yeah, they “convinced us” to want to buy things. Dumbest Marxist conspiracy theory out there.

When did consumerism become a Marxist conspiracy.

When I grew up, it wasn't. We all understanding that department stores and companies sold us all kinds of things we didn't need and in order to do that they had to create FOMO. Marketers job was to make viewers insecure. Make girls feel ugly without the latest fashion. Make guys feel unmanly without their BBQ or truck.

Without this constant advertising we do not want this stuff. that's why advertising is a billion dollar industry. Life pre department store era , we're talking pre 50s, you'd be considered insane to have the stuff we do and purchase like we do. Its still insane just acceptable to be such a glutton because advertisers made it normal to consume.

Honestly, if I was guaranteed high speed internet access and my electronics with solar panels, I'd absolutely live a solarpunk hobbit lifestyle

In France it wasn't the wealthy who rioted over the gas tax. It was the average person

Oh absolutely. Changes in society are going to affect the marginal the most. No disagreement there.

but the guy who is just barely making it now with the supercharged fossil fuel economy?

But I would indicate that we must look at the core issue on why the guy who is just barely making it now is in such a position. The monetary resources of this planet are finite and there is a group who is holding onto the vast majority of it. If that bulk of wealth was better distributed the guy who is just barely making it would have more at their disposal to absorb the impact of the change. That isn't to say that the change would not still be felt, but they would be better to navigate such change.

but that's going to be a concern even with public companies with no "one percent" making the decisions.

I would say that this undervalues the amount of consolidation that has happened in most industries. Where many industries are reduced to say a few players who dictate the direction the industry goes into. We need to diversify the mixture of players in many core industries in order to find those who take risks that could benefit solutions to climate change. That or we mitigate the risks at a governmental level in order to foster those changes.

It's no one fix and done kind of issue for sure. But the rich do hold an outsize grasp on the levers of change in government policy and industry direction. But I think we cannot just simply dismiss that they have such a position that is adverse to risk that comes with new initiatives that seek to reduce climate changing emissions and that they have incentive to be adverse to those risks. Removing them completely would absolve governments from implementing policies that cost taxpayers to mitigate those risks and free up capital locked into the hands of a few who would be adverse to take those risks.

There's also ways we can do all of the above without removing any players from any given industry, but there (at least to me so do understand this is solely my take on the matter) seems to be too many bad faith actors within these various industries that would be so affable to such changes and would seek to shift the winds more in their favor.

The rich for the most part can afford and handle a transition

And that, I think, is the point I'm trying to make here. While they would absolutely be the ones better at handling the change, they are also the group that would seek to prevent the change in the first place. Because why have the change and potentially receive less when they can have no change and continue to receive their current amount? The road that they are on is proven to yield a known value and changing that brings about risks that can modify that yield in unknown ways. Why change to something unknown, when what is currently working has known values? It's a kind of profit inertia that grips a lot of industries.

The general public is just mostly struggling to get by, that profit inertia is less a factor in their day-to-day life. If there is a change, that via the liquidation of one who held large amounts of locked capital, we can mitigate the impact on those struggling; there is still an impact but by an avenue that does not require taxpayer dollars we can minimize it.

It's much like how in third world nations we were resource dumping onto these countries and preventing small players from gaining footholds. And by basically removing the ability for these rich companies to dump resources heavily subsidized onto the people of these nations we allowed smaller players to gain some traction. Yes, the cheap resources are gone and people are struggling, but allowing domestic production of these goods eventually allows for products that can be afforded by all, because the domestic production grants more liquidity to those who work the jobs, increases demand, and in turn requires expansion of those domestic industries to include even more workers. We, rich first world nations with industries that are outsized, just needed to stop dumping onto these countries to allow that to foster. A parallel of that to the rich, I believe can be made and is the point of my argument.

But that's not to detract from what you have here as well, in that the solution is much more complex than just a single issue. Eating the rich isn't the panacea folks believe it to be. Once those rich companies dumping on the poorer nations was gone, there still needed to be development of domestic production, that's a non-zero cost and risk.

Yeah, but I will say we have seen a move away from fossil fuels for home heating by the common person all across Canada the past few years. So it's also not impossible, there just needs to be some sort of program or incentive to push those to move or aid the cost burden of those who can't.

We did it with heat pumps and shit, might as well put more of that carbon tax money into other sectors affected by it.

People don't organize unless there is a wealthy benefactor behind them that can fund it. I would bet good money that behind the French riots was a Steve Bannon, RFK Jr or whatever Europe's version of those are. Its impossible to grass roots anything in today's world. It's like thinking you can walk into a chess tournament and clean house. You're competing with people for attention in a space where you're out gunned. The internet only looks like it's fuelled by grassroots movements. It's all bullshit. The vast majority of it is controlled by powerful people with lots of money competing for their interests

We could cut emotions like in half if we were sufficiently motivated.

Could we really? The entire purpose of public education is to remove emotions so that one can reason about the world logically. I am not sure it has proven to be all that successful. At best in limited circumstances, but not without frequent regression.

We could store the nuclear waste beside the plastic we dump in the poorer countries