• Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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    27 days ago

    This infuriates me.

    I would actually love to do more to REDUCE my carbon footprint, but it’s prohibitively expensive to.

    But billionaires (and millionaires) can literally greenify every aspect of their lives, even be carbon-neutral or carbon negative! But they choose not to.

    I think taxing the rich just isn’t enough. We need to CAP the rich. There should be no billionaires.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      27 days ago

      They can spend millions trying to reduce everyone’s carbon footprints. Like literally they can lobby for trains and shit. But no they won’t.

    • tee9000@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      Its designed to infuriate you. This is not personal emissions of billionaires, its including their businesses.

      • godlessworm@lemmy.world
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        26 days ago

        brother, that doesn’t make it any better. these pieces of shit can do more pollution in 90 minutes than any of us will in a life time since it’s for their business? the one which is such a massive operation of exploitation and extraction that it earns them billions of illbegotten dollars, which is why they’re being talked about to begin with?

        “this infuriating shit was designed to infuriate you, don’t be infuriated, just accept it instead!”

        this is the same stupid shit argument as “um bezos can’t pay more taxes bc he doesn’t actually have all the money his networth implies, that’s not how networth works” as if people mad at jeff bezos or any of these other worthless rich parasites don’t know that, as if we need someone like you to explain some stupid shit to us

      • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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        26 days ago

        This is not personal emissions of billionaires, its including their businesses.

        The Oxfam report says that private planes and “superyachts” are contributing factors, as well as investments in polluting industries like oil and mining.

        Nowhere does it mention that their businesses are what’s contributing to their carbon footprint. They are explicitly talking about their lifestyle choices.

        So, I’m not sure where you got that info from, but if they are including businesses that these billionaires run, I’d be interested in seeing that data.

        Mind you, the majority of these billionaires are in software… a business that’s very easy to convert over to a carbon-neutral model, especially with their resources.

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        26 days ago

        A billionaire is a business themselves. One person can’t even passively possess a billion dollars without tons of support staff

        If you separate the direct actions of the person from the actions of the staff required to maintain and grow their wealth, you’re missing most of the reason why billionaires are so harmful to society

        • tee9000@lemmy.world
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          26 days ago

          Either we need the figures to represent a billionaires emissions when dealing only with their personal benefit, or we offset the current figures with the benefit to society for their ventures.

          Im sure their personal emissions are bad enough. We dont need to make shit up. If willful ignornace had a physical form, it would be Lemmy’s mascot. Truth is the only thing that matters.

          • theneverfox@pawb.social
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            26 days ago

            But again, it’s all for their personal benefit. A human Their money is managed to grow by any means, and that has a lot of knock on effects

            They generally either put their money in funds with the highest returns (which often use unethical and illegal but accepted practices, and the best ones require large minimum deposits), or they directly own large percentages of a company and use that influence when it suits them

            I see where you’re coming from, but I think the line is blurry. Their direct personal actions don’t capture the full extent of their actions, but this also assumes full responsibility for their ownership, where honestly it’s impossible to know what level of emissions the companies would have if the billionaire’s wealth machine wasn’t involved

            I wouldn’t say this is totally unfair to say though - at the end of the day they own what they own, and letting others do your dirty work doesn’t absolve you of responsibility

            The fact that their life would barely be affected if they added emissions to their criteria for investment makes this worse - these are the figures the billionaires should be looking at to make decisions