Who is consuming their products? I’m doing my damn best not too while striving for structural change, and I’d bet the other user is too. What about you? People taking your stance are usually the ones trying to make excuses to keep consuming mindlessly.
That’s a pretty absurd generalization. I live off grid and get my power from solar, food from my garden and foraging. I compost all of my waste, consume as consciously as I can possibly achieve as an average individual, and I refuse to accept that this is some regular person’s fault.
Rugged individualism and shame will not change the world positively, some fucking accountability on the part of the few people causing the damage (corporations etc) might. It is willful ignorance to say that it is just everyone’s fault.
Almost everyone is just trying their best, save for a small number of incredibly rich people+the entities they run ruining everything.
Idk here’s a quote from The Good Place
"I want to tell you about a guy from my dance crew in Jacksonville called Big Noodle.
I used to yell at Big Noodle 'cause he always showed up late to rehearsal. Then one day, the swamp under my house flooded. I needed a place to crash, so I slept at Big Noodle’s house. Turns out that he had to juggle three jobs to take care of four grandparents who all lived in the same bed just like in “Willy Wonka.”
I never yelled at Big Noodle for being late after that 'cause I knew how hard it was for him to be there. And he definitely didn’t have time to research what tomatoes to buy. Even if he wanted to, possession of a non-fried vegetable is a felony in Jacksonville. The point is, you can’t judge humans 'cause you don’t know what we go through"
That’s a pretty absurd generalization. I live off grid and get my power from solar, food from my garden and foraging. I compost all of my waste, consume as consciously as I can possibly achieve as an average individual, and I refuse to accept that this is some regular person’s fault.
Then why do you do all that? You are contradicting yourself. Clearly you believe the average person has an impact, which is what I and others are saying. That doesn’t mean it’s all the average person’s fault, or that there aren’t powerful people leveraging that power to try to keep this system up. But “the system” isn’t something magical or a law of the universe; “the system” is people and their choices.
Almost everyone is just trying their best, save for a small number of incredibly rich people+the entities they run ruining everything.
Come on, you know that’s not true. Just go outside and talk to the average person, or even go on a more popular and less closed off social network.
I’m not saying life is easy right now, but most people could do a lot more than they do. Most people eat more red meat than is even healthy for them, never mind the environment, and never mind other meats or animal products in general. Most people will buy bottled water (and other beverages) even when they have access to clean tap water (and I’m not saying everybody does have access to it). Most people will make excuses to use a car, no matter how good the public transport is, or even if they could use a bicycle. Most people will still choose to use plastic bags for groceries instead of reusable ones, at least until a store stops supplying plastic bags.
To expand a bit more on this and not have to do much typing, I’ll just a leave a couple of comments from else where on this thread; the first one is mine and the second is from another user:
Though experiment:
Tomorrow is election day in your country. The stout environmentalists win control of the government and proceed to make the following changes:
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Carbon tax, which increases the price of gas, which itself results in an increase in shipping anything. It also directly raises the price of anything that produces carbon in its manufacture process, such as anything made of plastic.
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An end to meat subsidies - maybe even a tax on it - and an increase to subsidizing other types of farming.
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A ban on single use plastics.
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And anything else you think might be necessary.
Now the questions: How long until they get kicked out? How long until the protests and riots? How long until a new government undoes it all?
I’m assuming you’re not naive and you don’t live in a bubble. You should know the majority of people will not be fans of any of that; and with the way it usually goes and the pendulum swings, the government that follows it will be a far right one.
what would happen if everyone turned around and said ‘you know what, fuck companies that sell drinks in bottles i’m never going to be without my refillable bottle’ how long would coca-cola keep producing 100 billion plastic bottles a year? what would they do with them?
But if James Quincey said ‘fuck it, I’m not producing plastic bottles anymore they’re bad for the planet’ but 8 billion people said ‘oh ok, well we’re still going to regularly buy drinks in plastic bottles’ the numbers of plastic bottles being made would dip slightly but only while Ramon Laguarta rushed to spend the flood of money now coming in to scale up production at pepsi co.
You seem have an incredibly narrow view of what is “right” and are willing to dole out judgement based on your beliefs. I do truly believe that everyone is doing their best with the tools that they are given, and I cannot discount their efforts. It is not my place to talk shit idk.
I live the way I do because I am uniquely able to, most people are not. I cannot fault others for not being able to live this lifestyle because it takes MONEY and TIME that most people do not have. I don’t think your solutions are necessarily the solutions we need, I personally live in a state where taxes on the individual are the answer to every problem and it only makes it even harder for people to survive? Not great.
The world is complicated and very hard, obviously the system is not “magic,” but I don’t accept that consumer gas, meat, and bottled water is entirely the problem here when most of the Pacific Ocean garbage patch is commercial fishing nets (just one example). We need corporate accountability before anything else.
Igss I’m just here commenting to let you know that I don’t think it’s these Lemmy users’ faults that shit is shitty, and that I am not a “mindless consumer” or whatever.