Personal vs Corporate Emissions

[Emrie]

I'm sure you've heard or seen this debate that people have where one side says there's really no point in trying to reduce your own emissions because "70% of all carbon emissions come from 100 companies" and the other side disagrees and says that it's still important and every individual action matters.

I wanted to bring this discussion to this forum here and hear people's thoughts on it.

Personally I think that individual action does matter. Within reason, of course. Like trying to buy new clothes that are both ethically sourced, made near you (like anywhere in Europe for me), and are also the color and style I like starts to become almost impossible. But taking the train to go on vacation in Europe as opposed to the plane, honestly that's a no-brainer. Trains are pretty comfortable and you can watch a couple movies and the time flies. Also the flight might be faster but there's still only one plane a day so you're not really saving that much time. And the train might be more expensive but it's never outrageously expensive.

I'm also not stupid enough to think that's gonna solve climate change which is why I vote for politicians that care about the climate and are ready to take action. Because ultimately we need our governments that have a lot of leverage to take action and solve this problem.

[Yarco]

For me the problem is companies trying to cut things that contribute a fraction of a fraction but cause a big decrease in quality of life. Like swapping out plastic straws for paper ones. They're inferior in every way... they affect the taste and turn into a soggy mess before you can finish your drink. I'm not convinced that by the time you bleach the paper and everything else that it's that much better for the environment. 

You could make more of an argument for getting rid of plastic bags. But personally I re-use my plastic grocery bags to dump all the dust into when I'm vacuuming, and in garbage/kitchen bins. So if I don't get them for 5 cents with my groceries, I'm just going to have to pay more to buy bags off the shelf.

Then you get into recycling being a scam. Less than 10% of the plastics you put in your bins actually get recycled. Most of it gets shipped to Southeast Asia to get burned or whatever they do with it. It can often take more energy to recycle a material than to just make it new.

Even if you got to net 0 emissions in North America and Europe, there's China and India contributing more than us. And is it really ethical to force them to stop polluting and shut the door on them, after we took advantage of cheap polluting technology to advance our own societies ahead of them? Like if you wanted to industrialize and modernize Africa today, making them comply with environmental regulations would make things 10x harder on them.

There is too much corruption going on with companies buying carbon emission offset credits rather than actually reducing their emissions, and all kinds of other corruption. Plus billionaires flying to Davos on private jets to lecture us about climate change isn't a good look either. 

I feel like there is a ton of bureaucracy in the system wasting the money, like how lots of charities keep half the money they raise and the CEO makes $100k+ per year.

Ultimately I think taking personal accountability to reduce your emissions is ultimately pointless. But it's also the only way that you can be 100% sure you're actually making a difference or doing something useful.

[Philipp]

@Yarco 0% responsibility mindset

@Emrie I d say the difference between individual and corporate emission is a tricky one to begin with, because when you consume, you could say its you individual emission, but you can also its the emission of the company that produced what you are consuming. In some sense, all emissions are individual emission and corporate emissions. 

the more interesting difference is probably between individual efforts and collective efforts. For collective problems such as climate change, collective sollutions are definitly the way to go. And with collective I am not even meaning nation wide, but supra national solutions. However politics will not make wonders. If you tax, oil, every one who needs a car to get to work, will protest, as they have in france for example. It to simple to say the politicians will solve it and I can continue my life as is. The politicians can create solutions, if we are willing to accept change as individuals. 

Furthermore the economic sphere which is basicly responsible for climate change, is globalized and has somewhat escaped the grasp of political control. In this sense the situation might need also solutions which do not only try to go over politics, but which go in a more direct way. Still collective solutions will be needed and this could mean create civic education movement for climate, new forms of companies which are less profit driven, communes, inspirational work, creating technologies that could help (AI could for example radically improve recycling), etc.

there is pride and honor in doing your individual part and ultimatily we will all have to make some efforts, even we are forced to by collective regulations. However if this is something you are really passionate about, you will need to search for collective strategies. I would also avoid blaming yourself or other individuals for climate change. 

[aurum]

@Emrie

Reducing measurable carbon emissions is already a reductionistic solution to a complex, holistic and systemic issue.

Which is not to say we shouldn’t reduce them. It just means there is way more to take into account, including things we may never be able to measure or understand.

People want to jump to simple solutions with a clear, definable goal and steps to take. But in this case, I think that instinct may be doing us more harm than good.

Can we perhaps temporarily sit in the uncomfortable, scary space of not knowing how to solve ecological crisis?

People want to take action, but action without proper orientation is often less than useful. It can actually be counterproductive. And I’m not convinced we are collectively well-oriented on this issue as of this moment.

[Bobby_2021]

The world economic form is coming up with a software that can help individuals track their personal carbon footprint to be "more responsible citizens".

Of course they are funded by the big oil corporations. 

[zurew]

17 hours ago, Philipp said:

@Yarco 0% responsibility mindset

Nah, there is truth to what he is saying.

We can talk all about these issues, but they will never get solved, if we can't get the incentives right. If there is no incentive to stop polluting, then why would anyone stop it? If there is no incentive for companies, to stop polluting (because in most cases, polluting is more profitable compared to not polluting) ,then why would they stop? They won't stop just because we make a moral argument, most comapnies won't give any fuck about morality, but they will change , if they can see that not polluting is more profitable than polluting.

On an individual level, why would anyone stop polluting? Why would anyone invest time or money or any effort solving this issue, if they don't gain almost any personal benefit from it? From their perspective ,it looks something like this: " So, i need to make a significant sacrifice right now, to reduce the global pollution by 0.0000000000001% later, and i know that i won't get any special reward for it in the short term, and i won't get any personal reward for it in the future " 

This is the core question: Why would anyone or any company or country stop polluting ,if in most of the cases, polluting is more profitable for them than not polluting? Talking about moral arguments won't cut it, talking about saving the World won't cut it either.

I think that money is a core driver here. 

We can say here, that the incentive would be, that if we change, then we can live longer on this Earth, but that reasoning won't cut it because of countless reasons)

1. Not everyone agrees that there is a problem
2. When we are talking about a problem like "carbon emissions" we aren't talking about just carbon emissions , because there is a system behind this problem and thats why its occured in the firstplace. If we really want to solve such problems we have to take a systemic approach.
3. People who recognize that there is a problem, don't want to make any sacrifice, because they don't see how one individual polluting less will make any significant global change
4. In most of the cases, the first who make  sacrifice, will lose the most in the short-term. Almost no one wants to optimize themselves for the longterm, because all our systems are rewarding in the short-term. If you lose in the short-term you can lose the race because others will tear you down (in this age, obviously there is  a rivalous dynamic between us)
5. Lot of people think that this issue is too complex so they are freezed and they feel hopeless
6. The reward can only be seen in the far future. Humans are not optimized in this age, to do tasks to get rewarded in the far future. We are optimized to get immediate rewards for our actions.
7. etcetc

16 hours ago, aurum said:

Reducing measurable carbon emissions is already a reductionistic solution to a complex, holistic and systemic issue.

Yeah, i agree 100%.

Edited June 2, 2022 by zurew

[DocWatts]

At a root level, the issue is that in their current form market mechanisms work to privatize gains while offloading social and ecological costs on to the public in a non-transparent manner.

If a company like McDonalds had to factor in externalities in to its pricing model, there's no way that they would be able to sell a hamburger for $1. 

Now in theory there's no reason that markets have to work in this manner. One can imagine more enlightened forms of markets where socially and ecologically destructive modes of production are rendered noncompetitive as a result of these invisible subsidies being discontinued.