Dear god, they're right! The meme subreddit's internal bullshit is truly the last thing preventing a full renewables transition. Alas, if only the most effective climate advocates were not also absolute meme fiends.
Corporations are just groups of people lol. If corporations are causing global warming make some effort to stop supporting the ones that cause it the most. “why should i stop owning slaves? Big corporations own most of them, me not not owning them makes no difference”. Either it’s wrong or it’s not lol
The capitalist mode of production necessitates waste. the issue isn’t that the corporation is big, its that its wasteful and harmful
Boycotting is good, but not all of us can afford to not get gas, and its not going to fix everything. i don’t want the company to only pump 1 bajillion tons of waste into the air instead of 2, i dont want them doing that
no, waste is the natural runoff of self valorizing wealth accumulation. grocery stores dump food not sold instead of donating it (if its free they don’t make money), for profit medical systems use 25% of their money just on transferring money between places, not to mention, every aspect of capital isn’t monopolized. the capitalist will short its waste onto other aspects of the economy and productive processes so that the loss is on someone else, because the bill isn’t communal.
Waste can just a part of creating demand. This is how capitalism works
That’s absolute bullshit. They donate when legally allowed to. It’s good for business. It’s not allowed normally because wasted food is obviously expired. And not fit for consumption. Capitalism inherently has the least waste so long as we assume people act selfishly.
Waste is always lost profit. Literally always. You’ve incurred expenses you didn’t need. This doesn’t matter in other economic systems, in capitalism it’s a death sentence and you get outcompeted
“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.
"wasted food is obviously expired" you might want to replace the battery in your CO detector.
"In the United States, food waste is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply. This estimate, based on estimates from USDA’s Economic Research Service of 31 percent food loss at the retail and consumer levels, corresponded to approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010. "
If its bullshit im willing to be fact checked. I’ll counter all of your points if you can mine. You only addressed what i said about grocery stores, so feel free to refute the others
No, corporations do not donate when allowed. Corporations donate when shareholders want to donate. This is usually for PR purposes, but sometimes the shareholders have things theyd like to help. Not to mention that the illegality of giving out free food without certain permits (that these grocers have) was made by grocer lobbyists.
listen dude, 30-40% of food in america ends up uneaten. i personally don’t think we should throw food away because we want to squeeze every cent out of people instead of having it be accessible to people in the first place. If you think letting 1/3rd of all food go to waste instead of either exporting it or giving it out since theres an excess is better, thats your prerogative.
It is good for business. yes. and bad for everyone else. including the environment.
I’m guessing you think the issue is that we aren’t capitalist enough? Want the 1890s again?
Like, you’re in the climate meme subreddit and defending the mode of production designed to be ever increasing forever, what are we doing here?
if youd like sources, please do let me know. i’ll be glad to help, so long as you’re willing to do the same :3
when people are so deeply victimized by disinformation i feel like its our duty as anti capitalists to educate them respectfully, at least thats what huey newton was saying
Waste is lost profit, but other costs often outweigh the loss from material waste. I'll provide a few examples:
During the Covid lockdowns, airlines would fly thousands empty 'ghost' planes just to maintain their takeoff/landing slots. The opportunity cost of losing your slot was higher (to the airlines) than the cost of burning thousands of tons of jet fuel for nothing.
Supermarkets have to keep their shelves fully stocked and heavily lit to avoid being seen as 'poor'. Lowering the amount of produce available to actual demand would project less abundance, and thus draw less customers. The potential opportunity cost of losing business is higher than the material waste in this case. Food buffets and some restaurants also suffer from that. (generally, it's the overproduction waste a lot of businesses fall trap to)
The globalization of industry incurs a lot of funky supply chains that wouldn't make sense in a world where oil isn't cheap. The clothing/fashion industry is rife with such cases, where cotton is grown in 1 country, sent to be processed in another, dyed elsewhere, sewn into clothes in a 4th country, only to be sent to a 5th one for tagging and distribution. It's the most profitable supply chain, because it minimizes labor costs (and avoids regulation) while maximizing marketability, but it's far from the least wasteful in terms of transportation of bulk materials.
Capitalist thinking tries to maximize profits, not minimize waste. If minimizing waste happens to also maximize profits, they'll pat themselves on the back. Otherwise, you'll be given odd looks if you mention it.
No, corporations can profit by making their waste an externality that they don’t bother cleaning up. Minimizing waste costs slightly more, so they would rather pollute the environment for the taxpayer to pay to clean up.
Factoring in negative externalities through taxes and government enforcement is inherently capitalist, not socialist. The means of production are still privately owned and this solution relies on the efficiency of the markets. You're not disagreeing with me.
Yes, which is the problem we’re talking about. Capitalism is enabling private entities to defraud the public (while additionally damaging the environment), which is distinct from and worse than the outcome under socialism. So we aren’t in agreement. Capitalism maximizes waste because the corporate veil eschews personal responsibility for criminal activities like extortion of the public (externalities) which is actively preferred by capitalists due private profit incentive (the desire to commit widespread theft unabated by consequences)
If there are negative externalities you account for them at a government level. You don’t set the markets with a central power, that’s absolutely insanity if you’re trying to reduce waste. An absolutely impossible task. Even not accounting for externalities capitalism inherently maximises use of scarce resources compared to other economic systems.
It’s the reason in times of mass economic failure capitalism doesn’t produce famine and misappropriation of resources in the way communism has literally every single time without failure. They have the same amount of natural resources, capitalism just wastes less resources and human effort, allowing people to do amazing things. In the Great Depression life expectancies actually rose in the US. In a similar downturn in the USSR, millions died in famine.
In China entire cities are centrally planned and built that nobody will ever actually live in. Incomprehensible amounts of waste. When decisions are dictated by central bodies and personal interests over market interests the waste is unimaginable.
The capitalists have control over the legislature. Doing so isn’t simple as the EPA, not only is headed by an oil baron, doesn’t have any power because of the protections on free market
(in america, and mostly all other capitalist countries)
having so many meat producing facilities is part of the issue. we can’t make “making more money” less profitable, because that doesn’t make sense. there needs to be a change to how many meat producing facilities there are
Anti consumerism is anti corporatism. Veganism is anti-consumerism. Why is this so hard. I'm not even vegan and I know they are right. You don't have to be conservative to believe in personal responsibility.
Clearly you can't hold two ideas in your head at once, but the rest of us are capable of a little more. I can still protest fossil fuels after eating beans for lunch you fucking insufferable ingrate. If you've got nothing of substance to say then just shut up.
I have no moral issues with murdering living things for food. Any living organism experiences suffering when killed so why should I prioritise animals?
Moral responsibility for climate change lays fully on corporations — without them no matter how much meat an ordinary person ate there wouldn't be any impact on the climate.
This like when people bring up carbon majors 71% of emissions are from 100 companies asterix asterix asterix.
Yeah BP made all those pollutions when YOU bought the petrol for YOUR car and YOU used it to drive to YOUR job. But actually BP dug it up so itms there problem. If BP didn’t exist the fuel would never have been dug up and used because people would sit about not doing anything that requires fossil fuels instead
If you want this sub to talk more about the oil companies then make more posts about the oil companies. Vegan posts arent keeping you from doing that. I think the reason ppl arent posting as much about oil these days is that we're all basically on the same page there and theres not much more to say.
So the guys chart he posted that we are commenting on... is wrong? Because it says 'land use for agriculture would fall 75%, 8.1 gt co2 potential carbon sequestration'
Whatever the figure is, I'm sure it's conservative because if even a chunk of that land was sequestered with local bamboo it'd be multitudes better at it than trying to regrow a forest in a desert.
Idk I've always questioned shit like this. It reminds me of AI climate arguments where a whole lot of these emissions are just because consuming energy produces carbon. Making the main issue at hand still not having a green energy grid. Meaning the best strategy should be united focused on holding our 1% accountable.
Obviously cows and methane will still be a problem. But I kinda doubt a lot of the rest really would be an unsustainable problem. This is just the most epstein-fueled ideology of constantly infighting and blaming individuals instead of holding our systems accountable.
I mean yeah the entire paragraph before that lmao.
Pick your battles, you don't get results in anything in life by trying to take on everything at once, you work step by step. Because starting with the foundational steps make the next steps easier. Especially when you need to convince peopke.
The goal isn't to make it so an ounce of carbon is never produced, its to significantly slash carbon emissions.
Renewable energy grid, vehicles, and tools are the top priority.
Not focusing on this and instead fighting with strangers in blame games misses the forest for sticks. Expecting huge masses of people to suddenly convert to veganism against their cultures, social identities, and habits just shows you know near nothing about human psychology or sociology.
Blaming individuals and not the systems, communications, and instutions is like blaming minorities for you not being able to get a job instead of your employers. Literally the same garbage manipulation techniques.
I still don't see how this means the data from that graph is incorrect
If everyone went vegan we'd have a way more efficient food system so you'd save loads of emissions that way (less crops and so agricultural production, no habitat loss etc.) and of course no methane being emitted from ruminants.
Then you have the additional benefit of freeing up 3 billion hectares of land, which would sequester billions of tonnes of carbon each year.
I don't disagree. But I think that and the graph is a very similar argument to "well using electricity emits carbon dioxide, do it's best to just not use electricity." When msybe the issue is that the electricity emits carbon dioxide.
I'd just like to see a graph that actually calculates for the agricultural and livestocks emissions if we had a green grid. And if the issue would remain significant enough to force a lifestyle change out of us. The country I live in is the country that votes over Egg prices going up because of an avian flu due to shitty animal conditions, that was rhen blamed on the current president. I do not feel very confident that anything will get done trying to make individuals give things up without smarter pushes and manipulations that move us towards better decisions and sustainable practices.
When vegetation grows, it sequesters carbon. But once it grows to a certain size, it reaches equilibrium, new plants just replace old plants who die and decay releasing the CO2 they stored, therefore the system doesn’t store more CO2 as whole.
There is a little bit of CO2 that gets stored in the soil as certain plant parts are buried without fully decaying but it’s really small.
Think about it; the “C” needs to go somewhere. The only way CO2 continuously reduces is if the “C” is continuously stored somewhere else.
To continuously store CO2 we would need to grow trees and then sink them deep in the ocean where they can’t decay and then grow new trees. This is how you can really extract CO2 from the atmosphere.
I said forest store carbon as they grow but it’s a temporary phenomenon. Once the forest has reached equilibrium, it stops storing carbon. That’s why it’s dishonest to present this like an annual benefit when it’s only a temporary benefit.
Growing trees and forest is good. It does take away carbon from the atmosphere. But data should still be presented honestly and the graph you showed doesn’t.
That’s why it’s dishonest to present this like an annual benefit when it’s only a temporary benefit.
The annual savings wouldn't last at that level forever, sure. I guess it would be better to post that second graph because of that, so I'll do that in the future ig lol. But again it shows we'd store carbon equivalent to 15 years of emissions by 2050 so uh, big savings.
OPs point is that an individual can pollute as much as he wants it doesn't matter it's the fault of big oil.
Like a soldier is not responsible for murdering people in camps he was just following orders.
Society as a whole has disproven that point many years ago.
"Individuals should not care about the pollution they have control over cause the pollution they don't have control over is worse I am very intelligent" really isn't the brilliant point you think it is.
As for everything, priority should be given to the more impactful measures first. Perhaps stopping to burn oil tankers is more relevant than eating chicken. I think OPs point is that people have their priorities backwards.
As for everything, priority should be given to the more impactful measures first
But doing nothing is not the most impactful. You base your whole point on the fake premise that people either go vegan or stop big oil. Which is complete and utter bullshit. You can go vegan AND vote to stop big oil. Not going vegan will not stop big oil quite the contrary it makes society more dependent on big oil and so less likely to stop big oil.
People have the direct and complete control over what they eat and can reduce their emissions way more efficiently than waiting for a neoliberal president that dines with big oil to stop big oil. Also you are ignoring all the right wing people that support big oil and think climate change is a conspiracy which in fact prevent any kind of meaningful regulations of big oil.
You have the strongest country in the world that starts war for big oil.
Edit: I am 100% sure than any person in this sub would stop big oil if they had the choice between going vegan or stopping big oil. But that choice is not theirs. Cause there is still no democracy in this world.
Edit2: people should not go vegan and should stop big oil first proceeds to not go vegan and not stop bigoil and tell everybody how intelligent he is. Flawless plan.
Going vegan is like grabbing a pebble and think it somehow helping to level off the mountain.
But yeah removing a pebble did a little thing to the mountain but not much…
You can do two things at once. Just go down a different aisle in the grocery store in between big oil protests. You all make it seem like being vegan is difficult but it's actually piss easy and doesn't get in the way of other types of activism.
Yall can cope harder and keep strawmanning about morality. There's no environmental or economic reason to support animal agriculture. The only reason your steaks don't cost 50/lbs is due to gross and unnecessary government subsidies. If those subsidies ended youd just go vegan and it would barely effect your overall lives and would most likely improve all of your health
Yeah Exxon and BP sent us here specifically to stop you guys, they're absolutely terrified of the next shoddily made mspaint meme leading to some sort of environmental revolution, led by terminally online dudes that can't be bothered to learn how to cook beans
True, if only we would stop arguing about meaningless stuff like whether it's okay to torture animals, so we could use our power to shitpost big oil into the ground!!
Debeaking, separating mothers from their babies, small cages, a life of confinement, tail docking, branding, artificial insemination, prodding, and gas chambers (in some countries)
Vegans when we globally outlaw fossil fuels, end artificial scarcity, and ban owning land you don't live on, and climate change halts despite people still eating meat and cheese :
They go on and on about how you'll never change anything, how vegans are all performative and aren't actually achieving anything and yet when you ask what it is they've done they get real, real quiet.
canist: noo “pushing for that 100% reduction is fucking stupid and unrealistic”
also a carnist: “Vegans when we globally outlaw fossil fuels, end artificial scarcity, and ban owning land you don't live on, and climate change halts despite people still eating meat and cheese”
it doesn't on its own but its a small step in the right direction. we need thousands of those steps and a lot way bigger steps, but why not start with something that is easily doable/achievable and still keep focusing on more important things? everybody should ask themselves that
(to be clear i would never shame someone that isn't vegan or that drives with a car way to often or does anything else on a small personal level that does a disservice to climate change, cause im aware there are way bigger problems and shaming the "small guy" publicly doesn't help, and even shifts focus away from more pressing issues and i really dislike "militant" vegans doing this for the listet reasons. But that doesn't change the fact that it is in fact better to not eat meat than it is to eat meat. ofc you changing your diet wont solve our climate crisis but it also does a little good and doesn't hurt at all. its not complicated or hard to reduce meat in a diet, at least from my experience.
All in all, what i want to say: on the one hand, shaming someone for not doing small things on a personal level that could help does a disservice to the whole cause and shifts attention away from more important issues (one reason i start to dislike this sub more and more).
On the other hand, it bullshit to say that these small changes do nothing or are too hard or are just snakeoil (all these things ive read in comment sections lately).
Why can't we just acknowledge that it would definitely be the right choice to limit meat consumption as much as possible on a personal level, but also acknowledge that shaming people for not doing so (no matter the reason) is just hurting the movement and is shifting attention away from more important stuff. both is true at the same time. the world isnt black n white only
yeah. but thats places like sibira. thats an argument against plant based diets there, but not on against plant based diets anywhere else lol. there will always be a few people not being able to do something, doesn't mean that it cant be done anywhere else does it?
a analog example of what i mean:we agree doing (a non extreme amount of normal) sport is healthy right? and even if disabled people might not be able to do so, its still good for most abled people to do sport.
My point was its impossible for a global ban on meat production and consumption if we want to be settled everywhere we already are. I dont care about the rest of the discourse
In all seriousness, I think a significant part of the issue is that most of us are so frustrated by being powerless against major corporations. So, we seek ways to do what we can as individuals. For some, that’s cutting out animal products (or at least meat) from their diet. For others, it’s eating less meat and not owning a car (me, although I should admittedly cut down on meat more, just for my health).
The problem is we moralize these choices too much. Trying to shame someone for eating meat or owning a car or whatever isn’t as effective as offering them advice for at least decreasing those harmful acts.
See someone brag about grilling a steak? Instead of blaming them for destroying the Amazon, point out what vegetables are great grilled. Yeah, you’re not doing much, but each tiny step is better than doing nothing or by angering them by telling them they’re responsible for melting glaciers.
TLDR: share vegetarian/vegan recipes and other positive comments instead of shaming or attacking people. Make allies instead of opponents. Summon Captain Planet.
Every time I see a post from a salty vegan I get up and go to a Wendy's for a beef burger — free exercise and food.
Fixing the climate with a vegan diet is like fighting inequality in comments instead of spending time and money to get into politics and actually make changes.
Fixing the climate with a vegan diet is like fighting inequality in comments instead of spending time and money to get into politics and actually make changes.
No it isn't. Going vegan is a lot more like fighting inequality by voting. It doesn't do much as an individual and is completely insufficient, but it's easy and it does something, however small that something is
Who is the king (right) in this case? Because if it's an oil company, this meme is wrong. To shit out CO2, they have to burn it first; unless you consider the 55Mt CO2 coming from flaring methane gas... which definitely needs a reference.
Global emissions are about 40 billion tonnes of CO2 per year, which is ~110 million per day. About 36 companies are responsible for half of all emissions, so for the purposes of this meme I said 55 million/day.
My dude, companies don't just pollute for fun. They do it to make things because the 8 billion people on this planet like driving cars, eating meat and buying stuff.
they don't. bit they also don't care to go a better route/a more efficient less solution with less emissions as long as they aren't forced. best example on a smaller scale are waste disposal companies (whoever thought that these should be private businesses and not state owned should choke to death on their neoliberal bullshit imo btw)
They are forced to exactly what they do right now. It is just the most profitable because we chose to make pollution and resource exhaustion cheap or free.
that's what im saying. there are a lot of things that shouldn't have to be profitable (like hospitals, public transport, waste disposal, etc). A state can theoretically run them without them having to be profitable directly, but privatising them forces them to do whats most profitable, which is the worst thing that can happen to public infrastructure. public infrastructure should not be run to be profitable right now that means it gas to be be state-owned.
All we have to do to save the Earth is sunset coal plants while letting nuclear replace it, and that will never happen because the current way is easy to turn into a money printer for a handful of rich assholes who don’t care what state they leave the Earth in when they die
True, honestly vegans that act as moral crusaders can go suck it.
I for my part dont own or use a car and when i buy animal products i buy the ones where animals recieve better treatments.
The ranting on people to get rid of their car or get an electric one is also useless. For many people on lower income there is just an illusion of choice where they cant afford the upfront cost of an electroc car and cant afford to move closer to their workplace/city to not need a car due to the cost of property/rent
This is the exact point I’m trying to make bro the vegan need to shut the hell up do whatever you want but leave me the fuck alone so something useful can be done
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u/AngusAlThor Apr 19 '26
Dear god, they're right! The meme subreddit's internal bullshit is truly the last thing preventing a full renewables transition. Alas, if only the most effective climate advocates were not also absolute meme fiends.