4 ms·

> Rich people naturally hold more power, proportionally to their wealth. This ends up being a cop out. Everyone consumes, and rich people consume less than po

by zepto 5y ago

> Rich people naturally hold more power, proportionally to their wealth. This ends up being a cop out. Everyone consumes, and rich people consume less than poor people relative to their wealth. Generally rich people get rich by selling stuff people want. > Right now we can blame government officials and the rich people who benefited from pollution and paid them. And we can also blame poor people for putting those rich people in power and consuming their wares.

makomk 5y ago
> Everyone consumes, and rich people consume less than poor people relative to their wealth. Which, of course, means that all this talk about blaming the rich are a distraction from one unavoidable thing: since most of the consumption comes from ordinary people and not the rich, any substantial decrease in consumption has to come from them too. It's the ordinary masses that will lose the ability to travel abroad (and probably be limited in their ability to travel within their own country), who won't be able to see their friends and family so much anymore, who will lose a lot of the daily comforts of life. Blaming the rich can't change that. Guardian headlines about how "just 100 companies" are responsible for most emissions based on counting all emissions from the fossil fuels produced by them as their emissions, regardless of whether they're being burnt in everyone's cars and to heat everyone's homes, won't change that either. All it does is hopefully distract blame from the activists trying to take things away from everyone.
- j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
  > It's the ordinary masses that will lose the ability to travel abroad (and probably be limited in their ability to travel within their own country), who won't be able to see their friends and family so much anymore, who will lose a lot of the daily comforts of life. Pretty dark view of the future. Its not that we have to lose all those things, we just got to change a little bit in how we produce things and electricity and how we travel. And got to insulate houses a little. We don't have to give up any of the comforts of modern life. That's actually the worst part of it all: its not even that we would have to give up something in order to prevent climate change. We'd just have to CHANGE something, but even that seems to be too much to ask. That really makes me mad. So incredibly unnecessary :(
  - fogihujy 5y ago
    Problem is that those changes will be prohibitly expensive for a lot of people. There's a lot of people who rarely get out, and who's struggling just to be able to buy a cheap smart phone every year and a last-minute all-inclusive trip to Las Palmas twice per decade. If rents go up due to climate-saving efforts, they will have to give those up. Because landlords won't give up their profits. Change incurs costs. Costs means someone is paying.
    - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
      > Problem is that those changes will be prohibitly expensive for a lot of people. There's this idea that we introduce a carbon tax, and pay out the money to people. Seems like this could be designed in a way those people don't suffer. > If rents go up due to climate-saving efforts, they will have to give those up. Because landlords won't give up their profits. That's why we can implement laws forcing them to. If they add insulation to the house, the cost for heating will go down. So we just got to make sure that the one makes up for the other. > Change incurs costs. Costs means someone is paying. But its an investment, isn't it? Its not like we're throwing the money out of the window. We're investing, we are building things that will have a positive net return in the long run. For example, solar and wind are so cheap now and don't require constant imports (or digging up of) fuel. So in the long run, we'll have a more robust and cheaper energy production. Or from above - insulating a house will cost money now, but we'll save money in the long run.
      - fogihujy 5y ago
        > There's this idea that we introduce a carbon tax Where I live, there is a carbon tax already. It's going straight to the coffers of the state, and I have little hope that they'll let go of those money as it's used to finance other things. > That's why we can implement laws forcing them to Assuming you get a political majority to approve it. If you do, the costs will indeed be transferred to others, but I don't think it's politically feasible. > long run Current society is fixated around short-term profits, and has little regard for the good of humanity. I agree that all those things would be nice and that they would improve the situation. If we ever get a majority in favour of such changes it might happen, but believe that'll take far more time than we'd like.
js8 5y ago
> Everyone consumes, and rich people consume less than poor people relative to their wealth. But that's irrelevant metric. The nature only cares about absolute amount of consumption, and in absolute numbers, rich consume significantly more than poor. The fact that rich could have consumed a lot more according to our own measure of "wealth" doesn't make them less morally culpable, since this is not tracked by nature at all. I realized I should also add, it's not just direct consumption, investment can cause emissions too. Investment often means building infrastructure, which nature counts as consumption regardless whether the investment is then recouped or not (if it's not, then it's a waste). Investment also drives consumption in other ways, often directly through advertising or people just realizing they "need" a new service or product that they didn't need before. Even savings (richer people just keeping money in assets) are not immune from not having a side-effect on consumption. As assets prices rise, this sends the market wrong signals and the result can be for example building far more housing that is needed, again resulting in additional consumption of resources.
- zepto 5y ago
  > and in absolute numbers, rich consume significantly more than poor This is obviously not true
  - js8 5y ago
    Here's the source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/worlds-richest-10-produce-half-of-global-carbon-emissions-says-oxfam https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/worlds-r... Emissions are closely tied to consumption.
    - zepto 5y ago
      Who is ‘the rich’?

by zepto 5y ago

makomk 5y ago

> Everyone consumes, and rich people consume less than poor people relative to their wealth. Which, of course, means that all this talk about blaming the rich are a distraction from one unavoidable thing: since most of the consumption comes from ordinary people and not the rich, any substantial decrease in consumption has to come from them too. It's the ordinary masses that will lose the ability to travel abroad (and probably be limited in their ability to travel within their own country), who won't be able to see their friends and family so much anymore, who will lose a lot of the daily comforts of life. Blaming the rich can't change that. Guardian headlines about how "just 100 companies" are responsible for most emissions based on counting all emissions from the fossil fuels produced by them as their emissions, regardless of whether they're being burnt in everyone's cars and to heat everyone's homes, won't change that either. All it does is hopefully distract blame from the activists trying to take things away from everyone.

j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
> It's the ordinary masses that will lose the ability to travel abroad (and probably be limited in their ability to travel within their own country), who won't be able to see their friends and family so much anymore, who will lose a lot of the daily comforts of life. Pretty dark view of the future. Its not that we have to lose all those things, we just got to change a little bit in how we produce things and electricity and how we travel. And got to insulate houses a little. We don't have to give up any of the comforts of modern life. That's actually the worst part of it all: its not even that we would have to give up something in order to prevent climate change. We'd just have to CHANGE something, but even that seems to be too much to ask. That really makes me mad. So incredibly unnecessary :(
- fogihujy 5y ago
  Problem is that those changes will be prohibitly expensive for a lot of people. There's a lot of people who rarely get out, and who's struggling just to be able to buy a cheap smart phone every year and a last-minute all-inclusive trip to Las Palmas twice per decade. If rents go up due to climate-saving efforts, they will have to give those up. Because landlords won't give up their profits. Change incurs costs. Costs means someone is paying.
  - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
    > Problem is that those changes will be prohibitly expensive for a lot of people. There's this idea that we introduce a carbon tax, and pay out the money to people. Seems like this could be designed in a way those people don't suffer. > If rents go up due to climate-saving efforts, they will have to give those up. Because landlords won't give up their profits. That's why we can implement laws forcing them to. If they add insulation to the house, the cost for heating will go down. So we just got to make sure that the one makes up for the other. > Change incurs costs. Costs means someone is paying. But its an investment, isn't it? Its not like we're throwing the money out of the window. We're investing, we are building things that will have a positive net return in the long run. For example, solar and wind are so cheap now and don't require constant imports (or digging up of) fuel. So in the long run, we'll have a more robust and cheaper energy production. Or from above - insulating a house will cost money now, but we'll save money in the long run.
    - fogihujy 5y ago
      > There's this idea that we introduce a carbon tax Where I live, there is a carbon tax already. It's going straight to the coffers of the state, and I have little hope that they'll let go of those money as it's used to finance other things. > That's why we can implement laws forcing them to Assuming you get a political majority to approve it. If you do, the costs will indeed be transferred to others, but I don't think it's politically feasible. > long run Current society is fixated around short-term profits, and has little regard for the good of humanity. I agree that all those things would be nice and that they would improve the situation. If we ever get a majority in favour of such changes it might happen, but believe that'll take far more time than we'd like.

js8 5y ago

> Everyone consumes, and rich people consume less than poor people relative to their wealth. But that's irrelevant metric. The nature only cares about absolute amount of consumption, and in absolute numbers, rich consume significantly more than poor. The fact that rich could have consumed a lot more according to our own measure of "wealth" doesn't make them less morally culpable, since this is not tracked by nature at all. I realized I should also add, it's not just direct consumption, investment can cause emissions too. Investment often means building infrastructure, which nature counts as consumption regardless whether the investment is then recouped or not (if it's not, then it's a waste). Investment also drives consumption in other ways, often directly through advertising or people just realizing they "need" a new service or product that they didn't need before. Even savings (richer people just keeping money in assets) are not immune from not having a side-effect on consumption. As assets prices rise, this sends the market wrong signals and the result can be for example building far more housing that is needed, again resulting in additional consumption of resources.

zepto 5y ago
> and in absolute numbers, rich consume significantly more than poor This is obviously not true
- js8 5y ago
  Here's the source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/worlds-richest-10-produce-half-of-global-carbon-emissions-says-oxfam https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/worlds-r... Emissions are closely tied to consumption.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Who is ‘the rich’?