37° heat is depressing.
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I've worked on climate issues since the mid 1990s. And I have to tell you that personally consuming less or not flying make no difference. If you don't believe me, we had a big natural experiment with Covid, and there was a momentary bump that did nothing to stop the drivers of fossil fuel use.
People can do something and what's involved is political resistance, not the electoral kind.
@richpuchalsky Mass boycotts are political action, I think. Like the South Africa apartheid boycott. They make our demands for action clear to politicians. If holiday flights were boycotted, the statement wouldn't just be about consuming less fuel. It would reduce numbers travelling through airports, which are basically shopping malls. And have other knock-on economic effects. This time, there would be no Covid lockdown subsidies for businesses losing money. Anything seems worth a try right now.
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@harib_murshidi @dckim Oh no - it was me not making it clear! I just tapped it out, knowing the context in my own head - not easy to get through a screen
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@clew @hamishb I've been thinking about that a lot lately too - the power we have collectively if we mass-boycotted, say, Amazon. Or those cheap fast-fashion companies that pay low wages and use so much of the planet's energy to make and deliver throwaway clothes. They wouldn't and couldn't do that if so many individual people didn't buy things from them. But as you say - there are rarely any takers when we say the word 'boycott'.
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@CiaraNi
We're, in fact, close to the point where we'll be lucky to survive a heatwave at all. I live in central France, not a hot region, and we hit 47⁰C in the shadow last Monday. More than a thousand people died of heat-related causes in just six days, only in France.
@hemlockcookie@Eetschrijver @hemlockcookie If the number of heatwave deaths in each country were the result of a virus, there'd be emergency measures and lockdowns and preventative measures.
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@Eetschrijver @hemlockcookie If the number of heatwave deaths in each country were the result of a virus, there'd be emergency measures and lockdowns and preventative measures.
@CiaraNi
Absolutely. It boggles the mind.
@hemlockcookie -
@experimentmapass This was my hope too, so I am now demoralised after the first few days of harsh heat where I am. It seems to be having the opposite effect - so many people are coming up with so many 'reasons' why it will make no real difference if individual people modify their individual behaviour. It's starting to feel very 'I'll give you my city-break flights when you pry them from my cold, dead hands on a warm, dead planet'.
@tompearce49 @CiaraNi @annaf @marjon Yes, I understand and am fully aware that this heatwave is having little effect. People still think individually rather than collectively. -
@clew @hamishb I've been thinking about that a lot lately too - the power we have collectively if we mass-boycotted, say, Amazon. Or those cheap fast-fashion companies that pay low wages and use so much of the planet's energy to make and deliver throwaway clothes. They wouldn't and couldn't do that if so many individual people didn't buy things from them. But as you say - there are rarely any takers when we say the word 'boycott'.
I feel (and have felt for decades) that how individuals point their spending dollars/kroner is just as powerful (probably more powerful) as their vote. Unfortunately, most people can't be arsed to change their convenient/comfortable habits.
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@annaf
"I just imagine a world where you say ‘hey there’s this big problem’ and people around you are like ‘let’s work on this together, you’re not alone’ that would be awesome" - that would indeed be awesome. The way things are going, we need that.@tompearce49 @CiaraNi @annaf @marjon I need to hear those words too. I'm not afraid to say: 'I understand there's a problem, so let's work on it together.
I want to see those words on every billboard, in every advertising break, in every supermarket, restaurant, and public space. I want to see those words instead of product prices. I want to see them on the front page of every newspaper and magazine, in every headline, every day, until the problem is fixed. -
@tompearce49 @CiaraNi @annaf @marjon Yes, I understand and am fully aware that this heatwave is having little effect. People still think individually rather than collectively.
@experimentmapass I had really hoped this was going to have some cultural tipping-point effect, but apparently not. Or not so far, at any rate.
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@tompearce49 @CiaraNi @annaf @marjon I need to hear those words too. I'm not afraid to say: 'I understand there's a problem, so let's work on it together.
I want to see those words on every billboard, in every advertising break, in every supermarket, restaurant, and public space. I want to see those words instead of product prices. I want to see them on the front page of every newspaper and magazine, in every headline, every day, until the problem is fixed.@experimentmapass Yes, that would be both a comfort and an actual help
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@wannabemystiker True, unfortunately. I was thinking of this contrast earlier: about once a year, someone learns for the first time that Captain Boycott was a real English land agent who was ostracized in the 1880s by the entire local community in Mayo. That person posts about it online. It goes viral. Everyone cheers those already poverty-stricken people who took action at great risk and invented 'the boycott'. But proposals for inconvenient modern boycotts meet no cheering.
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@urlyman
I agree. My daughter not flying would not decrease the CO2 emissions. The fuel that she might have saved gets consumed by some other tourist, or by the military.In the meantime, part of my pension is coming from Big Oil etc.
There is very little an individual can do. (But of course Trump, Putin, the generals in Sudan, etc could have chosen not to start their wars.)
I’m not giving young people a pass. I’m saying I understand how they get swept along in the activities we’ve told them are the markers of success, and I cut them slack because of it.
The very little that an individual can do is how we come to be where we are, through trillions of very little but destructive and destabilising things.
We *must* choose differently. But every person, young and old, has to reach their own epiphany on it
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@experimentmapass I had really hoped this was going to have some cultural tipping-point effect, but apparently not. Or not so far, at any rate.
@tompearce49 @CiaraNi @annaf @marjon I am fully aware of this too. It is the awareness of this reality, and the lack of meaningful change, that scares me witless. -
I’m not giving young people a pass. I’m saying I understand how they get swept along in the activities we’ve told them are the markers of success, and I cut them slack because of it.
The very little that an individual can do is how we come to be where we are, through trillions of very little but destructive and destabilising things.
We *must* choose differently. But every person, young and old, has to reach their own epiphany on it
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@richpuchalsky Mass boycotts are political action, I think. Like the South Africa apartheid boycott. They make our demands for action clear to politicians. If holiday flights were boycotted, the statement wouldn't just be about consuming less fuel. It would reduce numbers travelling through airports, which are basically shopping malls. And have other knock-on economic effects. This time, there would be no Covid lockdown subsidies for businesses losing money. Anything seems worth a try right now.
An organized mass boycott, sure. But not individual action.
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I dunno. Some of it is conscious, by the most lost people. But I think it’s mostly the aggregated property of what most of us do at the individual scale.
A billion “yeah I could do the low carbon thing but there are ‘reasons’ why this journey, this meeting, this purchase can’t do that”.
What we most critically lack are contexts in which to talk about why our ‘reasons’ are dust and what to do about it
@urlyman
With the simple and easily implemented scheme of "polluter pays" you would find people's minds wonderfully concentrated on this kind of conversation.Apart from EU emissions trading and CBAM there has not been much of this. Moneyed interests axed it in Canada. Revenue should of course be paid out as UBI.
@CiaraNi @tsturm -
I’m not giving young people a pass. I’m saying I understand how they get swept along in the activities we’ve told them are the markers of success, and I cut them slack because of it.
The very little that an individual can do is how we come to be where we are, through trillions of very little but destructive and destabilising things.
We *must* choose differently. But every person, young and old, has to reach their own epiphany on it
"The very little that an individual can do is how we come to be where we are, through trillions of very little but destructive and destabilising things." Yes. Well put. We must indeed choose differently, including individually.
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@tompearce49 @CiaraNi @annaf @marjon I am fully aware of this too. It is the awareness of this reality, and the lack of meaningful change, that scares me witless.
@experimentmapass This resonates. It is very unnerving to see the lack of meaningful change.
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An organized mass boycott, sure. But not individual action.
@richpuchalsky They are the same thing. A mass boycott is just a collection of individual actions.
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@CiaraNi @jakobtougaard @TCatInReality
And the a holiday in your own Country became a 'Staycation'
Which was all my childhood holidays, and our childrens too, camping around the UK.
Which they tell us they loved 🥰🥰@DoubleTreble Yes! Childhood holidays in the countryside in our own country are happy memories that stay with us for years.
