I can’t read minds, but my sense is that much of what individuals are asked to do is knowingly conservation theater. If you want to put a positive spin on that, you can say it makes them feel more committed to supporting the regulatory changes necessary by building a sense of shared sacrifice. The cynical version writes itself.
Oh it's not just conservation theatre, it's also cynical responsibilities shifting: by convincing everyone that the public at large is to blame, corporations get off scot-free
We can do all the efforts we can, if the big corps don't act properly, it will be for nothing.
For example, at-home recycling of organic waste by composting? Excellent. Municipal glass and metal recycling? Generally a net positive. Plastics recycling in the boonies? More of an energy waste than useful, in many cases the 'least worst' place for that material is landfill.
The other end of the consumption pipeline is where we should be focused IMO. If we nail that, the tail-end stuff becomes a much smaller issue as a matter of course.
Side note: I do not consider myself a "handy" person. Never cared much for fixing things around the house. However, thanks to YouTube and (at least in the US) RepairClinic, I have found that certain kinds of repairs to appliances are actually easy and I can get them done much more quickly than when calling a repair service because RepairClinic has the parts in stock. (I have the added benefit of living ~30 minute drive from RepairClinic.)
Also, I haven't personally found a correlation between price and reliability.
They're not pretty. They don't have lots of features. They use more water*.
But they'll last forever.
*Many consider this to be a drawback, but it results in cleaner clothing.
The dryer is a heat pump model, which was quite a bit more expensive than other models at the time. The salesperson at the local MediaMarkt even recommend against it, since you would never 'make the money back' in energy costs from it. This is quite wrong. In fact, with EU energy prices you recoup the difference within 2 years using it twice a week.
Either we can have more stuff and larger material/waste/energy/emissions footprint to save us some time/effort or improve convenience/pleasure, or we can put in the time & effort to lessen our footprint. I say we're overindulging our pleasures and underperforming our responsibilities.
That's not to say we're necessarily lazy, but likely due to a combination of pressures that distract and exhaust us through the course of our modern lives. Remove the oppressive/coercive/manipulative influences and more individuals will have the space to act responsibly. The greater challenge will be to train them to actually do so.
You seem to want to wash your hands of the whole thing, as if the presence of major polluters somehow absolves you from your part in this. Ultimately, it comes down to the actions of individuals. The faceless organizations pillaging the environment subsist entirely on our patronage; stop feeding into them and they die off. Ezpz.
Is handwashing dishes & clothes really too much to ask?
Consumers want oil. Drilling for oil is legal. BP drills for oil. Why is BP's fault?
Or, to switch around the entities a bit. America likes widgets. Making widgets generates pollution. Prior to the 90s it was mostly made in America, so that's where all the pollution is emitted. It's clear that America is to blame. Now it's the 2000s. Thanks to globalization it's now cheaper to make in China rather than the US. Now all the pollution is being emitted in china. Who's fault is it? Is America suddenly off the hook?
Where have you been? You missed oil comapnies spending billions to misinform people, the corruption, the carteling, ghe cover-ups, the greenwashing and everything else?
I'm also not sure how does "the carteling" refers to, and how that contributes to global warming.
The cartels were used to outcompete all alternatives and bend governments to their will. See 1979 for how just a 4% shock caused pandemonium.
"a hell of a lot further along" is much more vague than the original claim of "responsible for the vast majority of warming". Furthermore, most of the climate change in the future is going to be caused by developing countries rapidly industrializing and getting richer. How much of that can be attributed to climate change denial?
>The cartels were used to outcompete all alternatives and bend governments to their will.
That doesn't sound like a cartel to me. Excerpt from wikipedia:
A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. [...] Cartel behavior includes price fixing, bid rigging, and reductions in output.
>See 1979 for how just a 4% shock caused pandemonium.
It's unclear how that's due to cartels. Shortages during covid shows that a supply/demand shock in any essential commodity will cause pandemonium (eg. toilet paper, hand sanitizer, mask).
Just as much because a hell of a lot further would include alternatives. We'd have or be on our way to a functioming market, which they'd just be entering into. Also, you can't deny the negative effecr of denial on global culture via education and media.
> It's unclear how that's due to cartels.
It seems like you're just in the mood to argue or something. I didn't say cartels caused the 1979 shock, I was using it to illustrate how much power the cartels had and have.
Does Electrolux/AEG care? No. They don't care about the environment, their only obligation is to their shareholders. But frankly neither do I anymore. Next time, I'll buy the cheapest one and when it inevitably breaks down I'll throw it away and get another cheap one.
It's absurd that in the world where planned obsolescence, cruising industry and fast fashion exist, ordinary people are tasked with saving the planet. This is like trying to improve performance of a program using naive algorithm with O(n^2) complexity by rewriting it in assembler.