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There is no point in trying to fight climate change as an individual. The scale of pollution by industry is so mind-bogglingly massive that there is nothing tha

There is no point in trying to fight climate change as an individual. The scale of pollution by industry is so mind-bogglingly massive that there is nothing that we can do to make a difference. We could all turn off every device, never buy anything new, and go back to eating foraged berries while living in a cave and climate change would still happen. To give recent example of how industry works with no regard whatsoever to the climate, the German airline Lufthansa flew 21,000 entirely empty flights during periods of lockdown so that airports didn't change their schedules[1]. We are at the point now that unless industries change we should really start thinking about how we live with climate change, not how we stop it. [1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/airplanes-empty-slots-covid https://www.wired.co.uk/article/airplanes-empty-slots-covid

zokier 5y ago
Industry ultimately exists to serve individuals. > We could all turn off every device, never buy anything new, and go back to eating foraged berries while living in a cave and climate change would still happen. If consumers disappeared then its not like industry would keep on churning pollution to no end.
- onion2k 5y ago
  If consumers disappeared then its not like industry would keep on churning pollution to no end. Airlines carried on flying without passengers.
  - zokier 5y ago
    Temporarily. Because they were expecting the consumers to return, which was in this case reasonable expectation. Do you really think they would continue to do so indefinitely?
    - onion2k 5y ago
      It'll always be a series of temporary things though. Companies will always use whatever makes a convenient, reasonable-sounding excuse to carry on doing massively stupid stuff that kills the planet if they can. They expend huge amounts of energy thinking up reasons to not do good things. It's not even for the sake of profit, because a lot of the time these things don't make them any money. They just lurch from one thing to another in order to put off a dip in the share price because shareholders are terrified of losing any money (plus people working in the business have taken a big chunk of their salary in shares, which incentiveizes maintaining a higher stock price...) So sure, they're not doing whatever they're doing today permanently. They're doing a series of temporary things forever. Because that's different!

zokier 5y ago

Industry ultimately exists to serve individuals. > We could all turn off every device, never buy anything new, and go back to eating foraged berries while living in a cave and climate change would still happen. If consumers disappeared then its not like industry would keep on churning pollution to no end.

onion2k 5y ago
If consumers disappeared then its not like industry would keep on churning pollution to no end. Airlines carried on flying without passengers.
- zokier 5y ago
  Temporarily. Because they were expecting the consumers to return, which was in this case reasonable expectation. Do you really think they would continue to do so indefinitely?
  - onion2k 5y ago
    It'll always be a series of temporary things though. Companies will always use whatever makes a convenient, reasonable-sounding excuse to carry on doing massively stupid stuff that kills the planet if they can. They expend huge amounts of energy thinking up reasons to not do good things. It's not even for the sake of profit, because a lot of the time these things don't make them any money. They just lurch from one thing to another in order to put off a dip in the share price because shareholders are terrified of losing any money (plus people working in the business have taken a big chunk of their salary in shares, which incentiveizes maintaining a higher stock price...) So sure, they're not doing whatever they're doing today permanently. They're doing a series of temporary things forever. Because that's different!