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Plastic recycling* doesn't exist**

Your personal carbon footprint* doesn't exist**

Carbon offsets* don't exist**

Carbon capture* doesn't exist**

Green growth* doesn't exist**

__________
* At the scale necessary to matter in the slightest

** Is and always was an intentional deception perpetrated by industry and those complicit with them to avoid any meaningful change or regulation

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to The research fairy

If your plan includes the words "but if everyone would just—"

You don't have a plan

Everyone has never "just—" in the history of time

They won't "just—" this time either

We can't "individual responsibility" our way out of a systemic problem

in reply to The research fairy

It's like basing a safety plan on signs without considering physical barriers.
in reply to The research fairy

Think about the vanishingly small number of powerful people who actually can make meaningful change and are positioned to do so

They exist

Now imagine if they had the same level of concern

As all the people who will die screaming in their cars on the highway trying to escape the next small Canadian city that just bursts into flames due to an oil industry externality

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to The research fairy

If everyone would just take *one* bite out of their nearest rich...
in reply to The research fairy

Corporations invested in carbon offsets that were ‘likely junk’, analysis says

theguardian.com/environment/ar…

:pika:

in reply to The research fairy

@pozorvlak This is what I always think of in connection with Communism. "Okay, but what if all political and economic power were centralized in the state, and then the people in government *didn't* abuse that power to enrich themselves and oppress their enemies and maintain their power permanently?"

Very much an "I think you need to be more explicit in Step Two" situation.

Unknown parent

@FinchHaven Go do some individual action! Go burn down a CEO's house
in reply to The research fairy

Last one isn't true. Some countries have disconnected GDP growth from carbon emissions:
in reply to The research fairy

recycling is important but it's by far the least important of the three R's: Reduce, reuse, recycle. We can't reduce and reuse in most cases because we're forced to consume and consume, to commute instead of just living closer to our activities, to use single use plastics instead of being able to bring glass bottles and jars back, etc, etc. If we try hard individually, we're only making things hard for ourselves. Changed need to be systemic.
in reply to The research fairy

I don't disagree, it's a scam, but it's not "just" a scam. I won't stop recycling because the little it does is at least something. I focus on reducing and reusing but again, I can only do so much when there's plastic everywhere. I'm throwing water out of a sinking ship with a tiny bucket with full knowledge that what we actually need is plugging the hole. Until we figure out how, I won't stop using my little bucket, because it's not a big effort in the great scheme of things.
Unknown parent

The research fairy

@admin

> So... you're saying that

No I'm not. Please interact with what I wrote, not a strawman argument that you wish I wrote so you can "gotcha" me.

Recycling is not the same as re-use.

Unknown parent

The research fairy
@hazardouspeach Yup, it's all the same playbook: cynically directing your attention away from the people at the top who can actually make a change happen
in reply to The research fairy

Well, I recycle my food scabs into #compost. With the compost I feed the microbes in my soil, which stores carbon in the humus layer and then I grow green fruit and veggies in that very soil to harvest my food. And with the scrabs of that food I make compost again and so on.

Okay, it's not to the scale this planet needs. But it's a start. 😕

Unknown parent

The research fairy
@Juliasnz Looks like you fell for it and you're part of the problem!
in reply to The research fairy

I disagree with personal carbon footprint „not existing“

There’s definitely a difference in doing a vacation next town and traveling by train vs flying across the globe 3 times a year

Saying that personal choice doesn’t matter because the system is broken (which is indeed broken) sends a wrong message

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
Unknown parent

Mx Amber Alex (she/it)

@stapper @uint8_t every little bit helps, but also it can never help enough.

I've never flown anywhere in my life. I don't drive a huge car. Most of my food is from eco-friendly farming. My clothes are mostly second-hand.

If the entire population behaved like me, a dozen billionnaires going on a fifth vacation per year would cancel it all out.

All of our collective "carbon footprints" are smaller than the big toe of billionnaires' carbon footprints.

In other words: if billionnaires and mega corporations stopped pproducing garbage nobody needs, putting AI into everything, using their private jets to fly from the bedroom to the bathroom, and stopped gathering and processing unthinkable amounts of user data, stopped running countless data centers to show us advertisements, the rest of us wouldn't need to live like ascetics.

reshared this

in reply to Mx Amber Alex (she/it)

@stapper @uint8_t and I believe the origins of "carbon footprint" as a marketing/propaganda tool are well enough documented.
Unknown parent

Z̈oé ⛵

@stapper no it was not invented „by oil companies“

British Petroleum did run a marketing campaign, probably to cause the shift from collective to individual action.

No your personal choices aren’t enough without systemic change. However you can absolutely make things worse by the meme that personal responsibility for carbon footprint is fake, doesn’t matter, it’s a rigged system anyways, the Revolution will fix it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_f…

in reply to Z̈oé ⛵

@uint8_t Okay I'm gonna just dismiss you as a bad faith sealion at this point

Bye

in reply to The research fairy

this is reminded me, to research methods to make plastic ingots or beads that can be reused from waste plastic, on a basement workshop scale.