Ensuring that everyone on Earth has a decent standard of living is possible in accordance with reducing emissions quickly and decisively.
More info: Closing decent living gaps in energy and emissions scenarios: introducing DESIRE
Ensuring that everyone on Earth has a decent standard of living is possible in accordance with reducing emissions quickly and decisively.
More info: Closing decent living gaps in energy and emissions scenarios: introducing DESIRE
“Yeah but no” - The top 0.1%
And the 10% who are responsible for two thirds of emissions, which we’re probably both part of.
You speak as if we owned the means of production. The point of all these “it’s actually 100 million people who are at fault, not the 100 who actually make decisions” articles is so that responsibility is dissolved to a point of nonexistence and nothing gets done.
At this rate, blame the cows. Their farts are a very large part of climate change. If they didn’t fart, we’d be much better off.
Those cows exist because hundreds of millions of people eat cow meat, the 0.1% doesn’t force us to eat it.
Yes they do. A Big Mac is cheaper than it should be and people are struggling. For many, it’s cow meat (with PFAS to taste) or nothing.
My point is that you as a person, unorganised, has as much power as one cow in this system.
If all cows banded together, they could stop this. So could we. But we are prevented from doing so.
Unless it’s on a huge sale I never see beef for a lower price/weight than tofu. A BigMac costs more than making food at home so it’s pretty weird to use that as an example then saying that people are struggling financially.
I just farted when I giggled at this. I feel shame.
Is this a call to action?
We are absolutely part of the solution. Specifically, we have the power to hold the 0.1% and their petit quislings to task.
I’m just saying that yes the 0.1% pollute more individually, but most people in first world countries pollute way more than they should and if they’re told to reduce their emissions they won’t be ready to do their part.
I see your point.
Yes we’ll all (all of us reading this anyway) have to do our part, but we’ve already had decades of individual, consumer-focused mitigation efforts (reduce-reuse-recycle, etc). There are too many political and market forces guiding your average person to continue consuming.
The corpos with the real money uphold a system that will only ever incentivise keeping the consumption treadmill going, no matter what some individual consumers might think about it.
I’m curious what you’re proposing. My idea is to soak the rich until there are no more billionaires, and use the cash to pivot hard into a publicly funded green economy. I think people would get into it pretty quickly once they saw it wasn’t just a green washing cash grab.
I 100% agree that billionaires shouldn’t exist. I also believe that governments will need to take actions and adopt laws that people won’t like at some point because we can’t expect people to cut on luxury stuff by themselves (like air travel for example)…
There are some things which the rich can’t force us to do, eating beef isn’t mandatory for example, neither is buying a car with a big engine instead of the more economical option, but realistically people won’t stop by themselves…
Agreed, there needs to be some kind of push or pull at play to get people to choose better, until it becomes ingrained anyway.