The reason why the top polluters in the world are oil and gas companies is because you buy oil and gas directly to drive your car or heat your house, or you buy electricity generated by oil and gas. The metals in your vehicle? Mining companies pollution. The food on your plate? Agricultural companies polluting. Even the shirt on your back burned bunker fuel to get from Bangladesh to your house.
If you think you aren’t directly responsible for corporate pollution, you’re a fucking moron.
Oh yeah I’ll just stop driving my car in this world they manufactured to be unsustainable to travel in without a car.
If you think you can do ethical consumption by eating the avocados that fund latin american cartels to mutilate and rape the children of anyone who doesn’t just sit there and take their shit instead of some beef from a cow raised by some kid doing their 4H project, you’re the moron here.
You realize there are people in North America who do not own cars, right?
I made ethical consumption choices by looking at my three largest personal (and family) pollution sources.
First is Home heating/cooling. If you rank pollution sources, this is the single largest for most north American people. Now here I got lucky, my area uses almost 100% hydro electric power, so I switched to using a heat pump from a natural gas furnace. Now I no longer directly burn fossil fuels, and my grid is almost 100% pollution free as well. If I had not lived in this area, I would have chosen to install solar panels to offset my energy use as much as possible, and possibly participated in a green energy purchase program. It costs more, but the whole point is that if this were easy, it would already be done. You need to give something up to reduce your pollution, and in this case that thing you’re giving up is some extra money.
Heat pumps are a no-brainer in this category, Smaller homes pollute less, multi-family homes with shared walls pollute less, homes with better insulation pollute less. There’s choices here for everyone. They just either cost extra money, or give up some of your lifestyle.
2nd most pollution, transportation, I bought an EV a few years ago, which while it does have pollution for production over it’s lifespan will have significantly fewer emissions than an equivalent ICE vehicle. Again, my electricity here is almost 100% green, or could be in almost every area.
I wasn’t willing to go car free because of how far I live outside of a city, and I accept the pollution that results from my choice here. When I lived in the city, I used to have a bus pass AND a car, and I’d frequently leave the car in the driveway to take the bus for many trips.
Transportation can be addressed in so many ways, moving closer to the things you need, mass transit, EVs, etc. Again, Money or Lifestyle costs.
3rd most pollution, food, I cook with significantly less meat than average, we aren’t vegetarian, but we almost never eat beef(which is a massive pollution source even compared to other meats) and our portion size for meat from pork and chicken is more for flavor than nutrition. A single pack of bacon in a lentil/vegetable stew covers 10 dinner servings, compared to a single 5 person breakfast, and I bulk out the protein with the lentils. We eat tofu 4-5 times a month, prepared in various ways, etc. Using less meat actually saves you money, alternative protein sources like beans, tofu(which is beans), and lentils are FAR cheaper. We also buy a lot of our produce from our local area(less transportation pollution) and preferably with less fertilizers (heavy pollution source)
Overall, does it cost more money or reduce your lifestyle to pollute less? Yes. That’s the choice that consumers make.
You want to have no pollution AND keep your lifestyle the exact same, but it doesn’t work like that. Pollution makes things cheaper, that’s why companies do it. They wouldn’t bother if it was more expensive. Nobody is sitting in a boardroom going: “Man, this coal costs far more, but we need to fuck the environment a little harder so lets keep using it”
We use oil and gas because it’s the option that has been made most available to us. This isn’t an individual problem. As long as the alternatives are prohibitively expensive for the average person, in terms of time, money, availability, etc, then we’re going to always have the bulk of people choosing the easiest option.
We all have so much to worry about each day, trying to fit biking to my job a 45 minute drive away just isn’t feasible. The options for changing that are either we go fuckin full on anarchy, burn the system down, and start anew, or slowly, systematically. Set an easily achievable baseline the average person can work to adopt, encourage it via subsidization and education, and give it time.
You’re thinking about this wrong, you choose your lifestyle.
You simply aren’t willing to give up your lifestyle to avoid emissions. It’s clearly possible to live a less polluting lifestyle, there are billions of people polluting almost nothing compared to Western averages, their lifestyle just doesn’t have as many conveniences as yours.
There are North American people who have chosen to live ultra-simplistic lives who pollute almost nothing as well.
That’s a choice YOU make. It may not feel like you made a choice, but you do so every day by not changing your behaviors.
You’re right. At the end of the day, your lifestyle is your choice. I’m merely pointing out that there are a LOT of pressures keeping people stuck in the lifestyle they’re in. Those pressures are real, and if you want to effect change, it’s better to target them, rather than the individual.
The pressures are not real, they’re entirely social constructs.
The easiest fix is for the government to just tax carbon emissions, like Canada, and turn turn the cost way up. The market (Corporations) will change very quickly if it’s cheaper not to pollute.
Will it hurt people? Yes. Costs will go up, but pollution will go down. That’s the tradeoff.
Societal pressures are real, though. It doesn’t matter that there’s not a physical force making you do a certain thing. Humans are social animals. We’re, from day 1, molded by the world we were born into. To claim that you can just deny all of those drives is, quite simply, arrogant.
Again, I want change. I want to make it as easy as possible for the individual to do the best they can. Beating them about the head, saying “well you can just choose not to eat meat!” Doesn’t help that cause.
It’s not arrogant, people absolutely cast off social norms all the time. That’s how we drive change in our world already.
Remember segregation? We started out of that with people ignoring the rules (on both sides) despite the significant cost.
It’s dead simple to stop eating meat from a social perspective, vegetarians are extremely common these days. To add to that, there’s no social cost at all for simply reducing meat consumption. None of your friends are going to complain about you serving carbonara instead of steak when they come over.
And all of those social norms took time. Took small changes. We didn’t just bring a bunch of slaves over, and one day say “nah this ain’t right.” We had a MASSIVE chain of events that led to, finally, enough people being done with it, and they started a war. We didn’t just say “hey,black people shouldn’t be forced to use different facilities”, we had a massive chain of social events that shaped our cultural landscape, making it easier for people to do the right thing.
That’s my point. It’s not just a flip of the switch and it’s done. It’s small, incremental steps that win over people slowly. Just the fact that you bring up reduction at all is more evidence for my point. You have got to start small, if you want to see it through.
If it was as simple as you make it out to be, we’d already be in a utopia.
Let me ask you this - what, exactly, do you think my argument is?
As a vegan, you’re absolutely right. A lot of people think the hard part is giving up meat or dairy or eggs, but it’s not. The hard part is dealing with the social implications. Explaining to your friends you aren’t willing to eat with them when they’re doing something you find thoroughly wrong. Having your mom disappointed you won’t eat her cooking.
You have to be willing, at least somewhat, to pay the cost of maintaining your convictions, and nobody ever tells you that when you start.
Social change is hard, and it takes time. But so many have already blazed a much harder path than I’ve had to endure, and every time someone else gets on board it makes it easier.
Doing the right thing is rarely the easiest thing.
Exactly. So many people write off the impact society makes on our individual decisions. The thing that’s critical to remember is, we’re all doing our best. I believe that thoroughly - no one wants to be less than the best version of themselves. Celebrate the smallest of wins, and eventually we’ll all be there.
The reason why the top polluters in the world are oil and gas companies is because you buy oil and gas directly to drive your car or heat your house, or you buy electricity generated by oil and gas. The metals in your vehicle? Mining companies pollution. The food on your plate? Agricultural companies polluting. Even the shirt on your back burned bunker fuel to get from Bangladesh to your house.
If you think you aren’t directly responsible for corporate pollution, you’re a fucking moron.
Oh yeah I’ll just stop driving my car in this world they manufactured to be unsustainable to travel in without a car.
If you think you can do ethical consumption by eating the avocados that fund latin american cartels to mutilate and rape the children of anyone who doesn’t just sit there and take their shit instead of some beef from a cow raised by some kid doing their 4H project, you’re the moron here.
You realize there are people in North America who do not own cars, right?
I made ethical consumption choices by looking at my three largest personal (and family) pollution sources.
First is Home heating/cooling. If you rank pollution sources, this is the single largest for most north American people. Now here I got lucky, my area uses almost 100% hydro electric power, so I switched to using a heat pump from a natural gas furnace. Now I no longer directly burn fossil fuels, and my grid is almost 100% pollution free as well. If I had not lived in this area, I would have chosen to install solar panels to offset my energy use as much as possible, and possibly participated in a green energy purchase program. It costs more, but the whole point is that if this were easy, it would already be done. You need to give something up to reduce your pollution, and in this case that thing you’re giving up is some extra money.
Heat pumps are a no-brainer in this category, Smaller homes pollute less, multi-family homes with shared walls pollute less, homes with better insulation pollute less. There’s choices here for everyone. They just either cost extra money, or give up some of your lifestyle.
2nd most pollution, transportation, I bought an EV a few years ago, which while it does have pollution for production over it’s lifespan will have significantly fewer emissions than an equivalent ICE vehicle. Again, my electricity here is almost 100% green, or could be in almost every area.
I wasn’t willing to go car free because of how far I live outside of a city, and I accept the pollution that results from my choice here. When I lived in the city, I used to have a bus pass AND a car, and I’d frequently leave the car in the driveway to take the bus for many trips.
Transportation can be addressed in so many ways, moving closer to the things you need, mass transit, EVs, etc. Again, Money or Lifestyle costs.
3rd most pollution, food, I cook with significantly less meat than average, we aren’t vegetarian, but we almost never eat beef(which is a massive pollution source even compared to other meats) and our portion size for meat from pork and chicken is more for flavor than nutrition. A single pack of bacon in a lentil/vegetable stew covers 10 dinner servings, compared to a single 5 person breakfast, and I bulk out the protein with the lentils. We eat tofu 4-5 times a month, prepared in various ways, etc. Using less meat actually saves you money, alternative protein sources like beans, tofu(which is beans), and lentils are FAR cheaper. We also buy a lot of our produce from our local area(less transportation pollution) and preferably with less fertilizers (heavy pollution source)
Overall, does it cost more money or reduce your lifestyle to pollute less? Yes. That’s the choice that consumers make. You want to have no pollution AND keep your lifestyle the exact same, but it doesn’t work like that. Pollution makes things cheaper, that’s why companies do it. They wouldn’t bother if it was more expensive. Nobody is sitting in a boardroom going: “Man, this coal costs far more, but we need to fuck the environment a little harder so lets keep using it”
We use oil and gas because it’s the option that has been made most available to us. This isn’t an individual problem. As long as the alternatives are prohibitively expensive for the average person, in terms of time, money, availability, etc, then we’re going to always have the bulk of people choosing the easiest option.
We all have so much to worry about each day, trying to fit biking to my job a 45 minute drive away just isn’t feasible. The options for changing that are either we go fuckin full on anarchy, burn the system down, and start anew, or slowly, systematically. Set an easily achievable baseline the average person can work to adopt, encourage it via subsidization and education, and give it time.
You’re thinking about this wrong, you choose your lifestyle.
You simply aren’t willing to give up your lifestyle to avoid emissions. It’s clearly possible to live a less polluting lifestyle, there are billions of people polluting almost nothing compared to Western averages, their lifestyle just doesn’t have as many conveniences as yours.
There are North American people who have chosen to live ultra-simplistic lives who pollute almost nothing as well.
That’s a choice YOU make. It may not feel like you made a choice, but you do so every day by not changing your behaviors.
You’re right. At the end of the day, your lifestyle is your choice. I’m merely pointing out that there are a LOT of pressures keeping people stuck in the lifestyle they’re in. Those pressures are real, and if you want to effect change, it’s better to target them, rather than the individual.
The pressures are not real, they’re entirely social constructs.
The easiest fix is for the government to just tax carbon emissions, like Canada, and turn turn the cost way up. The market (Corporations) will change very quickly if it’s cheaper not to pollute.
Will it hurt people? Yes. Costs will go up, but pollution will go down. That’s the tradeoff.
Societal pressures are real, though. It doesn’t matter that there’s not a physical force making you do a certain thing. Humans are social animals. We’re, from day 1, molded by the world we were born into. To claim that you can just deny all of those drives is, quite simply, arrogant.
Again, I want change. I want to make it as easy as possible for the individual to do the best they can. Beating them about the head, saying “well you can just choose not to eat meat!” Doesn’t help that cause.
It’s not arrogant, people absolutely cast off social norms all the time. That’s how we drive change in our world already.
Remember segregation? We started out of that with people ignoring the rules (on both sides) despite the significant cost.
It’s dead simple to stop eating meat from a social perspective, vegetarians are extremely common these days. To add to that, there’s no social cost at all for simply reducing meat consumption. None of your friends are going to complain about you serving carbonara instead of steak when they come over.
And all of those social norms took time. Took small changes. We didn’t just bring a bunch of slaves over, and one day say “nah this ain’t right.” We had a MASSIVE chain of events that led to, finally, enough people being done with it, and they started a war. We didn’t just say “hey,black people shouldn’t be forced to use different facilities”, we had a massive chain of social events that shaped our cultural landscape, making it easier for people to do the right thing.
That’s my point. It’s not just a flip of the switch and it’s done. It’s small, incremental steps that win over people slowly. Just the fact that you bring up reduction at all is more evidence for my point. You have got to start small, if you want to see it through.
If it was as simple as you make it out to be, we’d already be in a utopia.
Let me ask you this - what, exactly, do you think my argument is?
As a vegan, you’re absolutely right. A lot of people think the hard part is giving up meat or dairy or eggs, but it’s not. The hard part is dealing with the social implications. Explaining to your friends you aren’t willing to eat with them when they’re doing something you find thoroughly wrong. Having your mom disappointed you won’t eat her cooking.
You have to be willing, at least somewhat, to pay the cost of maintaining your convictions, and nobody ever tells you that when you start.
Social change is hard, and it takes time. But so many have already blazed a much harder path than I’ve had to endure, and every time someone else gets on board it makes it easier.
Doing the right thing is rarely the easiest thing.
Exactly. So many people write off the impact society makes on our individual decisions. The thing that’s critical to remember is, we’re all doing our best. I believe that thoroughly - no one wants to be less than the best version of themselves. Celebrate the smallest of wins, and eventually we’ll all be there.