Climate activism has intensified in the past few years as the planet warms to dangerous levels, igniting more extreme heat, floods, storms and wildfires around the world.
I see this argument a lot about choosing between saving the planet and eating and affording rent. Of course that person is barely surviving they aren’t making choices for their food. The same can not be said for the middle class and up.
To instantly dismiss any argument that you as a person don’t have any responsibility in this, no matter how small, is ludicrous. We should all be doing all we can. Not blaming corporations but then still buying their products, eating their fast food, etc. Blame a corporation and then do something about it, like avoiding nestle products even if it means going without, especially for non essential items.
The demographic that can afford to make those changes, the middle class as you stated, have been a shrinking for decades due to wealth consolidation. They don’t make up the majority of people.
I’m not absolving any one person, I’m saying their impact is so minimal that combined with every other individual they wouldn’t come close to corporate impact so it’s stupid to single them out.
Not to mention, many people in that demographic are time-poor, even if they ostensibly have the money. It’s not like middle class people still have a stay at home parent to do all this emotional labor.
I’ve been flexitarian for decades, before it was a term. But it takes a lot more thought and time to eat healthy without animal products.
Of course that person is barely surviving they aren’t making choices for their food. The same can not be said for the middle class and up.
There is no “middle class.” There is only the working class, and the entire thing falls into that “barely surviving” category.
Blame a corporation and then do something about it, like avoiding nestle products even if it means going without, especially for non essential items.
Not only do boycotts not work, advocating for them is almost a bad thing because it only distracts people from advocating for the remedy that does work: enforcing antitrust law.
And that brings me to my main point, which is that both “blame corporations” and “blame consumers” are overly simplistic and wrong. The real problem is the systems that create the circumstances that both the corporations and the consumers are operating in. We should really be asking ourselves questions like this:
Why is cheap food so often unsustainable, despite the fact that “sustainable” basically means “least costly” in the long run, by definition? The answer is that there’s a whole pile of subsidies and externalities that mean the full cost of the unsustainable food is being borne by somebody other than either the consumers or proverbial “big ag.”
Why do even people who are “barely surviving” so often end up driving to buy fast food? The answer isn’t just that they “can’t cook” or “don’t have time” or whatever; there are deeper reasons for it. They don’t know how to cook because the public school system seems to have mostly stopped offering home ec class. They don’t have time because the zoning code forces their home to be far away from both their job and their grocery store, which not only robs them of the time spent making car trips between them and the money spent owning a car in the first place, but also artificially incentivizes businesses with drive-throughs.
Of course, now you might think I’m simplistically trying to blame the government, but nope. Why’d the zoning code get written the way it was? Well, that’s for a whole bunch of reasons (most of them racist, BTW), but among them was the influence of corporate entities like Standard Oil and GM.
So now, taking all that shit I just wrote into consideration, what’s the bottom line? The bottom line is that the systems have to be changed, and that takes action from individuals and corporations and government – but mostly the latter, not because it’s the government’s “fault” but because government has the power to change laws. But even then, it’s not heavy-handed stuff like prohibiting eating meat or prohibiting driving; it’s stuff like ending subsidies, internalizing externalities (that’s what a carbon tax is for, BTW), and ending the failed Suburban Experiment by abolishing things like low-density zoning restrictions so that people can pop into the store for groceries on their walk home from work instead of having to make an onerous car trip to go “grocery shopping” or resorting to fast food.
The “cheapest” or easiest option has to become the most sustainable option, such that people freely choose it without being coerced. That’s the only way any real change will ever happen.
This took me a while to digest, but thanks for the thorough answer.
I agree that silly subsidies should be abolished and climate friendly subsidies should be enacted worldwide. However looking from the American lens you are talking in the change seems almost impossible. Democracy worldwide has been corrupted America being the largest example of this with “lobbyists”. How are these uneducated, time poor, malnutritioned people meant to make any change? Maybe I just have my doom and gloom face on today.
In Australia we can barely stop our government from cutting down ancient forests to make woodchips. Let alone the 3 new coal mines they opened, and this is the climate concious party.
Looking at all that I feel making personal changes is the only way I can personally stay motivated. At least I am doing what I can in the face of this seemingly impossible task.
I see this argument a lot about choosing between saving the planet and eating and affording rent. Of course that person is barely surviving they aren’t making choices for their food. The same can not be said for the middle class and up.
To instantly dismiss any argument that you as a person don’t have any responsibility in this, no matter how small, is ludicrous. We should all be doing all we can. Not blaming corporations but then still buying their products, eating their fast food, etc. Blame a corporation and then do something about it, like avoiding nestle products even if it means going without, especially for non essential items.
The demographic that can afford to make those changes, the middle class as you stated, have been a shrinking for decades due to wealth consolidation. They don’t make up the majority of people.
I’m not absolving any one person, I’m saying their impact is so minimal that combined with every other individual they wouldn’t come close to corporate impact so it’s stupid to single them out.
Not to mention, many people in that demographic are time-poor, even if they ostensibly have the money. It’s not like middle class people still have a stay at home parent to do all this emotional labor.
I’ve been flexitarian for decades, before it was a term. But it takes a lot more thought and time to eat healthy without animal products.
There is no “middle class.” There is only the working class, and the entire thing falls into that “barely surviving” category.
Not only do boycotts not work, advocating for them is almost a bad thing because it only distracts people from advocating for the remedy that does work: enforcing antitrust law.
And that brings me to my main point, which is that both “blame corporations” and “blame consumers” are overly simplistic and wrong. The real problem is the systems that create the circumstances that both the corporations and the consumers are operating in. We should really be asking ourselves questions like this:
Why is cheap food so often unsustainable, despite the fact that “sustainable” basically means “least costly” in the long run, by definition? The answer is that there’s a whole pile of subsidies and externalities that mean the full cost of the unsustainable food is being borne by somebody other than either the consumers or proverbial “big ag.”
Why do even people who are “barely surviving” so often end up driving to buy fast food? The answer isn’t just that they “can’t cook” or “don’t have time” or whatever; there are deeper reasons for it. They don’t know how to cook because the public school system seems to have mostly stopped offering home ec class. They don’t have time because the zoning code forces their home to be far away from both their job and their grocery store, which not only robs them of the time spent making car trips between them and the money spent owning a car in the first place, but also artificially incentivizes businesses with drive-throughs.
Of course, now you might think I’m simplistically trying to blame the government, but nope. Why’d the zoning code get written the way it was? Well, that’s for a whole bunch of reasons (most of them racist, BTW), but among them was the influence of corporate entities like Standard Oil and GM.
So now, taking all that shit I just wrote into consideration, what’s the bottom line? The bottom line is that the systems have to be changed, and that takes action from individuals and corporations and government – but mostly the latter, not because it’s the government’s “fault” but because government has the power to change laws. But even then, it’s not heavy-handed stuff like prohibiting eating meat or prohibiting driving; it’s stuff like ending subsidies, internalizing externalities (that’s what a carbon tax is for, BTW), and ending the failed Suburban Experiment by abolishing things like low-density zoning restrictions so that people can pop into the store for groceries on their walk home from work instead of having to make an onerous car trip to go “grocery shopping” or resorting to fast food.
The “cheapest” or easiest option has to become the most sustainable option, such that people freely choose it without being coerced. That’s the only way any real change will ever happen.
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This took me a while to digest, but thanks for the thorough answer.
I agree that silly subsidies should be abolished and climate friendly subsidies should be enacted worldwide. However looking from the American lens you are talking in the change seems almost impossible. Democracy worldwide has been corrupted America being the largest example of this with “lobbyists”. How are these uneducated, time poor, malnutritioned people meant to make any change? Maybe I just have my doom and gloom face on today.
In Australia we can barely stop our government from cutting down ancient forests to make woodchips. Let alone the 3 new coal mines they opened, and this is the climate concious party.
Looking at all that I feel making personal changes is the only way I can personally stay motivated. At least I am doing what I can in the face of this seemingly impossible task.
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