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With being climate change friendly turned into a social more, survey style research like this is going to be fraught with issues. Of course they self identify a
by maerF0x0 3y ago
With being climate change friendly turned into a social more, survey style research like this is going to be fraught with issues. Of course they self identify as good little citizens who aren't anti-science, and without a decent rubric of what that means, their self identification is meaningless.
> It is largely the responsibility of corporations to make good climate decisions, parents say. Just more than half, 51%, of parents say companies have “a lot” of responsibility to hold themselves accountable to do the right thing for the climate, and only 36% of parents say the responsibility to push companies to act sustainably lies with the customer.
This is telling. Though they say they're willing to act, ultimately they're pushing more of the responsibility onto amorphous others.
A better design would be to longitudinally follow those who initially self identify as climate change conscious and then follow behaviors more quantitatively like do they have fewer children than outgroup cohort, does their annual travel * average MPG of their vehicle result in less CO2 (having a hybrid and driving 30K miles/yr is just as offensive than driving a hummer 5K miles per year) etc.
- Buttons840 3y agoWe can regulate 100 companies, or ask 8 billion people to individually change their behavior. Which of the two pushes responsibility onto amorphous others again? Which do you think is more likely to succeed if attempted?
- maerF0x0 3y agoI'm actually in favor of what you're saying, but would attribute that contribution to putting the onus on government (not businesses). To me businesses taking responsibility looks more like 1% for climate change and social responsiblity, which I think companies do poorly due to (seemingly) conflicts of interest. I think we agree in principal on a good path forward, but I disagree that the study says people think the government should regulate more. btw here's a lead for those wondering "why 100 companies?" - 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...
- Spinnaker_ 3y agoAre you sure those are two different things? Those 100 companies provide energy, food, transportation, consumer goods etc to many of those 8 billion people. By regulating them you are pushing change on their customers as well.
- emodendroket 3y agoTrue but it's also true that Saudi Aramco isn't drilling just for the thrill of it.
- mrguyorama 3y agoAh yes, because for the last hundred years in america, using oil was a choice, instead of a nearly required part of daily life
- emodendroket 3y agoIt's simplistic to say "choice!" or "no choice!" like we can boil the whole thing down to one or the other. Yes, you pretty much need to have a car. But plenty of people resisted any effort to, say, build transportation, or even build stuff like HOV lanes, tooth and nail, and that continues to be the case.
- mrguyorama 3y agoThose are largely not the same people who have been warning about climate change.
- emodendroket 3y agoOK… that seems like a different conversation than we were just having.
- revelio 3y agoYou're arguing something different. maerF0x0 is saying that survey respondents are saying what they think they're supposed to say, but they don't really care, which is why they think other people should be the ones to do something. You are saying it's easier to make a small number of powerful people do things than make lots of people do things. In other words, that's the best way to force 8 billion people to do things they don't want to do. That may be so but isn't really related. In particular, if most people don't actually care because they don't think a lot of the claims are true but are afraid of being cancelled for saying so, then there's no moral basis for controlling those 8 billion people by manipulating 100 companies.
- CommitSyn 3y agoIt's easy to worry about the tiger and think the village warriors will take care of it. It's much harder to fight the tiger yourself, especially when the tiger is an amorphous slow-burn.
- mrguyorama 3y agoMeanwhile half the tribe is sure that the tiger is their friend, would never eat THEM, and actually you are the enemy for wanting to prevent the tiger from eating other people. Tigers have been eating people for a million years, how dare you try and pervert the natural order!