https://climatejustice.social/@breadandcircuses/112303357717712825 Scroll down inside that link for a slightly more extreme version (NSFW).
80s: corporations send hundreds of tonnes of trash to landfills while people are told to reduce the trash they generate
90s: corporations make everything plastic and disposable while people are told to recycle
00s: corporations cover the atmosphere in greenhouse gasses while people are told to reduce their carbon footprint.
10s: corporations buy politicians while people are told to vote.
90s: corporations make everything plastic and disposable while people are told to recycle
It’s worse than that: the plastics industry tells us to recycle – even going so far as to plagiarize the recycling symbol into the resin identification codes – despite knowing from the beginning that recycling plastic was mostly never going to be a viable thing. They did this purely to shift blame to consumers because the only way their business model worked was to not be held accountable for their waste.
I’m fond of saying that recycling is almost exclusively bad for the planet. It’s true and people don’t like hearing it.
Reduce, reuse, recycle. In that order.
If you don’t need to, don’t produce something. Chocolates don’t need to be all individually wrapped inside of yet another wrapper. Transport should be mostly by public and active transport (though we also need better city planning to help enable this), and private motor vehicles can, at this point, mostly be converted to the less-polluting EVs. That kind of thing.
If it’s been produced, rather than throwing it away, find ways to reuse it. Coke should be taking in glass bottles, washing them, and putting more coke back in it, rather than producing new bottles all the time.
If something has been produced and cannot be reused, we should try to find ways to recycle it. You’re right that recycling is bad, but that’s mainly true of plastics. Glass and paper are far more easy to recycle, if collected effectively. Which is also why the move from glass and paper products to plastic is such an environmental disaster, brought on because companies don’t want to spend the larger cost of producing those products, or collecting them in to effectively recycle the glass.
This is absolutely right. It’s reductive of me to say that recycling is bad for the environment; intentionally reductive.
People generally have a very hard time absorbing the fact that plastic recycling is a scam, so it’s hard to start nuanced to actually get the point across.
But you definitely nailed it. I would argue that if it was reduce, reuse, revolt, the environment would be in a much better place.
The rhetoric causing people to put their guard down is what’s bad, or actually recycling is a bad thing?
Recycling was actively brought forward as a solution by the oil companies to push the blame of plastic use onto consumers.
So while recycling rare metals is always valuable, plastic is definitely not. Almost all plastic gets buried in landfills, and the only way to make this not happen is to not make products with plastics.
By creating and marketing plastic recycling as a solution that the consumers must take onto themselves, it allowed them to rake in profits by moving everything to cheap plastic alternatives.
We are now literally made of microplastics as a result.
What I don’t understand is why burning plastic waste and using the generated heat (for example for district heating) is not discussed more often. I think recycling offers very little benefit over simple burning of plastics due to the amount of oil still being burned everywhere compared to the amount of oil used for plastic production.
I guess I’m surprised we don’t do it but we all know that burning plastic is gonna end up directly in the lungs of some poor people who have to live by the pollution factory
I don’t think it’s a secret that despite the overabundance of public messaging that “we” (the public) need to do x to “save the planet” or whatever, it’s not working because it’s entirely predicated on the idea that it’s individuals doing the majority of the damage, which isn’t the case.
Recycling is a particular scam. The idea of recycling basically gave everyone the green light to buy and use as many products that were “recyclable” as they wanted and could afford. The businesses making those products, in no small part started using “recyclable” plastics for nearly everything. People were satisfied that it was recyclable, with the three arrows in the package and that was it. All the while, recycling alone likely doubled the number of waste collection trucks on the road (increasing the amount of fuel needed) doubled the number of trucks needed to do collections of waste, and, as many have since pointed out, was largely not helpful, considering that plastics are basically impossible to recycle effectively at scale, into any product that anyone can use. Only a very small amount of plastic was ever able to be effectively recycled, and the vast majority was basically just landfill with extra steps.
So we polluted a fuckton more on an idea that it would save the planet, an instead, we just killed it more with trucks and oil.
This isn’t a new story, and it’s never been your fault. The last frame in this comic is what should have been done all along, but we were sold some bullshit lie so an asshole we’ve never met can buy another yacht.
And there’s still legions of people engaging in wasteful practices and supporting companies that want you to throw out their products as soon as they release a “newer/better” version of the same. I’m looking at you, Apple. Sure, you’ve stepped back on this a little bit in the past few years, but remember when you intentionally slowed down millions of phones because they were 2+ years old, and for no other reason? I do.
Net Zero carbon emissions (or any other pollutant) shouldn’t be the goal. It should be the minimum fucking standard.
This is Lemmy; we can put that slightly more extreme version right here!
(I don’t think it really is NSFW, but I’ll put it behind a spoiler tag to honor your opinion.)
NSFW
Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: Violent threats
🙂 👍
I don’t think it really is NSFW
Not that I find it in any way objectionable myself, but I’d say that in a very literal sense it’s not safe for work. At least if you work for a corporation or similar type of soulless entity 😉
I haven’t yet been convinced that giving up meat can help. Specifically, I haven’t seen the question of what happens to the grazing land.
If it is left to burn, the carbon it contains cycles grass ➡️ fire ➡️ CO2, particles ➡️ grass, etc
If it’s left to rot it’s grass ➡️ methane, CO2 ➡️ grass
If it is rewilded the carbon cycles grass ➡️ meat, methane ➡️ predators, etc
If left as it is it’s the same, but with us in place of the predators.
I really feel like there is no way of preventing the carbon emissions of grasslands, but at least if they’re making meat for us we can work on engineering a way out of the methane release, and people are working on that
And at worst it’s not fossil carbon, it’s renewable, the carbon emitted is captured again when the grass regrows
There’s carbon in the farm equipment, but that’s the same in all farming
Grass fed cattle and corn fed cattle have very different impacts on the environment. “Meatless Mondays” to me says “eat less meat” which in turn means more money for “Grass-Fed Steak Fridays”.
The term is greenwashing, and it worked
And in the 1970s it was, “we all need to tighten our belts and conserve resources.”
Guess which part of society didn’t follow that advice at all?
It’s because the explanation in the last panel should have happend before the 80s
Could have happened as soon as the 1950s when they first began seeing substantial proof of how harmful fossil fuels are.
But of course, the ones with all the money got to decide what the public gets to know. Just like it’s been ever since 🤬
How about: regulate the 10 largest companies and we can save the Earth?
If by “regulate” you mean “forcibly dissolve them and charge their CEOs with crimes against humanity and nature”, then I agree
20s: “Allow these criminal billionaires to escape to space and we may be able to start a new feudal colony on another planet”
Trick the billionaires into going to space, then blow the ship up in orbit?
Or just convince one billionaire that they are actually good at designing spacecrafts and should bring their friends along for a joy ride.
Ah, the Oceangate maneuver
20’s: “Don’t look up.”
this isn’t a meme, it’s a boomer facebook group comic
overcome capitalism
I actually dont understand why we not do something drastic. I mean like ban cars and planes. We can still get around. Just not at the same speed at the moment. Someone will come up with a better idea then gas cars.
We also need to think about computers. Why throw them away? We could just make better software and keep the devices for a very, very long time. Heck, very bad computer could land on the moon…
I actually dont understand why we not do something drastic. I mean like ban cars and planes.
Talk so some other people about your idea and you’ll understand why we don’t.
It’s because oily boiz don’t want to give up their power and wealth. They seem to enjoy LARPing as dragons
Well, it is the many against the few rich. It is everyones planet.
To be honest, we are fucking up the planet at an exponentially faster rate, so it is natural that mitigation solutions seems exponentially crazier.
There are people that believe that doing these crazy things will actually reverse the damage.
Then there are people like me who not only believe we are fucked but also believe that anything we do now is completely pointless as we are fucked either way so why bother.
Stop. Please stop. Doomerism compounds the problem, it is not a neutral stance.
Has irreparable damage already been done? Yes.
Will it be worse if we don’t do anything as soon as possible? Yes. And each moment that we don’t do the thing, it gets a little bit worse.
But each moment we do do the thing, it gets a little bit better.
The Earth will relatively be 1.5°, likely 2°C hotter, regardless of what actions are now taken. But 2°C hotter is far, far preferable to 4°C.
Everything we do as individuals and societies matters. I understand it feels daunting, and I’m not really advocating for you to drive less or eat less meat, because ultimately these changes won’t be driven by individuals making the choices.
However, please please please support and push, protest, fight for societal changes for us collectively to drive less, eat less meat, and corporate carbon taxation.
However, please please please support and push, protest, fight for societal changes for us collectively to drive less, eat less meat, and corporate carbon taxation.
You may be preaching to the choir. This year in Europe more than 50 percent of the newly bought cars were SUVs. To me that feels that most people do not care, they just want to enjoy themselves as much as possible before total collapse. Protest ? Three states in the USA recently banned protesting. In Europe with far right winning about everywhere will likely go the same direction. It is obvious in the news headlines. Fascism is on the rise and the masses do not seem to care about a burning planet and killing of everything but themselves.
Protest ? Three states in the USA recently banned protesting.
If I’m thinking about the right laws, don’t they more specifically make whoever is running the protest responsible for damages or crimes done by members of the protest if said members cannot be identified?
Yep, and i’m dangerously approaching this pov…
Still make efforts for the cause anyway.
