this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Then why do you do all that? You are contradicting yourself. Clearly you believe the average person has an impact, which is what I and others are saying. That doesn't mean it's all the average person's fault, or that there aren't powerful people leveraging that power to try to keep this system up. But "the system" isn't something magical or a law of the universe; "the system" is people and their choices.
Come on, you know that's not true. Just go outside and talk to the average person, or even go on a more popular and less closed off social network.
I'm not saying life is easy right now, but most people could do a lot more than they do. Most people eat more red meat than is even healthy for them, never mind the environment, and never mind other meats or animal products in general. Most people will buy bottled water (and other beverages) even when they have access to clean tap water (and I'm not saying everybody does have access to it). Most people will make excuses to use a car, no matter how good the public transport is, or even if they could use a bicycle. Most people will still choose to use plastic bags for groceries instead of reusable ones, at least until a store stops supplying plastic bags.
To expand a bit more on this and not have to do much typing, I'll just a leave a couple of comments from else where on this thread; the first one is mine and the second is from another user:
Though experiment:
Tomorrow is election day in your country. The stout environmentalists win control of the government and proceed to make the following changes:
Carbon tax, which increases the price of gas, which itself results in an increase in shipping anything. It also directly raises the price of anything that produces carbon in its manufacture process, such as anything made of plastic.
An end to meat subsidies - maybe even a tax on it - and an increase to subsidizing other types of farming.
A ban on single use plastics.
And anything else you think might be necessary.
Now the questions: How long until they get kicked out? How long until the protests and riots? How long until a new government undoes it all?
I’m assuming you’re not naive and you don’t live in a bubble. You should know the majority of people will not be fans of any of that; and with the way it usually goes and the pendulum swings, the government that follows it will be a far right one.
what would happen if everyone turned around and said ‘you know what, fuck companies that sell drinks in bottles i’m never going to be without my refillable bottle’ how long would coca-cola keep producing 100 billion plastic bottles a year? what would they do with them?
But if James Quincey said ‘fuck it, I’m not producing plastic bottles anymore they’re bad for the planet’ but 8 billion people said ‘oh ok, well we’re still going to regularly buy drinks in plastic bottles’ the numbers of plastic bottles being made would dip slightly but only while Ramon Laguarta rushed to spend the flood of money now coming in to scale up production at pepsi co.
This will be my last comment because I don't want to keep bothering you, especially because I know I write too much, but feel to reply and I will read it.
But who eats the fish? It's not the companies. The companies are just enablers. I'm now not sure if you read it, so I refer you back to the last part of my comment (last 2 paragraphs).
It seems you don't realize it, but you're agreeing with what I'm saying. Studies/polls have shown the majority of people would be in favour of a carbon tax. But as you said, high prices/taxes don't really help and can make life terrible for the average person. Yet, that would be the result of a carbon tax. But people don't think about that; people just think about how the world is going to shit, and someone should do something and when they hear "carbon tax" they think "great!", because they think it's a way to keep their lifestyle and comforts and don't realize it would necessitate a life change anyway. The question is whether you do the change now by reducing your consumption, or wait until you're forced to do it due to regulation and prices hikes you can't afford.
I really don't want to be rude or mean, but I have no other way to put this: if you really think that, you really are naive and living in a bubble. Which I guess isn't surprising if you do live off grid and have enough room to grow your own food and you can compost all your waste, while also being on the Fediverse and especially from beehaw (very leftist leaning and environmentally aware places); but take it from someone living in a very large city and who frequents very diverse online places: that's not true.
Just from the most environmentally "aware" people I personally know: a lot don't bother recycling, or didn't until very recently; they don't think twice about single use plastics; most of them have meat as the stable of their diet, especially red meat; one of them insists on drinking bottled water despite have clean tap water, and a lot of the others buy quite a bit of plastic soda bottles. Oh, and something about my neighbours: some of them throw plastic take out packages out of their windows and into the street.
And also, finally, if what you say is true, then environmental parties would currently be in government in most places; after all a vote is tool everyone has and it costs nothing. But that's not the case. In my country, the two most environmentally aware parties are currently the 2 smallest parties in the parliament; the second biggest one is a far right party; the third party are somewhere between liberals and right wing libertarians who have said there is no climate emergency; the leading party is a liberal party who talks about the environment, but doesn't actually do shit about it. And that's with a 60 to 70% voter turnout.
Do you really expect me to believe that "everyone is doing their best with the tools that they are given"?
I'm from Portugal btw, you can see here how many tons of CO2 per capita we were responsible for emitting (from production and consumption in 2018 and 2016 respectively). We're not even top 50 in either list; USA is 17th and 7th, for reference.