This is good. This particular change has to be top down. The ability to put pressure on government and industry should be grass roots, not behavioral changes themselves.
Bingo. Fuck this gaslighting. The vast majority of pollution in general, and CO2 in particular, comes from industry, not individuals. Tossing trash everywhere and running gas through your bus-like SUV like a maniac is an asshole move, and your neighbors don't appreciate it, but it doesn't move the needle much on actual environmental issues. Big companies and big foreign nations are where the CO2 is coming from. They have a stranglehold on congress thanks to their money, so good luck forcing change. But in the meantime let's stop wringing our hands over "lifestyle changes". They don't matter.
> Bingo. Fuck this gaslighting. The vast majority of pollution in general, and CO2 in particular, comes from industry, not individuals.
Military (which I'd argue is in fact Industry) up until recently, actually; but somehow that gets swept under the rug. Moreover, when Industry loses a significant case in which they are forced to pay for their blatant environmental misconduct they can intimidate, and retaliate against the counselors [0] in some grotesque way to put a chilling effect on those who want to do the same.
I intermittent fast eat meat only 3 times a week and try to maintain a 5;1 plant to animal protein ratio, lowered my carbon footprint in many ways for 16 years now (from farming in large scale regenerative farms to living in towns where I don't need a car) and have been reducing my consumption more and more as I get older--it does nothing for me and I'm pretty utilitarian about my purchase and will prefer to buy used over new. In many ways I'm pretty sure my actions have made me (individually) carbon negative.
But, as you mentioned, the conclusion you realize after living this way is that Industry can essentially null all of the actions I've taken in a day of operation as it's activity in terms of GHG emission, pollution or wide-scale contamination of the environment. This is why I think Ecocide [1] should be enforced to all including corps as well as Governments and individuals (directors of investor's funds) and Hedgefunds who have benefited from these events. Anything short of this is political theater and will ensure that business as normal is maintained--COP26, Bilderburg et al are examples of how State and Cooperate power exempt themselves from all the things they decry are responsible for these impacts at scale.
With that said, I place greater confidence in the ingenuity of Humans to create solutions to these problems. Incentivizing this is what we should be doing instead of continuing to bail out failed business models from megacorps via infinite QE.
Exactly. But at the same time we can’t wash our hand at the grassroots level. We have to continue to be environmentally conscious and put pressure on industry.
