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Corporations create the heat and cooling, build the cars and airplanes, and raise the meat for... wait for it... consumers. These things go hand in hand. Asking people to make changes to their lifestyles that will help the environment IS demanding the corporations to stop producing so much pollution. No one wants to take the blame.
When the world is on fire, no one will care, but the idea that corporations are somehow a separate entity from the consumers/individuals that line their pockets with profits is equally irresponsible. It does come down to daily choice, because the corporations follow demand. But no one wants to suffer the inconvenience of changing their lifestyle, so we blame the corporations that we then buy gas, electricity, meat, and cars from. It's blindingly dumb from either direction.
Spiderman points at Spiderman.
Note that the IPCC acknowledges that no one is paying the true cost of energy or food. You could decapitate all corporate executives, and, if we truly wanted to pay the environmental costs of heating, cooling, and food, all prices would go up. If you think things are hard now, give it a decade. Prices for everyone for everything will go up. You could kill all the rich people on the planet, and it wouldn't change that fact, and it wouldn't suddenly make the environment sound. It truly does come down to fundamental lifestyle changes that none of us want to enact.
You cannot eat money.
This is classic dog wags the tail and vice-versa. Is it the demand causing these corporations to make the product or are they creating the demand through plentiful supply and marketing?
If these entities were to make something with lower emissions and marketed that as a better alternative will nobody buy that something? I highly doubt it...
I remember when the things we bought were extremely durable and could last for decades if taken care of, I'm talking about anything, from tools, to cars, to clothes.
Now, from the 2000s to present day, everything is made to be consumed extremely fast, products are made with cheaper materials and most likely designed to fall apart sooner, this increases consumption by A LOT on a shorter span of time meaning more money in less time, something corporations just drool at.
With things being replaced on a shorter span means more energy required for the factories, more materials, more waste, and yes, way more pollution.
A lot of the times the "consumers" were created artificially with this tactics. Many things that lead to the current state of nsumption by the common folk is engineered.
I'm glad someone else understands this. Everytime I see the statistic about corporate emissions, I can't help but think about how it's so misleading. Exxon et al keep polluting because we keep collectively buying their product.
That doesn't absolve them from their efforts to discredit climate change research, but to suggest they are just some evil entity polluting at will is just ridiculous.
You can't expect someone not ride a car if they need one for survival.
The same is true for the fast-food industry: a lot of people dont cook anymore and just go to McDonald's. Hell, a lot of people don't even make their coffee in the morning anymore.
If we want to get back on track, make a law that reflect this otherwise, fuck off.
Admittedly part of the issue is that huge parts of many cities, especially in the anglosphere, are designed in such a way that living there without a car is impossible, because they've been built too spread-out and too far away from anywhere people want to go
And remedying this would basically require densifying everywhere close to urban centres, up to 5 stories in most places, then fucking razing the suburbs to the ground and making it abundantly clear to anyone who wants to live at that old suburban density or lower that the price will be having a septic tank and dirt roads
Electric cars won't change this, btw. Mass adoption of them is not practical due to their weight, strain on the grid, tendency to catch fire in a way that takes 1 entire tender per car, and use of finite lithium, and should be reserved for those with a very specific set of disabilities that make walking difficult while not impairing driving abilities, or those who actually want to live out in the country and put up with aforementioned septic tank and dirt roads
I think it's hard to estimate how much effort corporations put into getting us to do what they want. If you've ever looked at why the public transportation in the US is shit you'd know there's something suspicious going on with it.
US used to have cities that are great for public transportation, the grid design of the 1920s is excellent or public transportation. Some cities like NY still have that but cities like Detroit spent decades destroying that to build a highway going straight through the city. Suburbs in America are being built in a way that only suits car travel. And not just that, people have been conditioned to think that only poor people would use public transportation. Not only have been people made to believe they don't want public transportation, they couldn't have it even if they wanted to because it would be horribly inefficient.
Who benefits from those decisions? Definitely not the people who are now dependent on owning cars. But I'm pretty sure car manufacturers and oil companies are pretty happy because they get to sell more cars and oil. Now I can't point the finger at that those companies because there's no evidence they influenced this, at least none that I know of. But it's awfully convenient for them that when the car boom happened in the 50s the US government was happy to spend money literally rebuilding cities to make them more car dependent and keep at it, while the same thing was stopped in Europe pretty quickly.
I don't mind giving off some conspiracy theorist vibe, but I don't think it's far fetched that corporations are entities that put money above everything else and if needless polluting let's them make more money they will do it without hesitation. I wouldn't put it past them to deliberately build the narrative that somehow the people are to blame for this polluting. After all EXXON started the "is it even real?" and "is it even man made?" arguments that regular people used for decades to derail the climate change discussions, all with the purpose of shifting attention away from them. It's literally their MO.
I agree with this entirely. Of course there are corporations responsible for way more than myself. But using it as a means to justify myself doing nothing to reduce my own consumption is just backwards and stupid. It's comparing a bad thing to another really bad thing but they're both still bad things. Should they stop doing what they're doing to contribute to this, yes. Should I also? Also yes lol. Plus like your comment said. These companies are driven by our own demand. It's our fault for supporting and relying on the way things are for sure.
Thanks for your reply. I think the hard truth that we all need to look at is, regardless of who is to blame, we all need to make daily choices that work towards a common goal of salvaging this planet. And I think often those choices are annoying, inconvenient, or expensive. Some of us can shoulder the expense portion easier than others, but until we start acting every day like the world is worse than it was 100 years ago, we're only going to make it worse in the future. Things are not going to be easier going forward. The more of us that make things harder now, the less hard things will be in the future for the young. It truly is a daily choice.
TL;DR:
Consumer choices can influence industries, but it is impractical to solely rely on this to drive ecological change due to factors such as lack of awareness, inconvenience, habits, price and limited to no alternatives. Government subsidies for ecologically detrimental industries and the lack of subsidies for ecologically beneficial industries worsen the effect. Improved legislation is necessary to address these issues by enforcing ecologically beneficial industry practises and guide consumers.
Verbose:
I agree with you partly. Yes, consumer choices do affect which companies get money and which don't. But I would say that consumers are not completely responsible for the practises of a company. If a company chooses to power their production based on fossil energy carriers there's not much a consumer can do about it. Sure, they can stop buying from them. But for that a lot of things must happen. First of all they must know about it. And if it's not printed fat on the packaging or news are screaming about it, there is a high probability that they will never know about it. They could ask the companies themselves. And even if companies would be transparent and honest about their response, there's only a small fraction of people who would do this. That's because it's inconvenient. As ugly as it sounds, people hate inconveniences. A lot of people don't want to spend their precious free time with writing or calling the hundreds of companies, whose products they use, to ask about their production practises. Finally, if consumers eventually learn about the ecological impact of their products, they still need to collect a significant amount of mental energy in order to make the conscious decision of not buying them and possibly looking out for alternatives. That's difficult, because people easily get used to stuff and it's psychologically hard to change habits. And they'd need to do this for every single product they use. Even worse, in a critical amount of cases there aren't even alternatives available to consumers. If you continue buying the wrong products (in an eco sense), because you don't have access to an (affordable) alternative, that will send the wrong signals. The market won't see an increased demand for ecologically friendly products in these (significant amount of) cases, but quite the contrary. I don't say that it's impossible, clearly humans seem to have the capacity of intelligence and can be educated to do better, but I claim it's impractical for the everyday life of the masses. Especially, we don't have the time to wait until the majority of people is able to change their consumption behaviour. That's why we need laws, such that law makers do the hard work of paving the way for ecologically beneficial industry practises, so the Jon or Jane Doe going to the grocery store after a long day of work doesn't have to worry about which products to buy.
Besides, in a lot of countries fossil based energy carriers are still cheaper than environmemtally friendy alternatives, sadly. If companies start to completely switch to green energy, this would increase the price. Increasing the price can lead to less consumers buying the products. Either because they can't afford it or because they want or need to save money. This again would turn the circle of environmental destruction once more, since the cheaper alternatives, which consumers are looking out for, are usually less beneficial or even detrimental to the environment.
Also let's not forget that also a lot of countries subsidise industries which are major contributors to greenhouse gases, e.g., the meat industry. Meanwhile there is a lack of sufficient subsidies for ecologically better industry segments. I live in a world where an organically grown cucumber is much more expensive than a pack of meat. That can't be right.
We need good laws and can't rely on the behaviour of consumers alone. There's no way around it.
People demand goods and services. They very often do not care how those get to them. If they did, most corporations would go out of existence for using child and slave labor.
Your average person is not the one fighting against climate change regulation. It is the corporations throwing billions at government officials to not regulate them.
Shortest answer to the problem. Corps would LOVE if they could charge some people more for environmentally friendly shit while shoving more plastic in the ocean and carbon in the atmosphere for everyone who doesn't and will never give a shit.
Not would, do. Energy providers, for instance, will often charge extra if you want to only use clean energy despite renewables being cheaper for energy production. That extra money subsidizes their failing coal contracts and investments.
Yeah you're right, didn't mean to say that doesn't already happen. Even Amazon has made it an option to have your delivery be delayed to be more "green" while they pocket the cost savings themselves.