Drive less
Baut addressed a number of your other points already, so I wanted to drill down into this one.
You touched on it later, but driving less is really hard with how our cities are designed. Yes absolutely people should advocate and vote for less car dependency. But right now when cycling can be seriously risking your life every day, and public transport can take 90 minutes for a trip that’s easily a 30 minute drive—and that’s if you leave at precisely the right time and make all your connections, which are themselves all on time—far too often not driving is not really a viable option. People should cycle and go by public transportation as much as possible, but “as much as possible” is, in our cities, much less often than it should be.
BautAufWasEuchAufbaut@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
Without commenting any of your other points, saying that “our stuff is made by corporations so it’s the individuals fault for buying it” is in my opinion extremely shortsighted.
You don’t have any influence on the supply chain. Even with exceptions like Fairphone, harmful ways to produce are mostly cheaper than less harmful ways. On one end, those who produce cheaper have the competitive advantage, on the other you have low, non-increasing wages.
This also applies to the “buy quality” thing. Even if the word “quality” had an objective definition, it’s incredibly hard to decide that. Expensive items could be made out if cheap materials, which feel valuable but aren’t. The hardware could be good, but software updates are only supplied in the short-term.
And after all, people have work in the morning and I think it’s reasonable to expect them to sacrifice what little free time they have into researching all of their consumption. It’s a systematic issue, and these tips floating around feel like bikeshedding. Yes they’re nice, good on you for doing it, but does it really fix any of the pressing issues?
it’s late so please apologize if this text doesn’t make any sense.
neanderthal@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I didn’t mean it in a way to pass blame, but to empower.
If a billion people make an effort, then it certainly helps. It will require individual action AND systemic changes.
We really need an all hands on deck effort here. We are racing down a mountain towards a cliff with a buried speedometer. Individual action is removing our foot from the accelerator. Systemic action is applying the brakes. We might have to crash into the side of the mountain to avoid going over the edge, so let’s try and slow down as much as we can first.
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Consumers definitely share some of the blame for the demand, but the fools errand is expecting millions/billions of individuals to act in everyone else’s best interest at detriment to their own immediate finances, quality of life, and standard of living.
Climate change is a tragedy of the commons that corporations have continuously exploited for financial gain (e.g. offshoring their most dangerous and pollutant processes to developing countries; out of reach of developed world democracies/regulations/voters).
Corporations will always bear most of the blame, as they have used their capital to engage in immoral, unethical, and downright criminal anti-democratic and psychological warfare tactics to maximize profit; the same as they have done for labour laws and everything else that benefits the collective (impacts profitability).
ReverseThePolarity@aussie.zone 1 year ago
There are also situations where there is no good option but you still need it. I live in Victoria. Most of our power comes from brown coal.
I have solar panels but that only covers part of it. I can’t afford the $5-10k for batteries so I have no choice but to keep using grid power. Even if I did spend that, there is no guarantee that it will be better.
neanderthal@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You are why individual action matters. Replacing your power source will take years. I can eat 5 less cheeseburgers a year right now and start slowing demand for beef production almost immediately. If the whole world does this, we start slowing things down a bit and buy time for things like your grid situation to be fixed.