Ask Lemmy

A lot of the initiatives are ineffective by design because the real goal is to give the consumers agency over the problem. Corporations have known that individual effort is a drop in the bucket but by framing the problem as not not a "corporate" problem but a "society" problem, they can keep not fixing it, for profit.

The vast majority of these initiatives are just pointless "greenwashing".

Do not let perfection get in the way of progress.

Some are already being questioned as inadequate. Carbon offsets often times don't offset much carbon at all. Some of that is on purpose and are just people trying to make a quick buck, but some are actual humanitarian efforts that didn't take into account all factors and end up being much less effective than initially thought.

Anything that's safe to advocate for in a public forum is inadequate.

The embarrassing thing will be that we did nothing to limit private jets.

If everyone but world leaders had to fly with us poor's, wed be doing a hell of a lot better than we are.

We never address the easy, large targets because those targets are rich people and they pay for it to not be addressed.

It's embarrassing that we have an Internet and are unable to come together to fight such a small group of people.

There won't be a "we" to look back on them, so I wouldn't worry about it.

I gave up hope when I learned that the blue and green recycle bins in my area are really only there to make the consumer feel better about how much we waste as a society. A lot of the stuff we put in those bins still just winds up in a landfill.

I've learned that we're doing an even poor job of handling recyclables, the very thing we're beaten over the head with to be responsible about.

Speak for yourself, I'm peeing in the shower.

Yes, we're basically doing nothing. Then we'll run around like headless chicken when things will start to get really bad. And when the mass deaths will start, well, we'll start acting, by killing each other.

Sure but have you tried goin grink?

It's a difficult topic, those of us already engaged with the problem are already aware that the current solutions are inadequate, but, every year we are making improvements.

Is that going to be enough? It depends on what you define as enough. I'd describe myself as short term pessimist but long term optimist.

By that I mean, short term there are far too many vested interests (stranded capital, the income of various nation states, nationalism in general, the 8 hour day, our built environment and the car centric nature of its design) to do the sort of immediate changes that we needed to have averted this problem. We needed to have started meaningfully pursuing this in the 70s, not the 2010s.

But that shouldn't take away from the fact that the ever increasing rollout of renewable energy generation is better than continuing to use coal and gas. Every ton of CO2 we don't emit is a ton we don't have to get rid of later. That is as true today was it was 50 years ago, or 50 years in the future.

Long term, I'm optimistic that humans will continue to develop new technologies and the political and economic will shifts to meaningfully tackle climate change and we ultimately will survive, but I am expecting billions to die explicitly due to climate change - ie from floods, droughts, famine, war caused by the preceeding, internment of fleeing refugees, etc - in the interim. I won't be surprised if towards the end of my life terms like ecocide start to shift to mean genocide of humans via negligent climate policies, eg when Bangladesh goes under water.

The next 100 years is going to be a brutal mix of exciting technological breakthroughs, coupled with soul crushing deaths of people in countries who predominantly did very little to cause the problem.

I think it’s safe to say the whole climate change episode will go down as this era’s “How could they be so stupid or bad like that?!” Like Germans during the Nazis, slave owners in the US, medieval superstitions during the plague etc. All of it will become a lesson in what not to do and how not to think.

Collectively our generation will be marked as that which had all the means and privileges one could hope for but the foresight and wisdom of bricks.

Today's initiatives are theater.

100 companies are responsible for 71% of the worlds emissions. The rest is also mainly companies. The idea of a carbon footprint is propaganda invented by BP (this sounds like a conspiracy but I swear it's true, look it up). Before anything you personally can accomplish can make any difference, we would first have to significantly change society.