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Worth noting here that many of the so called organic initiatives targeted at getting individuals to make little silly little sacrifices such as the use of straw

Worth noting here that many of the so called organic initiatives targeted at getting individuals to make little silly little sacrifices such as the use of straws, or shorter showers or etc and etc are lovingly embraced by the world's worst megapolluting megacorporations exactly because they nicely deviate attention from their colossal carbon footprints (https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...) and throw responsibility on ordinary people to a completely unwarranted degree. Exxon Mobil, Saudi Aramco et al have plenty of reason to love the notion of hundreds of millions of individual millenials and others feeling guilty because they used a straw for their soft drink today, or asked for a plastic bag during their grocery shopping. Because a great number of influencer, celebrity and media types also know that exhortations of this individual kind get them much more brownie points and media attention, they're complicit in the same misplaced guilt crusade. Posting on social media about how some oil corporation should dump 20% less carbon into the atmosphere doesn't have nearly the same level of pop culture trendiness or immediate satisfaction of making someone comment about how they'll change their ways.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
The straw thing is a good case study. As far as I'm aware that started with a picture of a turtle being affected by plastic ocean waste. Getting rid of non-biodegradable disposable items has always been a good idea, since they are designed to be thrown away. And the best way to do that has always been global industry regulation and producer responsibility after initial awareness raising. However, the only context it gets mentioned in now is by people saying that its not going to stop climate change (which it was never claimed to) and that individual action is pointless. It's like theres a whole industry dedicated to undermining people's faith in reasonable efforts to fix actual problems. And since their main weapon is subverting human biases they can attack from both sides at once. So banning disposable plastic straws is at once a regulatory overreach of communist-hippies and also a conspiracy by big oil to continue polluting because all those stupid people think straws are the problem when really its foreigners or liberals or environmentalists or whatever other convenient scapegoat can be found. Basically anyone angry about how were dealing with climate change and directs that anger at anyone other than the fossil fuel extraction industry and their enablers in the media and politics strikes me as super suspicious. Corporations are effectively sociopathic and this feels like the stage after the denials and the minimizations in a typical narcissistic abuse cycle "well if it is happening and if it is a big deal then it's your fault" and hoping you forget all the times they denied it was a problem or that it wasn't a big deal.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

The straw thing is a good case study. As far as I'm aware that started with a picture of a turtle being affected by plastic ocean waste. Getting rid of non-biodegradable disposable items has always been a good idea, since they are designed to be thrown away. And the best way to do that has always been global industry regulation and producer responsibility after initial awareness raising. However, the only context it gets mentioned in now is by people saying that its not going to stop climate change (which it was never claimed to) and that individual action is pointless. It's like theres a whole industry dedicated to undermining people's faith in reasonable efforts to fix actual problems. And since their main weapon is subverting human biases they can attack from both sides at once. So banning disposable plastic straws is at once a regulatory overreach of communist-hippies and also a conspiracy by big oil to continue polluting because all those stupid people think straws are the problem when really its foreigners or liberals or environmentalists or whatever other convenient scapegoat can be found. Basically anyone angry about how were dealing with climate change and directs that anger at anyone other than the fossil fuel extraction industry and their enablers in the media and politics strikes me as super suspicious. Corporations are effectively sociopathic and this feels like the stage after the denials and the minimizations in a typical narcissistic abuse cycle "well if it is happening and if it is a big deal then it's your fault" and hoping you forget all the times they denied it was a problem or that it wasn't a big deal.