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this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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Not to derail this, because hey, nothing wrong with prepping/trying to help your community. But let's not forget that 100 companies are responsible for 70% of emissions since 1988.
Woah, seems like I started something. I specifically said there was nothing wrong with doing your part, but that we shouldn't forget it's not our fault.
Which is why fighting for policy changes is important. One of the only things that can stop companies are government regulations
I fully understand what you're saying and agree that on an individual level our impact is minimal compared to these companies, but I always wonder how fair it is to say they have to change and that's the only solution.
My understand, and this is of the top of my head, is that 93 of those companies are oil/gas companies and the other 7 are cement. If they all gained a conscience today and stopped operations tonight, the world would be in chaos. People on an individual level would still need fuel to be able to get to supermarkets, and the supermarkets need fuel to get food moved around the supply chain.
Whilst I'm not saying it's a solution and I'm using a simplified example to make my case, but if everyone prioritised buying electric cars as their next car, then manufacturers would speed up production of them and phase out combustion engine cars and vehicles. This would reduce the need for oil and at some point these top 100 polluters would either adapt or collapse.
What I'm trying to get at is the masses need to put pressure on these companies both through policy changes and purchasing power. I think it's too easy to keep driving petrol cars and pointing at the oil companies as the bad guys.
It has to be a team effort, but those companies also engaged in a multi decade effort to underplay the impact of human activity (specifically theirs) on the climate and the dangerous associated with those changes.
Apparently due to a new clean fuel rule for ocean going vessels they stopped making sulphur oxide clouds and that is the main reason for there recent spikes in ocean water temperatures. It took 3 years to see a manual reduction in sulphur oxide pollution. No calamity in the world economy. Just an unexpected revelation of how much that pollution was cooling the ocean.
https://youtu.be/dk8pwE3IByg
So yeah, we can't just turn off the O&G sector. But we can set ourselves some pretty aggressive targets and make them.
They’re not even companies that make the goods you buy. Almost all of them - exclusively - are fossil fuel energy companies.
If you don’t limit car use, and you don’t buy renewable power, then you’re absolutely part of the problem. If you give a shit about the future there’s plenty of action you personally can and should take.
Yes, I was agreeing with you!
Just responding to your edit, I think it's a great thing that you did start this wider conversation. I find it refreshing that on Lemmy people are having much more detailed conversations and raising these wider talking points. Back on the old place a lot of people would just try to drop short gotcha type replies that were repeated over and over just to get karma, it got boring.
The only thing I will say is I think you failed at not derailing the conversation slightly!
Yeah some very good reads in this thread, cool to see everyone actually having a conversation instead of contrarianism left and right (some of that here... but not as much). I think I was pretty clear, but some people seem to think I meant that you shouldn't change your lifestyle.
I meant that we should be holding those companies accountable in conjunction with making personal changes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Is that not just another frame of reference to shift responsibility elsewhere? Like lOoK At cHiNA WhAt cAn i poSsIbLy do?
Anything to stop action that would change our ways of living.
Then why are activists deflating SUV tires instead?
Are they? In any case, a reason would be because SUVs take a lot of space for on average less than one inside. That’s space which is asphalt, and not available for pedestrians, bikes, trees, benches or other things that make cities a nice place to live.
But who buys their products? It always comes back to us and our actions
This response is frustrating. A company can have pressure put on and change actions more than "can everyone just spend 5 minutes". To put pressure back on a consumer who does not have the ability to purchase time (via more employees) to handle the load of "5 more minutes" means that only the crazy will think they can make a difference.
Your response is generated from a successful captain planet propaganda campaign that successfully brainwashed a generation. You are technically right that no supply = no demand. You are technically right that "if 100% of humans stopped using and correctly educated themselves on further green washing pivots" then the 100 companies would stop.
Your comment is even more frustrating.
There is no collective will to "put pressure on companies" if people don't individually recognize that their cultural consumption practices, behaviors, and expectations are not sustainable and that, INDIVIDUALLY, their behaviors must change.
For example, the only real way to put pressure on companies is through government action through something like a carbon tax.
If we, collectively and individually, don't realize that such an action will have significant impact on your day to day behaviors that action is politically untenable and will immediately get voted out.
If there is no government pressure or individual pressure (since we refuse to acknowledge individuals as participants in climate change), then the companies who are most willing to reduce their costs and increase their profits will thrive and the climate is fucked.
Even on a very essential level of "it requires government action" requires vast amounts of individuals to work and sacrificial to make that a reality. How much are you willing to sacrifice to help candidates who will take this seriously? If you don't believe you have an culpability, probably nothing.
I am about 75% sure that "It's all the companies emitting" is an immensely clever astroturfing campaign that preys on people's desire for their to be a big bad and to not believe that they should suffer even the slightest inconvenience.
Guess what? A large majority of what you would need to do to survive in a "there is external pressure on companies" world are things most can do today. Start spending money in companies today who are at least attempting to make sustainable practices work. Reduce your regular consumption today. Start spending money today to support research and development for solutions. Stop eating meat today. Start looking into alternative sources of energy personally, today. Look into increasing your home insulation today. Start organizing, talking, supporting, volunteering, today.
Stop pretending that you are not part of the problem. You are.
The real irony with that statement is that even if 70% is some "disconnected from the reality of our consumption and economic practices and can simple be shut of magically", that still leaves an enormous amount of carbon emissions that are individual, and guess what, those still count and are just as real.
Some facts:
17% of emissions in the US are light road vehicles (aka cars). Aircraft are another 8%. Are you advocating in your city for true alternatives?
6% is residential. Are you supporting and seeking smaller, highly efficient homes, financially? Homes built with more sustainable materials?
10% is agricultural, the large majority of this is meat. Are you eating less meat?
We could keep going.
It goes both ways. You've heard of the personal carbon footprint, right? Invented by oil companies so environmentalists would call people out for not doing enough, frustrating said targets of environmentalist ire to a point where a lot of people are intentionally polluting more, while also driving people into a sentiment of "I've done enough, now it's everyone else's fault" when they've reduced their own footprint to a minimum.
The only way for change to happen is political. Regulations work, telling people to stop eating meat and walk to work doesn't, because you'll never get more than maybe 1% of people to go along with it. Who wants to restrict themselves when other people don't?
Basically as an individual, the only way your efforts mean anything is if you decide to go for some good old eco-terrorism. But it has to be enough for fossil company CEOs and board members to be legitimately scared to the point nobody wants to run those companies anymore.
Or if you're a dictator selling gas, you can start a war and some of your customers will stop buying from you. That reduces gas consumption for a while until they find new sources, and might make some governments reconsider their foreign fossil fuel dependency.
Did you bother to look at exactly which 100 companies these are?
Spoiler alert, they are oil energy production companies.
Got rid of your petroleum-burning car? Great! But I hope you don't ever buy literally anything, because shipping still runs on petroleum. Fun fact, most semis get around 6 MPG.
Oh, also, don't use the internet. Even if your local power is renewable, the electric grid on the whole runs on fossil fuels. Your house electric could be green, but the majority of the switches, routers, servers and miscellany of the rest of the internet sure don't.
It's unrealistic to expect everyone to completely disentangle their lives from using our nation's energy production systems. Sure, if we all went completely off-grid, we'd generate less greenhouse emissions. Of course, millions would starve due to the impossibility of scaling small-scale agriculture to feed us all.
All of us are supported by a huge infrastructure based on burning fossil fuels. Without regulating that industry, the only choice we can make is to leave society entirely.
Good idea. New plan: don’t buy anything. Don’t even buy food. We did it boys, we saved the planet.
Carbon footprint is a term coined by the petroleum industry to move the responsibility from them to the end users
What is a better term that places responsibility on them?
You can not individualise a problem like climate change.
It requires collective action from governments.
You have to regulate the common use of fossil fuels out of existence (among other major changes) for us to have any hope.
They could, you know, stop making them...
They could. And then someone else would just make more to fill the gap.
We need a change in governance and economic structure. That said, individual actions do also have an impact, collectively.