When I was in elementary school, the cafeteria switched to disposable plastic trays because the paper ones hurt trees. Stupid, I know… but are today’s initiatives any better?
A lot of the initiatives are ineffective by design because the real goal is to give the consumers agency over the problem. Corporations have known that individual effort is a drop in the bucket but by framing the problem as not not a “corporate” problem but a “society” problem, they can keep not fixing it, for profit.
BP created the concept of a carbon footprint to make customers feel responsible for climate change. The reality is that consumer choices make no difference in the face of China building a dozen new giant coal power plants each year. This needs to be tackled diplomatically, and nations need to be willing to negotiate with much more force. China emits more than double the CO2 of the U.S. That’s just CO2. There’s PFAS, methane, plastics, and hundreds of others pollutants. They’re destroying whole oceans with their huge bottom-trawling fishing fleets. It’s time we get serious about tackling the major polluters first.
A corporate problem and a societal problem are two sides of the same coin. Corporations don’t make money in isolation, they make money because they sell things that (directly or ultimately) are bought by consumers.
You could choose to imagine a scenario where the CEOs of Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, etc just voluntarily decide to stop extracting oil overnight, and think that would be more impactful than billions of individual consumers slashing their demand for carbon-intensive products and fuels. But if the consumers don’t change their behaviour and continue to demand this stuff, other companies would just step in to fill the gap, takeover the old oil fields, etc.
The sustainable way to change corporate behaviour is through changing their end-consumers’ behaviour - i.e. if end-consumers stop directly buying carbon-intensive products and stop buying from carbon-intensive companies.
The MOST sustainable way to change corporate behavior is to make it prohibitively expensive for them to engage in behavior that is bad for the environment by levying major financial penalties and taxes on the offending corporations.
Corps frame it as an individualist problem because they don’t want regulation, which is really the only viable way to attack the problem (and regulations needs to be backed by treaties with teeth since it is a global problem).
You can’t expect every consumer to research every product and service they buy to make sure these products were made with an acceptable footprint. And if low-footprint products/services are more expensive or somehow not quite as good, there will be a financial incentive to use higher footprint products (if individuals acted “rationally,” this is what they would do).
Consumers are also voters. Corporations are not. Whether through the products we purchase at the shops or the politicians we elect at the ballot box, it will be the behaviour of individuals that creates the incentive set within which corporations profit-maximise.
Telling ourselves that this is a corporate problem and our individual behaviour doesn’t matter is a comforting fairy tale but it will accomplish little.
That’s frankly idiotic, since lobbyists, corporate donors and pressure groups have far, far, far more power to affect policy than voters.
You’re comparing the collective influence of lobbyists, donors and pressure groups with the individual influence of a single voter - no shit the former looks bigger.
The collective influence of voters in choosing (say) Trump over Clinton, or Biden over Trump, or Macron over Le Pen, or voting for Brexit, has influenced the direction of these Western democracies in recent years dramatically more than any group of lobbyists could dream of.
You’re telling yourself a comforting fairytale that society is directed by some powerful secret cabals pulling the strings so you as an individual are absolved from having to do your bit with how you spend your money and how you vote. If everyone thinks like you, nothing will improve. So fucking irresponsible.
Please don’t invent strawman arguments. I haven’t compared collective influence to individual influence, and I haven’t mentioned any hidden cabal or fairytale story. Everything is out in the open and I’m happy to provide my source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379421001256
Corporations are financial supporters of politicians, though, and they do a good job of making sure any viable political choice is on their side.
It’s false choices all of the way down.
Capital has already shifted toward green energy and renewable systems. Capitalism is way ahead of any other process in terms of fighting climate change
https://www.strategy-business.com/article/A-rising-tide-of-green-capital
I think there is two important points that you haven’t considered:
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Information asymmetry: in economics, this is the situation where one party has more/better information than the other. Of course a big corporation will have more information about a product I’m using that I would on every product I use, especially given that they can hire as many specialists as they want. Because of this, consumers should not be expected to take care of all societal change through their choices
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You seem to imply that these companies only exist to satisfy a customer need. While this is partially true, this completely omits the fact that since 15 years, every company has a marketing department, whose sole purpose is to suscit this need in the consumer mind. Company are not just need-fulfilling machines, but also self feeding systems. You can’t talk about the fact that renewing your phone emits a lot of carbon without talking about the fact that every phone company spends millions at making you want to renew it
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Those companies pollute to produce goods and services that individuals buy.
What does holding corporations accountable look like if not refusing to give them our money while advocating for regulation?
Throwing your hands in the air, doing nothing to change your destructive habits and just saying “but corporations” isn’t gonna help anything.
People boycotting certain products only really works if an alternative is available and attainable, or the demand is elastic.
For example, if I go to any grocery store, all the pasta, rice, buckwheat, bread and other staples are packaged into single-use plastic, as are hygiene products like toothpaste and shampoo. I have no choice but to be part of the plastic waste problem since there is no alternative and the demand for food is not elastic—I literally can’t go without food and basic hygiene.
But I can and will avoid buying problematic products like teflon cookware, fast fashion, ICE vehicles, tech products with severe privacy/ownership/repairability issues since there are alternatives available and if not, I can go without since eg Alexa smart speakers are not essential for life.
Hence, we need to hold companies, whose products are problematic while not having alternatives and that are essential for life, responsible and force them to change to less problematic practices. In short, eg single-use plastics should be regulated out of existence wherever possible.
And for products that have better alternatives, we need to raise awareness about them and raise their social acceptance/desirability (make them cool). Plus we need to increase their availability and attainability—what use of is an ethical alternative product if it’s not easily available in my country or if the price is not affordable to everyone who can afford the “normal” version?
That’s not really what OP is saying though? They’re talking about corporate efforts to make it seems like the consumers are the problem, not them, and many are still falling for it. As long as the awareness of this is not raised and more people aren’t pointing fingers at the corporates the whole don’t buy their product is never going to be effective, same for advocating for regulations (rather, especially the regulations). You’re assuming everyone knows the root of the problem already, but that’s just not the case here.
Indeed
Claiming that oil companies are to blame for producing all that oil seems stupid. If you use less oil, they make less oil
The amount of profit and money in the oil industry will ensure that it’s product remains relevant for as long as possible. If it’s not through gasoline, it will be something else.
Meanwhile they’ll be doing their best to sabotage and lobby against any competition to make it harder for individuals to even have the opportunity to do the right thing. The change has to come from the top (government mandates) in order for it to have any meaningful impact any time soon.
It’s borderline impossible to use less oil in increasingly car-centric infrastructure systems.
Maybe in US, but in Europe the trend is towards more public transportation.
This is a frustrating kind of defeatist attitiude I’m finding is getting more and more common.
It comes from a place of unwillingness for personal and habitual change. It’s hard to accept that we all have to change our lifestyles and accept that how we’re living is going to have to change. That there is exists some scenario whereby we all continue living exactly how we’re doing now with the same consumer behaviour and expect a bit of regulations to change everything. Or delay changing until after these regulations are in place, when in reality BOTH needs to happen.
What’s the point in sitting on your ass complaining about the behaviours of other individuals and organisations when the only thing you have direct control over is your life.
What’s the point in sitting on your ass complaining about the behaviours of other individuals and organisations when the only thing you have direct control over is your life.
I’m not challenging you on the “sitting on your ass” part because that is true. But I promise you the Earth getting hotter and more polluted is going to exert “direct control …over your life.” And the only real way we can change this is through some kind of political process.
Where did I say it shouldn’t be a political process? It isn’t an either-or. How many people online who are saying “oh why should I consume less when corporations emit the most CO2, there’s no point I’m not going to bother” is politically active outside of voting? As in, physically - attend climate rallies or petition their local representative. I’d wager it’s a slim minority. Signing an online petition or tweeting does not count.
If people honestly cared so much that they’re doing these things anyway, then changing themselves and their consumption habits should be dead easy. So why don’t more people do it?
My point is this isn’t an excuse to not take any actions locally within your life, which is something you can do RIGHT NOW.
I assume that folks are just looking for a way to keep their comfort zone the same. Finding an excuse is simple, even without blatant logic errors.
It is textbook cognitive dissonance.
Ineffectively complaining about corporations and changing your own life are not the only two options. That is a conveniently simplified view that just serves to make everyone feel better about using paper straws.
A third option is to try to make effective change. Real change requires significant investment of energy, time and maybe money. Lobbying, campaigning, making noise, seeking and rallying larger groups of people; politics. Make youtube videos, radio shows, interviews - chain yourself to a tree, whatever… Any of those are better than recycling unrecyclable plastic.
Making meaningful change in a society is hard work. You can’t just keep living your life and pat yourself on the back just because you stopped buying that one Néstle product you know about.
I gave up hope when I learned that the blue and green recycle bins in my area are really only there to make the consumer feel better about how much we waste as a society. A lot of the stuff we put in those bins still just winds up in a landfill.
Also incineration as “energy recycling” - https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/waste-energy-controversial-power-generation-incineration
One thing not working like it should doesn’t make your destructive habits less destructive.
While they have close to no value from practical standpoint, they do allow to start the conversation about the seriousness of climate issues.
Today’s initiatives are theater.
100 companies are responsible for 71% of the worlds emissions. The rest is also mainly companies. The idea of a carbon footprint is propaganda invented by BP (this sounds like a conspiracy but I swear it’s true, look it up). Before anything you personally can accomplish can make any difference, we would first have to significantly change society.
It’s just not true that we can’t make a difference though - it’s just easier for people to think that. Even if corporations, China, people on private jets etc. are damaging Earth and its inhabitants, our habits still make a difference also. You know, we can do what we can do personally at the same time as voting, campaigning and protesting for the change we can’t control.
There is no sustainable consumption under capitalism. Most have already cut down on their personal emissions, less meat, less flying. Good luck on trying to overcome the system by participating in it.
What can help is direct action and direct democracy, building resilience in your community. Which is hard.
Those companies pollute to produce goods and services that individuals buy.
What does holding corporations accountable look like if not refusing to give them our money while advocating for regulation?
Individual change is changing society.
Throwing your hands in the air, doing nothing to change your destructive habits and just saying “but corporations” isn’t gonna help anything.
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The paper vs plastic thing sucks because both are bad. Paper needs trees to be cut down and single use plastics are horrible for the environment
At least paper can be produced through sustainable farming practices and any waste is almost entirely biodegradable.
But I do agree that the debate sucks. What we should really be doing is forcing corporations and governments to 1. Adhere to very strict sustainability levels and 2. Pay for clean up efforts out of the salaries of their board of directors. Any corporation that declares a profit or gives a bonus to someone in managment without meating their sustainability requirements results in large fines for the company as well as every individual member of the board of directors. And anyone who claims they can’t pay within 12 months is given jail time and stripped of all assets instead.
Sounds harsh, sure. But till we start holding them accountable, it’s not going to matter how many people are using reusable plastic shopping bags or soggy paper straws. It’s not going to make any difference
I mean, in theory, dumping paper into a landfill is a carbon sink
Which is essentially what happened to create coal in the first place, kinda sorta.
Literally everything that isn’t investing in Nuclear Fusion and electrification.
I find it astonishing that in 2023, when renewables are more ubiquitous and far cheaper than nuclear, there are still people who would advocate for an technological and societal inferior solution.
Eh, I think you’re thinking about nuclear fission? The guy you replied to was talking about nuclear fusion.
I mean fusion. It is just like advocating for NG as a bridging solution, true in theory, but at least three decades to late.
My interpretation of “today’s initiatives” is they are something already on-going rather than started today, and nuclear fusion isn’t really one of them. So, I don’t think you guys are on a different page here?
I’m not opposed to renewables at all, the progress in solar power has been awesome.
But I think the scalability is hard, both in providing a reliable baseload, and also producing all of the solar panels for example. I don’t think it’s insurmountable though.
Ideally we use all of them - we need more electricity than ever. “Degrowth” is the real enemy.
I think the scalability, in production as well as in installation, is the biggest plus for pv. You can build 0.25 kW PV or 1 GW. Nuclear reactors that are not even in the construction phase are, in my opinion, a waste of money and resources that could be invested in building renewables.
Renewables will never replace stable energy production until the storage problem as been solved. At present there are no practical mass storage solutions available. So on days when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow, there isn’t sufficient energy generation without LNG/coal/nuclear. This will be true for decades. Nuclear is currently the best option of those three. Some places are lucky with hydro generation, but even this is subject to variable rainfall. Tidal generation has come a long way, but it’s still not ready for prime time, and it also suffers from variability.
Maybe spend some time reading about the actual market situation.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/12/23/global-solar-capacity-additions-hit-268-gw-in-2022-says-bnef/
I think most people who want to do something about regulating climate change to prevent creating an uninhabitable world already think today’s measures are stupid and inadequate. People won’t be thinking much of anything in the future when we’re all dead.
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There won’t be a “we” to look back on them, so I wouldn’t worry about it.
The embarrassing thing will be that we did nothing to limit private jets.
If everyone but world leaders had to fly with us poor’s, wed be doing a hell of a lot better than we are.
We never address the easy, large targets because those targets are rich people and they pay for it to not be addressed.
It’s embarrassing that we have an Internet and are unable to come together to fight such a small group of people.
Honestly, if that was the only embarrassing thing, we’d be golden.
air travel is negligible.
the real killer is the animal industry and traffic.
and quitting animal consumption is a lot easier than not driving.
I think your final statement is backwards. The world was car-free not very long ago in the grand scheme of things. We’ve never been fully vegan. I agree we should eat fewer animal products as well as driving less, but just because it was easier for you doesn’t mean it’ll be easier for society at large.
The vast majority of these initiatives are just pointless “greenwashing”.
It’s a difficult topic, those of us already engaged with the problem are already aware that the current solutions are inadequate, but, every year we are making improvements.
Is that going to be enough? It depends on what you define as enough. I’d describe myself as short term pessimist but long term optimist.
By that I mean, short term there are far too many vested interests (stranded capital, the income of various nation states, nationalism in general, the 8 hour day, our built environment and the car centric nature of its design) to do the sort of immediate changes that we needed to have averted this problem. We needed to have started meaningfully perusing this in the 70s, not the 2010s.
But that shouldn’t take away from the fact that the ever increasing rollout of renewable energy generation is better than continuing to use coal and gas. Every ton of CO2 we don’t emit is a ton we don’t have to get rid of later. That is as true today was it was 50 years ago, or 50 years in the future.
Long term, I’m optimistic that humans will continue to develop new technologies and the political and economic will shifts to meaningfully tackle climate change and we ultimately will survive, but I am expecting billions to die explicitly due to climate change - ie from floods, droughts, famine, war caused by the preceeding, internment of fleeing refugees, etc - in the interim. I won’t be surprised if towards the end of my life terms like ecocide start to shift to mean genocide of humans via negligent climate policies, eg when Bangladesh goes under water.
The next 100 years is going to be a brutal mix of exciting technological breakthroughs, coupled with soul crushing deaths of people in countries who predominantly did very little to cause the problem.
Ha, look at this optimist who thinks there’ll be people in the future.
If a large percentage of people can’t even utilize resuable bags for their groceries we’re already screwed. So much apathy and people not really committed to take even the smallest of steps to help our environment.
I’d say that blaming individuals for fundamental architecture of our society is the essence of the problem we have.
Fundamental architecture? Being adverse to making environmentally conscious decisions is a choice. When other solutions are available fundamental architecture sounds more like a cop out to me.
By fundamental architecture, I mean things like suburban development. Suburban development enforces commuting by personal motor vehicle which is far less efficient, from a pollution perspective, than public transit like intra-city rail. Another example could be planned obsolesence. This is part of the fundamental architecture which imposes a cycle of pollution into the replacement of consumer goods. These aren’t individuals’ choices, they’re the fabric of western society.
It’s systemic.
