• "We are the last generation that can stop Climate Change" - UN summit
    51 replies, posted
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/03/we-are-last-generation-that-can-stop-climate-change-un-summit
Hey you 100 companies, do something! Hey governments, do something ffs!
Well yeah they should, but people also need to start taking responsibility as well. Minimise consumption, reuse whatever you can, and recycle the rest when possible. Eat significantly less meat. Use push mowers instead of motorised lawn mowers. Don’t have any more than one shower per day. Support businesses that take better care of the environment. Switch to an electricity provider that has sustainability policies. Don’t have any more than two children. Etc. There are so many things that everyone can do that can make a big difference. People need to stop trying to shift the responsibility onto others, and start taking self-responsibility. And also it’s worth remembering that those top 100 polluting companies are polluting as a by-product of demands in the market; consumption by people. And governments aren’t working fast enough because too many people don’t care about the environment, and they keep on electing parties that won’t do anything about climate change. Point is, the average person is responsible for this mess, but can also do many things to help clean it up.
The measures required are huge. People will suffer from the drastic measures. But still, those measures are orders of magnitude better than the legacy we leave if we dont take those measures. We might already be too late but its worth a shot. Slam on the brakes.
I I disagree with this narrative. I'm sure those things help a little bit but they're going to be hard if not possible to get individuals to do, but mainly, I find that this shifts responsibility from those who are at main fault on to random normal people. Corporations and governments need to lead the push, and we need to be focusing on forcing them to do what's necessary and not taking Jacob's nightly chicken tendies away.
We're way past the point of having the luxury of deciding whose responsibility it is. We just have to do every fucking thing we can to stop it, and that includes making personal sacrifices to our way of life. Regardless of how bad and evil corporations are (and they are) you won't prevent climate change by living in a way that would require us 3-4 planets for the global population to do the same. There's no questioning whether we should pressure the governments and corporations to pull their weight or take individual measures to lessen climate change. Do both, or be guilty of complacency.
Unless the companies and pollution causing nations take the lead, the people will not follow, why should they change their lifestyles if others are not. This is a 'don't tread on me' sort of moment.
Because they're not retarded and can see further than the tip of their nose? Because they're adults and not fucking kids who throw tantrums when they don't get the same things as others? Because they're responsible citizens who care about the future of their children and grandchildren, not just about their own little comfort?
Unless massive change is seen by the public from the likes of China, US or India, I see no large in-country changes happening.
And that would be retarded behaviour on their part.
There are simply some large societal issues to work through before people dedicate to the climate change train.
I agree there's a lot to work on, but I think it should be possible (and mandatory) to tackle both at the same time.
I'd rather we just apply hard caps on ecological impact instead of waiting for companies to respond to civilians changing their lifestyles over the course of however many years.
I'm getting tired of this. I very rarely eat meat or dairy. I only recently started driving, and still almost entirely use public transport. I attempt to consume ethically sourced products as much as possible, though I simply can't afford most locally sourced food and don't have the time to be going to the market every week. I live off renewable energy and our house is full of high efficiency lights and energy saving switches that turn the mains off instead of standby. What the fuck is this all for? My actions have no bearing on any of this. And the 100 companies doing 99% of global polution aren't going to change their behaviour because some libcuck who drinks soy and eats bok choi told them to. Of course, I'm going to keep up the soy and bok choi, but that alone is going to do bugger all in the grand scheme of things. I can't stop that the bus I take is fueled by an ancient petrol engine, I need that bus to get to work. I can't stop that the soy I drink is contributing to deforestation and poor worker conditions, because I need something, and cows milk is even worse. I can't stop that the computing devices I use are filled with conflict minerals that contribute to massive amounts of human suffering globally, because without a phone and PC I'd have no job and be unable to function in society. We should do all we can, nobody is denying that. But blaming individuals for societal problems is disgusting and has to stop if we want to stand a chance at reshaping our society to not murder the world by existing.
Ideally both should be worked on, but societal issues need a head start that would then move to improve the mood and sense of security in the general population, thus having the best chance of asking people to recycle, eat different etc.
You're missing the point entirely. If everyone made the same efforts as you do, it would have a significant impact. Your argument is similar to claiming that voting is useless because a vote alone doesn't change much. Everybody has their responsibility, corporations and individuals alike. Of course what you can do is limited if the rest of society doesn't support more ecological ways of living. But if you do your best you can't possibly be blamed for that. Part of the problem is, only few people are currently doing their best.
I'm not missing the point. For starters, to have mass change not just one off weirdos like me, you need sweeping changes in the default lifestyle, which means education and accessibility. Which means governments need to start emphasising this in schools and businesses. And even if everybody was consuming milk and meat alternatives like me, we'd still be committing mass deforestation to make those alternatives. Even if everyone took the bus like me, we'd still be running those buses off incredibly inefficient petrol engines. Even if everyone bought used electronics, those electronics would still be made from conflict minerals in areas where production and waste polution is completely unregulated. We'd need changes from up high to make those alternatives ethically sourced, those buses running on electricity that comes from clean sources. And to make those electronics not destructive we'd need regulation in factories and waste disposal, plus regulations on how the materials they're made out of are mined and processed. i.e governments would need to act to make people act enmass, and even once people do act enmass, we'd still need government intervention to make those actions meaningful.
And even then, it would still be a significant change for the better. There are no perfect solution, only better alternatives than we currently have. Obviously it would be much more efficient if governments and corporations played ball. But this is still a lot better than nothing. You claim that governments need to be the ones to act first so that the population start being more considerate about the environment. But who do you think elects the government? I can turn your claim on its head and point out that the government won't bother with carrying meaningful ecological policies and emphasize them until their voter base start caring about those in the first place. The western world has already had more than its fair share of education and sensitisation on environmental issues. At this point, you're not going to persuade the remaining naysayers. What you can do, though, is point out to all the hopefuls who just sit on their ass waiting for the elite to come up with a solution that they can do something about it themselves, even if it's only part of the overall solution.
Even if there were obvious clear measures to take I somehow doubt we'd get around to actually implementing them. Consumers will, in pretty much all cases, be footing the bill for climate-saving changes and I believe people won't accept that. How are we going to get the massive changes needed to reduce carbon emissions implemented when high oil prices results in riots? Who will want to pay for drastically increased government incentives for bolstering renewable energy technology development? Who will want to pay more for food and products, either through taxes or through higher prices, made with sustainable production methods?
Just to Axel and Yannich, we're in agreement. I'm all for people's actions, it's just that I'm saying we also NEED government action too. And obviously, I'm all for pressuring that.
If media and governments started *heavily* explaining to the general public about exactly what's going on and what the possible future scenarios are, and what are the possible solutions.. Maybe people would realize that the options are either keep going, fuck up the world, and go down to history as criminals, OR take the lesser suffering (compared to the future generations if we do nothing), and go down to history as people who prevented an end-of-human-civilization scenario. TL;DR Governments need to make sure vast majority of their people understand the changes that need to be made and exactly why they need to be made, before making said changes.
While I don't see anything inherently wrong with this, what exactly amounts to 2 times a week? Do we have a certain ration then spread that out over the week, or are we just supposed to eat meat on Tuesday's and Friday's? I like the ration idea better just saying.
It effectively needs to become a staple of education in school, not just a 5 paragraph page in a geography textbook, or one of those crappy mandatory registration slides they force you to watch every year. It needs to be baked into every level of every subject they teach, their needs to be an explanation of the physics, the biology, the chemistry, an economic and political explanation, environmentalist works in literature, and a broader cultural approach to what we can do in softer or misc subjects like sociology, and design and technology.
I don't see why it would make any difference whether you spread 2 portions worth of meat during the whole week or if you concentrate it in two meals. I'm not sure it would be very appreciable to only eat a tiny ass portion of meat per meal, though. It probably wouldn't go very well with the rest of the dish and would just leave you wanting more rather than being satisfied.
Meanwhile Republicans introduced a bill to literally abolish the Department of Education next year.
Hard truth: We need to eat way the fuck less meat to make the biggest impact on global warming and there's basically nothing governments can do to make people eat less meat
I wasn't aware that the only that meat that exists is beef. Livestock production counts as 14.5% of all human GHG emissions Beef and dairy production accounts for 41% and 20% of that figure, respectively (8.8% of the total) Pig and poultry farming accounts for 9% and 8%. respectively (1,3% and 1,2% of the the total) All these figures include emissions across the whole production chain (including transportation, feed production etc.) Source: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i3437e.pdf I think you are overestimating the impact of livestock when it comes to global warming. Fossil fuel usage is a way bigger concern.
I'd honestly wouldn't be that mad about global warming if we were planning around the shortage of resources, increased natural disasters, famine, mass migrations and wars as a result. We're not going to do that though, because taking measures would be acknowledging the problem. Instead we're going to bury our head in the sand until something comes along to fuck us in the ass.
Beef may not be as much of a significant contributor to emission but it is still a massive problem just because of the way it impacts how all the agriculture is set up As it stands now, the biggest grain crops in the United States don''t go to feeding humans. The grand majority of those harvests go to feeding cows in order to feed the mass produced beef industry. What's left over goes to chicken and pigs/ All those Maccas value meals gotta get their beef from somewhere And this is a problem, because just about every single agricultural process used to support this mass production chain is unsustainable and an environmental nightmare On top of how horrifyingly wasteful it is, with the heavy reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides we are seeing terrifying insect population reductions as a direct result of the heavy reliance of the mass agricultural industry on pesticides, and every single continent has its own massive ocean dead zone that is similarly a direct result of dumping millions of tons of fertilizers out into the fields, which subsequently drain into rivers, which subsequently drain into the ocean, which leads directly to ocean dead zones On top of that, these farming practices are actively eating away topsoil. Deforestation leading to even more erosion, chemical heavy processes that pollute the topsoil and contribute to those ocean dead zones as they get washed away into the sea. We have sixty harvests left, and then we're done Agriculture absolutely is a major problem for climate change, and anyone telling you otherwise doesn't know nearly enough
Sorry, but what exactly is your point? 15% of GHG emissions is huge. Transportation is 20-25%. If you think that designing more CO2 efficient transportation methods is important to tackle climate change, then so is drastically reducing meat consumption.
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