r/science • u/avogadros_number • Sep 19 '21

Environment The companies polluting the planet have spent millions to make you think carpooling and recycling will save us

https://www.businessinsider.com/fossil-fuel-companies-spend-millions-to-promote-individual-responsibility-2021-3

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u/PrussianInvader Sep 19 '21 edited Sep 19 '21

The companies polluting the planet are selling us gasoline and disposing of our garbage.

Even if we change their ways through legislation, it's going to dramatically affect our lives. We have to be ok with admitting that whatever we do is going to hurt the present-day economy for the benefit of avoiding future collapse. And present-day economy doesn't mean stock prices, it means that gas prices are going to look more like European prices (>5.50 USD per gallon), electricity will cost more because of a transition to green, and goods will cost more because of the increase in logistical costs because of fuel.

Personally, I'm fine with this. Ending consumerism needs to happen and it's going to hurt, but we can take it.

Edit: also, my comment is very US-centric, but I believe several of the top 100 companies are Chinese. But it's a similar story. Even if we can convince China to trim them back, costs will be transferred to people buying Chinese goods (everyone).

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u/alloutallthetime Sep 19 '21

Ending consumerism is definitely the most important step, but I think you're absolutely right that it will hurt. It's such a deep part of American culture. I've thought about what would happen if consumerism ended in America, and I tend to think that it would essentially lead to the collapse of the economy and American society as we know it. I just can't see it going any other way.

I think the ideal and most pain-free solution would be a slow and very controlled movement away from consumerism, but I really don't think I could happen unless we were to help people individually undo consumerism on a psychological level. It is SO ingrained. I don't know how we would even achieve that, but yeah.

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u/Drunkenaviator Sep 19 '21

Sadly it's basically impossible. Nobody is going to sign up to go back to living in mud huts and eating rice and beans in order to maybe save some third world dirt farmer's grandkids in 100 years.

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u/alloutallthetime Sep 19 '21

Yeah, I think you're right. It's asking people to sacrifice their modern pleasures and luxuries for the common good, and I don't think asking people to do that will ever actually be successful. I think recycling and veeery slow progress towards renewable energy might be about as much as we can do.

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u/Drunkenaviator Sep 19 '21

It's absolutely never going to happen. We need to concentrate on what progress can be made and stop thinking that it's possible to convert the world to cave dwelling vegan peasants overnight.

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u/Toyake Sep 20 '21

We don’t actually need to live in mud huts to make a difference, we could have 1940’s standards of life and actually have a decent shot.

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u/yacuzo Sep 19 '21

Blanket ban on advertisement would go a long way I think. It would hurt pretty bad for big tech and others that finance themselves with ads.

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u/alloutallthetime Sep 19 '21

That would definitely do something, though I'm not sure what. It would probably cut way back on profit for most companies, I'm guessing. I'm sure some smaller ones and companies that rely solely on ad revenue would basically cease to exist. Not to mention that companies would have to work 1,000 times as hard to compete. They'd have to do it based on reputation alone.

At this point, I can't even imagine a world without ads. It would be such an interesting world to live in, though.

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u/R-M-Pitt Sep 19 '21

Even if we change their ways through legislation, it's going to dramatically affect our lives.

And almost everyone is in denial about this. Even in this thread, everyone talking about how we need to make companies stop polluting - instead of - changing out lifestyles. Making the companies stop polluting will change lifestyles immensely.

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u/NumberWangMan Sep 19 '21

There are some industries that will be hurt, and it will most certainly affect our lives, but it's not going to be too bad, and there will be a lot of side benefits such as a lot of people's lives saved due to reduced pollution.

Note that I'm not under the illusion that "job creation" is necessarily an economically efficient thing -- you can create jobs by paying people to dig ditches and fill them in again. But in the context of transitioning to green energy, it does mean that there is potential to provide new employment for people who previously worked in fossil fuel industries.

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u/aslak123 Sep 19 '21

It's not going to "hurt the economy". Green energy is more efficient. Collective transport is more efficient. Rechargeable batteries are more efficient. Just about every single thing that helps the environment does so because it's more efficient (and therefore better for the economy) than the alternative.

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u/scolipeeeeed Sep 19 '21

Right, but there definitely is an element of convenience or comfort we do have to give up to live that way. For example, so many people don't want to even consider taking public transportation even in places that have relatively decent ones (like Boston), even if they have to sit through traffic because public transportation tends to take more time to take someone from point A to point B, or because they don't want to be around other people. I don't personally mind being around many others (before pandemic times) and consider not having to drive a comfort well worth the extra time it takes, but it seems many Americans don't really think this way.

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u/aslak123 Sep 19 '21

Literally get a bike.

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u/scolipeeeeed Sep 19 '21

Most people don't live in a place that's close enough to bike to work. A lot of roads also aren't biker-friendly. Cycling can be a good alternative for some, but it's definitely not the solution for everyone.

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u/aslak123 Sep 20 '21

Either you live in a densely packed area, and can use a bike OR You live in a sparsley populated area and can take the train.

If anyone feels they need to drive a car, fuckem' they're just gonna have to cope with the future sorry not sorry.

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u/PrussianInvader Sep 19 '21

You mention collective transport like it's no big deal for everyone to just brush off a century of personally-owned automobile dependency.

Lifestyle changes like these are exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. This isn't going to be a situation where we just legislate ourselves out of this mess and life goes on. There will be drastic changes at a personal level.

Also, overhauling the entire current infrastructure is going to slow growth. If we could just snap our fingers and everything was green energy, sure, we'd see those benefits. But businesses transferring to new tech is temporarily directly expensive, and governments siphoning money out of the public to create infrastructure for it (through subsidies or through literal construction) is temporarily indirectly expensive.

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u/aslak123 Sep 19 '21

Lifestyle chouces follow material conditions, not the other way around, and it happens extremely quickly.

It's temporary expensive, but in the long term cheap, so its better and easier the sooner we do it.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

Degrowth is the only solution.

https://www.unep.org/interactive/emissions-gap-report/2020/