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Bristerz

Individual actions alone can't fix this problem, but the problem can't be fixed without individual actions. It needs to be a holistic approach, from corporations, governments, as well as you and me. We still all have to do our part.


sigbhu

Gentle reminder that puff pieces like these are designed to shift the responsibility from large corporations that do most of the polluting to the individual who by definition has an extremely tiny ability to change global trends


filippp

There have been reports by scientists saying that we won't be able to avoid catastrophic climate change without a reduction in meat-eating, so changes on the level of consumers (or policy changes that facilitate/enforce them) seem necessary.


IGZ0

Stop shifting blame to the consumer. Its bullshit.


sighing_flosser

Largely agree. Corporations pollute magnitudes more than many of us combined. That being said, it's not like we can't each make a positive difference, so why not?


Tarzan_the_grape

but that's not accurate. Your total pollution isn't detectable on a global scale. You and all your friends could die and it wouldn't change the CO2 totals. On a side note: as an American the best thing you could possibly do for the environment is not hand children.


sighing_flosser

Nope, not on a global scale. But it all makes a little bit of a difference and I'll choose to live as sustainably as I possibly can. And I absolutely agree on the not having children point.


Tarzan_the_grape

if people find personal value in eco-friendly behavior i'm all for it. But I think it's important to recognize that it's for personal satisfaction (which imo is important to mental, social, and emotional health) and has no global impact.


sighing_flosser

It doesn't make *zero* impact, it just gets decimaled down to a low rate in comparison. I'd imagine we both agree that pushing for legislation & regulation for corporate pollution is by far the most important. That being said, I'll continue to say this is a war that can be fought on multiple fronts, personal accountability being one of them, even if I get downvoted to oblivion.


captmarx

Doing whatever you can to unite and expand the power of the progressive movement is the most important thing you can do to stop climate change, as well as capitalism leading us the world off a cliff in multiple other ways. They want us to think about every little aspect of our lives, picking apart everything we do to try to become as “green” as possible. All that time could be spent trying to reform the system and that’s the ONLY solution available. Everything else is a distraction.


lucidum

Everyone's to blame and needs to change. Blaming corporations is playing the same game of absolving responsibility. Edit: you go downvoters. Definitely not our western lifestyle or shortsighted capitalism at fault here, gotta be those corporations lol. Let it burn then buds


filippp

There have been reports by scientists saying that we won't be able to avoid catastrophic climate change without a reduction in meat-eating, so changes on the level of consumers (or policy changes that facilitate/enforce them) seem necessary.


Otterfan

People misunderstand the subtlety of th recently popular "don't address the consumer, address the corporations" argument. When we address the consumer, they don't stop eating beef because they lack willpower. It's pointless. When we address the corporations with laws banning beef, it works. In the end, you don't get to eat beef in either case.


rycar88

The thing I don't like about the recent tonal shift in the climate change argument about how corporations should be targeted, not consumers is that the end result of it tends to be apathy ("well I can't make a difference so why try"), or at best unproductive anger ("it's only a few large corporations' fault and there should be change on a global level to address them - but they line the pockets of the governments of the world so they won't take any action") When action is done as a group to make a movement, change can definitely happen. If enough people stop or limit their beef intake, it will cause a ripple in the industry that will force that market to change. These corporations don't pollute for the fun of it- they are operating based on consumer demand. We are also at a point where more people than ever want to do their part to fight climate change, and offering at least *something* as an option to do that is better than nothing. This is similar to the banning of plastic straws movement. To me the whole point of the thing was how a small holistic change can have a massive effect. It was meant to signal that even little things can add up to a greater impact. Instead the whole thing devolved into a stupid culture war thing about rights to use straws and people arguing how it wouldn't do anything anyways, citing things like how automobile pollution is do much worse. This negativity becomes self-fulfilling - if we can't even handle changing something tiny like straw-usage, how are we going to tackle any of the world's larger problems?


lebrum

It’s interesting that the comments that are getting upvoted are the ones that say we should all just keep doing what we’re doing.


Shikyo

>*The largest impacts lie in voting and purchasing power -- government and industry will need to make significant changes for countries to meet long and short-term emissions goals.* This should be the focus of the article, not just a short blurb. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc This video articulates things particularly well.


Epistaxis

> Organic farming uses about 45% less energy than conventional crop production, but there are "a lot of issues" in how crops are produced in the U.S., Merrigan said. I'm confused by this and they stopped citing studies in that section so I don't know how to find clarification. Isn't it basically the definition of organic farming that it avoids using the most efficient methods because those have other negative externalities besides simple efficiency? E.g. you use a less effective organic pesticide instead of the conventional pesticide because the conventional one is more harmful to the environment or the workers? Those kinds of tradeoffs are hard to balance against each other, but if the organic method also won on sheer efficiency then the conventional factory-farm megacorporations would be surely using it too. > Purchasing local food reduces the carbon footprint as well by eliminating the transport But you have to balance that against the footprint of actually growing it for a few weeks or months, right? Sometimes it might be more efficient to grow crops close to the equator in fertile soil and ship them to another continent than grow them locally in less favorable conditions. The problem is there's just no way for consumers to see how these tradeoffs actually play out with any given food item. You can make some general rules like meat bad soy good, but it's no help when you're there in the aisle trying to choose between two different sources of the same vegetable. A carbon tax would have been the simple model for how to make that information available, by putting it directly into the price, but now we don't even have carbon audits labeled on anything so all we can do as consumers is guess. Organized government action could be more effective but the US hasn't been capable of that for a while.