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I'll be honest "fall behind" isn't a good phrasing on my part. It's more accurate to say that you straight up can't participate in aspects of modern society without some degree of consumerism. At least not without some difficult hoop-jumping.
You mean conspicuous consumption or things like "being the loser who doesn't own a car, but actually walks to work and saves tons in gas"
I'm not entirely following, so if I'm a bit off in my reply I apologize.
That can be a part of it, yeah. More like a "you can't walk to work because it's too far, so you HAVE to either have a car or rely on some ride-sharing or, if you're lucky, public transit to get to work" kind of thing. You can get around it, with a lot of work and great personal inconvenience. Switch jobs, live closer, whatever, but the reality for most people is you HAVE to have a car. You HAVE to have a phone. Computer. Clothes. Food.
For all of those, the easiest thing most consumers can do is reduce their consumption, which I 100% advocate for. Don't drive a new car, use what you have til it dies. Buy a desktop and upgrade the aspects that fall behind piece meal, instead of buy a new laptop every couple of years. Use your current phone til you can no longer get a replacement battery or screen when it inevitably breaks. Opt for quality clothes and wear them til they're actually inadequate, instead of just out of fashion or boring.
That's all still drop in the bucket, and not all of those can even be reasonably done by everyone. The problems start at the top, and they ultimately have to be fixed at the top.
It's not a drop in the bucket. Not driving, not flying has a major impact, but sure if 1% of people hoard 50% of the ability to emit CO2 and other scarce resources, that's something else that needs to be fixed, but carbon pricing in terms of a footprint or an actual number under every price tag makes sense nevertheless.
It's ABSOLUTELY a drop in the bucket. Less than 1% of people are responsible for greater than 50% of emissions. A quick Google result leads me to a BBC article stating that just 100 fossil fuels producers are responsible for 70% of the emissions in the last 100 years. I don't feel like looking for any other sources tonight, but when I say the individual impact is a drop in the bucket, it's absolutely just a drop.
Don't let that undervalue it though. Each drop in the bucket buys us a bit longer to correct the gigantic ship that is corporations, and we'll need all the time we can get for that one. Keep doing what you can, but extend the empathy towards your fellows who are unable to do as much just yet. We all have a common enemy in this thing.
Yes, but corporations make things for the 99%. Or maybe you mean things outside mainstream society, like private jets, all sorts of military manufacture and upkeep and space vanity projects...I have a hard time understanding what it is that corporations are responsible for that their customers are not responsible for as well.
It's a bit self-feedback for sure. Corporations have an interest in producing as much as they can, as rapidly as they can, because that means they have more goods to sell, which means they can afford to sell them cheaper (funny joke I know) and thus, bring in a larger market. If no one is buying anything, sure, corporations will stop their mega production, but until it hits a certain level, they're just gonna keep going. If we could convince like, 75% of people to adopt a waste conscious attitude towards consumerism, we'd probably see production drop significantly, but I'd say before that it's going to be a less than linear result.
It's probably easier to convince enough of our representatives to do something for their constituents benefit for a change. Or work on getting a representative elected that actually gives a shit. People don't like to compromise when it impacts their way of life too dramatically, unless everyone has to make the same concessions.
I have zero formal education in this topic btw. Any numbers were pulled straight out of my ass, so please don't quote me lol
I think we're only gonna get out of this feedback loop if something drastic happens to knock most of the world's oil exports (war, some miracle UN tax on pumping oil out of the ground) or if prices start to adequately reflect carbon prices i.e. a CO2-standard that reflects the way fuels drive society and how you can't simply hide the price of your lifestyle through subsidies or diluting the future cost of pumping free energy out of the ground on everyone else.
Societies can't do it on their own without an individual blanket incentive (for all social classes) to save on CO2 emission (i.e. something like a currency). Or I guess there is maybe straight-out climate fascism, there is also that solution to this tragedy of commons, but I'd like to try to avoid that.
Most likely. That's all stuff at the top. Stuff that's going to be changed through political action,not any individual action. I was considering as well - corporations also have all of the leverage. They have resources SO VAST that the relative burden of tackling this problem is much smaller for them than it is for us. One company growing a backbone and acting for public good than for pocketbook good would have more impact than a million individuals completely destroying their way of living, and with far less self-harm.
But corporations don't have any incentive to do anything that hurts the profits they extract from the 99% (mostly indexed to energy prices, everyone is selling energy directly or indirectly) and politicians at best just do what people vote for (better standard of living, which mostly depends on cheaper energy prices).