That’s a standard problem with ecology. I can’t use a plastic straw which has negligible impact but fishing industry can dump 640,000 tonnes of plastic every year and that’s fine. Let’s just ignore that.
You go on holiday once a year with the efficient normal flight - bad guy. Ritch person uses private jet for no good reason - that’s normal. Let’s ignore those emissions and create special rules for the airlines so they don’t have to worry about it too much.
Private jets pollution doubled during one year and it’s probably the worst way to travel for the environment but I hope you have spent your life savings for a slightly better car to compensate that. We can’t inconvenience ritch people, right?
It is this way because the rich people control everything. They won’t lift a finger to change if they think they can scam 10,000,000 people into lives of utter inconvencience and guilt to “offset” their own pollution. Hint; every one of us could live in caves and recycle our everything with stillsuits and the rich’s portion would just expand to fill the voids we left. This isn’t a game with a high score. The hands of the many must join as one to cross the river of life.
It’s why all carbon should be a currency distributed to all people like an UBI. Let’s say sustainable amount of CO2 emissions is 8 billion ton and there are 8 billion people, so everybody gets 1 ton per year. You want to pull oil it if the ground, pay in CO2 coin and ask the buyer to pay in turn. Rich guy wants to fly a private jet, they pay the oil producer. Not enough coin, buy with dollars from someone poor that drives a bike and has excess CO2 coins.
It seems fair to me. Everybody is equal, it keeps the market intact while keeping capitalism within sustainable emissions and distributes some wealth.
Of course no rich guy or oil producer is going to accept that, at least not until some people figuratively start building the wooden platform and sharpen the blade to a razor edge.
It’s not entirely unlike my plan: No more externalities. That’s the big problem with the environment and with a bunch of other things. Economists call it an “externality” when the things you’re doing have side effects that you don’t have to account for, such as pollution.
The thing is, we let industry and capital get away with it for a long time. And there’s no doubt that fixing it would also impact people. If the cost of properly disposing of a tire was built into the price of the tire, it would be passed along to customers. But it’s the only way to rehabilitate ANY system that uses currency.
The environment does not take markets into account and it never will. This consumption will never be sustainable. Our entire ecosystem did not evolve with capitalism or industrial needs in mind. There will be a point where we cannot extract anymore resources without every system collapsing. You can’t tie all your resources up into consumer products and military industrial complexes without major drawbacks to everything else. And we will always need more in this current system, and there is never a point where more is enough. You’ll never hear “okay, everyone has a smartphone, shut the factory down.”
How to make Carbon Taxes even more worthless.
Make it so the poorest homeless Junkie can make $5 to sell his “Carbon”. Drive the price of Carbon down to nothing because rich people can always make you more desperate.
How about we don’t involve the system that is actively destroying the planet - into the system meant to save it.
I have a plan. Bear with me here. Requires only a cursory understanding of basic construction and late 18th century French revolutionary methods.
I’m a woodworker by trade! Would my skills be of any use in this endeavor?
A woodworker who actively dislikes the hypocritical and predatory exploitation of lower class people and who is willing to do his part to save us? Are you Jesus?
pre edit: this is just a pointless rant. Your time is precious. Consider skipping it
Please don’t take my statement as arguing against your point (I like where you are coming from).
I don’t even need sources, I rarely believe metrics in the first place because it is so difficult to conceive and even harder to conduct studies at this scale. This isn’t even a possibility in my mind, but:
If everyone that wasn’t in the global top 10% of wealth went full Fremen, would the problem truly continue to exist? I doubt it because much of the much industry owned by our increasingly indulgent hoarders wouldn’t be necessary. There wouldn’t be regular folks to make or buy the product. We’d be hiding under the sand in a cave while drinking our own pee.
I’m not knocking it - I haven’t tried it. All at once, anyways.
The gluttonous upper crust would still be jetting to the poles and burning tires for light, but I feel like that would be a much smaller burden on our planet’s ability to support life as we’ve known it than industry on a massive global scale.
I don’t know what my point is exactly. I don’t think I believe we’ll find a workable solution without a cataclysm. Let’s go with: selfish assholes are gonna earn their title every time. Regular folks shouldn’t be told that their combined efforts won’t put a dent in the problem. The ultra rich process nature into poison in order to gain more wealth and power over their peasants. Weakening public education and access to healthcare helps them sell their low quality, single use poisonous trinkets. Having a bunch of money isn’t useful if there aren’t a lot of folks that have little or even less money. Power, money, knowledge - resource - however you want to frame it.
But then the rich could just overpopulate and use their least favorite offspring as peasants…
Ugh. I should just delete this comment as I don’t know what my central statement is. I am certainly not disagreeing. Maybe its that we shouldnt accept futility even though our efforts may truly be futile. To encourage integrity and contentment among our masses. It’s very possible for the inhabitants to overcome our downward trend - but if we end up failing, there is still no reason we should accept defeat and be the poor, uneducated, meager servants they see us as.
Fuck the powers that don’t respect every life equally. Even if resistance isn’t effective, I’d rather suffer than accept a darker future. (I won’t have kids. Easy for me to say)
Ugh. Sorry if anyone reads this. I just needed to vent I guess. Thanks for being interested and making the post and conversation. Be well all
What do you have to offer but the water of your bodies? You’re right. If everyone walked away. If you couldn’t sell people a t-shirt with a cat’s asshole and a stupid slogan on it, there wouldn’t be an industry because there’d be no customers. But thats the issue, where we came from fucking sucked. Children died as often as they lived in every community. But what difference does it make? Its hard to tell. My kids sleep peacefully while Palestinian and Yemeni children are viciously murdered by world powers. So I agree with you. Fuck this. Leave your cities. Have an affair with the Earth and praise Shai-hulud. Would I rather cut my teeth experiencing the reality of life, or extend that percieved comfort to give 4000 people control over billions? Its a hard question. We don’t truly know the hardships we would experience. I mean Fremen call their homes a seitch, a meeting place in a time of danger, they are accustomed to war and being hunted. I don’t want that for my kids and everyone else that still breathes with compassion for others. Though, the current option seems to be surrending to the disgusting forces at the helm, to which my heart says it’d rather die, and it is in a way.
Anyway, clothes shouldn’t be mass produced, lets learn how to make them again. Theres plenty of industries we could get by without if we were allowed to live as a community of people instead of strangers in nearby boxes. I thought I’d answer your rant with a rant of my own because I love our advancements but I hate the intentional suffering of our world. Suffering does not bring merit, suffering is not necessary for growth. All this suffering apologia makes me sick. We are better than this. Mankind is betfer than this. And more people can feel it on the inside now than ever before, we just don’t know what to do, or what happens after.
every one of us could live in caves and recycle our everything with stillsuits
I wish this was an option
Private jets is a very small part of airplane pollution and four people travelling in a Chevy Suburban with a big V8 actually use less fuel per km per passenger than the big passenger airplanes use per km per passenger. That’s not even taking non CO2 pollution into consideration.
People in general rely on airplanes way too much, may it be for personal travel or to get shit shipped to them ASAP, it’s not just a rich people issue.
AI disagrees but yeah. We need more trains
Private planes emit significantly more CO2 than passenger planes per passenger. Here’s why:
- Fewer passengers: Private jets are designed to carry a small number of people, often just a handful. Passenger planes, on the other hand, can carry hundreds of passengers. This means the emissions from a private jet are spread out among far fewer people.
- More frequent takeoffs and landings: Private jets often take off and land from smaller airports, which can mean shorter flights. Takeoff and landing are the most fuel-intensive parts of a flight, so these short trips contribute disproportionately to a private jet’s CO2 emissions.
Studies estimate that private jets emit 5 to 14 times more CO2 per passenger compared to commercial airlines [Transport & Environment].
That’s part of why we need viable rail travel in the US.
What are we going to do, build high speed rail!? A technology so advanced that China alone has enough track in active operation to traverse the US over 13 times as of three years ago? I dunno, seems like a gamble
I want to laugh but it hurts.
Yeah let’s not do anything because something else is worse.
In just the U.S. alone, one estimate suggests 500 million straws are used every single day. One study published earlier this year estimated as many as 8.3 billion plastic straws pollute the world’s beaches. In the U.K., at least 4.4 billion straws are estimated to be thrown away annually.
That means an average U.S. citizen uses 1,46 straws a day. What the fuck are you guys doing? Compare that to the U.K. where it’s 0,18 by your own numbers.
I’m going to guess fast food is a large portion of that here in the US. Idk how other countries serve fast food, but here every “meal” comes with a drink, and that drink not only has a plastic straw but also a plastic lid the straw goes into.
After opening the plastic container with my pancakes in it, I open three individually plastic wrapped teaspoons of butter and one plastic tub of high fructose corn syrup to pour onto them. I begin eating with my plastic knife and fork, before getting thirsty and reaching for my plastic cup with a plastic lid. I throw the plastic straw that they gave me away, and pull out my trusty stainless steel straw. I am saving the environment one breakfast at a time.
We use them as single shot spit ball launchers. It’s common to settle disputes lining up like a napoleonic army and blasting at each other. We need gun violence, but don’t always want someone to die.
Imagine all of those straws in a single pile. 3000 tons of straws.
Now imagine a pile 200 times larger. That’s what the fishing industry is doing.
We’re moving sand piles while they’re building pyramids.
The fishing industry is a fucking eldritch abomination. It puts everything else to shame. Fun fact, we kill roughly a hundred billion land animals for food every year across the world. But if you want an estimate on how many animals we kill total, you can just ignore that entirely because the answer is around 1 to 3 trillion fish, depending on how you estimate it.
Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing. You’re wasting time and money and not solving any problem in the process.
You also have a nice distraction while the actual source of the problem is getting worse.
UK has banned plastic straws in 2020 and guess what. Nothing has changed. We’re still drowning in plastic. UK doesn’t dump plastic waste in the ocean so the straws you see on the beaches aren’t from here anyway. Never were. No problem was solved
In the end we are just gonna have to eat these billionaires wont we
I’d be happy if they were just dead. The real question is how do effectively wipe out their wealth…
We don’t need to take it. Just make it not exist. I’ve been thinking about this a bunch lately.
hivemind?
Basically. If we all decide at once to ignore their “wealth”. Bam. They are no longer wealthy and their power goes poof.
Unless they have a private army of drones of course.
Threat of violence is the core of all power. Even wealth is just a way to account for how much you can leverage violence over another.
or I think the desire to earn personal assets of that level should really be classified as a mental disease, like gambling addiction. And be treated accordingly
these two things aren’t mutually exclusive, your can play your part and eat billionaires.
the vast majority of pollution is created by the richest people in the world.
99% of the planet could produce zero pollution for the rest of our lives and it wouldn’t even make a dent in the amount of pollution created by the billionaire class.
Take a look at the Cargill family, 14 billionaires. From the wiki about the current CEO:
In 2019, former U.S. Congressman Henry A. Waxman, in a report by Mighty Earth, called Cargill “the worst company in the world” and noted that it drives “the most important problems facing our world” (deforestation, pollution, climate change, exploitation) “at a scale that dwarfs their closest competitors.”
Do you think that is because they use every cent to burn coal and oil in their backyard, or
do you think it is because they produce and sell products to consumers which can not be produced without harm to the environment?
99% of the planet could produce zero pollution for the rest of our lives and it wouldn’t even make a dent in the amount of pollution created by the billionaire class.
How do you think they would create that damage to the environment if nobody would buy their products?
How do you think they would create that damage to the environment if nobody would buy their products?
Selling to other billionaires and governments…
They would sell $165 billion worth of meat, 22% of all meat products consumed in the US to a handful of billionaires and the US government? Ignoring the international business.
Billionaires would never touch that meat. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/10/zuckerberg-cattle-hawaii-beef-environment
China or Russia would probably buy it. Or the US military.
You think that after 99% of the US population decided to stop supporting climate change by not buying meat from billionaires, those 99% would still allow them to continue? Not for their own taste and convenience but for some billionaires profits?
How can you possibly think the US military, or any sovereign country, will magically spend an extra $165B a year on meat a year if all of the current consumers magically go vegetarian? Who exactly is going to eat a bunch of extra meat? There will just be fewer meat sales, period, ignoring a short term price drop if everyone magically goes vegetarian on the same day.
This is just not true, unless you’re counting manufacturing as part of the pollution from the billionaires. We consume the products produced in those factories, so we’re not free from that blame.
The general public has sadly been guilted into the idea that dealing with the vast majority of pollution is their problem. Don’t get me wrong, there is some personal responsibility, but much of it is out of our hands.
I’d be very interested in the source for this…
America’s richest 10% are responsible for 40% of its planet-heating pollution
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/17/business/rich-americans-climate-footprint-emissions/index.html
The emissions of the middle class are also a huge problem and will have to drop to 0 as well.
The solution is obviously another coup in Guatemala to reduce their power usage
I upvoted, but is c/Memes just Lemmy general now?
Is this not a meme? I thought this counted. Lmk if it doesn’t belong.
If you wanna get technically, according to Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene (1976) which first coined the term “meme”, a meme is "a unit of culture—such as “tunes, ideas, catch‐phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or building arches.”
So yes, your post would count as a meme, but so would pegging
To be honest, pegging has given birth to some real dank memes.
(˵ ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°˵)ﾉ⌒♡*:･。.
Marketing is everyone’s common enemy.
Original link for posterity: https://mastodon.social/@jimray/112133920866875045
I mean, there are good uses as well. Just as an example:
- Providing helpful information: People are looking for information to reduce their environmental footprint. Fuel-efficient routing in Google Maps uses AI to suggest routes that have fewer hills, less traffic, and constant speeds with the same or similar ETA. Since launching in October 2021, fuel-efficient routing is estimated to have helped prevent more than 2.4 million metric tons of CO2e emissions — the equivalent of taking approximately 500,000 fuel-based cars off the road for a year.
- Predicting climate-related events: Floods are the most common natural disaster, causing thousands of fatalities and disrupting the lives of millions every year. Since 2018, Google Research has been working on our flood forecasting initiative, which uses advanced AI and geospatial analysis to provide real-time flooding information so communities and individuals can prepare for and respond to riverine floods. Our Flood Hub platform is available to more than 80 countries, providing forecasts up to seven days in advance for 460 million people.
- Optimizing climate action: Contrails — the thin, white lines you sometimes see behind airplanes — have a surprisingly large impact on our climate. The 2022 IPCC report noted that contrail clouds account for roughly 35% of aviation’s global warming impact — which is over half the impact of the world’s jet fuel. Google Research teamed up with American Airlines and Breakthrough Energy to bring together huge amounts of data — like satellite imagery, weather and flight path data — and used AI to develop contrail forecast maps to test if pilots can choose routes that avoid creating contrails. After these test flights, we found that the pilots reduced contrails by 54%.
https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/report-ai-sustainability-google-cop28/
Even something like household phantom power currently uses more energy than AI at data centers.
I’m all for putting pressure on corporate climate impact and finally putting to rest the propaganda of personal responsibility dreamt up by lobbyists, but I don’t know that ‘AI’ is the right Boogeyman here.
AI isn’t the boogeyman, the corpos using it for dumb shit is.
Exactly: replace AI with “crypto mining” or any other waste of processing power in this paragraph and it is just as relevant…
How would contrails cause global warming? They’re just condensation.
From the Report, Chapter 10.5.2:
If the conditions are suitable, emissions of soot and water vapour can trigger the formation of contrails (Kärcher 2018), which can spread to form extensive contrail-cirrus cloud coverage. Such cloud coverage is estimated to have a combined ERF that is about 57% of the current net ERF of global aviation (Lee et al. 2021), although a comparison of cirrus cloud observations under pre- and post-COVID-19 pandemic conditions suggest that this forcing could be smaller (Digby et al. 2021). Additional effects from aviation from aerosol-cloud interactions on high-level ice clouds through soot (Chen and Gettelman 2013; Zhou and Penner 2014; Penner et al. 2018), and lower-level warm clouds through sulphur (Righi et al. 2013; Kapadia et al. 2016) are highly uncertain, with no best estimates available (Lee et al. 2021).
The 2 papers listed which quantify the effect:
- Lee, D.S. et al., 2021: The contribution of global aviation to anthropogenic climate forcing for 2000 to 2018. Atmos. Environ. , 244, doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2020.117834. Link to paper
- Digby, R.A.R., N.P. Gillett, A.H. Monahan, and J.N.S. Cole, 2021: An Observational Constraint on Aviation-Induced Cirrus From the COVID-19-Induced Flight Disruption. Geophys. Res. Lett. , 48(20) , e2021GL095882-e2021GL095882, doi:10.1029/2021GL095882. Link to paper
Please delete this, this is not a meme, this is real life.
:,(
Wait… Wait… Is this just idiocracy? Like… We all joke, but now we have computers that will automatically lay off workers like in the movie?
I don’t think any data centers would be using ground water for cooling. They’d likely be on closed loop systems. And the power draw is only an issue if we decide to not fix where the grid gets its power from.
Of course the power draw is an issue. There’s no 100% clean energy and our grid is still not 100% renewable. If we continue expanding the energy use in frivolous projects, we’re barely moving the needle. We want to do both, reduce energy use and clean up the grid.
Whilst I don’t want to debate the energy usage here.
How do we define frivolous projects? Some might think the LHC was frivolous but it had real world benefits.
It’s definitely a spectrum, with crypto sitting at one end and heating homes in the winter on the other.
Systemic issues require systemic solutions, not individual efforts. The current state of our society is a clear manifestation of this principle. It’s time to address the root cause which is capitalism.
Capitalism is too broad of a term to make any type of useful argument. Democratic socialism is still a capitalist way of doing things when it’s miles apart from corporatism. Both still fall under Capitalism umbrella, however one is definitely worse than the other.
Ultimately, commerce will never cease, resources will always cost, etc. Just update your terminology and you’ll find much more reception to your point.
It’s not too broad a term at all. Capitalism is an economic system where the capital owning class holds power in society. Whatever flavor you have leads you down the same path in the end. Ultimately, commerce should not be equated with capitalism. Just try thinking more broadly instead of trying to carry water for a deplorable system that’s killing us all.
