this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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Wrong. Everyone has to chip in to make a difference.
True but the emissions saved if everyone copied in with the proposed actions dwarf in comparison with the emissions saved if those 100 corporations did the same.
So what is easier to do? Change the lifestyles and circumstances of billions of people in every country in the world within half a decade or so the same with large companies?
Do it all. Every bit counts. Companies suck. Boycott the ones who don't help.
On that we can agree. But most of the activist effort should go into stopping the companies' emissions, not into infighting.
We are well past the "what is easier to do" point and need to grasp for every straw there is though.
But the efforts done are more akin to everyday people infighting about stuff that would amount to 5% saved on the expense of pushing against the real culprits. The planet's resources are limited but so is people's attention span. Better focus the efforts proportionally on emitting sectors.
That’s a lie that got spread by the same companies that tried to convince us that cigarettes ain’t bad for you and fat is the problem instead of sugar regarding obesity.
Climate change isn’t a linear process, it has so called tipping points and if those are reached shit happens. Consumer behaviour on that level doesn’t matter, it’s literally means we reach the tipping points a week later or something.
This misinformation is made for only one purpose: To spread the blame. So the ones truly responsible can later say that we all failed together instead of being held responsible. The reality is that wether we successful combat climate change or not is up to probably a couple hundred people in leading positions in the world.
If you want to see wether we make progress or not just take a look at the oil and coal production, every drop and rock of that eventually ends up in the atmosphere.
If billions of people who are not owners of corporations each does a little, and forces the greedy billionaire corporations to comply by way of boycott, this CAN be done. Vote against people who explicitly DO NOT want to hold billionaires accountable. The notion that every person cannot make a difference and should give up IS A LIE pushed by the capitalist RW/Kremlin and fossil fuel mafia.
You don’t understand the problem. The problem isn’t what you eat, how long you shower or which products you buy. The problem is we are converting fossile fuels that have been removed from the carbon cycle into CO2 and releasing it into the atmosphere where it’s going to be part of the carbon cycle again while increasing the total size of available carbon.
Now you may say "But if everyone does xy we release x% less carbon into the atmosphere!", which is naive at best. A lower demand for fossile fuels does:
a) not correlate with a reduced production of fossile fuels(as production quotas are set mainly with the relevant countries income needs in mind and many producers are afraid of lower future demand and are thus trying to sell their product now before it becomes worthless), lower prices might even mean higher production if the state needs a fixed amount of income.
b) reduces the price, which in turn increases the demand again. To put it plainly, if all the people go together and restrict their use of carbon products as much as possible we might slash the oil price to a fraction of what it is right now which in turn would make it extremely attractive for third world countries to use fossile fuels to meet their energy demands.
What’s the point if countries in the west use 10% less oil, the price goes down and people in Africa and Asia use 30% more oil because it’s more affordable now? The only thing that would truly help is a world wide oil and coal production quota that over time gets reduced to zero. As long as we keep burning oil and coal, at an increasing rate I might add, individual contributions are meaningless because we don’t truly affect the oil production, we affect the oil price, making it cheaper and everyone should understand that cheaper oil prices are not a good thing for the climate.
We need to get renewables going in the western world, then help other nations to convert as well.