- cross-posted to:
- science_memes@mander.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- science_memes@mander.xyz
Tommy Siegel | Bluesky | website
Transcript
Comic in 4 Panels:
Header: It’s That Easy!
Panel 1: The year is 1994. A dad with short black hair, in a blue shirt, red shorts, and white sneakers with calf high white socks, kneels with one arm resting on a knee and the other raised demonstratingly in front of a kid in a green ball cap, yellow shirt, blue pants, and green sneakers. There is a round metal trash can behind them.
Dad: Pick up your litter and save the Earth!
Panel 2: The year is 2004. Same dad, but in brown cargo shorts, brown shoes, and ankle high white socks speaking to the same kid. There is a green recycle bucket behind them.
Dad: Recycle and you can save the Earth!
Panel 3: The year is 2014. Same dad, but wearing a bike helmet, black athletic pants, and black sneakers to the same kid. A bike is behind them.
Dad: Reduce your carbon footprint and you can save the Earth!
Panel 4: The year is 2024. Same dad, but he’s in the same outfit from panel 1. There is a massive fire behind them.
Dad: Completely restructure global economic systems and you may be able to save a remnant of humanity!
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We failed them like our parents failed us
All generations suffer from the same issue: the system is designed so that only the narcissists make it to the top. This will repeat again for eternity if we don’t change the system, and the failure isn’t generational when we are presented with only two options that both work for the elite in some capacity.
It will not “repeat for eternity”, both our societies and the planet’s ecosystems which we depend on all have breaking points after which they will not be able to sustain capitalism. We have a few decades until human civilization collapses if we don’t overthrow the system.
I think a random lottery for office positions is the only system I’ve ever heard of which can’t be abused by narcissists.
You’re 100% right
The individual action PSAs were a deliberate fraud perpetrated by the worst polluters.
Precisely. It was strategically designed and marketed to shift the blame/responsibility from manufacturers to consumers.
It was a scam and distraction from the start created by advertising agencies.
“If they knew that to save .03 a unit we are dumping this byproduct in the river, they would have our heads on a platter. Get the PR team in here” “Why dont we tell them its their fault for buying it in the first place, but never really blaming any specific product” “Yeah, its all their fault”
Right? People super quick forgot about 1999s Battle of Seattle
Great comic. Good to see this is finally starting to dawn on people.
Good news is that we’re facing an incredible economic crash worse than anything we’ve ever seen, and the degrowth of GDP is going to be great to reduce greenhouse gasses.
I already reduced my carbon footprint. For some reason people get really mad when I try and blow up an oil refinery to reduce theirs.
I’m not mad.
Well if I could rely on people like you being on the jury, I just might be more willing.
Jury nullification? Never heard of her!
Just pick up that trash and YOU’LL BE SHOT IN THE FACE BY A MASKED GROUP OF PARDONED JAN 6 TRAITORS IN ALL DIFFERENT HOMEMADE ARMY MAN COSTUMES, CHARGED WITH “ULTRA LEFT WING” TERRORISM AND DEPORTED, AS AN AMERICAN CITIZEN, WITHOUT A TRIAL, FOR WOKE MARXIST CANCEL CULTURE AND DOUBLE TRANS!!!
One of the most brilliant (and evil) tricks that big corporations have used is to shift the blame for climate change to normal people: just recycle, don’t use plastic straws, and buy our CO₂-neutral products, and everything will be fine!
While not unimportant, it’s a very small change compared to the pollution of corporations and private jets. It’s easy for them to pay lip service to the environment while the real pollution goes on unimpeded.
Environmentally inclined people feel like they do something and don’t rally against the real problem. They just have to convince everyone to live like they do and the environment will be saved!
It’s abusive victim blaming by psychopaths
I feel like “psychopath” is very dehumanizing language, the correct term is “people with antisocial personality disorder”.
That’s a joke by the way, lol. Not sure what the Lemmy equivalent of /s is…
Yes. We do use /s here, as well.
Good to know!
And even worse, it split us up again because if you point that out, the environmentalists are against you too. Because everything counts. Well yes, but…
Billionaire oligarchs flying in to climate conferences every year on private jets by the thousands, where oil executives are regularly invited to give the keynote speeches, while not accomplishing anything policy-wise or binding to materially reduce the rate or impacts of climate change, is the epitome of greenwashing.
“What menial lifestyle changes should we tell our consumers to adopt this year to keep them off our backs?”
Environmentally inclined people feel like they do something and don’t rally against the real problem.
Actually we have already been lobbying and protesting and trying to change the system for decades.
The work might not be visible, but it’s due to resource constraints, not because we are delusional and think that decreasing global CO2 emissions by 0.000000027% will fix the biodiversity loss.
Oh, I’m not saying that there are no activists anymore, just that the corporations successfully distracted large parts of the population by shifting blame to the consumers.
I don’t know anyone in the environmental protection world that suggests cutting CO2 emotions by that tiny percentage, and the resource constraints thing sounds like a corporate talking point… Are you secretly 3 oil execs in a trench coat?
deleted by creator
While there is some truth to this, this line of thinking is a trap because it removes responsibility from the individual.
Coorporations don’t pollute the world for no reason. They do it because there’s too many of us consuming too much crap.
Changing the whole system (regulations, etc.) is not a safe plan. Clearly it did not work out.
Stop buying so much crap online.
Look at it from the other way around: Capitalism is dependent on endless growth to function. To that end, consumerism is one tool by which capitalists sustain that endless growth rather than the problem in and of itself. It would be no good for them if people were able to just buy a thing when they needed it and it lasted a really long time. So they find ways to induce demand. A shiny new phone every year with planned obsolescence, advertising and other forms of cultural influence that equate happiness with disposable consumption, monopolistic tactics to crush alternatives, lobbying for government policies to limit alternatives and promote financial conditions that encourage consumption over saving, etc.
You can still say that at the end of all of this people ultimately “decide” to consume or not, but… what is that accomplishing exactly? Is our plan to just hope that every single individual person decides to lower their consumption, no matter how difficult or burdensome that might be given their situation? Especially considering how lopsided the actual emissions are towards the very wealthy? And if people started doing that… do you think corporations don’t aggressively push back in whatever way they can? Because that plan isn’t working either.
The “personal responsibility” angle isn’t actually taking responsibility, it’s just acting smug and accepting our doom is inevitable, but not your fault because you already “did your part.” Get organized or we all die. It’s that simple. It won’t be easy, but it’s our only real option.
Notably, this is all a very daunting task. While we need national and international action, that isn’t the only thing that matters. Activism in your community can help too. Plenty of stuff happens at the level of cities, towns, and counties. Roads and transportation. Zoning laws. Any gov or HOA requirements around grass and gardening. Tree planting. The gov’s relationship with utility providers. Fighting back against destructive development projects like data centers, parking lots, etc.
This is going to depend a lot on what the town is like though. Some places are going to be too poor to build any infrastructure projects like trains without funding from higher levels of gov. Some states have passed laws which try to limit local gov’s ability to enact environmental legislation. In some places it might be a pretty big uphill battle politically to make any big changes.
Ultimately the important thing is to gather enough people who can be engaged in the process that whatever your goals are become achievable. And hey, going back to the consumer side of this, if you have a lot of people, a boycott or strike becomes more of an effective option.
So to echo your final dismissive line: Go touch grass (then rip it out and replace it with native plants). This is coming from someone who’s been dealing with chronic depression for years and is finally making an effort to get out there and connect with people again. If I can do it, you can. (Maybe, idk your circumstances, maybe you have a condition even worse than mine.)
No, I actually agree with what you are saying to a great extent.
But the thing is, I still believe what I originally said is ALSO true.
I suspect the most effective thing is a combination of both approaches: personal resposibility + organization at various levels of society. Both are necessary, I believe.
Additionally, those corporations aren’t made up of robots. People work there and make the decision to cause this damage. It being done at work doesn’t absolve them of their responsibility.
The vast majority of emissions are to serve the desires of the masses. The “pollution of corporations” is mostly used in making stuff for ordinary people, not private jets.
You make it seem like these desires arise spontaneously. Corporations have been using advertising in a systematic way since the 20th century to induce demand and shift behavior patterns of the masses.
With your logic, all business decisions can be laid at the feet of common people. “Yes, shrinkflation exists and is terrible, but it is for ordinary people, so they are to blame.” “Sure, companies sell bullshit insurance to consumers, but the people buy it, so it’s really the masses who cause it.” And so on.
Then you should direct your attention in two directions to deal with that, I think:
- Criticise companies for advertising unnecessary consumption
- Criticise people for buying unnecessary stuff
Look, I get it. We’ve been fed a story about individual responsibility for generations. It’s hard to break free from that mindset.
I experience this myself when I see cigarette butts on the side of the path when walking my dog. “Fucking smokers!” is my first reaction. But then I remember that people who smoke are suffering from an addiction they were tricked into and the only thing they get out of smoking is poverty, sickness, and possibly death. On the other hand, the immoral corporations who sold them the cigarette butt lying on the ground have made a tidy profit of the smoker, as well as the trash that the company generated.
Look, I get it, you hate corporations and so don’t want to criticise anyone else. And you feel like you’re better than other people so you write patronising replies that start, “look, I get it.”
But no tobacco corporation created propaganda to discourage smokers from putting their fag end in a bin. No level of nicotine addiction prevents that basic act of care. That was a choice the smoker made. Your understandable displeasure with harmful corporations is giving you a blind spot to the actions everyone else needs to take.
Remember that two groups can need to change their behaviour.
It’s not about some kind of petty hate for corporations, it’s about facts and reality. Systematic problems require systematic solutions. Most ordinary people are just trying to survive and will utilize whatever the lowest common denominator is at the moment.
You realize that the “carbon footprint” and “personal responsibility” campaigns were all started by oil corporations, right? You realize all the recycling ads and “nonprofits” were started by oil and plastic companies? You realize that the anti-smoking campaigns were also run by big tobacco corporations? There’s a reason all of these ad campaigns put the responsibility on the regular person, and not the multi billion dollar corporations making the actual things and making things accessible.
Arguments like this always sound like they’re trying to be “logical”, like “obviously everyone needs to just start doing the right thing” while completely ignoring the material reality, the “personal responsibility” argument goes completely against human psychology and leads to defeatism, “well, not enough people will start caring enough to recycle or stop using plastic, etc, so humanity is doomed anyways 🤷”. Stop defending corporations, they’re literally the ones that create the world around us that we have access to.
Stop pretending anything other than systematic solutions will solve any of this, and systematic solutions start with public discourse, like what we’re doing right here.
You realize that the “carbon footprint” and “personal responsibility” campaigns were all started by oil corporations
According to Wikipedia (so happy to be corrected) the term was coined in 1999 by the BBC, and only later taken up by oil giants.
So no, I don’t “realise” anything of the kind, and casting your opinions, which seem to be contrary to reality, as facts that I merely have to realise is again patronising.
All the while you’ve ignored the last line of my comment, and ignored all the people, including me, who have changed their behaviour.
I’ve had enough of that. I’m sure your condescension and blinkered immunity to discussion will convert a lot of people to your worldview, but not me. Bye.
Yes and no.
With stricter ecological protections, corporations would be forced to decrease their carbon footprint. In their absence, the choice for the consumer is limited, and likely leaving you without a properly ecological option.
(Bad) Example: plastic straws. Before the ban, finding alternatives was difficult. Now suddenly it’s possible.
Same goes for computers with ecologically sourced rare metals. There is just no good option at the moment, and this will be the situation up until stronger regulations will come in effect.
This point exactly. It seems to me that a lot of people don’t really understand how profit motive works in our capitalist world. Corporations will burn the entire planet so long as the burning is far enough down the road that it doesn’t affect today’s profit projections. I find it sad, because we as a species learned quite a while back that the only way capitalism can actually work is with a strong hand steering it to make sure it doesn’t drive us right off (another) cliff. This is the entire reason for the rise of modern liberalism (not talking liberals as in Democratic party, talking liberalism as in liberal democracy, which was a political/economic movement to protect capitalism from eating it’s own tail).
Of course this is why I’m not a liberal, I think the idea that capitalism is a beast that can be tamed is flawed, liberalism and capitalist regulations are just Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill. Ultimately under capitalism we have individuals with far too much power, basically kings, but instead of kings of land, kings of industry, which is actually a far more dangerous form of power, because it’s significantly more versatile and can reshape itself for survival when needed, it can even run PR campaigns to fool the populace into thinking it’s changed, when in reality it’s just the abusive narcissistic spouse convincing you to come back for another beating.
Anyways, I digress, corporations will ONLY prioritize profits in the short term, to ensure things are built that benefit society we must have strong regulations guiding them, paired with charismatic leaders who can push back against the “wah wah baby doesn’t like big bag government” messages coming from their corporate PR campaigns, claiming “we can’t possibly survive” even though they are swimming in massive profits.
We could ban single use plastic containers globally, we have alternatives that work quite well. Bamboo can replace all plastic utensils.
Hell most of the plastic alternatives if scaled would likely be a carbon sink. Grow plants to make packaging, as plants grow they absorb carbon, packaging is discarded, then sealed away in a land fill trapping the carbon.
It probably wouldn’t be net 0 given the industry around production and transport, but still a lot better than what we’re doing.
sealed away in a land fill trapping the carbon
This is generally not how it works and/or a bad idea. Anaerobic bacteria tend to reduce carbon compounds to CH₄ (as opposed to CO₂ - makes sense). It is a lot worse as a greenhouse gas, and it will eventually bubble up and escape from the landfills, we can’t realistically seal them in the same way as ancient peatlands did for our current oil and gas reserves.
A better way is to recycle that packaging into mulch/fertilizer of some kind so that this carbon is absorbed, directly or indirectly, by newly growing trees.
Fair enough, my understanding was that most modern landfills were so full and sealed that they limited the ability for waste to breakdown significantly.
If we get the infrastructure there mulch and compost away
Companies will basically do the cheapest thing they can get away with, so it is again down to the ordinary people to make sure that the cheapest thing isn’t harmful. Sure, criticise the companies for doing shitty things, but that alone won’t achieve anything, and nor will trying to shift the blame “back” to them.
I want regulation to bound what companies can do, such that “the cheapest thing” is not harmful. We can’t and shouldn’t expect the population to take on such gargantuan task as figuring out its own personal carbon footprint. That’s insane, but has been normalized since for ever, thus we do.
We need a carbon tax, and we need to get people on board with a carbon tax. Which we can campaign for at the same time as campaigning for individuals to make what choices they can do.
Flying less, cycling more, eating less meat, buying less, delaying replacement of things, making replacements greener - these are all things everyone can and should do, now, while the world drags its feet on making emissions cost money.
Personally I don’t think that encouraging people to think about their carbon footprint absolves companies at all and despite the popularity online of this line of thinking, I have never once seen evidence that it was devised by companies to do that. I think instead it helps foster a shared purpose, which will ultimately help generate the consensus needed to resist wealth.
If you look through the other comments you’ll see numerous people patronisingly imply that I can’t think straight about this because I’ve just swallowed the propaganda, yet mysteriously the “propaganda” hasn’t actually managed to get me to think that companies’ actions are OK.
private jets
that seems a bit too specific. what about all the other planes? ships?
tbf the solution was always the last one.
it’s just that they’ve been stringing us along.
But that was unimaginable to those, who promoted environmentalism, at least in the west.
Hot stove hurts. God is real or you go to hell. Communism is only good on paper.
People choose to believe the stove burns without ever actually touching it.
Our behaviors are linked to our brain chemicals. We burn through them at work and ration the remainder for ourselves and our family. We are tired, unfocused, and easily manipulated. We don’t have the resources to challenge basic assumptions.
Go home, Lemmy, you’re drunk.
drawing attention to that is cool, i guess, but doesn’t shed light on the underlying issue.
america loves victim blaming the individual rather than ever admitting that there’s some kind of issue with the system or wealthy people.
every single house in america could be built on the edge of a cliff prone to landslides and someone would always come out of the woodwork to act like it’s your own fault you bought it.
‘shoulda lived in a shopping cart.’
Isn’t that the whole point of the comic? None of the advice the Dad gave to the child was ever going to solve the problem. Presumably the kid tried, and the problem just kept getting more dire.
One of the many consequences of hyper individualism.
What was the post on lemmy earlier today? The solutions are very simple, the problem is the people profiting off keeping things broken.
If individual behaviour didn’t matter, Canada wouldn’t have 307% of global per capita emissions, and the US wouldn’t have 285% while Finland only has 118% and Sweden has only 71% of the world average.
I picked those European countries in particular because they’re rich, have cold winters, and have a low population density in a lot of the country.
The reality is that the US and Canada are decades behind Europe when it comes to these things. Sure, this guy in panel 2 is telling his kid to recycle, but Americans never took recycling seriously. Meanwhile in Zurich you have separate bins for green glass, brown glass, clear glass, along with the normal paper and plastic. If you don’t want to recycle, you can do that, but it’s going to cost you. You have to buy expensive special garbage bags to throw out anything that you don’t recycle.
In panel 3 the guy is shown with a bike, but less than 0.5% of people bike to work. Meanwhile, in Finland, it’s about 10% of people who commute by bike.
I loved the recycling outposts in the apartments in Korea (they even took styrofoam, probably just burned everything anyways though), but in US I asked my local politician about recycling, even said I’d pay a couple bucks extra a month in taxes for opting in, and he said it’s been tried before but people abused the system :(. Not sure what he meant by abused but now I procrastinate taking my recycling to a center until my garage is stuffed and it’s a major chore.
It really seems to me like many people really want to recycle and make a difference if they can, they just need a gentle nudge, or for it to not be too difficult. It’s just that other people don’t want to feel bad about not recycling, so they speak out against any change that makes it easier. Then there are the idiots who are in denial and think climate change is a hoax.
“Just don’t use AC (during a heat wave killing thousands) and you can save the Earth!” (2026)
If you use AC and you could instead be using passive cooling (managing the light fading on your house) and fans, without endangering your health, then you deserve criticism.
We need more AC for hospitals and schools and care homes and so on, not my friends who just didn’t want to be a bit sweaty. Who then blast it at fifteen degrees below ambient instead of acclimatising a bit.
Of course reducing energy consumption is always nice, but
then you deserve criticism.
Nah, this is the thing. This is pushing off responsibility for huge corporate energy consumption onto consumers. Even in very AC heavy America, it accounts for something like 7% of energy use. Imo, fuck telling people to just deal with the heat over 7% of energy use while private jets are allowed to flit around and data centers are gobbling up power, often very energy inefficiently. It’s a comparative drop in the bucket.
You’re doing the thing the comic is making fun of here.
Also, yeah, I hate when people blast AC 15 degree below ambient temperature, especially when ambient is at 44°C like last week and ‘blasting’ is 29°C /s
That is assuming a post was not about °F which would be a laughable difference in temperature completely.
Also, there are people who blast heaters in winter, too. Where I live now this is not that much of an issue, but you can’t just decide not to use any heater when it’s below -20°C outside
Users of private jets deserve criticism as well, and proportionally more criticism than those using AC - however in my circles, the ultra-rich are criticised a lot while my friends actually buy AC (even extremely inefficient single-hose units) rather than feeling adequately admonished.
You cite the low percentage of US energy consumed by AC as a reason not to call it out, yet flying accounts for 4% of global emissions, and private aircraft (so, little Cessnas as well as private jets) account for under 2% of that. source. The global baseline is 0.08% of emissions, and yet you think a use case with 7% of US energy consumption is too insignificant to criticise?*
I think two things are going on here:
- The unfairness of the situation means that you want people who are having such a hugely disproportionate effect as individuals to give up their lifestyles before that of ordinary people in developed countries are affected.
- The huge array of things that cause emissions mean that each individual sector has a very small contribution, which makes action in any one seem pointless… unless there is some clear resonance with it, like it being the exclusive province of the ultra-rich.
But the fact is that we can’t afford to wait for the ultra-rich to have an uncharacteristic selfless turn because the world is on fire right now and we’ll be waiting until we’re dead. (They’ll be fine). And we certainly can’t rely on the ultra-rich to shoulder the burden, because the burden is too big. Even though each mega-wealthy person contributes a grossly outsized amount to climate change, their total contribution is not that significant, because there are so few of them. Suppose the top 0.1% each contributes 100x more than the bottom 90%. Well, 0.001×100 = 0.1, i.e. the bottom 90% together contribute 10× more than the top 0.1% together. Illustrative numbers, but if we only do 10% of the work to combat climate change, we will all be fucked.
So, we can’t afford to think like that. We can’t afford to think like the comic wants us to think, even though it’s understandable.
*These figures aren’t directly comparable without more information - it’s likely that 7% figure is a percentage of electricity usage, not total energy usage, for example, whereas the 0.08% figure is directly emissions. The figures for aviation are global, and the US will have a proportionally higher responsibility. But come on - we’re off by about 100× here, and those factors are just fiddling around the edges.
yet flying accounts for 4% of global emissions, and private aircraft (so, little Cessnas as well as private jets) account for under 2% of that.
So in other words, the unnecessary actions of a very, very limited few alone consume nearly a third of the entire country’s use of a pretty basic comfort.
I see this as rather damning if I’m being honest.
But the fact is that we can’t afford to wait for the ultra-rich
No, the fact is reducing a portion of 7% of energy use (because again, we’re excluding health reasons and such which are ever more relevant in 40+C summers) will not have any noticeable impact on climate change. It just won’t. And let’s keep in mind this is in the shadow of many deaths here in Europe this summer… nah man, we just do not share the same principles here, I flat out disagree that’s in any way a good take.
There are some cultural changes that can make a big impact; if we convinced most people in the industrial world to only eat meat once a week or go vegetarian entirely, this would definitely make a large impact. AC use will not. For the most part, systemic change is the only thing getting us out of this. And yes, our odds of accomplishing it don’t look good… you not using AC in extremely hot weather will have no impact on that outcome at all, not measurably anyway.
So in other words, the unnecessary actions of a very, very limited few alone consume nearly a third of the entire country’s use of a pretty basic comfort.
I have absolutely no idea where you’re getting “nearly a third” from.
No, the fact is reducing a portion of 7% of energy use (because again, we’re excluding health reasons and such which are ever more relevant in 40+C summers) will not have any noticeable impact on climate change. It just won’t.
What is a sector that we should concentrate on? Presumably not private jets (100× less effective than AC) or aviation in general (commensurable, with AC perhaps somewhat less). You suggest meat, but livestock is about 4.2% of US emissions.
Every time the topic of emissions come up, I’ll be right there with you saying we should be reducing our consumption of meat! But could you agree that the implication of this is that sectors which contribute 5 or so percent to emissions are actually important?
I wanted to get more data about air conditioning usage in the US. From what I could find, AC is responsible for 8.6% of US energy demand, and that energy generation constitutes about 60% of US emissions, making AC responsible for 4.9% of US emissions.
So, to me it looks like you’re saying that from an environmental standpoint we absolutely should criticise people for eating meat, but absolutely shouldn’t criticise people for using AC, when meat consumption is in the same ballpark in terms of how much it contributes, at least in the US.
That doesn’t make sense to me given that, where I live (not in the US), AC is definitely not necessary for most people at home.
I have absolutely no idea where you’re getting “nearly a third” from.
Private aviation is 2% you said. Air conditioning is 7%. That’s between 1/3 and 1/4. And that’s for a frivolity vs a thing that measurably reduces deaths.
You suggest meat, but livestock is about 4.2% of US emissions.
This number doesn’t cover the actual impact though as it doesn’t account for imports, opportunity cost of land, or the amount of agriculture necessary to support that livestock. As I recall from my ecology days, only about ~10% of energy makes it to the next step in the food chain. So you need a much larger amount of land, energy, and water to grow crops in addition to direct emissions from livestock industry for the same calories.
we absolutely should criticise people for eating meat
Minor point of contention, but no; I’m suggesting we should encourage people to eat less meat.
but absolutely shouldn’t criticise people for using AC
The difference being very, very few people need meat to live, certainly not more than one a week or so barring some specific medical conditions. Much of the US experiences summers where 40C is normal and 45+C isn’t abnormal. It is literally a necessity in much of the US unless you’re just willing to accept a lot of extra deaths due to heat.
And even where it isn’t strictly necessary for health reasons, we’re talking hot enough to be extremely uncomfortable; I’m not going to browbeat people for using AC in that kind of heat while we’re literally building data centers that are using diesel generators and allowing various much more frivolous use of electricity.
It’s not like this is purely Americans Americanning with overconsumption either; southern Europe sees almost ubiquitous use of AC for the same reasons. It varies from actually dangerous to bloody miserable without it.
Do we expect northerners to not use any heating until wearing their parka indoors is no longer effective? Or can we afford some degree of comfort to the unwashed masses?
That doesn’t make sense to me given that, where I live (not in the US), AC is definitely not necessary for most people at home.
With respect, this may be why you’re not treating this with the seriousness it deserves and see it as “not willing to be a bit sweaty”. I come from a place where, even before the kind of climate change we’re seeing today, a week or more of 45C weather wasn’t unusual, 40C was very normal, and deaths from heat stroke happened every year. That’s a big chunk of the US. Obviously, in places like San Francisco, air conditioning is much less ubiquitous and it isn’t unusual at all to have as home without it.
Look, I’m starting to be over this conversation if I’m being honest, so I’ll sum it up as such: AC use is less frivolous than you seemed to be implying and is a necessity in many places, witnessed by Europe going through a bit of a crisis with heat deaths as we catch up and change our culture to adapt to a new climate reality. Even where it isn’t strictly necessary, it is often required for any level of comfort. Considering that, the portion of energy it uses is relatively small; the other things I’ve listed are almost purely frivolities. They simply aren’t necessary in all but the rarest circumstances (remote Alaskans needing private planes, some medical conditions requiring more meat consumption, etc). If the energy use of AC was much higher, I might be with you, but telling people they need to live in misery when there are bigger fish to fry… no.
Remember, my whole premise here is mass cultural changes are relatively ineffective… I cited meat eating culture changing as one of the few that are somewhat, not as a keystone or anything (and again, there are reasons that 7% isn’t comparable to 4.5%… the latter isn’t accounting for a lot of factors that hide its true impact and the former has at least some % of truly necessary use baked into it). It would be far more effective to push systemic change like eliminating fossil fuels for energy production entirely, as electricity production is still one of the biggest emitters. It would be far more effective to work to reduce private auto use, especially for solo trips, and more conversion into electric vehicles powered by non emitting sources. We have better solutions that don’t require misery or death from the masses.
Also 1994, don’t use ac refills that are bad for the environment. (Freon)
1984, don’t use these aerosaw cans that will kill the ozone layer.
- Make sure you have a catalytic converter to not hurt the environment.
1964 Oil companies noted oil will have marked climate changes by 2000. (We just didn’t do enough to stop it)
I man, the Montreal
productprotocol absolutely succeeded at protecting and eventually repairing damage to the ozone layer. So, if nothing else, that one’s a win on multiple levels.It’s just that the powers that be decided that they didn’t want to go through all that hassle again and the “people” decided that they were done sacrificing.
The attempts to repopulate populations of beavers and American buffalos are going great as well.
I don’t normally recommend YouTube channels, but if you are ever feeling down about everything there is a channel called Good_News https://m.youtube.com/@Good__News Which tries to capture all the decent bits of things that do occur while everything else looks bleak lol
*aerosol
Hang on though, I want to hear more about these ‘aerosaws’. They sound cool.
I can only picture Half-Life’s manhacks.
I don’t think they’re cool.
Thanks that looks a lot more correct. I’m usually responding quick and don’t take the time to actually fix things, lol
These are three different environmental dangers though
Reduce your carbon footprints and break kntondata centres servers with a aluminum baseball bat.
I kinda feel like the years are all 10 too late. I definitely remember “reduce reuse recycle” as more of a 90s thing and the city I lived in got a recycling program around 1994. The no littering thing was already well engrained by then.
2030: Run
Think recent events have shown you can’t outrun nature
That sounds like a movie name
![It’s That Easy [Tommy Siegel]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9c434776-2f3d-4610-85e6-726b2c165177.png){kind=link}