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I hate to get all soap-boxy, but this seems like the right time. Corporations are responsible for something like 70% of global emissions. It's nice that you wa

I hate to get all soap-boxy, but this seems like the right time. Corporations are responsible for something like 70% of global emissions. It's nice that you want to help, and I do too. But bottom line, it has been an absolute failure of journalism and our regulatory bodies that the solution to climate change is somehow up to citizens driving and consuming less. Corporations can feed themselves regularly, but there are 730 million people on earth without access to clean water. Enough is enough!

forum_ghost 5y ago
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... seems it is mostly the fossil fuel industry. "The report found that more than half of global industrial emissions since 1988 – the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established – can be traced to just 25 corporate and state-owned entities." A good chunk are even state-owned!
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  Yeah it turns out oil companies produce emissions, news at 11. The problem with that study is that it puts all of the emissions on to the producer, when a consumer focused approach makes more sense.
d3ntb3ev1l 5y ago
I heard Bitcoin will solve everything
roenxi 5y ago
Consider the perspective that those corporations are almost uniformly dedicated to providing goods and services for citizens to consume, with a few outliers. The parts that nominally aren't are generally part of the control structures that anticipate what people are going to want to consume in the future and make it available. Corporations producing less emissions is equivalent to consumers consuming less.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  This depends... there are whole subreddits (eg: https://old.reddit.com/r/NonFunctionSlackFill/top/?sort=top&t=all https://old.reddit.com/r/NonFunctionSlackFill/top/?sort=top&... ) dedicated just to slack filled items, to make them look bigger (thus increasing the amount of packaging and waste, and increasing transportation emisions).
  - Manuel_D 5y ago
    Right, but filling that slack fill would consume the same amount of volume, and more mass. So filling in the slack fill is strictly worse for transportation emissions. And crucially, the manufacturer would have to produce more of the actual product which in turn means more emissions from raw materials and refining those materials into goods. I think, in a way, that subreddit really reinforces what the parent comment is saying: people don't like it when their consumption decreases. When we see this [1] our thought isn't "how great it is that the company didn't spend emissions on building a full set of crayons", it's "this sucks, I didn't get a full set of crayons". 1. https://old.reddit.com/r/NonFunctionSlackFill/comments/egm4a4/coloring_book_for_my_son/ https://old.reddit.com/r/NonFunctionSlackFill/comments/egm4a...
jeffnappi 5y ago
It's not just the impact of the commute. There's also the impact of all that office space which just sits empty ~14 hours out of the day. Of course not everyone has an office space at home, but rooms in a home can easily serve dual purpose.
notreallyserio 5y ago
Hey, it worked for recycling. Can't blame them for trying.
renewiltord 5y ago
I don’t think it’s the corporations. Ultimately it’s the Earth that’s responsible for 100% of global emissions. We have to stop the Earth.
shoo 5y ago
> Corporations are responsible for something like 70% of global emissions. Corporations produce goods and services that people consume. I think it is intellectually lazy to attribute all the blame of pollution to the producer side of the economic relationship rather than the consumer side. The people consuming the polluting goods and services usually derive most of the economic benefits, the producers and people along the value chain capture some value, and everyone not involved in the transaction (especially future generations) get to suffer the externalities without having the chance to prevent the transaction between producer and consumer. Many people do not regard climate change as a priority and do not use it to influence their voting or buying decisions. E.g. in the march 19 2022 economist yougov poll of 1500 US adult citizens, out of 14 important topics, the issue regarded as "very important" by the largest group of people is "jobs and the economy" (65%) -- tied dead last is "climate change and the environment", which only 43% of the surveyed population regard as very important. I am not optimistic that effective public policy and regulation to seriously address global warming can be rolled out until there is relatively wide support from the voting public to regulate things like human population growth & rationing of scarce resources. Politically I don't think any politician could dream of stating that they are in favour of a policy of population control, it'd kill their political career. I don't suggest we try to debate it now in this thread, it tends to lead to incredibly toxic discussions. In western democratic capitalist societies the social contract often seems to value individual rights and freedom over the needs of the collective -- at some level this seems fundamentally incompatible with "limits to growth" where one generation might need to leave enough resources for subsequent generations. https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/joqdn4nhky/econToplines.pdf https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/joqdn4nhky/econToplines.pdf

forum_ghost 5y ago

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... seems it is mostly the fossil fuel industry. "The report found that more than half of global industrial emissions since 1988 – the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established – can be traced to just 25 corporate and state-owned entities." A good chunk are even state-owned!

disgruntledphd2 5y ago
Yeah it turns out oil companies produce emissions, news at 11. The problem with that study is that it puts all of the emissions on to the producer, when a consumer focused approach makes more sense.

d3ntb3ev1l 5y ago

I heard Bitcoin will solve everything

roenxi 5y ago

Consider the perspective that those corporations are almost uniformly dedicated to providing goods and services for citizens to consume, with a few outliers. The parts that nominally aren't are generally part of the control structures that anticipate what people are going to want to consume in the future and make it available. Corporations producing less emissions is equivalent to consumers consuming less.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
This depends... there are whole subreddits (eg: https://old.reddit.com/r/NonFunctionSlackFill/top/?sort=top&t=all https://old.reddit.com/r/NonFunctionSlackFill/top/?sort=top&... ) dedicated just to slack filled items, to make them look bigger (thus increasing the amount of packaging and waste, and increasing transportation emisions).
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  Right, but filling that slack fill would consume the same amount of volume, and more mass. So filling in the slack fill is strictly worse for transportation emissions. And crucially, the manufacturer would have to produce more of the actual product which in turn means more emissions from raw materials and refining those materials into goods. I think, in a way, that subreddit really reinforces what the parent comment is saying: people don't like it when their consumption decreases. When we see this [1] our thought isn't "how great it is that the company didn't spend emissions on building a full set of crayons", it's "this sucks, I didn't get a full set of crayons". 1. https://old.reddit.com/r/NonFunctionSlackFill/comments/egm4a4/coloring_book_for_my_son/ https://old.reddit.com/r/NonFunctionSlackFill/comments/egm4a...

jeffnappi 5y ago

It's not just the impact of the commute. There's also the impact of all that office space which just sits empty ~14 hours out of the day. Of course not everyone has an office space at home, but rooms in a home can easily serve dual purpose.

notreallyserio 5y ago

Hey, it worked for recycling. Can't blame them for trying.

renewiltord 5y ago

I don’t think it’s the corporations. Ultimately it’s the Earth that’s responsible for 100% of global emissions. We have to stop the Earth.

shoo 5y ago

> Corporations are responsible for something like 70% of global emissions. Corporations produce goods and services that people consume. I think it is intellectually lazy to attribute all the blame of pollution to the producer side of the economic relationship rather than the consumer side. The people consuming the polluting goods and services usually derive most of the economic benefits, the producers and people along the value chain capture some value, and everyone not involved in the transaction (especially future generations) get to suffer the externalities without having the chance to prevent the transaction between producer and consumer. Many people do not regard climate change as a priority and do not use it to influence their voting or buying decisions. E.g. in the march 19 2022 economist yougov poll of 1500 US adult citizens, out of 14 important topics, the issue regarded as "very important" by the largest group of people is "jobs and the economy" (65%) -- tied dead last is "climate change and the environment", which only 43% of the surveyed population regard as very important. I am not optimistic that effective public policy and regulation to seriously address global warming can be rolled out until there is relatively wide support from the voting public to regulate things like human population growth & rationing of scarce resources. Politically I don't think any politician could dream of stating that they are in favour of a policy of population control, it'd kill their political career. I don't suggest we try to debate it now in this thread, it tends to lead to incredibly toxic discussions. In western democratic capitalist societies the social contract often seems to value individual rights and freedom over the needs of the collective -- at some level this seems fundamentally incompatible with "limits to growth" where one generation might need to leave enough resources for subsequent generations. https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/joqdn4nhky/econToplines.pdf https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/joqdn4nhky/econToplines.pdf