100% convinced our decedents will look back in this age and laugh 2 things : domestic recycling as an attempt to save the the planet , and the fact that we did nothing unless there was a profit in it.
Also I don't know about you, but my countries recycling relied on sending it all to China to burn.
dustsv hands yep my work here is done
Recycling is a lie to keep making plastic, nothing more
Ancestors?
It will probably be an alien species who will find a dead planet and wonder how and why so much toxic material was spread around the planet .... and also wonder why there is an orbiting space station filled with gold, paper money and the greyed out decaying bodies of a humanoid species.
*Laughs until crying because he can't afford his own home, let alone afford to have and take care of children*
Lol .... will it matter in the end anyways?
I goofed and I'll take the fall .... also the spelling is DESCENDANTS ... thanks for pointing out my error
Humanity will survive the climate apocalypse. Life is incredible at adaptation. But our present society won't survive and our descendents will curse us for sitting idle while their future was sacrificed for the sale of lethargy.
I have my doubts about humanity's survival ... I think life, some form of life will continue on but us walking bipeds will either have an extremely hard time, or we just won't make it all.
the fact that we did nothing unless there was a profit in it.
who are "we"?
I'm not profiting, are you?
Those who already have all the money and power are, don't even let the focus slip from them.
I remember reading a fun fact: A single day (it might have even been an hour but let's err on the side of caution) of the bigger cruise ship engine use pumps out the same amount of pollution as all of the cars in Europe do combined for a while year.
Why on fuck do we bother with the small stuff when the big ones have such a huge weight on the problem.
One cruise ship has carbon emissions roughly equivalent to 12,000 cars. Maybe if you're specifically looking at sulphur oxide pollution, since modern cars emit so little of it. But there's a lot of other stuff coming out of tailpipes, sulphur oxide is just a single pollutant.
Humans are no different now than they were thousands of years ago and will be no different if they survive another couple thousand, I don't think they'll be any more moral in the future
yeah anytime i see anyone talking about some little change they made in their lives to be more eco friendly it makes me incredibly, deeply sad. especially if it's at more expense or more effort for them -- they're trying their best but it's literally completely pointless
Many of us do it for sport tbh. A healthier way to gamify life sorta. I've been vegan since 2015/16 and it does increase the difficulty setting somewhat, but also it's unlocked a million fun mini games for me along the way and provided much needed community.
Reducing your meat consumption is likely the most effective way of lowering your personal climate 'footprint'.
You don't even have to go fully vegan. Use 20%, 30% or 50% less meat and you're already doing a lot.
Also look up climate impact of different types of food (and where it comes from), and use that to prioritize. Chicken, fish and pork are up to 10 times less impactful than beef.
Reducing your meat consumption is likely the most effective way of lowering your personal climate ‘footprint’.
I hear this a lot, but I think the context of what other actions are available and their relative impact is important in this kind of discussion.
Of course, this is all with the knowledge that trying to put the onus of fixing climate change on the individual is both doomed to fail and a great burden for many. Climate change can only be properly addressed by top-down action, which we should all advocate for.
I think kill yourself is essentially the last item on the chart. They just frame it in a nicer way.
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Could you explain how the graph is eugenecist? I would agree if it were targeted toward a specific demographic, but from what I can tell that isn't the case here. /gen
Vegans really need to embrace this strategy. Reduce meat consumption is a much easier sell to the majority of the world, and it would open them up to the idea that vegetables can make a complete meal.
Too many vegans I know try to get you to buy into their lifestyle from the start. Bruh, I'm an American and I can tell you from personal experience that most Americans, especially down here in the south, do not consider something a meal unless it has meat in it. You are not going to convince these people to stop eating burgers straight up. This is a cultural thing that isn't going to be easy to change. Going full vegan is a deal breaker. Cutting back on meat for your personal health might just gain some traction.
You don't even have to go vegan. You can just go vegetarian.
It's also extremely effective. Seems like people just forget it exists.
I'm vegetarian mostly to save money but if someone gifts me meat? I won't be wasting it.
People who know nothing about beekeeping and the fact that it is important to preserving the endangered species that are bees:
I have been told by many vegans that honey and sugar are not allowed, as they are both animal products. Apparently sugar is refined by using cattle bones. They told me you can use agave nectar instead.
Reducing your meat consumption is likely the most effective way of lowering your personal climate ‘footprint’.
carbon footprints are narrative devices
That's actually why I put it in quotations. I considered elaborating on the legitimate gripes on the concept of personal climate footprint, but figured that it was too off topic, and if someone wanted to discuss that, they would probably show up 😉.
Give it a shot, can't hurt. You won't become Buddha overnight, but it can certainly put you on a path toward much different ways of seeing yourself and everything around you.
Even if it isn't you could use the same approach in many other ways. Increase game difficulty by giving yourself bonus objectives. I gamify life quite a lot to do the boring stuff and try to be healthy. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to keep it up.
Labeling this as "cope" is just straight slander against vegetarianism. Most people who are vegetarian don't expect "it's going to change the world" so there's no "coping" to be had with the fact that it's not.
Vegetarianism choices can be based in health, ethics, not wanting to support mega corps, dislike of the taste, environmental impact, among other things. "it's going to save us from climate change in light of everything else going on in the world" is a tiny clueless subset of just ONE of those rationales.
Vegeterianism isn't "hopeless" or "cope" unless you're delusional enough to believe that everyone doing so would instantly solve our problems. Sure, some people think if everyone did it, it would make a difference, but very few think it'd fix all our problems.
It's absolutely not helpless to change your habits. All our consumption is based on collective habits, and changing them will have an effect.
Exactly. It's only pointless as long as other people think it's pointless. If everyone made changes we could see a noticable impact happen.
Billionaires need to change too, they do more than their fair share of polluting, but it doesn't mean we are all off the hook. We should hold them accountable and also each of us strive to be better.
For some things, yes. The straw thing, no. If we snapped our fingers and made straws disappear, the effect on the world will be negligible.
What if that small change In made was assasinating billionaires (sorry, PragerU, people with means) in my spare time instead of just playing Hitman?
Does one person saying that they voted for change in the government make you incredibly, deeply sad? Just one vote in millions after all. Little things can collectively add up to something big.
Exactly. And just because those that can have the most impact refuse to do so, doesn't mean the rest of us shouldn't try.
It isn't pointless, it's our thinkings that makes it pointless. "It wouldn't do much if it's just me living eco friendly", yes it doesn't do much since alot of people thinks the same, and that leads to no progress.
It makes me deeply sad that assholes like you spread the message that we shouldn't try to be better people.
It drives me crazy, this performative enviornmentalist bullshit. I have to pay 10c (on top of 300% food cost increase don't forget) for a plastic bag at the grocery when i forget my canvas ones. In these bags i must pay for i can place fruit individually wrapped in plastic.
Every time something gets worse, we must be the ones to pay. This whole environment-saving-by-paper-straw phenomenon is so insipid that I would rather believe that it's actually a deliberate corporate strategy. At least that would make sense. If they keep us thinking that something is being done, they don't have to change a thing, and if it's "all of our jobs" (read: not theirs), to save the world, we'll never take them to task for their (greater) part of the waste.
It is actually a deliberate corp strategy. Plastic straws were never a real concern, save for that ONE turtle. Plastic straw make such a negligible amount of plastic waste that stop using it will have virtually zero measurable impact in amount of plastic waste we create. All it ever was intended for was to make us feel like something was being done while doing absolutely nothing.
That's not to say all plastic reduction initiatives are pointless. But the straws definitely belong in the least environmentally impactful category.
All it ever was intended for was to make us feel like something was being done while doing absolutely nothing.
It certainly does help a little bit. But it's of course still not a coincidence that companies are pushing for it instead of more effective measures... It's not just cheap but it also pushes people to believe that measures to save the environment are all useless and annoying, and makes them less likely to want more to happen.
It's the "thoughts and prayers" of environmentalism. I'm convinced the net effect is negative after you factor in the way it distracts people from anything that might actually help.
What's worse is we haven't replaced plastic straws with a good alternative. Paper straws fucking blow and I'm not going to carry around and wash a silicon straw with me at all times.
I mean, one alternative that you are carrying around at all times is your mouth. It's very rare that a straw is needed at all.
They had acrylic straws back in the 80s FFS, this isn't hard.
Or you could just not use a straw, only babies need them.
Can we use Lemmy to figure out what should be done, push for that change, and bring plastic straws back?
Fund a grassroots media campaign advocating to make corporations pay to fix the environment and for price control laws to stop them passing on costs to the consumer.
At some point, people are going to have to accept their legal systems have been completely broken by regulatory capture and that they're going to have to go to war to implement new governments that actually will do what the people want them to do. That's the real talk that needs to happen
Companies already buy "carbon offsets" or whatever that shitbis called - essentially, they pay money to another businnes, one that is supposed to somehow help the planet and the carbon dioxide increase, and then they just call it a day and slap some stickers on their stuff saying it's all eco-friendly.
Big players have been at it for a long time to cover themselves from way more angles than we can think of. :(
This is also what many countries do to achieve their emission reduction targets.
Nothing beats collection of beer/cola can's pull tabs for recycling competition at schools. That forces children to ask parents to buy more of the six packs so that they could have the tabs.
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The cans are also lined with plastic, albeit a much smaller amount. One thing that's always bothered me about packaging and colorings and aesthetics in general is how much unnecessary ink and paint pigments are used in addition to the packaging itself. I remember Crystal Pepsi tasting no different from regular Pepsi; it just didn't have caramel coloring added, but it completely bombed. Maybe I'm wrong about the taste, but I opted for it every time just because I spill often and it never made any stains. I'm sure they did it to save money but the cans still had all the pigment/paint.
Every time I merge onto an interstate I get stuck in this repeat thought cycle wondering how much pigment was used to make the white dashed lines in 10 miles on one side of this stretch of divided highway, and then the yellow solid lines, the paint on all the exit and mile marker signs, billboards, etc. Then how much aluminum or steel was used for the signs and just a single overpass, plus eventually it has to be scraped and repainted, and where do all those rust scrapings go? Then I try to mega-lowball guess if 25,000kg of steel and 1kg of pigment is required for an average stretch of 10 miles, multiply that by the total number of interstate miles in this country (>45,000), and leave out all the state and county roads and all the city streets, and all the other paved roads in every other country, and if I feel like I can even grasp how much that is, multiply it by 2 to include the other side of the divided highway.
I never really grasp it before I reach my destination, but sometimes I then start to wonder how much rubber particulate and tar/asphalt aerosolized from my 30 minute drive and lowball 10 cars a day taking that same drive and then get a little sad.
You're treating it like a hypothetical but that is in fact exactly what's going on.
Corporations and the politicians they own are hyperfocused on (relativee to centralised) inefficient end user recycling and regular people taking responsibility for the environment and climate change to distract from the fact that maybe 95%+ of it are the fault of corporations, not their customers.
Even consumer waste is many times worse than it would be if companies didn't for example use all that plastic and design electronics to become obsolete if functional at all in as little as a single year just to squeeze as much money out while spending as little as possible.
I would rather believe that it’s actually a deliberate corporate strategy.
as is almost all suffering under capitalism - it is indeed a feature, not a bug
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/30/capitalism-is-killing-the-planet-its-time-to-stop-buying-into-our-own-destruction
Apple: We're changing everyone's charging schedules to make electricity 0.00001% greener.
Also Apple: Titanium, so pretty. Even though it's dirtier to mine.
Apple: "Look, we made an ad with a woman depicting mother nature. Look at how self-aware and quirky we are."
Me: (writes a short fanfic of mother nature beating Tim Cook up so bad, it might look like a Family Guy cutaway)
Not only the billionaires, even the millionaires, and all the people taking the plane more than once a year. It is an ecological crime the pollution of air transport.
fun fact. modern planes consume ~3-4l per 100 passengers per km or 3-4l per passenger per 100km.
efficient ICE cars consume ~6l per passenger per 100km.
add to that, that there's basically no good alternative to fast very long distance or cross-continent transport
Edit #2: ICE is a type of train in germany. I mistook "ICE cars" as meaning trains and was wondering how flying is supposed to be more efficient than trains. Hence my confusion.
OG comment (invalid, see Edit #2): Where are these numbers coming from?
I cannot find any source for the 3-4l/passenger/km claim. I cannot find any source for the claim that planes are more efficient. Nothing comes even near this claim.
https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint
https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/rail-and-waterborne-transport
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49349566
Can you please provide a source?
Edit #1: I just want to add that my old combustion car (VW Up! / Seat Mii / Skoda Citigo) burned around 4.2l/100km. So I according to you, if I had another person with me, I'd beat both planes and trains with what stands uncontested as the most inefficient form of transport?
Since I just had this whole back and forth with someone else a few days ago, I have these handy. I’m not the parent, but he’s right. An individual car can be more fuel efficient with 3+ passengers but the average car trip is only 1.3 passengers. The most popular use of a car is commuting and that stands at 1.2 passengers per trip.
“A new report from the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute shows that flying has become 74% more efficient per passenger since 1970 while driving gained only 17% efficiency per passenger. In fact, the average plane trip has been more fuel efficient than the average car trip since as far back as 2000, according to their calculations.”
http://websites.umich.edu/~umtriswt/PDF/UMTRI-2014-2_Abstract_English.pdf
“The main findings are that to make driving less energy intensive than flying, the fuel economy of the entire fleet of light-duty vehicles would have to improve from the current 21.5 mpg to at least 33.8 mpg, or vehicle load would have to increase from the current 1.38 persons to at least 2.3 persons.”
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-math-of-flying-vs-driving/
The alternative is stop traveling such huge distances all the time.
Other than public transportation and filling up the cars with people, instead of having one vehicle per person.
Distances that require a flight are far too common here in the US at least, it's kind of unavoidable
A lot of those flights could be replaced with high speed rail. Maybe not New York to LA, but a lot of people live in the cities in the northeast and travel between those cities would be very feasible at reasonable travel times with high speed rail.
Okay let me just lobby the government to build long distance high speed rail before I take my trips.
High speed rail makes more sense for sure, but it's not available in most of the country. There's only two stretches in the US, in the northeast corridor and surprisingly in Florida
I know how pitiful our rail networks are. I take Amtrak regularly. It’s faster to drive. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Obviously I’m not talking about today, but building improved rail infrastructure over the next decade is very realistic and a worthwhile investment. Unfortunately the investment Amtrak has gotten isn’t enough to modernize our rail network, and a lot of that money is being used to improve privately owned rail lines that Amtrak leases for their passenger service.
My point was that the US doesn’t have distances that are insurmountable that can only be traveled via plane. It’s an investment issue.
efficient ICE cars consume ~6l per passenger per 100km.
More like 6L per 100km, whatever the number of passengers, I suppose. So it's usually still less than planes.
And there are better alternatives like trains or buses, which can be actually efficient for long distance travels (high speed trains, night travel. Works well from city centre to city centre)
There is also the additional issue of contrails which are a massive factor of greenhouse effect
Is that planes that are packed to the gills or private planes that actually have space that people aren't crammed into?
Also, 3-4/6 liters of what? ICE cars and modern planes aren't burning the same fuel, so I'm not sure what this is intending to portray by directly comparing how much of each (in liters) that they burn (serious question, no snark)
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But the foreign country only lets me stay for 3 months, and in any case I only get 4 weeks leave
Yeah gotta agree with you. I have to fly a good amount, both families live over 2000 miles away, it's unavoidable. But I change what I can in society, I am switching to an EV, I pay extra on my electricity to pay for green sources, and I overall try to lower my carbon footprint.
As soon as they come out with an alternative fuel airline I'll be flying on that as much as possible, but until there are alternatives I'm stuck flying.
I feel like this is a whoosh. The environmental impact of our collective straw use is so insignificant compared to the effects of so many other things. The fact that people focus on straws is just evidence that the average person has no idea what to do, in order to decrease their environmental impact and will also complain about the mildest of inconveniences.
I don't use straws at all, but this isn't really the point. There are much more impactful ways to reduce your carbon footprint like biking, walking, public transport, but all this pales in comparison in the massive environmental pollutions that billionaires and corporations do to our waterways and air.
I like using straws, and stainless is a really pleasant straw experience ; you can slurp up really thick smoothies, for example.
I'm hyping stainless for the experience.
I prefer gravity straws. You just put the cup above your head and tilt the cup for the drink to pour in a straight line to your mouth.
This resonates hard. Also incredibly fun to watch companies get to abuse loop holes and continue operations as always, then get told we need to sell our cars and turn off our heating to survive this environmental disaster.
Let's just start literally cannibalizing them to send a message. The population is hungry 🍴
ANY effective, long-term collective change REQUIRES that the large majority of people CHANGE THEIR CONSUMPTION HABBITS. While not great, the private plane stuff is exactly as pointless as the paper straws. Both are ways for everyone to point the finger at everyone else, and not have to change.
If the government implemented the "correct" laws tomorrow, but the populace doesn't want to change their habits, they will vote in people that give them back their old, bad things.
If a company implemented to "correct" processes, but the consumers don't want to pay the necessary price, they go bankrupt, and the company with the "incorrect, but cheap" processes wins.
ALL COLLECTIVE ACTION IS A COLLECTION OF INDIVIDUAL CHANGE. There is no alternative!
You don't solve this by just recycling harder - you solve this with legislative intervention to minimise packaging, ban private jets, retire fossil fuels, and stop massive food waste.
Pointing your finger at the masses and demanding they muster the will to change enough that entire supply chains are forced to retool entirely is naiive to the point of stupidity - people will go for cost and convenience just as predictably as companies will burn down the world for an extra dollar. The systemic change makes that shift quickly and (for the consumer) easy.
Bollocks! If every private jet is grounded there's no amount of paper straws that can match that impact.
There's still individual changes that impact more than the collective ones!
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I can’t argue with that. There needs to be immediate change on all fronts.
This means that I wont suck on a paper straw while mr CEO flies in his private jet. Dead easy.
So far, there have mostly been changes that target the lives of people who already have a small CO2 footprint. I don’t even own a car for example.
The mere existence of private jets is an atrocity while the „lesser“ of us need to invest time and effort to change their ways.
https://greenisthenewblack.com/private-jets-are-uncool-environmentally/
Obviously, there are those of us who like to leave their v8 running while in the grocery store and they absolutely need to stop. No emptying the ashtray on the street or going to starbucks every day and get a one use cup every time. But still, I‘m done listening to people telling me I‘m not doing enough.
In my experience, women tend to opt for straws when wearing lipstick and everyone opts for them when too much ice gets in the way of a good sip.
Uness you're driving or something. But yes, you really don't need a straw when you're at McDonalds.
In my country, McDonald's stopped using straws completely. And boasts about the tons of plastic per year they don't waste anymore.
You’re talking about two different ways to screw the environment. One is the rampant plastics pandemic, the other is carbon emissions. Paper straws are meant to combat the first, not the second.
While that's true, I think the complaint here is that the the law deliberately harms poor people only. Instead of banning individual plastic applications, we should be taxing literally all plastics and letting consumers decide what's worth it. And if we are to take a case-by-case class warfare approach, we should be going after the excesses of the wealthy - like private jets.
It's not that they're the same thing, it's that they both hurt the environment and are treated very differently.
Wait till they find out what plastic is made out of and how that impacts carbon emissions.
Downvote this man and his factual statement!!!
The popular comments are all about how recycling is a scam to allow plastic companies to continue creating plastics.
But mushy straws isn’t even about recycling. You’re literally removing a plastic that people use all the time. Sounds like a win no matter what.
My number one pet peeve:
hey here's one some concession we can do to make the planet slightly better.
Most people in the US:
if it doesn't t solve all of our problems 100% I'm not going to think about doing so. What it only makes life slightly better for us? Nope fuck that it means I have to be slightly inconvenienced for it, I'm not willing to do that. Come back when it'll fix everything 100% and then I'll find more excuses to why I don't have to change.
Where do these mushy straws reside? I'm not one to get fast food or go to restaurants very often but it's always plastic.
In California. I carry around a silicone straw all the time now because I want a straw that fucking works at being a straw.
Paper straws are everywhere where I live I've also seen sugar cane and pasta stir sticks.
In my area I can sometimes find these light blue colored ones that are super rigid, I think they're made of agave? Regardless of the material, I think they're actually just better than plastic for once.
Name one time we solved a systemic problem through individual action. You solve systemic problems with systemic solutions.
You get your first ticket as a part of the gift hamper you receive when you earn your first billion through honest hard work and never taking a sick day in your life. Each subsequent ticket is gained through deals shifting help desk call centres to India, The Phillipines or China.
Obviously, the tickets are very sort after but on-selling them is only legal if you list them as “TICKET FOR TAYLOR SWIFT CONCERT!! Serious offers only!!! #swifty #taytay”.
I don't even want a straw, I prefer drinking from the side of the cup and save the environment even a little more bringing my own fave cup and asking for no straw!
And yes, billionaires really do go brrr while I do all this