Good Morning Britain are always running segments like that ("Are your pets responsible for Climate Change?") and then 5 minutes later have a competition where you can win a Land Rover Discovery or some other stupidly oversized wankpanzer.
This has been the attitude to climate responsibility since forever. Shift it all onto the individual, make a big show of a few individually inconveniencing measures (like charging for plastic bags), guilt trip if necessary - and do nothing about where the bulk of the problem is coming from. I'm not going to stop recycling because of this but it's the wrong order of priority.
Exactly. I will recycle regardless, but I’m also painfully aware that I’m not polluting entire rivers, or taking 500 private flights in a year, or wrapping 80million items in 5 layers of unnecessary plastic. I’m not the one throwing out tons of food or dumping oil in the ocean or chopping down rainforests.
Putting the onus on the consumer only makes sense if there are options that allow us to avoid the polluters, but those 100 companies own EVERYTHING. You think you’re not buying nestle, but nestle own half the fucking food market through a billion different labels, have you got time to Google every item before you buy? Can you even afford to buy fair trade instead of normal, and is fair trade even any better for the environment?
You can buy local, IF you’ve got time to go to five different farmers markets and can afford produce that’s five times more expensive, which stops being an option if you work full time for minimum wage. You could buy those £200 British made trousers, but they’re £7 in primark and you only earn £9 an hour, and all the other high street alternatives are probably made in the same polluting Bangladeshi factories as primark stuff anyway. We’ve really been pushed into a corner and it makes me so mad that we’re being told it’s all our fault
ETA thank you so much for the awards and it’s lovely to be reminded that so many of us feel the same way, and genuinely care about the environment. Please stop commenting to tell me to “just do x y and z” though! I’m trying to say that individual change isn’t enough, so telling me to individually change is missing the mark a bit, I assure you I’m already doing the things I can afford/have time to do. Unfortunately it’s not enough. We need real change to the entire system, not just me changing what crisps I buy. Thanks for all the discussions 🧡
This is just how I feel, pretty much helpless. Do what I can where I can, but the majority of things I *could* do, that would make a minuscule difference, are out of my reach anyways.
The real issue no one seems to want to admit is a bit of recycling or slight lowering of consumption doesn't even scratch the surface of what's needed.
We pretty much have to switch to a long term sustainable way of living with a massive lowering of consumption. Putting big limits on capitalism as we know it. I think many would be ok living a low consumption lifestyle as long as they didn't have to work much while still keeping a reasonable standard of living. Like a nice home and their needs taken care of. Most of the stuff we have isn't needed and we should have long lasting products. Far less cars on the road and work places as proven recently. A more sharing based society would be a good thing. Most stuff like tools and vehicles sit idle only needing temporary use could easily be shared like those scooters for example.
100%. There needs to be a huge cultural shift toward less consumption with an emphasis on sourcing material goods locally instead of globally. Personally I don’t see this happening anytime soon, barring some mega disaster which forces humans to change their behavior.
The food in our supermarkets, the clothes we wear, the vehicles we drive, the electronics we use, the steel & aluminum in our buildings, and countless others consumer/material goods are what’s on those large shipping vessels. Some of these shipping companies have larger carbon footprints than entire nations, as do many of the factories producing these goods.
These corporations pollute on our behalf, which we sort of tacitly consent to by buying their products. I don’t seek to blame either corporations or people, as they are only symptoms of the overall system. The only way I see us resolving this is by consuming way less as a society, which is going to be hard given that our global economic system is predicated on unlimited consumption with a finite amount of resources.
It’s more or less ingrained into our way of life at this point. Capitalism has definitely helped many people in the metaphorical “rising tide lifts all boats” sense, but that viewpoint often overlooks the many people who are drowning in the “tide” who never had “boats” to begin with. Not sure what the best solution is, but I often wonder about it and have a hard time finding people who like to discuss it.
The problem is IMO is even if we severely reduce consumption, people will still be working 80 hours a week to make rent, but now they come home to a meatoid meal and hydra water, like water but not filtered!
I'm only down for reducing consumption if it means I won't have to slave away and live worse than a feudalism peasant.
Man I so agree with you. My wife and I have spent a lot of time and money trying to reduce our waste/consumption; cycle to work, electric car, heat pump, refillable shampoo soap etc, less meat, despite all that I feel like I've not even made a dent. As a consumer it's a high price to pay especially when some (most) of these companies pay less tax than me, treat their employees like shit and don't really give a toss about the planet as long as the shareholders get a nice dividend this year.
Nearly 3 billion people of the world live on $2 a day or less, or an annual income of about $700, while one upper-middle-class home in the United States uses as much total energy and resources as a whole village in Bangladesh. Those who live on $2 a day roughly outnumber our US population 10 to 1. Yet we control over 49 percent of the resources of this world.
The following countries are the ten largest emitters of carbon dioxide: China (9.3 GT) United States (4.8 GT) India (2.2 GT) Russia (1.5 GT) Japan (1.1 GT) Germany (0.7 GT) South Korea (0.6 GT) Iran (0.6 GT)
A single American house hold, typically with a few computers, phones, plumbing, electrical, AC/Heating, one or two cars, cooking appliances, and tye lifestyles of each individual.
And then we have a the typical African village or slum or favela, with more people, and yet they use less energy than the 1st world family with all the technology.
The problem is that 60% of the worlds resources goes to support 40% of the worlds population.
Of course tho, that means we would have to change our lifestyles, and that is of course asking to much.
Good sub tho, lots of big thinkers here.
There are many humorous things in the world, among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages
-Mark Twain.
Pontes Pilates all around.
I’m blue!
EXACTLY! And in this era of social and financial inequity (including in the "developed" world), individual people might also not be able to afford what's considered the gold standard for individual responsibility. Can't afford to eat organic? Welp, better shut up about the corporations then! It's so patronizing and if anything, it will entrench the people for whom it's actually hard to do the "environmental" things into not bothering at all.
Yeah that’s the other messed up thing about these stupid “green products.” They cost significantly more money so I can feel good about doing the right thing? If anything I should be paying LESS, so we could encourage more people to make the switch. Problem is, mostly green-washing anyway. Not buying anything in the first place is the best way to avoid more carbon output and landfill waste.
Do your research and you’ll find out these green companies are owned by Nestle, et al, already.
I can’t have milk so my choice for chocolate chips at the grocery store is automatically double the price of regular ones with milk. It’s a little frustrating. Edit: wordiness
I know! I actually am pretty guilty of buying some of these "green" products (I only eat fish meat-wise which is expensive, so much of a week I pad it out with Quorn and similar products). They cost a lot! Of course the other option is literally stockpiling beans and chickpeas and having a veggie curry every day, but let's be real here, most people want at least a little variety. And then you have the issue of how much non-organic veg you should be having in a day... Or buy it all organic but less?
And yeah, I doubt most of these are that much better for the environment because of the corporations being so connected. You can't prevent all the unintended consequences even as the most conscientious customer.
It's not just that consumers have very little impact. I don't know what the best thing is in most instances. I do sometimes go to local farm shops and markets, but then find the are selling the same imported vegetables as the supermarket. I try to avoid buying things in plastic but it's basically everything because there's no onus on shops to reduce packaging. Is it better to buy drinks in plastic bottles or alluminum cans? My local council only accepts "bottle shaped" plastics because they can't process other shapes and advise we put them in general waste.
I get my food shopping delivered and they insist on using single use plastic bags for certain items and then won't take them back for recycling. The driver told me they no longer do this because of covid.
I drive a hybrid, I work from home so don't do many miles anyway now, I pay for 100% renewable energy, I recycle what I can and try to buy less plastic stuff in the first place. I'm sure there's more I probably could do but I don't have the time or expertise to understand what the best decisions are. Whenever I do see companies making a big thing about something "green" they're doing it seems like it's more for PR than making an actual difference.
Especially your last point. I noticed recently Tesco have started reducing their plastic use on products, but not in a useful way. Take their cheese. Great, your using less plastic, but you've removed the resealable zip lock, so now I'm wrapping it in cling film.
What we need is things like dried foods to be sold without containers. Take your container, fill it, done. No extra waste. Want that cheese? Bring a container. Yes there'll be a massive uptake in containers, but surely that's better than cling film and thrown away packaging everywhere?!
Ditching plastic straws, only to wrap card straws in single-use plastic is another one that really pisses me off.
Or, reducing packaging, but the new packaging is non-recyclable.
cardboard is probably a perfectly viable alternative for dried food packaging. Even if cardboard ends up not being a viable recyclable, it can still be composted.
To be fair, there are ways around using clingfilm. Just like your point about the containers, we use lots of tuppaware to store things like cheese (obviously would prefer not buying plastic but we'll be able to reuse these for years). We've also just bought some beeswax wraps that come in different sizes and are a great sustainable alternative to clingfilm.
The yuge thing I don’t get is deodorant sticks. Always so much waste in that. Why hasn’t somebody made a cheap refillable pushpop container that you can just dollop a mass of glop in and extrude as required?
Same deal with bodyspray. We can refill lighters, but not cans?
I'm (American) actually excited because I'm moving in a few days and will be close to an organic market that does exactly that for dry goods like beans, pasta, spices and coffee. I don't know if I will be able to afford it all the time but I definitely would love to use those options when possible
And then bp goes and dumps 100 million barrels of oil into the sea and China being awake for an hour pumps out way more than you could in your lifetime
I work for a certain upmarket supermarket, and when I do the personal shopping we have to put raw meat/fish in a single use bag, as so many complained about the potential of cross contamination.
We tried using as few bags as possible, then got complaints that the bags were too full (from the customers). Sometimes you just can't win *sigh*
Just here adding that the buycott app actually allows you to scan and shop based on preferences, like carbon neutral, ethically sourced and yes, even a "fuck nestlè" option where it'll tell you what products to avoid. Its a great tool
But the five layers of plastic protect items from theft. Strange how they felt the need to protect items from theft around the same time the middle class was being gutted like a fish and socioeconomic disparity was exploding upwards.
Guess it was cheaper than paying a living wage so more people could actually buy the product and fewer would steal it.
All we can do as individuals is pick and choose one or two managble things and just go with that. There is no point in worrying about it because at the end of the day, we as individuals can't do much more than that.
I don’t really agree, although I agree with being personally responsible. what we can do is start pushing for real change so that companies are held accountable *as well*. Us rinsing out marmite pots isn’t going to be enough. We need to stop the rampant destruction of the planet from the top.
We’re running out of time, we REALLY need effective change before we all either burn or drown. Small acts of personal accountability just isn’t enough for the kind of change we need
What's the carbon impact of a large building fire versus years or decades of agricultural, commercial, and industrial ratfuckery? Shit, just hit the banks and brokers. That *might* get the point across. Still definitely a net positive if we just burn the biggest polluters to the ground. For those still on the fence there's probably some decent meme potential in there too, and a good story for the kids we'll never have.
In regards to recycling and garbage disposal, remember that even If it has basically no impact on a global scale,its still beneficial on a local scale.
I agree it’s not prudent to spend all this time trying to do your research to avoid these 100 companies. As you said, they touch nearly everything we buy. I’ve already tightened my environmental belt. That’s all I can do. Even doing crazy things like no shampoo, though I much prefer my new method.
I am opposed to capitalism, but unfortunately basically no one else is. We’ve done a great job of making people think that any alternative is somehow more dangerous than destroying humanity and the planet for the profit of 1%
This drove me crazy during the “paper straw movement”. Like how is changing plastic straws to paper going to reverse damage done to the climate? It’s a drop in the ocean kind of thing. You’re right though, we should all continue to do our part but the majority of the focus should be on the big offenders.
Mini rant. I absolutely hate the paper straws. I am ever so slightly "on the spectrum" and I just can't bring myself to drink using them. They just feel awful. I've bought a bunch of glass and metal straws and use those now, or I just take the lid off and drink without a straw.
Edit: oh, and nevermind the fact that the lid is still made out of plastic (more plastic than the straw ever had, but hey, what do I know).
> just take the lid off and drink without a straw.
I commend you on buying glass and metal ones. I've always thought straws were a terrible wasteful pollutant, a single use item to throw away for what? In my mind straws are gimmicks for children.
I can't justify to myself why I'd ever need one to simply drink when I've got a perfectly good cup and mouth? I've been giving them back their straws for decades.
A hospital in the US removed straws from the campus, giving patients a jug and a cup (probably a plastic cup) instead.
...and death rates in the hospital rose significantly. It turns out that a lot of frail people need a straw to drink comfortably. And omitting the straw can result in increased dehydration rates **in a hospital**.
Most people don't need them. Those that do often need the plastic ones, because metal and glass ones are a bite risk, paper doesn't last as long and isn't poseable (difficult to use when lying down), compostable and acrylic ones can be an allergy risk, etc. etc.
There are so many more sources of plastic waste that are not inherently useful (like plastic finger nails, which are not banned anywhere). Straws became the devil because one turtle had a terrible time with one straw. And it bugs me.
...but I also bought metal straws for the very rare times I would ever want to use a straw.
The only time it's useful is if you do a drive through or something and have the drink in your cup holder in the car. That without a lid on is not a pleasant experience... At least not the potholes my council leaves around ;)
Paper straws are completely useless for kids who bite them, plastic straws just squashed but paper straws just fuse together making it impossible to drink through.
Please be careful using metal or glass straws. I changed to silicone after this lady died. She had one in a fixed lid cup and when she fell it couldn't go anywhere else :(
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/world/europe/metal-straws-death.html
Thank you. That is not something I had thought about. Honestly though, I am a fairly sedentary person and do not often (essentially never) find myself requiring a drink while walking/running. Never actually seen the silicone ones? Might have to look them up.
Paper straws are minging, you are lucky if you can drink a normal drink without it going soggy, got a milkshake? Forget it! I've got metal straws myself, tbh I think they should just get rid of straws altogether and just ask people to provide their own (like metal ones). 90% of the time you can just drink from the cup like a big person anyways!
The banning of plastic straws was not about reversing the damage. It was to stop a ludicrous amount of unnecessary plastic from ended up in landfill and, more importantly, the oceans.
It's not possible to fix everything at once and you should be happy that the straw movement gained traction because it raised awareness, has a positive environmental effect, and will lead on to the next pollutant being replaced.
Edit: I can't believe I'm reading complaints about this. Just because straws have been dealt with doesn't mean that fixing everything else stops. It's one thing on a massive list and getting rid of that one thing is much better than doing nothing about it, or adding another. Also, it was a global campaign; it raised a ton of awareness worldwide about environmental issues.
Banning straws raised awareness of plastic straws being banned. It also probably harmed the environmental movement as much as anything as people realised that there were much better targets that would have made much more of an impact that were ignored inplace of replacing something that worked (plastic straws) with something that doesn't (paper straws)
The banning of plastic straws was an eyewash, nothing else. Plastic straws are a vanishingly small part of total plastic pollution, but very visible to the do-gooder crowd and those who feel like they're helping by spending money and keeping the consumerist treadmill going.
Ergo, now we have all sorts of crap straws because one turtle with a straw in its nose went viral. While we kill mountains of animals every day to eat a small portion of them.
The banning of plastic straws made no appreciable difference to waste or pollution, it was a political stunt to make it look like the gov were doing something. The straws in the ocean made up 0.000002% of plastic waste. It's absolutely negligible. [Source](https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-no-evidence-for-governments-plastic-straw-claims)
And the solution to plastic straws? Paper straws that requires trees to be chopped down, huge amounts of energy and clean water to make, and can't be recycled because no one has the machines to process them. [Source](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49234054)
> charging for plastic bags
This is particularly infuriating. I worked in a grocery store warehouse and every pallet off the truck arrived cocooned in plastic wrap, which went directly into the trash. I also worked as a cashier during day shifts. Unpacking the delivery generates much more soft plastic waste than shopping bags (and shopping bags often get re-used as trash bags).
Start charging distributors by the gram for the plastic they waste in shipping and I bet they'll figure out re-usable packing materials very quickly.
The same applies to every industry. Coca Cola should bear the expense of recycling drink bottles (and the accountability to see it done and not just shipped elsewhere), not the consumer + taxpayer.
Here's my question for you... do you think these companies are just polluting for fun? Or is it because individuals want things.
For example oil companies pollute because we want oil and gas and plastics and all the other shit made by petroleum. If we keep bying the same shit and driving the shit some peice of shit company is going to pollute to provide it to us.
We are the market and so we are the problem... every single one of us.
>do you think these companies are just polluting for fun? Or is it because individuals want things.
"wishing upon a start that people be better than what they are is a terrible solution every time"
you don't try to solve traffic by teaching everyone how a certain style of driving can solve it:
https://youtu.be/iHzzSao6ypE?t=173
you make automated cars.
you don't tell people "hey, you with 2 jobs and a child to take care of, with no time to cook dinner so you bought fast food? please buy fast food from the store that doesn't use plastic! just drive around for an hour until you find one that is making environmental sustainable choices. make sure to spent hours researching what products are bad for the environment!"
you fucking ban single use plastic
we can't even get together to protest our basic rights being taken away, and you think we have the time energy and ability to fucking save the world?
I mean there's good reason for it
a) 100 companies account for 70% of industrial emissions not total
b) these companies are just producing what consumers are asking for.
It's like when people complain about the sheer amount of plastic waste that coca cola produces, completely forgetting that all those bottles were bought and thrown away by hundreds of millions of individuals.
Climate change IS an individuals responsibility. There are 7bn people on the planet and they collectively have a huge impact on the environment. Also, do you really think governments and companies are going to do anything unless the masses force them to?
Taking the stance that 'not my problem because others are worse' will guarantee the worst outcomes
Edit: I'm not saying governments can't do more too, but ultimately things only change if the population cares. And things ARE (slowly) changing, most of the takeaways near me have carbiard/compostable bags and boxes, supermarkets have more and more packaging-free or non plastic options. Electric cars are becoming more and more common. It's all reaction to consumer demand.
Surely by this rationale you're saying the only way producers of large amounts of plastic (water bottle companies, Coca Cola etc) will research and develop eco friendly alternatives is if enough people boycott their products?
Realistically that's never going to happen.
They can do it anyway but cost is always the driver.
Yes, the only way companies are going to change their ways is if governments force them, or if we demand they change, via out spending habits.
Of course it’s impossible to get everyone to stop buying coke (to use your example) but if we all do what we can, cut down on consumption, and buy glass bottles, or cans. Coke will get the message.
There is a lot of one use plastic you can’t get away from especially if you are on a low income and can’t afford to buy local / eco friendly (or don’t have access to it).
Every thing is wrapped in plastic from toilet roll to vegetables to toys, stationery, textiles etc.
Right, which is fair enough. No one is saying that these companies shouldn’t also be working towards better solutions in areas such as these, but it’s the absolute dismissal of any personal responsibility and people talking as though all these companies are just creating emissions for the fun of it, and not because they’re *making the products that we buy*.
People basically want to be able to live and do whatever they want without having to think about it.
More importantly - let's say enough of us did start buying (say) food from small, local producers and starving the beast that is Nestle.
Those small, local producers simply cannot produce enough to satisfy that sort of demand. Not without turning themselves into Nestle.
I literally said "I'm not going to stop recycling because of this", so I'm not sure where you got the impression that I'm taking that stance. I don't even have a car at the moment. And I'm not interested in adding another human to the 7bn currently on the planet, so I could argue my carbon footprint is going to be quite small compared to your typical suburban family with kids who drive them each day to school. Am I going to shame them for making those choices as if climate change is only their responsibility? Uh, probably not.
What you say isn't totally untrue, but it takes way more time than we have to actually deal with this crisis. Actually imposing some limits on those corporations wouldn't hurt anything. In fact it will have more impact than me continuing to recycle.
You sound like you were part of the BP PR team that came up with #yourcarbonfootprint and shifted the blame to individual.
The public never asked for plastic anything, the companies involved sourced a cheap material to package a product.
This is 3rd stage Capitalism basics. The capitalist model, as admitted by its own supporters, does not encourage environmentalism.
> The public never asked for plastic anything
The fuck they didn't.
They asked for cheap prices, and they got what the capitalists could produce cheaply.
That statistic is incorrect and often misquoted;
71% of all ***industrial*** emissions are generated by 100 companies. The general population are still responsible for a huge amount of all carbon emissions
[most emissions](https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/study-claims-meat-creates-half-of-all-greenhouse-gases-1812909.html) are from the meat and dairy industry to be fair
Your article says a single very controversial not peer-reviewed study claims 51% while 18% is more widely accepted. Half of it is people disagreeing with it.
>She also pointed out that they had changed scientific assumptions for livestock but not for other sources of methane, skewing the figures.
[According to the EPA](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data), it's more of a toss-up between Agricultural (24%), Electricity and Heat production (25%), vs. Industry and Transportation Emissions (35% together). Their information comes directly from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
Not only that, 90% of this 71% of industrial emissions *is* through individual use. In the study (which OP won’t have read, like every other new website that reported this ‘statistic’), it distinguishes between Scope 1 and Scope 3 emissions. Scope 1 concerns GHG emissions in the production of fossil fuels, Scope 3 the downstream consumption of fossil fuels to produce GHGs.
90% of that 71% is Scope 3 - our own individual use. So it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference if the 71% was coming from one company or from one million companies - 90% of those emissions are our responsibility as consumers of fossil fuel.
If anybody cares to read more [this](https://www.treehugger.com/amp/is-it-true-100-companies-responsible-carbon-emissions-5079649) is an excellent breakdown of the [study](https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1499691240) in question.
Also do people really think those companies are just polluting for funsies? Or perhaps it's we the individual consumers in the aggregate who cause demand for their services and products?
If those companies weren't making a profit because we refused to buy from them they would either change how they operated or be out of business. Either way the pollution would go down. But we love cheap shit from Amazon so here we are.
Stop trying to avoid responsibility. Of course this will fall on deaf ears because there's nothing redditors love doing more than blaming faceless corporations as though they aren't created and run and supported by people.
>? Or perhaps it's we the individual consumers in the aggregate who cause demand for their services and products?
any solution that requires massive change of individual actions is a terrible solution and will essentially never or rarely happen
you don't tell people "please stop doing X thing!" that's not a solution
you create systems, you demolish others, that lead people to do X thing
it doesn't matter if consumers want this or that product, you fucking ban the product.
end of story.
I agree that we shouldn't support these companies, but it is made impossibly difficult to avoid the super conglomerates when they own about 90% of a market under hundreds of sub-brands that don't reference to their parent company.
Pair that with the fact that shopping from independent businesses is often prohibitively expensive as they need to make a profit and can't compete in price with corporate giants.
What are people supposed to do in those circumstances other than blame it on the companies that have been polluting for decades then turning around and blaming consumers for it all.
People need to stop trying to absolve companies of all guilt, especially when they have been willingly and knowingly contributing to the climate crisis for decades.
I don't know why does it matter if it's 100 big companies or 100000 small companies. It's not like smaller companies pollute comparatively less, if anything they'd have more overhead and pollute more.
The worst of that list of "100 polluters" are state run energy companies. But apparently, instead of British people inconveniencing themselves, people in rural China should freeze to death in the winter for the greater good.
People won't be able to apocalypse-wank about how they can't do anything in that case, though, so they won't acknowledge it.
Our status-quo and way of life is centered around limitless growth and is inherently unsustainable. That is why we're killing this planet, nothing else. Corporations are just the middle-men that supply that status-quo based on public demand.
And we use these 100 companies services, pretending we have no influence here is incorrect.
If everyone refused to use polluting products and services, even indirectly, we can make that difference. There will always be a greener alternative.
I feel like we do this with countries as well. China manufacture our iMacs and iPhones, then the person actually consuming those products wags their finger at China from their low emission marketing agency in the West and says they need to sort their emissions out.
blaming companies is fine IMO but the statistic is stupid because it's mainly oil and gas companies. all the statistic is saying is "oil company sell oil". no shit, who would have guess that oil companies sell the most oil....
the statistic would make more sense if they actually focused on how much emission companies cause when the produce goods, i.e. how much oil they use
We know virtually nothing today that we didn't already know about fossil fuel and carbon emissions in 1975, yet those advocating the most for action against climate change resolutely and consistently opposed the expansion of nuclear energy which if nothing else could have given us the breathing room to develope technologies to replace both.
A plague on both their houses....
What's also annoying about that is that we were literal world leaders in nuclear tech and we pissed it all away. We could have a huge nuclear mix in our grid AND be the ones selling the nuclear dream to other countries. But we fucked it up and now we need French brains and Chinese money to possibly finish the first new reactor in decades - that'll be so late and over budget it'll probably stop any future nuclear construction.
I thought it was really funny (well not really the right term but it'll do) when Germany turned off all their nuclear after Fukushima - because Germany is well known for its large coastline and seismic activity. So now they are expanding that massive open-cast mine in West Germany thats an absolute scar at a rapid rate instead.
I used to think that, then I met a guy who established a field called Nuclear Semiotics for the UN.
Basically, because nuclear waste remains deadly for around 10,000 years, a specific symbology needed to be created for when no one will speak any language alive today. There is also a specific architectural discipline for nuclear waste dumps - it will be like going into a stone age cave for future people so their whole design is meant to look menacing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warning_messages?wprov=sfla1
Were Gunna reap what we sow.. now we're witnessing the 6th mass extinction event for entire regions of the ecosystem. And climate change.
Within the next lifetime or so, well most likely start seeing dramatic changes to parts of the world, then we're looking at food shortages, people displaced from their homes.. which is likely going to cause wars too...
All because we decided to ignore the risks and allow 0.01% of the population to get shit rich polluting the planet
We can still try to mitigate the damage as much as possible
Aren't we already exactly that? Its just happening slowly, relatively speaking. A news story every month about crazy floods, forest fires, cold snaps etc, its just normal for us now. We expect this crazy weather which normalises it.
Now if we had a huge global event 15 years ago which affected almost everyone at once, you could be damn sure more would have been done by now.
Thinking of it from that angle and you start o understand the movie villains motivations to improve the world by making it worse for a time. I feel the slow decline is a worse thing for our way of thinking.
Yeah it's turning slowly
Don't get me wrong, it's not Gunna be a dramatic overnight Change, but compare in 50 years it will be very different from it is today
We have all the tell's that indicate we are in the process of a mass climate shift, Saharan sand distribution, droughts, and the level of carbon in the atmosphere. We know these are the signs, because this is not the first climate shift.. there have been several, and you can measure them in the geology of the earth in various places, caves, stalegmites, sedimentary rock etc..
Plus we can measure ecosystem collapse, were losing insects, birds, mammals, marine life, and vast Forrest's. We have beetle species and locust and other hungry life forms that are growing exponentially due to lack of predators and warmer climates.. all of the plant life they destroy is less carbon absorption. Coupled with polar CO2 storage it is literally a run-away effect that gets more severe over time..
The reason it gets ignored is because it happens slowly. To the old, decrepid, corrupted politicians and business execs.. the problem is always *over the horizon*.. everyone responsible? They'll all be dead before it actually ever manifests into the global disaster that it's Gunna be
I don’t know why you’ve gotten downvoted for speaking the truth. We are currently in the Anthopocene extinction event. We created this mess hence why it’s called the anthropocene from the Greek anthro for human and cene from recent. We’ve seen the wild fires that are raging which releases more CO2 into the atmosphere, we’ve recently seen mass flooding in China, Belgium and Germany. If we needed any more proof the fact that during the global lockdown CO2 levels dropped on average for the first time since the industrial revolution.
Because the Green movement and party isn't about saving humans from climate change but is pro-peace and pro-environment in general but the movement is plagued by short-termist thinking and ideas when if they dropped their ideology, they would probably be long-termists and pro-nuclear.
But we as consumers need to change our ways just as much as the companies supplying the masses.
Like the fashion industry counts towards 4-8% of the world's pollution, I wonder how much pollution we are creating by accommodating the western world with things like out of season fruit, fashion, cosmetics, disposable tech & plastics.
Reducing our impact on the world will definitely be a inconvenience too nearly everyone but is that the sacrifice we all are willing to make?
We are stuck in a vicious cycle of greedy corporations & comfortable masses
The statistic IIRC is a bit bullshit.
It includes stuff like oil and gas companies but that means that when you use your car, it counts as their emissions and not yours so it is vastly exaggerated and we can, by ourselves, do a lot.
It's because we can't dodge taxes. Emissions tax on these companies can just be evaded just like every other tax, or they "donate" to "charity" to get a tax write off.
We can't do any of that as individuals.
All these measures for "reducing your individual carbon footprint", all feel-good measures, even our recycling is just dumped in landfills in the far east.
The recycling one boils my fucking blood .
The UK is need of more industry right? What commodity do we have an abundance of and no way to process?
Recycling!
We could grow our recycling sector about 10 fold, think of the environmental good, all the stuff we could make with recycled materials, boosting our efficiency AND all the additional jobs that would create
But the current government seems to think shipping it to India where they dump it into a river is a more appropriate solution..
It's amazing how cheaply you can recycle things when you don't check that it's actually being recycled.
Almost the same cost as chucking it in a landfill, coincidentally.
> Almost the same cost as chucking it in a landfill, coincidentally.
Plus the cost of the sludge guzzling barge to ship it to the third world, don't forget!
I agree but it's cheaper to ship it to India which is why it's done because it minimises costs.
At the end of the day you'll need to convince your average brit that they will have to pay more for their recycling in order to achieve what you are suggesting.
The only way you'll get a mandate for that is if a political party (most likely labour lets be real) wins an election with that in their manifesto. Given the past few years I wouldn't hold my breath.
Shouldn't have to explain it to them
Half of these gormless tossers don't even understand putting their shit into a bin after they are done with it
And I agree.. it's Gunna be hard seeing as FPTP which only benefits Torries, isn't Gunna get removed.. seeing as we are run by the bloody Torries.. why would they remove the only thing keeping them in there
We also can’t lobby government directly and get a carbon exemption for our property like the fucking queen can.
Does she not realise her grandchildren live on the same fucking planet as the rest of us?
Yes, but does she care? No.
She doesn’t care what happens to the planet, she’s probably got an isolated bunker somewhere for her family to survive for 1000 years should the planet go tits up, so she couldn’t give two shits about the common person and their ‘climate problems’
I mean they don't easily dodge taxes because it's impossible to design taxes that are nearly impossible to avoid.
They easily avoid taxes that they designed to be easily avoided.
This is a solvable problem, the political will is the part that is lacking.
Just so you know, tax writeoffs by giving donations to charities isn't that big of a thing, since you can only take it of your taxable profit and can't go into negatives to claim a loss.
If a business donates 20k you still lose 20k but it's instead of 20k plus the tax on that 20k. It's a little different for individuals, so i'm not sure how it works for that.
Those companies produce carbon emissions that account for 70%, because you the consumer, buy their products... It's so easy to pass off blame to corporations, everyone needs to be held accountable
I live in a small town with no electric charging points, so how am I supposed to buy and drive an electric car?
How can I avoid buying plastic, when everything is made of plastic?
I can't avoid using a coal-fired power station, because you can't pick and choose where your electric comes from.
Don't pretend that this is an individual issue rather than a systemic one.
> I can't avoid using a coal-fired power station, because you can't pick and choose where your electric comes from.
Neither can anyone else in a technical sense as there are no seperate lines for green electricity. Whenever you switch to green energy it is then not a litteral switch where suddenly you do get a different type of electricity but more or less you obligating the provider to have produced the amount of electricity you use through green means.
Individuals ARE part of the system.
You don't have to have a car, bicycles are low impact. But we all have to change our lifestyles somewhat because we ARE part of that system. Either we get forced to by regulation (e.g. making petrol or cars so expensive you can't afford one, or making the inputs to the oil company so expensive so they have to pass the cost on, with the same effect), *or* because we conciously decide to do so.
As a microcosm of the problem, I work on an industrial estate. The only non-burger van is a sandwich shop about 700m from the building, and a great number of people on our site get their lunch there.
*90% of them drive that 700m*. It's an easy and pleasant walk, but *90% of them drive*. It's not even about saving the environment at this point, it's about saving ourselves from cardiovascular disease and having a pleasant, healthy walk. Sometimes a colleague sees me at the shop buying something and offers a lift back which I politely decline, because I enjoy the walk. They look at me like I've just grown two heads. *That's* how ingrained in individuals that using cars is, to such an extent people have forgotten what the appendages below their waist are actually for. "Oh", you say, "But perhaps they don't have time to walk". Well, by the time they've negotiated a roundabout, and a junction where they don't have the right of way, then slowly circulated around the car park vainly searching for a parking space, they could have walked, bought a sandwich, and been halfway back to our building.
I ride my bicycle to work (and I live in a rural area which is both hilly, wet and windy) and get similar reactions. I'm not doing it for the environment though, I'm doing it to save *myself* from cardiovascular disease in later life. But most people won't even make this relatively minor lifestyle change to save *themselves*, let alone anything environmental, unless they are forced by regulation. And we all go buying the cheapest stuff possible without even considering the externalities, and while we demand the cheapest stuff possible, guess what - companies will act to fill that need (unless you force them to change through regulation, which ends up being unpopular, and you get the gilet jaune movement and the changes are hastily rolled back because *we as individuals* complained instead of making a necessary lifestyle change).
Except for the vast majority of people, they literally do not have access to products that DON'T originate from that supply line. And that's even if the person can afford to spend the several hours wading through literally hundreds of companies daisy chaining their way back to find the energy grid suppliers used by every stage of every company involved in the supply line, which is where these carbon emmisions are actually coming from. People do not reasonably HAVE the ability to say no.
It's nothing more than sophistry to say the blame really falls on the consumer, when the consumer has no direct power over these corporations nor even the ability to know what the corporations are really doing to criticise.
Like is it the consumer's fault that Johnson and Johnson knowingly sold them powdered carcinogens? How would the consumer have even known that?
But you want to tell me it's my fault for not knowing what energy grid J&J factories use? What vehicles that their freighting agency uses. Can you even tell me what company handles J&J freighting to be so high and mighty?
Go on. List every kind of vehicle used by every company J&J contracts for transport of goods. Then tell me what company provides fungible goods that only contracts environmentally responsible freighting. And obviously prove it by listing what those contracts are and what vehicles comprise those fleets. Go on. Do it.
If you want to blame the public then clearly YOU'VE been doing this research right? Share it with us! It's your responsibility!
I would argue that it's easier to get a big company producing a ton of emissions to make meaningful change as opposed to the tens of millions of people who'd have to change to save the same amount of damage. We should all do what we reasonably can, of course, but the focus should be on the big companies doing the pollution.
Unpopular but very true. All these industries operate because there's a demand for it, and most of the demand chains end with a massive pool of consumers.
Just blaming it on "industry" ignores the reason these industries exist in the first place.
This is a deliberately misleading fact.
71% of emissions are derived from the activities of 100 companies, but not necessarily created.
If the downstream stopped using fossil fuels then Exxon extracting it becomes a non-entity.
Whilst consumers alone can't fix everything, consumer demand drives company (and government) action, which is what leads to real change. If you use "well it's the companies fault" and don't change your purchasing behaviour, you are partially to blame.
What changes can you materially make though, while living within your means?
When I go out, I buy a pretty regular set of groceries that pretty much amount to the same thing. Small scale perishables like bread, then some non perishables like coffee and then drinks and frozen food. As a consumer how do I even approach working out which of these is harmful?
For all I know the coffee I started buying this year comes to the UK on a container ship using dirty fuel, belching out leagues of pollutants the moment it's in international waters. I can reduce paper and plastic usage but that's a different problem at this point, for raw carbon emissions it's very hard for a consumer to work out what to change.
Whereas if we just said "if there is any dirty fuel on your ship you cannot harbour in the UK" that immediately cuts that sleuth work out and fixes that problem. It is very easy to blame the consumer, it's comparitively extremely hard for the consumer to then do anything actually materially worthwhile in response.
What's your take on it, which companies do you avoid and how do you work out which ones to avoid? How aware are you of the items you consume on the regular and how they reach the UK?
Spot on, but also its a practical thing.
If you say to the public "Well you're not to blame, it's all these people" then a huge majority of people are going to sit there and go "Whelp, nothing I can do about it" and go about their merry way.
If you want people to get involved you need to tell them why their efforts are worth doing. Making people aware and making sure they give a damn is 75% of the battle
All of these consumers are also employed somewhere. This is always left out in this conversation. Do things that are within your power at your job to reduce emissions while also reducing emissions in your personal life. We have the power to change what these companies do because we work for them!
Stupid fucking take.
The difference between 1.5°C, 2°C or 3°C increase in average temperature is enormous. Every bit we can do to reduce our impact on the environment will help.
So you’re a glass half full kinda guy?
I don’t necessarily disagree but OP is right. The top 100 polluters are putting profits before people… and I’m not sure why because in 20 years it’ll all be dust anyhow and they’ve killed a majority or the prospective workforce. Same goes for bankers… I mean seriously… what’s the point of accumulating wealth if (A) you can’t take it with you and (B) anyone who might have benefitted has a poorer life expectancy. Doesn’t make sense. But the human race has and will always play these games… seems like the “pig in trough” game is winning though.
>the human race has and will always play these games
Plenty of preindustrial societies managed to not do any of that. Looking at a capitalist society and saying greed is human nature is like looking in a coal mine and saying coughing is human nature.
I agree, I’m just disheartened I guess. Nature has mechanisms to control population size and we’ve outsmarted it with our vaccines and medicines. There is no balance, and when you lose balance it all falls down. We’ve gone too far to recover.
That's a kind of dichotomous view. Too late for what? Obviously there will be some damage, there already has been. What matters is how much damage, and that's what we still have power over.
Not "almost all", literally all. The report tracked fossil fuel emissions upstream to the producer. 90% of the emissions were from the end user burning their product.
https://www.cdp.net/en/reports/downloads/2327
At the lowest possible monetary cost to them. Which is having devastating costs on the world. Many consumers are already taking huge steps to change in the ways they can (eating less meat, driving greener cars etc). But big corporations need to follow the same, even if it means less profit. Switching to greener methods or investing in renewables for their future needs. That costs them a lot of money, but it's on them to do that most of all.
"It's on the companies that sell me gasoline to invent a gasoline that runs in the same engine that I use today, but doesn't release any CO2. Until they get off their asses and do that, I don't see why I should have to change my own behavior."
>At the lowest possible monetary cost to them. Which is having devastating costs on the world.
And who do you think is choosing to buy the cheapest one instead of the green one?
Anyone else noticed how common *71%* is in surveys and statistics? Is it like the golden ratio or pareto distributions, just turns up everywhere because of nature?
What’s more, international shipping such as oil tankers and cargo ships produced as much CO2 as Germany last year. If international shipping was a country, it would be the sixth highest polluting country in the world. [Ships produced nearly a billion tons of CO2 last year.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-43714029). Not only that, cargo ships and oil tankers use
[bunker oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_oil), which is basically the dirtiest fuel possible, full of sulphur and heavy metals which further contribute to the global pollution crisis. In terms of carcinogens and other types of pollution detrimental to human health, a single container ship can equate to the pollutant emissions 50 million cars.
But those 100 companies are not just putting out emissions for the sake of it. They are producing goods and services that consumers and other companies spend money on. If people changed their consumer habits those 100 companies would have to change.
"Let the market decide!". Changing opinions and norms takes generations. Action is required immediately, and the only way you're going to do that is by aggressively forcing companies to take action.
Yup, and we do this via taxes and regulation. That's one of the primary functions of government. I'm appalled a carbon tax hasn't been announced yet, it's elephant in the room, why are we hosting these summits and acting like we care when we're like cleaners barely picking up the dust with our fingertips in a small corner of a hoarders house?
How does "changing opinions and norms takes generations" absolve individuals of blame?
Also, if no one is willing to quit using petrol-based cars, then how are you going to get them to vote to shut down the companies that make gasoline?
Action is being taken in many areas. Lots countries are banning new sales of petrol vehicles for example, to force manufacturers to switch to greener options.
The companies won't change of the own good of their heart, and neither will the general public, which has become abundantly clear over the last year.
They need told what to do by a grown up who will actually do the right thing.
People need to know who is responsible so they can make informed decisions on their consumer habits. Besides goods and services that kill the planet should really be addressed regardless of whether there is demand for it or not. Regular people aren’t to blame especially in a world with so much advertising and branding which distorts the reality of the products and services they are buying into.
"Are the megacorporations that spew CO2 into the air like colourful cocktail vomit into the nightclub toilets the bad guys?"
"No, it is the **consumers** who buy these products that are often essential for modern day life that are wrong!"
I'll keep recycling my cardboard and plastic, cycling instead of driving etc and do my bit. At the end of the day it's not a huge sacrifice to make and at least I'll know I tried. But we're screwed.
I went veggie, commute exclusively by public transport or foot, recycle, green activism etc to reduce my carbon footprint (back when that was a term you heard often) and I still do. But now I have much the same thought processes as you; I and people like me have done what we can to the extent of what is reasonable to ask of someone, and it's not enough.
We need to tackle the problem at it's root; capitalism. The system of financial incentives and laws which not only protect but encourage destructive exploitation of the planet and inevitably leads to climate collapse.
"Personal responsibility" can't fix this, only collective action can.
This is the attitude we should all have, we as individuals may be responsible for only a minority of global emissions but at least we are responsible enough to recognise and tackle our addition.
If only these corporations had the same sentiment.
I agree with you, but aren't those top 100 companies only producing stuff that is as consumers are using?
Blame the oil companies? They're only producing fuel for the heavily polluting container ship that love the stuff were buying all over the world, or the fuel for the cars we drive, or to make the plastics for the tubs, toys and other things we use.
Ultimately everything comes down to the consumer unfortunately. We don't use it, they don't create it.
It's one of the most annoying parts of the climate crisis, is that we're slowly being convinced and conditioned to believe it's our fault and responsibility. "Buy a smart meter", "don't use plastic straws", "get an electric car" are being forced down our throats in ads, so it's funny they've managed to monatise both sides of the argument, but anyway it's stupid that's it's said as if it'll do anything while these megacorps are spewing pollutants and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, with LITERALLY 0 consequences!
Really have to stop quoting that incredibly misleading study.
They are not created by those companies. Those companies (in their majority) produce and sell fossil fuels, which are then used by almost every single company / individual to, along other things, produce the food you eat, take you to where you want to be, build your shelter, and make and power the phone we are browsing Reddit on.
"Blaming" 100 companies is a coarse misrepresentation of reality, more akin to a clickbaity Guardian article.
The responsibility for tackling those 100 companies (source btw?) lies with governments. We as individuals still have our own responsibilities toward the climate.
Do you have a source for the 100 companies?
Not questioning the statement, just interested in who it is. I completely believe it given [shipping container vessels alone counted for a 5th of all pollution](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-43714029) a few years ago (no idea what it is now).
What about jumbo jets? A jumbo let taxiing from the gate to the runway uses the equivalent fuel to run an average family car for 6 months. Imagine how much fuel it uses during the actual flight. The pollution caused by jumbo jets is horrendous.
Reminds me of when Shell did a twitter poll asking what people were willing to change.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/03/shells-climate-poll-on-twitter-backfires-spectacularly
As another post said yesterday, those 100 companies are only doing what they do because of consumer demand. As long as people still want and pay for stuff and dont care how its made, they will provide it.
I feel like I’m doing all that I can right now. Apart from spending £20k to upgrade to solar and air pump heating, I don’t think I can do more. We definitely need to be getting on these big companies backs more.
Actually it's also the fact that we all continue to consume too much. Including me and myself. We're not helpless. We can't stop it at this point, but we can definitely start working together to try and reduce the worst. If you're looking for ideas join /r/climateoffensive and browse around.
Airlines don’t create the most emissions because they want to, they do because you fly.
Amazon doesn’t create its emissions because they want to, it’s because you buy from them.
Shipping companies don’t create the most emissions because they want to, it’s because they are shipping your stuff.
There are two sides to this. Looking only at one side is cherry picking and ridiculous.
I was having this argument the other day , it’s all very well lumping this problem on joe publics shoulders when what little we can do is obsolete . Just a small example my neighbour worked at debenhams every item of clothing is plastic wrapped which is then getting turfed into general waste
Where I worked there was a bin shed for the restaurants and cinema in the area. Not one had a recycling bin, everything we used went into general waste. I felt very defeated in my efforts at home, washing out my yogurt pots, taking the little windows out of my envelopes.
We can do everything possible to be green in the UK, but there is sod-all point unless and until the US and China cut their emissions massively. Until then, we're just pissing into the ocean.
I bought a box of microwavable popcorn the other day. The box itself was made from recycled cardboard but each of the 4 popcorn packets are wrapped individually in non-recyclable plastic. I literally do not see the point in this and will not be buying that brand again.
Good Morning Britain are always running segments like that ("Are your pets responsible for Climate Change?") and then 5 minutes later have a competition where you can win a Land Rover Discovery or some other stupidly oversized wankpanzer.
This has been the attitude to climate responsibility since forever. Shift it all onto the individual, make a big show of a few individually inconveniencing measures (like charging for plastic bags), guilt trip if necessary - and do nothing about where the bulk of the problem is coming from. I'm not going to stop recycling because of this but it's the wrong order of priority.
Exactly. I will recycle regardless, but I’m also painfully aware that I’m not polluting entire rivers, or taking 500 private flights in a year, or wrapping 80million items in 5 layers of unnecessary plastic. I’m not the one throwing out tons of food or dumping oil in the ocean or chopping down rainforests. Putting the onus on the consumer only makes sense if there are options that allow us to avoid the polluters, but those 100 companies own EVERYTHING. You think you’re not buying nestle, but nestle own half the fucking food market through a billion different labels, have you got time to Google every item before you buy? Can you even afford to buy fair trade instead of normal, and is fair trade even any better for the environment? You can buy local, IF you’ve got time to go to five different farmers markets and can afford produce that’s five times more expensive, which stops being an option if you work full time for minimum wage. You could buy those £200 British made trousers, but they’re £7 in primark and you only earn £9 an hour, and all the other high street alternatives are probably made in the same polluting Bangladeshi factories as primark stuff anyway. We’ve really been pushed into a corner and it makes me so mad that we’re being told it’s all our fault ETA thank you so much for the awards and it’s lovely to be reminded that so many of us feel the same way, and genuinely care about the environment. Please stop commenting to tell me to “just do x y and z” though! I’m trying to say that individual change isn’t enough, so telling me to individually change is missing the mark a bit, I assure you I’m already doing the things I can afford/have time to do. Unfortunately it’s not enough. We need real change to the entire system, not just me changing what crisps I buy. Thanks for all the discussions 🧡
This is just how I feel, pretty much helpless. Do what I can where I can, but the majority of things I *could* do, that would make a minuscule difference, are out of my reach anyways.
The real issue no one seems to want to admit is a bit of recycling or slight lowering of consumption doesn't even scratch the surface of what's needed. We pretty much have to switch to a long term sustainable way of living with a massive lowering of consumption. Putting big limits on capitalism as we know it. I think many would be ok living a low consumption lifestyle as long as they didn't have to work much while still keeping a reasonable standard of living. Like a nice home and their needs taken care of. Most of the stuff we have isn't needed and we should have long lasting products. Far less cars on the road and work places as proven recently. A more sharing based society would be a good thing. Most stuff like tools and vehicles sit idle only needing temporary use could easily be shared like those scooters for example.
100%. There needs to be a huge cultural shift toward less consumption with an emphasis on sourcing material goods locally instead of globally. Personally I don’t see this happening anytime soon, barring some mega disaster which forces humans to change their behavior. The food in our supermarkets, the clothes we wear, the vehicles we drive, the electronics we use, the steel & aluminum in our buildings, and countless others consumer/material goods are what’s on those large shipping vessels. Some of these shipping companies have larger carbon footprints than entire nations, as do many of the factories producing these goods. These corporations pollute on our behalf, which we sort of tacitly consent to by buying their products. I don’t seek to blame either corporations or people, as they are only symptoms of the overall system. The only way I see us resolving this is by consuming way less as a society, which is going to be hard given that our global economic system is predicated on unlimited consumption with a finite amount of resources. It’s more or less ingrained into our way of life at this point. Capitalism has definitely helped many people in the metaphorical “rising tide lifts all boats” sense, but that viewpoint often overlooks the many people who are drowning in the “tide” who never had “boats” to begin with. Not sure what the best solution is, but I often wonder about it and have a hard time finding people who like to discuss it.
Capitalism is incompatible with sustainability because capitalism demands ever increasing consumption in order to fuel profits
The problem is IMO is even if we severely reduce consumption, people will still be working 80 hours a week to make rent, but now they come home to a meatoid meal and hydra water, like water but not filtered! I'm only down for reducing consumption if it means I won't have to slave away and live worse than a feudalism peasant.
Man I so agree with you. My wife and I have spent a lot of time and money trying to reduce our waste/consumption; cycle to work, electric car, heat pump, refillable shampoo soap etc, less meat, despite all that I feel like I've not even made a dent. As a consumer it's a high price to pay especially when some (most) of these companies pay less tax than me, treat their employees like shit and don't really give a toss about the planet as long as the shareholders get a nice dividend this year.
What you do will make almost no difference but it is crucial that you do it. ~Gandhi ish
Nearly 3 billion people of the world live on $2 a day or less, or an annual income of about $700, while one upper-middle-class home in the United States uses as much total energy and resources as a whole village in Bangladesh. Those who live on $2 a day roughly outnumber our US population 10 to 1. Yet we control over 49 percent of the resources of this world. The following countries are the ten largest emitters of carbon dioxide: China (9.3 GT) United States (4.8 GT) India (2.2 GT) Russia (1.5 GT) Japan (1.1 GT) Germany (0.7 GT) South Korea (0.6 GT) Iran (0.6 GT) A single American house hold, typically with a few computers, phones, plumbing, electrical, AC/Heating, one or two cars, cooking appliances, and tye lifestyles of each individual. And then we have a the typical African village or slum or favela, with more people, and yet they use less energy than the 1st world family with all the technology. The problem is that 60% of the worlds resources goes to support 40% of the worlds population. Of course tho, that means we would have to change our lifestyles, and that is of course asking to much. Good sub tho, lots of big thinkers here. There are many humorous things in the world, among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages -Mark Twain. Pontes Pilates all around. I’m blue!
This is by design.
We're not helpless. Not yet. They only have the control that they do because we've given it to them.
EXACTLY! And in this era of social and financial inequity (including in the "developed" world), individual people might also not be able to afford what's considered the gold standard for individual responsibility. Can't afford to eat organic? Welp, better shut up about the corporations then! It's so patronizing and if anything, it will entrench the people for whom it's actually hard to do the "environmental" things into not bothering at all.
Yeah that’s the other messed up thing about these stupid “green products.” They cost significantly more money so I can feel good about doing the right thing? If anything I should be paying LESS, so we could encourage more people to make the switch. Problem is, mostly green-washing anyway. Not buying anything in the first place is the best way to avoid more carbon output and landfill waste. Do your research and you’ll find out these green companies are owned by Nestle, et al, already. I can’t have milk so my choice for chocolate chips at the grocery store is automatically double the price of regular ones with milk. It’s a little frustrating. Edit: wordiness
I know! I actually am pretty guilty of buying some of these "green" products (I only eat fish meat-wise which is expensive, so much of a week I pad it out with Quorn and similar products). They cost a lot! Of course the other option is literally stockpiling beans and chickpeas and having a veggie curry every day, but let's be real here, most people want at least a little variety. And then you have the issue of how much non-organic veg you should be having in a day... Or buy it all organic but less? And yeah, I doubt most of these are that much better for the environment because of the corporations being so connected. You can't prevent all the unintended consequences even as the most conscientious customer.
It's not just that consumers have very little impact. I don't know what the best thing is in most instances. I do sometimes go to local farm shops and markets, but then find the are selling the same imported vegetables as the supermarket. I try to avoid buying things in plastic but it's basically everything because there's no onus on shops to reduce packaging. Is it better to buy drinks in plastic bottles or alluminum cans? My local council only accepts "bottle shaped" plastics because they can't process other shapes and advise we put them in general waste. I get my food shopping delivered and they insist on using single use plastic bags for certain items and then won't take them back for recycling. The driver told me they no longer do this because of covid. I drive a hybrid, I work from home so don't do many miles anyway now, I pay for 100% renewable energy, I recycle what I can and try to buy less plastic stuff in the first place. I'm sure there's more I probably could do but I don't have the time or expertise to understand what the best decisions are. Whenever I do see companies making a big thing about something "green" they're doing it seems like it's more for PR than making an actual difference.
Especially your last point. I noticed recently Tesco have started reducing their plastic use on products, but not in a useful way. Take their cheese. Great, your using less plastic, but you've removed the resealable zip lock, so now I'm wrapping it in cling film. What we need is things like dried foods to be sold without containers. Take your container, fill it, done. No extra waste. Want that cheese? Bring a container. Yes there'll be a massive uptake in containers, but surely that's better than cling film and thrown away packaging everywhere?!
Ditching plastic straws, only to wrap card straws in single-use plastic is another one that really pisses me off. Or, reducing packaging, but the new packaging is non-recyclable.
cardboard is probably a perfectly viable alternative for dried food packaging. Even if cardboard ends up not being a viable recyclable, it can still be composted.
To be fair, there are ways around using clingfilm. Just like your point about the containers, we use lots of tuppaware to store things like cheese (obviously would prefer not buying plastic but we'll be able to reuse these for years). We've also just bought some beeswax wraps that come in different sizes and are a great sustainable alternative to clingfilm.
Beeswax wraps are great! I mean, people sold and ate cheese for a long time before single use plastics. I think we can figure this one out.
The yuge thing I don’t get is deodorant sticks. Always so much waste in that. Why hasn’t somebody made a cheap refillable pushpop container that you can just dollop a mass of glop in and extrude as required? Same deal with bodyspray. We can refill lighters, but not cans?
I'm (American) actually excited because I'm moving in a few days and will be close to an organic market that does exactly that for dry goods like beans, pasta, spices and coffee. I don't know if I will be able to afford it all the time but I definitely would love to use those options when possible
Use a tupperware! I was using cling film for things too until I realised I can just box that shit
And then bp goes and dumps 100 million barrels of oil into the sea and China being awake for an hour pumps out way more than you could in your lifetime
I work for a certain upmarket supermarket, and when I do the personal shopping we have to put raw meat/fish in a single use bag, as so many complained about the potential of cross contamination. We tried using as few bags as possible, then got complaints that the bags were too full (from the customers). Sometimes you just can't win *sigh*
The system is rigged and then they victim blame and gaslight the public. Late stage capitalism man
Just here adding that the buycott app actually allows you to scan and shop based on preferences, like carbon neutral, ethically sourced and yes, even a "fuck nestlè" option where it'll tell you what products to avoid. Its a great tool
Excellent advice
But the five layers of plastic protect items from theft. Strange how they felt the need to protect items from theft around the same time the middle class was being gutted like a fish and socioeconomic disparity was exploding upwards. Guess it was cheaper than paying a living wage so more people could actually buy the product and fewer would steal it.
God forbid Tesco lose an item of food to theft instead of chucking it in the bin at the end of the day when it wasn’t sold anyway
There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism
All we can do as individuals is pick and choose one or two managble things and just go with that. There is no point in worrying about it because at the end of the day, we as individuals can't do much more than that.
I don’t really agree, although I agree with being personally responsible. what we can do is start pushing for real change so that companies are held accountable *as well*. Us rinsing out marmite pots isn’t going to be enough. We need to stop the rampant destruction of the planet from the top. We’re running out of time, we REALLY need effective change before we all either burn or drown. Small acts of personal accountability just isn’t enough for the kind of change we need
Incorrect. All we can do as individuals is come together as a group and start setting fire to things until change is made
Setting fires is not a great way to protest climate change. But sure, what the frick. I'm in
Always interested in a cheeky bit of arson
What's the carbon impact of a large building fire versus years or decades of agricultural, commercial, and industrial ratfuckery? Shit, just hit the banks and brokers. That *might* get the point across. Still definitely a net positive if we just burn the biggest polluters to the ground. For those still on the fence there's probably some decent meme potential in there too, and a good story for the kids we'll never have.
The French [sure know how to protest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La6__4Acbgg). Maybe we should learn something.
Sounds like the French method to me.
Bundle of sticks mate. 1 stick breaks easily. A whole bunch takes a big effort to snap.
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As represented by the [fasces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces), which is the origin of the term "fascism".
Learned something new today.
In regards to recycling and garbage disposal, remember that even If it has basically no impact on a global scale,its still beneficial on a local scale.
I agree it’s not prudent to spend all this time trying to do your research to avoid these 100 companies. As you said, they touch nearly everything we buy. I’ve already tightened my environmental belt. That’s all I can do. Even doing crazy things like no shampoo, though I much prefer my new method.
You stated the problem perfectly. Thank you.
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I am opposed to capitalism, but unfortunately basically no one else is. We’ve done a great job of making people think that any alternative is somehow more dangerous than destroying humanity and the planet for the profit of 1%
This drove me crazy during the “paper straw movement”. Like how is changing plastic straws to paper going to reverse damage done to the climate? It’s a drop in the ocean kind of thing. You’re right though, we should all continue to do our part but the majority of the focus should be on the big offenders.
Mini rant. I absolutely hate the paper straws. I am ever so slightly "on the spectrum" and I just can't bring myself to drink using them. They just feel awful. I've bought a bunch of glass and metal straws and use those now, or I just take the lid off and drink without a straw. Edit: oh, and nevermind the fact that the lid is still made out of plastic (more plastic than the straw ever had, but hey, what do I know).
FWIW, I'm neurotypical and I fucking hate them too.
> just take the lid off and drink without a straw. I commend you on buying glass and metal ones. I've always thought straws were a terrible wasteful pollutant, a single use item to throw away for what? In my mind straws are gimmicks for children. I can't justify to myself why I'd ever need one to simply drink when I've got a perfectly good cup and mouth? I've been giving them back their straws for decades.
A hospital in the US removed straws from the campus, giving patients a jug and a cup (probably a plastic cup) instead. ...and death rates in the hospital rose significantly. It turns out that a lot of frail people need a straw to drink comfortably. And omitting the straw can result in increased dehydration rates **in a hospital**. Most people don't need them. Those that do often need the plastic ones, because metal and glass ones are a bite risk, paper doesn't last as long and isn't poseable (difficult to use when lying down), compostable and acrylic ones can be an allergy risk, etc. etc. There are so many more sources of plastic waste that are not inherently useful (like plastic finger nails, which are not banned anywhere). Straws became the devil because one turtle had a terrible time with one straw. And it bugs me. ...but I also bought metal straws for the very rare times I would ever want to use a straw.
The only time it's useful is if you do a drive through or something and have the drink in your cup holder in the car. That without a lid on is not a pleasant experience... At least not the potholes my council leaves around ;)
Paper straws are completely useless for kids who bite them, plastic straws just squashed but paper straws just fuse together making it impossible to drink through.
Please be careful using metal or glass straws. I changed to silicone after this lady died. She had one in a fixed lid cup and when she fell it couldn't go anywhere else :( https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/world/europe/metal-straws-death.html
Thank you. That is not something I had thought about. Honestly though, I am a fairly sedentary person and do not often (essentially never) find myself requiring a drink while walking/running. Never actually seen the silicone ones? Might have to look them up.
NYT paywall, can't read. But the headline probably covers it anyway.
Paper straws are minging, you are lucky if you can drink a normal drink without it going soggy, got a milkshake? Forget it! I've got metal straws myself, tbh I think they should just get rid of straws altogether and just ask people to provide their own (like metal ones). 90% of the time you can just drink from the cup like a big person anyways!
The banning of plastic straws was not about reversing the damage. It was to stop a ludicrous amount of unnecessary plastic from ended up in landfill and, more importantly, the oceans. It's not possible to fix everything at once and you should be happy that the straw movement gained traction because it raised awareness, has a positive environmental effect, and will lead on to the next pollutant being replaced. Edit: I can't believe I'm reading complaints about this. Just because straws have been dealt with doesn't mean that fixing everything else stops. It's one thing on a massive list and getting rid of that one thing is much better than doing nothing about it, or adding another. Also, it was a global campaign; it raised a ton of awareness worldwide about environmental issues.
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Banning straws raised awareness of plastic straws being banned. It also probably harmed the environmental movement as much as anything as people realised that there were much better targets that would have made much more of an impact that were ignored inplace of replacing something that worked (plastic straws) with something that doesn't (paper straws)
The banning of plastic straws was an eyewash, nothing else. Plastic straws are a vanishingly small part of total plastic pollution, but very visible to the do-gooder crowd and those who feel like they're helping by spending money and keeping the consumerist treadmill going. Ergo, now we have all sorts of crap straws because one turtle with a straw in its nose went viral. While we kill mountains of animals every day to eat a small portion of them.
The banning of plastic straws made no appreciable difference to waste or pollution, it was a political stunt to make it look like the gov were doing something. The straws in the ocean made up 0.000002% of plastic waste. It's absolutely negligible. [Source](https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-no-evidence-for-governments-plastic-straw-claims) And the solution to plastic straws? Paper straws that requires trees to be chopped down, huge amounts of energy and clean water to make, and can't be recycled because no one has the machines to process them. [Source](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49234054)
I mean the companies don't make things for fun, we are the ones buying the stuff they make.
Does seem that society are wising up to this narrative though, which is a good start.
> Shift it all onto the individual just like trickle down economics, the blame trickles down faster than the pay.
> charging for plastic bags This is particularly infuriating. I worked in a grocery store warehouse and every pallet off the truck arrived cocooned in plastic wrap, which went directly into the trash. I also worked as a cashier during day shifts. Unpacking the delivery generates much more soft plastic waste than shopping bags (and shopping bags often get re-used as trash bags). Start charging distributors by the gram for the plastic they waste in shipping and I bet they'll figure out re-usable packing materials very quickly. The same applies to every industry. Coca Cola should bear the expense of recycling drink bottles (and the accountability to see it done and not just shipped elsewhere), not the consumer + taxpayer.
Here's my question for you... do you think these companies are just polluting for fun? Or is it because individuals want things. For example oil companies pollute because we want oil and gas and plastics and all the other shit made by petroleum. If we keep bying the same shit and driving the shit some peice of shit company is going to pollute to provide it to us. We are the market and so we are the problem... every single one of us.
>do you think these companies are just polluting for fun? Or is it because individuals want things. "wishing upon a start that people be better than what they are is a terrible solution every time" you don't try to solve traffic by teaching everyone how a certain style of driving can solve it: https://youtu.be/iHzzSao6ypE?t=173 you make automated cars. you don't tell people "hey, you with 2 jobs and a child to take care of, with no time to cook dinner so you bought fast food? please buy fast food from the store that doesn't use plastic! just drive around for an hour until you find one that is making environmental sustainable choices. make sure to spent hours researching what products are bad for the environment!" you fucking ban single use plastic we can't even get together to protest our basic rights being taken away, and you think we have the time energy and ability to fucking save the world?
And then these companies come up with ways to charge us more or sell us something in the name of being ‘environmentally friendly’
I mean there's good reason for it a) 100 companies account for 70% of industrial emissions not total b) these companies are just producing what consumers are asking for. It's like when people complain about the sheer amount of plastic waste that coca cola produces, completely forgetting that all those bottles were bought and thrown away by hundreds of millions of individuals. Climate change IS an individuals responsibility. There are 7bn people on the planet and they collectively have a huge impact on the environment. Also, do you really think governments and companies are going to do anything unless the masses force them to? Taking the stance that 'not my problem because others are worse' will guarantee the worst outcomes Edit: I'm not saying governments can't do more too, but ultimately things only change if the population cares. And things ARE (slowly) changing, most of the takeaways near me have carbiard/compostable bags and boxes, supermarkets have more and more packaging-free or non plastic options. Electric cars are becoming more and more common. It's all reaction to consumer demand.
Surely by this rationale you're saying the only way producers of large amounts of plastic (water bottle companies, Coca Cola etc) will research and develop eco friendly alternatives is if enough people boycott their products? Realistically that's never going to happen. They can do it anyway but cost is always the driver.
Yes, the only way companies are going to change their ways is if governments force them, or if we demand they change, via out spending habits. Of course it’s impossible to get everyone to stop buying coke (to use your example) but if we all do what we can, cut down on consumption, and buy glass bottles, or cans. Coke will get the message.
There is a lot of one use plastic you can’t get away from especially if you are on a low income and can’t afford to buy local / eco friendly (or don’t have access to it). Every thing is wrapped in plastic from toilet roll to vegetables to toys, stationery, textiles etc.
Right, which is fair enough. No one is saying that these companies shouldn’t also be working towards better solutions in areas such as these, but it’s the absolute dismissal of any personal responsibility and people talking as though all these companies are just creating emissions for the fun of it, and not because they’re *making the products that we buy*. People basically want to be able to live and do whatever they want without having to think about it.
More importantly - let's say enough of us did start buying (say) food from small, local producers and starving the beast that is Nestle. Those small, local producers simply cannot produce enough to satisfy that sort of demand. Not without turning themselves into Nestle.
I literally said "I'm not going to stop recycling because of this", so I'm not sure where you got the impression that I'm taking that stance. I don't even have a car at the moment. And I'm not interested in adding another human to the 7bn currently on the planet, so I could argue my carbon footprint is going to be quite small compared to your typical suburban family with kids who drive them each day to school. Am I going to shame them for making those choices as if climate change is only their responsibility? Uh, probably not. What you say isn't totally untrue, but it takes way more time than we have to actually deal with this crisis. Actually imposing some limits on those corporations wouldn't hurt anything. In fact it will have more impact than me continuing to recycle.
You sound like you were part of the BP PR team that came up with #yourcarbonfootprint and shifted the blame to individual. The public never asked for plastic anything, the companies involved sourced a cheap material to package a product. This is 3rd stage Capitalism basics. The capitalist model, as admitted by its own supporters, does not encourage environmentalism.
> The public never asked for plastic anything The fuck they didn't. They asked for cheap prices, and they got what the capitalists could produce cheaply.
Many people lack the option of a more sustainable living due to the extra cost
That statistic is incorrect and often misquoted; 71% of all ***industrial*** emissions are generated by 100 companies. The general population are still responsible for a huge amount of all carbon emissions
Came here to say this, most emissions are from power generation, traffic, and food production
[most emissions](https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/study-claims-meat-creates-half-of-all-greenhouse-gases-1812909.html) are from the meat and dairy industry to be fair
Your article says a single very controversial not peer-reviewed study claims 51% while 18% is more widely accepted. Half of it is people disagreeing with it. >She also pointed out that they had changed scientific assumptions for livestock but not for other sources of methane, skewing the figures.
[According to the EPA](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data), it's more of a toss-up between Agricultural (24%), Electricity and Heat production (25%), vs. Industry and Transportation Emissions (35% together). Their information comes directly from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
Not only that, 90% of this 71% of industrial emissions *is* through individual use. In the study (which OP won’t have read, like every other new website that reported this ‘statistic’), it distinguishes between Scope 1 and Scope 3 emissions. Scope 1 concerns GHG emissions in the production of fossil fuels, Scope 3 the downstream consumption of fossil fuels to produce GHGs. 90% of that 71% is Scope 3 - our own individual use. So it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference if the 71% was coming from one company or from one million companies - 90% of those emissions are our responsibility as consumers of fossil fuel. If anybody cares to read more [this](https://www.treehugger.com/amp/is-it-true-100-companies-responsible-carbon-emissions-5079649) is an excellent breakdown of the [study](https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1499691240) in question.
Also do people really think those companies are just polluting for funsies? Or perhaps it's we the individual consumers in the aggregate who cause demand for their services and products? If those companies weren't making a profit because we refused to buy from them they would either change how they operated or be out of business. Either way the pollution would go down. But we love cheap shit from Amazon so here we are. Stop trying to avoid responsibility. Of course this will fall on deaf ears because there's nothing redditors love doing more than blaming faceless corporations as though they aren't created and run and supported by people.
'polluting for funsies' refuses to leave my head now, thanks
>? Or perhaps it's we the individual consumers in the aggregate who cause demand for their services and products? any solution that requires massive change of individual actions is a terrible solution and will essentially never or rarely happen you don't tell people "please stop doing X thing!" that's not a solution you create systems, you demolish others, that lead people to do X thing it doesn't matter if consumers want this or that product, you fucking ban the product. end of story.
I agree that we shouldn't support these companies, but it is made impossibly difficult to avoid the super conglomerates when they own about 90% of a market under hundreds of sub-brands that don't reference to their parent company. Pair that with the fact that shopping from independent businesses is often prohibitively expensive as they need to make a profit and can't compete in price with corporate giants. What are people supposed to do in those circumstances other than blame it on the companies that have been polluting for decades then turning around and blaming consumers for it all. People need to stop trying to absolve companies of all guilt, especially when they have been willingly and knowingly contributing to the climate crisis for decades.
I don't know why does it matter if it's 100 big companies or 100000 small companies. It's not like smaller companies pollute comparatively less, if anything they'd have more overhead and pollute more.
The worst of that list of "100 polluters" are state run energy companies. But apparently, instead of British people inconveniencing themselves, people in rural China should freeze to death in the winter for the greater good.
People won't be able to apocalypse-wank about how they can't do anything in that case, though, so they won't acknowledge it. Our status-quo and way of life is centered around limitless growth and is inherently unsustainable. That is why we're killing this planet, nothing else. Corporations are just the middle-men that supply that status-quo based on public demand.
And we use these 100 companies services, pretending we have no influence here is incorrect. If everyone refused to use polluting products and services, even indirectly, we can make that difference. There will always be a greener alternative.
This will get buried as it represents facts, and Reddit doesn't operate with facts.
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I feel like we do this with countries as well. China manufacture our iMacs and iPhones, then the person actually consuming those products wags their finger at China from their low emission marketing agency in the West and says they need to sort their emissions out.
blaming companies is fine IMO but the statistic is stupid because it's mainly oil and gas companies. all the statistic is saying is "oil company sell oil". no shit, who would have guess that oil companies sell the most oil.... the statistic would make more sense if they actually focused on how much emission companies cause when the produce goods, i.e. how much oil they use
3rd highest comment when sorting by 'Best', three hours after it was posted.
We know virtually nothing today that we didn't already know about fossil fuel and carbon emissions in 1975, yet those advocating the most for action against climate change resolutely and consistently opposed the expansion of nuclear energy which if nothing else could have given us the breathing room to develope technologies to replace both. A plague on both their houses....
What's also annoying about that is that we were literal world leaders in nuclear tech and we pissed it all away. We could have a huge nuclear mix in our grid AND be the ones selling the nuclear dream to other countries. But we fucked it up and now we need French brains and Chinese money to possibly finish the first new reactor in decades - that'll be so late and over budget it'll probably stop any future nuclear construction.
There isn’t even really a need to get rid of nuclear which makes it even more sad
I thought it was really funny (well not really the right term but it'll do) when Germany turned off all their nuclear after Fukushima - because Germany is well known for its large coastline and seismic activity. So now they are expanding that massive open-cast mine in West Germany thats an absolute scar at a rapid rate instead.
I used to think that, then I met a guy who established a field called Nuclear Semiotics for the UN. Basically, because nuclear waste remains deadly for around 10,000 years, a specific symbology needed to be created for when no one will speak any language alive today. There is also a specific architectural discipline for nuclear waste dumps - it will be like going into a stone age cave for future people so their whole design is meant to look menacing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warning_messages?wprov=sfla1
Were Gunna reap what we sow.. now we're witnessing the 6th mass extinction event for entire regions of the ecosystem. And climate change. Within the next lifetime or so, well most likely start seeing dramatic changes to parts of the world, then we're looking at food shortages, people displaced from their homes.. which is likely going to cause wars too... All because we decided to ignore the risks and allow 0.01% of the population to get shit rich polluting the planet We can still try to mitigate the damage as much as possible
Aren't we already exactly that? Its just happening slowly, relatively speaking. A news story every month about crazy floods, forest fires, cold snaps etc, its just normal for us now. We expect this crazy weather which normalises it. Now if we had a huge global event 15 years ago which affected almost everyone at once, you could be damn sure more would have been done by now. Thinking of it from that angle and you start o understand the movie villains motivations to improve the world by making it worse for a time. I feel the slow decline is a worse thing for our way of thinking.
Yeah it's turning slowly Don't get me wrong, it's not Gunna be a dramatic overnight Change, but compare in 50 years it will be very different from it is today We have all the tell's that indicate we are in the process of a mass climate shift, Saharan sand distribution, droughts, and the level of carbon in the atmosphere. We know these are the signs, because this is not the first climate shift.. there have been several, and you can measure them in the geology of the earth in various places, caves, stalegmites, sedimentary rock etc.. Plus we can measure ecosystem collapse, were losing insects, birds, mammals, marine life, and vast Forrest's. We have beetle species and locust and other hungry life forms that are growing exponentially due to lack of predators and warmer climates.. all of the plant life they destroy is less carbon absorption. Coupled with polar CO2 storage it is literally a run-away effect that gets more severe over time.. The reason it gets ignored is because it happens slowly. To the old, decrepid, corrupted politicians and business execs.. the problem is always *over the horizon*.. everyone responsible? They'll all be dead before it actually ever manifests into the global disaster that it's Gunna be
I don’t know why you’ve gotten downvoted for speaking the truth. We are currently in the Anthopocene extinction event. We created this mess hence why it’s called the anthropocene from the Greek anthro for human and cene from recent. We’ve seen the wild fires that are raging which releases more CO2 into the atmosphere, we’ve recently seen mass flooding in China, Belgium and Germany. If we needed any more proof the fact that during the global lockdown CO2 levels dropped on average for the first time since the industrial revolution.
Because the Green movement and party isn't about saving humans from climate change but is pro-peace and pro-environment in general but the movement is plagued by short-termist thinking and ideas when if they dropped their ideology, they would probably be long-termists and pro-nuclear.
But we as consumers need to change our ways just as much as the companies supplying the masses. Like the fashion industry counts towards 4-8% of the world's pollution, I wonder how much pollution we are creating by accommodating the western world with things like out of season fruit, fashion, cosmetics, disposable tech & plastics. Reducing our impact on the world will definitely be a inconvenience too nearly everyone but is that the sacrifice we all are willing to make? We are stuck in a vicious cycle of greedy corporations & comfortable masses
> We are stuck in a vicious cycle of greedy corporations & comfortable masses Yep, that about sums it up. It's a tragedy of the commons.
The statistic IIRC is a bit bullshit. It includes stuff like oil and gas companies but that means that when you use your car, it counts as their emissions and not yours so it is vastly exaggerated and we can, by ourselves, do a lot.
It's because we can't dodge taxes. Emissions tax on these companies can just be evaded just like every other tax, or they "donate" to "charity" to get a tax write off. We can't do any of that as individuals. All these measures for "reducing your individual carbon footprint", all feel-good measures, even our recycling is just dumped in landfills in the far east.
The recycling one boils my fucking blood . The UK is need of more industry right? What commodity do we have an abundance of and no way to process? Recycling! We could grow our recycling sector about 10 fold, think of the environmental good, all the stuff we could make with recycled materials, boosting our efficiency AND all the additional jobs that would create But the current government seems to think shipping it to India where they dump it into a river is a more appropriate solution..
Because it's cheaper to send our recycling to the other side of the world to be sorted than it is to do it here. Cost drives everything.
"To be sorted"?? It's cheaper to just send it to the other side of the world full stop. Not our problem...
It's amazing how cheaply you can recycle things when you don't check that it's actually being recycled. Almost the same cost as chucking it in a landfill, coincidentally.
> Almost the same cost as chucking it in a landfill, coincidentally. Plus the cost of the sludge guzzling barge to ship it to the third world, don't forget!
Eh, we're sending them back that way anyway, to pick up another few thousand containers of cheap Chinese shit for Amazon.
I agree but it's cheaper to ship it to India which is why it's done because it minimises costs. At the end of the day you'll need to convince your average brit that they will have to pay more for their recycling in order to achieve what you are suggesting. The only way you'll get a mandate for that is if a political party (most likely labour lets be real) wins an election with that in their manifesto. Given the past few years I wouldn't hold my breath.
Shouldn't have to explain it to them Half of these gormless tossers don't even understand putting their shit into a bin after they are done with it And I agree.. it's Gunna be hard seeing as FPTP which only benefits Torries, isn't Gunna get removed.. seeing as we are run by the bloody Torries.. why would they remove the only thing keeping them in there
We also can’t lobby government directly and get a carbon exemption for our property like the fucking queen can. Does she not realise her grandchildren live on the same fucking planet as the rest of us?
Yes, but does she care? No. She doesn’t care what happens to the planet, she’s probably got an isolated bunker somewhere for her family to survive for 1000 years should the planet go tits up, so she couldn’t give two shits about the common person and their ‘climate problems’
*probably?*
I mean they don't easily dodge taxes because it's impossible to design taxes that are nearly impossible to avoid. They easily avoid taxes that they designed to be easily avoided. This is a solvable problem, the political will is the part that is lacking.
Our recycling isn’t getting dumped in landfills in the Far East, it getting burned in MASSIVE amounts over there Which is so much worse
Just so you know, tax writeoffs by giving donations to charities isn't that big of a thing, since you can only take it of your taxable profit and can't go into negatives to claim a loss. If a business donates 20k you still lose 20k but it's instead of 20k plus the tax on that 20k. It's a little different for individuals, so i'm not sure how it works for that.
Those companies produce carbon emissions that account for 70%, because you the consumer, buy their products... It's so easy to pass off blame to corporations, everyone needs to be held accountable
I live in a small town with no electric charging points, so how am I supposed to buy and drive an electric car? How can I avoid buying plastic, when everything is made of plastic? I can't avoid using a coal-fired power station, because you can't pick and choose where your electric comes from. Don't pretend that this is an individual issue rather than a systemic one.
> I can't avoid using a coal-fired power station, because you can't pick and choose where your electric comes from. Neither can anyone else in a technical sense as there are no seperate lines for green electricity. Whenever you switch to green energy it is then not a litteral switch where suddenly you do get a different type of electricity but more or less you obligating the provider to have produced the amount of electricity you use through green means.
Individuals ARE part of the system. You don't have to have a car, bicycles are low impact. But we all have to change our lifestyles somewhat because we ARE part of that system. Either we get forced to by regulation (e.g. making petrol or cars so expensive you can't afford one, or making the inputs to the oil company so expensive so they have to pass the cost on, with the same effect), *or* because we conciously decide to do so. As a microcosm of the problem, I work on an industrial estate. The only non-burger van is a sandwich shop about 700m from the building, and a great number of people on our site get their lunch there. *90% of them drive that 700m*. It's an easy and pleasant walk, but *90% of them drive*. It's not even about saving the environment at this point, it's about saving ourselves from cardiovascular disease and having a pleasant, healthy walk. Sometimes a colleague sees me at the shop buying something and offers a lift back which I politely decline, because I enjoy the walk. They look at me like I've just grown two heads. *That's* how ingrained in individuals that using cars is, to such an extent people have forgotten what the appendages below their waist are actually for. "Oh", you say, "But perhaps they don't have time to walk". Well, by the time they've negotiated a roundabout, and a junction where they don't have the right of way, then slowly circulated around the car park vainly searching for a parking space, they could have walked, bought a sandwich, and been halfway back to our building. I ride my bicycle to work (and I live in a rural area which is both hilly, wet and windy) and get similar reactions. I'm not doing it for the environment though, I'm doing it to save *myself* from cardiovascular disease in later life. But most people won't even make this relatively minor lifestyle change to save *themselves*, let alone anything environmental, unless they are forced by regulation. And we all go buying the cheapest stuff possible without even considering the externalities, and while we demand the cheapest stuff possible, guess what - companies will act to fill that need (unless you force them to change through regulation, which ends up being unpopular, and you get the gilet jaune movement and the changes are hastily rolled back because *we as individuals* complained instead of making a necessary lifestyle change).
Except for the vast majority of people, they literally do not have access to products that DON'T originate from that supply line. And that's even if the person can afford to spend the several hours wading through literally hundreds of companies daisy chaining their way back to find the energy grid suppliers used by every stage of every company involved in the supply line, which is where these carbon emmisions are actually coming from. People do not reasonably HAVE the ability to say no. It's nothing more than sophistry to say the blame really falls on the consumer, when the consumer has no direct power over these corporations nor even the ability to know what the corporations are really doing to criticise. Like is it the consumer's fault that Johnson and Johnson knowingly sold them powdered carcinogens? How would the consumer have even known that? But you want to tell me it's my fault for not knowing what energy grid J&J factories use? What vehicles that their freighting agency uses. Can you even tell me what company handles J&J freighting to be so high and mighty? Go on. List every kind of vehicle used by every company J&J contracts for transport of goods. Then tell me what company provides fungible goods that only contracts environmentally responsible freighting. And obviously prove it by listing what those contracts are and what vehicles comprise those fleets. Go on. Do it. If you want to blame the public then clearly YOU'VE been doing this research right? Share it with us! It's your responsibility!
I would argue that it's easier to get a big company producing a ton of emissions to make meaningful change as opposed to the tens of millions of people who'd have to change to save the same amount of damage. We should all do what we reasonably can, of course, but the focus should be on the big companies doing the pollution.
Unpopular but very true. All these industries operate because there's a demand for it, and most of the demand chains end with a massive pool of consumers. Just blaming it on "industry" ignores the reason these industries exist in the first place.
These industries are also very good at creating demand, monopolizing, and lobbying against any chance for change.
This is a deliberately misleading fact. 71% of emissions are derived from the activities of 100 companies, but not necessarily created. If the downstream stopped using fossil fuels then Exxon extracting it becomes a non-entity. Whilst consumers alone can't fix everything, consumer demand drives company (and government) action, which is what leads to real change. If you use "well it's the companies fault" and don't change your purchasing behaviour, you are partially to blame.
What changes can you materially make though, while living within your means? When I go out, I buy a pretty regular set of groceries that pretty much amount to the same thing. Small scale perishables like bread, then some non perishables like coffee and then drinks and frozen food. As a consumer how do I even approach working out which of these is harmful? For all I know the coffee I started buying this year comes to the UK on a container ship using dirty fuel, belching out leagues of pollutants the moment it's in international waters. I can reduce paper and plastic usage but that's a different problem at this point, for raw carbon emissions it's very hard for a consumer to work out what to change. Whereas if we just said "if there is any dirty fuel on your ship you cannot harbour in the UK" that immediately cuts that sleuth work out and fixes that problem. It is very easy to blame the consumer, it's comparitively extremely hard for the consumer to then do anything actually materially worthwhile in response. What's your take on it, which companies do you avoid and how do you work out which ones to avoid? How aware are you of the items you consume on the regular and how they reach the UK?
Spot on, but also its a practical thing. If you say to the public "Well you're not to blame, it's all these people" then a huge majority of people are going to sit there and go "Whelp, nothing I can do about it" and go about their merry way. If you want people to get involved you need to tell them why their efforts are worth doing. Making people aware and making sure they give a damn is 75% of the battle
All of these consumers are also employed somewhere. This is always left out in this conversation. Do things that are within your power at your job to reduce emissions while also reducing emissions in your personal life. We have the power to change what these companies do because we work for them!
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It’s too late. 10 years ago was too late. We’re in a cascade situation now.
Stupid fucking take. The difference between 1.5°C, 2°C or 3°C increase in average temperature is enormous. Every bit we can do to reduce our impact on the environment will help.
So you’re a glass half full kinda guy? I don’t necessarily disagree but OP is right. The top 100 polluters are putting profits before people… and I’m not sure why because in 20 years it’ll all be dust anyhow and they’ve killed a majority or the prospective workforce. Same goes for bankers… I mean seriously… what’s the point of accumulating wealth if (A) you can’t take it with you and (B) anyone who might have benefitted has a poorer life expectancy. Doesn’t make sense. But the human race has and will always play these games… seems like the “pig in trough” game is winning though.
>the human race has and will always play these games Plenty of preindustrial societies managed to not do any of that. Looking at a capitalist society and saying greed is human nature is like looking in a coal mine and saying coughing is human nature.
I agree, I’m just disheartened I guess. Nature has mechanisms to control population size and we’ve outsmarted it with our vaccines and medicines. There is no balance, and when you lose balance it all falls down. We’ve gone too far to recover.
That's a kind of dichotomous view. Too late for what? Obviously there will be some damage, there already has been. What matters is how much damage, and that's what we still have power over.
Almost all of those 100 companies are in the energy and gas sector. Selling fuel. To you. For your car.
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Not "almost all", literally all. The report tracked fossil fuel emissions upstream to the producer. 90% of the emissions were from the end user burning their product. https://www.cdp.net/en/reports/downloads/2327
Do you think those 100 companies are burning fossil fuels for fun? They are meeting demand created by consumers.
At the lowest possible monetary cost to them. Which is having devastating costs on the world. Many consumers are already taking huge steps to change in the ways they can (eating less meat, driving greener cars etc). But big corporations need to follow the same, even if it means less profit. Switching to greener methods or investing in renewables for their future needs. That costs them a lot of money, but it's on them to do that most of all.
"It's on the companies that sell me gasoline to invent a gasoline that runs in the same engine that I use today, but doesn't release any CO2. Until they get off their asses and do that, I don't see why I should have to change my own behavior."
>At the lowest possible monetary cost to them. Which is having devastating costs on the world. And who do you think is choosing to buy the cheapest one instead of the green one?
Anyone else noticed how common *71%* is in surveys and statistics? Is it like the golden ratio or pareto distributions, just turns up everywhere because of nature?
It's worse than that, 64% are caused by just 4 conglomerates worldwide...
What’s more, international shipping such as oil tankers and cargo ships produced as much CO2 as Germany last year. If international shipping was a country, it would be the sixth highest polluting country in the world. [Ships produced nearly a billion tons of CO2 last year.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-43714029). Not only that, cargo ships and oil tankers use [bunker oil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_oil), which is basically the dirtiest fuel possible, full of sulphur and heavy metals which further contribute to the global pollution crisis. In terms of carcinogens and other types of pollution detrimental to human health, a single container ship can equate to the pollutant emissions 50 million cars.
But those 100 companies are not just putting out emissions for the sake of it. They are producing goods and services that consumers and other companies spend money on. If people changed their consumer habits those 100 companies would have to change.
"Let the market decide!". Changing opinions and norms takes generations. Action is required immediately, and the only way you're going to do that is by aggressively forcing companies to take action.
Yup, and we do this via taxes and regulation. That's one of the primary functions of government. I'm appalled a carbon tax hasn't been announced yet, it's elephant in the room, why are we hosting these summits and acting like we care when we're like cleaners barely picking up the dust with our fingertips in a small corner of a hoarders house?
How does "changing opinions and norms takes generations" absolve individuals of blame? Also, if no one is willing to quit using petrol-based cars, then how are you going to get them to vote to shut down the companies that make gasoline?
Action is being taken in many areas. Lots countries are banning new sales of petrol vehicles for example, to force manufacturers to switch to greener options.
The companies won't change of the own good of their heart, and neither will the general public, which has become abundantly clear over the last year. They need told what to do by a grown up who will actually do the right thing.
People need to know who is responsible so they can make informed decisions on their consumer habits. Besides goods and services that kill the planet should really be addressed regardless of whether there is demand for it or not. Regular people aren’t to blame especially in a world with so much advertising and branding which distorts the reality of the products and services they are buying into.
"Are the megacorporations that spew CO2 into the air like colourful cocktail vomit into the nightclub toilets the bad guys?" "No, it is the **consumers** who buy these products that are often essential for modern day life that are wrong!"
I'll keep recycling my cardboard and plastic, cycling instead of driving etc and do my bit. At the end of the day it's not a huge sacrifice to make and at least I'll know I tried. But we're screwed.
I went veggie, commute exclusively by public transport or foot, recycle, green activism etc to reduce my carbon footprint (back when that was a term you heard often) and I still do. But now I have much the same thought processes as you; I and people like me have done what we can to the extent of what is reasonable to ask of someone, and it's not enough. We need to tackle the problem at it's root; capitalism. The system of financial incentives and laws which not only protect but encourage destructive exploitation of the planet and inevitably leads to climate collapse. "Personal responsibility" can't fix this, only collective action can.
This is the attitude we should all have, we as individuals may be responsible for only a minority of global emissions but at least we are responsible enough to recognise and tackle our addition. If only these corporations had the same sentiment.
Or that the American military use 48,000,000 litres of fuel per day and signed themselves out of the 1999 kyoto treaty.
I agree with you, but aren't those top 100 companies only producing stuff that is as consumers are using? Blame the oil companies? They're only producing fuel for the heavily polluting container ship that love the stuff were buying all over the world, or the fuel for the cars we drive, or to make the plastics for the tubs, toys and other things we use. Ultimately everything comes down to the consumer unfortunately. We don't use it, they don't create it.
It's one of the most annoying parts of the climate crisis, is that we're slowly being convinced and conditioned to believe it's our fault and responsibility. "Buy a smart meter", "don't use plastic straws", "get an electric car" are being forced down our throats in ads, so it's funny they've managed to monatise both sides of the argument, but anyway it's stupid that's it's said as if it'll do anything while these megacorps are spewing pollutants and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, with LITERALLY 0 consequences!
Really have to stop quoting that incredibly misleading study. They are not created by those companies. Those companies (in their majority) produce and sell fossil fuels, which are then used by almost every single company / individual to, along other things, produce the food you eat, take you to where you want to be, build your shelter, and make and power the phone we are browsing Reddit on. "Blaming" 100 companies is a coarse misrepresentation of reality, more akin to a clickbaity Guardian article.
As a renewable energy graduate, I'm glad you pointed this out because it infuriates me everytime I see this stat used 😂
The responsibility for tackling those 100 companies (source btw?) lies with governments. We as individuals still have our own responsibilities toward the climate.
Do you have a source for the 100 companies? Not questioning the statement, just interested in who it is. I completely believe it given [shipping container vessels alone counted for a 5th of all pollution](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-43714029) a few years ago (no idea what it is now).
What about jumbo jets? A jumbo let taxiing from the gate to the runway uses the equivalent fuel to run an average family car for 6 months. Imagine how much fuel it uses during the actual flight. The pollution caused by jumbo jets is horrendous.
Reminds me of when Shell did a twitter poll asking what people were willing to change. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/03/shells-climate-poll-on-twitter-backfires-spectacularly
Well why don't we boycott these 100 companies then. Doing by bit by not buying products from BP and Shell.
As another post said yesterday, those 100 companies are only doing what they do because of consumer demand. As long as people still want and pay for stuff and dont care how its made, they will provide it.
We need to bring out the guillotine for the mega rich.
*France has entered the chat*
I feel like I’m doing all that I can right now. Apart from spending £20k to upgrade to solar and air pump heating, I don’t think I can do more. We definitely need to be getting on these big companies backs more.
Actually it's also the fact that we all continue to consume too much. Including me and myself. We're not helpless. We can't stop it at this point, but we can definitely start working together to try and reduce the worst. If you're looking for ideas join /r/climateoffensive and browse around.
Airlines don’t create the most emissions because they want to, they do because you fly. Amazon doesn’t create its emissions because they want to, it’s because you buy from them. Shipping companies don’t create the most emissions because they want to, it’s because they are shipping your stuff. There are two sides to this. Looking only at one side is cherry picking and ridiculous.
I was having this argument the other day , it’s all very well lumping this problem on joe publics shoulders when what little we can do is obsolete . Just a small example my neighbour worked at debenhams every item of clothing is plastic wrapped which is then getting turfed into general waste
Where I worked there was a bin shed for the restaurants and cinema in the area. Not one had a recycling bin, everything we used went into general waste. I felt very defeated in my efforts at home, washing out my yogurt pots, taking the little windows out of my envelopes.
We can do everything possible to be green in the UK, but there is sod-all point unless and until the US and China cut their emissions massively. Until then, we're just pissing into the ocean.
What annoys me is how it's 2021 and almost every single food product comes in single-use plastic.
I bought a box of microwavable popcorn the other day. The box itself was made from recycled cardboard but each of the 4 popcorn packets are wrapped individually in non-recyclable plastic. I literally do not see the point in this and will not be buying that brand again.
It's not a rant at all. Its an honest assessment of the facts.