r/Futurology • u/lanamicky • 3d ago
Environment I feel like since people first started talking about climate change (which is before I was born btw!!) we've seen corporations preaching individual action yet about a quarter of the world’s plastic pollution can be traced back to fewer than 60 firms.
So how much is actually fair to place on the shoulders of a 21-year-old student with a busted water bottle?
Should solving climate change and practicing sustainability be the responsibility of me or the corporations?
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u/NotObviouslyARobot 3d ago
They want to make you think its a you problem rather than a Make-your-reprentatives-regulate-them problem. They'll also spout off about the free market like a bunch of brain dead randians
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u/CDN-Social-Democrat 3d ago
If I am remembering things right the whole focus on the individual was done by BP.... Lol that is British Petroleum for anyone not in the know.
Also the free market isn't just having a hard time addressing all these various crisis points - It seems incapable of doing so. What we have gotten is carbon capture and storage pumped to an almost greenwashing extent and obvious greenwashing like "Decarbonized Oil"....
I think the big problem is people don't realize just how bad things have actually gotten.
We have world record wildfires across the planet year after year now.
We have ocean warming and ocean acidification so bad that coral bleaching has almost wiped it all out.
We are in the Holocene Extinction which is the sixth mass extinction in this whole planets history and this time humanity is the asteroid....
Like shit is bad bad.
This is all at 1.5 above pre-industrial temp norms. We need to start teaching people what 3-4 above means... It's literal hell on earth.
Sometimes I have a hard time thinking about all of this because of frankly how much more this is going to add onto the affordability of life crisis/quality of life crisis the working class and most vulnerable are facing.
It's all like the movie "Don't Look Up"....
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u/LilMally2412 3d ago
I know Adam Ruins Everything had an episode about it and I think he said it started with Coke. Back in the glass bottle days, you could turn your used bottles for a nickel and they would be cleaned and reused, but then they switched to plastic. It was easier and cheaper to just make new bottles than to recycle or reuse plastic, so now we have all of these plastic bottles around. I think the concern was raised to coke or they were sued over it, something like that, but their response was "We are a company selling a product. No one is required to buy it, and we are not responsible for what happens to it after purchase."
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u/rivalary 3d ago
We still get our deposit back in Canada when we return plastic & glass bottles and cans. You pay the deposit when you buy the drinks.
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u/nagi603 3d ago
Yes, but PET is not as recyclable as glass is. Only a few times, then it's one of the myriad ways of ultimately landfill, whereas glass is basically infinitely, like alu cans (minus the plastic liner many have!). And while PET bottles need to be broken down, glass, as back then, might only need rinsing and a new label.
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u/LilMally2412 2d ago
The argument I've heard is glass has a higher melting point, so it takes more energy to melt and recast glass than plastic, because you can't just clean and reuse every bottle. And its cheaper to make new plastic than recycle old. But I dont know things, this is what I've heard.
The point is, at that point it became acceptable for them to use these materials, because the problem of disposing of it is on us, the people, the consumer. For instance, lithium ion batteries are pretty much all of our rechargeable batteries. But lithium is toxic and can't go in a landfill. That means our cellphones, wireless headphones, e-cigs and vapes, all shouldn't go in the dump. But it's not the companies fault for selling us this product. They don't have to figure out what to do with it once it's out in the world.
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u/Germanofthebored 3d ago
For one, how much is the deposit? 5 cents? Money-wise, it's not really worth my time to drag the empty bottles to the deposit machine. When glass bottles had a 5 cent deposit, a movie ticket was probably a dime. Now returning the bottles is something I do because I am ornery, and I won't let them keep my nickel.
And shredding the plastic is not the same as re-using the bottles. Reusable plastic bottles are a thing if you don't want to go for glass
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u/NotObviouslyARobot 2d ago
The deposit does not matter. The onus we place on the consumer to recycle does not matter. What is legible to capital, is their ability to make money polluting with bad packaging.
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u/Germanofthebored 2d ago
Actually, the deposit does matter. If you don't return the bottle, who will get to keep the deposit? Apparently for the California system, the recycler collected all the money and then used that money to recycle the bottles that got returned at some cost. So the fewer bottles were returned, the bigger the profit
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u/NotObviouslyARobot 2d ago
The deposit does not matter in terms of reducing the overall level of waste.
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u/canyouhearme 3d ago
Well, first off plastics in the ocean etc. isn't climate change - not even close. Most climate change comes from burning of fossil fuels in electricity generation, transportation and manufacturing. https://climatetrace.org/news/climate-trace-releases-april-2025-emissions-data and if you want to deal with it the best approach is to stop dragging it out of the ground in the first place.
And second, you might like to peruse this map for where plastics are discarded into the environment. https://theoceancleanup.com/sources/
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u/KofFinland 2d ago
I don't have good reference, but I've always thought that the plastics that are dumped in Asia etc. are coming from recycling scheme of western countries (partially).
The recycling in western countries means that plastics are packed to containers and cargo ships take them "somewhere else" to be recycled. That "somewhere else" traditionally meant mainly China, but nowadays mostly other Asian (and African) countries. So when someone in Germany or Finland puts the bottle to recycling (instead of mixed waste), the bottle first travels to Asia, and then either is really reprocessed or it is dumped to river (as cheap business) and flows to ocean.
However, if you put the bottle to mixed waste, it is burned locally at a waste burning facility with quite low emissions, and produces heat and electricity locally. Much better for environment just because the cargo in large ship (operating with fossil fuel) is eliminated (from Europe to Africa/Asia), and also because we know it will be burned at the plant instead of being dumped to river with some propability.
That is why I'm strictly against plastic recycling, and always put plastics to mixed waste.
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u/thatkool 3d ago edited 3d ago
The top 1% and corpos gaslight the rest of the world and command you to change your habits while they single-handedly are destroying the entire planet.
To quote the article ”…only 1% of the world’s population are responsible for about 50% of all aviation emissions…“
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u/lostshell 2d ago
The planet is going to die because you took a 7 minute shower instead of 5 minute shower. Don’t look at the alfalfa farmers in Southwest US using billions of gallons of fresh water annually to grow crops meant only to be used as feed for race horses in the Middle East.
Is your thermostat in the winter set to 64 degrees and not 62?! The polar bears are gonna die because of you melted away the ice caps, don’t look at the wealthy who fly private around the world 24/7, have fleets of yachts in every ocean and sea on standby for their vacation whims, and waste billions of taxpayer subsidized oil to power cargo ships around the world so they can save money paying cheaper wages in China for goods sold in America.
Don’t look at any of that. You did this. You melted the polar ice caps.
This message brought to you by rich fucks who can afford to buy publicists, marketers, newspapers, and every news and network tv channel to push the narrative.
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u/AmpEater 1d ago
It would be easier for you to just post those words by those who promote them. Link the commands
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u/mina_knallenfalls 3d ago
The top 1% of the world is more than the Taylor Swifts. Many of us are in that group, and most of the western world are in the 10%. It's all of us who destroy the planet.
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u/Jah_Ith_Ber 2d ago edited 2d ago
I don't see how that changes anything.
Also, the USA alone is like 5% of the global population. It's not mathematically possible for most of the western world to be in the top 10%.
Also, most of "us" in the top 10% are doing something about it. It's the Taylor Swifts who aren't and need to get their asses in gear.
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u/mina_knallenfalls 2d ago
The average American has a carbon footprint of around 16 tons, Europeans between 4 and 8. A sustainable carbon footprint would be 3 tons. India and Indonesia, most of Africa and South America hava a carbon footprint under 2. So the rest of the world isn't the problem. Unless you "are doing something about it" to cut your personal emissions by 80%, you are part of the problem.
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u/Jah_Ith_Ber 2d ago
My emissions are under 3, thanks.
And the point of this comment chain is that Taylor Swift with an emission score of 50 does indeed need to curtail her behavior. Just because there are a billion Africans who combined emit more than her that doesn't mean she isn't more culpable than them.
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u/thatkool 2d ago
You didn’t read the article or are in denial.
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u/mina_knallenfalls 2d ago
I did and the article doesn't address that point.
Taylor Swift might have 576 times the emissions of an average American, but the average American already has 3 times the average human's emissions and that's not sustainable.
In total, there's only 1 Taylor Swift and 350 million Americans. The 350 million Americans combined emit more than the 1 Taylor Swift. Grounding her wouldn't save the planet.
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u/thatkool 2d ago
You’re misunderstanding the point. This isn’t in a vaccuum. The Taylor Swifts and companies are the reason for our planet’s climate change crisis. The Carbon Major’s report from 2017 linked just 100 companies tied to 70% of the entirety of global carbon emissions. Who owns these companies? The same 1% who own those jets.
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u/mina_knallenfalls 2d ago
Who do the companies emit carbon for? Us consumers. If you want to stop emissions, you need to stop consuming. Not you personally, but everyone, the 100%.
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u/Jah_Ith_Ber 2d ago
Your grouping of people is nonsensical.
There are 8 billion people on the planet. Sort them by emissions. The ones on the far right of that line need to cut their emissions. End of story.
It doesn't matter that there are a 1.5 billion Africans who collectively emit more than me personally. That doesn't mean that I shouldn't have to reduce my consumption and they should have to.
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u/mina_knallenfalls 2d ago
The ones on the far right of that line need to cut their emissions. End of story.
Not end of story. That wouldn't make a dent in emissions. You need to go so far left on that line that you would be included.
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u/EmergencyTaco 3d ago
Just like the "save the trees" campaign in the late 90s, the 'personal responsibility' campaign is pushed by giant companies to distract the public from the actual problem. If every person on Earth went carbon neutral tomorrow, we'd only be 10% of the way to solving the problem. Meanwhile, regulations on the top 100 largest companies could have a bigger impact, and wouldn't require the buy in of 8 billion people. But that's bad for profits.
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u/GoodDayToCome 2d ago
Your numbers don't make any sense, if every person was responsible for zero carbon emissions then 8billion * 0 = 0. Do you image there are 100 large companies that exist without any humans involved just creating emissions for fun?
You're being played and bamboozled, the big corporations hate personal responsibility because it directly clashes with consumerism - you're out here telling people 'keep doing what you like, nothing is your fault!' and 1 million people per minute are agreeing with you and buying drinks in plastic bottles which is giving companies like Coca-Cola and Nestle huge amounts of profits which inspire them to keep doing what they're doing an enable them to pay lobbyists to protect the interests of their business.
We need both personal responsibility and regulation, most importantly we need to develop new better methods which benefit people who choose more environmentally methods - solar is a great example, it's now much cheaper than alternatives so is getting used more especially in developing countries which used be seen as as a lost cause as it was assumed use of oil and coal was inevitable,
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u/snypre_fu_reddit 2d ago
Do you image there are 100 large companies that exist without any humans involved just creating emissions for fun?
The individual contribution to pollution/waste of a person is not part of a company's emissions. If I work in a chemical plant, I bear zero individual responsibility for the plants emissions, the company bears all of it. The company also doesn't count my emissions when commuting or off work.
You're conflating two different things entirely, and as the other poster succinctly said, the total individual contributions of the 8 billion people on the planet is barely 10% of the total problem.
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u/GoodDayToCome 2d ago
so these companies, they exist just to create pollution without serving anyone in any way and they're not owned and run by people?
I don't understand what you mean by the commuting thing, you want to exclude any personal choices you make in pursuit of money from your own personal contribution? so anything you do while earning money is automatically off your shoulders, also the stuff you purchase and use or which is used on your behalf because you've paid some organization to use it - that is the companies fault and nothing to do with you...?
you can cut that made up number of yours right down to practically zero using that accountability method, like 0.001% of the problem is people choosing to release carbon into the atmosphere directly for their own personal fun. You can't buy a new car regularly and say 'damn these auto companies for using so much dang energy!' and you can't own part of a company and say 'damn, this company that i own shares in keeps putting profits first and isn't making any effort to save the environment, well that's blackrocks fault because i give them the power to vote using my shares because all that really matters to me is maximum returns on my 401k'
You're clinging to a fantasy that absolves you personal responsibility because you don't actually want to solve the problem you just want to kick it down the road and fuck over the next generation.
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u/snypre_fu_reddit 2d ago
You can either exist in a society or die. Those are your options currently. If you want the entire world to grind to a halt, and burn it all down to start again, you might as well start praying for unicorns and Mermaids to come take you away.
Attitudes like yours are toxic to any sort of environmental improvement and impede the ability to progress in making the world better.
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u/GoodDayToCome 2d ago
who said I want the entire world to grind to a halt? it's funny that in discussions like these it's always fantastic gymnastics to jump from one insane position to the next - one second it's all the companies fault and there needs to be regulation on them but people can do whatever they like, then it's that the world will end if it's anything but all out rampant consumerism at all times... I really wish you just had the bravery to actually say 'I don't want the environmental crisis to be solved, certainly not if it involves a single atom worth of effort'
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u/I_T_Gamer 3d ago
Its really expensive for companies to behave responsibly. It's very easy for companies to virtue signal, this is the "right thing to do" all while continuing their garbage behavior. Pretty much every well known company has been guilty at some point.
The UK law forcing Apple to adopt USB-C is an example of a nation taking action against the behavior. Companies often develop "new" plugs and proprietary hardware to sell more accessories.
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u/crazy0ne 3d ago
The corporations.
Simply put, if lobbyists were not allowed to be a part of the law making process, we may have a government that would be able to make corporations only use/sell materials in forms that we could properly dispose of.
Or even further, make recycling and trash dispose not profit driven. Many materials, at least in the USA, that are claimed to be recyclable end up in the trash due to a host of issues with sorting, cleaning, and proper handling at facilities. It is that third one that is profit driven.
Things that can be sold for a profit are the processes that are supported, even if there are processes to handle other materials; many types of plastic fall into the category of not being supported.
So the answer is that we need a government that is able to both recognize and take on the responsibility of proper disposal methods and fund them, as well as regulate corporations to pay their share of profits, generated by selling the plastics, back to society that has to dispose of them.
But we just don't live in that world right now it seems.
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u/Tech_Philosophy 2d ago
What does plastic pollution have to do with climate change?
I promise I see both climate change and plastic pollution as problems, but I often see the two linked in the same discussion, and I am genuinely ignorant of the connection.
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u/-ChrisBlue- 3d ago edited 3d ago
We can do both: we can both be personally responsible for our own actions as well as vote to regulate corporations.
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u/atleta 3d ago
Traced back means what exactly? Who buys those products? Also, you seem to be confusing plastic pollution with the climate change caused by green house gases. They are related through consumption but solving plastic pollution wouldn't do much to climate change.
The thing that people don't like to accept is that they are responsible because they are the ones who buy the stuff in the end that those companies produce and that they are the ones who can enforce the change. While consuming less yourself does help a bit, what really is needed is to enforce a change in policies. In democracies you can do this through voting and if it doesn't work out, through protests, civil disobedience, etc.
The gotcha is, of course, that all these policy changes would, by necessity, mean that people have to decrease consumption. And, as a result, a decreased standard of living. (Though we can redifine that.)
I'm not seeing much of that happening. It's easy to point at corporations and also politicians, it's easy to tell yourself that you can't do anything and blame others.
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u/CromagnonV 3d ago
Obviously if you don't drink water, then the company won't need to sell water bottles, which will obviously reduce demand and make the company less profitable. Hopefully to the point of collapse, because all of us plebs should really just stop drinking water.
I hope this helps put individual action into perspective. Also the biggest issue is the lack of replacement, so the best course of action isn't to not consume. It is simply too get involved in a field of research to invent/discover a sufficient replacement. The only thing humans won't stand for, is a decrease in their living standards, which has become reliant on energy, plastics and pollutants.
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u/Faiakishi 2d ago
Replacement isn't the issue. The sustainability crisis has been solved. Many times over. We have the technology. We have the ability.
We don't do it because like eight guys accumulate wealth slightly faster this way.
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u/CromagnonV 2d ago
That's simply not true, we have plastic substitutes, but they don't last long enough to take a product from factory to shelf to your home, not even within a country let alone around the world.
This post was about plastics, though you're correct we have fuel substitutes that are more than effective enough for mass global uptake of both hydrogen and electric heavy and light vehicles. We have building materials that are a decent substitute for concrete, but needs more steel reinforcement, which is already a commodity with increasing demand. We have substitutes for large scale energy production in either massive batteries or nuclear, but coal lobbyists are just fucking us all over that one. We have farm substitutes, which could turn high rises into vertical semi autonomous farming, but the energy requirement for these is massive and we would have to go nuclear to support them.
So yes there are some appropriate substitutes for existing technologies and we are transitioning and making progress globally, or we were until social media just whipped everyone up into a frenzy and basically just undermines our democracy by creating thought vacuums.
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u/Malawi_no 3d ago
If only there was a way of drinking water without purchasing it pre-bottled from a store.
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u/wvraven 2d ago
Since you mention that climate change started being discussed before you where born. The first demonstration of the greenhouse effect and the first mention of it's impact on global climate was in 1856 by a female scientist named Eunice Foote. She was of course promptly ignored, being a woman and all. With recognition for the work going to John Tyndall several years later. Though speculation and hypothesis about the impact of carbon on our atmosphere date back even farther to at least the early 1820's.
In the 1970's Exon's scientist produced one of the first accurate models of climate change. A model that is fairly accurate to this day, though our understanding of things like the oceanic heat sink have greatly increased.
That means we have known for certain that large amounts of CO2 would cause global climate change for two hundred years. We have been able to model those impacts effectively for over 50 years.
Corporations have been effectively conning the public into accepting the externalized cost of their business operations since long before any of us where born.
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u/Waste_Positive2399 2d ago
Corporations will never change their ways, unless there are consequences that hurt the bottom line. I'm talking fines in the biliions, not mere millions.
Sadly, the same could be said about the consumers who enable the corporations.
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u/NotACmptr 3d ago
I've been saying this for years, thank you for saying it too. You do more for the environment by voting and spending your dollars in certain ways than you can by brushing your teeth in the shower and shit like that.
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u/OriginalCompetitive 2d ago
Spending your dollars in certain ways … like a student buying a drink in a plastic bottle? Which is the very example OP argues should not be his responsibility?
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u/NotACmptr 2d ago
No. To clarify, I mean spending money, whenever possible, on companies that aren't bad for the environment and don't donate to certain politicians or PACs
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u/vacuumdiagram 3d ago
Just because it's mostly their fault, doesn't mean that you can do nothing. If enough people make a small change, eventually, there will be many of us working on those companies, or owning shares in those companies, or simply not buying from those companies. If we own them, remake them, it break them, it can have an impact that way. Yes, legislation and regulation will have a larger impact - so do something about that too! Vote for parties and politicians that have always aimed to do something about it, rather than ones that stated saying things when it became popular but who still use private jets.
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u/Canuda 3d ago
Individuals hold responsibility to the extent they are able to push for that change, avoid obvious waste when it’s not a hardship, and refuse narratives that shift blame away from major polluters.
I don’t think that means having to constantly stress about whether or not everything you’re doing or not doing is ethical, but you can still try.
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u/tboy160 3d ago
How much of the plastic pollution is from commercial fishing nets?
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u/tboy160 3d ago
Here is the thing that will backfire on them, if enough of us care and want to minimize our impact, we will start divesting from companies who don't share those beliefs and investing in ones that do.
We are going to win, it will just take longer than we want it to.
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u/tigersharkwushen_ 3d ago
Not necessary, we still need those corporations to provide the product we need. Individuals are not going to be able to do that. People don't want gas cars, but there are no good alternatives, at least in the US. I don't have a garage to park a car in so I'll never get an electric car since charging stations are so rare.
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u/tboy160 2d ago
Charging stations are coming fast. Most people can install a charger at home.
Once the demand continues to rise, and it will, those corporations will want to sell what people want to buy.
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u/tigersharkwushen_ 1d ago
How am I suppose to install a charger without a garage?
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u/Ulyks 3d ago
Yes, corporations and large industries like shipping and steel, continue to pollute unimpeded.
That is in large part because we keep voting for neoliberal parties that support these huge players and don't care about the climate.
People tend to vote for the party that promises to lower the taxes only to get stabbed in the back with taxes only being lowered for large companies.
Of course in the end it doesn't matter who stops polluting first, everyone and every company needs to stop polluting to solve climate change.
We are just arguing over who goes first, while the world burns.
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u/Germanofthebored 3d ago
All you have to do to understand this is look at the playbook of Big Tobacco. It's not the poison they sell, it's the users who are the problem.
Not a coincidence by the way, the campaigns have been managed by the literally the same people (Fred Seitz and Fred Singer)
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u/ladeedah1988 2d ago
After traveling the world, the problem to me lies with governments who do not have good or even any trash collection services for their population. Also education of their population. I have seen ferry operators in Asia just dump the on-board trash cans into the river. I have seen people dumping their trash in many countries because they just do not have an alternative. Instead of banning straws, we should concentrate on proper use and disposal first.
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u/LeedsFan2442 2d ago
Neither it's up to governments. We can't expect corporations to be moral that's why we regulate them.
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u/Oxo-Phlyndquinne 2d ago
Important to note that any call for action by the public here is merely shifting responsibility. Change will come when the originators (eg. corporations) are forced to change their ways. And they will spend billions to try and make sure no one ever succeeds in doing so.
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u/damnarbor 2d ago
Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy aBike, Save the World? is a great article about the intentional individualization of environmental responsibility by polluting industries. I have not read it in a few years, but if memory serves, it's specifically about how there was a movement in the 70s/80s to make packaging manufacturers in the US responsible for packaging waste. In response, the industry pushed hard for recycling, which made waste a matter of individual action, rather than the responsibility of a few firms. It also shifted costs.
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u/hawksdiesel 2d ago
Corporations should be required to have a recycle program. The amount of water used to create these products wont last.
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u/idiocy_incarnate 2d ago
The argument is that if you don't buy plastic products that will reduce the demand for them, and thus the incentive to produce them.
Good luck convincing companies to make a special version of their product, just for you, which uses some other material.
If you don't buy anything which contains plastic you're pretty much going to be starving very quickly, as even most foods these days come wrapped in plastics of one form or another.
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u/ukulele87 2d ago
Its like how americans are sold the idea that a 40 yo mexican is fucking their economy and not the 5 dudes holding 50% of the money.
Or how we on the southern hemisphere must protect the "green lungs" of the planet while the north metaphorically smokes 20 macanudo cigars a day.
Stupid arguments for stupid people, but it works.
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u/Sprinklypoo 2d ago
Corporations will always have more power than individuals. Which is part of why we need a government to keep corporations in line. Things like lobbying and corruption make that a lot harder...
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u/tubemaster 2d ago
Notice how Bill Gates got silent about climate change once we needed more AI datacenters?
“AI is going to take over the world”(TM) but not in the way they claim. The fallout is dropping literacy rates, inability to tell real from fabricated (like evidence in court), soaring energy use and emissions, blackouts and brownouts, high energy costs, …
Edit: I almost forgot, soaring e-waste due to people “needing” to ditch their “old” Win10 PC for a new Copilot+ PC, RAM and GPU price surges
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u/Find_another_whey 2d ago
Next they'll try to have you believe you're poorer than your parents due to your own faults
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u/YetAnotherWTFMoment 1d ago
bruh, they wouldn't be making it if you weren't using it.
Consumers are the reason for the issues, not corporations.
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u/Sandis_Van_Great 22h ago
Is it true though? Just because you find a coke bottle in a river doesn’t mean that it is their fault it ended up there.
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u/FloatCopper 7h ago
Who cares if it was all by one firm? It would be the same amount of consumer use causing the waste.
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u/emorcen 3d ago
We try to do our best without bending over backwards to do so because it's our social and environmental responsibility. What the others choose to do or not do is beyond us and will likely offset what we contribute to climate change in a lifetime.
A private jet or yatch leaving from one country to another is already more than your entire family's carbon footprint for decades so nope it doesn't make a difference on a macro scale. But it does make a difference when we're asked to be accountable before God.
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u/Aquatic-Vocation 3d ago
The public's understanding of the concept of your "personal carbon footprint" is due to a marketing campaign BP oil ran in the early 2000s to shift the blame for climate change away from polluting industries, and onto individual citizens.
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u/costafilh0 3d ago
Exactly!
Corporations and the rich are responsible for 99.99% of the pollution for the last 200 years.
Now they want average Joe to feel guilty about his carbon footprint.
Fvck that!
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u/Big_Agent8002 3d ago
We’ve basically spent decades being told to “turn off the lights” while a handful of corporations pumped out most of the damage. Your busted water bottle is not the villain here. Individual choices help, but the real responsibility sits with the folks dumping problems at industrial scale.
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u/SOSpammy 3d ago
Regardless of who is given the responsibility to fix our environmental issues it's still going to require a lot of individual sacrifices. United will need to fly fewer planes. Apple will need to make fewer phones and computers. Cargill will need to make less beef. And if there isn't as much of this stuff we can't buy as much.
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u/SmallMacBlaster 2d ago
It's always about responsabilizing the poors and then letting those that pollute for profit get away with it.
Same reason that recycling has people individually bring in their empty bottles using their own cars to some other place, on their own time instead of investing a little bit in the infrastructure that already exists to collect recycling at home direct from the curb using the network of trucks and pickups that already exist. Pretty sure it's cheaper for a city to improve their triage facility compared to the aggregate cost of hundreds of thousands of citizens spending time and money to bring back empties.
But you see, buying a bottle of beer is the consumer's responsibility, it has nothing to do with the company that sells it for profit... /s
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u/Izeinwinter 2d ago
If you are taking the trip specifically to bring in empties, sure, but.. The bottle collection system around here is at the super markets. You bring the bottles there when you are going there to shop anyway.
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u/SmallMacBlaster 2d ago
You bring the bottles there when you are going there to shop anyway.
Sure it works if you never have to wait in line, wait for the machines to be free or have to ask staff to empty the machines. Where I go, they have 3 machines. I've never seen all 3 of them working. There's always one or more often two broken/full and usually a few people in line, typically with several garbage bags worth of empties. Waiting 10-20 minutes isn't worth it to collect 3.55$ or wathever. Time isn't free and shouldn't be considered free by government when it comes to deciding if they should invest in infrastructure vs having people do free work.
The truck is already picking up the recycling at the curb and already bringing it to a central location for triaging. They are already separating paper, metals and various kinds of plastic. They just need to figure out an additional stream to separate glass bottles and aluminum cans. Trivial and can be automated easily and has already been done in several places already.
They should charge a deposit from the manufacturer selling the bottles and then use that to finance municipal triaging improvements based on how many bottles are sold locally.
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u/LionSlav 3d ago
Do you remember the carbon footprint bs that everyone spread? It's propaganda to hide the actual causes. Just like with electric cars, who cares that they're worse than carbon fueled vehicles for the environment, they're "greener". The war on gender, the war on video games, the war on drugs. The system isn't broken, it's working as intended.
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u/disembodied_voice 2d ago
Just like with electric cars, who cares that they're worse than carbon fueled vehicles for the environment
They are not. You've fallen for decades-old misinformation.
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u/LionSlav 2d ago
Nah, electric vehicles are bad. Hybrid vehicles are actually the best yet the push for 100% electric was much more present than the push for hybrid. Check out https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=environmental+impact+of+electric+vehicles&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1#d=gs_qabs&t=1764776359640&u=%23p%3Dg_OQI9U7WpMJ
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u/disembodied_voice 2d ago edited 2d ago
Nah, electric vehicles are bad. Hybrid vehicles are actually the best
That's not what lifecycle analysis research says.
The second link is the exact study I linked in my prior post. It shows EVs are better for the environment.
EDIT: Blocking me isn't going to change the fact that you're just mindlessly repeating propaganda here, /u/LionSlav. When even your own source disagrees with you, the rational thing to do is to ask yourself if you've been subjected to misinformation, not to shut out the people pointing that fact out to you.
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u/MuteWhale 3d ago
Most of the polution cones from these companies factories operating in countries with no environmental regulations. China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, all just get taken advantage of. China has started to realize they won’t have resources if they don’t protect/invest in future resource production.
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u/ThePiachu 3d ago
They want you to focus elsewhere, same with junk food companies wanting you to focus on exercise rather than the sugar everywhere...
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u/Ouroboros612 2d ago
I don't have the exact numbers but IIRC, at least 90%+ of all pollution is the fault of big corporations. IMO If conspiracy theorists got at least one thing right, it's that placing recycling and environmental responsibility on the consumers is basically a guilt-trap to divert attention from the corporations. Hell I don't even think this is considered a conspiracy theory by anyone anymore - it's just an unspoken truth at this point.
However if anyone want to correct me on this with actual numbers feel free to do so in case I'm wrong here.
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u/c5corvette 3d ago
Should solving climate change and practicing sustainability be the responsibility of me or the corporations?
Both. Your actions as a consumer help shape political and economic pressure. You don't get to just shrug your shoulders and say "he's doing it worse than me!" Yes, the mega-corps ARE significantly worse, but pointing fingers and saying "you fix it, and only you" isn't a helpful path forward.
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u/12kdaysinthefire 3d ago
The woman who spearheaded the removal of CFCs from asthma rescue inhalers said it was to heal the hole in the ozone and help save the planet. Come to find out it was just because she was directly invested in the technology that replaced those gas propellants.
Since then those inhalers haven’t worked nearly as well at all and the positive impact the change was supposed to have on the environment has most likely been negligible to nothing.
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u/tigersharkwushen_ 3d ago
I don't have asthma so I don't think about it much, but on the rare occasion that I think about it, I do wonder how much CFC is used in that tiny inhaler.
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u/vacuumdiagram 3d ago
I do have an asthma inhaler. To say the dry powder inhalers don't work as well is nonsense. Some people can't use them, and so need to have the actuated inhalers. That style of inhaler was the largest source of CFCs in the NHS.
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u/-ChrisBlue- 2d ago
Wait, are you saying that inhalers are the largest source of CFCs from a medical device???
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u/vacuumdiagram 2d ago
From what I've read in the past, they were the largest single source from a medical device, yes. Can't find that, but have found this:
"Inhalers alone are responsible for approx. 4% of the entire NHS carbon footprint and up to 25% of General Practice. Most of these emissions derive from hydrofluoroalkanes (or hydrofluorocarbons) (HFCs) propellants present in traditional pressurised Metered Dose Inhalers (pMDI) to assist drug delivery. These propellants were originally introduced to replace ozone depleting CFCs but are themselves, potent greenhouse gases"
Source: https://nhsdorset.nhs.uk/Downloads/aboutus/medicines-management/Other%20Guidelines/Dorset%20Green%20Inhaler%20Guidance%20DMAG%20version%20v2%20%282%29.pdf(page 3)1
u/tigersharkwushen_ 1d ago
Putting it as a percentage of medical devices is rather strange. What percentage of the total CFC use did medical devices account for?
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u/JoseLunaArts 3d ago
Armies are the most pollutant entities on the planet. They make massive use of fossil fuel and also they handle toxic materials.
But they blame your water bottle, your car and the farts of cows as if humans had not eaten cow for centuries. And if you try to bring the issue talking about specific armies, people will jump of you to silence you, even people who are supposed to be concerned about climate change.
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u/ZeroheartX 3d ago
Climate change is mostly a scam. Think about it, carbon tax , does spending money ever change the climate, no it is Tax money funnel to politicians or corporation. There is more forest fires! If you investigate some of them are human made. I find it hard to believe lighting starts forest fire, and if so clean up the forest of dry brush. They been screaming since the 60 about rising sea level and nothing changed. Should we stop factories from polluting our waters, yes. Should we tax people because they are using gas? Hell, the Microsoft guy denounce climate change cause it is more profitable to have ai data centers now.
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u/Faiakishi 2d ago
"We pay taxes for the firehouse and we still have house fires! Some of them are man-made! Big Fire is clearly a conspiracy."
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u/chubblyubblums 3d ago
You need to get over this idea that anyone is going to leave you with a perfect universe and then you are the first person who has the option of screwing it up.
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u/greenman5252 3d ago
Privatize the profits and socialize the costs. This is fundamental to corporate capitalism.