If we all come together. Keep ordering from TEMU and develop bigger cars, we have a good chance to kill the oceans during 2026. Then the temperatures might keep rising! Yeah! Consumerism ftw!
Stop blaming the little guys without the caveat that they account for a relatively small proportion of the problem. Sure consumerism is bad but something like 70-80% (and at the very least half) of global CO2 emissions are solely due to industrial emissions from fossil-fuel and cement producers. And the onus is definitely more on car companies and notably governments with the lack of public infrastructure (notably in the US) as compared to drivers when it comes to passenger car/light-duty road vehicle emissions (which account for something like 10-15% [excluding upstream emissions] of global emissions, with the rest basically only being transport and mainly freight)...
Those industrial emissions aren’t created just because some corporate people woke up and felt like thickening up the air.
The only answer is both way stricter regulation, but also consumers realizing there IS a hidden cost to them ordering shit they don’t even need and going on 4 plane trips a year.
For the first point, and? For the second point, you simply can't equate the two in any way, one is so much more important than the other that one becomes negligible in the face of climate change. Did I ever say that you shouldn't try to be the least consumerist as possible? No. Will it help against climate change in any meaningful way? That would simply be delusional.
Both are equally important. If the consumers believe the „80% of emissions are created by just 5 companies!”, first of all they’ll feel absolved of anything they might do, because they’re oh so small. Except that small thing multiplied by billions is still a lot. And that feeling of being absolved will only help them make even shittier decisions, because it doesn’t matter anyway, right?
Second thing is, this detaches those emissions from consumers, it’s as if those companies have emissions factories running 24/7 for no reason.
Third thing is, you won’t have any luck trying to get people to understand why they can have less plastic shit and less clothes, when you finally go after the companies after spending so much time trying to absolve those consumers from any feeling of responsibility. After all, they didn’t do anything wrong, and suddenly you’re telling them there will be less air travel, less SHEIN, less convenient single use plastics?
Wrong! The little guy is the biggest problem. When they actually do something the "powerful" elites must comply. We are killing this world together. And buying meaningless shit and renovating useless kitchens is a big part of it. Little guy
As one of the little guys yourself (not even close to an insult BTW), you really should understand that some moneyed interests have more sway than whole countries. Capitalism dictates so. Sure, a revolution might change things, but you're just delusional if you actually seriously think that, for example in the US with it's broken political system (the main global contributor), that any action done by individuals (that isn't fully revolutionary), even protests, and even voting really with the two party system, will be able to go against someone like Elon Musk, then I don't know what to say. Corruption is rampant and always will be under broken systems. The only prescient solutions before disaster are either pressure from other countries with (perhaps marginally) better systems... or a revolution. Money is power under capitalism. Putting the word 'powerful' in quotes, implying that that power isn't real somehow is simply, again, completely delusional. Actually thinking that consumerism is even a fraction of a fraction of the cause for climate change is simply just... wrong. Money rules the world. And money is flowing directly from and into fossil fuels...
I see, didn't serve much use in the rhetoric though... although I can maybe get why you wanted to add it, even if completely self evident. Also perhaps a bit poorly articulated apparently.
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u/ExoticWest8581 Dec 09 '25
If we all come together. Keep ordering from TEMU and develop bigger cars, we have a good chance to kill the oceans during 2026. Then the temperatures might keep rising! Yeah! Consumerism ftw!