- cross-posted to:
- climate@slrpnk.net
- cross-posted to:
- climate@slrpnk.net
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Nice, seems like we’re finally getting to the point where we stop blaming the common people for climate change.
Also, this seems like a much, MUCH better PR move than throwing paint at masterpieces in fucking museums.
I don’t know who thought that was something that would have moved the public opinion towards their cause.Well it did seem to do a good job bringing attention to their cause. And, the worst damage incurred over the dozens of demonstrations was some minor frame damage. Imo it was kind of a brilliant scheme to get worldwide attention for the price of some tomato soup
Didn’t they choose art pieces which were protected by a glass window anyways? Getting so much attention with so little damage seems like a good move to be honest.
I don’t even know what you’re talking about so apparently it didn’t do that good of a job
It was these people. Go down to protests - art galleries. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Stop_Oil
Nah, that was pretty useless because it just brought ridicule of them and the cause. A lot like gluing themselves to public surfaces, which anyone I talk to remembers laughingly, but nobody can tell me what they were protesting. That’s completely useless.
This actually gets the point across.
They were throwing paint into corporate offices and CEO’s cars at the same time. The media chose to put the art vandalism on blast. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out the art vandalism was the idea of a corporate mole.
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No, I can believe that true believers thought that art vandalism was a good idea, but I’m just skeptical about where the idea originated from.
Not to sound like a dick, but you sort of sound like Matt Gaetz accusing Antifa of J6.
There is zero proof that these people are moles. I’d be hard pressed to find a white 20 something to act the part of a climate activist, on the behalf of the oil companies.
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Half the world could switch to a plant-based diet and it would barely make a dent
Our part is teeny tiny compared to corporations
But who is buying the goods and services these corporations produce? Mysterious figures in the night, or humans?
Greenwashing is a result of a change in consumer desire, not 100% what was wanted but a change non the less. If the people buying goods actually think before they buy and don’t just look at the lowest priced item then change will happen.
Many times people have no choice but to buy those goods due to years of monopolistic practices
actually think before they buy and don’t just look at the lowest priced item then change will happen.
When the choice is between saving the planet and eating and being able to afford rent, you can’t possibly blame someone for choosing the cheaper option.
[Edit] also want to add that while I’m still eating meat, I fully support vegetarianism.
I see this argument a lot about choosing between saving the planet and eating and affording rent. Of course that person is barely surviving they aren’t making choices for their food. The same can not be said for the middle class and up.
To instantly dismiss any argument that you as a person don’t have any responsibility in this, no matter how small, is ludicrous. We should all be doing all we can. Not blaming corporations but then still buying their products, eating their fast food, etc. Blame a corporation and then do something about it, like avoiding nestle products even if it means going without, especially for non essential items.
The demographic that can afford to make those changes, the middle class as you stated, have been a shrinking for decades due to wealth consolidation. They don’t make up the majority of people.
I’m not absolving any one person, I’m saying their impact is so minimal that combined with every other individual they wouldn’t come close to corporate impact so it’s stupid to single them out.
Not to mention, many people in that demographic are time-poor, even if they ostensibly have the money. It’s not like middle class people still have a stay at home parent to do all this emotional labor.
I’ve been flexitarian for decades, before it was a term. But it takes a lot more thought and time to eat healthy without animal products.
Of course that person is barely surviving they aren’t making choices for their food. The same can not be said for the middle class and up.
There is no “middle class.” There is only the working class, and the entire thing falls into that “barely surviving” category.
Blame a corporation and then do something about it, like avoiding nestle products even if it means going without, especially for non essential items.
Not only do boycotts not work, advocating for them is almost a bad thing because it only distracts people from advocating for the remedy that does work: enforcing antitrust law.
And that brings me to my main point, which is that both “blame corporations” and “blame consumers” are overly simplistic and wrong. The real problem is the systems that create the circumstances that both the corporations and the consumers are operating in. We should really be asking ourselves questions like this:
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Why is cheap food so often unsustainable, despite the fact that “sustainable” basically means “least costly” in the long run, by definition? The answer is that there’s a whole pile of subsidies and externalities that mean the full cost of the unsustainable food is being borne by somebody other than either the consumers or proverbial “big ag.”
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Why do even people who are “barely surviving” so often end up driving to buy fast food? The answer isn’t just that they “can’t cook” or “don’t have time” or whatever; there are deeper reasons for it. They don’t know how to cook because the public school system seems to have mostly stopped offering home ec class. They don’t have time because the zoning code forces their home to be far away from both their job and their grocery store, which not only robs them of the time spent making car trips between them the money spent owning a car in the first place, but also artificially incentivizes businesses with drive-throughs.
Of course, now you might think I’m simplistically trying to blame the government, but nope. Why’d the zoning code get written the way it was? Well, that’s for a whole bunch of reasons (most of them racist, BTW), but among them was the influence of corporate entities like Standard Oil and GM.
So now, taking all that shit I just wrote into consideration, what’s the bottom line? The bottom line is that the systems have to be changed, and that takes action from individuals and corporations and government – but mostly the latter, not because it’s the government’s “fault” but because government has the power to change laws. But even then, it’s not heavy-handed stuff like prohibiting eating meat or prohibiting driving; it’s stuff like ending subsidies, internalizing externalities (that’s what a carbon tax is for, BTW), and ending the failed Suburban Experiment by abolishing things like low-density zoning restrictions so that people can pop into the store for groceries on their walk home from work instead of having to make an onerous car trip to go “grocery shopping” or resorting to fast food.
The “cheapest” or easiest option has to become the most sustainable option, such that people freely choose it without being coerced. That’s the only way any real change will ever happen.
This took me a while to digest, but thanks for the thorough answer.
I agree that silly subsidies should be abolished and climate friendly subsidies should be enacted worldwide. However looking from the American lens you are talking in the change seems almost impossible. Democracy worldwide has been corrupted America being the largest example of this with “lobbyists”. How are these uneducated, time poor, malnutritioned people meant to make any change? Maybe I just have my doom and gloom face on today.
In Australia we can barely stop our government from cutting down ancient forests to make woodchips. Let alone the 3 new coal mines they opened, and this is the climate concious party.
Looking at all that I feel making personal changes is the only way I can personally stay motivated. At least I am doing what I can in the face of this seemingly impossible task.
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Food production is 35% of global greenhouse gases. Meat accounts for 60% of the emissions from food production. So yeah, if we cut global meat consumption in half it would absolutely make a dent.
Blaming the corporations is just a convenient way of putting the responsibility on somebody else. You can’t eat beef and then blame the farmer for the emissions caused by cattle production. You can’t drive a big truck and then blame the oil companies for the emissions. You can’t fly around the world and then blame the airlines. Corporations are selling stuff to people. Their emissions look huge because they’re the aggregate emissions of millions of people.
I’m not blaming the farmer, I’m blaming the megacorps that have control over the food supply. I’m blaming the lobbyists and corrupt politicians who push deregulation of industry.
I’m blaming the 1% whose hoarding has left so many people struggling, forcing them to work against their own best interest.
I said it in another comment, but you can’t blame someone for choosing to pay rent instead of buying eco-friendly products.
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Meat does NOT account for 60% of food production.
They said emissions.
Meat accounts for nearly 60% of all greenhouse gases from food production, study finds
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study
As for the rest of what they said:
The entire system of food production, such as the use of farming machinery, spraying of fertilizer and transportation of products, causes 17.3bn metric tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, according to the research. This enormous release of gases that fuel the climate crisis is more than double the entire emissions of the US and represents 35% of all global emissions, researchers said.
What this fails to account for is that a whole lot of land that produces beef can’t produce edible vegetables. It’s not so easy as flipping a switch.
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You misread my comment.
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Sure, sure. Whatever makes you sleep at night and keeps your overlords happy. Seriously, stop putting down your fellow men and start punching upwards. They are the problem, not people who eat meat.
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You sound really young
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When do you people stop pretending this is about the environment?
We can all adopt a plant based diet which will absolutely slow change as well as cost less than a diet that involves meat.
Found the vegan.
Some people need to eat meat: Like my room mate who has mass cell activation.
Also many indigenous peoples have dishes that involve meat. They are not apart of this problem.
Frankly there are a lot of reason to eat meat. If I go out and shoot my own deer and butcher it and cook it this does not effect the climate the same way as buying beef of the shelf.
And while beef is particularly resource and land intensive so are many vegetables you see at grocery stores.
Do you eat avocados? Because most avocados grown in mexico are done under control by violent cartels.
Many people probably should eat less meat. But acting like EVRYONE can do this is wrong on many fronts.
If you want to be a vegetarian please do. But lets stop acting like its a real solution to climate change or even a option for many people. It isnt.
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there is something you can do
there is something you can do, but being vegan doesn’t help.
I gotta be honest, this comes across more like excuses to not make changes or even admit your part. I’m not a vegetarian myself, but I’m under no delusions that my meal preferences aren’t bad for the environment and have ethical concerns. I eat meat anyway because honestly, I just like the taste and struggle to give that up. But I fully support those who can give it up and want to see lab grown meat be a viable replacement.
Like your roommate, nobody is saying literally everyone has to stop eating meat full stop. If you have a medical need, obviously keep eating meat. Similarly, reducing how much meat you eat is still an improvement. You don’t have to go 100% vegetarian.
Similarly, if indigenous folks can sustainably eat meat, cool. But most people simply aren’t doing that. And are you aware of why meat is so bad for the environment? I mean this 100% seriously: cow farts. Raising livestock ethically only addresses the moral problems with animal husbandry. This thread is about environmental problems. Land intensiveness doesn’t actually matter that much. The amount of land used isn’t the problem.
The avocados thing isn’t related to environment. Again, I gotta be honest here, this feels like an attempt at a “gotcha”. I get it. I struggled with the idea that my own consumption (which again, I still do) is bad for the environment. Plus I could never kill an animal myself. I can only eat meat because I emotionally separate myself from it. It’s a hard reality to face and I’m still not really comfortable with it. But we can’t act like “oh, you eat a bad thing, so I’m okay to do different bad things” is a good reasoning.
Don’t take things literally when someone says “we should all do X”. That’s not a personal attack on you if you don’t. That’s just how we talk. We say “everyone should watch the new Barbie movie because it’s really great” but I don’t actually mean literally every single human needs to watch it.
cow farts
Changing what we feed cows from like corn by-products to barley and hops by-products reduces this problem greatly. But of course the scale isn’t big enough.
Ok, I’ll give you a choice!
- Eat this food that’s made in a way that causes a lot of environmental problems
- Eat this food that’s made by the same company, except it claims it’s vegan, hides the fact it’s the same company by using 10 middle-men, but has great marketing
- Eat this actually environmentally friendly food. Wait, scratch that, you’re too poor to actually eat this regularly
- Starve to death
What great choices you have!
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what your suggesting takes time and equipment (and some experience with seasoning). the time alone can make it cost-prohibitive.
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many people still cannot afford it, no matter how your arrange the facts.
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You fell for the propaganda.
The 1% do more damage to the planet than consumer habits could ever hope up mitigate.
If you feel better making what you see as more sustainable life choices I fully support it and more power to you. But the reality is that it doesn’t matter whether or not we eat meat, sort your recycling, or bring our canvas bags to the grocery store.
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It’s understandable that you are overestimating your own impact.
You mean the half of humanity without clean water, reliable electricity, and certainly no Internet emits less CO2 than the top 10% (630M!) wealthiest people in the entire world? There are not 630M Billionaires. There are not even 630M Millionaires. An income of $80-100k puts you at 10% worldwide.
Sure, go right ahead. Tell the family with an income of $80k that they need to cut out their use of private jets and mega yachts. That’ll fix climate change right up.
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If you change the mind of one billionaire and you’ll have reached the same result as a million of ordinary people. But he’s got you convinced your mission is to punch down.
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The polluting corporations all sell consumer goods.
and we NEED to demand that they are made using green energy. The price incentives offered by the US government now are so fucking insane that the only thing keeping these companies from making a change is whatever fossil companies can offer them.
Just … You already know what you have to eat to mitigate this horror. And it ain’t plants, friend.
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I mean…you could
Yeah! As long as it’s not our fault!
The buck stops anywhere but here!
Both can be at fault and yes billionaires are worse but that’s not excuse for others to do nothing whatsoever
Edit: guessing the downvoters got mad when their moms asked them to clean their rooms. To even suggest they bear any responsibility is offensive apparently
seems like we’re finally getting to the point where we stop blaming the common people for climate change.
I mean the “common people” are to blame. The 1% doesn’t live in a vacuum.
Do billionaires carry a significantly larger portion of that blame? Yes. But we’re all on this gaseous rock together. Them being at fault doesn’t mean you can’t do your part. They couldn’t do what they do if the people weren’t buying the shit they’re selling.
Eat the rich!
Golf? I need to do some research. I’d be lining up more useless garbage like cruise ships, coal energy, gas powered mowers, and all of the ‘recyclable’ garbage that isn’t. Also styrofoam. Fuck styrofoam.
The gripe with golf usually lies within the incredibly high amounts of water needed to keep the courses green.
That makes sense. Places like Arizona make my jaw drop.
A lot of the courses in Arizona aren’t using potable water; they’re using treated waste water.
The locals know golf isn’t the problem in Arizona. It’s ‘use it or lose it’ water rights for agriculture, and selling land/water to foreign powers (Saudi alfalfa)
Then there shouldn’t be any opposition to courses in places like the PNW. Right?
Golf can use a terrible amount of water, plus keeping it mowed, and cutting forests for it. Places like Canada or the UK might be fine if it’s not a drought year. But there’s golf courses as far as Mexico. There’s places in Mexico that is so dry outside of the summer months that golf courses would use a disgusting amount of water to keep the greens… green… there was a golf course in Mexico I went to that only bothered with the putting area and a bit around that. Everything else was dirt. It wasn’t that pleasant of an experience because you do kick up dust when teeing off and whatnot. However, no way to lose your ball I suppose. Still, the water they needed just for the putting area must have been disgusting.
we need to change golf so it respects the land the course is built on, and doesn’t try to make everything look like scotland. keep the green as-is but make the fairway something that doesn’t use water, fits the local landscape (maybe have different solutions for different environments) and is just as playable as fairway grass. leave the out of bounds areas untouched. I think golf could serve to gain from forming itself to the terrain it’s played on, rather than the other way around
Scotland doesn’t and shouldn’t look anything like a golf course, hell the entire image of Scotland thats sold to the outside worlds is basically entierly artifically sculpted and maintained landscapes that continue to choke out our native species.
we need to change golf so it respects the land
But then you lose the feeling of entitlement.
And let’s face it, that, plus knowing you are better then everyone else is the whole reason to play!
The vast majority of courses are this way. The PGA level courses and private clubs are the main problems. For example in Florida many courses are part of treating waste water and act as a flood control for the surrounding condos.
I though it would be a neat twist to have sand dune golf courses with much smaller playing areas since you won’t hit the ball as far, and you can irrigate small patches of grass that you don’t mow and it gets 6-8" tall as a grass trap instead of a water/sand trap.
Basically what disc golf is
This is the best summary I could come up with:
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Climate activists have spraypainted a superyacht, blocked private jets from taking off and plugged holes in golf courses this summer as part of an intensifying campaign against the emissions-spewing lifestyles of the ultrawealthy.
Climate activism has intensified in the past few years as the planet warms to dangerous levels, igniting more extreme heat, floods, storms and wildfires around the world.
Tactics have been getting more radical, with some protesters gluing themselves to roads, disrupting high-profile sporting events like golf and tennis and even splashing famous pieces of artwork with paint or soup.
They’re now turning their attention to the wealthy, after long targeting some of the world’s most profitable companies – oil and gas conglomerates, banks and insurance firms that continue to invest in fossil fuels.
“We do not point the finger at the people but at their lifestyle, the injustice it represents,” said Karen Killeen, an Extinction Rebellion activist who was involved in protests in Ibiza, Spain, a favorite summer spot for the wealthy.
He published estimates of top billionaires’ annual emissions in 2021 and found that a superyacht — with permanent crew, helicopter pad, submarines and pools — emits about 7,020 tons of carbon dioxide a year, over 1,500 times higher than a typical family car.
The original article contains 873 words, the summary contains 212 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Based
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plugged holes in golf courses
I mean… that’s kind of pointless, many courses change hole locations daily anyway.
What the Letzte Generation did on Sylt was way more sensible: Replace hole flags with signs saying “natural reserve” and then plant native trees and flowers everywhere.
You’ve never heard of targeted ads?
Buy our product! 💥
Good. More of this please.
Pointless, but better than blocking roadways.
Ah yes protests against the rich have never been useful before
I remember being in LA during the Rodney King Riots in 1992. White people (especially privileged leftists) were all clutching their pearls, wondering why black folks were attacking their innocent Korean merchant neighbors and dragging random white people out of their cars and beating them, instead of going to rich people’s neighborhoods and attacking them, or attacking the systems of oppression. Clearly these white folks did not understand how oppression works.
When you’re the victim of random violence, and have reached your breaking point, and don’t know what else to do, you respond with random violence, against whatever and whomever is nearby.
Black folks in Compton had no way to get to the racist white power structure. It was insulated from their rage.
Can XR act against Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk? The board of Exxon? No way, they’re not accessible. So they attack whatever they can reach. The world is burning and they’re pissed off. Their targets may or may not make sense strategically. They aren’t trying to influence people or win friends. They’re just infuriated. Know the difference, try to understand with empathy.
Sorry, but in my book, nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies random violence. Your justification of it sickens me and I’m surprised that you got so upvoted. I’ve been on the breaking point from things that were happening inside my own home as a kid, but I never took it on my little brother, or other kids. Instead, I was taking it against the actual aggressor (my father), even if it resulted in more beatings and hairline broken jaws, and put the knife, or the gun on my head. So, yes, I’ve been through some shit myself. But I protected my brother and my mother as much as I could. Doing random violence, as you described it, against people who might have their own cross to bear is not justified. EVER.
And yes. They CAN act against Bezos, Musk, and the board of Exxon. They can easily find where these people are, paparazzis certainly can. Every second day we have pictures of Bezos with his darling gf. Get organized so the locals can take it against him when he visits somewhere. But you don’t act against your fellow citizen who is also a victim of oppression and climate change, or destroy classic works of art. What kind of BS is that??
His view is a product tailored by the elites… his entire story about his experience with the riots is proof of that. the rich whites made it so the poor whites were with the poor blacks when they jammed them up. when you grow up below the poverty line like i did, survival doesn’t allow for racism, because you have to rely on anyone willing to help, asian, black up down left or right. So if i did get attacked by my fellow poor black friends id be furious and would feel betrayed. color doesn’t justify random vengeance as you say
you are confusing explanation with justification, which is very common in social media and social world. The comment was more in line with social scientific explanation of HOW the random violence occurs, not saying that they are morally right. The ideological reality of north americans is a very distorted political, economic and social perception that clouds their minds, and confuses the correct ideas of cause and effect, and who has agency and responsibility for what. It is like if you were raised by everyone outside your family that the actions of your father are the result of the family dinamic , or a shared blame with the mother and children. Then your mind would not cognitively or intelectually process that your father was the agressor responsible for the situation, and you absolutely could lash out at your siblings or other kids.
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There’s an enormous gap between private jets & yachts, and golf. Most cities have municipal golf courses that are affordable and they even rent out clubs. Golf is a relaxing sport that preserves green spaces that would otherwise be parking lots. I’ve seen a lot of hate against golf on this site already though, so I guess it’s fashionable to hate it now.
It wouldn’t necessarily be a parking lot though would it? That’s just convenient for your argument. The truth is it would be extra easy and cheap to turn golf courses into public parks, with local trees and flowers instead of water guzzling grass. That would improve weather events, wildlife and human lives’ quality in the area.
There’s plenty to be outraged about other than golf. Cities aren’t running out of space because of a golf course.
Maybe not space, but water.
From 2003-2005, the average water use for golf course irrigation in the U.S. was estimated to be 2,312,701 acrefeet per year. That equates to approximately 2.08 billion gallons of water per day for golf course irrigation in the U.S.
Source: https://www.usga.org/content/dam/usga/pdf/Water%20Resource%20Center/how-much-water-does-golf-use.pdf
When I was in Africa they wanted to tear down a huge forest to build a golf course so tourists would come
“The yachts are just a small issue, focuse on the bigger issues first!” Said the yacht owner.
“There are so little private jets, you should focuse on bigger issues first!” Said the jet owner.
There’s an enormous gap between private jets & yachts, and golf. Most cities have municipal golf courses that are affordable and they even rent out clubs. Golf is a relaxing sport that preserves green spaces that would otherwise be parking lots. I’ve seen a lot of hate against golf on this site already though, so I guess it’s fashionable to hate it now.
Said the golf player.
“Green spaces” A golf course is basically a giant lawn. That space would be better as a park with actual trees and shit for everyone else that doesn’t give a shit about golf.
You make a compelling point. I think my hatred of golf is perhaps reactionary.
On the other side of things, golf courses take immense amounts of water, and earned its reputation as a rich person’s sport. While there may be some more affordable courses, it’s more often expensive and takes that green space away from the public to be sequestered to the wealthy.
And they have to clear land to build the course
Well, golf courses in california or arizona are to me criminal. Because of the water use. And golf courses in the middle of cities are deeply irresponsible land use. And yeah, I’d like more public land and more intermingling between the wealthy and the poor. But I suppose I’ve seen some responsible golf courses. I know of one that doesn’t even have or need sprinklers.
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Why?
Could you give them a moment? They have to get Bezo’s dick out of their mouth.
