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Governments and industry are responsible. Personal consumption/waste is not the primary driver of climate change, no matter how much corporations tell us that u

by nkohari 21d ago

Governments and industry are responsible. Personal consumption/waste is not the primary driver of climate change, no matter how much corporations tell us that using paper straws is the solution. It's tough to expect average people to take major action when corporations are essentially given carte blanche.

WarmWash 21d ago
And who is buying all that stuff from corporations? Who is actually the one consuming? We can quibble about edge effects like "induced demand", but by and large, people just love cheap energy, cheap calories, and can shift the moral burden by playing "not my responsibility" games.
myaccountonhn 21d ago
From the IPCC report, 2/3rds of all global emissions are directly tied to consumption.
- nkohari 20d ago
  Well, yeah. Corporations aren't just nefarious evil entities, dumping carbon into the atmosphere for no reason. They're doing it to sell goods. The problem is that a lot of the environmental costs for the manufacture and transport of those goods are externalized and go unpaid. It's difficult to put the blame for that on the consumer, who has no visibility into manufacturing or logistics, and who has vanishingly-small options for not participating. Buying domestic goods is very difficult or impossible, and goods which are manufactured in more environmentally-safe ways are significantly more expensive (because the costs I mentioned earlier weren't externalized). If a consumer is presented with two options, one that costs $X and has unknown environmental costs, and one that costs $2X and is marketed as being environmentally safe, the majority will choose the first. This is especially true as economic forces continue to squeeze average people. Consumers absolutely participate in the problem, but the only process by which it could be corrected is regulation, and the only entity capable of that is the government. (Democracy being what it is, you can however place more blame at the feet of voters.)
  - myaccountonhn 20d ago
    I think pinning the blame on them is the wrong way to look at it. Its more a very complex system where each actor's behaviour affect the behavior of other actors. So politicians doing more is super important, consumers doing more is important, companies doing more is important. Everyone's collective effort pushes the flywheel in a different direction.

by nkohari 21d ago

WarmWash 21d ago

And who is buying all that stuff from corporations? Who is actually the one consuming? We can quibble about edge effects like "induced demand", but by and large, people just love cheap energy, cheap calories, and can shift the moral burden by playing "not my responsibility" games.

myaccountonhn 21d ago

From the IPCC report, 2/3rds of all global emissions are directly tied to consumption.

nkohari 20d ago
Well, yeah. Corporations aren't just nefarious evil entities, dumping carbon into the atmosphere for no reason. They're doing it to sell goods. The problem is that a lot of the environmental costs for the manufacture and transport of those goods are externalized and go unpaid. It's difficult to put the blame for that on the consumer, who has no visibility into manufacturing or logistics, and who has vanishingly-small options for not participating. Buying domestic goods is very difficult or impossible, and goods which are manufactured in more environmentally-safe ways are significantly more expensive (because the costs I mentioned earlier weren't externalized). If a consumer is presented with two options, one that costs $X and has unknown environmental costs, and one that costs $2X and is marketed as being environmentally safe, the majority will choose the first. This is especially true as economic forces continue to squeeze average people. Consumers absolutely participate in the problem, but the only process by which it could be corrected is regulation, and the only entity capable of that is the government. (Democracy being what it is, you can however place more blame at the feet of voters.)
- myaccountonhn 20d ago
  I think pinning the blame on them is the wrong way to look at it. Its more a very complex system where each actor's behaviour affect the behavior of other actors. So politicians doing more is super important, consumers doing more is important, companies doing more is important. Everyone's collective effort pushes the flywheel in a different direction.