Edit: I wanted to apologize after reading some of the comments. You raise some legitimate points, I realize that there is a subtle malthusian element to this chart and some of you feel like a burden already. Furthermore, you raise a good point about corporate pollution, oil companies, and how their footprint is much greater than average plebs like us.
That’s 100% valid and I don’t disagree with you at all. My “compromise” I guess would be that continue to apply pressure and protest against large corporations, but in terms of ourselves, just pick a few things you can cut down on yourself, it does not have to be everything on this list.
For example, I really prefer having animal products in my diet, but I am willing to live in a small apartment , car-free, and not go on vacation much in my adulthood. In the same way, you guys can pick what you are comfortable with in reducing and what you do not want to compromise on.
All of us have different standards of living and we are flexible on some things, and some things we are not flexible. That is alright, just consider changing what you are comfortable with, but please do not think you are a burden. Your presence and your life is valuable to me. I don’t like to demoralize people.
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Before you read what I’m about to say. Understand that I have an electric bicycle, car and I recycle almost everything. I throw out one one bag of trash per week.
This chart is good but let’s not kid ourselves for even a second. Everyone in the world could take up these practices but that change would pale in comparison to the major issue at hand. Major corporate pollution.
We need to address that first before anything else. It will have the biggest and most dramatic change. Getting everyone caught up on better habits is something that can be taught over time. Considering the situation, I think getting the most bang for our buck by regulating large companies is the best way to go.
Agreed, chart needs “Don’t be Amazon” added for scale.
Thank you. This is the point I’m trying to make. We need to address both but one is far more urgent than the other.
I mean… I look at this chart, and I see that a single transatlantic flight has more impact than completely eliminating the use of your car?
I’m with you, but not for any semblance of the same reason :) I’m with you because im a hostler, a commercial driver that just moves cargo around a local yard. We send roughly 400 tons of bulk paper down the road and rails every 12 hour shift. Most of that is used to manufacture goods like cups, straws, and takeout boxes, within roughly 800 miles of here, but the majority of what goes on railcars is bound for Japan… it’s literally going to be transported to the other side of the globe. Japan wants incredibly specific quality paper, and they get it from here. That’s a huge amount of tonnage going across the Pacific, and going by this chart might be roughly equivalent to every single car driven in an entire less populous state. Just the shit I move around the yard here… And then basically everything bought in the US is made in China… all that stuff goes across the Pacific.
A long haul truck gets 6mpg, and runs 100k miles a year… every truck, every year… A whole ass lifetime worth of fuel for an average commuter in a “gas guzzling” SUV, in a year. One single truck. Every few days one of these trucks comes to your Walmart, your Home Depot, your Costco.
This chart is peanuts compared to JUST “economy of scale”… Not corporations or manufacturing, just the simple economics of shipping the spork you got at Taco Bell across the Pacific and driving it from the spork warehouse to 2,000 different taco bell joints…
Your personal carbon footprint is a fucking joke. Not in the sense that you shouldn’t care, but in the sense that what we do individually, despite being incredibly laudable at its own scale, is such a tiny tiny impact at the scale of economy…
I feel you. Not the way you mean it, but I really do feel you :)
While this is true, also consider the reason those trucks are necessary. If no one took a spork from taco bell, and used dishes at home instead, that truck would never need to come. Do this with many other non-essential items, and the impact starts becoming measurable. Using electric trucks for the essentials could eliminate that pollution entirely, though that last step is policy, not individual.
Making a policy out of this introduces a choice in enforcement tho:
is it more feasible to make sure every individual brings their own flatware, or is it more feasible to make sure taco bell doesn’t stock flatware?
A lot of the time, these things boil down to supply side vs demand side, and regulating the supply side ends up being the better choice.
I wonder how many of the large meat and dairy companies will still be such huge polluters if everyone ate a vegetarian or even vegan diet? I wonder how much less pollution fast fashion producers create if everyone prioritised high quality clothing that lasts a long time over cheap clothing that doesn’t even last a year? I wonder how much pollution oil and gas producers would make if everyone decided to stop using gas boilers and petrol cars and taking long polluting flights?
To argue that we can’t affect the amount of pollution going in to the world makes someone else less likely to try. If we all do our part the companies are forced to change, not via laws and regulations, but by the fact that they will lose money if they don’t. The fact of the matter is, most people say they care about climate change and the environment, but when you ask them to give up their highly polluting luxuries, they suddenly don’t care as much. And obviously there are exceptions to this, you and I for example probably care about the environment and actually act in a way as to reduce our own footprints. But the average person does not care enough.
Average people are sometimes not going to care. Changing laws to force businesses not to pollute is something that can have a major impact.
We can teach people better habits over decades and generations but if we don’t stop dumping tons of oil into the oceans or CO2 in the air we are not going to be around to teach anyone anything.
This is true, in reality it’s what has to be done, and it will be against the will of the people, it would be undemocratic and would require agreement on both sides of the political spectrum. When one side makes unpopular but necessary change to regulation to reduce our environmental impact, you have to pray that come next election, your hard work isn’t immediately undone after almost certainly being voted out.
People generally aren’t unreasonable, adding additional regulation on say oil producers is fine for people in rich nations, people who can afford (begrudgingly) to pay more money for their petrol. But the only way to make such a change fair is to increase the amount of aid sent to lower income countries. When the price per litre of petrol in Kenya is about €1.2 and the average income is €2000 it becomes unfair to give them higher prices for necessities without also loading these developing nations with significant amounts of financial aid. Oil and gas is the ladder which developed nations climbed to become who they are to day, and it is the same ladder which we need to kick down behind us to prevent or limit climate change. We can not leave those behind us ladderless however. We must use money to help them reach our levels.
And money comes from taxes, and taxes come from people, and when people in these developed nations look at the state of their country, large expenses, large mortgage payments or rent, increased price of fuel increased price of meat and dairy. Most will not understand why it is necessary to also start sending hundreds of billions of dollars to poorer countries. You either need to educate the general population to a level where they can understand what must be done to save ourselves. Or you must do it against the will of the people, undemocratically.
I understand that this comment may be slightly irrelevant but it came to my mind and I thought it had to be voiced. If you can see any way in which the logic is not sound in my comment here please let me know and correct me. Thank you in advance.
But the average person does not care enough.
Can you point to examples where this has worked to change mass social behaviour where it hasn’t been underpinned by laws or regulation or taken multiple generations to achieve?
We need change now. Targeting companies is the only way to change things now - not some years down the line when eventually we get every common person to understand that taking on hardship voluntarily is prevents collective hardship even more years down the line.
I wonder how much less pollution fast fashion producers create if everyone prioritised high quality clothing that lasts a long time over cheap clothing that doesn’t even last a year?
All I can buy here where I live is disposable fast fashion. Quality clothing is not readily available.
Also, quality stuff I could buy from the internet (and gamble wether it would fit me or not) is way, way too expensive for someone living in a lower income country. I just can’t afford 500+€ boots or 200€ shirt that may or may not last for 5+ years.
Which brings another point—you can never know if the products a company makes today are the same they made a few years ago that got praised for their quality. Enshittification is everywhere.
You can get high quality clothing for much much less than these prices you have said. Solovair boots are about €200, and they’re still pretty expensive for high quality stuff. €80 for a high quality charles tyrwhitt shirt. It doesn’t even need to be specifically branded as high quality, but when you are browsing in whatever store, check the thickness of the teeshirt or shirt, check the strength of the trousers, think about how easy it would be to repair if it broke. Last year I bought a thick plain teeshirt from H&M for €8, I have worn it a lot and it shows no signs of wear. You just have to be conscious about what it is you are buying.
If fast fashion wasn’t an option would you be naked? No, your country would have it’s own cottage industry of clothing much like used to exist before fast fashion flooded your markets. You get rid of fast fashion and now you have local quality back.
Lets assume one dairy farm serves 2000 people. In order to limit the emissions from the farm, you must either regulate the farm, or convince 2000 people to give up dairy.
In your time as an advocate, how many people have you convinced to give up dairy? How long would it take to convice all dairy consumers?
This is true, but when 2000 people find out that the price of milk and cheese they love so dearly is going to have to go up, a perhaps decently sized portion of those 2000 would protest and fight to stop the regulation that causes them to have to change their diet. It’s incredibly difficult to change the way people think in a democracy. The only democratic way to make the change we need is to already have more than 50% of the people on board with the proposed regulation.
Im also gonna add that meat products are often treated more favorably by governments, making them cheaper than vegetarian options, despite being more resource intensive. Not that I think governments shouldn’t help light industry mind you.
Make it illegal for corps. to use anything other than biodegradable plastics (starch-based, etc), for single-use products, unless there is a very good and specific case to be made (eg long-term storage, or storage at extreme temperature needs). Outlaw unsolicited snail mail (leafleting, etc). With reasonable exceptions for municipal stuff.
We need to address that first before anything else.
No, we can simply address it at the same time, especially since we are the consumers of the products those awful companies produce.
So what I said? What part of “teaching people over time” meant stop teaching?
Ah yes, so when you said “Let’s do this, before we do anything else”, you meant “Let’s do these things at the same time”. Makes sense.
I was implying that we should lead with that first. Sounds like you’re looking for any reason to pick a fight with someone who is advocating for major changes over minor ones.
Who’s side are you on anyways?
I was implying that we should lead with that first.
Yes and I said that there is no reason for that and that we can address both at the same time, to which you replied that this is what you are saying, yet now it appears again to not be what you are saying. Are you confused?
I will ignore the rest of your comment as the weak attempt to derail the conversation, that it is.
You know what. I’m going to extend an olive branch here. I think we got off on the wrong foot and we both want the same thing overall. I think we are both nitpicking the minor details looking for a reason to be outraged.
So what do you say, friends?
Being friends is not neccessary for staying on topic and I am not outraged.
Each individual needs to act in a climate conscious way NOW and every corp needs to be heavily regulated to be climate conscious NOW.
Eh, I’m not sure addressing it at the same time is as helpful as it seems.
People have limited bandwidth and energy. Better to rally them to supporting climate action targeting companies, which has the knock on effect of influencing people’s personal climate responsibility. (e.g. if you put a carbon/GHG tax and include the meat industry, then all of a sudden veggie/vegan alternatives are a lot cheaper and people end up buying them without having to personally and collectively motivate themselves.)
Edit: at this point I’m beginning to think that people arguing for consumer responsibility as equally or even more important than legal regulation on emitters are at best useful idiots propping up polluting industries or at worse bad faith actors.
Edit: at this point I’m beginning to think that people arguing for consumer responsibility as equally or even more important than legal regulation on emitters are at best useful idiots propping up polluting industries
Those people are the target and purpose of this type of industry propaganda.
We need to address that first before anything else
Why not both? Doing these other things does not prevent you from fighting for regulations etc. However, arguing they aren’t regulated yet so you don’t give a shit about what you do is absolutely worse.
The most bang for our buck? We’ve been arguing that companies should be regulated for decades. These other habits have been known to be an improvement for years already.
Don’t push off what you can already do today simply because companies still polute. That’s pointless and counter productive.
That’s not at all what I’m implying. I never said wait. I said we can teach it over time. You’re mincing my words to be divisive.
Yes it’s been talked about for decades and it still needs to be the first part of any climate change conversation.
I literally quoted you. You said it needs to be first. Do you know what that phrase means?
And this information is literally 6 years old even and the information itself is older than that. What gradual time to teach this do you want?
You sound like a company saying you can’t regulate now, give us time first.
This argument always comes up. But corporations are no independent evil agents trying to destroy the world for the sake of it. They facilitate and produce what people want. So it does have to start with regular people because even though the onus should be on politics, history has shown that this is not working in a democracy.
The decisions politicians would have to make are hugely unpopular and would result in their opposition being voted in to undo those changes.
Not to mention the corruption that’s also a pretty big factor in all of this.
That’s a dumb take. “The corporations are only doing what we’re asking them to do so it’s all our fault”
No one wants modern packaging on kids toys, it’s annoying to deal with, makes tons of trash, and it’s designed to make kids want more junk toys at home. The only reason corporations do this is that they know colorful packaging and uselessly large boxes draw kids in more than a brown paper box with the name of the toy on it. It’s pure emotional manipulation of children, which already has (ineffective) laws to prevent it. The reason these laws are ineffective is corporate pressure in politics undermining the democratic desires of the population, because manipulating kids is profitable.
Nearly every product can be made in a manner that is more earth friendly and supports good labor practices. Corporations choose NOT to do these things because of profits not because it’s what we want to buy.
Even “what we want to buy” as a concept itself has been under assault by targeted ad campaigns for decades now such that it’s hard to separate consumer desires from corporate profit motives. Apple is a great example of this type of “lifestyle” brand.
I can’t believe ANYONE believes that “corporations are just a reflection of the material desires of society, so changing them won’t fix the real problem” what boot licking brown nosed bullshit.
Don’t simp for corporations.
I mean, stopping commercial passenger flights is on regular people, so is not buying food produced 10 000km away (no, it’s not normal that we can eat oranges or bananas in Canada, we would be supposed to eat a whole lot more squash instead of letting them rot in the fields though) or buying Chinese made crap…
I’ll tell my youngest child the bad news I guess. He’s gotta go.
I don’t even have a child. If I were to end someone else’s spawn would that count as -1 child for my footprint or theirs? Just asking out of curiosity…of a friend…an acquaintance really.
Maybe a really old “child” that takes a lot of international flights.
I know where there is a whole building full of old children who fly a lot and aren’t addressing climate issues…
Don’t forget to compost the body. We’re trying to be sustainable here.
Exactly. They might as well suggest people to kill themselves to make less of a climate impact.
No, it means that people who want to have big families but don’t have one yet should chill the fuck out or adopt instead. I’ve got two friends with four kids, my ex colleague’s daughter was having her 11th, I know many people with three…
There are too many humans on earth, just having less kids overall to let the population come down would make a huge difference.
I’ve only got two and it absolutely kicks my ass on a daily basis. I’ve got no idea why anyone would want more than two, let alone eleven. Absolute madness I tell ya!
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hahah
If you add pollution caused by large companies as another column here then the personal responsibility lines would not even be 1 pixel in height. Climate change is not something that can be fixed by personal change.
No no, the benefactors of systemic issues told me it’s all my fault. They’re innocent
Yes, but making changes in my own life (as small as they may be in the grand scheme of things) helps me feel a little less depressed about the whole thing. So many of the most impactful changes are outside of my control. Yes, i can, to some extent, make my voice heard and push for policy changes, and I can refuse, to some extent, to purchase from or invest in companies that are the biggest polluters and carbon-users. But I’m not a CEO of a multinational oil and gas conglomerate, nor am I in charge of making policy decisions for the country (hell, I live in a very red state, so my vote essentially doesn’t count, outside of local elections).
But I do have the power to set an example. It is always good to make changes that you can, even if it’s comparitively negligible. I think if everyone made the effort to live more sustainably, the people that actually have the power to make big changes may feel more pressure to do something (people asking “if i can do it, why can’t they” when voting or making purchases or investments could have a big effect if we all did it together). It would also help show the greenwashing that a lot of companies engage in as a facade (people that actually know what it takes to reduce their carbon footprint would be more aware of what does and doesn’t have an impact). Possibly… Maybe we’re all screwed and there’s nothing we can do about it and civilization as we know it will come crashing down around us. But I think hope is a good thing to hold on to in the meantime, and doing what I can in my own life gives me hope.
A better method would be to organize protests. Like billionaires know that their companies are responsible for like 90% of global warming, otherwise we wouldn’t get ads aimed at making normal people feel responsible for this. Carbon capture is a similar incentive, it is absolutely useless but it let’s companies continue with the status quo instead of making an actual change, it’s just a distraction.
I hold out hope that people will get out of their homes and join protests. I’ll continue participating in protest held in my country but it’s a country of like 1.3 million with more forest and bears than people. What is needed is that the people of the US, China, India, Russia etc start organising.
Absolutely. I did not mean to imply that small daily-life changes are all that is necessary, just that we shouldn’t count them as useless just because they are small impact. At the very least, it is a tool i use to keep climate-change-induced depression and anxiety at bay enough to make “real action” something i’m mentally capable of.
Yes, but making changes in my own life (as small as they may be in the grand scheme of things) helps me feel a little less depressed about the whole thing.
Then feel free, but for most of us, making those same changes would remove what little joy there still is in being alive.
Enough with these tiny effects
- Fix the gas pipeline leaks in Turkmenistan
- Wildfire fighting
- Actually doing something with that satellite map monitoring of pollution
- Help the people of Brazil keep the government that isn’t burning the Amazon
- Require sails and kites on cargo ship
Sails and kites on cargo ships is a cool idea. But why not electric?
- Cars can be electric
- Rockets, tough, but they could be (hydrogen from electrolysis of water)
- planes, so far - batteries seem to heavy, but maybe one day
- trains, electric
- boats, I’m sure the cargo will be reduced - but just get more boats.
Tax oil/gas/plastic at a tiny tiny amount (0.0001%) per unit, and increase it every quarter (maybe even in line with global co2 production, or global temps, if you want some people to feel what the earth is feeling)
This gives business time to de-hydrocarbon, and as stated above - there are already non hydrocarbon solutions
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The personal choice with the biggest effect that’s missing is leading an overthrow of our capitalist economic system to something more sustainable.
Exactly! I don’t see “eat a billionaire” on this chart.
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This is just a friendly reminder that 71% of global emissions are created by just 100 companies.
Dont forget, around 30% of ALL US emissions comes from US military - but no one is pushing to reduce that, and to the contrary, many politicians push for green stuff while also push for war and military… The level of ignorance and hypocrisy…
Trust me… we have been asking. For a long time.
Seen this argument around, got any source for that?
Edit: Found that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_contributors_to_climate_change
Edit 2: Is it more accurate? https://peri.umass.edu/greenhouse-100-polluters-index-current
Do you think companies exist in a vacuum?
And these companies are just emitting for fun right
Frequently, yes. They skirt regulations and don’t give a fuck and there’s not enough oversight. Or they say they are carbon neutral but actually its because of offsets.
Of course it’s not for fun. It’s for something more important than anything else - their bottom line.
Worse, they are doing it because it’s profitable and they will continue to do so as long as it remains profitable. And guess what, it will never not be profitable to pollute no matter how much personal responsibility you want to blame.
Where’s “eliminate billionaires*” and “stop consumerism”?
*I don’t mean killing them, just tax them to oblivion.
*i don’t mean killing them
🥺
I don’t mean killing them [billionaires]
:( /j
*I don’t mean killing them, just tax them to oblivion.
For anyone still not paying attention - they will never ever let us do the one (they are literally planning their lives underground or in space for when the planet is no longer liveable, why anyone would think they would ever do anything to benefit anyone but themselves truly is beyond me), leaving us no choice but to resort to the other.
*I don’t mean killing them, just tax them to oblivion.
You can guillotinepost here, it’s not reddit.
Needs to have a couple of examples of corporate changes and their relative impacts just to put it into perspective
This graph probably assumes that the child will lead a similar lifestyle as us for an entire lifetime.
If the child grows up in a post-apocalyptic wasteland however it’s not going to have that footprint.
There is hope is all I am saying. 😉
I beg to differ. In a mad maxian wasteland the child would still burn a lot of gasoline. Witness them.
Don’t forget the aerosols, from all that silver paint!
WITNESS!!!
If I learned anything from Mad Max, then that pumping out carbon dioxide is going to ge one of the favorite pastimes in a postapocalyptic future
If the child grows up in a post-apocalyptic wasteland however it’s not going to have that footprint.
I guess you’re joking, but this whole thing is about preventing this scenario…
Yes they were making a joke severien
Industry propganda around the climate is not “Beautiful.” Don’t spread bullshit like this.
Meh, and I’ll get downvoted to hell for this but getting people to care about an issue is the only way to bring about real change. Showing how they could actually make a difference, no matter how small, on their own power is the first baby step in the process. If this is anti-climate propaganda, it is an absolutely terrible choice that has and continues to backfire. If I was a corporate propagandist, I’d be telling everyone how they cant do anything about it so why try.
the narrative that our personal carbon footprints matter was created by oil companies and continues to only benefit them and nobody else. changing your individual habits will never address a systemic problem. and this is a systemic problem, not a personal one.
I agree but, again, if they want to spread propaganda that they think it benefits them but, in reality, it only hurts them in the long run, I’m not going to stop them.
Getting some uncaring person to the level of going after oil companies and billionaires doesn’t come at a flip of the switch. It’s a process that starts with small actions, like these, and can lead to them attempting bigger actions. “If I can make an impact, my family/social circle can make a larger impact, getting Big Company to do something similar will make a massive impact”.
The Perosnal Carbon Footprint and similar small scale activism has done more to inspire new climate change activists than most things in recent years. There is no logical way this helps the oil companies. If anything, it hastens their decline. If what you said is true about them being behind the personal carbon footprint, they really fucked up. The fastest way to change a systematic issues is to give people hope that it can change at all, even if their individual change at the begining is negligible.
I guess you are right. We have already won, no need to do anything else, I would offer to celebrate with you, but I figured out that leaving my house hurts the environment so I am inside in the dark doing my best to reduce my personal carbon footprint. Eventually when all of us are dead, the Capitalist Survivors will surely be defeated.
Nah. You were right. There’s nothing we can do about it so why bother trying? Guess I’ll start rolling coal, trowing my trash directly into the river, and not voting at all as my impact means nothing. I’d also say let’s celebrate but it’s not worth it to start small get together outside that our neighbors might join us for the festivities so we might as well just cough ourselves to sleep.
I am not the one that said there is nothing we can do about it. However the liberal solutions of “vote blue no matter who” and “make my life measurably worse by cutting out the majority of culinary culture, most travel, child-rearing, fireworks, and literally everything else because it all has an impact on the environment” are bullshit. There are something like 20,000 people on earth that are fucking it up for the rest of us, and maybe a couple hundred thousand who defend them, why should I change my lifestyle just because those people should be culled? Let’s just cull them, restructure society so that people like that don’t get to exist again, and then the rest of use with very minor changes to our lifestyle (getting rid of the concept of commuting by car) can enjoy meat, travel, and having a family.
People are acutely aware of climate change, but our current form of government doesn’t give people a voice in systemic issues. Propaganda like this doesn’t inform anyone, it blames them, and making people think it’s a personal problem is WAY better then telling people to ignore the problem.
For example if you had 10’s of thousands of fish wash up on the Texas shore because of lack of oxygen in the gulf of mexico. https://www.npr.org/2023/06/12/1181661320/fish-kill-texas-beaches-explained Then you can’t just ignore that. But if you’ve already internalized that it was your fault because of your carbon footprint, you won’t do anything else except be sad. You might even be like Boxer in Animal Farm, thinking that somehow you are personally responsible for the issue. But that’s wrong. Much like in Animal Farm the problem was systemic, and no matter how hard Boxer worked, he couldn’t fix the issue of greed and that was the point.
That’s exactly the response that I’d be going for as a pro-oil propagandist: Nothing you can do matters! The government (the only entity that can rein in these corps though regulation) won’t listen to you so don’t even bother to vote!
People who pay attention to their carbon footprint are much, much more likely to vote for candidates that support climate change infinitives. Many don’t see it as blaming themselves, but as a roadmap on how to do things better. Again, everyone starts somewhere. For many people, that starting point is their own impact, how ever so small.
No, people who pay attention to their carbon footprint are more likely to be liberals and vote blue no matter who. “I must vote harder, the Democrats are always right.” Which ultimately is exactly what propaganda like this wants you to do. This type of green washing encourages that kind of thinking. “The solution can only be found within the system, it cannot be the system that is the problem, only my interaction with it.”
Anything that makea the normies let me have my car-free (stress-free) and child-free (gay) lifestyle. Please let me have this.
Typical vaush viewer
Why they stopped on “one less child”? I’m pretty sure that a suicide is the best thing a person can do to fight against climate change.
Also, suicide has a positive impact on the pension system, whereas having less children has a negative impact.
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Why they stopped on “one less child”? I’m pretty sure that a suicide is the best thing a person can do to fight against climate change.
Advice doesn’t make much sense within some kind of shared ethics framework, otherwise you just end up with a reward function for some kind of rampaging AI.
That’s likely why this collection of personal choices doesn’t list “kill yourself” or “kill others” - because it doesn’t consider them to be acceptable personal choices. And surely neither do you.Agree. But promoting/pushing childfree as a responsible answer for a climat issue as the next option after carefree does not make sense either for the same reason.
Agree. But promoting/pushing childfree as a responsible answer for a climat issue as the next option after carefree does not make sense either for the same reason.
I’m not sure I follow - are you saying that you would consider a family with two children to have made a less acceptable/responsible decision than a family with three children (or zero/one, one/two, … etc.)?
I mean if so then I certainly don’t want you to feel uncomfortable talking about it, it’s just that I’ve never encountered that kind of outlook before, so it’s a bit of an unexpected turn in the conversation for me. Could you elaborate on what you mean?Well, the info promotes options people can do to fight climate change. It says less children is the best option. Right now eco-activists blame and attack people for using cars and planes, they promote laws to restrict this kind of things. In few years they will blame attack mothers with 2 children and promote birth restrictions laws.
How many children to have - is a personal decision made considering many different reasons. What I find not acceptable is - promoting/advertising/pushing people to have less children because to protect climate. Like: “you have a 2 children? You are a shitty person killing our planet - much worse then a guy flying private jet!”
Well, the info promotes options people can do to fight climate change. It says less children is the best option. Right now eco-activists blame and attack people for using cars and planes, they promote laws to restrict this kind of things. In few years they will blame attack mothers with 2 children and promote birth restrictions laws.
How many children to have - is a personal decision made considering many different reasons. What I find not acceptable is - promoting/advertising/pushing people to have less children because to protect climate. Like: “you have a 2 children? You are a shitty person killing our planet - much worse then a guy flying private jet!”
I always find it helpful to try and decouple everything from value judgements as best as possible - in that regard I find it hard to read any kind of “blame” or accusations of “being a shitty person” into that graphic. I mean, it’s just a fancy spreadsheet, isn’t it? “This kind of choice entails that kind of impact”.
Assuming that the data and the estimates themselves are reasonable and correct then it wouldn’t seem too far-fetched to accept that avoiding a transatlantic flight is a more impactful decision for one’s carbon footprint than life-long dutiful recycling. I mean at that point it’s just comparing numbers and it would seem to be rather objective and judgement-free to say “A person choosing to live their life without a car has made a bigger impact on their carbon footprint with that decision than than a person choosing to replace that car with a hybrid” or, conversely, “A person choosing to live their life with one fewer children has made a bigger impact on their carbon footprint with that decision than a person choosing to recycle” - wouldn’t it?
Or let’s do it the other way around: What would you change about that graphic to make it more acceptable in your eyes? Would you just leave out the last column or do something completely different with the data?
I would remove the last column, all other parts are widely recommended/enforced steps and putting “less children” to the same line automatically makes it most recommend option.
If this picture is just for fun - there should be no problem to add a suicide there - since this just shows facts, not pretend to impact anyone’s decisions.
Thanks for humoring me!
Why not? Choosing to have 1 child instead of 2 (or zero instead of 1) is generally considered a legally/ethically/morally acceptable choice. On the other hand stabbing someone (or yourself) with a carbon-neutral knife is generally not. Actually committing suicide would be less effective than having a child, unless you were able go back in time and kill yourself as a newborn.
Actually committing suicide would be less effective than having a child, unless you were able go back in time and kill yourself as a newborn. Why? suicide = no kinds, no car, no plane, not consuming of stuff for next XX years etc - much better than just do not have children.
Right now there are eco-activists which blame and attack other people for using cars and planes and pushing restriction in these areas to fight with the climate change. In few years they will blame and attack people with children and push laws forbidding having more than one child.
Having on not children is a valid personal choice, promoting/pushing this idea to others for reduce climate change - is not very acceptable.
Slippery slope argument aside, what does having information about the consequences of your choice have to do with how personal the choice is?
I’d wager most people who are thinking about having a kid have not thought much about the impacts outside of their own personal life, or only about the potential positive impacts. Fact is the world really doesn’t really need more people, and if you’re serious about making a better future for humanity, you’d at least consider the impacts of having more than a couple kids.
And just to head off any semantic argument, when I say the world doesn’t need more people, I’m saying 8 billion is plenty of humans, not that we should just stop reproducing.
Let’s all have no kids and save the future of humanity!
Sounds like mass suicide with extra steps imo.
That’s especially true in any country with the resources to reduce emissions which are already below replacement rates. I’m not suggesting we grow forever or even at all. We’re already going to have less people every generation than the one before it, telling people to have less kids to save the future seems especially deaf. Who exactly are we saving the planet FOR?
Saving the earth by ending humanity is the trivial solution to the problem not a useful one.
Who exactly are we saving the planet FOR?
The plants and animals who didn’t create this catastrophe and don’t deserve to suffer from it.
Although they all suffer from being killed and eaten by other animals, so I’m not sure it matters very much. Nature is brutal even without humans involved.
What are you on about?? It takes a little over 2 kids per child-producing couple just to sustain the population flat. Does that sound dystopian to you? Sounds like the average suburban family to me.
Who exactly are we saving the planet FOR?
Uhhhh… those hundreds of millions of kids born each year, exploding population or not, are the ones we are saving the planet for.
Show me a country where people have enough money to “make choices to reduce climate change” where the fertility rate is above 2
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate
Fair point, now try weighting it by “per capita climate impact” or some other factor as vague as “enough money to make choices to reduce climate change”.
OK. One less child. Now I just have to decide whether the boy or the girl has to go.
Mesoamerican human sacrifices to volcanoes to appease natural forces I suppose were one of the earliest policies to combat climate change.
Girls are important for the continuation of our species, don’t make the same mistakes China made.
But the continuation of our species is bad for the planet according to this graph. It’s safer if we keep only men. The world record for most babies to a woman is 50x less than the world record for most babies to a man, so girls should be the limiting factor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_the_most_children
I do most of these by being poor and am explicitly excluded from doing the ones I’m not already doing also by being poor.
Poverty is great for the environment apparently.
They should do one for corporations
Even just add private jests on to this, it would make all the other columns disappear…
I do not see what clown contracts have to do with this!
😂
I’m leaving it, we can all use a little chuckle scrolling through this boring dystopia of a thread lol…E: also, clowns is still technically correct for many of them, so… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Removed by mod
