Should must be china and the usa
They left of china and India…
Who buys and burns most of the fuel they create and why?
Wouldn’t be us if they hadn’t lobbied for decades against renewables
It’s always easiest to blame someone else.
How am I wrong?
Yeah, we already knew how how propagandists operate. No need to spell it out what your are doing here.
What am I doing here besides pointing out that people buy things that corporations create and no one is blameless here?
governments and industry
Who buys and burns most of the fuel they create and why?
You say this like buying only from sustainable companies is something everyone can just decide to do, and there haven’t been decades of lobbying and propaganda against policy that would make it possible at a collective level.
That’s true, if you’re in a wheelchair then I can see an argument for the necessity of cars. But if you have working legs, you don’t really need a car.
I’m not gonna ride 50km round trip daily to work on my labour job. I mean i technically can and did with my ebike, but as someone with the lack of time, the time loss is really significant.
The thing about your opinion is, you’re assuming everyone work 5km away from home, or can reach it just crossing the street, but the reality of what we’re in now, is people often live far from their job because the rent is (significantly) cheaper, room is bigger, and they already have a car, and have near zero public transit availability. There’s many lazy people who wouldn’t walk 500m, but there’s even more people who aren’t given a chance to pick their mode of transport.
You live 50 kilometres from your workplace?? What a bunch of bourgeois decadence! Never in human history has that been a sustainable lifestyle choice, except when there was a railway. Other people pay the price for that luxury.
Round trip, that’s 25km one way.
And i don’t decide that. If i were to live near my workplace, house will cost 3 times more, and rent will be doubled than what i paid monthly for my house loan. If i have the money, i would definitely live in the city, but i don’t. Not everyone born and live in a paradise where rent is cheap and public transport is everywhere you know.
- Industry that produces commodities for sale in rich Western countries.
- Industry, military, and direct individual consumption in rich Western countries.
The cause of this is not individual consumer choices, it is capitalism - it seeks to increase capital and nothing else. Capital does not care about the emissions of growing fruit in Central America, packaging in Thailand, and selling in Germany. It cares that you buy the fruit cup for more than they spent on it. And to make that happen, capital had to force wages and production to be depressed and scattered across the globe. And it’s not going to waste money on making the processes themselves independent of fossil fuels so long as fossil fuel prices are low enough - and it keeps them low by constantly seeking more extraction for profit.
All these companies make things for people to buy.
That means the people buying the things are not blameless either.
If you want to have a conversation you’ll need to reply to what I actually said.
I chose to explain to you why your comment failed to reply to what I said.
My comment directly replied to what you said. I numbered the bullet points, literally the first thing I wrote.
But you’re defending consumer’s choices to destroy the environment so you aren’t replying to what I said you’re replying to what you want me to say.
Your question was, “Who buys and burns most of the fuel they create and why?” and I answered it and explained how it works. It’s mostly industry The answer is absolutely not simply “consumer choice”, which is quite clear if you review my simple 2-point list.
Here I’ll write it again:
- Industry that produces commodities for sale in rich Western countries.
- Industry, military, and direct individual consumption in rich Western countries.
The cause of this is not individual consumer choices, it is capitalism - it seeks to increase capital and nothing else. Capital does not care about the emissions of growing fruit in Central America, packaging in Thailand, and selling in Germany. It cares that you buy the fruit cup for more than they spent on it. And to make that happen, capital had to force wages and production to be depressed and scattered across the globe. And it’s not going to waste money on making the processes themselves independent of fossil fuels so long as fossil fuel prices are low enough - and it keeps them low by constantly seeking more extraction for profit.
because not purchasing anything that is produced or transported with energy from fossil fuels means fucking off into the woods to starve to death naked in a hut made of mud and twigs
As if there is nothing in between “don’t do anything” and “go live in the woods”
if there’s a minimum amount of consuming fossil fuels that’s required to continue to live in society, and the goal is to eliminate that, then we need change on a societal level. individuals alone cannot solve the problem, and therefore cannot be blamed for the problem existing
I’m vegan and carfree. I’m probably closer to that minimum than most people in this thread. I looked up the stats once and saw that the average American produces ten times as much CO2 as the average Congenese person. Imagine that, ten times. If you’re an average American, you can reduce way more of your emissions than that average Congenese person can! If you eat meat and drive a car, you’ve got so much opportunity for growth!
Sure there probably is a minimum somewhere, but most people are far above that minimum.
Exactly. Cutting out all net resource consumption is really difficult, but almost all of the difficulty tends to come in the second half. The first half is worth doing.
Somewhat counterintuitively, switching from a 15 mpg vehicle to a 20 mpg vehicle (and driving the same number of miles) represents a greater reduction in fuel consumption compared to switching from 20 mpg to 30 mpg. Side note, this is also why we probably should’ve always been talking about fuel consumption per unit distance rather than distance per unit fuel, but it’s hard to change the conventions around this.
So there are a ton of examples of products that use far more or less energy than alternatives, or simple changes in time of day that can make a huge difference in fossil fuel demand.
Are you an AI? It sounds live you live in a binary world.
I always hate that most people are happy to blame corporations, forgetting we are consuming that’s why corporations are creating.
I agree. It’s obvious to me that it will never be a tidy “it’s just them to blame” scenario but people really want it to be, regardless. I suspect the downvote crew will show up soon…
The corporations blame the consumer, the consumer blames the corporations and everyone gets to consume and profit blamelessly.
Yeah, that’s a nice fairy tales to keep burning the planet.
In reality the main consumers are a handful of rich people including those owning the corporations and paying off politicians and media while 95% of the people would not consume anything if not forced to do it and are also contributing only a miniscule amount to the total consumption.
Not true. Our cars account for more than 15% of the problem. Our meat is about the same. With just those two things, we are over the 25% of the “factor 4” from Rio. It is oversimplified, but it gives the idea: if the Ultra richs stop polluting, we are still doomed if the rest of us doesn’t do something either.
Sure… people spend hours in congested traffic because they love their cars so much, not because they lack alternatives for transportation. And it’s totally normal that I can pay less for 500g of cheap meat than for a 500g bag of rice, and that’s not caused by insane subsidies for meat producers.
The issues are systemic and guess what… the majority is not in power to change the system.
The top 10% of people create something like 50% of the carbon footprint which means 90% of people create the rest of it.
No one’s blameless.
I also they’ve that a large amount of the bottom 90% are paying the top 10% to do it.
Also the difference between create and consume is important. even if shell only had 1 employee and 1 shareholder, that person would have many customers paying. you can measure both of course.
But that also means that if the top 10% cut their consumption by half, we would have blown past the required targets to not have global warming pass 1.5° C, even if the other 90% didn’t change a thing. And they would have still been engaging in massive consumption by anyone else’s standards.
yeah, it is like blaming china for a pollution, when that pollution is externality of cheap shit we buy from them. it is our pollution in the end.
that isn’t an argument for blaming the end consumer, because that problem is not going to be solved from the bottom, but it is also childish to pretend like we, the consumers, are not complicit.
You should read Terry Pratchett’s Boots Theory. Many people don’t have the option to pay more up front to consume less, if there is even an option to buy a more expensive but longer-lasting item in a given market any more.
Many people don’t have the option
well many do and they will buy cheap shit anyway. and i am not talking about boots, i am talking about people who have a dog, which is clearly non-essential expense, and they buy him shitty toy from temu. is that rubber toxic? who knows, who cares, look how cheap it is!
Well said
“there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” has to me always been a clear call to reduce your consumption within a capitalist system. yes, it is these shit heads who shackle us. but when we reduce our dependence on them we begin the breaking of our bonds to a system that kills thousands every year
So I should starve to death so that the multinational conglomerates never have to face any consequences? Miss me on that one.
this is in fact the opposite of what i’m saying
No ethical consumption under capitalism, I scream, at my local farmers market. (Made up quote btw).
But yeah, fuck oil companies, they are real fuckers.
Farmer’s markets, co-ops, and mutual aid all exist as forms of resistance to capitalism purely by making sure your dollars go to people within your community rather than get captured by the modern company store through Wal-Mart or Target. At the same time though, they are also not everything. It’s a whole thing. Nothing anywhere is or can be perfect. The best we can do is the best we can do. I know that sounds like a thought terminating cliche but sometimes it’s important to set aside the things you can’t control and to focus on the things you can and have faith that the more people that do that the easier it will become to resist the horrors that surround us all
How is a farmers market a resistance to capitalism? It’s in the very sprit of capitalism to increase efficiency and remove the middle man
capitalism is a way of organizing society such that the means of production are owned by private interest, and the working class is employed by the owners to produce goods. a farmer working their own land is not actung as a capitalist.
A farmer farming their land and sell it is absolutely participating in capitalism and moreso if they hired farm labor.
if they have hired labor, that does change the analysis, but selling the product of your own labor is not capitalism.
Increasing efficiency isn’t capitalism; letting those with capital decide is capitalism. If you exclude capital and just do the thing directly, you’re resisting capitalism.
most farmer’s markets where i am have a heavy emphasis on community building and resiliency as well as income stabilization for vulnerable people with the bank’s sword of Domacles hanging over them. of the three i mentioned, they are the weakest form of resistance but they still have a role to play, which is why Granges put so much work into making sure they are available to non members of the grange
And God said “LET CORPORATIONS DESTROY THE PLANET AND ERADICATE ALL LIFE”.
Guess this is the modern alternative to the flood.
But it is us, secondarily because we run our gas cars and such.
Not even secondarily, imo, but like thirdly and fourthly. A lot of people don’t have the option to not drive. I’d say it’s a sad privilege to have a reliable public transportation system.
I’d say it goes a bit deeper than us.
It’s “us” because we keep voting for, and alongside, the people fucking us over. We like to blame the ruling class for buying our government, but it’s the stupid-ass workers that keep being herded like sheep and getting mad at anyone who calls it out.
In essence, most people deserve the state of the world because most people did nothing to stop it because they didn’t want to look bad in front of their idiot peers.
Anyone who legitimately fought back gets my condolences, but that certainly isn’t most of us.
Congress. For not taxing carbon emissions according to the damage they cause.
(And other countries’ legislatures, but as an American voter, I first need to hold my own legislature responsible.)
I first need to hold my own legislature responsible
Don’t think that’s really a thing in America anymore.
It’s just a vibe I get. It may have something to do with felon rapist pedophiles running the legislature.
Put a garnishing order on their past 50 years of profits. All proceeds go to infrastructure investments for the developing world in climate mitigation and food security.
I know for a FACT that Shell bought up every patent it could on Hydrogen use in the 1960’s. My dad worked in England back then in the main office; way up in the tree and he witnessed this himself. FACT. Maybe I’m not completely clear: F A C T !!! He told me when I was a boy and I never forgot. (Was I clear? FACT!!!)
What do you have to be a TOTALLY ROTTEN COMPANY to even NOW not use those inventions and implement Hydrogen as a fuel so the world will be saved.
I truely HATE Shell with all my guts.
Hydrogen will never be a viable fuel and will never save the world. It leaks like hell, has a low energy density so it needs to be either highly compressed or highly refrigerated to liquify it to be even usable for something that is moving, which needs a lot of energy and induces a lot of constraints.
Basically, everywhere where electricity is a meaningful solution, hydrogen is just outclassed. Which leaves heavy industries and maybe cargo ships. The rest must either electrify, or just go.
Green hydrogen only works when you have more energy than needed and you’re 100% renewable electricity. You could have done that with nuclear power in the 60s in theory. But solar in abundance is the only likely route it will work.
The point wasn’t that we should go all-in on hydrogen. The point was that they’ve been actively suppressing alternatives to oil for the better part of a century
I thought it is me, because I’m Not recycling hard enough. Puh, got lucky here /s
We ought to seize all the top companies.
They’re just holding companies. They don’t make anything. They don’t produce anything. They just bleed off a kick, like a mob boss, and use those gains to amass political power.
Seize them all and use the assets (and annual profits) to fund American society.
Absolutely.
Take their wealth by force.
No thanks, BP and Saudi Aramco already prop up the US enough.
like a mob boss
Who do you think started the first big companies?
Why are we blaming these companies when there’s a much bigger contributor
Why blame China? They do this so you guys can have crappy stuff that won’t last because your country makes you too poor to buy local 😉
I’m sure you’re joking but I do recommend reading Tragedy of the Commons, it’s just a few pages long. Amongst other things, it talks about how regulations need to be applied everywhere for them to be effective.
Goddamn you really are just sinophobic for capital.
So the US, with 1/5 the population of China, produces almost half the CO2 emissions that China does? How much is that per person? I wish they could get that Chinese level efficiency, maybe they need more solar panels.
If you want to measure efficiency, population is not the way to do it, economic output is. After all, a person laying in bed does not contribute much to emissions, but also not much output.
The US has 3/4 the GDP of China with less than half the emissions. The EU also has 3/4 the GDP of China, but less than 1/4 the emissions. Both are far more efficient
China builds physical objects for the world. The US sells intellectual property, financial services, with far less manufacturing.
So no, CO2 per GDP is not a useful measure.
When your hospital or HMO decides to jack up the price of a medication, that’s measured as an increase in GDP. When your car insurance goes up, that’s GDP going up.
Information has tons of value. I’m not a fan of copyright but I also don’t agree that physical products are inherently more valuable.
Also regarding insurance raises and other price raises. Prices usually rise when demand rises. So it’s a measure of what people want. Much better than just measuring pure survival. Now if all prices rose, that would be inflation, and GDP accounts for that. But if the price of one product rises while the prices of others fall, that’s just shifting consumer demand. Of course GDP isn’t perfect since there can be monopolies, oligopolies, and state-controlled companies, but imo it’s better than using population as a measure.
This is a bad faith argument. You are arguing the efficiency of a country based upon its CO2 per GDP. That’s kind of a shit argument because GDP is a human construct. Global warming doesn’t give a shit about GDP.
How much “value” a country produces based upon…what, exactly? How much it extracts from the ground? How much value other humans assign to those goods?
Capitalism got us into this fucking mess and you’re still using it as the goddamn ruler.
If you want to compare states, fine, I guess that works as a proxy for cultural differences, but if you are going to compare the efficiency of the people within the state, you measure per capita.
Using GDP is just a shit excuse to be able to defend capitalism while simultaneously dismissing the fact that China supports more people with fewer per-capita emissions.
Energy is money, and US will use more of it per capita because we have more money per capita. That’s going to be true until there’s a massive economic recession or a technology that greatly increases efficiency.
Or you reduce consumption, but the line going down is not part of the plan for China or the US.
Fossil fuel emissions are also a human construct. We did fine before fossil fuels, and even coal. Population is a horrible measure because all it captures is if you are keeping people alive. Even North Korea can keep people alive. But people want more than just survival.
But fine, you want to talk about population? You’re ignoring the second example I brought up. The EU has 1/3 the population of China and 1/4 the emissions. In other words, China is still the problem.
Edit: I just did the calculation, and North Korea is 4x more “efficient” than China if we are using carbon emissions per capita. I don’t think population is a great measure, to say the least
Fossil fuel emissions are also a human construct.
Huh what?
It’s a human activity, not a human construct.
What it essentially is, is sequestered carbon from millions of years ago, now being burned off and released into the atmosphere. Lion King’s Circle of Life is essentially the Carbon Cycle, and lots of blades of grass don’t get eaten. Carbon that returned to the earth in large quantities and under the right conditions became oil/coal, and now we are digging that back up and burning it for funsies.
But that’s besides the point. The point is that each individual emits an amount of carbon per year, much of which was formerly sequestered. Some countries, each individual is using less than others.
The problem is that you won’t be able to pull out a number that makes America/the west/Capitalism look good, because such a thing doesn’t exist…so instead you just try to brush it off as “oh well our country is better because of this number”.
It’s xenophobia and nationalism. Not science. Not even statistics.
The problem is that you won’t be able to pull out a number that makes America/the west/Capitalism look good, because such a thing doesn’t exist…so instead you just try to brush it off as “oh well our country is better because of this number”.
You’re contradicting yourself here. You’re saying I can’t pull out a number so I…pull out a number?
I’m not even clear what you’re arguing here. My point is that the US and EU emissions have been declining for the past 20 years while China’s continues to climb.
Is that scientific enough for you?
Don’t the non-auto companies who dump sludge in the rivers count for anything anymore?!
Ah yes companies that famously refine oil only to pour it into a hole and light it on fire for their own amusement, no one else uses it at all.
If its just these companies that would be affected let’s just close them down. I’m sure it would make no difference what so ever.
Shell also dodge paying fair taxes. https://www.ftm.eu/articles/shell-shifted-billions-in-profits-to-tax-havens-leaked-files-reveal
Please, dodging taxes is the least of Shell’s atrocities.
then where does energy come from?
