made easier by increasing access to sustainable and plastic free items both physically and financially, and at a time when economic inequality is through the roof and a dwindling number of corporations control markets, voting with your dollar is less and less possible for any given person. @dangoodin @sidereal @chu @ianrosewrites Yeahhhh I think we’re going to disagree here. I do not stop the buck at the feet of the people with the least amount of power. @WhiteCatTamer @sidereal @chu @ianrosewrites What about all the people with means who say fuck it? @dangoodin @WhiteCatTamer @sidereal @ianrosewrites Fuck the a holes who still buy gas guzzlers and water bottles in 2024.  @dangoodin @chu @ianrosewrites dudes. This is still a government regulation topic, not an individual once. If there's less plastic to buy, then people have less plastic in the trash. Just look to Europe. Flaschenpfand. Public recycling facilities. Recycling quota for product producers. Obligation to take back packaging at point of sale. Trash tax. Paying for plastic bags. Limiting the amount of trash that gets taken away at trash day, etc. Lots of little nudges. So you really think that a country that's on the brink of electing a dictator is going to legislate its way out of a climate disaster? @dangoodin @lizzard @chu @ianrosewrites yet a country "on the brink…" is gonna go vegetarian and stop drinking water from plastic bottles on their own? Gov regs ARE a completely valid thing to target -and very much an uphill battle, as are targeting the obscenely wealthy, who, as noted elsewhere, spew literally tons of pollutants more than most people. Doing everything you can to target the worst excesses first and hardest is basic triage- life threatening injuries should get most attention @cjpaloma @lizzard @chu @ianrosewrites Nice way to put words in my mouth I never said. Come back when you paraphrase me accurately and I'll read the rest of what you wrote. @dangoodin @lizzard @chu @ianrosewrites My message was more: Keeping at governments to appropriately regulate corporate and military responsibility is an uphill battle and a completely valid thing to continue to do. So is targeting the HUGE excess users. So is getting ordinary people to wake up and reduce their footprints. In about that order. basic triage says to prioritize the biggest bang for the buck, or you end up with nice stitches on a dead patient. sorry if you took offense @dangoodin @chu @ianrosewrites and yet you won't be able to pollute as much as a single bomb all your life. OP's point is the scale requires a proportional response to the core issue/culprit. Not saying you do the right thing in your life.  @dangoodin @chu @ianrosewrites not necessarily. People seem to only focus on dietary aspects of animal ag when making calculations like this and fail to consider the multitudes of industries dependent upon animals. The leather industry alone requires the use of billions of animals each year to produce shoes and other products. Those animals would still be raised and slaughtered even if people cut out meat and dairy. Going vegan is the only way to make a real impact.  @chu @dangoodin @ianrosewrites I think it's important to note that neither government nor corporations act in a vacuum though. We vote, either by political voting or with our money. Shein for example are terrible for encouraging overproduction and overconsumption of harmful fast fashion. But we can't really sit here and go "well look at those baddies" while purchasing their products, watching hauls on youtube, and sharing their products with friends. They exist only with our support. @Craftycat @chu @ianrosewrites Yes, exactly. Consumers are blameless here even though they're the ones buying all this plastic crap, supporting restaurants that use unsustainable practices and voting out any politician who supports legislation holding corporations accountable. They bare 0 responsibility for climate disaster. @B_Whitewind @ianrosewrites @chu "absolutely nothing anyone else can do that will ever matter" is a very dangerous and untrue self-fulfilling prophecy. @B_Whitewind @ianrosewrites @chu OK, in that case, I think I'll sell my bike, buy an SUV, ditch my canteen and drink out of plastic and feel fine about all of it. I'll be sure to tell my neighbors to do the same. Thanks for setting all of us straight. Happy earth day! @dangoodin @ianrosewrites @chu Of course all those individual behaviours are reprehensible and don’t help but I don’t believe for a minute that those people rationalise / justify their behaviour as “Corporations do worse” They behave like that because waste & overconsumption are the principles underpinning the system we’re “blessed” to inhabit - extractive capitalism. Like all system conditions, to most people they are invisible so unquestioned @Simon318ppm @ianrosewrites @chu I think everyone in this thread agrees with each other more than we disagree. Cheers.   @dangoodin @ianrosewrites @chu I would frequently hike some hills right along Pacific Coast Highway (Crystal Cove for those who know it). I noticed that some would come down, get in their cars, start them up and run the air conditioner .. even when it was in the '70s. I'm thinking to myself, here you are, with an onshore breeze and the cleanest air you're ever going to breathe .. what are you even thinking? I guess they're not thinking, just doing what they automatically do. A neighbor across the street was camped out in her running car for 45 minutes while talking on the phone. I finally approached her and asked if she might considering turning off her engine and she was outraged. She feels perfectly entitled to pump exhaust into my window. It's really maddening. Unfortunately, she and so many others like her, aren't likely to vote for common-sense climate legislation anytime soon.  @dangoodin @John @ianrosewrites @chu There is a public park with a pair of baseball diamonds / soccer field very close to where I live. When they use the field for kids sport practice the entire parking lot is full of parents inside their idling cars either using their phones or watching the practice. @dangoodin @ianrosewrites @chu yeah. I was a Prius driver* for a number of years. I was low-key about it, but I kind of tallied the reactions of friends, family, and strangers. The vast majority of them thought that I was doing something odd, and I took that as the takeaway. * - as well as a frequent pedestrian and bicyclist  @ianrosewrites they are hiding their 90% responsibility among 1 billion .00000001% responsibilities. And another 7 billion that don't have enough independent options to have consented to any responsibility at all.  @ianrosewrites We should enjoy nice things while we still can, nobody in power wants to stop the rot and actually build the better future, so do things now you will savour in 20 years when it's all swept away by the Climate @Lazarou No, I can't agree with that either. We are at the point in history where we get to decide whether we face a 2.5C or 4C future, and those are vastly different. Both involve a lot of suffering, but one is survivable for large swaths of the world and one isn't. We have to think at the scale of the problem. That's not nearly the same thing as giving up. @ianrosewrites well you're just arguing against your own opening statement there so I'll just leave you to it.  @ianrosewrites thank you for this. I refuse to feel guilt for what the oil, and gas companies have done to destroy the planet when we were striving to save it. We're not the ones who started the fire. We're the ones who inherited the ashes. @DaveMasonDotMe Voting may be the most effective action an individual can take in our society, especially on the local and state level. The electoral college limits that power, absolutely. But the idea that voting is pointless only serves the worst people and institutions in the country. @ianrosewrites I'll conclude by noting that much like you would never discourage individual reduction, I would never discourage voting. @ianrosewrites i kind of agree but if we're doing everything so that big players are taking actions to really prevent climate change then there will be less treat for yourself, you'll have to relocate to walk or bike to your work (or get another job) and you will only flight to see your parents once or twice in your life. @ianrosewrites for real. The problem is the bizarre fetish for profits (to shareholders) above the planet. Take Apple’s, “oh we’re almost there, we’ll be carbon neutral in 2030!” stance. That’s cool, but when you’re already raking in *trillions*, can do better. @ianrosewrites the greatest lie the fossil fuel companies ever convinced us of was that our personal carbon footprints are responsible for the climate crisis. “It’s not us, it’s you!” @ianrosewrites we all have to live in the world we are born into. The goal is to make it a better world for the next generation to be born into. @ianrosewrites WE, the Many Individuals, BUY the products produced by those pollution emitters. All of us are involved in this consumption of resources that have resulted in environmental degradation and the LIARS are the DENIERS! |
Gregory's Server
Large scale polluters love Earth Day. It's a big advertising day for them. Coca Cola will spend a lot of money today telling you to recycle one bottle, because they don't want anything to happen, any law or tax or regulation, that keeps them from making another billion bottles next year.
A version of the Spider-Man maxim holds here. Responsibility scales with power, and on both sides of the equation, yours is limited. I know that's not the sexiest idea, but it has the advantage of being true.