37° heat is depressing.
-
the best choice is to give away money that is in excess of your own needs, if you can afford it. Every day that we have enough food for that day is a blessing, and it's as if we have everything.
Most of the poverty that we see is people actively preventing others from getting what is provided in abundance.
That's the reality of tyranny.
-
There is a pervasive sense of "what difference does it make?" when it's the 100 corporations and the 1% who do the biggest amount of damage. And there is a lot of truth in that, but waiting for that to be solved will not help prepare us for what is coming either. There is a lot of room between obsessing over "individual footprint" and doing at all nothing to change. Capitalism encourages FOMO; choosing to miss out is part of the resistance.
My response to the “it’s all from 100 corporations “ is “all right! We just boycott those!”
No takers. No suggestions of a plan to control them.
-
@CiaraNi @dckim is this some kind of a taunt to the 'poor of the world' or something ?!
correct me if I am wrongThe 'regular' things you have mentioned are also not a regular thing for the majority of the world population i.e. the global south ! I for one have not even seen the insides of an airliner yet,
@harib_murshidi @dckim Sorry if it was unclear - I meant it ironically. My point was exactly that - that over-consumption and flights are not regular things for the majority of people on the planet. And that the '10%' minority who have these privileges can modify their behaviour as a collective signal, instead of just pointing at the 1% and saying: I will not change my consumer behaviour until the billionaires all give up their jets'.
-
@harib_murshidi We are in agreement
-
@harib_murshidi We are in agreement
I stand corrected, I am gonna delete what I said before... sorry it was difficult to grasp the 'irony' behind some statements, sometimes !
-
@harib_murshidi @dckim Sorry if it was unclear - I meant it ironically. My point was exactly that - that over-consumption and flights are not regular things for the majority of people on the planet. And that the '10%' minority who have these privileges can modify their behaviour as a collective signal, instead of just pointing at the 1% and saying: I will not change my consumer behaviour until the billionaires all give up their jets'.
Well said, I took everything in the positive sense. I can tell that you are a wonderful and thoughtful person.
Who else would take time to reply to whatever I originally wrote? I have forgotten the first subject matter by now...
-
As long as people can continue to have dialogue with each other, and do not become polarized and then adversaries to each other, then everything is actually much better.
This is the way to support each other towards positive results.
-
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.
-
@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
-
@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'.
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
@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
-
@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.
-
@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
-
@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.
