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Big oil quietly walks back on climate pledges as global heat records tumble
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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Emissions can’t be stopped at the point of consumption.
They didn't say we can stop it at our individual points of consumption. They explicitly mentioned policy. People need to be willing to support policy that will drastically change their own lives, likely in ways they don't even realize, and be ready to live with that. Otherwise pretty soon we won't be living with much at all.
Suggesting that the consumer is responsible for emissions at the point of production betrays a deep misunderstanding of climate change.
Suggesting that “people’s” willingness to support policy that would change their lives is holding back cuts to emissions at the point of production betrays a similarly deep misunderstanding of political power.
This is it exactly. We have to turn off the f*cking spigot at the source!
There is no amount of science or innovation that's going to save us. It's going to take "holy shit we're all going to die horribly" panic from world leaders to forcefully cut off the source, which is oil and its byproducts.
Short of that, no amount of responsible consumerism can stem this tide.
Not immediately but they'll stop producing if people stop buying. Just takes a lot of people to have any meaningful change. And that starts with every single one of us.
And that'll never happen, because everyone else will ignore you and just buy the shit anyway.
It NEEDS to be regulatory change. Shaming consumers into not consuming doesn't work. Oil companies want you to think it works, that's why THEY invented the concept of the carbon footprint. To make everyone ignore real solutions that could actually work.
We can't even get people to individually choose to wear a mask or stand a little bit away from each other when their immediate health depends on it. Nevermind asking people to… to do what? It's not like there's a choice. That's what the monopoly phase of capitalism means.
How can I choose not to use fossil fuels to get around? The buses don't go where I'm going or when I need to go. How can I choose to avoid the food without the plastic packaging? Almost all the food except for some niche items is packed in plastic. I don't even get the choice by picking fresh produce because it got to the store wrapped in plastic. How can I choose to use fewer resources? My devices, white goods, furniture, clothes, etc, are all built intentionally not to last – and if they do last, they get 'updated' to landfill mode.
I'm agreeing with you, to be clear. I do wonder how regulation can help, considering politicians don't regulate unless they're forced to. Partly because they are or they represent the bourgeoisie and wouldn't get anywhere near power if they wanted to do things differently. Political pressure can be built but the voices in some of the problematic comments in this thread are quite mainstream.
I suppose what I'm saying, and I'm not necessarily looking for an answer, is: if we get to the stage where the public consciousness and it's organisation are powerful enough to make politicians take climate action seriously, why would we leave it to those politicians to implement and why would we retain a system based on infinite growth? Why would we get to the point where we collectively decide to make the world a better place and then say, you know what, you can keep doing all the other extractivism, oppression, war, slum landlording, racist border controls, etc, just make sure you use recyclable packaging and transport it in electric vehicles?
Exactly. The world around us has been engineered so that we'd all consume more. Either out of necessity, or for convenience. After all the hard work we put in, we feel like deserve convenience, don't we?
More and better public transit is 100x better for reducing transport carbon emissions than telling people to "just walk to work". When the options are there, and they're incentivized, people will use them. But public transit will also have to be way cheaper than driving, because let's be honest, it's kinda icky, if you're used to driving your air conditioned private pod of utter comfort, and you're being asked to share space with some hobo who couldn't decide if he wanted to piss or shit himself so he did both.
Agree with that. It's been difficult since Covid, too, as it's made it clear how different people's views are on hygeine and health. I didn't used to have a car. But I'm not sitting in an unventilated metal tube where nobody wears a mask and every third person coughs or sneezes without covering their face. That was disgusting before Covid. Now it's potentially life-changing.
They could be built with better ventilation and with more frequent services and more regular cleaning but that would eat into profits. In fact, during Covid, they reduced the number of lines, citing 'safety'. How it's safer to have busier carriages in an airborne pandemic, I'll never know. They never re-introduced the old lines. So the trains and buses have been even more crammed than they were up to 2019. At least the shareholders are happy.
Ooooh the bullshit companies did "because covid" drives me up the wall. Closing early, because covid is scared of the dark. Longer hold times because covid? Bullshit. Forcing everyone to enter and exit through the same door, because that's safer for some reason? Jesus
"Think globally, act locally" and other such clever slogans that seemed so logical and made so little impact.
How about "round up the heads of oil companies and deliver them to a firing squad?"
Not as much zing to it though.
That can never work. You can’t boycott a business into not producing.