this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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[–] [email protected] 224 points 1 year ago (22 children)

This is fine, we just need to switch from plastic bugs and make caps attached to bottles and everything will be alright! Together we can fight at least 1% of the carbon emissions from top 100 corporations in the world :)

[–] [email protected] 105 points 1 year ago (22 children)

I really think this narrative is counterproductive. It's not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it's fun. They're doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.

No corporation is going to choose more environmentally friendly practices out of the goodness of their own hearts unless those practices are cheaper. And given that that is very rarely the case, we have to look at things like carbon taxes to actually price in the externalities of climate damage. But that is going to increase the prices of some goods, and that requires a level of political will that has proven very difficult to come by. "Just make corporations pay" to fix things, whether that's a carbon tax or taxes on oil company executive pay or dividends or whatever else the proposal may be is always going to mean "increase prices to compensate for climate-related externalities".

That doesn't necessarily mean that all costs of addressing climate change must directly fall on consumers; government subsidies to reduce the costs of environmentally sustainable practices can also be extremely beneficial. But ultimately, this is a problem that we've all created, and we're all going to have to be part of solving it. Blaming corporations, even if partially accurate, doesn't actually get us any closer to solving things.

[–] [email protected] 97 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Yes and No. Yes, it’s not only corporations and we must act ourselves.

No, it’s the rules that set the game. Corporations play within the rules. Politics is owning and can change the rules. The society and corporations will follow accordingly. If we really want to change we can. Look what happened during Covid. In retrospect, some insane rules (eg Germany kids not allowed to enter playgrounds. Kids couldn’t play to save the elderly). However, society obeyed to those rules.

It’s not us, it’s the rules that must change. In my view this should be the priority.

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Blaming the public over corporations is the #1 reason why we are in this mess in the first place. For decades, the narrative has been "it's your fault and you need to change your habits". It is a pointless and useless narrative because nobody is going to actively change anything like that until they are forced to. Even when we make moderate, easy efforts to do stuff like recycling, the recycling companies bitch and moan about how they can't ship this shit off to China to let them do the work, and then throw away most of it, anyway. We PAY recycling companies to recycle this shit and they can't be bothered to figure out how to recycle it. We PAY THEM to take away materials to use in new products, not the other way around.

In every aspect of people's lives, you will find that corporations use up 90% of the resources that the general public use because corporations deal in economies-of-scale far bigger than anything a person or even a country can do. Corporations have been pushing the "blame the public" narrative to shift focus away from the decades of abuse they will continue to inflict on the planet. Corporation shit all over everything, and they will continue to do so in the name of profit. That is exactly what they are designed to do.

It takes governmental effort and regulations against the corporations to stop this sort of thing. They do it for clean water, and CFCs, and automotive design, and architecture, and many many other things. Why? Because a minority group of people who are struggling to make a living is never going to have enough power and clout as a large corporation or a government.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It’s not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it’s fun.

I think we can agree on that corporations are aimed at cheapest way to produce most popular goods at the biggest scale they can achieve for, in the end, produce the biggest possible profit. Thats what corporations are made for: money.

In the end, rich guy gets a yacht, bunker for apocalypse and private residence with AC, private kitchen stuff and anything they want so he will be fine even if its 60C outside. If it will get unbearable, they'll move to something like Norway and will be fine.

At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people who live in hot countries will die and millions will be climate refugees.

All that, because producing iphone with coal electricity (simplification, albeit I feel like its close to truth) is 10$ cheaper.

Blaming corporations, even if partially accurate, doesn’t actually get us any closer to solving things.

Swapping to paper bags will not help either. There are only two options to solve the issue:

  1. Government forces corpo to stop wasting our planet (because we don't have a spare one)
  2. People get torches

1 is impossible because gov will never cut the feeding hand and 2 is just a matter of time until we will get couple hundred millions migrants from Aftica, India, Pakistan etc.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

Also if you only eat meat in the weekends then the rich peoples private jets will suddenly have no environmental impact

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[–] [email protected] 125 points 1 year ago (4 children)

If only somebody warned us 50 or 100 years ago. Oh wait, they did.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (4 children)

More like over 200 years ago. There was a french female scientist that discovered the greenhouse effect before John Tyndall but I forgot her name and I'm at work rn, can't search for it.

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[–] [email protected] 118 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (14 children)

New normal, folks. So begins the era of climate migration.

A reminder that this is why we should never tolerate selfishness. We're now largely screwed because we, as a species, valued our individual comfort over expert research.

We knew what we needed to do - but no, profits. Such a dumb way to die.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Climate and Healthcare migration. I can't afford to retire here in the states. It's coming.

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[–] [email protected] 112 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Honestly I will never forgive people who STILL continue to deny climate change is happening and refuse to legilslate on it.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago

At this point Don't Look Up is a documentary. I honestly cannot imagine what it's like to he a climate scientist who actively studies this, only to have some fox news watching crazy uncle parroting cherry-picked data, thinking they somehow know better than global scientific consensus. I imagine some at this point may be going, "fuck it. Let it burn." And honestly, I can't blame them.

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[–] [email protected] 97 points 1 year ago (20 children)

We fucked around, now we're going to start finding out.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Captain Planet tried to tell us

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Don't worry guys, everything is fine. We just need to [redacted] and this will all go back to normal in no time.

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 1 year ago (8 children)

The EU needs to wake up and go hard on companies and industries. No mercy, no half-assing, just legislate the absolute shit out of them for once so that maybe our children can survive and live in not so terrible conditions, because not so terrible is the best we can hope for at this point.

The rest of the world too obviously, but the EU seems the most likely to do so.

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 year ago (8 children)

and people say global warming/climate change is not real

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (12 children)

It's not simply a climate change. It's a coined term by the fossil fuel industry. Like BP introduced the individual carbon footprint, this one should also be ignored. It's a climate crisis.

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"... It's not normal"

It wasn't normal.

Nowadays it is.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago (40 children)

Let's be honest, this will end up with only the ultra-rich surviving in the last few strips of livable surface of the planet - and them elated to have finally "culled the undeserving" as they have been hoping for for millennia.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Look at previous violent revolutions and see who died and who lived. I wouldn't bet on the ultra-rich, there are simple more of the rest but a new elite will rule, just like the old one.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I'm Italian myself. The issue with this heat is that it's humid too, I live in the riviera and we've had constant 35-37°C weather with high humidity for a week now

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yet, social medias are filled with people saying that they saw this every day when they were younger and the millenials are just weak and should stop complaining.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I was working outside this week (Southern US) and it was an absolutely miserable week. After a half an hour I was drenched in sweat, and it was rolling off my hard hat, getting in my eyes, and I was forced to pace myself and work much slower than I would otherwise be able to do because the heat was that intense.

I was able to drink some of my coconut water reserve because it has the things plants crave.

It's definitely the worst summer heat I've felt since ever.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago

For the longest time, measures against climate change were decried for potentially impacting "the economy". Well now we're going to see the impact to "the economy" with climate change getting worse. I assume it'll be a bigger impact than if we had invested in more sustainability earlier. Slower work pace outside just being a small taste of the impact.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Meanwhile big polluters like Shell and others help pumping emissions and try to keep carbon based economy for short term profit 🙄

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (3 children)

whatever could we have done to stop this!!!

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Where I stay these temperatures can be quite normal in summer. I'm now just worried that a hot summer's day here will now go from 45 to 55. I've felt 50 before. It's not fun. But besides that, I think of the implications for the agricultural sector. Good luck my European friends. I'll report back in our summer.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (19 children)

Everything is fine, the earth simply won't be habitable for humans. The Earth will spin on without us when we inevitably allow industry to destroy humanity by making earth uninhabitable by human life.

It's what we deserve for being so stupid as to see this happening and doing nothing about it to stop it or slow it down. There's plenty of climate change advocates which are almost always drowned out by the chorus of companies and climate deniers who believe propaganda over science.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (14 children)

I think climate change is happening far sooner than scientists could have predicted. We focus on increased global average temperatures but I think that we are going to have insanely hot summers sooner. We're fucked.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (17 children)

Simple way to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit in your head:

  1. Take the Celsius value and double it

40 * 2 = 80

  1. Subtract 10%

80 - 8 = 72

  1. Add 32

72 + 32 = 104

40 C = 104 F

This is still hot but a far cry from 118F

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago

That was a typo by OP. The temp in Italy is 48C/118F

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (3 children)

40c is 104f. The article mentions possibly peaking at 48c, which is 118f. In case anyone thought something was a little off

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

It's 48°C, not 40. The title is incorrect.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Get ready for this headline every year.

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