Additionally, the impact that individual consumers can make pales in comparison to the impact a corporation can make when it comes to preserving our environment. We've been tricked to think that the most minimal of our actions (banning bags and straws) is enough.
NASA climatologist James Hansen testified to Congress in 1988 that climate change was a risk and that we should continue building more nuclear power despite Chernobyl having happened the year before.
If we had done that, we would have solved climate change in the 90s.
We had sufficient time. We had sufficient technology.
But instead of fighting for the environment, the environmentalists fought against it.
This provided the first Bush cover to kill nuclear so that his fossil fuel sponsors could make more profits.
Thats not entirely true though. What you are referring to is the impact of a single person vs the impact of a corporation, which is obvious. But if everyone would change their lifestyles and started taking this matter seriously, that would have by far the greatest inpact. Also every corporation depends on its customers and if those dont consume the way they used to, corporations are forced to change in the same way. This 'people like us cant make a change' bullshit attitude is the same as 'Im not voting because whats a single vote gonna do'.
Entire industries are dominated by maybe a couple of corporations each and you're telling us they're at the mercy of the customer? They certainly don't seem to be at the mercy of the customer with all this "inflation" they keep imposing on us. They choose to pollute because it's cheaper for them and they don't bother passing on those savings, they instead use it for higher profit margins. If you think they're afraid of being undercut by a competitor, then they wouldn't be fighting legislation that would apply across the industry.
in Spain we get fined if we don't recycle or even if a box is outside their respective container (even if it's not ours, some councils just want to fine people)
the company in charge of recycling (EcoEmbes) is not doing their job of waste collection, sorting, separation and treatment in our country, and they are even faking their statistics to make us think in Spain we are achieving our recycling goals, when we are not recycling even the 25 %.
many Spanish citizens already know about this and they recycle 'just in case', or they get so damn discouraged that they decide not to recycle at all. we are just.. tired and depressed. no will to fight since 2014.
i have four containers, one for each garbage type, and i still recycle even if i know maybe not even the 25 % of it will be treated as it should.
it's very depressing. it's not just companies, but our governments too. they are allies one to another, and their enemy is every nuisance that interferes with their greed. the only green they like is money.
i wish European Union helped us Spanish citizens with the EcoEmbes corruption and our many other corruptions, but the European Union is just an European richman's club, so i suspect they probably will be doing their own corruption schemes in their countries too, and being allies to our politicians.
our Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, who is probably going to be re-elected, and his Ministers, but also members of the Royal Family, and other Left and Right governments before since forever, = all of them politicians and monarchs in office, have been using the Falcon airplanes to go to the most simple reunion, vacation, music concert, football match... just citing 'security reasons' even if the reasons are not related to their job.
here you have the usage statistics of our current Government's Falcon airplanes, taken from FlightRadar: https://falcondespega.es
thanks to this page, the Government stopped using the airplanes so innecessarily because people started being aware of it. but if not, our Ministers and monarchs would be still doing as bad as before.
they could be using trains but why doing so, right?
If the world leaders of today would want to fix climate change or pollution they should focus their attention on countries that do not already do a good job fighting against these problems, instead of focusing about smal national problems. Remember this is a GLOBAL ISSUE which is what many people forget.
i agree, but the thing is that we could be already doing more 'here' and 'there' to fix this corruption, but in the end we don't get anything done 'here' or 'there' anyway because we are not organized enough in local.
if i can't fix my own stuff, how can i pretend to fix others'?
i get the 'there is no time to think small', but i don't think we currently are 'locally big' enough to think 'big globally' either.
also, the ecologic problems in countries like India, Bangladesh or China (for example), mostly depend directly on how economy is being handled by these countries, but also in rich countries that externalize their industry and garbage there, which makes this not an isolated corruption problem, but a whole failed economic model, in global as you say.
we people from Western countries import industry and export garbage, when we could have a responsible national, inner, circular, market first, so we don't affect other economies so much and so bad.
i feel we people from Western countries are in a much powerful position than people from those countries because we are the Demanding part of the market. we shape it. they Offer what we Demand. sadly, when it comes to the market, a bunch of Westerners can have more impact on India's Government than one of their citizens.
the problem: we are powerful but we cannot make it count because we are disorganized on what to do and how, we have been numbed and individualized.
we can cry in forums or go greta'ing to random politicians, but when it comes to action it feels like we are "oh no! ... anyway" and go to daily stuff again.
i think the easiest way to not get overwhelmed by this is starting local, making active choices in our economies and prosecuting corruption.
Recycling is simply a way to get people to buy more plastic products. Plastic is rarely recycled and even if it is, it's only for a single time. Recycling is supported by oil and gas companies since it promotes plastic container sales if people feel like they are helping the environment by recycling.
You’d still be just as depressed even with reusing, not using. Bees are still dying. Bad things are still happening. Because it’s not all on what one individual person does.
He's actually a teetotaler, if he has a sip of alcohol he transforms into George Lucas and starts destroying contraband copies of the original unedited Star Wars trilogy
The problem is that there absolutely need to be political measures taken and those will have to mean that gas gets far more expensive, flying won't be easily possible anymore and meat will be a special treat instead of the go-to option
But unless a decent amount of people change to show politicians that they can be re-elected even if they pursue those changes noone will even try
A politician promising rising prices (even if indirectly) will never have any success as long as it's possible for opponents to run on a platform of "nothing has to change" that denies the reality
I did my part. I think. I dunno. Calculating your carbon footprint is pretty much fucking impossible, and every time I vote in a candidate that supports green energy they also do a bunch of oily shit, making their position on fossil fuels a toss-up.
Rich has probably done more for the environment than most people. Rich, Mike, Jay, and the boys have kept hundreds of VHS tapes from going to a landfill.
Well for starters you obviously shouldn't drink wine from a glass bottle. Choose PET or tetra pack. Lighter and therefore save a lot of co2 in transport