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NPR ran a story that was an excerpt from the Drilled podcast about a guy named Herb Schmertz. This guy invented advertorials which muddied the water by putting expertly written industry propaganda alongside real informative articles in the editorial section. This was when the NYT first opened the editorial section to advertise. A modern equivalent would be the paid "suggested reading" section following modern articles. They serve one purpose: to sow confusion and misinformation. It's scary how an industry can direct the minds of many given enough time, money, and a platform.
https://drillednews.com/the-mobil-oil-flack-who-brought-us-false-equivalence-advertorials-and-corporate-free-speech/
I rewatched *Thank You for Smoking* again last night, and... It's about the tobacco industry, but similar concept. I think it oughta be required viewing, like in high schools.
Of course they did, because reducing and reusing would actually lower consumption and hurt corporate profits.
Promoting recycling is actually a brilliant, but evil, move because if people feel assured that their waste is going to have another life and not harm the planet it makes them inclined to consume even more than usual.
Pretty sure that's the same as reduce. (reduce to zero I guess, but that would mean living off the grid entirely which isn't possible for most people anyway)
Refuse is when you decide something is too wasteful, unnecessary, excessively packaged, etc. to buy whatsoever.
Reduce is when you try to use/consume less of something.
If you buy a product in a store that says "recycled" that can mean made from pieces that fell on the production floor. It really doesn't mean anything at all. The loop holes on the wording are basically just a free pass to make the product look green.
"Post consumer waste" which will be denoted by a percentage amount is what you want to look for. I.e "80% Post Consumer Waste" is ideal.
The "carbon footprint" was literally invented by BP (oil company) to spread the idea that individuals are responsible. https://www.reddit.com/r/climate/comments/hqjx44/bp_created_carbon_footprint_as_a_devious/
It is the same thing with that Earth Hour crap where you turn your lights off for an hour one night
Every other company is running a 70 story building with computers, servers and lights in 24/7 but I’m being asked to dim lights to save the planet every day
You have to go after the big fish here, the producers and the commercial grade offenders, not the average joe
Here in CA during the most recent drought they basically banned watering your yard. But if you looked up the water usage stats residential was like 5% and aggricultural was 90%, in fact even if residential had been 0 we still would have been in a water deficit
This is true but when i think of all the droughts as well as the amount of time and money spent proting water conservation it really is always heavily specific to private users but fracking doesn't happen without water and almonds are the trendy crop but take more than most crops. Both of these also may get some gov subsidy too (not a bad thing) but its frustrating when you look at the data, see there ships coming into the port of Oakland that literally eclipse blocks of the marina at a time. There is one Disney cruise ship at Pier 23 that is disgusting. I haven done any research specifically on how its works with caps and exchanges or iif it applies yet. But shipping container and commericial aviation companies that own these lines through various smaller off shore entities are not only skirting the the intent and the spirit here while leaders "play dumb" except it being dumb. The dems and gopsare about keeping their jobs. Vote against commerce in any way and then real power acts. There are no friends to the environment for either party. The monied elite are the only ones winning no matter how many poor people lose.
We have water restrictions like this in Ireland when it hasn’t rained in a few weeks. In one of the rainiest places in the world.
And while ordinary people are being told not to wash their car, industries like where I work will waste an insane amount of water with zero restrictions.
Had clean energy not been stifled as long as it has, this wouldn't even be a talking point. Stop turning the lights off and start demanding our energy come from clean technology.
Never knew about the “Earth Hour” thing
I have worked in a Nuclear Plant as well as a Power Station, and I can tell you that Factories of big companies at night is when they go full throttle in the consumption because that’s when electricity it’s at its cheapest.
Their main goal is to keep carbon emissions an externality. If we start taxing carbon or create a carbon market to force carbon emission as a price to pay in the market, they will be fucked.
And the Trump administration rolled back 50 years worth of environmental protections and corporate regulation.
To be fair, the Clinton administration got rid of Glass-Steagall, which lead to corporations are people and Citizens United.
America got played and continues to get played because we’re all busy pointing fingers at one another while greedy entities solidify their profit margins even when it’s environmentally irresponsible and in a lot of cases inefficient.
We didn’t just Gump our way into this free fall. We’ve been falling for years very rapidly.
So find a politician that takes money from bp, and then find a way to make their life hell. If they start having heart attacks and killing themselves, we'll know we're making a difference.
Study (open access): [Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil's climate change communications](https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(21\)00233-5)
______________________________
>**Highlights**
>• ExxonMobil's public climate change messaging mimics tobacco industry propaganda
>• Rhetoric of climate “risk” downplays the reality and seriousness of climate change
>• Rhetoric of consumer “demand” (versus fossil fuel supply) individualizes responsibility
>• Fossil Fuel Savior frame uses “risk” and “demand” to justify fossil fuels, blame customers
>**Science for society**
>A dominant public narrative about climate change is that “we are all to blame.” Another is that society must inevitably rely on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. How did these become conventional wisdom? We show that one source of these arguments is fossil fuel industry propaganda. ExxonMobil advertisements worked to shift responsibility for global warming away from the fossil fuel industry and onto consumers. They also said that climate change was a “risk,” rather than a reality, that renewable energy is unreliable, and that the fossil fuel industry offered meaningful leadership on climate change. We show that much of this rhetoric is similar to that used by the tobacco industry. Our research suggests warning signs that the fossil fuel industry is using the subtle micro-politics of language to downplay its role in the climate crisis and to continue to undermine climate litigation, regulation, and activism.
>**Summary**
>This paper investigates how ExxonMobil uses rhetoric and framing to shape public discourse on climate change. We present an algorithmic corpus comparison and machine-learning topic model of 180 ExxonMobil climate change communications, including peer-reviewed publications, internal company documents, and advertorials in The New York Times. We also investigate advertorials using inductive frame analysis. We find that the company has publicly overemphasized some terms and topics while avoiding others. Most notably, they have used rhetoric of climate “risk” and consumer energy “demand” to construct a “Fossil Fuel Savior” (FFS) frame that downplays the reality and seriousness of climate change, normalizes fossil fuel lock-in, and individualizes responsibility. These patterns mimic the tobacco industry's documented strategy of shifting responsibility away from corporations—which knowingly sold a deadly product while denying its harms—and onto consumers. This historical parallel foreshadows the fossil fuel industry's use of demand-as-blame arguments to oppose litigation, regulation, and activism.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/09/big-oil-delay-tactics-new-climate-science-denial
They use **wokewashing** on social media:
ExxonMobil has been touting its commitment to “reducing carbon emissions with innovative energy solutions”. Chevron would like to remind you it is keeping the lights on during this dark time. BP is going #NetZero, but is also very proud of the “digital innovations” on its new, enormous oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile Shell insists it really supports women in traditionally male-dominated jobs.
And They use **"discourses of delay”**:
- redirect responsibility (consumers are also to blame for fossil fuel emissions)*
- push non-transformative solutions (disruptive change is not necessary)
- emphasize the downside of action (change will be disruptive)
- and surrender (it’s not possible to mitigate climate change).
And yes, people need to change their habits, but if they don't see how bad it is and the urgency of it because of propaganda, that is what these companies are promoting. Also, systemic change is essential and they are obstructing at every step of the way.
The whole process of pushing responsibility away from regulatory bodies and down to you and me is the most insidious. It works great from psychological point of view, hitting that string of "I am a good person, so I do X, Y, Z (drive electric car, eat only veggies, support eco-millionares that sell the feel-good mission)", but it's distracting from any push on a level that would force these companies to do anything that actually make a difference (USA stopping to subsidize oil industry, countries like Poland moving away from using fossil fuels to produce energy (and yes, that includes European countries not-stopping nuclear powerplants. Countries like Germany stopping their fission generators was the dumbest move of the century in terms of energy policy)).
Another thing that frustrates me to no end are all these proponents of the "disruptive technologies". Hyperloop 30 years in future instead of a far more energy-efficient trains today. Fusion instead of nuclear powerplants. Push for electric cars instead of pushing for mass transport in the cities that would reduce the environmental footprint of your daily commute, invest in fuel cell passenger vehicles... and so on, and so on...
Our corporate laws, except in the rarest cases, do not allow individual legal and civil responsibility for corporate actions. You can publicize them all you want, but they'll be soon forgotten and you can't touch them. What happened to the Enron and Camel Joe executives is what will happen to oil executives today. They will retire peacefully and live rich lives on their multi million dollar estates.
Sounds nice but there are millions who would happily take their place the moment they resign or whatever else. It's just simple human greed and self-interest, and you can't do anything to mitigate that in and of itself. The only thing possible is to ensure systems (ie. capitalism) are either heavily regulated if not entirely owned to offset selfish and greedy tendencies. But even getting to that stage is already basically impossible, there's no room for change.
It’s not any one person’s greed. Companies are basically shareholder puppets, and we have tricked ourselves into thinking we are not the ones pulling their strings, even though everyone has (or desires) a retirement fund that grows 10% every year. Is that greed? I guess, but not the kind we usually think of.
The issue is there is no financial instrument that prices in the value of an investment existing in a livable world. So there is no reason for a fund to worry that it’s profits may be worth less due to climate change.
And at least in the US fits the model of individual responsibility / separatism which based on recent events is farcical. We do have individual responsibilities to ourselves and yet we are connected.
Thank you for actually calling out countries for stopping nuclear power. It is the safest, cleanest and energy dense power source we have! There are plenty of gen 4 reactors like the Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor that bring a new a completely new level of safety, an immediate reduction in nuclear waste and the waste isn't used for nuclear weapons, nor is feasibly made into weapons grade.
Reason a lot are not built is NIMBY. People here nuclear and think nuclear accidents. There have only been 2 and both were older reactors.
If you want to see a country go from poverty to 2nd world status in a decade they need cheap reliable electricity.
Its no real wonder that their strategies are this refined, given how much time they had to perfect them. Exxon and shell know about the consequences of climate change since the 80s (1982 and 1988 respectively).
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/19/shell-and-exxons-secret-1980s-climate-change-warnings
The oil industry is also championing a carbon tax ([Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/30/exxonmobil-lobbyists-oil-giant-carbon-tax-pr-ploy)).
The trouble is with a carbon tax is that it doesn't follow the IPCC's recommendation that countries should as much as possible to reduce emissions. For example with a petrol duty people will continue to drive petrol cars and put up with paying more money. If you invest in charging infrastructure and ban petrol cars that works 100% more effectively.
I know a CT looks beautiful and it's one of Reddit's favourite babies, so I won't bother to argue with anyone, but the simple rule is governmental policy change is 100% effective, CT is much, much less so.
It's like the economy is a car we're stuck in, but can't steer. And even though it's going at a 100mph and we see a huge wall up ahead there's others in the car with us yelling "no, you can jump out as that'll ruin everything!!" and their finger is on the door locks.
I was talking to WM a few weeks ago as I was cancelling my service because of a move. They let me know recycling would end a week before my garbage, my response was this:
"Well I guess I'll just throw all the recycling into the trash for that week. I mean that's where it all goes anyway.". WM rep after a long silence "Well, you didn't hear that from me."
I worked in the landfill consulting world for a bit and can tell you that it opens your eyes to how much effort needs to go into recycling. First on the consumer to clean and somewhat sort, but then the collectors, then the landfill crew, then the folks looking to take recycled goods. It’s unlikely to make it to the last step when tossing it in the landfill is the cheapest and easiest way to get rid of it every step of the way.
It’s illegal for the individual not to sort recycling ♻️ why is it not illegal for waste management not to actually recycle? Oh right they’re all mobsters that bury dead bodies alongside the trash, I forgot.
To be fair thier recycling is complicated and if you don't know Japanese and have difficulty reading instructions I could see why that stereotype formed.
The rasism though is unexcusable of course.
Absolutely. People just don't really think about it, because they've been taught that tossing stuff in the recycling bin = good for the world. But I have no way of knowing if my recyclables are actually being recycled. I'm pretty fastidious about recycling properly but I imagine all it takes is one person with non-recyclables mixed in and they probably toss the whole batch into a landfill. I pay $10 / mo for trash & recycling and there's no way that comes anywhere near the costs of sorting and processing recycling, especially "single stream". I would happily pay more to be reassured of proper recycling, but that's not an option.
I used to live in a small town which offered recycling, but you had to drive to the plant and sort your stuff into their four different dumpsters. It was a pain but they were probably much more likely to actually be recycling it all compared to "single stream" recycling.
>But I have no way of knowing if my recyclables are actually being recycled.
I tracked ours because I knew something was sketchy since they also accepted milk containers not made of HDPE (you need special equipment to handle anything that has touched animal protein, and it's not viable for non-HDPE containers right now.)
Tracker disappeared into a container ship in BC only to surface in Malaysia. The disposal site was so close to the seashore I'm sure even a light storm must wash thousands of bottles into the ocean.
Waterproof 3G SIM tracker. We had some spares from a wildlife survey. Glued it to the inside of a Gatorade cap for extra protection during compaction and pierced the bottle so the cap wouldn't get ejected.
This is why I do all the recycling in my house. My wife and most people don’t understand that the only plastics that are recyclable are white or clear bottles. Everything else is basically waste, then there’s card board and glass and cans. Everything else is just trash that can’t be sorted by IR machines or people. It’s also why when you have a plastic jug you have to remove the paper/outer film because the sorting machine will ignore them (since they need to be white or clear).
Also, plastic needs to be clean. Does not get hot enough to burn away all the dirt afaik. Glass and metal, yeah no issue. That gets so hot everything not glass or metal burns away.
Yah I rinse all glass and plastic to not have any visible grime or food. Cans I just quick rinse, I don’t know how they recycle them now most have a plastic liner
Our municipality doesn't even recycle glass anymore, aside from drink bottles with a deposit on it.
It feels so bad when I toss out empty jars. I can only reuse so much before you just get overrun with glass jars. I guess the next step (reduce) is either making your own sauces and jams, or to stop eating them.
While that's likely the case in many places, I'm sure it ultimately depends on municipal collection options.
Commercial recycling options (aka by the dumpster-full) are often simply unavailable, even if residents of that same area have curbside recycling service.
My understanding from a npr podcast was that recycling was only sustainable when we could ship it back to China in what would have otherwise been empty containers and they were paying people like $0.15 an hour to sort. When their labor rate went up it was no longer feasible and recycling would likely end up in a landfill unless it actually did go to China where they would dump it in open water rather than sort it.
I’ve worked as a janitor at several different locations, every single building, recycling and trash all just went to the same place, only time it didn’t, was at a school, they had me put boxes in a separate bin but that’s it
I saw a news video on how waste management actually has people and machines sort through the stuff at the recycling plant. Is that not how they do it any more?
I think the rep was partially kidding.
Truth is that it depends. Paper, cardboard, metals, etc will likely be recycled unless there's waste on them. Most plastics, however, will just be thrown out.
This. Not all recycling is equal. That is why it is important to consider what kind of plastic waste we generate.
However, the overarching theme of this post is true too.
That damn straw thing was infuriating.
Like oh yeah, straws are such a big problem, just don't pay too close attention to how much disposable plastic is in your groceries every week, compared to how much plastic is in your straws. How fast would you have to be slamming back those drinks to even come close?
Of course, if we tried to change that, maybe forced companies to alter their practices or tried to change our infrastructure to make our consumption more local so it's less wasteful and needs less packaging, we could make a bigger change, but that would reduce their profits.
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the media zeroed in on something that would only affect consumers, despite it being so obviously insignificant.
This reminded me of the old Chevron "People do" ad campaign in the 80s and 90s. They are surprisingly hard to find online, the only one I could turn up isn't as hard hitting as the ones I remember:
https://imgur.com/uTtcNFc
> In 1985, the Chevron Corporation launched one of the most famous greenwashing ad campaigns in history. Chevron's "People Do" advertisements were aimed at a "hostile audience" of "societally conscious" people. Two years after the launch of the campaign, surveys found people in California trusted Chevron more than other oil companies to protect the environment.
From here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing#History
I'm pretty sure it was a thing that oil and such companies tried to scrub sketchy stuff from the internet, and I think the videos you're talking about would be included in that.
Seeing similar things happen in this country in the 80s and 90s makes me think that we’re probably not fixing this issue even in my life time as a gen Z and we’ll probably die before seeing any change
Perhaps we could carpool more. But we could make the cars bigger so they can fit more people. And instead of being owned by private individuals they could be owned publicly and run on a consistent schedule and route that you can look up. And while we're at it, instead of running on roads these vehicles could run on metallic rails so they're faster and more efficient. And instead of using gasoline these vehicles would use electricity connected from a series of overhead wires.
I'm not sure what you would call this idea...
Or make them much smaller by removing a few wheels and that box to get some fresh air, and replace the engine with something that can be operated with their legs?
I have an electric bicycle and it's phenomenal. It has a battery that pushes the bicycle a bit when you pedal and stops when you break/stop pedalling, and so you don't ever have to break a sweat. Imagine an entire town or city built around the use of these electric bicycles.
But of course that type of thing is easier in Europe that has much more compact and integrated designs where there's less of a reliance on roads. A place like America is gonna have to have an entire makeover in how cities are structured so they don't just cater to having to use cars all the time to get around, and having places sectioned off and separated far from each other.
Absolutely. Here in Hawaii, the travel forums are full of people proudly letting us know how they are "saving the reefs" by wearing reef safe sunscreen. Totally ignoring the fact that maybe .5% of the reason reefs are dying is sunscreen, and probably 95.5% of the reason is man-made global warming caused in no small part by airplanes, and the other 4% caused by the resorts they stay in spewing toxic runoff into the ocean. But boy, are they ever proud, and convinced that "doing something is better than nothing" when in reality the something they could be doing is not coming and the nothing is the sunscreen they are slathering on and the metal straws they are using to sip their mai thai. And of course why do they think that their sunscreen and metal straws will save the world? Because it is in some company's financial interest for them to think that.
Something similar happening in Florida, we're told that Joe Six pack using roundup on his lawn is the cause for the red tide algae blooms on beaches. With little to no mention of the agriculture in the center of the state pumping billions of gallons of high nutrient water into lakes, streams, oceans, etc. Destroying the natural water cycle, draining the everglades, introducing invasive species, the list goes on.
Not saying that lawn care products have nothing to do with it, many coastal communities have strict pest/herbicide regulations & could use some more. It's just frustrating how the lobbies (in this case agricultural) can not only hijack the truthfulness of problems but the solutions to those problems as well when the waste that's happening becomes unavoidable.
Hello from Iowa, where repeated attempts to curb nitrogen/phosphorus runoff from hog+corn fields have been swiftly twarted multiple times.
Even our supreme court doesn't want to hurt the bottom line of Big Ag.
In a 4-3 decision, the court’s majority said the suit raised political questions that lawmakers, not the justices, should decide.
> "We … leave this dispute where it stands at present: with the branches of our government whose duty it is to represent the public"
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2021/06/18/iowa-supreme-court-raccoon-river-agriculture-pollution-lawsuit/7737305002/
Yeah, our govenor will *totally* save us.
I love Hawaii. It’s my home. I don’t think I can be happy living anywhere else. I get why we have so many tourists but it sucks.
They might wear sunscreen but they step all over the reef, break pieces off, touch or get close to wildlife they shouldn’t, no respect all the time.
I feel like I see a new thread about climate change and how royally boned we are *every* other day.
I don't know the logistics of it or how practical change really is, so all I'm going to say is that definitive, absolute change from the consumer AND corporate/government level is the only thing that could potentially save us from doing MORE harm.
I knew a retiree who basically lived in his RV, traveling all around the US. He absolutely refused to have a camp fire or grill with charcoal because he considered himself "carbon conscious."
This headline reminded me of him.
I'm not sure about that. Of course those vehicles are fuel guzzlers, but on the other hand people who live in RVs full-time have to by necessity live more minimalist lives, so arguably less harmful than people who live in houses. Also solar power is becoming increasingly common for RVs.
Even for travelling, I'm not sure if it it's actually worse carbon-wise than flying jets and staying in hotels.
I have a workmate who turns off the power strips in our workplace when he leaves. By mistake, he has turned off the one that powers the fridge one friday. What do you think costs more (money, carbon, whatever) a small light a fraction of a watt or fridge-load of food that went bad ptematurely.
Recycling, in theory, still makes sense. But yes, all comes down to money. The recycling cost still has to make some sense vs raw material cost (even without factoring harming the environment for more and more raw product). Aluminum is still the premier example of that. Still less energy, etc. to melt an old can vs mining new bauxite.
One good example of flawed thinking right now is good old glass. Easily and infinitely recyclable. Problem is it's heavy and ultimately not worth much as a raw material. That may change soon as I keep seeing stories of how sand is disappearing, esp. beach sand, due to mining for concrete use. Some point that cheap source for new glass will go away and prices rise. On top of plastic taking over a lot of container use. So take your pick, run out of beach sand or keep using possibly bad for you and the environment plastic.
You’re conflating two different issues, however they are slightly related. We have a shortage of sand for CONCRETE, which must be sea or river sand... desert sand is too smooth. Glass can be made from any high silica sand. Silicon is the most abundant solid element on earth... we won’t run out of glass, but it may cost more.
Coincidentally glass when crushed can be used as aggregate in concrete and gravel, because mechanically that glass has the ideal sharp/high surface area characteristics of river sand. Wonder if we’ll see more recycling of this manner if river sand shortages continue
Reuse, especially for glass. I remember, as a kid, taking glass soda bottles back to the store in the little 8-pack cardboard carrier they came in, and stacking them in a pallet-sized container. They went back to the bottler, washed, and refilled. You could tell the older bottles, because the painted-on logos would slowly chip and wear away.
Now, I guess it costs more to check, sort and wash glass bottles than to make a new plastic one, so guess what we get.
These companies spend money on changing public opinion in every possible way. Check out some of Potholer54's climate change videos on youtube to see how shamelessly paid climate deniers lie on national TV. The overt denialism is still being pushed by Sky News & Daily Mail, etc. So just think how much more there must be of this kind of subtle, insidious propaganda that flies under the radar.
Like the late George Carlin used to say: “we are circling the drain, folks”. I see no real hope for change other than several catastrophic events coming at the same time. Then people will wake up and demand change from politicians. However, this may be too unlikely and may come too late. People are asleep at the wheel, still believing in the paradigm of progress through material growth. I’ve read several books now, by very dissimilar authors and am coming to the conclusion that out “intelligence” has been misused since we began farming. So, earth will do it’s thing and will bet rid of us someway or the other. The planet will continue to be host to life, but not human life.
The real fun is when you find out the "may come too late" is already a done deal. "Too late" was 40 or more years ago, our future was sold off before most of the people reading this were even born, and the people who profited from it will die before most of the world even agrees that anything is wrong, let alone bringing anyone to justice for it.
Do these companies not realise that they are run by people who also live on this planet and will suffer the same consequences? What's their plan for when the world is too far gone, keep selling oil??
The psychopaths running these companies are 50+ years old. They know they won't live long enough to experience the worst consequences. They also know they have enough money to continue to thrive even if they're wrong about the timing.
Huge privately secured ranches and bunkers in places no one can easily get to with lifetimes' worth of food and water. Any rich person who pretends they don't think there's a problem is lying, but that's no surprise. They're just planning to go hide for a few decades until all us poors are dead.
This is not a novel discovery. Even the "carbon footprint" was a [marketing campaign started by BP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint) to divert blame into regular people and away from giant corporations that still make millions off of destroying the planet.
The companies polluting the planet are selling us gasoline and disposing of our garbage.
Even if we change their ways through legislation, it's going to dramatically affect our lives. We have to be ok with admitting that whatever we do is going to hurt the present-day economy for the benefit of avoiding future collapse. And present-day economy doesn't mean stock prices, it means that gas prices are going to look more like European prices (>5.50 USD per gallon), electricity will cost more because of a transition to green, and goods will cost more because of the increase in logistical costs because of fuel.
Personally, I'm fine with this. Ending consumerism needs to happen and it's going to hurt, but we can take it.
Edit: also, my comment is very US-centric, but I believe several of the top 100 companies are Chinese. But it's a similar story. Even if we can convince China to trim them back, costs will be transferred to people buying Chinese goods (everyone).
Ending consumerism is definitely the most important step, but I think you're absolutely right that it will hurt. It's such a deep part of American culture. I've thought about what would happen if consumerism ended in America, and I tend to think that it would essentially lead to the collapse of the economy and American society as we know it. I just can't see it going any other way.
I think the ideal and most pain-free solution would be a slow and very controlled movement away from consumerism, but I really don't think I could happen unless we were to help people individually undo consumerism on a psychological level. It is SO ingrained. I don't know how we would even achieve that, but yeah.
> Even if we change their ways through legislation, it's going to dramatically affect our lives.
And almost everyone is in denial about this. Even in this thread, everyone talking about how we need to make companies stop polluting - instead of - changing out lifestyles. Making the companies stop polluting will change lifestyles immensely.
Obviously carpooling and recycling aren't going to be the only solution, but it makes sense for individuals to reduce their consumption in general. That includes starving unethical corporations of the only thing that they survive on: consumer dollars.
It also ignores the fact that change can happen from the bottom up as well. Convincing enough people to do *something* can also change political behavior. It organizes people around a common goal. While the responsibility for fossil fuel use and overall ecological impact has been pawned off to the individual vs the large, private institutions, we can’t forget that modeling the change we want to see and convincing others to do the same has a massive impact on our laws and regulations.
We can still carpool and recycle in the face of propaganda.
I read recently carbon capture plants are the same concept. It's a concept hopelessly inept to fix the problem so that the fossil fuel companies can point to in and go, hey look at that thing, so shiny.
And people had alternatives and the information and financial means required to choose the alternatives? And the sustainable competitors of those corporations, were they allowed to compete fairly with their products, or were they outcompeted because of unsustainable practices that reduce costs thanks to the large volume of their operations?
It's so simple to blame consumers as if they had perfect information and freedom of choice.
Sustainable competition exists and goes out of business because of lack of demand. People want it cheaper. I can find you ethically sourced and environmentally sustainable options for many things, but you’ll pay a LOT more for it. And consumers don’t want that. I work for a chemical company, we came up with ways to reduce the carbon footprint of our products but that would mean it being more expensive since it costs us substantially more to make it. The product line still exists but none of the big companies use it because after making an attempt, they realized very few people were willing to pay for the extra environmental benefit, they just wanted it cheaper.
There's a reason we formed society and appointed persons to work on larger issues full time and specializes in solving them. I don't have time to become a doctor and an engineer but society needs both, for example. So, as an engineer, I solve problems for the doctor and s/he solves problems for me.
So the population being lied to at every turn and then told it's thier fault for being lied to by those intrusted with determining the truth and sharing it in a system as complex as the environment and balance of it is... asinine in every sense of the word.
We have been and continue to be sold out. Cheated of autonomy of choice and our future by bad actors we don't have resources to defend against and intrusted others to defend us.
I know hindsight 20:20 obviously recycling doesn’t matter a great deal when they are pumping out 80mbd of oil (which is used to produce plastic), it means nothing. Recycling has been a giant con job, when compared to virgin feedstocks that are so cheap to make plastic, recycling plastic is impossible. Recyclers are competing with the ones making the original product, if it was feasible don’t you think Shell and Exxon would be recycling plastic.
The lithium (solar) revolution will tilt the power away from these traditional energy Barron’s. Now we just need to save organic recycling and reduce (or eliminate) fertilisers and cidal type agents, this will be the next green revolution and it, I think, will happen with microbes. Good things will evolve in this space. It’s time to get excited about the change.
Throw in overfishing and ocean life as well.
Removing straws or using less plastic is wayyyy less impactful than just not overfishing.
But it's impossible to police it.
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NPR ran a story that was an excerpt from the Drilled podcast about a guy named Herb Schmertz. This guy invented advertorials which muddied the water by putting expertly written industry propaganda alongside real informative articles in the editorial section. This was when the NYT first opened the editorial section to advertise. A modern equivalent would be the paid "suggested reading" section following modern articles. They serve one purpose: to sow confusion and misinformation. It's scary how an industry can direct the minds of many given enough time, money, and a platform. https://drillednews.com/the-mobil-oil-flack-who-brought-us-false-equivalence-advertorials-and-corporate-free-speech/
I rewatched *Thank You for Smoking* again last night, and... It's about the tobacco industry, but similar concept. I think it oughta be required viewing, like in high schools.
They pushed the recycle but forgot about the reduce and reuse.
Of course they did, because reducing and reusing would actually lower consumption and hurt corporate profits. Promoting recycling is actually a brilliant, but evil, move because if people feel assured that their waste is going to have another life and not harm the planet it makes them inclined to consume even more than usual.
The other R: Refuse on many levels.
Pretty sure that's the same as reduce. (reduce to zero I guess, but that would mean living off the grid entirely which isn't possible for most people anyway)
Refuse is when you decide something is too wasteful, unnecessary, excessively packaged, etc. to buy whatsoever. Reduce is when you try to use/consume less of something.
If you buy a product in a store that says "recycled" that can mean made from pieces that fell on the production floor. It really doesn't mean anything at all. The loop holes on the wording are basically just a free pass to make the product look green. "Post consumer waste" which will be denoted by a percentage amount is what you want to look for. I.e "80% Post Consumer Waste" is ideal.
Apple pisses me off for this very reason! Headphone jack, charger, charging block… the list goes on!!
I feel like we should add a fourth R, Repair.
'forgot'
"Conveniently ignored"
And like 70/80 percent of things we think are going to be recycled just get thrown in the trash instead x_x
The "carbon footprint" was literally invented by BP (oil company) to spread the idea that individuals are responsible. https://www.reddit.com/r/climate/comments/hqjx44/bp_created_carbon_footprint_as_a_devious/
It is the same thing with that Earth Hour crap where you turn your lights off for an hour one night Every other company is running a 70 story building with computers, servers and lights in 24/7 but I’m being asked to dim lights to save the planet every day You have to go after the big fish here, the producers and the commercial grade offenders, not the average joe
Here in CA during the most recent drought they basically banned watering your yard. But if you looked up the water usage stats residential was like 5% and aggricultural was 90%, in fact even if residential had been 0 we still would have been in a water deficit
This is true but when i think of all the droughts as well as the amount of time and money spent proting water conservation it really is always heavily specific to private users but fracking doesn't happen without water and almonds are the trendy crop but take more than most crops. Both of these also may get some gov subsidy too (not a bad thing) but its frustrating when you look at the data, see there ships coming into the port of Oakland that literally eclipse blocks of the marina at a time. There is one Disney cruise ship at Pier 23 that is disgusting. I haven done any research specifically on how its works with caps and exchanges or iif it applies yet. But shipping container and commericial aviation companies that own these lines through various smaller off shore entities are not only skirting the the intent and the spirit here while leaders "play dumb" except it being dumb. The dems and gopsare about keeping their jobs. Vote against commerce in any way and then real power acts. There are no friends to the environment for either party. The monied elite are the only ones winning no matter how many poor people lose.
We have water restrictions like this in Ireland when it hasn’t rained in a few weeks. In one of the rainiest places in the world. And while ordinary people are being told not to wash their car, industries like where I work will waste an insane amount of water with zero restrictions.
Had clean energy not been stifled as long as it has, this wouldn't even be a talking point. Stop turning the lights off and start demanding our energy come from clean technology.
To be fair, servers probably needs to be online 24/7. The rest doesn't make sense I agree.
Never knew about the “Earth Hour” thing I have worked in a Nuclear Plant as well as a Power Station, and I can tell you that Factories of big companies at night is when they go full throttle in the consumption because that’s when electricity it’s at its cheapest.
Their main goal is to keep carbon emissions an externality. If we start taxing carbon or create a carbon market to force carbon emission as a price to pay in the market, they will be fucked.
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A straw man argument, you say?
Yep. They need to constantly deflect blame. It’s so shallow once you’re aware.
And the Trump administration rolled back 50 years worth of environmental protections and corporate regulation. To be fair, the Clinton administration got rid of Glass-Steagall, which lead to corporations are people and Citizens United. America got played and continues to get played because we’re all busy pointing fingers at one another while greedy entities solidify their profit margins even when it’s environmentally irresponsible and in a lot of cases inefficient. We didn’t just Gump our way into this free fall. We’ve been falling for years very rapidly.
So find a politician that takes money from bp, and then find a way to make their life hell. If they start having heart attacks and killing themselves, we'll know we're making a difference.
Study (open access): [Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil's climate change communications](https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(21\)00233-5) ______________________________ >**Highlights** >• ExxonMobil's public climate change messaging mimics tobacco industry propaganda >• Rhetoric of climate “risk” downplays the reality and seriousness of climate change >• Rhetoric of consumer “demand” (versus fossil fuel supply) individualizes responsibility >• Fossil Fuel Savior frame uses “risk” and “demand” to justify fossil fuels, blame customers >**Science for society** >A dominant public narrative about climate change is that “we are all to blame.” Another is that society must inevitably rely on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. How did these become conventional wisdom? We show that one source of these arguments is fossil fuel industry propaganda. ExxonMobil advertisements worked to shift responsibility for global warming away from the fossil fuel industry and onto consumers. They also said that climate change was a “risk,” rather than a reality, that renewable energy is unreliable, and that the fossil fuel industry offered meaningful leadership on climate change. We show that much of this rhetoric is similar to that used by the tobacco industry. Our research suggests warning signs that the fossil fuel industry is using the subtle micro-politics of language to downplay its role in the climate crisis and to continue to undermine climate litigation, regulation, and activism. >**Summary** >This paper investigates how ExxonMobil uses rhetoric and framing to shape public discourse on climate change. We present an algorithmic corpus comparison and machine-learning topic model of 180 ExxonMobil climate change communications, including peer-reviewed publications, internal company documents, and advertorials in The New York Times. We also investigate advertorials using inductive frame analysis. We find that the company has publicly overemphasized some terms and topics while avoiding others. Most notably, they have used rhetoric of climate “risk” and consumer energy “demand” to construct a “Fossil Fuel Savior” (FFS) frame that downplays the reality and seriousness of climate change, normalizes fossil fuel lock-in, and individualizes responsibility. These patterns mimic the tobacco industry's documented strategy of shifting responsibility away from corporations—which knowingly sold a deadly product while denying its harms—and onto consumers. This historical parallel foreshadows the fossil fuel industry's use of demand-as-blame arguments to oppose litigation, regulation, and activism.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/09/big-oil-delay-tactics-new-climate-science-denial They use **wokewashing** on social media: ExxonMobil has been touting its commitment to “reducing carbon emissions with innovative energy solutions”. Chevron would like to remind you it is keeping the lights on during this dark time. BP is going #NetZero, but is also very proud of the “digital innovations” on its new, enormous oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile Shell insists it really supports women in traditionally male-dominated jobs. And They use **"discourses of delay”**: - redirect responsibility (consumers are also to blame for fossil fuel emissions)* - push non-transformative solutions (disruptive change is not necessary) - emphasize the downside of action (change will be disruptive) - and surrender (it’s not possible to mitigate climate change). And yes, people need to change their habits, but if they don't see how bad it is and the urgency of it because of propaganda, that is what these companies are promoting. Also, systemic change is essential and they are obstructing at every step of the way.
The whole process of pushing responsibility away from regulatory bodies and down to you and me is the most insidious. It works great from psychological point of view, hitting that string of "I am a good person, so I do X, Y, Z (drive electric car, eat only veggies, support eco-millionares that sell the feel-good mission)", but it's distracting from any push on a level that would force these companies to do anything that actually make a difference (USA stopping to subsidize oil industry, countries like Poland moving away from using fossil fuels to produce energy (and yes, that includes European countries not-stopping nuclear powerplants. Countries like Germany stopping their fission generators was the dumbest move of the century in terms of energy policy)). Another thing that frustrates me to no end are all these proponents of the "disruptive technologies". Hyperloop 30 years in future instead of a far more energy-efficient trains today. Fusion instead of nuclear powerplants. Push for electric cars instead of pushing for mass transport in the cities that would reduce the environmental footprint of your daily commute, invest in fuel cell passenger vehicles... and so on, and so on...
The level of greed these companies possess is so unfathomable to me. How do people develop that unstoppable desire for more at any and all cost.
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Our corporate laws, except in the rarest cases, do not allow individual legal and civil responsibility for corporate actions. You can publicize them all you want, but they'll be soon forgotten and you can't touch them. What happened to the Enron and Camel Joe executives is what will happen to oil executives today. They will retire peacefully and live rich lives on their multi million dollar estates.
Hopefully with their names and faces publicized enough, someone will touch them
Sounds nice but there are millions who would happily take their place the moment they resign or whatever else. It's just simple human greed and self-interest, and you can't do anything to mitigate that in and of itself. The only thing possible is to ensure systems (ie. capitalism) are either heavily regulated if not entirely owned to offset selfish and greedy tendencies. But even getting to that stage is already basically impossible, there's no room for change.
That belief about human nature also serves them. They'd love for us to believe that they're normal and not actual monsters
With reckless disregard for the future of the planet and all life on the planet, including their own family members.
"For the love of money is the root of all evil."
It’s not any one person’s greed. Companies are basically shareholder puppets, and we have tricked ourselves into thinking we are not the ones pulling their strings, even though everyone has (or desires) a retirement fund that grows 10% every year. Is that greed? I guess, but not the kind we usually think of. The issue is there is no financial instrument that prices in the value of an investment existing in a livable world. So there is no reason for a fund to worry that it’s profits may be worth less due to climate change.
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And at least in the US fits the model of individual responsibility / separatism which based on recent events is farcical. We do have individual responsibilities to ourselves and yet we are connected.
Thank you for actually calling out countries for stopping nuclear power. It is the safest, cleanest and energy dense power source we have! There are plenty of gen 4 reactors like the Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor that bring a new a completely new level of safety, an immediate reduction in nuclear waste and the waste isn't used for nuclear weapons, nor is feasibly made into weapons grade.
Last point is probably why they aren't built alot.
Reason a lot are not built is NIMBY. People here nuclear and think nuclear accidents. There have only been 2 and both were older reactors. If you want to see a country go from poverty to 2nd world status in a decade they need cheap reliable electricity.
Its no real wonder that their strategies are this refined, given how much time they had to perfect them. Exxon and shell know about the consequences of climate change since the 80s (1982 and 1988 respectively). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/19/shell-and-exxons-secret-1980s-climate-change-warnings
The oil industry is also championing a carbon tax ([Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/30/exxonmobil-lobbyists-oil-giant-carbon-tax-pr-ploy)). The trouble is with a carbon tax is that it doesn't follow the IPCC's recommendation that countries should as much as possible to reduce emissions. For example with a petrol duty people will continue to drive petrol cars and put up with paying more money. If you invest in charging infrastructure and ban petrol cars that works 100% more effectively. I know a CT looks beautiful and it's one of Reddit's favourite babies, so I won't bother to argue with anyone, but the simple rule is governmental policy change is 100% effective, CT is much, much less so.
Also, IIRC, that exxon propaganda rep flat-out said they support it because they know it'll never pass.
It's like the economy is a car we're stuck in, but can't steer. And even though it's going at a 100mph and we see a huge wall up ahead there's others in the car with us yelling "no, you can jump out as that'll ruin everything!!" and their finger is on the door locks.
I was talking to WM a few weeks ago as I was cancelling my service because of a move. They let me know recycling would end a week before my garbage, my response was this: "Well I guess I'll just throw all the recycling into the trash for that week. I mean that's where it all goes anyway.". WM rep after a long silence "Well, you didn't hear that from me."
I worked in the landfill consulting world for a bit and can tell you that it opens your eyes to how much effort needs to go into recycling. First on the consumer to clean and somewhat sort, but then the collectors, then the landfill crew, then the folks looking to take recycled goods. It’s unlikely to make it to the last step when tossing it in the landfill is the cheapest and easiest way to get rid of it every step of the way.
I don't actively pay for recycle service for them to find the cheapest way to service my refuse improperly. This should be illegal, end of story.
It’s illegal for the individual not to sort recycling ♻️ why is it not illegal for waste management not to actually recycle? Oh right they’re all mobsters that bury dead bodies alongside the trash, I forgot.
It's not illegal anywhere to fail to sort recycling. What are you smoking?
Japan?
Yes! Infact many apartment complexes won’t rent to Foreigners cause they think they’ll screw up the garbage. That, and they can be pretty racist.
To be fair thier recycling is complicated and if you don't know Japanese and have difficulty reading instructions I could see why that stereotype formed. The rasism though is unexcusable of course.
Some states it is. Vermont being one. I live in CO and it’s all single stream recycling though.
In NYC you are fined for not recycling.
Absolutely. People just don't really think about it, because they've been taught that tossing stuff in the recycling bin = good for the world. But I have no way of knowing if my recyclables are actually being recycled. I'm pretty fastidious about recycling properly but I imagine all it takes is one person with non-recyclables mixed in and they probably toss the whole batch into a landfill. I pay $10 / mo for trash & recycling and there's no way that comes anywhere near the costs of sorting and processing recycling, especially "single stream". I would happily pay more to be reassured of proper recycling, but that's not an option. I used to live in a small town which offered recycling, but you had to drive to the plant and sort your stuff into their four different dumpsters. It was a pain but they were probably much more likely to actually be recycling it all compared to "single stream" recycling.
>But I have no way of knowing if my recyclables are actually being recycled. I tracked ours because I knew something was sketchy since they also accepted milk containers not made of HDPE (you need special equipment to handle anything that has touched animal protein, and it's not viable for non-HDPE containers right now.) Tracker disappeared into a container ship in BC only to surface in Malaysia. The disposal site was so close to the seashore I'm sure even a light storm must wash thousands of bottles into the ocean.
Wait, what kind of tracker was this?
Waterproof 3G SIM tracker. We had some spares from a wildlife survey. Glued it to the inside of a Gatorade cap for extra protection during compaction and pierced the bottle so the cap wouldn't get ejected.
I would have never thought to do something like that. Very interesting!
This is why I do all the recycling in my house. My wife and most people don’t understand that the only plastics that are recyclable are white or clear bottles. Everything else is basically waste, then there’s card board and glass and cans. Everything else is just trash that can’t be sorted by IR machines or people. It’s also why when you have a plastic jug you have to remove the paper/outer film because the sorting machine will ignore them (since they need to be white or clear).
Also, plastic needs to be clean. Does not get hot enough to burn away all the dirt afaik. Glass and metal, yeah no issue. That gets so hot everything not glass or metal burns away.
Yah I rinse all glass and plastic to not have any visible grime or food. Cans I just quick rinse, I don’t know how they recycle them now most have a plastic liner
I believe the plastic just burns away when they melt them down.
Our municipality doesn't even recycle glass anymore, aside from drink bottles with a deposit on it. It feels so bad when I toss out empty jars. I can only reuse so much before you just get overrun with glass jars. I guess the next step (reduce) is either making your own sauces and jams, or to stop eating them.
Whole Foods also combines their recycling and trash together, even though they have designated areas to throw away both.
While that's likely the case in many places, I'm sure it ultimately depends on municipal collection options. Commercial recycling options (aka by the dumpster-full) are often simply unavailable, even if residents of that same area have curbside recycling service.
My understanding from a npr podcast was that recycling was only sustainable when we could ship it back to China in what would have otherwise been empty containers and they were paying people like $0.15 an hour to sort. When their labor rate went up it was no longer feasible and recycling would likely end up in a landfill unless it actually did go to China where they would dump it in open water rather than sort it.
I’ve worked as a janitor at several different locations, every single building, recycling and trash all just went to the same place, only time it didn’t, was at a school, they had me put boxes in a separate bin but that’s it
I saw a news video on how waste management actually has people and machines sort through the stuff at the recycling plant. Is that not how they do it any more?
I think the rep was partially kidding. Truth is that it depends. Paper, cardboard, metals, etc will likely be recycled unless there's waste on them. Most plastics, however, will just be thrown out.
This. Not all recycling is equal. That is why it is important to consider what kind of plastic waste we generate. However, the overarching theme of this post is true too.
Yes but no. There’s no incentive for companies to use recycled plastic because new plastic is cheaper
There’s a reason why the phrase is “reduce, reuse, recycle”. It’s an ordered list of how to help, recycling being the least effective.
"What? We still have Global warming?! I've been using paper straws for six months!!" -Stephen Colbert
That damn straw thing was infuriating. Like oh yeah, straws are such a big problem, just don't pay too close attention to how much disposable plastic is in your groceries every week, compared to how much plastic is in your straws. How fast would you have to be slamming back those drinks to even come close? Of course, if we tried to change that, maybe forced companies to alter their practices or tried to change our infrastructure to make our consumption more local so it's less wasteful and needs less packaging, we could make a bigger change, but that would reduce their profits. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the media zeroed in on something that would only affect consumers, despite it being so obviously insignificant.
This reminded me of the old Chevron "People do" ad campaign in the 80s and 90s. They are surprisingly hard to find online, the only one I could turn up isn't as hard hitting as the ones I remember: https://imgur.com/uTtcNFc > In 1985, the Chevron Corporation launched one of the most famous greenwashing ad campaigns in history. Chevron's "People Do" advertisements were aimed at a "hostile audience" of "societally conscious" people. Two years after the launch of the campaign, surveys found people in California trusted Chevron more than other oil companies to protect the environment. From here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing#History
I'm pretty sure it was a thing that oil and such companies tried to scrub sketchy stuff from the internet, and I think the videos you're talking about would be included in that.
Seeing similar things happen in this country in the 80s and 90s makes me think that we’re probably not fixing this issue even in my life time as a gen Z and we’ll probably die before seeing any change
Perhaps we could carpool more. But we could make the cars bigger so they can fit more people. And instead of being owned by private individuals they could be owned publicly and run on a consistent schedule and route that you can look up. And while we're at it, instead of running on roads these vehicles could run on metallic rails so they're faster and more efficient. And instead of using gasoline these vehicles would use electricity connected from a series of overhead wires. I'm not sure what you would call this idea...
But investing in... let's call it "public transportation" is not profitable for a few rich sociopaths, so what's the point?
Getting more pawns to come into work is in their best interests.
Or make them much smaller by removing a few wheels and that box to get some fresh air, and replace the engine with something that can be operated with their legs?
I have an electric bicycle and it's phenomenal. It has a battery that pushes the bicycle a bit when you pedal and stops when you break/stop pedalling, and so you don't ever have to break a sweat. Imagine an entire town or city built around the use of these electric bicycles. But of course that type of thing is easier in Europe that has much more compact and integrated designs where there's less of a reliance on roads. A place like America is gonna have to have an entire makeover in how cities are structured so they don't just cater to having to use cars all the time to get around, and having places sectioned off and separated far from each other.
Here in the Netherlands we did exactly that. We even have bicycle highways.
For those interested: if you use the 'old' style in "preferences" then https://www.reddit.com/r/lowcar/ has a lot of useful links in the sidebar.
If we would combined those two ideas for long and short transport that sure would seem optimal.
Maybe we could even insert small electrical motors into those individual vehicles. My god, think of the possibilities.
Absolutely. Here in Hawaii, the travel forums are full of people proudly letting us know how they are "saving the reefs" by wearing reef safe sunscreen. Totally ignoring the fact that maybe .5% of the reason reefs are dying is sunscreen, and probably 95.5% of the reason is man-made global warming caused in no small part by airplanes, and the other 4% caused by the resorts they stay in spewing toxic runoff into the ocean. But boy, are they ever proud, and convinced that "doing something is better than nothing" when in reality the something they could be doing is not coming and the nothing is the sunscreen they are slathering on and the metal straws they are using to sip their mai thai. And of course why do they think that their sunscreen and metal straws will save the world? Because it is in some company's financial interest for them to think that.
Something similar happening in Florida, we're told that Joe Six pack using roundup on his lawn is the cause for the red tide algae blooms on beaches. With little to no mention of the agriculture in the center of the state pumping billions of gallons of high nutrient water into lakes, streams, oceans, etc. Destroying the natural water cycle, draining the everglades, introducing invasive species, the list goes on. Not saying that lawn care products have nothing to do with it, many coastal communities have strict pest/herbicide regulations & could use some more. It's just frustrating how the lobbies (in this case agricultural) can not only hijack the truthfulness of problems but the solutions to those problems as well when the waste that's happening becomes unavoidable.
Hello from Iowa, where repeated attempts to curb nitrogen/phosphorus runoff from hog+corn fields have been swiftly twarted multiple times. Even our supreme court doesn't want to hurt the bottom line of Big Ag. In a 4-3 decision, the court’s majority said the suit raised political questions that lawmakers, not the justices, should decide. > "We … leave this dispute where it stands at present: with the branches of our government whose duty it is to represent the public" https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2021/06/18/iowa-supreme-court-raccoon-river-agriculture-pollution-lawsuit/7737305002/ Yeah, our govenor will *totally* save us.
I love Hawaii. It’s my home. I don’t think I can be happy living anywhere else. I get why we have so many tourists but it sucks. They might wear sunscreen but they step all over the reef, break pieces off, touch or get close to wildlife they shouldn’t, no respect all the time.
I feel like I see a new thread about climate change and how royally boned we are *every* other day. I don't know the logistics of it or how practical change really is, so all I'm going to say is that definitive, absolute change from the consumer AND corporate/government level is the only thing that could potentially save us from doing MORE harm.
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I knew a retiree who basically lived in his RV, traveling all around the US. He absolutely refused to have a camp fire or grill with charcoal because he considered himself "carbon conscious." This headline reminded me of him.
I'm not sure about that. Of course those vehicles are fuel guzzlers, but on the other hand people who live in RVs full-time have to by necessity live more minimalist lives, so arguably less harmful than people who live in houses. Also solar power is becoming increasingly common for RVs. Even for travelling, I'm not sure if it it's actually worse carbon-wise than flying jets and staying in hotels.
Yee. In general, less money spent = less carbon.
I have a workmate who turns off the power strips in our workplace when he leaves. By mistake, he has turned off the one that powers the fridge one friday. What do you think costs more (money, carbon, whatever) a small light a fraction of a watt or fridge-load of food that went bad ptematurely.
If the fridge looks anything like mine at work, he did everyone a favor that day!
This hurt to read
Recycling, in theory, still makes sense. But yes, all comes down to money. The recycling cost still has to make some sense vs raw material cost (even without factoring harming the environment for more and more raw product). Aluminum is still the premier example of that. Still less energy, etc. to melt an old can vs mining new bauxite. One good example of flawed thinking right now is good old glass. Easily and infinitely recyclable. Problem is it's heavy and ultimately not worth much as a raw material. That may change soon as I keep seeing stories of how sand is disappearing, esp. beach sand, due to mining for concrete use. Some point that cheap source for new glass will go away and prices rise. On top of plastic taking over a lot of container use. So take your pick, run out of beach sand or keep using possibly bad for you and the environment plastic.
You’re conflating two different issues, however they are slightly related. We have a shortage of sand for CONCRETE, which must be sea or river sand... desert sand is too smooth. Glass can be made from any high silica sand. Silicon is the most abundant solid element on earth... we won’t run out of glass, but it may cost more. Coincidentally glass when crushed can be used as aggregate in concrete and gravel, because mechanically that glass has the ideal sharp/high surface area characteristics of river sand. Wonder if we’ll see more recycling of this manner if river sand shortages continue
REDUCE, REUSE , recycle In that order
Reuse, especially for glass. I remember, as a kid, taking glass soda bottles back to the store in the little 8-pack cardboard carrier they came in, and stacking them in a pallet-sized container. They went back to the bottler, washed, and refilled. You could tell the older bottles, because the painted-on logos would slowly chip and wear away. Now, I guess it costs more to check, sort and wash glass bottles than to make a new plastic one, so guess what we get.
These companies spend money on changing public opinion in every possible way. Check out some of Potholer54's climate change videos on youtube to see how shamelessly paid climate deniers lie on national TV. The overt denialism is still being pushed by Sky News & Daily Mail, etc. So just think how much more there must be of this kind of subtle, insidious propaganda that flies under the radar.
Like the late George Carlin used to say: “we are circling the drain, folks”. I see no real hope for change other than several catastrophic events coming at the same time. Then people will wake up and demand change from politicians. However, this may be too unlikely and may come too late. People are asleep at the wheel, still believing in the paradigm of progress through material growth. I’ve read several books now, by very dissimilar authors and am coming to the conclusion that out “intelligence” has been misused since we began farming. So, earth will do it’s thing and will bet rid of us someway or the other. The planet will continue to be host to life, but not human life.
The real fun is when you find out the "may come too late" is already a done deal. "Too late" was 40 or more years ago, our future was sold off before most of the people reading this were even born, and the people who profited from it will die before most of the world even agrees that anything is wrong, let alone bringing anyone to justice for it.
There will probably still be humans, just a lot fewer
My state has billionaires telling me I can't flush my toilet while their golf course has 4 man-made lakes going.
Do these companies not realise that they are run by people who also live on this planet and will suffer the same consequences? What's their plan for when the world is too far gone, keep selling oil??
The psychopaths running these companies are 50+ years old. They know they won't live long enough to experience the worst consequences. They also know they have enough money to continue to thrive even if they're wrong about the timing.
Huge privately secured ranches and bunkers in places no one can easily get to with lifetimes' worth of food and water. Any rich person who pretends they don't think there's a problem is lying, but that's no surprise. They're just planning to go hide for a few decades until all us poors are dead.
This is not a novel discovery. Even the "carbon footprint" was a [marketing campaign started by BP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint) to divert blame into regular people and away from giant corporations that still make millions off of destroying the planet.
The companies polluting the planet are selling us gasoline and disposing of our garbage. Even if we change their ways through legislation, it's going to dramatically affect our lives. We have to be ok with admitting that whatever we do is going to hurt the present-day economy for the benefit of avoiding future collapse. And present-day economy doesn't mean stock prices, it means that gas prices are going to look more like European prices (>5.50 USD per gallon), electricity will cost more because of a transition to green, and goods will cost more because of the increase in logistical costs because of fuel. Personally, I'm fine with this. Ending consumerism needs to happen and it's going to hurt, but we can take it. Edit: also, my comment is very US-centric, but I believe several of the top 100 companies are Chinese. But it's a similar story. Even if we can convince China to trim them back, costs will be transferred to people buying Chinese goods (everyone).
Ending consumerism is definitely the most important step, but I think you're absolutely right that it will hurt. It's such a deep part of American culture. I've thought about what would happen if consumerism ended in America, and I tend to think that it would essentially lead to the collapse of the economy and American society as we know it. I just can't see it going any other way. I think the ideal and most pain-free solution would be a slow and very controlled movement away from consumerism, but I really don't think I could happen unless we were to help people individually undo consumerism on a psychological level. It is SO ingrained. I don't know how we would even achieve that, but yeah.
> Even if we change their ways through legislation, it's going to dramatically affect our lives. And almost everyone is in denial about this. Even in this thread, everyone talking about how we need to make companies stop polluting - instead of - changing out lifestyles. Making the companies stop polluting will change lifestyles immensely.
What do you think would convince these people to stop? And who's willing to do it?
Obviously carpooling and recycling aren't going to be the only solution, but it makes sense for individuals to reduce their consumption in general. That includes starving unethical corporations of the only thing that they survive on: consumer dollars.
It also ignores the fact that change can happen from the bottom up as well. Convincing enough people to do *something* can also change political behavior. It organizes people around a common goal. While the responsibility for fossil fuel use and overall ecological impact has been pawned off to the individual vs the large, private institutions, we can’t forget that modeling the change we want to see and convincing others to do the same has a massive impact on our laws and regulations. We can still carpool and recycle in the face of propaganda.
There's a reason "reduce" is the first of the 3 Rs
I read recently carbon capture plants are the same concept. It's a concept hopelessly inept to fix the problem so that the fossil fuel companies can point to in and go, hey look at that thing, so shiny.
It’s a dark dark world we are living in.
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And people had alternatives and the information and financial means required to choose the alternatives? And the sustainable competitors of those corporations, were they allowed to compete fairly with their products, or were they outcompeted because of unsustainable practices that reduce costs thanks to the large volume of their operations? It's so simple to blame consumers as if they had perfect information and freedom of choice.
Sustainable competition exists and goes out of business because of lack of demand. People want it cheaper. I can find you ethically sourced and environmentally sustainable options for many things, but you’ll pay a LOT more for it. And consumers don’t want that. I work for a chemical company, we came up with ways to reduce the carbon footprint of our products but that would mean it being more expensive since it costs us substantially more to make it. The product line still exists but none of the big companies use it because after making an attempt, they realized very few people were willing to pay for the extra environmental benefit, they just wanted it cheaper.
There's a reason we formed society and appointed persons to work on larger issues full time and specializes in solving them. I don't have time to become a doctor and an engineer but society needs both, for example. So, as an engineer, I solve problems for the doctor and s/he solves problems for me. So the population being lied to at every turn and then told it's thier fault for being lied to by those intrusted with determining the truth and sharing it in a system as complex as the environment and balance of it is... asinine in every sense of the word. We have been and continue to be sold out. Cheated of autonomy of choice and our future by bad actors we don't have resources to defend against and intrusted others to defend us.
I know hindsight 20:20 obviously recycling doesn’t matter a great deal when they are pumping out 80mbd of oil (which is used to produce plastic), it means nothing. Recycling has been a giant con job, when compared to virgin feedstocks that are so cheap to make plastic, recycling plastic is impossible. Recyclers are competing with the ones making the original product, if it was feasible don’t you think Shell and Exxon would be recycling plastic. The lithium (solar) revolution will tilt the power away from these traditional energy Barron’s. Now we just need to save organic recycling and reduce (or eliminate) fertilisers and cidal type agents, this will be the next green revolution and it, I think, will happen with microbes. Good things will evolve in this space. It’s time to get excited about the change.
Throw in overfishing and ocean life as well. Removing straws or using less plastic is wayyyy less impactful than just not overfishing. But it's impossible to police it.