I really think this narrative is counterproductive. It’s not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it’s fun. They’re doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.
No corporation is going to choose more environmentally friendly practices out of the goodness of their own hearts unless those practices are cheaper. And given that that is very rarely the case, we have to look at things like carbon taxes to actually price in the externalities of climate damage. But that is going to increase the prices of some goods, and that requires a level of political will that has proven very difficult to come by. “Just make corporations pay” to fix things, whether that’s a carbon tax or taxes on oil company executive pay or dividends or whatever else the proposal may be is always going to mean “increase prices to compensate for climate-related externalities”.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that all costs of addressing climate change must directly fall on consumers; government subsidies to reduce the costs of environmentally sustainable practices can also be extremely beneficial. But ultimately, this is a problem that we’ve all created, and we’re all going to have to be part of solving it. Blaming corporations, even if partially accurate, doesn’t actually get us any closer to solving things.
Yes and No. Yes, it’s not only corporations and we must act ourselves.
No, it’s the rules that set the game. Corporations play within the rules. Politics is owning and can change the rules. The society and corporations will follow accordingly.
If we really want to change we can. Look what happened during Covid. In retrospect, some insane rules (eg Germany kids not allowed to enter playgrounds. Kids couldn’t play to save the elderly). However, society obeyed to those rules.
It’s not us, it’s the rules that must change. In my view this should be the priority.
Blaming the public over corporations is the #1 reason why we are in this mess in the first place. For decades, the narrative has been “it’s your fault and you need to change your habits”. It is a pointless and useless narrative because nobody is going to actively change anything like that until they are forced to. Even when we make moderate, easy efforts to do stuff like recycling, the recycling companies bitch and moan about how they can’t ship this shit off to China to let them do the work, and then throw away most of it, anyway. We PAY recycling companies to recycle this shit and they can’t be bothered to figure out how to recycle it. We PAY THEM to take away materials to use in new products, not the other way around.
In every aspect of people’s lives, you will find that corporations use up 90% of the resources that the general public use because corporations deal in economies-of-scale far bigger than anything a person or even a country can do. Corporations have been pushing the “blame the public” narrative to shift focus away from the decades of abuse they will continue to inflict on the planet. Corporation shit all over everything, and they will continue to do so in the name of profit. That is exactly what they are designed to do.
It takes governmental effort and regulations against the corporations to stop this sort of thing. They do it for clean water, and CFCs, and automotive design, and architecture, and many many other things. Why? Because a minority group of people who are struggling to make a living is never going to have enough power and clout as a large corporation or a government.
It’s not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it’s fun.
I think we can agree on that corporations are aimed at cheapest way to produce most popular goods at the biggest scale they can achieve for, in the end, produce the biggest possible profit. Thats what corporations are made for: money.
In the end, rich guy gets a yacht, bunker for apocalypse and private residence with AC, private kitchen stuff and anything they want so he will be fine even if its 60C outside. If it will get unbearable, they’ll move to something like Norway and will be fine.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people who live in hot countries will die and millions will be climate refugees.
All that, because producing iphone with coal electricity (simplification, albeit I feel like its close to truth) is 10$ cheaper.
Blaming corporations, even if partially accurate, doesn’t actually get us any closer to solving things.
Swapping to paper bags will not help either. There are only two options to solve the issue:
Government forces corpo to stop wasting our planet (because we don’t have a spare one)
People get torches
1 is impossible because gov will never cut the feeding hand and 2 is just a matter of time until we will get couple hundred millions migrants from Aftica, India, Pakistan etc.
1 is still possible. But, we’re at a tipping point between ending up in some Cyberpunk corporate-ran dystopia and one where the general public actually has the upper-hand and can fend off governmental corruption.
but the thing about voting is that basically every politician is either:
In the pocket of one or more corporations
Literally part of a corporation (or outright owns one)
A politician at who doesn’t have as much power as the former two or is in the pocket of one of them
so we could vote for John StopClimateChange, and then find out that every single thing that Mr. StopClimateChange said about his crusade to stopping climate change was not at all true or was so utterly miniscule in the long run as to be meaningless
This is a defeatist and authoritarian position that the rich and powerful want you to have. They want to feel like you can’t win, so that they vote behind you while you sit at home. Until eventually, they just dismantle democracy altogether and we go back to fiefdoms.
There is clearly one party that is more in line with the goals of fighting climate change than the other. Vote for that group. Vote for that group twice a year.
I really think this narrative is counterproductive. It’s not like corporations produce greenhouse gasses because they think it’s fun. They’re doing it to produce goods that people want at the absolute minimal price possible.
No corporation is going to choose more environmentally friendly practices out of the goodness of their own hearts unless those practices are cheaper. And given that that is very rarely the case, we have to look at things like carbon taxes to actually price in the externalities of climate damage. But that is going to increase the prices of some goods, and that requires a level of political will that has proven very difficult to come by. “Just make corporations pay” to fix things, whether that’s a carbon tax or taxes on oil company executive pay or dividends or whatever else the proposal may be is always going to mean “increase prices to compensate for climate-related externalities”.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that all costs of addressing climate change must directly fall on consumers; government subsidies to reduce the costs of environmentally sustainable practices can also be extremely beneficial. But ultimately, this is a problem that we’ve all created, and we’re all going to have to be part of solving it. Blaming corporations, even if partially accurate, doesn’t actually get us any closer to solving things.
Yes and No. Yes, it’s not only corporations and we must act ourselves.
No, it’s the rules that set the game. Corporations play within the rules. Politics is owning and can change the rules. The society and corporations will follow accordingly. If we really want to change we can. Look what happened during Covid. In retrospect, some insane rules (eg Germany kids not allowed to enter playgrounds. Kids couldn’t play to save the elderly). However, society obeyed to those rules.
It’s not us, it’s the rules that must change. In my view this should be the priority.
Blaming the public over corporations is the #1 reason why we are in this mess in the first place. For decades, the narrative has been “it’s your fault and you need to change your habits”. It is a pointless and useless narrative because nobody is going to actively change anything like that until they are forced to. Even when we make moderate, easy efforts to do stuff like recycling, the recycling companies bitch and moan about how they can’t ship this shit off to China to let them do the work, and then throw away most of it, anyway. We PAY recycling companies to recycle this shit and they can’t be bothered to figure out how to recycle it. We PAY THEM to take away materials to use in new products, not the other way around.
In every aspect of people’s lives, you will find that corporations use up 90% of the resources that the general public use because corporations deal in economies-of-scale far bigger than anything a person or even a country can do. Corporations have been pushing the “blame the public” narrative to shift focus away from the decades of abuse they will continue to inflict on the planet. Corporation shit all over everything, and they will continue to do so in the name of profit. That is exactly what they are designed to do.
It takes governmental effort and regulations against the corporations to stop this sort of thing. They do it for clean water, and CFCs, and automotive design, and architecture, and many many other things. Why? Because a minority group of people who are struggling to make a living is never going to have enough power and clout as a large corporation or a government.
I think we can agree on that corporations are aimed at cheapest way to produce most popular goods at the biggest scale they can achieve for, in the end, produce the biggest possible profit. Thats what corporations are made for: money.
In the end, rich guy gets a yacht, bunker for apocalypse and private residence with AC, private kitchen stuff and anything they want so he will be fine even if its 60C outside. If it will get unbearable, they’ll move to something like Norway and will be fine.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of people who live in hot countries will die and millions will be climate refugees.
All that, because producing iphone with coal electricity (simplification, albeit I feel like its close to truth) is 10$ cheaper.
Swapping to paper bags will not help either. There are only two options to solve the issue:
1 is impossible because gov will never cut the feeding hand and 2 is just a matter of time until we will get couple hundred millions migrants from Aftica, India, Pakistan etc.
1 is still possible. But, we’re at a tipping point between ending up in some Cyberpunk corporate-ran dystopia and one where the general public actually has the upper-hand and can fend off governmental corruption.
Choose wisely. Vote every year, twice a year.
but the thing about voting is that basically every politician is either:
so we could vote for John StopClimateChange, and then find out that every single thing that Mr. StopClimateChange said about his crusade to stopping climate change was not at all true or was so utterly miniscule in the long run as to be meaningless
then what?
This is a defeatist and authoritarian position that the rich and powerful want you to have. They want to feel like you can’t win, so that they vote behind you while you sit at home. Until eventually, they just dismantle democracy altogether and we go back to fiefdoms.
There is clearly one party that is more in line with the goals of fighting climate change than the other. Vote for that group. Vote for that group twice a year.
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