That’s an odd way to spell “what the insatiable greed of like seven corporations has done to us.”
Those 7 corporations. Would those be companies whose products we keep buying?
They have trained you all your life to blame the victims.
Who is consuming their products? I’m doing my damn best not too while striving for structural change, and I’d bet the other user is too. What about you? People taking your stance are usually the ones trying to make excuses to keep consuming mindlessly.
That’s a pretty absurd generalization. I live off grid and get my power from solar, food from my garden and foraging. I compost all of my waste, consume as consciously as I can possibly achieve as an average individual, and I refuse to accept that this is some regular person’s fault.
Rugged individualism and shame will not change the world positively, some fucking accountability on the part of the few people causing the damage (corporations etc) might. It is willful ignorance to say that it is just everyone’s fault.
Almost everyone is just trying their best, save for a small number of incredibly rich people+the entities they run ruining everything.
Idk here’s a quote from The Good Place
"I want to tell you about a guy from my dance crew in Jacksonville called Big Noodle.
I used to yell at Big Noodle 'cause he always showed up late to rehearsal. Then one day, the swamp under my house flooded. I needed a place to crash, so I slept at Big Noodle’s house. Turns out that he had to juggle three jobs to take care of four grandparents who all lived in the same bed just like in “Willy Wonka.”
I never yelled at Big Noodle for being late after that 'cause I knew how hard it was for him to be there. And he definitely didn’t have time to research what tomatoes to buy. Even if he wanted to, possession of a non-fried vegetable is a felony in Jacksonville. The point is, you can’t judge humans 'cause you don’t know what we go through"
That’s a pretty absurd generalization. I live off grid and get my power from solar, food from my garden and foraging. I compost all of my waste, consume as consciously as I can possibly achieve as an average individual, and I refuse to accept that this is some regular person’s fault.
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.
Almost everyone is just trying their best, save for a small number of incredibly rich people+the entities they run ruining everything.
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:
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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.
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An end to meat subsidies - maybe even a tax on it - and an increase to subsidizing other types of farming.
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A ban on single use plastics.
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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.
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Yeah, if people really wanted, they could make their own phones and all they own by hand. These damn socialists!
“We can’t make our own phones, so there’s literally nothing we can do!”
Do you have a plant based diet, or try to reduce meat consumption to the best of your abilities?
Do you walk or take public transport when you could walk?
Do you avoid buying things you do not need?
If you answered “yes” to all that, then congratulations! You are part of a different 1%, and you are also just arguing for the sake of arguing.
If you answered “no”, then you’re part of the problem. You can pretend otherwise all you want, but you are one cog that keeps the system going. The system isn’t magical, other wordly, or some fundamental law of the universe. The system is people and their choices.
Yeah to those 3.
However, I wasn’t intending to argue with someone with such a simplistic view of how the system works, anyway. If you think it’s all up to the customer and the corps nor the system have no blame in comparison, it’s just a lost cause, so sort yourself out.
If you think it’s all up to the customer and the corps nor the system have no blame in comparison
When did I or anyone else say companies and the government do not have any blame? Can you link me the comment and quote the relevant bit?
I’m only in my thirties. I don’t really think I had like… A huge hand in all this.
Well it can’t be the billionaires or the boomers, so it must be your fault.
This is what late stage capitalists actually believe
We should still try to do something, because it can become worse. So it’s still an actual problem to make other people believe it’s a thing…
I feel it’s time for people that care to start moving on the the acceptance phase of our future. Whether that is beginning to accept austerity in what we eat/wear/do and wait for the collective “we” to join us when they need to adapt more rapidly than we chose to, or if we give in and join the “it’s already too late, let it burn” side.
I try to stay positive, because I’ve always tried to conserve and be responsible, so it isn’t too bad, but I feel bad for the next generation or 2 at least. They asked for this even less than we did. But I feel the sooner we get on acting like this is a done deal the better, because most people aren’t going to care until they’re hurting.
I feel it’s time for people that care to start moving on the the acceptance phase of our future.
I’ve recently started to feel this way as well. One need not look any further than this thread itself to see that we’re fucked. The discussion here is a perfect example of how we seem to be frozen in some sort of complex “prisoner’s dilemma” between the public, the media, the politicians, the industry, etc. All this finger-pointing going around, when the reality is that most people AND (especially) most companies in the entire developed/industrialized world shares a large part of the blame for this, and because of the mentality (human nature) and manipulations (capitalist nature) at play, nothing will be done in time before our species starts to be completely decimated.
I’ve been recommending this article to people who seem to share this realization, because it not only describes what we’re thinking, but it also provides some resources to help us process this.
Edit: At the same time, I still would like to fight like hell to change our course. But I just don’t want to fight alone, and I fear that that’s what it would mostly feel like. Alone, or very, very few people by my side.
Pretty bad doomerism takes here.
I find articles like this so frustrating. It feels like it is aimed at being a wake-up call to the reader, but at the same time offers no solutions, no advice and still lays the blame at the feet of the average person for not doing enough. “What we have done to ourselves” is not advocate enough I guess?
Perhaps I’m not the target audience for the article. I grew up in an environmentally conscious home we’ll before it was trendy and have been worried about climate change for as long as I can remember. It’s hard to see an article like this as anything other than an effort to drive traffic…
I’d be happy to hear what others got out of the article if it was more positive than my read of it.
Climate despair is the new climate denial, and these doomer editorials are oil industry propaganda pivoting.
If we can’t do anything about it then nothing has to change and rich people keep getting everything they want.
I’m honestly super sick of this take. I keep seeing people say that the oil industry is responsible for doomers, and it’s as bad as climate denial.
Is it though? Of all the people I know, the only ones that take the situation at all seriously are the ones that actually truly believe we are in serious trouble. Only those people are voting primarly based on climate issues, taking part in protests, or making changes to lifestyle. The vast majority of people don’t actually believe we are in serious trouble. The vast majority of media is still feeding us the line that things are basically going to be fine with some incremental changes.
Oil companies are advocating for market solutions to the problem and continuing the status quo as long as possible. The idea they are trying to cause the greater population to actually believe they are doomed is insane. A population that actually believes they are doomed might take drastic action.
I dunno, I have the unfortunate experience of association with a lot of libertarian types. All of them believe we’re in serious danger, all of them believe it’s too late, and all of them are leaning hard into that “fuck you I got mine” mentality because it’s too late for anything else.
They do nothing to help except vote libertarian or green.
Who’s “we”, exactly?
