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twenty firms are behind a third of all carbon emissions
I wish people would stop saying this. The people responsible for the carbon emissions are the end users, who are really Western consumers and governments (e.g. the US department of defence).
NickCJ-
The people responsible for the carbon emissions are the end users, who are really Western consumers and governments (e.g. the US department of defence).
Well, obviously providers and consumers are not wholly separable. Of course 'Western' lifestyle expectations are much to blame, but manufacturers also manufacture 'needs' and hence demand. There's absolutely no doubt that car manufacturers have massively contributed to increasing demand for cars, for instance.
Equally obviously, ethical behaviour on the part of companies probably won't happen without ethical behaviour on the part of 'consumers' and vice versa. So, both 'sides' have to work together in (effectively) going back along the road that we have travelled, e.g. in transportation reducing the need (and desire) to travel (increasing both is a hallmark of hypermobile modernism), but the difficulty with placing the consumers (assuming we're not talking about large governmental agencies like the US Department of Defense) first in this is that each of them has very little power, and it's elected political power that needs to get the ball rolling.
Oliver Schick
Could you elaborate on this?
I think protest is needed and welcome – climate change is clearly a crisis. Side note: If we collectively renamed the phrase to ‘Climate Collapse’ it might do something to highlight the urgency of the matter.
But surely how I clean my porridge bowl every morning has absolutely zero impact on climate change? If twenty firms are behind a third of all carbon emissions and pro fossil fuel think tanks, lobbyists, politicians and in turn governments continue to block real measures of change and a switch to renewables, then unless I’m washing my bowl in crude oil, well, does it matter?
Isn’t essentially what’s needed a total restructuring of capitalism? I often end up thinking that the very people at the top who could create meaningful change are the ones who have successfully made a lot of people at the bottom believe that using a cardboard straw is all they need do.
I’m genuinely not trolling here or being intentionally obtuse and I’m happy to be educated but I’d like to receive more than the often said “well if everyone thought like that...” response. Because isn’t the point that extinction rebellion highlights so well, that it doesn’t matter if we all scrubbed our porridge bowls clean with brute force alone, when it’s forecast that oil firms will produce an additional 7m barrels per day over the next decade, it’s those at the top who need to be forced to change.