I always hate that most people are happy to blame corporations, forgetting we are consuming that’s why corporations are creating.
Comment on take their money and arrest those responsible
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 1 month ago
Who buys and burns most of the fuel they create and why?
faintwhenfree@lemmus.org 1 month ago
14th_cylon@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
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.
GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca 1 month ago
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.
14th_cylon@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Many people don’t have the option
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!
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Well said
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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…
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 1 month ago
The corporations blame the consumer, the consumer blames the corporations and everyone gets to consume and profit blamelessly.
Ooops@feddit.org 1 month ago
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.
kayzeekayzee@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
Wouldn’t be us if they hadn’t lobbied for decades against renewables
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 1 month ago
It’s always easiest to blame someone else.
kayzeekayzee@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
How am I wrong?
Ooops@feddit.org 1 month ago
Yeah, we already knew how how propagandists operate. No need to spell it out what your are doing here.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 1 month ago
What am I doing here besides pointing out that people buy things that corporations create and no one is blameless here?
wander1236@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
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.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 1 month ago
That’s true, if you’re in a wheelchair then I can see an argument for the necessity of cars. But if you have working legs, you don’t really need a car.
psx_crab@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
I’m not gonna ride 50km round trip daily to work on my labour job. I mean i technically can with an ebike, but as someone with the lack of time, the time loss is really significant.
The thing about your opinion is, you’re assuming everyone work 5km away from home, or can reach it just crossing the street, but the reality of what we’re in now, is people often live far from their job because the rent is (significantly) cheaper, room is bigger, and they already have a car, and have near zero public transit availability. There’s many lazy people who wouldn’t walk 500m, but there’s even more people who aren’t given a chance to pick their mode of transport.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 1 month ago
You live 50 kilometres from your workplace?? What a bunch of bourgeois decadence! Never in human history has that been a sustainable lifestyle choice, except when there was a railway.
arctanthrope@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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
TheMightyCat@ani.social 1 month ago
As if there is nothing in between “don’t do anything” and “go live in the woods”
sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
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.
Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
I understand and agree with your general point, I don’t believe it’s counter intuitive but accept than many people do. In any case, you used range distance disparities too close together to be accurate with a shift from a 5 to 10 mpg split. I’ll just covert to a unit per distance, as you referenced (gallons per 100 miles): 15 mpg = 6.67 gallons per 100 miles 20 mpg = 5 gallons per 100 miles 30 mpg = 3.33 gallons per 100 miles 40 mpg = 2.5 gallons per 100 miles
As calculated upgrading from 15 mpg to 20 mpg would take 1.67 fewer gallons to go 100 miles while upgrading from 20 mpg to 30 mpg would also take 1.67 fewer gallons to go 100 miles. Upgrading from 30 mpg to 40 mpg would only further reduce fuel required to go 100 miles by 0.83 gallons.
Again, I with your broader point, 15 to 20 being the same improvement as 20 to 30 is likely just as impactful and also accurate.
arctanthrope@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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
TheMightyCat@ani.social 1 month ago
Sure there probably is a minimum somewhere, but most people are far above that minimum.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 1 month ago
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!
bryndos@fedia.io 1 month ago
Are you an AI? It sounds live you live in a binary world.
TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
- Industry that produces commodities for sale in rich Western countries.
- Industry, military, and direct individual consumption in rich Western countries.
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.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 5 weeks ago
All these companies make things for people to buy.
That means the people buying the things are not blameless either.
TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
If you want to have a conversation you’ll need to reply to what I actually said.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 5 weeks ago
I chose to explain to you why your comment failed to reply to what I said.
nsrxn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
governments and industry
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 5 weeks ago
Who buys and burns most of the fuel they create and why?
nsrxn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
industry is speculating. governments are oppressing people.
quill7513@anarchist.nexus 1 month ago
“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
ChilledPeppers@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
No ethical consumption under capitalism, I scream, at my local farmers market. (Made up quote btw).
But yeah, fuck oil companies, they are real fuckers.
quill7513@anarchist.nexus 1 month ago
Farmer’s markets, co-ops, and mutual aid all exist as forms of resistance to capitalism purely by making sure your dollars go to people within your community rather than get captured by the modern company store through Wal-Mart or Target. At the same time though, they are also not everything. It’s a whole thing. Nothing anywhere is or can be perfect. The best we can do is the best we can do. I know that sounds like a thought terminating cliche but sometimes it’s important to set aside the things you can’t control and to focus on the things you can and have faith that the more people that do that the easier it will become to resist the horrors that surround us all
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
So I should starve to death so that the multinational conglomerates never have to face any consequences? Miss me on that one.
quill7513@anarchist.nexus 5 weeks ago
this is in fact the opposite of what i’m saying