• conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    Woah, no way! How could this happen? We’ve only been consistently investing more and more money into fossil fuels and infrastructure to both supply and demand them while saying that it doesn’t matter because we bought completely worthless carbon credits..

    • WetBeardHairs@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      They might not be the solution to climate change, but they do help local pollution levels. Or at least they would if people would stop buying ginormous pedestrian-smasher trucks at a rate of 20:1 bev.

      • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        Doesn’t stop the brake/tire dust issue, or the fact that it takes so many resources (and carbon waste) to keep churning out individual cars as well as all the pollution and wasted resources and environmental impact of roads and parking lots everywhere.

  • FanonFan [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    I’m glad most of these problems can be solved by small lifestyle choices, and that by consuming slightly differently as an individual, I can have faith that I’m personally preserving the world for future generations. And once people see the profoundly ethical consumption choices I make, they’ll start to follow suit, and there’ll be a massive ripple effect centered around my consumption that spreads across the whole world as people switch to paper bags and only eat meat three days a week. If people’s choices were influenced by their material environment rather than the spread of ideas, we’d be forced to think of ways to change their material environment, which seems a lot harder than just changing people’s minds.

    I’m glad that most of this impact is caused by individuals and their consumption habits, because it’s easy to convince people to consume differently. If these problems were disproportionately caused by corporations, governments, and militaries, then we’d have to change their minds, and they can’t be simply talked into acting differently. There’d have to be some risk to their bottom line or material interests, perhaps some sort of immediate threat to the people in charge, which would be difficult for individuals like us to enact within the bounds of the law and pacifist social norms.

    I’m glad most of us live in some form of democracy where we can vote for initiatives and people who will address these pressing issues. Voting is more important than ever because of this.

    In a hypothetical world where this weren’t the case (say elected representatives had shown a long track record of ignoring the demands of their constituents and brushing these kinds of problems under the rug, for instance) it would unfortunately be our ethical duty to take matters into our own hands with more radical action. Since politicians would value the profit of fossil fuel corporations more than our well-being and the world’s future, we’d have to find some way for individuals to impact the bottom lines of these companies, possibly by drastically increasing the cost of doing business, perhaps by increasing the cost of maintaining their machinery somehow. But I’m glad I can just vote for people who can be trusted to use their state power to solve these problems peacefully and legally.

      • FanonFan [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        No sarcasm here. I’d never recommend people do anything illegal, especially on a public internet forum. Like I said, voting and baby steps are already good solutions to impending global catastrophe.

        • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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          8 months ago

          Not only is voting and individual life-style changes good solutions to impending global catastrophe, you would also be a racist and/or sexist, for suggesting that those approaches aren’t good enough. Not to mention ableist for suggesting that maybe the status-quo isn’t something that should be upheld.

  • 18107@aussie.zone
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    8 months ago

    I’m honestly surprised it’s set to fall. I thought we were still increasing fossil fuel use.

    • Adlach
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      8 months ago

      Thank China. Just this year they built more solar infrastructure than the US has in total.

    • HubertManne@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      thing is I usually see things about coal increase and we are back to the peak oil situation now that easy fraking is gone. I know they want to export fraking more internationally and im betting there is going to fraking2 - harder, deeper, longer coming out or just getting it in protected areas. So long story short im betting lower oil/gas with greater coal (also don’t forget russia can’t move its stuff as easily)

  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    We live in such a clownish society society that it’s a mainsteam and generally accepted belief that billionaires will save humanity by escaping the planet they’re burning down and continuing capitalism on an already dead planet. galaxy-brain

  • HubertManne@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    No worries folks. Was having an interminably long back and forth with a guy who is sure we are going to figure out technology and shit to not only stop using fossil fuels but also resequester what we have done before it even becomes to bad. Oh and if you want to bring in issues around that or point out even if we 100% “solved” global warming it would not fix our pollution of everything problem. Well then you just want it to happen is all.