Yes, voters should take responsibility. But too much destruction comes from the elites. But feel free to support them. When this planet is ravaged by the effects of climate change, no elite will help you. They have their bunkers built and ready to move in.
As you said, there are good politicians. Its us that do not vote for them.
In Germany, it was always the same: in between elections, the Green party have really nice results in polls. However, when it comes to the election, people prefer reducing (or not increasing) taxes and stuff over fixing the climate.
People DO know about climate change. There IS good information available online. Its not that people have no idea what's happening. They just don't care to do something themselves - there's enough other people to fix it. Its like an email with lots of recipients, no one feels responsible to reply.
> But feel free to support them.
I never said I support them. I said we could easily get rid of them, of we only wanted to. The problem is (half of) the people around you, not the elites put in power by them.
Asking because that is why voting for the green party may be a huge turnoff for many (like myself.)
In my opinion, them being a possible choice for conservative voters keeps our conservative party from doing too much rightwing crap, as they will know they'll loose voters to the Greens. We'll see how stuff goes in September (national elections). Under the hood, there's still lots of rightwing tendencies in our conservative party, unfortunately.
Its an officially extremist party (observed by the "Verfassungsschutz" [or: "Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution"], that traditionally kind of ignored the far-right), one of their leaders can officially be called a fascist (court ruling), and another leader says the 3rd Reich was kind of not that big of a deal.
Regardless, by this point I think it is inevitable some of the hardcore right wing politics will enter mainstream; we (as in Europe as a whole) took too many immigrants without any consideration of how to manage them.
Lest anyone try to throw the nazi card my way it should be stated that this is a failure born from rigid top-down management structure of the EU which does not even remotely have the flexibility required to manage external shock events like this. Same reason why the joint debt mechanism being forced on the excuse of COVID is a horrible idea and will end in tears for many.
So in Germany, we are actually quite successful in managing the million that came in 2015. Most got a job and pay taxes. Actually quite awesome, fiveteen years ago everyone in Germany was afraid we'll run out of young workers.
> it should be stated that this is a failure born from rigid top-down management structure of the EU
As far as I remember, the problem was that it was actually not possible to do a top-down decision, because each national government did whatever they wanted to do? I guess the only thing we did end up doing on a EU-wide level was border protection. Not sure though.
> Same reason why the joint debt mechanism being forced on the excuse of COVID is a horrible idea and will end in tears for many.
Funny, I strongly believe its the reason the EU will not just survive but strive. Finally, the excuse of "all the money we have to give to the EU" is gone. Soon, the EU will have some taxes that only make sense on the EU level (financial transactions, or a tax on digital goods) and we're good. Besides, no national government would get the low interest rates when taking up debt that the EU combined will get, right?
We paid in 6 billion into the relief fund and are projected to get less than 3 out of it wrapped in some pre-determined financial instruments. It's like paying 10€ for a gift card that's worth 4€ and only works for some specific shops. People would call that a rubbish deal but what do I know.
In addition, our politicians lied very intentionally to us that this is a one-time fund, just for COVID purposes. Less than 2 weeks later after passing the vote in parliament, Governor of the Bank of Italy Ignazia Visco is already marketing the fund as permanent and the future of a joint monetary EU strategy.
Excuse me if I don't share your optimism on this swindle, but then again unlike us, Germany is a very likely benefactor from all of this. Because let's call it what it is - it's a redistribution of wealth into the power centers of EU obscured by lies and insane amounts of bureaucracy.
England, for example, did only join the EU back then for economical reasons. Them leaving the EU now doesn't seem like an economical win (and it was probably not an decision made based on economics, I guess).
So I agree that
> Germany is a very likely benefactor from all of this.
but I would argue that all countries in the EU are.
> Because let's call it what it is - it's a redistribution of wealth into the power centers of EU obscured by lies (...)
Which lies do you mean, for example?
> (...) and insane amounts of bureaucracy.
Well yeah. But if the EU would not manage these things, each country would have to manage them with each of the other countries, leading to much much more bureaucracy.
The US senate is even more extreme. Wyoming at 578,759 people has exactly as much power as California with 39,512,223. Clearly a party aiming to minimize the number of voters it needs to please would avoid California. After all if you get the right 10% of voters you win and who cares about anything else.
I don't follow. I assume turnout would have to be taken into account? Also, I was specifically saying "voters", not "population" (more by luck, though) ;-)
> The US senate is even more extreme.
Yeah that's very true. Weren't some of the sates basically only created to give a certain party the majority? Forgot where I read or heard that though.
Actually you don't even need to get that many votes. Depending on the electoral system you might not need to win a majority of the votes in any constituency, you just need more votes than anyone else, which could be a very low percentage if the opposition is split enough ways.
The current governing party in the UK holds a comfortable majority of seats despite only winning 43% of the vote in the last election. And in fact, this was the highest vote share received by any party in decades. Labour in 1997 won more seats on a lower vote share.
> Weren't some of the sates basically only created to give a certain party the majority?
I've read that the reason Dakota Territory was split in two (North and South) upon statehood was mainly as a cynical ploy to get two extra senate seats for the favoured party.
Ah ok, got it. However, probably an unlikely scenario even in a "segregated" (republicans vs democrats) country as the US. But yeah - the reality right now that 40, 45% of the votes are enough for - in the case of the US - the republicans to win is pretty bad already.
> Depending on the electoral system you might not need to win a majority of the votes in any constituency,
In Germany we have two ways to get into the Bundestag (national parliament) - the one is a "Direktmandat" (the candidate with the most votes in one county county gets the seat), the other is via the party ticket. The parties have lists of candidates, and depending on their percentage of the total vote, the first X candidates get a seat.
That system tries to balance between each county getting the representative in they favor, but also representing the relative votes via the party ticket.
So yes, when the distribution of wealth is enormously skewed towards the elites, and production follows capital, it is absolutely the fault of "the elites."
Don't give me astronomically less voting power than others and then blame me for not saving the world with my vote.
> Yeah but sure, it's always "the feudalism" fault.
M'kay.
This is not sustainable, it's not democratic, frankly it has to change.
PS: Not to mention you can only even have the luxury of doing this if you're at least relatively well off. If you're poor you just buy cheapest of everything, no questions asked.
> it's not democratic
How is it not democratic if democracy decided to not force those CEOs do make different decisions? We can force them. Easily. Even better, we don't even have to force them, we just have to increase taxes on stuff we don't want and subsidize stuff we want. That, for example, worked extremely well to get renewables in electricity production to 50% in Germany (within 15 years, while the new government was trying to work against it).
We're just not doing it. We're not voting for politicians that would write regulation and laws that would force those CEOs to decide differently. There's no reason, nothing to keep us from doing it, no brainwashing, nothing. Just way too few people that think of climate change in the voting booth. It really sucks, but it doesn't help to blame anyone else than most of the people around you.
> Not to mention you can only even have the luxury of doing this if you're at least relatively well off. If you're poor you just buy cheapest of everything, no questions asked.
If you're poor, your CO2 emissions probably are way lower than if you're rich.
Because the pollution of flying isn't adequately accounted for and priced as an externality. If we had a proper carbon tax (which I dislike the name, it's actually simply a carbon price) then green transportation would be cheaper than flying (and then all second-order effects would kick in: more incentive to invest in green transportation, more incentive to leave flying, etc).
> How is it not democratic if democracy decided to not force those CEOs
> We're just not doing it. We're not voting for politicians that would write regulation
Your entire argument relies on the false premise that the will of the people is translated into policy. It's not. Consider the following damning evidence:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
in particular Figure 1.
That would be awesome :)
> Your entire argument relies on the false premise that the will of the people is translated into policy.
I can only speak for Germany, where it does. Right now, the Green party has the least seats of all parties in the national parliament. Why should the parliament then do something about climate change? However, when they were in the government between '98 and '05, the put the "EEG"[1] into effect (basically just implementing subsidies for renewables), and now 50% of our electricity is produced by renewables (not including nuclear). And that happened even though the following government tried to slow the transition.
There's national elections in September in Germany. With some luck, the green party will be in the new government, right now they are 2nd in the polls. That will, undoubtedly, change national politics with respect to climate change policy.
As for the US ... not sure what your problem currently is. Does the two party/winner takes it all system lead to these problems? Or is it because the republicans basically stopped caring about the truth in the 90s to win elections, spoiling the whole political process? No idea ... however, still, under the last three democratic presidents, more was done for the middle class (and probably less wars were started) then under republican presidents, right? So it does definitely matter what party wins, right, making voting not completely irrelevant even in the US?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source...
Overall, a conscious consumer can maybe cut their carbon output in half compared to their peers, but their actions have no path towards actual carbon neutrality. That is a problem that needs to be tackled by politicians.
We've just signed a new contract with our electricity provider in Poland. Renewable usage didn't even enter the discussion - none of us even realized there's a choice there. Only when reading the details of the agreement I realized the provider is committing themselves to deliver electricity from renewable sources. So now, I'm powering my computer with green energy, and so is likely my entire neighbourhood. Not because any of us made that choice - it's because the power company did.
Systemic incentives are what's needed to save us. Getting a power company to go green is much more cost-effective than trying to make an equivalent number of consumers to switch individually.
Although they'll have a pretty hard live if we don't do something against climate change. And yes, many people do not have the resources to do these tings.
> Because people have neither time nor money for any of this.
Many people do not have that, yes. But many others do, and they could start doing it and as they are probably the ones better off, their over-proportional influence as consumers would make a huge difference. Its a complete failure of the "middle class".
> Systemic incentives are what's needed to save us.
Well yeah, I agree that politics/elections are a better way. Its just that ... we do neither. We do not take our individual responsibilities serious, neither when voting, nor when consuming.
That is a false choice - unless electricity providers have wires all the way to your house you have no idea where the electricity came from. All you know is they buy enough renewable to cover what you use. However if you didn't use them the renewable power would mostly be generated at the same time anyway, just at a lower cost.
The above isn't completely true, as the higher price you pay does get a bit more renewable power into the mix. However overall it isn't a big factor unless most people choose the same provider.
And where is the problem with that? The coal plant you got your electricity from is the real sucker here because they didn't get paid and more people doing this is a real problem for them.
Consumers have more choice than you think; not everyone, but a definite proportion come into a position to make a choice on a continual basis. And economically, it is the margin that matters.
These "choices" are largely meaningless. The choices that matter are ones which reduce emissions or waste across society, not for one individual.
Upgrading to an EV does little to prevent climate change. Do all new EV owners have their old ICE vehicles responsibly destroyed? No, they mostly just sell them on. All you do by choosing to buy an EV and a house with charging is push the emissions onto somebody else.
The important choices, the ones that determine the overwhelming bulk of the outcomes, are being decided by elites and politicians. And they are choosing in the wrong direction.
Poor customers go with what they can afford
I was arguing that we can vote in politicians with a spine with respect to doing something about climate change, if the ones we have don't do their job.
I think it is really important to acknowledge how well the political system works, at least in Europe. Politicians largely do what their voters want from them.
Its the voters that don't want climate change legislation. Take Germany: the conservative party did rule now for 16 years, and they are certainly fulfilling their voters wishes by NOT doing something about climate change. Voters of that party don't want that.
> The average consumer doesn't think there is a point in changing behaviour
Unfortunately I have the feeling that the consumer just does not want to change behavior, no matter if it would change something or not. Afterwards, they'll rationalize their decision with such arguments, sure.
If they don't show responsibility, and we vote them in again and again, it is not their fault, its ours.
Stuff like: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me?
The one problem with that is the equation is not that simple.
Most of our so-called leaders come from a completely different class than the rest of us, or were inducted into that class through their networks. They spend billions to make sure that everything goes their way. Unfortunately, you don't just have people voting for leaders; you have leaders pushing propaganda to influence thought patterns to make people vote for whomever has the most resources, and alternative voices are pushed off the stage before most people have a chance to change their minds.
Voters are to blame, but those with the most power aren't absolved just because the voters give them their value. That value is also mined from the public through careful manipulation.
Yes. And some are not, and we could vote for them to give them more influence. I bet once that happens, even more of such people would come into politics.
> Unfortunately, you don't just have people voting for leaders; you have leaders pushing propaganda to influence thought patterns to make people vote for whomever has the most resources, and alternative voices are pushed off the stage before most people have a chance to change their minds.
Speaking for Germany (and I believe it is the same in many European countries), I don't see that. I don't see manipulation and propaganda on that level, and I do, for example, see quite a lot of good journalism providing good information.
Of course there's wild theories going around on social media and influencing people in really bad ways, but that's just people telling lies to other people, not a lot of the classic elite/leaders there.
> those with the most power aren't absolved just because the voters give them their value
I absolutely agree. That's why its so depressing that we do not vote such people out.
Because we have a government which uses threat of violence to exert extra power even if they don't have money, it's natural to blame them as well.
If we were living in complete anarchy, we would definitely hold the polluter accountable for polluting the world and demand some retribution, possibly using a private court system and some underlying threat of violence (which can be externalised through agencies specialised in that).
Right now we can blame government officials and the rich people who benefited from pollution and paid them.
This ends up being a cop out. Everyone consumes, and rich people consume less than poor people relative to their wealth.
Generally rich people get rich by selling stuff people want.
> Right now we can blame government officials and the rich people who benefited from pollution and paid them.
And we can also blame poor people for putting those rich people in power and consuming their wares.
But that's irrelevant metric. The nature only cares about absolute amount of consumption, and in absolute numbers, rich consume significantly more than poor.
The fact that rich could have consumed a lot more according to our own measure of "wealth" doesn't make them less morally culpable, since this is not tracked by nature at all.
I realized I should also add, it's not just direct consumption, investment can cause emissions too. Investment often means building infrastructure, which nature counts as consumption regardless whether the investment is then recouped or not (if it's not, then it's a waste). Investment also drives consumption in other ways, often directly through advertising or people just realizing they "need" a new service or product that they didn't need before.
Even savings (richer people just keeping money in assets) are not immune from not having a side-effect on consumption. As assets prices rise, this sends the market wrong signals and the result can be for example building far more housing that is needed, again resulting in additional consumption of resources.
This is obviously not true
Emissions are closely tied to consumption.
Which, of course, means that all this talk about blaming the rich are a distraction from one unavoidable thing: since most of the consumption comes from ordinary people and not the rich, any substantial decrease in consumption has to come from them too. It's the ordinary masses that will lose the ability to travel abroad (and probably be limited in their ability to travel within their own country), who won't be able to see their friends and family so much anymore, who will lose a lot of the daily comforts of life. Blaming the rich can't change that. Guardian headlines about how "just 100 companies" are responsible for most emissions based on counting all emissions from the fossil fuels produced by them as their emissions, regardless of whether they're being burnt in everyone's cars and to heat everyone's homes, won't change that either. All it does is hopefully distract blame from the activists trying to take things away from everyone.
Pretty dark view of the future. Its not that we have to lose all those things, we just got to change a little bit in how we produce things and electricity and how we travel. And got to insulate houses a little. We don't have to give up any of the comforts of modern life.
That's actually the worst part of it all: its not even that we would have to give up something in order to prevent climate change. We'd just have to CHANGE something, but even that seems to be too much to ask. That really makes me mad. So incredibly unnecessary :(
If rents go up due to climate-saving efforts, they will have to give those up. Because landlords won't give up their profits.
Change incurs costs. Costs means someone is paying.
There's this idea that we introduce a carbon tax, and pay out the money to people. Seems like this could be designed in a way those people don't suffer.
> If rents go up due to climate-saving efforts, they will have to give those up. Because landlords won't give up their profits.
That's why we can implement laws forcing them to. If they add insulation to the house, the cost for heating will go down. So we just got to make sure that the one makes up for the other.
> Change incurs costs. Costs means someone is paying.
But its an investment, isn't it? Its not like we're throwing the money out of the window. We're investing, we are building things that will have a positive net return in the long run. For example, solar and wind are so cheap now and don't require constant imports (or digging up of) fuel. So in the long run, we'll have a more robust and cheaper energy production. Or from above - insulating a house will cost money now, but we'll save money in the long run.
Where I live, there is a carbon tax already. It's going straight to the coffers of the state, and I have little hope that they'll let go of those money as it's used to finance other things.
> That's why we can implement laws forcing them to
Assuming you get a political majority to approve it. If you do, the costs will indeed be transferred to others, but I don't think it's politically feasible.
> long run
Current society is fixated around short-term profits, and has little regard for the good of humanity.
I agree that all those things would be nice and that they would improve the situation. If we ever get a majority in favour of such changes it might happen, but believe that'll take far more time than we'd like.
> Current society is fixated around short-term profits, and has little regard for the good of humanity.
Kind of sad. We could do it in a fair way, we just don't care enough. But was there ever a time when that was actually different? I assume not, and even though lots of things are crappy right now, we're probably still better off than ever (speaking for Europe, at least ...)
I'm pessimistic and don't think we should hope for more than damage control once the effects of the climate change start becoming more evident in a few decades.
Just like all the consumers buying all that stuff and just like all voters not voting for politicians that would change something?
Yeah but sure, it's always "the elites" fault.