The climate change narrative insists that we are all doing something wrong. The results, they say, will be catastrophic for the planet. What we are doing wrong is: activities that put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That all of our private and public behaviors result in carbon dioxide emissions is pretty much true, but is carbon dioxide emission the worst thing the western consumer is doing environmentally speaking?
When is the last time you heard discussion of any other form of industrial pollution? The production of EV batteries is environmentally catastrophic. Most consumer electronics carry a similar pollution cost. While activists shout for us to stop using cars, disposable consumer products continue to dominate the market.
I’m not a fan of doomers, but I am concerned that we are covering up real ecological damage with the specter of climate change. Thoughts?
100%. plastic waste alone has done more damage than carbon emissions ever could. Plastic allows us to have all of these cheap and """disposable""" items so they can be sold and resold to us. To regulate plastic is to regulate the disposable goods industry itself, something that every big business tycoon is heavily invested in one way or another. So of course there's no serious campaign against plastic.
but carbon emissions? not only are they basically invisible to the naked eye and therefore easily fudged, a sudden push to eliminate carbon emissions artificially creates a multitude of new industries. if one can be the initial investor in these new industries, and these industries become the norm, they will be billionaires.
that's all the government push for carbon emissions is about: riding the wave of a brand new industry. it's crony capitalism at its finest.
climate change is a naked power grab mechanism similar to any other crisis they've invented or engineered. it has the added benefit of not being easily questioned by normies as normies have no scientific skills anymore. we don't even effectively teach the scientific method anymore to your average retarded university grad.
it's not about "crony capitalism", or communism. It's about turning you into the obedient cattle-person you so desperately want to be and absolving you of all responsibility for it, and your desire to be cattle.
Plastic waste, at least what Western consumers produce, does no damage whatsoever - except the damage caused by the West's outsourcing of useless 'recycling' to countries with a waste problem.
See this great article by John Tierney
The ecological damage making the most impact was us trying to modernize the third world.
Did we every actually try to modernize the global south? Or did we just import foreign workers to suppress local wages while selling chinesium seconds to keep those who couldn't immigrate happy?
Yes. It's called "The Green Revolution". We basically pushed hard on chemical fertilizer farming. It massively increased food production and increased population sizes in the global south, making some places self-sustainable with food where they previously hadn't been capable of that.
Additionally, Africa is entering an industrial phase (both with and without help from the Chinese). The horrors of the 2nd Congo War were the result of western Leftists propagating socialism and Leftism among tribal conflicts, but Africa is starting to recover from the horrors of it's post-colonial period.
Even as someone who recognizes anthropogenic climate change, there's no questions that plastics, damaged soil, and damaged waterways are much more likely to be an immediate threat.
Consumer electronics probably carry more of a cost than a vehicle.
Worse, I'm afraid they are using "climate change" as a quick way of diverting additional funds to their embezzlement schemes; while also pretending like they are doing something for the horrors they actually inflict.
Newsome keeps crying "climate change" while California's wildfire policy has been provably wrong for 50 years and it's only getting worse. The government of Maui may have directly killed over a thousand people from misconduct at best, and they are crying about climate change to deflect from mass murder.
Andrew Cuomo did the same thing when it looked like Lee Zeldin might win in NY State, and possibly start charges against him for the 43,000 counts of negligent homicide he committed. He distracted everyone by saying "Ahhhh, Imma an italiano! I toucha dah women's faces!" and the Democrats quietly ushered him out with a fake scandal instead of a murder case.
and if socialism could work to preserve the environment, why has it been Socialist and Communit countries that have been the absolute worst for the environment on every level.
The 'we can save the environment if we sacrifice' message that is widely propagated by the media is both a smokescreen and a means to extend control over the general population because current tech makes it TOO easy for those in charge to become informed that they risk losing their last grasp of power.
The planet is already beginning to repair any damage we are doing, from ozone layer repairing itself, had reports of a new type of bacteria that consumes plastic, if we were doing too much damage to the Earth, it'd delete us with a new virus that wasn't made in a lab or just activate ring of fire failsafe and kill the majority of us in a volcanic ice age. Most of the environmental measures required can be done overnight with efficiency upgrades on all businesses around the world and nuclear power.
That's not a glorious counter by nature. It's one of the greatest environmental victories over the past 50 years (along with the re-introduction of fish to the Cuyahoga River).
In that case, the reduction of specific industrial chemicals that had a horrific effect on Ozone really did have an effect, and it didn't take as long as we thought it could. It only took 30 years, rather than 50. Cancer rates are coming down in South America because of it.
That's what I mean, that the industry shifted and had a huge affect than if they tried to say the public were the ones that individually had to do something.
The most we need the public to do is dispose of waste and trash responsibly and they fail at that basic task looking at a lot of cities.
Water, soil, and forest management are frankly more important than landfill management (but we could still do way better with that, including mining them for energy).
I'm not even talking landfill, I'm just talking about putting rubbish in trash cans, the times I've been in cities and felt dirty because there's half eaten fast food on the streets or plastic bags littering the ground, that probably affects the environment in just the natural wildlife in cities itself.
But land management is key, it's why the targeting of farmers reveals how much of a shit they really care about the environment.
Their goal isn't land management, it's land redistribution. Gaia will only be pleased if the right people are allowed to tend to her fields... or something.
And yeah, Leftists don't pick up after themselves, why would they. Abandoning responsibility is a feature.
Completely and utterly false. Unsurprising coming from you.
First the ozone hole was discovered in 1983, and the Montreal Protocols were established in 1987. That isn't enough time to determine what the natural state of the ozone hole is. Its complexly bullshit to claim it is human caused, but they went ahead with it anyways, because communist, who you are helping, always do.
First there is the part where the Protocols of the Elders of Montreal actually worked. They didn't. Also.
Then there is the part where they claim that the ozone hole is "healing" when it was at its 13th largest extent. Note, the ozone hole essentially completely recovers every Antarctic winter, as ozone returns to a level that is comparable to most of the rest of the atmosphere.
Finally there is the fact that there is an ozone hole over the tropics which completely invalidates the "CFC destroy the ozone layer" model.
Not just damage, but mismanagement and corruption.
California is probably the worst example, but Maui looks to be the same shit. Poor land and forestry management by the government, combined with utility companies not clearing fuel from under powerlines lead to massive fires. These are then blamed on climate change.
Other examples are floods and landslides. Massive, but normal or certainly not unprecedented, rainfall hits a place that has had a combination of massive logging operations clear cutting huge swathes of land, and or property development on known flood areas. The inevitable happens, and the landslide wipes out a whole neighbourhood while the huge development that sits at the bend of the river and is named "the place that floods every 10 years" in the local language gets a few meters of water.
Add onto this land mismanagement either property development, windfarm developers or climate activists with matches and you get this summers fires around the Mediterranean.
At the heart of this is a mix of environmentalists demanding an end to logging and proper forestry management, lazy, broke or corrupt local government failing to clear drainage ditches (how the south of England flooded a few years ago), or just deferred or embezzled maintenance building up fuel load until a powerline sparks or lightning strike burns down a whole town with 1k+ kids.
I can easily think of three more pressing issues than Carbon Dioxide.
Plastic Waste / microplastics
"Forever Chemicals" i.e. industrial solvents entering the water cycle
Radioactivity / Fukishima's backwash into the oceans. (notice how it's all sea salt now? yeaaah...)
All three will bioconcentrate with disastrous consequences, but yes. Keep worrying about the pollutant that plants will photosynthesize out of existence.
Pay no attention to the pollution that will actually ruin us.
Sacrifice more to change the weather, peons!
Absolutely yes. I've had this same thought for nearly a decade.
It's the perfect scam for the elites and yes they are obviously coveting up all sorts of issues with it.
I've always been against disposable plastics. It's a wasteful way of doing things and all the plastic we send to Asia (via recylcing) just gets tossed into the pacific.