They didn’t say we can stop it at our individual points of consumption. They explicitly mentioned policy. People need to be willing to support policy that will drastically change their own lives, likely in ways they don’t even realize, and be ready to live with that. Otherwise pretty soon we won’t be living with much at all.
don’t @ me about “100 corporations are responsible for like 90% of emissions”. Who’s buying those corporations’ goods?
Suggesting that the consumer is responsible for emissions at the point of production betrays a deep misunderstanding of climate change.
Suggesting that “people’s” willingness to support policy that would change their lives is holding back cuts to emissions at the point of production betrays a similarly deep misunderstanding of political power.
This is it exactly. We have to turn off the f*cking spigot at the source!
There is no amount of science or innovation that’s going to save us. It’s going to take “holy shit we’re all going to die horribly” panic from world leaders to forcefully cut off the source, which is oil and its byproducts.
Short of that, no amount of responsible consumerism can stem this tide.
Not immediately but they’ll stop producing if people stop buying. Just takes a lot of people to have any meaningful change. And that starts with every single one of us.
And that’ll never happen, because everyone else will ignore you and just buy the shit anyway.
It NEEDS to be regulatory change. Shaming consumers into not consuming doesn’t work. Oil companies want you to think it works, that’s why THEY invented the concept of the carbon footprint. To make everyone ignore real solutions that could actually work.
We can’t even get people to individually choose to wear a mask or stand a little bit away from each other when their immediate health depends on it. Nevermind asking people to… to do what? It’s not like there’s a choice. That’s what the monopoly phase of capitalism means.
How can I choose not to use fossil fuels to get around? The buses don’t go where I’m going or when I need to go. How can I choose to avoid the food without the plastic packaging? Almost all the food except for some niche items is packed in plastic. I don’t even get the choice by picking fresh produce because it got to the store wrapped in plastic. How can I choose to use fewer resources? My devices, white goods, furniture, clothes, etc, are all built intentionally not to last – and if they do last, they get ‘updated’ to landfill mode.
I’m agreeing with you, to be clear. I do wonder how regulation can help, considering politicians don’t regulate unless they’re forced to. Partly because they are or they represent the bourgeoisie and wouldn’t get anywhere near power if they wanted to do things differently. Political pressure can be built but the voices in some of the problematic comments in this thread are quite mainstream.
I suppose what I’m saying, and I’m not necessarily looking for an answer, is: if we get to the stage where the public consciousness and it’s organisation are powerful enough to make politicians take climate action seriously, why would we leave it to those politicians to implement and why would we retain a system based on infinite growth? Why would we get to the point where we collectively decide to make the world a better place and then say, you know what, you can keep doing all the other extractivism, oppression, war, slum landlording, racist border controls, etc, just make sure you use recyclable packaging and transport it in electric vehicles?
