I lov ethe large open grass field in this one. Reall makes me imagine how cool and beautiful the world could be.
Would be even better if it wasn’t a monoculture and had a thriving ecosystem of different plants and animals :3
Who is electing your government? Who is feeding the corporations by buying their products? If you think your three friends not caring, and my three friends not caring, and OP’s three friends not caring is all inconsequential and there’s no point in changing their minds, then how do you envision change happening? That is a geniune question; do you actually have a plan of action, or is it just “the corporations and governments are the ones who have to do something”?
Like the saying goes, “no individual drop of rain sees themselves as responsible for the flood”, or something along those lines.
“how do you envision change happening?”
You’re so close to getting it…
That’s how collective action works, yes.
I do wish we could have grown up discussions about climate change instead of this sort of thing. Governments and large industrial and commercial organisations are overwhelmingly more responsible for climate change than individuals like you and me. We individuals could not be more concerned about climate change already. Everyone wants to pollute less and live more sustainable lives. Our bins have multiplied and we learnt to comply with that. Plastic straws and bags went away and we learnt to comply with that. A lot of us are driving electric cars now or taking public transport and cycling wherever possible. Cities declared clean air zones so only the least polluting vehicles were allowed in them and we’re learning to comply with that. There’s all sorts of taxes on vehicles that pollute too and we’ve learnt to comply with that.
Meanwhile manufacturers pollute our rivers and skies and we’re all finding out how full of microplastics we are because of them too. How about that self righteous finger spending some more time pointing at them than at us eh? It’s just annoying how it’s always the end users who gets the blame for not doing enough about climate change.
And while I’m at it and no one is going to read this anyway how about someone with a brain actually spends some time on the branding side of “Climate Change”. It’s better than “Global Warming” because at least that reduced the amount of people denying there’s a problem every flipping winter but it’s still dumb. If you want people to understand the urgency of something you have to convey it in the language you use. Called it “Planet Cancer” or “Climate Apocalypse” or “Earth Burn”. Anything would be better than “Climate Change” which conveys about as much urgency as a hedge that needs trimming at some point.
(Edit: Looking at the guidelines for this magazine I can see how this post may be a little too negative. If it is I totally understand it getting removed.)
Governments and large industrial and commercial organisations are overwhelmingly more responsible for climate change than individuals like you and me
Right, but those governments and commercial organizations are supported by individuals like you and me; they do not exist in a vacuum. It doesn’t take a long conversation with an average person to realize they do not want to make the necessary changes to their life (either directly, or indirectly through significant change in the system) to fix the problem.
If most people were actually in favour of strong action to make significant change, then most democratic governments would be more in favour of more significant action as well, because at the end of the day most of them just want to be elected. But even in countries with a parliamentary system and multiple parties, greens barely have any power, and people keep choosing governments that either do nothing, or just the bare minimum.
For a small example of what I mean, just look how many people go out of their way to show up on vegan/vegetarian threads to talk about how much they love meat and won’t stop eating it - despite the fact it’s one of the largest contributors to climate change. And this is on Lemmy too, which is a lot more left leaning than the average social media platform, and even more than the real world. Then add in how many people are pro-car, especially gas, or how many people are addicted consumerists and can’t stop buying things they don’t need in plastic packaging; and for some more sprinkles you can also add all the “environmentalists” who campaign in favour of shutting down nuclear plants despite the fact that a) it’s the second safest energy source b) even with nuclear, by 2026 fossil fuels will still be responsible for over 50% of energy production.
If anyone wants to be a grown up and have a grown up discussion, then they need to stop shifting blame around and acting like governments exist in a vacuum and corporations aren’t selling anything.
If Coke decided to stop producing plastic bottles then Pepsi would up their production and their profits would skyrocket; if a government had the balls to issue laws about plastic reduction that would stop them from producing them, they would almost certainly lose the next election and there might be protests and riots; but if people just stopped buying soft drinks in plastic bottles, Coke and Pepsi would both stop producing them regardless of what the government does.
If anyone wants to be a grown up and have a grown up discussion, then they need to stop shifting blame around and acting like governments exist in a vacuum and corporations aren’t selling anything.
Exactly. Thank you.
