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Systemic problems cannot be solved at individual level
Save the environment, compost a billionaire
Compost the rich, and eat the veggies!
They’d probably poison the ground they’re composted into.
gotta remove all the plastic implants and shit, first, sure.
I learned from game theory that these situations are the equivalent of the prisoner’s dilemma.
In the prisoner’s dilemma, in the case where you only play the game once, cooperation has a worse outcome for you, regardless of what your opponent does. It is a dominated option. Only in the case where the game is repeated many times, and where both players are paying attention to their opponent, only in that case does cooperation become a useful option.
When people recycle, we are choosing to cooperate. But as nobody is paying attention to what we’re doing, it is always the dominated option. We end up having to work more, and we don’t get better results. And then we inevitably get huge betrayals.
But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t recycle. It simply means the game has shitty rules. That’s why responsible government regulations are essential for environmentalism, if we actually want to see results.
Plastic recycling is literally pointless though.
It’s a farce to pretend that plastic can be reused/sustainable in any way. Most “recycled” plastic ends up just shipped off to pollute developing countries in Africa and Asia.
yup, china has mostly stopped plastic trash from the us, i think malaysia is making moves to prevent that too.
its difficult because plastic is basically toxic when you try to melt it or dissolve it into a usable plastic again, the process is probably more expensive too.
Its why I throw it in the bin! Rather poison my own landfill than someone else’s.
The best solution is to try to avoid buying things with plastic, and repurposing plastic that you do have to buy.
It’s not really that much of an answer, but plastic recycling is entirely greenwashing by the industry.
I try where possible but companies have cottoned on to this and now charge more for the greener option.
" Oh you want to buy recycled paper towel that comes wrapped in paper and not plastic? Thats $2 more than the non-recycled one which is wrapped in plastic, cough up you green cuck! "
Me paying 5¢ for a plastic bag while the owner attends a wedding. Sounds about right
Lol yes.
Even if Jeff kills every single puppy he sees we still have a chance to save one or two if we encounter them in our neighborhood
Jeff “allergic to philanthropy“ Bezos is an idiot but if we have a waterway next to our house we might be able to keep a bag or two out of it by getting folks to put skin in the game
(Normally I’d say “make bags cost 0.001% of your income so it’s all fair for everyone” but cheapskate richies actually might be reminded to grab reusable bags just to save a nickel, though IDK… Warren Buffet would not want to pay for a bag I do know that, cuz he eats McDs and pays exact cash change once his wife counts it out for him)
Yeah, the thing I hate about these memes is there’s often an implicit suggestion that we’re let off the hook for the things we can control.
The moral isn’t “you can stop recycling now”, it’s “eat the rich, they’re fucking up the whole planet”.
My issue is, you using a reusable bag is wonderful, please keep that up. However, it is like dropping a eye dropper full of acid into the ocean. You are not changing the acidity of the ocean.
Dropper being 1mL Ocean being 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers
Bezo housing tons of servers, just to collect information to manipulate people into buying his shit products. Clear cutting huge plots of land for his fulfillment centers. We haven’t even touched the amount of plastic waste sold to third world countries or dumped in the ocean. Also their AI service that helps boil the ocean.
Everyone on this planet could be negative waste producers. And still the mega companies will destroy our planet.
Why can’t you bring your own reusable one and save the five cents?
Sometimes you forget it at the house.
Then pay the five cents occasionally?
Yes?
Nah, buy a new reusable one. It’s not like if they last forever, they need occasional replacement.
Not related to the five cent cost, but there are stores I go to where they don’t allow you to take outside containers (like bags) into the store.
Man that’s fucking dystopian.
Eh. It’s a low-profit-margin store in a bad area of a bad area. I get the rationale, and self-serve shopping is a pretty recent innovation itself (only developing come the 1920s or so). I wouldn’t call it dystopian so much as unfortunate.
Odd. Not even folded and subsequently unfolded in front of the clerk?
No offense but then that’s just a five cent tax on choosing that store.
Not related to the five cent cost
I stand by my statement and my reading skills.
Just reading about reusable bags and theft yeah
Mario bros! RISE UP!
Let the rich fear us, let the exploiters cower in terror. Systemic change requires dramatic catalysts, the money tree needs to be ripped at its roots and burned with revolutionary intent.
No longer will we bow down to the ‘Almighty Dollar’
A cancer can only be ‘cured’ if it’s completely removed and destroyed. Fuck Cancer, Fuck the Rich
I’d allow it if, say, we seized 90% of each owner’s wealth and invested it into clean and renewable tech.
I’m very reasonable like that!
Fun fact: if Jeff bezos lost 90% of his wealth, he still would be a billionaire
Zohran the Destroyer, is that you?
I could only aspire to be so based!
Counter point we burn 100% of their wealth and they thank us for the privilege of not being fed to the nearest tree. If they don’t the tree will eat.
Counter point we burn 100% of their wealth and they thank us for the privilege of not being fed to the nearest tree. If they don’t the tree will eat.
I could never support such a thing!
Burning wealth is so wasteful!
Don’t the Norwegians brun trash to generate power? Same principal, I guess we can recycle computer parts and metals but everything else goes into the furnace.
Unless the individual happens to be exceedingly wealthy. In which case, they’re the systemic problen
Could a mechanic forget a couple of critical screws holding the engine together? Its a general question from a friend who theoretically asked lol. Hypothetically.
I don’t like this example, because it ignores that normal people take planes, too - sure it’s less frequent, and it’s usually public transport-style as opposed to just being one billionaire and their entourage per plane, but there’s also just a lot more normal people than billionaires. Not to say that the pollution made for billionaires’ personal lifestyles isn’t massive or that rich people’s economic and political activities aren’t the main driver of climate change, but using such an obviously bad example makes it too easy to dismiss the general sentiment of the joke. If every non-billionaire stopped taking plane rides, it would make a difference for climate change - the issue is that rich people do their hardest to make sure that something like that doesn’t happen. At least not until all the non-millionaires are so poor that they can’t afford to travel anymore.
It’s not just plane rides, it’s private jets. If you’re going to Venice, you’re going to have to fly. But every person doesn’t have to take their own individual plane
Or, they can take one of the the yachts. Don’t forget about the yachts.
Sure we fly, but they choose to fly with the option that pollutes 50x more per person.
Yes, that’s bad - so why not use that as an example? It’s about as equivalent as we’re going to get when comparing regular people to billionaires, and it’s still literally 50 times worse (or whatever the actually value is, it’s probably even worse considering that normal people usually share the plane with hundreds of unrelated people while on Bezos’ plane, it’s 100% just him, his “friends” and people who work for him).
The system is rigged against the individual. The best choices are mostly the most expensive. The best solutions for climate change are blocked by corporate greed and crippled by national laws. And even if you’re lucky enough to live in a country that allows you to have influence in who governs you, the biggest polluters are dictatorial regimes. Want to eat healthy? Sure, but pay more. When Covid hit and working from home got popular and air travel much less, there was measurable less smog in big cities. But companies now demand people come back into the office. Because shareholders don’t like workers to have freedom.
A lot of us are trying, making decent sacrifices to reduce our already relatively negligible impacts on the environment. While those with money make significantly more of a negative impact instead of mildly inconveniencing themselves. Sure, refuce your impact, use less plastic, buy less shit. But none of that is really going to matter if people like Bezos are around.
I agree. Which is why the yoghurt cup example is so bad - it’s hardly a personal sacrifice and it’s very obviously low impact compared to vacation planerides. The issue is that things like plane vacations and other polluting consumer goods are actively promoted, and made even worse for the environment just to shave off tenths of percents in profits, by the ultra rich.
The yoghurt cup example is excellent, I would argue, for the same reasons. The yoghurt cup example is the sacrifice of a small amount of time and effort for no gain for yourself - in exchange for a gain for society.
How many of those private jet owners could’ve sacrificed a small amount of time and effort in taking commercial flights in exchange for a massive gain for society’s environmental health?
The issue is that the yoghurt cup is only a tiny sacrifice, but it’s also only a tiny gain (as long as the alternative isn’t ‘just dump it in the river’). I suppose regular people don’t have a lot of opportunities to do a small sacrifice that will actually have a big impact compared to the effort, once they took the hurdle of not being a complete asshole.
I fly at most 2-3 times a year, not privately. I have a feeling that these people are flying significantly more than that. So not only do they pollute more per flight they fly more frequently
Exactly. Think about how many times a year Taylor Swift takes a plane somewhere while on tour. That’s why I can’t fw her. And her music. Her music too.
