cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/1097575
this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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Who buys and burns most of the fuel they create and why?
"there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" has to me always been a clear call to reduce your consumption within a capitalist system. yes, it is these shit heads who shackle us. but when we reduce our dependence on them we begin the breaking of our bonds to a system that kills thousands every year
So I should starve to death so that the multinational conglomerates never have to face any consequences? Miss me on that one.
this is in fact the opposite of what i'm saying
I always hate that most people are happy to blame corporations, forgetting we are consuming that's why corporations are creating.
yeah, it is like blaming china for a pollution, when that pollution is externality of cheap shit we buy from them. it is our pollution in the end.
that isn't an argument for blaming the end consumer, because that problem is not going to be solved from the bottom, but it is also childish to pretend like we, the consumers, are not complicit.
You should read Terry Pratchett's Boots Theory. Many people don't have the option to pay more up front to consume less, if there is even an option to buy a more expensive but longer-lasting item in a given market any more.
well many do and they will buy cheap shit anyway. and i am not talking about boots, i am talking about people who have a dog, which is clearly non-essential expense, and they buy him shitty toy from temu. is that rubber toxic? who knows, who cares, look how cheap it is!
Well said
I agree. It's obvious to me that it will never be a tidy "it's just them to blame" scenario but people really want it to be, regardless. I suspect the downvote crew will show up soon...
The corporations blame the consumer, the consumer blames the corporations and everyone gets to consume and profit blamelessly.
Yeah, that's a nice fairy tales to keep burning the planet.
In reality the main consumers are a handful of rich people including those owning the corporations and paying off politicians and media while 95% of the people would not consume anything if not forced to do it and are also contributing only a miniscule amount to the total consumption.
Not true. Our cars account for more than 15% of the problem. Our meat is about the same. With just those two things, we are over the 25% of the "factor 4" from Rio. It is oversimplified, but it gives the idea: if the Ultra richs stop polluting, we are still doomed if the rest of us doesn't do something either.
Sure... people spend hours in congested traffic because they love their cars so much, not because they lack alternatives for transportation. And it's totally normal that I can pay less for 500g of cheap meat than for a 500g bag of rice, and that's not caused by insane subsidies for meat producers.
The issues are systemic and guess what... the majority is not in power to change the system.
Wouldn't be us if they hadn't lobbied for decades against renewables
The cause of this is not individual consumer choices, it is capitalism - it seeks to increase capital and nothing else. Capital does not care about the emissions of growing fruit in Central America, packaging in Thailand, and selling in Germany. It cares that you buy the fruit cup for more than they spent on it. And to make that happen, capital had to force wages and production to be depressed and scattered across the globe. And it's not going to waste money on making the processes themselves independent of fossil fuels so long as fossil fuel prices are low enough - and it keeps them low by constantly seeking more extraction for profit.
You say this like buying only from sustainable companies is something everyone can just decide to do, and there haven't been decades of lobbying and propaganda against policy that would make it possible at a collective level.
because not purchasing anything that is produced or transported with energy from fossil fuels means fucking off into the woods to starve to death naked in a hut made of mud and twigs
As if there is nothing in between "don't do anything" and "go live in the woods"
Exactly. Cutting out all net resource consumption is really difficult, but almost all of the difficulty tends to come in the second half. The first half is worth doing.
Somewhat counterintuitively, switching from a 15 mpg vehicle to a 20 mpg vehicle (and driving the same number of miles) represents a greater reduction in fuel consumption compared to switching from 20 mpg to 30 mpg. Side note, this is also why we probably should've always been talking about fuel consumption per unit distance rather than distance per unit fuel, but it's hard to change the conventions around this.
So there are a ton of examples of products that use far more or less energy than alternatives, or simple changes in time of day that can make a huge difference in fossil fuel demand.
if there's a minimum amount of consuming fossil fuels that's required to continue to live in society, and the goal is to eliminate that, then we need change on a societal level. individuals alone cannot solve the problem, and therefore cannot be blamed for the problem existing
Sure there probably is a minimum somewhere, but most people are far above that minimum.
I'm vegan and carfree. I'm probably closer to that minimum than most people in this thread. I looked up the stats once and saw that the average American produces ten times as much CO2 as the average Congenese person. Imagine that, ten times. If you're an average American, you can reduce way more of your emissions than that average Congenese person can! If you eat meat and drive a car, you've got so much opportunity for growth!
De-growth rather.
governments and industry
industry is speculating. governments are oppressing people.