People blame the rich and politicians because those are the people that should be "leading us".
One person breaking the norm isn't gonna do a thing. Two isn't either. The number thats gonna make a difference is the larger, mass level of number. The one that listens to everything its leaders say.
A mentality needs to be created, and people need to be "told" to follow it. But for that mentality to exist, there needs to be a cultural change, and that cultural change comes from the top.
Take my words as a grain of salt really, I'm not an expert on this, just an idea that might not be right, but remember that FPer that did a good post on why there were school shooters and just shooters in general in the US? I THINK (please correct me if I'm wrong please) the mentality of which he talked about also inserts itself into going against the mentality we want. I feel like its all connected, one way or another, but I can't really tell if I'm wrong, which I possibly am, or not.
The vast majority of cultural changes don't come from the "top". Plenty of movements have started without the impetus of some world leader. Movements based on sustainability should be no exception.
yeah, nothing is gonna change if only the minority does something. there's no guarantee that doing anything yourself will make anyone else follow suit either, but what else can we do? if no one at least tries to do something, then nothing is gonna happen and we're fucked either way. right now, the best we can do is make our sacrifices and try to convince the ones you know to do the same. even if it's not enough, it's still better than sitting down and accepting defeat
Capitalism is a system designed for infintite growth in a finite space, it exploits the third world, promotes imperialism, has constant economic crises every 20 years or so and even when regulated creates gripping poverty for some.
A system designed to be explotitiave, a system where the fruits of your labor are not yours but your bosses. It has infected our schools, goverment, prisons, hospitals and even our childrens perceptions of sucess.
Now its literally killing the planet and you social democrats are like "but it can still be reformed" lol
when will people figure this shit out, its unsustainable, ask the gilded age, ask the old IWW strikers getting beaten in chicago.
Nordic style is the farthest I feel the US will go peaceably, without revolution.
Revolution in the US is highly unlikely, we arw a young nation with deeply capitalist roots. Shame since it literally makes us go around the world squashing peoples right to self determinism (chile, vietnam, iran 200 others)
Yeah, you're making severely erroneous conclusions, actually.
If you sell your car, the person who buys it won't buy a new car instead, and given that a significant chunk of car-related emissions comes from their production, this means avoiding emitting a lot of CO2.
This is why buying a used ICE car is sometimes better for the environment than buying a new electric car, by the way. It depends on mileage, L/km, and how often you plan to use it.
If it's scrapped and recycled, well, that's less CO2 emitted for the production of spare parts that would be required instead. It's a win-win either way.
I'm honestly baffled by your attempt at an anti-vegan argument. If people eat less meat, farming industries will lower meat production to match demand. Otherwise they'll lose money. I thought that was obvious.
I'm not sure what your point about finding more local jobs is. If you get a job close to your home, you may get it instead of someone who lives far from it. It works both ways.
the lifestyle most of us have right now isn't sustainable. either we try to be the change we want to see and hopefully minimize the consequences of climate change, or we'll keep up our gluttonous lifestyles till the very end where society as we know it will be gone and we'll have no choice but to sacrifice a lot more from our lives, while also dealing with a more severe aftermath from climate change.
you don't need to sell off your home, grow your own plants and live on the streets to make a change. it's all about asking yourself what is necessary and what you could go without.
So you take stance that is just few steps from being a climate denier. You acknowledge the threat, but don't do much about it as you deny that humanity is incapable of changing itself.
You don't internalize the message that the modern consumption as it is, is unsustainable. Do you think just saying that you think humanity is doomed absolves you from any responsibility?
Rather than that, you just give up and waiting for shit to really go down, rather than change behavior?
And yes, I am dubious if humanity will achieve this, but we don't have much choice, do we? Changing consumption does not need to start from 0 to 100 immediately. For example of meat: eat less red meat, eat poultry in favour of other meats, substitute portions of that meat with vegetable products such as soy, beans, etc. and eventually substitute most of it with other products. Supporting these products in favour of meat would do two things - it supports such products and will prompt further investment in such, bringing down prices and increasing availability, as well as creating new options. meanwhile reducing profitability of red meat.
It may be raindrops, but what's lakes made out of?
Nevertheless, even if we land in deep shit, being accustomed to lower, more sustainable consumption will help you more than bellyflopping into deep end.
People still gotta eat dude, no matter what people eat there will be jobs supplying people with food. May as well make the food production and consumption sustainable to the planet.
but it sure would help
My idea is that with people like Trump in power, that continuously push against climate rescue agenda, it ends up being the small push of a million outweighed by the huge pull of one.
Things we can't have: cities not supported by agriculture in the surrounding area.
Always the same shit with you people. You said:
Then I explained to you why your conclusions about it having no impact were false, and then you completely ignored that explanation before promptly moving the goalposts.
You don't actually want to solve the issue. You're just looking for an excuse to put no effort in.
https://i.imgur.com/J3HAuXj.jpg
Tbh I dont know if I see the whole "everyone can do their part" mentality as all that productive anymore. I don't eat red meat, I recycle, I carpool often.I even have solar panels on my roof. What else am I supposed to do? Wait for everyone else to magically wise-up? Not recycling has already been pretty firmly established as a cultural stigma in the west.
The truth is, the majority of emissions come from things that people can't just change through conscientious individual effort. Agriculture and transportation are probably the two biggest and most pressing, but you can't seriously expect people to just stop driving cars or eating meat. The US is too big and spread out due to poor urban planning for public transportation or biking to be effective, and electric cars are still too expensive for a vast majority of Americans.
The same goes for meat. I just do not think people will ever forgo meat wholesale unless synthetic, lab-grown meat catches on. And is cheaper to both produce and purchase. And can be produced on a scale exceeding regular meat production. Only then will it be offered to consumers in any meaningful capacity and you still have to convince people to actually buy it.
While systematic change may not be entirely necessary, I think it would massively help given our timeline. We don't have a ton of time to make all this stuff happen. And it wont when countries are competing rather than collaborating. So long as countries like the US being lead by leaders like Trump continue to pull out of things like the Paris accord, we're actually fucked. I think the UN should have more power, should be a legislative body, and should be more universal. Being able to actually enforce meaningful sanctions against unethical labor and environmental practices would go a long way for the prosperity of our species.
making a change does not mean handicapping yourself and living poorly. you live in a country/area with poor public transportation? of course you need a car. you do what you can do, within what's reasonable for your life. it's all about not buying a new phone every 6 months and instead keeping it until it breaks, and that applies to TVs, new cars, new shoes, abundance of clothes, etc. there's other ways too, like _Axel pointed out earlier, like avoiding red meat, bring a backpack to the store instead of buying a plastic bag, using energy efficient lighting, making single car trips instead of many, and the list goes on.
it all boils down to not being overindulgent in material goods, luxuries and making smart choices with the things that aren't good for our climate. it's not about lowering yourself to the bottom of the social ladder and gimping yourself so hard that it affects your life severely.
Did you even read my post? I've debunked your claim that "there's no point in making any effort because someone else will do it instead".
You can't just ignore that I disproved your point and carry on like nothing happened.
... And I've explained that buying a used car may be preferable to buying new electric cars. Either way, public transportation is miles ahead of both electric and ICE vehicles when it comes to curbing emissions.
What the fuck kind of argument is that? What about the local job makes it more prone to being affected by climate change? Why wouldn't your current, non-local job be affected just as much? This shit makes no sense.
A realistic solution to the problem requires sacrificing things. Our current lifestyle is unsustainable. Wasn't that said enough times already?
Whether such a solution comes from the people or from government enforcing restrictions, you will have to give up on luxuries that are incompatible with a sustainable civilization. So why the fuck not do it right now? Your reasoning is all over the place.
you make it seem like the only thing we can do is sacrifice everything in our lives and go back to the tribal ages. how could our lifestyles possibly be sustainable if that's exactly the reason why we're in this mess to begin with?
you can make a change without sacrificing tasty beef, a smart phone, a PC, or TV, or whatever. the problem we face today is overindulgence. what do you think would happen if the majority of people stopped buying new phones every 6-12 months and instead bought them every 3 years? apply that idea to everything we own and I think that's a really good start on actually doing something good for our climate. there's literally nothing sacrificed here other than not having the newest, most expensive new product every single year which frankly, I don't think most people really need to begin with.
a change does NOT mean sacrificing all luxuries in life. it simply means buying less and more infrequent.
No, I've disproven that your broken ass logic according to which "if we make sacrifices others will ruin them anyway", and which you persist in clinging on here:
If these countries, according to you, will not engage in such sacrifice either way, then either:
We engage in sacrifices that reduce our carbon footprint, they don't, CO2 emissions are still reduced
We don't, and they don't, no CO2 emission reduction whatsoever
So your claim they'll "undo any effort" is, simply put, blatant bullshit.
I never advocated for such measures to be forced upon others. I think those things can be done entirely voluntarily.
My point, however, is that those who don't want to change a single thing in their life for the sake of holding on their little comfort for however long they can are selfish cunts.
this is the most depressing thread I've seen in quite a while
Eh, your idea of what climate change will result in is sort of misguided. It's not the apocalypse some people are heralding.
It'll start by natural disasters and extinction events leading to a lot of displaced people, destruction of food sources and infrastructure.
While we in wealthy western countries won't feel those things, they will lead to ever worsening refugee crises and a shortage of food and goods.
Assuming if by that point we haven't changed away from our unsustainable growth based economy, we will suffer scarcity and collapse of global economy in every sector probably.
So then when you're in an endless recession and refugees are pouring in will people's thoughts be "damn the climate change, we should have done more to prevent it" or will they go with their first instinct of "get rid of these foreigners pouring in on our territory competing for our limited resources, it's all their fault"
What, just because everyone didn't follow your example you think there's no point doing the right thing? When you changed your lifestyle to a sustainable one, you also changed your product and service demand from unsustainable to sustainable, and perhaps even influenced people around you to do the same. Maybe it's enough, maybe it isn't. That's how it works being just an individual in a gigantic collective. Nothing "magical" about it, but it sure as hell is better than contributing to the problem.
Of course, there's more to do if that's what you're looking for. Become an activist, go into politics and campaign for positive change, study sciences and invent solutions.
The refugee crisis we had just now already caused notable surging in far right rhetoric and political activity, what's coming will be the same but worse I'm guessing. Also the refugees will be looking to settle, not intending to return since there will be even less to return to this time.
In Europe it'd be the same dilemma. Most people, at first anyway, won't want to support a closed border policy or letting the refugees starve. So again the countries in the union will try to distribute the refugee burden amongst each other, as not to let any one country buckle under the pressure. Then gradually the burden will start getting too much for many countries and thus fascism happens.
Or the countries decide that they just plain don't like refugees and don't want to share the burden even before it's economically insignificant, as we witnessed happening.
It's about setting an example for other countries to follow, and even be pressured to follow. Also if you live in the UK then it's the easiest thing to incorporate a plant-based diet into your life, I recently did some travelling there and the number of options there are are crazy high. Way more than what you would find in Aus. Really want to thank the Indians living there, given the Brits and Scots some real good food.
Not at all. I'm perfectly content with my contribution, and actively look to improve it. I just don't think that individual lifestyle change efforts are going to be good enough to stave off the worst-case scenario.
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