Nah, working class will kill off the planet just as fast, one has shit to do with the other. Stop shoving your political wants in actual world problems
I predict a world where it's too hot for most to work, air-conditioning becoming mandatory everywhere, a slowing of development in terms of properties being built. The search for automation as a response. Cooling suits being widely used. The majority of the world's crops failing. Food stipends being delivered on specialised trucks to each home... Perhaps by a division of the military... People dying on mass in the third world and quietly in their rooms in the first. Rolling black outs become waves of death. Experts dying on the job trying to fix them. Skinny bodies fighting for life, or fighting each other for food. Death squads who think killing is the answer. A daily announcement of what percentage of the country is on fire... But we'll probably mostly be dying of thirst by then. Maybe it won't be so bad.
Even if there's a working class revolution, things are still completely fucked.
The biggest issue isn't who is in charge, it's the fact that humans are fundamentally incapable of cooperating across large groups.
We couldn't even get the population to wear masks during a global pandemic killing so many people that hospitals needed to bring in refrigerator trucks to store the bodies.
But those same salt of the earth workers are going to negotiate climate controls with China?
The biggest issue isn’t who is in charge, it’s the fact that humans are fundamentally incapable of cooperating across large groups.
I'm not so sure that this is an inherent problem with humanity so much as it is a symptom of our current political and economic systems and culture.
Take you pandemic/mask example for instance. Pretty much everyone was on board with masks, social distancing, etc, until a few weeks/months in when it got politicized. Conservative leaders saw they could rile up their base by take a stance against the science. And they took advantage of our cultural preference for individualism where we could instead have a more collectivist culture.
These systems and cultural norms aren't inherent to humans. It's inherent to our shitty half-democracy, capitalism, etc.
But those same salt of the earth workers are going to negotiate climate controls with China?
The oil lobby pays shit loads of money to propagandize the population in the exact same way the tobacco industry did it. Start dealing with that, and the workers won't buy the bullshit propaganda anymore.
Cooperating across large groups is one of our defining characteristics, as a species.
We could get the population to wear masks, in very large part, because certain ultra wealthy interest groups didn't want to close the economy down and make a little bit less money. So, they polluted the avaliable information. Post working class revolution, the idea would be for them to not have the power to do that.
We can't use a problem caused by the system as an argument against changing the system.
We couldn’t even get the population to wear masks during a global pandemic killing so many people that hospitals needed to bring in refrigerator trucks to store the bodies.
You tell me the trusted source, and I'll give you an article on China's zero COVID woes. Here's CNN, with details IMO much worse than the link I previously shared from a site you seem to have a beef with:
You tell me the trusted source, and I’ll give you an article on China’s zero COVID woes.
Sure, find one connected to the communist party of Vietnam, Laos, or Cuba. China had issues with zero covid but the nonsense you're sharing is sensationalist garbage.
Every time climate discussion comes up and i point out that we can do things to decrease their own impact, i'm met with anger and relentless defense that they have no responsibility and it's all corporations.
So I have little faith that any worker revolution will solve the problem.
So there is a little no waste shop by me. I've turned on numerous neighbors to it. They have grown quite well and are moving into a bigger space, and even have talked about opening a second store...and basically don't do any advertising. It's all word of mouth.
While I agree with you that the focus should be on corporations, ultimately the reason these corporations are producing stuff is because individuals are consuming it. If more consumers show a willingness and desire to buy low carbon shit, the more it will be catered to. I do believe this would have a leveraging affect.
Individual changes are negligible compared to corporations though. Also, changes that would benefit would be to improve public transit to reduce carbon emission, but that is something on the government level. This people are rightly pointing out that individual changes would account to like less than 1% of the emissions. A workers Revolution would change this because it would implement all the changes needed on corporations and public transit, among other.
If you can come up with an excuse to not do something now, you'll always be able to find an excuse. Which is exactly why corporations don't do anything, as they too can come up with an excuse.
I neither said nor implied that I want no moderation. In fact, that sounds way worse than what happened here.
Second, whether that's true about lemmy doesn't preclude moderators from acting exactly like what everyone claimed to hate about reddit moderators, which is exactly what happened here. Mod didn't like that I called out their claims, so they removed the post with the claim of "victim blaming" lol (which, of course, isn't a violation of any rules).
I absolutely agree with the concept, it's something I've argued in the past (although less in a loss of profit, than simply a loss of hard to enumerate "rights), I just never knew there was an established concept for it. So thanks for that.
But I don't see how it applies here. Unless you're agreeing with me and something like driving (one of the first examples given in the article) is an externality that should be addressed, and something that the individual often has some control over. But what it's always met with, as it was here, "It's really not my fault so I have no responsibility to change my behavior at all."
In my personal experience, and I'm lucky to have this available to me a lot: our rules is that if it's a 15 minute or less walk, we walk it. I bike to work most mornings when the weather is nice. These are things I could often just drive because "eh, what's my contribution going to do?" But I try my best (certainly still a work in progress), because i understand my actions are an negative externality for much of the rest of the world.
This doesn't preclude me from pushing for larger scale things too, but at least I also put my money where my mouth is.
Don't let me discourage you from cycling, that does help!
BUT
Even homeless people are still polluting at higher than sustainable levels. If we internalized the cost of pollution (with pigouvian taxes or whatever), then your efforts would yield even better results. As you can see under "Possible solutions", none of them involve placing responsibility on people around you individually - they're all addressing the externality at a systemic level.
It's not either/or; I can both work to decrease my personal impact and also push for systemic changes. It's just a recognition that responsibility does fall on the individual as well. If one cares about this issue, they should make changes in their life to minimize their impact. I understand that we can't solve it without a systemic change, because even from what I see all the time, right here, people who presumably care about the situation coming up with every excuse in the book to avoid assuming even a modicum of responsibility. Can't imagine how long it would take to get the current deniers on board.
The reality is that any change that is going to be top down is going to be slow; it's not coming for a while. Right now, you can make changes in your personal life. And even then, it's not all or nothing. You can just keep grabbing the low hanging fruit over and over again to minimize your personal impact.
And on top of that, any change coming from top down is going to affect the individual: things will get more expensive and less convenient. So you might as well get a head start on it.
Married with two kids, we both work full time, cook dinner almost every night, i have multiple hobbies, regularly exercise, and I usually go out once a week with buddies to get a drink.
It's overwhelming if you treat it as all or nothing. I get that. I just started by grabbing the low hanging fruit, and when I realized that wasn't all that hard, I just reached up and grabbed the next. And then the next.
What if you took all the time you spend suggesting that consumers unilaterally pollute less, and invested it towards suggesting systemic change instead?
Is the goal here social status, or to maximize your impact?
"Every time climate discussion comes up and i point out that we can do things to decrease their own impact, i’m met with anger and relentless defense that they have no responsibility and it’s all corporations.
So I have little faith that any worker revolution will solve the problem."
Because we all need to start doing shit now, not wait for other people to do it for you. I'm not punching at all, just being honest. You're just grappling with the cognitive dissonance of claiming to care, but also not wanting to inconvenience yourself by doing anything about it.
That shit that we need to do now is outlined in that externality article solution section. We can't wait for other people to coordinate on defense for us.
Time spent on unilateral inconveniences is rival with time spent on systemic change, especially for a busy person like you. Trying to convince individuals one by one to reduce their carbon footprint simply doesn't work - that's why big oil popularized it.
The hypocrisy of calling yourself an activist after telling me that I could be better spending my time than convincing one person. Lol if you think anyone believes that.
If you think we all ought to reduce our pollution down to sustainable levels, and you haven't, then aren't we both hypocrites? I'm certainly not saying you can't discuss your strategy at all.
This purity testing and infighting are exactly what big oil wants. You keep appealing to social status - you do something, you care, you're no hypocrite, you inconvenience yourself - you're a virtuous good guy. And your neighbors, why if they won't list their sacrifices, then what business do they have suggesting the very well-studied solutions that can actually work based on a concept you just learned the name of.
If you think we all ought to reduce our pollution down to sustainable levels, and you haven’t, then aren’t we both hypocrites?
I've been very clear about my point: we're all responsible and we should all make an effort. I even outright told you that you don't have to do everything at once, but grab the low hanging fruit.
And you're trying to tell me i'm suggesting you get yourself down to a sustainable level.
This purity testing and infighting are exactly what big oil wants.
Yes, clearly saying you share some of the responsibility and we should all make an effort to do something, i'm requiring purity.
You can argue my point, do you're mindlessly attacking a strawman youve made up about me.
And who said anything about anyone not being able to offer up other solutions? Lol
Again, anything to avoid accepting any responsibility, doesn't even matter if it's even based on reality at all. You need me to be a bad guy because otherwise you might have to admit I have a point.
Every time climate discussion comes up and i point out that we can do things to decrease their own impact
Yes, clearly saying you share some of the responsibility and we should all make an effort to do something, i'm requiring purity.
This but not sarcastic. Every time you bring it up is a distraction from collective action that works. Your efforts have been diverted.
100% honestly, you sound like a great person. But that shouldn't matter to the validity of a person's arguments, and your approach is counterproductive.
Too bad most progressive left leaning people who this comic is talking about don't own firearms to fight the ruling class.
And if you're reading this thinking of rebuking with "there's a lot of liberal gun owners", the reality is that most of pro gun culture is monopolized by right wing Republicans and not only do they outnumber you by an alarmingly high order of magnitude, they side with the boot lickers and cops who protect the ruling class.
thats the sad truth of it, they ain't massacring us because we ain't a threat. but back when we were, in not-so-distant past, workers were murdered for disrupting and striking.
they don't care about climate change beyond how it affects their power. they will not just repent and hand the world over.
See, I wonder about this. Perhaps left leaning people are just far less likely to do things that draw attention to their gun ownership. You say gun culture is dominated by the right wing, and I don't disagree with you. Maybe it's just that right wing people make it a cultural thing more.
Yes, corporations with billions and private "security ", backed by governments with billions, police armed like the military, and an army, can be defeated by a bunch of good progressists with guns.
I don't know if you're being dumb or sarcastic. Likely your are stupid and forgot your history.
Vietnam NVA did fine with farmers who had no education, so did the Taliban using the same. Both defeated a coalition backed major military superpower with infinite money and significantly better equipment than them.
Yes and no. We don't have school shootings so that's a plus. I guess not having guns is the cost of that, which is pretty fair. Some people are allowed guns, but you need a special license for it.
Edit: also we actually have stronger unions and more strike action even without guns. They don't actually help outside of a revolution. If anything we have less police violence because we don't have guns, so the most of police don't either. As a police officer you have to have special specific training to even handle a taser, nevermind a gun.
Sounds like a great role model to follow. Since you never mentioned what country you are fucking talking about we all will assume it's a random one. So let's just say, you're talking about Mongolia.
