There's only so much that a person can do to reduce emissions. And this is the big lie that big corps PR sold you: that you as individual is main person responsible.
According to this article from The Guardian, 100 companies are responsible for 71% of emissions: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...
Literally nothing you or I can do in our entire lifetime will have as big an impact as fixing just one of those companies.
I don't see it. Saying "consume less/differently" is not the same as saying "be poor".
> There's only so much that a person can do to reduce emissions. And this is the big lie that big corps PR sold you: that you as individual is main person responsible.
> According to this article from The Guardian, 100 companies are responsible for 71% of emissions: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...
> Literally nothing you or I can do in our entire lifetime will have as big an impact as fixing just one of those companies.
It seem that you read nothing past the title of that article. Those are fossil fuel companies. The study contains data on GHGs that come from direct operational emissions and emissions from the use of sold products. That means that if you use a car the emissions that are produced by that usage are counted towards the emissions of one of those companies that extracted/refined your fuel.
To have significant impact all these "eat less, have fewer kids, don't use services that demand the use of cars" is more or less "be poor".
> It seem that you read nothing past the title of that article. Those are fossil fuel companies.
Does it matter? The number matters. 100 companies are responsible for 71% of emissions.
Literally nothing you or I can do in our entire lifetime will have any significant impact compared to this 100 hundred. And we haven't talked about the long tail of companies.
Individuals have been sold a lie that only they are responsible for fighting the climate change.
Eat less, today with obesity epidemic showing no signs of stopping, doesn't have to mean being poor but can mean to be healthy. Having kids is expensive, saying that having less kids makes your poorer is divorced from logic. I can see how saying don't use services that demand the use of car can seem to be advocating for being poorer but it doesn't necessarily follow.
> Does it matter? The number matters. 100 companies are responsible for 71% of emissions.
It seems that not only did you not read the article that you linked but you did not read my previous post to the end. As I've explained In my previous post that those 100 companies do not produce 71% of emissions. What they do produce is fossil fuel that, when burned, produces those 71% of emissions.
> Literally nothing you or I can do in our entire lifetime will have any significant impact compared to this 100 hundred. And we haven't talked about the long tail of companies.
So what you are saying is is that if all of the people of earth stopped using fossil fuels today those 100 companies would still be producing and burning(they'd have to since nobody else would be doing it) enough fossil fuels to produce those 71% of emissions? Why would they do that?
> Individuals have been sold a lie that only they are responsible for fighting the climate change.
I agree that the responsibility doesn't solely lie on an individual. I disagree that an individual has no responsibility. The rest of what you wrote is idiocy that, without you understanding it, advocates for being poor.
Find more about this under the term "Climate Shadow": https://www.mic.com/impact/forget-your-carbon-footprint-lets....
If we get enough renewable power, electric cars and start building houses from wood (excellent way of storing carbon), then there's no fundamental reason why people couldn't still drive cars, live in fairly large apartments and so on. Reasonable amount of consumption wouldn't be a problem in such world.
use less energy, period. ideally yes, the energy should be renewable and not cause harm to the environment as well.
> It's also more ethical solution than forcing people to live in tiny apartments and preventing them from traveling.
What does this have to do with ethics? Is "more ethical" when you bother people less?
You can't significantly reduce food intake, but switching to a plant-based diet is more beneficial than many other changes.
Switching to a plant based diet is almost equivalent to eating half as much of an omnivorous diet : https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06466-8
However, dividing omnivorous food intake by two would probably not be possible in the long term, unless your diet is way oversized.
And it's easier to switch to a plant based diet than to be constantly hungry.
Reducing environmental impact is a marathon, not a sprint : it s much better to take actions that can be sustained in the long term than very impressive actions that are marginally more effective, but abandoned after 2 month
The improvement is way bigger than that for most meat-intensive (e.g. American) diets.
See https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
It's not even means-tested so they're literally taxing struggling workers to pay rich parents just for knocking out more babies.
I'm glad to inform you that besides struggling (child-free) workers there are also rich (child-free) workers. I'm sorry to inform you that besides rich parents there are also struggling parents.
You certainly save a great deal of energy in the short term for both you and the state. Long term this is extremely destructive. If you want to see how it ends look at former/current communist countries like Russia and China.
Having fewer kids, having housemates, eating less food, buying fewer things, not driving a car, not inducing demand for services that require cars, etc