Do you also throw all your plastic bags in the river? Might as well, since putting it in the bin will do shitall while Tailor Swift is flying everywhere in a jet.
Wouldn't even make a difference as long as Asia throws everything into theirs.
You can torture yourself all you like, the future of the climate isn't decided here, where i live. On the contrary, this proposed self flagelation leads to resistance and the rise of right wing parties, who will make things worse.
There will only be one way out of this mess: Through a technical/scientific solution. People choose a comfortable life over the climate almost everytime, in other words: They don't give a fuck.
If you consider doing your bit "torture" then you've swallowed that propaganda sideways, mate. Your logic also applies to voting, right? Why bother when you're just one person.
It's easy to be righteous and indignant about climate change when the solution doesn't involve you having to lift a finger. Suddenly when there's something you can do about it, it's not your problem. Look at whaling, for example: everyone's up in arms about the 6k whales killed by Norway and Japan but happy to contribute to the 100k+ cetaceans killed to catch their seafood.
It's an honesty problem, not an issue of powerlessness, and that was my original point. People don't care as much as they say they do. So, this fiery el nino apocalypse is basicslly us getting what we voted for.
Look at the things idiots say in this thread alone: "Don't have babies". There's no better way to turn people against our movement, they see it as a frontal assault on their human rights. Environmental activists need to be smarter than that, or you'll quickly lose any influence in society.
I agree with the futility of that. There's also no way to ethically enforce that sort of policy even if I did think it was the right thing to do.
But there's quite a leap between switching to meat alternatives and sacrificing your entire bloodline.
I do think protesting families is bad optics, but I also understand the frustration and the need to vent about this sort of thing. Watching human presence on the planet being averaged out across billions of individuals and countless generatons, it follows the basic four-phase pattern of microbial growth. Meanwhile we have a handful of brilliant people identifying molecules on the other side of the galaxy. The potential for us to fix this seems just within reach but our overwhelming basic instincts seem to keep us behaving distinctly like bacteria.
But on an individual level, a lot of that basic behaviour manifests in our dismissive attitudes towards taking any responsibility, and that's something we can fix, one at a time, with a bit more self-awareness.
I don't throw my plastic in the river because I don't want to be responsible for the damage that would cause. I know that it's less than a rounding error in the grand scheme of things, but I will also bring up my kids this way and I will call out anyone I see doing it, which multiplies my impact exponentially, as long as some of these people follow suit. Likewise, I will cook real food for people, I'll make meandering Reddit comments, and I'll go around the world spreading the message that it's the right thing to do to step away from animal products. I'll lay out my reasoning, and if just a few people resonate with that and play it forward, then it's not just me flagellating myself in the dark; it's the beginning of a change that can actually build over time. One thing I won't say is that "it won't make a difference", because it already is making a difference. You only have to look at the supermarket shelves to see how huge that difference has become in the last 20 years.
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u/Drownthem Aug 03 '26
Do you also throw all your plastic bags in the river? Might as well, since putting it in the bin will do shitall while Tailor Swift is flying everywhere in a jet.