this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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This reply misunderstands the fundamentals of market economics. If we, the consumers, start making the global climate more of a factor in our purchasing decisions, that will directly affect what gets produced in a capitalist system. Not trying to absolve these corporations of responsibility for the problems they’ve caused, just saying that if enough people start taking the bus/train instead of driving or substituting meats for plant based foods, we can have a significant impact. Of course the best thing we can do is vote to get ignorant climate science deniers out of office.
Choosing what to buy is a luxury most people don’t have. Companies need to be forced into changing because the market proves time and time again that it can’t regulate itself
Chosing to eat chicken instead of beef impacts the whole chain from fertilizer to animal feed to clearing the Amazon for pasture to methane produced by cows.
You have more choice than you think, like which meat to pick or to use more eggs and cheese as replacement instead. This is just one of the obvious everyday choices. Not all fish is equal too, with sustainable aquaculture being the best choice for the world.
If the oil majors, or just one of them switch off the taps tomorrow we will just get Russian gas crisis x10 and make OPEC and friends insanely rich. We need to transition to something else, that's for sure, but blaming them for everything is super naive.
The issue with that logic, voting with your money, which I once used as well, is that richer people get more of a vote than poor people. And as a bunch of the issues with global warming didn't really hit rich people, we shouldn't depend on them to fix it.
In order to make an actual impact on the environment, we'd need to all go back to living without electricity in stone houses. Everyone in the world could take the bus and it would do fuck all. Society needs to change how we produce energy and how we construct things. That's stuff consumers cant do by changing their habits.
Here's a great video by Kurzgesagt
Kurzgesagt is propaganda
That's a 2 hour video from a guy with 35k subscribers and it starts off with Chad memes and an ad break for an alpha male bro podcast...
Do you have any response to the substance or is the style the only thing you want to attack?
The video does not "debunk" kurzgesagt" but disagrees with who to blame. It's the same conundrum that is happening in this thread. When telling individuals to do what they can to protect the environment you aren't telling them that they alone are responsible. I don't understand how people so regularly make this jump.
This Video is badly researched and the worst you could accuse Kurzgesagt is that they have sloppy research on sponsored Videos. Which in my opinion is also not correct.
Oh boy. If you think that's the worst thing you can accuse Kurzgesagt of you must have entirely missed the whole Coffee Break drama, where not only did Kurzgesagt reveal himself to be a complete dishonest arsehole in his private commications with Coffee Break, he also stood by while a whole heap of his fellow large creators sicced their audiences on a small-time creator who was putting out really interesting stuff.
Plus, unrelated to all of that, his former business partners at Standard/Nebula do not have positive things to say about how he completed himself there. Supposedly he and CGP Grey saw Standard as a way for those of them who got in early to essentially leech off of the newer creators as Standard expanded, and when the other creators wanted to keep expanding it in a way that way mutually beneficial to all, those two creators tried to shut down the whole thing. It only survived because the others agreed to buy them out.
Can't buy what doesn't exist, can't buy a healthier option if one isn't produced, can't buy a more sustainable product if one isn't produced, can't buy a solar powered utility vehicle if one isn't produced, can't buy wind power if it isn't produced, can't buy items without single use packaging unless they're produced.
Needs and wants may drive a market, but nothing is consumed before production.