“Voting with your dollar” is bullshit. Just stop buying oil? Ok, let me go to the no oil store and buy a new car that doesn’t run on gas and isn’t made with any plastic. Let me spend my entire 5 dollars worth of disposable income to buy a new vehicle. And then take that vehicle to the store that has 0 petroleum products. No cans lined with PFAS, no plastic bags, no plastic packaging, no products made entirely of plastic. Never fly again in your life, or take the bus. Don’t you even think about eating out again. Live life as a hermit, make your own goods, provide your own services and maintinence to yourself to ensure an oil free existence. Better start soon too, the planets only getting hotter. Rinse and repeat x8,000,000,000.
Markets are driven by capital. Those with the most capital have the greatest influence. Your pittance of a wage isn’t going to change a damn thing. 10% of the global population has 52% of the purchasing power. Even if the other 90% of us all united together at once, about a single thing, we still wouldn’t have the purchasing power to overwhelm them. You can’t reform a system that’s made to perpetuate consumption and pollution. It’s cheaper to pollute by design. Do you think it’s a coincidence that bills meant to make polluting more expensive either don’t get passed or are so rife with loopholes they’re effectively useless? Pull your head out of your ass. If there was ever a time this shit show could be reformed, it’s long gone.
>Just stop buying oil? Ok, let me go to the no oil store and buy a new car that doesn’t run on gas
You mean an electric car?
There are options for consumers. Some of them cost more right now, others are an investment that pay off later. But those and not the polluting option and low and behold the markets change. Why do you think oil companies are starting to diversify more
What’s the trim in the electric car made of? How about the insulation around the wires? The clear coat on the paint? The lamination layer in the glass? What about the headlights and tail lights? The bumper covers? The logo and model letters? How was it delivered to the dealership for you to buy? You think there wasn’t any oil consumed in the mining and refining of the non petroleum materials that constitute the rest of the vehicle? You said stop buying oil. Not stop using gasoline.
The oil in your plastics for your car aren’t being burned, so they don’t contribute nearly as much as gasoline and diesel fuels do towards climate change.
Today is completely impossible to eliminate plastics from the global economy, so ranting about plastic use making it impossible to stop climate change is a red herring.
Only about 10% of oil goes into plastic. We can also make bioplastics out of corn and other agricultural products.
Ok, stop buying gasoline then. Because the vast majority of oil is used for fuels. Only a small percentage is used for plastics, like less than 1%. 50% is used for gasoline alone.
Simpler? Imagine if we could reduce oil GHGs by 50%. Just by changing the way consumers drive.
Regulations are the only thing that can enforce corporations to do the right thing every time. Free market might make them do it every now and then.
Example: do you want free market to (maybe) decide on use of asbestos and lead in fuel or regulations against them right away?
