100% convinced our decedents will look back in this age and laugh 2 things : domestic recycling as an attempt to save the the planet , and the fact that we did nothing unless there was a profit in it.
this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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Also I don't know about you, but my countries recycling relied on sending it all to China to burn.
dustsv hands yep my work here is done
Recycling is a lie to keep making plastic, nothing more
Ancestors?
It will probably be an alien species who will find a dead planet and wonder how and why so much toxic material was spread around the planet .... and also wonder why there is an orbiting space station filled with gold, paper money and the greyed out decaying bodies of a humanoid species.
Lol decedents !
*Laughs until crying because he can't afford his own home, let alone afford to have and take care of children*
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the fact that we did nothing unless there was a profit in it.
who are "we"?
I'm not profiting, are you?
Those who already have all the money and power are, don't even let the focus slip from them.
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yeah anytime i see anyone talking about some little change they made in their lives to be more eco friendly it makes me incredibly, deeply sad. especially if it's at more expense or more effort for them -- they're trying their best but it's literally completely pointless
Many of us do it for sport tbh. A healthier way to gamify life sorta. I've been vegan since 2015/16 and it does increase the difficulty setting somewhat, but also it's unlocked a million fun mini games for me along the way and provided much needed community.
I wish I could cope as good as you. Is going vegan the answer?
Reducing your meat consumption is likely the most effective way of lowering your personal climate 'footprint'.
You don't even have to go fully vegan. Use 20%, 30% or 50% less meat and you're already doing a lot.
Also look up climate impact of different types of food (and where it comes from), and use that to prioritize. Chicken, fish and pork are up to 10 times less impactful than beef.
Reducing your meat consumption is likely the most effective way of lowering your personal climate ‘footprint’.
I hear this a lot, but I think the context of what other actions are available and their relative impact is important in this kind of discussion.
Of course, this is all with the knowledge that trying to put the onus of fixing climate change on the individual is both doomed to fail and a great burden for many. Climate change can only be properly addressed by top-down action, which we should all advocate for.
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Give it a shot, can't hurt. You won't become Buddha overnight, but it can certainly put you on a path toward much different ways of seeing yourself and everything around you.
Labeling this as "cope" is just straight slander against vegetarianism. Most people who are vegetarian don't expect "it's going to change the world" so there's no "coping" to be had with the fact that it's not.
Vegetarianism choices can be based in health, ethics, not wanting to support mega corps, dislike of the taste, environmental impact, among other things. "it's going to save us from climate change in light of everything else going on in the world" is a tiny clueless subset of just ONE of those rationales.
Vegeterianism isn't "hopeless" or "cope" unless you're delusional enough to believe that everyone doing so would instantly solve our problems. Sure, some people think if everyone did it, it would make a difference, but very few think it'd fix all our problems.
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It's absolutely not helpless to change your habits. All our consumption is based on collective habits, and changing them will have an effect.
Exactly. It's only pointless as long as other people think it's pointless. If everyone made changes we could see a noticable impact happen.
Billionaires need to change too, they do more than their fair share of polluting, but it doesn't mean we are all off the hook. We should hold them accountable and also each of us strive to be better.
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Does one person saying that they voted for change in the government make you incredibly, deeply sad? Just one vote in millions after all. Little things can collectively add up to something big.
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Apple: We're changing everyone's charging schedules to make electricity 0.00001% greener.
Also Apple: Titanium, so pretty. Even though it's dirtier to mine.
Not only the billionaires, even the millionaires, and all the people taking the plane more than once a year. It is an ecological crime the pollution of air transport.
fun fact. modern planes consume ~3-4l per 100 passengers per km or 3-4l per passenger per 100km.
efficient ICE cars consume ~6l per passenger per 100km.
add to that, that there's basically no good alternative to fast very long distance or cross-continent transport
Edit #2: ICE is a type of train in germany. I mistook "ICE cars" as meaning trains and was wondering how flying is supposed to be more efficient than trains. Hence my confusion.
OG comment (invalid, see Edit #2): Where are these numbers coming from?
I cannot find any source for the 3-4l/passenger/km claim. I cannot find any source for the claim that planes are more efficient. Nothing comes even near this claim.
https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint
https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/rail-and-waterborne-transport
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49349566
Can you please provide a source?
Edit #1: I just want to add that my old combustion car (VW Up! / Seat Mii / Skoda Citigo) burned around 4.2l/100km. So I according to you, if I had another person with me, I'd beat both planes and trains with what stands uncontested as the most inefficient form of transport?
Since I just had this whole back and forth with someone else a few days ago, I have these handy. I’m not the parent, but he’s right. An individual car can be more fuel efficient with 3+ passengers but the average car trip is only 1.3 passengers. The most popular use of a car is commuting and that stands at 1.2 passengers per trip.
“A new report from the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute shows that flying has become 74% more efficient per passenger since 1970 while driving gained only 17% efficiency per passenger. In fact, the average plane trip has been more fuel efficient than the average car trip since as far back as 2000, according to their calculations.”
http://websites.umich.edu/~umtriswt/PDF/UMTRI-2014-2_Abstract_English.pdf
“The main findings are that to make driving less energy intensive than flying, the fuel economy of the entire fleet of light-duty vehicles would have to improve from the current 21.5 mpg to at least 33.8 mpg, or vehicle load would have to increase from the current 1.38 persons to at least 2.3 persons.”
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-math-of-flying-vs-driving/
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The alternative is stop traveling such huge distances all the time.
Other than public transportation and filling up the cars with people, instead of having one vehicle per person.
efficient ICE cars consume ~6l per passenger per 100km.
More like 6L per 100km, whatever the number of passengers, I suppose. So it's usually still less than planes.
And there are better alternatives like trains or buses, which can be actually efficient for long distance travels (high speed trains, night travel. Works well from city centre to city centre)
There is also the additional issue of contrails which are a massive factor of greenhouse effect
Is that planes that are packed to the gills or private planes that actually have space that people aren't crammed into?
Also, 3-4/6 liters of what? ICE cars and modern planes aren't burning the same fuel, so I'm not sure what this is intending to portray by directly comparing how much of each (in liters) that they burn (serious question, no snark)
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One plane flight a year? What if I want to return home the same year?
You don't, wait the next year or don't leave home.
The trick is to go a week before new year's
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What’s magical about that once-a-year limit? I find that quite a lot already.
Neptunian year maybe?
probably op gets on a plane once a year, so that's an ok amount
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This resonates hard. Also incredibly fun to watch companies get to abuse loop holes and continue operations as always, then get told we need to sell our cars and turn off our heating to survive this environmental disaster.
ANY effective, long-term collective change REQUIRES that the large majority of people CHANGE THEIR CONSUMPTION HABBITS. While not great, the private plane stuff is exactly as pointless as the paper straws. Both are ways for everyone to point the finger at everyone else, and not have to change.
If the government implemented the "correct" laws tomorrow, but the populace doesn't want to change their habits, they will vote in people that give them back their old, bad things.
If a company implemented to "correct" processes, but the consumers don't want to pay the necessary price, they go bankrupt, and the company with the "incorrect, but cheap" processes wins.
ALL COLLECTIVE ACTION IS A COLLECTION OF INDIVIDUAL CHANGE. There is no alternative!
You don't solve this by just recycling harder - you solve this with legislative intervention to minimise packaging, ban private jets, retire fossil fuels, and stop massive food waste.
Pointing your finger at the masses and demanding they muster the will to change enough that entire supply chains are forced to retool entirely is naiive to the point of stupidity - people will go for cost and convenience just as predictably as companies will burn down the world for an extra dollar. The systemic change makes that shift quickly and (for the consumer) easy.
Bollocks! If every private jet is grounded there's no amount of paper straws that can match that impact.
There's still individual changes that impact more than the collective ones!
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Let's just start literally cannibalizing them to send a message. The population is hungry 🍴
You’re talking about two different ways to screw the environment. One is the rampant plastics pandemic, the other is carbon emissions. Paper straws are meant to combat the first, not the second.
While that's true, I think the complaint here is that the the law deliberately harms poor people only. Instead of banning individual plastic applications, we should be taxing literally all plastics and letting consumers decide what's worth it. And if we are to take a case-by-case class warfare approach, we should be going after the excesses of the wealthy - like private jets.
It's not that they're the same thing, it's that they both hurt the environment and are treated very differently.
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Downvote this man and his factual statement!!!
The popular comments are all about how recycling is a scam to allow plastic companies to continue creating plastics.
But mushy straws isn’t even about recycling. You’re literally removing a plastic that people use all the time. Sounds like a win no matter what.
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Where do these mushy straws reside? I'm not one to get fast food or go to restaurants very often but it's always plastic.
In California. I carry around a silicone straw all the time now because I want a straw that fucking works at being a straw.
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Airyacht A880
Name one time we solved a systemic problem through individual action. You solve systemic problems with systemic solutions.
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Don’t use a straw at all; it’s less waste and more convenient
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