That’s so very sad, especially because Shell just does it for fun. If, at the very least, there would be some kind of product we could reduce demand for to stop Shell from being so bad. But alas, we can only blame them and never challange our own behaviour - since you know, no one single person ever made any difference at all.
But corporation bad no?^/s
I mean — despite our own collective apathy, and want for oil-based products — the answer is still unironically yes
Maybe we could stop them from lobbying so hard against alternatives to try and kill the development or adoption of them? Maybe we could stop them from bribing lawmakers to support subsidies for themselves while denying subsidies for alternatives?
Or wait, here’s a good one, maybe we could stop them from spending billions of dollars on ad campaigns and BS propaganda that downplays their contribution while pushing a message that the real problem is all those awful individuals like us who are really the ones who should be sacrificing rather than the poor, misunderstood, multi-billion dollar international conglomerates?
Great, instead of Shell, just buy BP, or Exxon… Oh wait… they’re up to exactly the same shit, and are all together deliberately holding us captive and keeping any realistic alternative from being accessible to the masses because they know it will replace them…
First remove head from ass, then form opinion…
Great suggestion, I can help you pull! After your head is free, maybe consider life style changes like, you know, using your legs instead of a car. Or a bike. I’m not saying that everyone can do that and certainly not on every trip, but I’m definitely saying that a lot of people drive their cars around without needing to. Not to mention the amount of people driving around in cars that are way too large and way too heavy.
Oh, but wait, those are obviously unrealistic alternatives and even if they weren’t, Shell executives would come over personally and break your legs. How could I forget - silly me.
like, you know, using your legs instead of a car.
Like, you know, some people fucking can’t. I’m literally housebound, have never owned a car, and haven’t been on a flight in about 2 decades, I guarantee you consume significantly more oil than I ever could. You really did pick the wrong fucker to make your ableist and exclusionary assumptions about (E: though I LOVE the projection - you assumed I’m against shifting responsibility to individuals because I don’t want to change my habits, when in reality it’s you who are unwilling to change yours, your habit being punching down instead of up because those at the top told you to).
And you know what, if you disappeared tomorrow and didn’t even use any of that oil - that still wouldn’t solve a fucking thing (in terms of oil production that is, otherwise if that happened it’d definitely be a more pleasant world lmfao).
Because individual use isn’t the fucking problem and would be resolved if the oil companies weren’t keeping society hostage for profit. Individual solutions CANNOT solve systemic problems
But sure, whatever helps you continue to blame the little person you can feel superior to, rather than face any real threat to your ego - pointing the finger at those actually at fault (which you feel inferior to because deep down you actually look up to the
scumbagowning class), and trying to act against the cause of the problem, not its symptoms.So I’ll make the same suggestion again - first remove head from ass, then form opinion - yours is wrong, and will continue to be no matter how many times you repeat the same propaganda to yourself and others, you pushing it exclusively serves those you claim you want to stop (and your own little ego, of course), the fact is - you are choosing to be an active shill for those exploiting humanity and the planet, but hey, isn’t it so much easier blaming other powerless people and convincing yourself you’re this brave souled warrior than it is to face reality… Smmfh… Self cantered, wilfully ignorant, ableist clown.
TL;DR: the oil companies have spent billions if not trillions on developing a button especially for people like you to press to make you feel like you’ve acted and give you the warm fuzzies, when in reality all pressing the button does is make them more money, a fact you can easily confirm for yourself, but you don’t because that empty dopamine hit and pretence of acting that the oil companies have provided you with just feel too good.
Like, you know, some people fucking can’t. […] ableist and exclusionary assumptions […]
And i quote myself: “I’m not saying that everyone can do that and certainly not on every trip, […]”.
I guarantee you consume significantly more oil than I ever could.
First you judge me for making assumptions and projections, then you make assumptions about me. I work from home. I don’t have a drivers license and neither does my girlfriend. I don’t go on vacations, I rather stay at home. I’ve only ever boarded a plane three times, all of them work related. I don’t even order stuff online, expect for my girlfriend. And just for good measure, I’m vegan too! For the most part, I could only reduce my CO2 further by dying.
But enough of the dick measuring contest. I don’t care for you personally, we’re talking about the average person here. It just was funny to address you personally to throw back your needlessly added “head in your ass” insult.
And you know what, if you disappeared tomorrow and didn’t even use any of that oil - that still wouldn’t solve a fucking thing (in terms of oil production that is, otherwise if that happened it’d definitely be a more pleasant world lmfao).
Personal insult, that’s always the sign of someone being right! Like, your post is littered with that stuff. Maybe take a few deep breaths or something.
[the fucking rest of your post]
You keep on blaming the companies here and I mean, that’s not wrong. They are destroying the world with no regard for anything but wealth. But let me introduce to a concept so advanced, it’s taught in 5th grade or something: Supply and demand. Shell destroys the environment to by extracting and selling oil. If no one buys oil, they stop. It’s not profitable anymore. “But nuh-uh” I hear you say, “other companies use more oil than we do!”. And I’m sure they do it for funsies too! It’s not like, e.g. logistic companies use that shit to deliver stuff to you or anything. Once again, something we could reduce by ordering less as a whole. There is not a single company that could keep on doing their thing if its customer base would crumble away. “But it’s impossible to be perfect” and therefore not worth trying, eh? Just keep on shaking your fist at clouds, old man.
If the demand for ecological solutions would grow, companies would become more ecological simply because that’s where the money is. Companies and even whole industries that used to be big die all the time, often supplemented by some “Millennials killed X!” articles. They are not some form of omnipotent force, if enough individuals decide against supporting them, they die. It’s just that not enough people care and you actively tell them to not care. Even if you’re right and individual actions do mostly nothing, once enough individuals actively try to fix the problem some are bound to be CEOs, shareholders, politicians and lobbyists. We just need to hit critical mass for people that care.
And you know what, if you disappeared tomorrow and didn’t even use any of that oil - that still wouldn’t solve a fucking thing (in terms of oil production that is, otherwise if that happened it’d definitely be a more pleasant world lmfao).Personal insult, that’s always the sign of someone being right! Like, your post is littered with that stuff. Maybe take a few deep breaths or something.
it’s not a personal insult, it’s a thought experiment.
it’s taught in 5th grade or something: Supply and demand
besides being grossly condescending, your understanding of this price discovery theory is, itself, elementary.
That’s a bit like saying “you think individuals consume a lot of food? Look at restaurants!”
Yeah it’s a shitty parsing of it, because my mind went there too.
But if the restaurant was using 1 entire cow to make 1 single 1/2lb burger, that’s on the restaurant to do better.
There’s a lot of that happening that corporations need to focus on.
The emissions attributed to Shell are the emissions of their customers. People love to play dumb to make a point.
True. Plus the whole backstory of car companies buying and destroying what little public transit there was in this country to force us into cars.
destroying what little public transit there was
Hey now, let’s not stray into historical revisionism. Make no mistake: there was a lot of public transit back in the early 20th century. For example, here’s Atlanta’s streetcar map from exactly 100 years ago:
That’s not just a fuck-ton more streetcar (or subway/other rail) routes than Atlanta has now; that was legitimately good coverage of most of the city!
Edit: Oh yeah, and that applies to intercity rail too, by the way:
Never forget the full breadth and scope of what was stolen from us.
Sure, but perhaps people could stop eating at that restaurant?
Because how some people currently are acting is that they continue to support these corporations, unwilling to switch to alternatives.
You need a car to get to work. How are you supposed to not buy oil? The point is the fossil fuel industry gave us no real alternative, you don’t have to eat at a restaurant to survive but you need a job to.
No I don’t. I don’t even have a driving license.
It’s also not just about cars. Oil is in other products people can try to avoid. Everyone can do something. Everything between voting for the right direction to changing your whole life around it. It doesn’t matter where, as an individual, you can exist on that spectrum. As long as people don’t just throw their hands to the air and deny all responsibility.
Yea, bc you’re German. Americans aren’t so lucky, and nothing constructive comes from acting like that makes you superior to Americans, who for the most part are literally forced to drive places
If the restaurant is the only source of food around, what do you do then? Not eat?
It transpose into the fact that North American societies made car centric cities with poor public transit where many place that aren’t a city, you need a car to literally do everything.
And even cities cut budgets for public transit.
A simple example from a friend of mine. He makes an effort to go to work by public transit instead of taking his car.
If he takes his car, it’s a 10 minutes ride. If he takes public transit, it takes him an hour to get to work. I wouldn’t blame him for taking his car to get to work.
Well, ten minutes by car probably means he could gobwith a bicycle !
But 58 million Americans emit as much as shell
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Look the important thing is always that it’s someone else’s fault and if I were to change my ways it wouldn’t make a difference anyway so let’s just all keep doing what we’re doing.
I feel like there’s a middle ground where we recognize that we can take steps to not actively contribute to the problem while also squarely blaming the system for creating this.
I can’t expect people to walk or cycle six miles to work in -40F temperatures when virtually no public transportation infrastructure exists in my town. (Especially applies to older people, or people with disabilities, or hell, kids whose parents drag them to some fucked up place like disconnected suburbs or remote rural homesteads).
I can and do choose to walk/cycle/skate more, turn down the heat, buy upcycled clothes, look for products manufactured in the US/Canada/Japan/Europe/etc. (not because of some sick sense of nationalism, but because they’re less likely to use straight-up slave labor). I can and do choose to meet with my city council rep and offer to serve in my community in a way that will hopefully lead to positive change.
But at the end of the day, it’s also important to remember that capitalism and greed are at the root of the problem, and I hope for the type of radical systemic change we really need in order to fix this.
This complexity is the problem. Thanks to insufficient funding for education, many people find it difficult to understand to understand complex problems and their full context, so they want simple “solutions” that are black and white, instead of the grey of reality.
Many people also are prone to zero sum thinking. When you tell them that everyone is responsible, they hear “We shouldn’t blame corporations, YOU are to blame!”
Even though that’s neither what you said nor thought.
Zero sum thinking + cognitive dissonance.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t acknowledge that the system is at fault, but we should also be able to acknowledge that change requires us to change our own habits to shift the status quo. Where I live there used to practically be no vegetarian meals other than salads and fries and now (in cities at least) you’ll be hard pressed to find a restaurant that doesn’t offer realistic vegan options on the menu.
That didn’t happen because the system decided “wow, animal rights” but because people, with their wallet, were the voice of change. Same goes for other mentioned issues. We have a system in place in Germany that allows unlimited regional travel for a flat price of 49 euro a month (or 39 for people getting social help or even 29 euro for students). That’s one thing that’s trying to provide a more environmentally friendly alternative for everyone. Change is possible and your actions to contribute.
I just deteste when people act like there isn’t anything we could do and that that somehow excuses their lack of effort or interest.
Agreed, especially western countries that have their CO2 targets, then barely make them and shout at countries like China for having big emissions. Yeah no shit, if you outsource all your manufacturing to China then you don’t have any emissions at home, because the factory isn’t there, it’s in China. Same thing with health and safety regulations, child labor etc. Look at us being all high and mighty, no children working here (except the US, we don’t talk about that), we have proper health and safety regulations. Boo China why are you like this? Oh right, we made you this way.
And why did all the factories move to China? Capitalism…
Also a lot of that carbon produced by Shell is the same carbon counted as emitted by the people, right? Or does the Shell number just include whatever they release while producing the gas and then it being burnt is only counted towards the people?
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That just means we have to get rid of 58 million Americans to balance it out!
Are you taking volunteers
Pick victims based on a series of cruel games they have to play against each other. Call it The Shell Game.
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Ooo they’re tryin!
/Meseeks
We’re gaining upwards of 15 million Americans just in Biden s first term. Thanks Obama!
Ah, the old “this solution isn’t 100% effective, thus I shall ignore it”.
Shell is creating products you are buying. We can regulate them harder, but you can ALSO just not buy their product. We can do multiple things that contribute, you just don’t want to, because it’s slightly inconvenient for you.
I’m not buying any Shell products. Yet they destroy my life and world.
It’s basically impossible not to buy Shell products. Even if you don’t buy from Shell directly, chances are there are products of Shell in the products you buy. And even if that isn’t the case, chances are the factory the product is made uses a lot of Shell products and so do all the factories that made the components and so do the shipping companies that shipped all the stuff around the world.
Shell is freaking huge, they are everywhere and one of the biggest companies in the world. They don’t just make gasoline, they have so many products and have their claws in a lot of industries.
Probably. It was a reply to someone writing that the solution would be for me to not buy their product.
I don’t even know how to use the three shells!
Your personal action affects only your own carbon footprint, and if you somehow eliminate it entirely, you alone can reduce carbon emissions by 16 tonnes per year.
However, by funding climate research, educating the public, and most importantly: contacting your lawmakers, you can affect the footprints of many thousands or potentially millions of people. If you do even 0.001% of the work required for getting a law passed that cuts Shell’s emissions by only 1%, you will have reduced the global carbon footprint by approximately 90 tonnes per year (58000000 * 16 * .01 * .00001 = 92.8). That’s more than 5 times as effective a use of your time, assuming you were able to do each with an equivalent amount of effort.
Vote with your wallet, yes, but NEVER underestimate the power of campaigning for change. A person’s actions carry further when they affect the actions of others.
Your personal action affects only your own carbon footprint
That’s not true. If I take the bus, I increase ridership and resources for buses, which in aggregate can lead to improvements to the bus route, which can convince others to ride. the people at your local city government can have a much easier time justifying an increase to public transit spending if they can show high or increasing transit ridership. Depending on your individual circumstances one may provide better impact to effort than another but taking a bus is as much political action as voting.
Riding the bus alone will discourage others from taking the bus because they’ll see the busses as more crowded. Taking the bus and using that to convince others to also ride the bus by talking to them about your experiences will. Political action can include anything you do with the intent of influencing others to change their behavior. If you don’t add that step, you cannot reduce other’s carbon footprints.
Great, instead of Shell, just buy BP, or Exxon… Oh wait… they’re up to exactly the same shit, and are all together deliberately holding us captive and keeping any realistic alternative from being accessible to the masses because they know it will replace them…
First remove head from ass, then form opinion…
I’m very sorry you see absolutely no alternatives to driving a car, but I think it’s a bit unfair to claim my head is up my ass because of your lack creativity.
This post is a call to action. You should take it as a call to action.
You should be going to marches.
You should be rallying and participating in your local politics.
You should be supporting groups fighting for better public transit, stricter regulations and the budget to enforce it, and right to repair.
You should be voting with environmental Policy in mind.
You can do personal changes too, and encouraging others to do the same. but the vast majority of humans will not change until it’s easy and gratifying or they’re forced to. It will take exponentially more work getting a meaningful number of people to listen to you’re propaganda. Its much more efficient to target the infrastructure around them to incentivize the change.
But that’s the point. You can do both. You could do anything, just don’t shrug and go “it’s only corporations”.
That’s not point. Individualist solutions are weak in comparison - a drop in the bucket. Collectivist solutions are what will actually be the brunt of solution. You’re pitching a patch kit for damage that needs a full rework.
By all means, cut you’re consumption, but realize that your consumption change isn’t going to do nearly enough on its own. That’s the point of what’s being said above.
And my point is that structural reform is neither fast, total or certain. It’s preferable, but if you can change some things today, that’s a great temporary thing in addition to maybe changing everything in 10 years.
Yes, and people are already getting hit with propaganda constantly encouraging them to recycle, take the bus, buy fewer clothes, and a bunch of other minute actions. Some people even followed through.
This post was explicitly about getting people to support action against corporations, and your response to it was to take a dig at the message and promote more of the most common environmentalism propaganda in the US - as if it wasn’t promoted to high hell already.
Remember everyone, corporations aren’t at fault for climate change, it’s YOUR fault for living in a country that requires driving a car where everything is made of plastic and powered by coal! Shame!!!
/s, fuck off with the blatant propaganda that is your “carbon footprint”. You should support more sustainable stuff when you can, literally nobody is claiming otherwise (besides oil and car companies). But your carbon footprint is a molecule of water in the pacific ocean. Plus oil and car companies have been specifically trying to make other options less accessible. Fuck off if you think that climate change is caused by people and not corporations
You guys know we buy shell products right?
You know shell along with a handful of other companies actively block any other option for us, and hold us captive to their exploitation, right? 🙄
Objectively false/hyperbolic statement. Shell haven’t stopped me buying a second hand electric car and a heat pump for my property.
If you’re wealthy you can avoid shell
Oh fuck you’re right, it didn’t occur to me I could just be wealthy to avoid consuming shell products xD sorry for not being wealthy enough to be a good person m’lord
You’re taking it the wrong way. I’m criticising the wealthy for not doing their part, not anyone that can’t afford it.
The world is fucked up, you do what you can.
But nice, well done for turning this conversation into a class war instead of focusing on the issue at hand
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I’ve lost interest in you and anything you have to say after that comment. Maybe try to have constructive conversation next time
It’s my fault for not being open to constructive conversion, not your fault for being an insufferable fucker who acts better than others bc they have more money, I see. I could’ve had a constructive conversation, just not with a holier than thou piece of shit who thinks victims of capitalism are more responsible for climate change than the capitalists
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You’re twisting words and replying emotionally. I said it’s objectively false/hyperbolic that “any” person can’t avoid shell, which I did not contradict.
Read and think before you reply, also resulting to insults is childsplay, nice one
“You know shell along with a handful of other companies actively block any other option for us, and hold us captive to their exploitation, right? 🙄” this is an objectively true statement, even after you shift the goalposts. Just because you avoid shell specifically doesn’t mean the other oil companies you support are any better. And yes, you support the fuck out of them no matter what because it’s current year and everything is made of plastic.
What the fuck even is your point if you’re not shitting on poor people like you say? What the fuck was the point of “debunking” the “claim” that oil companies run everything and work to block more sustainable options? What fucking side are you on??? You’re like those fuckers who claim to hate netanyahu and likud but only ever mention hamas’ crimes, so clearly trying to look like an ascended centrist while supporting mass murder
Yeah I’m sure shell and co really forced the sale of 750k F-series trucks last year, right?
No they don’t. They don’t understand that industry emits carbon because we consume their products.
I wonder if it’s a cope mechanism or ignorance.
Daily reminder that carbon footprint is a myth created by big oil
Not a myth. Most of your actions in this world are generating carbon.
More accuratly, it was a PR campaign to shift blame from big oil.
PR campaign to shift blame from big oil
They aren’t drilling for the fun of it. They do it because you pay them to do it.
Damn, you’re right, I’ll just take the train to work instead to avoid having to use my car and thus pay for gas, so simple!
What’s that? Car and oil companies lobbied hard as fuck to ensure public transit in the US wouldn’t be good enough, forcing people to use alternative means of transportation?
Well, shit
Car and oil companies lobbied hard as fuck to ensure public transit in the US wouldn’t be good enough
I thought the lack of transit had more to do with everyone wanting their own suburban home with a yard, two cars, boats, campers, etc.
Me as an end consumer buys a relatively tiny % of oil directly from Shell.
Well, “generation” of carbon usually requires fusion of He atoms in a star.
“Carbon dioxide footprint” is less punchy.
The only thing is that there are 9 billion people per shell
The only other thing is that the entire 9 billion wouldn’t all be emitting the same amount as each other.
And honestly more practical to deal with 1 rather than 9b
but the problem is that we need to do both. we’re not blameless, and throwing our hands up and doing nothing because they won’t either is incredibly not helpful.
just like when voting, individual action may feel pointless and hard, but it’s still necessary. we can still do things and make choices, but everyone is just giving up now because of this feeling…
of course corporations are polluting more, but so are we, and we can still force change through consumer action. just like conservatives are dumb for bitching about companies “catering to the left” when it’s actually just the same things they always have and always will do: cater to the average. if more of us would stop and think "huh, this product uses less packaging, maybe that should be a factor in my purchasing decision."these companies would start using less packaging. but no, most people just open something over packaged, and either don’t notice, or shake their heads for a moment and comment on the plastic waste before buying the same thing again next time…
we can’t be defeated by the inaction of others. if we do, then even their action won’t be meaningful if/when it comes. it’s going to take more than just one side…
what you are doing is called “Individualization of Responsibility” and it is a successfull tactic used by fossil-fuel-lobbies to shift blame away from themselves.
https://medium.com/@mitpress/individualization-plant-a-tree-buy-a-bike-save-the-world-ecb916df95e4
edit: don’t get me wrong. I don’t think you are doing this intentionally. But I do think, that by accident you are being useful to fossil-fuel companies
Not the person above, but Corporations are built around the idea of selling something. The biggest way to reduce your environmental impact is to not buy shit. Doesn’t matter if the shit is eco friendly, more shit means more emissions.
Corporations don’t pollute for shits and giggles. They pollute because they want to make stuff for us to buy. Shell doesn’t just make pollution, they pollute on the way to producing gas.
If we cut back on how much gas we use, Shell pollutes less because they have less gas to sell.
That doesn’t absolve Shell of their role in chasing profits over environmental protection, and there’s plenty of space for demanding better and holding them accountable, but acting like these corps pollute just cuz is disingenuous. They pollute because we want shit.
So I need food, but it’s all sold in plastic, should I starve? Or should I blame those who produce food?
You should blame them and still choose options with less plastic where possible? I don’t see where this idea of black and white, one or the other comes from
Where it’s feasible given your financial and geographical means, avoid food wrapped in plastics, foods shipped from far away, and meats. Not every single item in the store comes in plastic. It will require adjusting your habits, for sure.
No need to demonize anyone for not being able to if it doesn’t work, but every time you choose something better, it’s an incremental step forward.
At the same time, send an email or phone call to the grocery store manager. Write to your local politician and push for laws regarding stricter use of plastics, more comprehensive recycling programs, or funding and grants for local farmers.
Simply being angry online and not changing your own habits or lobbying for change isn’t actually improving anything.
Can’t buy what isn’t sold.
addendum: this is not an excuse to do nothing on a personal level. you are just as bad as the corporations if you act carelessly like you can’t help change anything. go vegan
Whenever I say this I get gang downvoted by people on this site.
What most fail to understand is they are contributing to the emissions of shell and other major contributors to global warming by purchasing or using anything which relates to their products.
The wealthy humans can afford to avoid these products, but they cop out. Personally I’ve bought a second hand electric car and gone vegan over the last 18 months. It’s more expensive than not changing my car but I could afford it and now I don’t support the oil industry at all. Next on my list is my natural gas house boiler.
I’ve had people say 4 return flights a year isn’t many flights and isn’t a factor to climate change, especially compared to businesses which fly employees everywhere. Madness
Do we have the proper infrastructure to make sure everyone can take on a vegan diet?
You can take a vegan diet right now, no problems at all.
Just focus on yourself, then convince one other person later down the line
At once? No. But via advocacy and trying to claw people to the side of veganism, even partially, over time industry adjusts.
absolutely, plants and vegetables have been around since the dawn of time, and once we stop funneling those plants through animals so they can grow fat and get slaughtered, we can just eat the plants directly from the source :) like @Cowbee said (no idea how to tag people on lemmy, sorry), however, getting everyone on board is a process
the only reason why animal meat is so rich in b12-vitamins is because it is artificially pumped with it. nutritionally the exact same as taking a supplement tablet, except the supplement tablet doesn’t go through a gas chamber before they sell it to us
edit: here’s a handy site that answers the most frequent arguments against veganism: https://yourveganfallacyis.com/en - i also recommend Ed Winters (“earthling ed” on youtube), i’m currently reading through the first of his two recent books on veganism
Joke’s on you: I plan to live at least 58 million years.
You better become vegan then.
He already is, that’s why he said he is going to live that long
Choline deficiency catches up eventually.
Choline is in many vegan foods: grains, nuts, brassicas, beans, lentils, everything made from Soja,…
You should check out how much of those you need for RDI, enjoy your 2lbs of soybeans daily.
I eat a vegetarian diet my whole life, vegan on and off for most of my life and reached old person years with no Cholin deficiencies in sight.
No, you do not need to eat 2lbs of soybeans daily.
You can educate yourself on Cholin here, for example: Concentrations of Choline-Containing Compounds and Betaine in Common Foods
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Choline-Consumer/
Educate yourself they say, I say you can’t do maths if you think that’s the case. Your mental deficiency is obvious even if you can’t feel it.
Jfc, it’s distressing to see how many people buy in to the personal responsibility propaganda and are actively not only licking the boot that’s on all our necks, but doing the corporations’ dirty work for them, gleefully, ignoring the entire picture (the deliberate spending of many trillions, and holding governments in their pockets to keep us dependant on oil and having no viable alternative) except the tiny little fragment they’re comfortable confronting - other individuals. It’s both gross and concerning.
It is not a matter of responsibility, it is a matter of action. Being less consumerist on a grand scale would be a kick in the balls for most of these big corporations which rely on our consumption habits. They exist because we consume. %90 of the stuff Amazon sells is unlikely essential goods, yet we buy them. We eat much more meat than we should and then we get angry at deforestation. Blame them all you want, most wont exist without our over-consumption habits.
You’re herding cats at that point, though. The vast majority of people will not change their ways because:
A: its exponentially harder for them to do so. Not driving in the majority of the US is flatout not viable for work and groceries, changing your diet is fucking difficult period, etc. Unless they’ve got a damned good reason that isn’t some cosmic cataclysm they don’t even fully get how it’ll affect them, they’re not going to change.
B: Companies are actively pumping out propaganda and lobbying to fuck over anyone attempting to change the status quo. When shown two different pieces of information, people will usually choose the one that causes less cognitive dissonance, and being told you’re killing the planet by filling up your gas tank causes alot of that, so alot of people just buy into the big oil propaganda.
We need to tackle these issues locally - getting entire towns and cities to actually cooperate with climate-friendly policies ; Then States; Then Countries - if we want to make any actual meaningful headway.
Not driving in the majority of the US is flatout not viable for work and groceries
Yeah but if you and 10 friends inconvenience yourselves and do it otherwise, or inconvenience yourself by showing up at 11am on a tuesday to city council meetings you can make the bus a little better, and then it makes sense for a couple more people who were on the fence, which drives more improvements. I don’t really care whether you start with the council meeting or the bus ride, we need both really, one enables the other.
This is all just a false dichotomy, it’s all the same shit. Phrasing it differently and fighting over it is just distracting.
I agree on its difficulty though entrenched in this very narrow local minima of a capitalist society, I presume no alternative would be much easier.
Nevertheless there are major shifts in these directions in other parts of the world. And what you are suggesting is actually adding forces to the system to push people in the direction I mentioned. Otherwise where there is over-consumption and demand, capitalism will find a way to expand again.
Legit question, because I never really see a breakdown of these numbers. I always hear about corporations emitting n number cO2, but it’s never really the whole story (I don’t think) But, is this from developing their product, or is is it the development of said product plus the use of that product? Like in Shells’ case, is it them making gas (I know they do more, but for the sake of argument…) and the use of their gas in vehicles across the world? Or is the use of the gas calculated into the individual person’s number?
I’m not trying to start anyrhing, I am genuinely trying to understand.
This is my big criticism of these claims, because it really seems like the latter.
Yeah, it’s a disgusting mess. Yeah corporations are given far too much privilege. But if Shell weren’t around, there’d still be demand for oil that would be met by someone else.
The problem there isn’t Shell…not directly, at least (they’re certainly guilty of a lot, including lobbying to protect their position)…the problem is the oil. Redirecting to “the corporations” just ignores that.
You could say the same about the meat producers and the people who are clear cutting the rainforests and planting alfalfa in the deserts of Arizona to feed cows in the Middle East. Some seriously fucked chain of events must’ve happened to make that the logical and profitable choice yet, here we are.
But don’t use plastic straws.
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If someone says “fuck oil companies” and they drive an ICE car, then their argument had better be “I wish the government would make the thing I do every day illegal”. If they want their car to be legal, then there is no possible way to satisfy their demand that there be no oil extraction. And that means nobody is going to listen to their nonsense, because nobody can. I say “fuck oil companies” and I ride a bicycle. I actually want to make cars illegal. I’m actually making demands that a politician has a hope in hell of satisfying. But there’s no legislature change that can make anti-oil car drivers happy.
That’s because it’s impossible to just rip out oil our cars from the current economy and city design. It can’t be a bandaid that gets ripped off.
Getting rid of ICE cars is the easy part. All we gotta do is ramp up electric production and distribution. Decades of neglected maintenance and upgrades. And hopefully done now using cleaner fuels like solar/wind/nuclear.
Getting rid of cars…well, that’s gonna take massive redesigns of suburbs and cities. Can’t let perfect be the enemy of good here. Gonna have to build up intra-city mass transit as well as increase park-and-ride availability and utilization for the suburbs. But even then, nobody in the burbs is gonna ride their bike 3 miles to the grocery store with two kids in tow to be able to carry home maybe two or three days worth of groceries.
But nearly every suburb was designed, or spent the majority of its incorporated days, around personal cars. Thats gonna need a lot of unfucking.
I’ve stayed at not one but two different beach houses, in different towns, that look on paper to be really close to the beach. But due to no cut throughs, private property, fences and culs de sac, what should have been a 5 or 10 minute walk to the shore became a 20 minute walk to the edge of the beaches sprawling parking lot. With two little kids and a beach cart, a 5-10 minute walk along backroads, totally easy. A 20 minute walk, half of which along busy streets (which, when there are sidewalks, they’re overgrown with prickly bushes and poison ivy, pushing you out into the shoulder) before even getting to another 10 minute walk across a parking lot before you touch sand, does not a good vacation make.
I prefer to put the goal first and let people’s ingenuity take care of the solution. If I had a fleet of battleships in orbit of earth, I’d start by saying “every car is getting blown up with plasma guns on 1 Jan in five years, with or without people inside”. Then I’d watch everyone with a shred of self preservation do whatever needs to be done to fix the problem. It’s just a matter of willpower and determination, it’s not like these problems can’t be solved in a few short years.
That all depends on the industry in question. I’m not sure about Shell.
But the key point is that regulating individual action, or focusing on individual action, is only a small part of the problem. We need to focus on the big polluters first and foremost. And we know who they are, even if we don’t know exactly how to parse the data.
This is a false dichotomy, the way you shutdown O&G is through political action, making personal choices to limit your personal carbon output is a political action. It directly hurts O&G and directly helps the alternatives.
Making a personal choice helps drive political will which changes how people make personal decisions which drives political will. Arguing about which step to bootstrap the process seems pointless. If it’s easier for you to show up at Tuesday at 11am to city council meetings and yell for more bus routes do that. If it’s easier to increase your commute 20minutes and drive up ridership to give ammo to the council people, do that. If it’s easier to drop a big sum of money to lobby the government do that. Just do whatever you can that helps.
We are all drops of rain in an ocean, but without the rain the ocean would run dry.
You fell into the trap that this post is exposing. Of course personal action matters, everyone knows it and there’s no chance we’ll forget it, but the heavy polluting companies want to focus our attention on that alone, to keep it off of themselves. Please don’t assist them in doing so.
I think this is the same carbon emissions : just split differently. Shell consumers are the very same citizens. Also 16tons is huge, even compared to other developed countries in Europe for example (almost twice as much !)
No they didn’t. They clearly stated that we need to take political action which is the only way to force the companies to align with our goals. Policies that drastic need a lot of backup in the society that legitimises these policies, which is what they meant by “we are all raindrops”
idk if ill make it that long, but ill try i guess
Just gotta start emitting more. Maybe take up smoking??
This comparison makes no sense at all. But true, tax the rich, and imprison people profiting on the lifes of others
