What’s wrong is assuming people even have the means to travel in the first place. Next time you take the bus to work, ask yourself how many of the people in that bus could afford to travel on their vacations, both financially and time-wise. You act as if the bottom 75% of the population of whichever country you’re talking about (I assume USA) live luxurious lives of overabundance, when in fact a majority of people in capitalist countries have basically no choice on what they consume, let alone what they could abstain from.
Waste isn’t high because of individual lifestyle choices or “carbon footprint” or whatever else, it’s because the ruling classes have engineered highly profitable societies with complete disregard for their wage slave wellbeing or the environment that sustain those same wage slaves.
As two other exercises, how would somebody in a city with no public transport be able to drive less? And how would people with no time to cook and no access to affordable organic food be able to eat less meat from those cheap industrial foodstuffs? If you wish to prescribe actions to people, you should first learn about their material conditions.
First, I don’t completely disagree with some of your points about problems in the US. I think you are infantilizing people to an extent by ignoring the agency they do have and what they can control.
I never made any of the claims you are arguing against. Please check usernames.
What’s wrong is assuming people even have the means to travel in the first place.
I never made that assumption.
All I did was ask what is the problem with not traveling when taking time off work. The person I responded to sounded like not traveling was somehow problematic. I just wanted clarification.
As two other exercises, how would somebody in a city with no public transport be able to drive less?
I couldn’t agree more. Car dependency is the cause of sooo many of our problems in the US.
Waste isn’t high because of individual lifestyle
Yes and no. E.g. A large segment of the US have CHOSEN to drive around in monster trucks and canyoneros instead of more reasonable vehicles. A large portion vote for politicians (GOP) who refuse to even acknowledge it is a problem.
I think the paycheck to paycheck claims are somewhat exaggerated. There are a lot of people with good incomes that this applies to because of bad choices like the aforementioned vehicle choices, buying larger houses than they need, hiring out every simple job that 99% of people could easily do with a 2 minute video (like replacing the flap in a running toilet), annual extravagant vacations, etc. I think the paycheck to paycheck claims need to be calculated by household size, local cost of living, and income. These people would both reduce their contribution to GHG emissions AND be in a financially better position if they made better choices.
As far as food choices, non beef options are available pretty much everywhere food is available. Beef is generally more expensive than other meats. Beef is the biggest contributor to GHG emissions. A person of limited means could easily choose the cheaper AND environmentally better options.
basically no choice on what they consume
Not entirely true. I can choose to buy a monster truck to commute to work or a small car. Ideally that choice would include transit, bike, etc. I can choose beef, pork, chicken, or lentils for my protein. Even at corner stores, fast food, etc, it is pretty easy to avoid beef. Sure, there are problems like car dependency and the ideal choice would include transit, bike, etc. To claim no choice isn’t really true. The kicker is, the greener option is often the cheaper option.
Its not that people have to make new choices it’s that the general patterns of how goods flow under capitalism require the resource consumption we see now. Food in general is a huge one, but also disposable items, the length of work, cars, housing patterns, etc.
Everyone (will say in the us for simplicity, but most industrialized places) is going to have to live differently if you stop those 100 companies from polluting. It takes effort to upkeep non disposable items, to live in a world where objects have purpose. Change must take place in how people live if you remove capitalism to remove pollution.
What’s wrong is assuming people even have the means to travel in the first place. Next time you take the bus to work, ask yourself how many of the people in that bus could afford to travel on their vacations, both financially and time-wise. You act as if the bottom 75% of the population of whichever country you’re talking about (I assume USA) live luxurious lives of overabundance, when in fact a majority of people in capitalist countries have basically no choice on what they consume, let alone what they could abstain from.
Waste isn’t high because of individual lifestyle choices or “carbon footprint” or whatever else, it’s because the ruling classes have engineered highly profitable societies with complete disregard for their wage slave wellbeing or the environment that sustain those same wage slaves.
As two other exercises, how would somebody in a city with no public transport be able to drive less? And how would people with no time to cook and no access to affordable organic food be able to eat less meat from those cheap industrial foodstuffs? If you wish to prescribe actions to people, you should first learn about their material conditions.
First, I don’t completely disagree with some of your points about problems in the US. I think you are infantilizing people to an extent by ignoring the agency they do have and what they can control.
I never made any of the claims you are arguing against. Please check usernames.
I never made that assumption.
All I did was ask what is the problem with not traveling when taking time off work. The person I responded to sounded like not traveling was somehow problematic. I just wanted clarification.
I couldn’t agree more. Car dependency is the cause of sooo many of our problems in the US.
Yes and no. E.g. A large segment of the US have CHOSEN to drive around in monster trucks and canyoneros instead of more reasonable vehicles. A large portion vote for politicians (GOP) who refuse to even acknowledge it is a problem.
I think the paycheck to paycheck claims are somewhat exaggerated. There are a lot of people with good incomes that this applies to because of bad choices like the aforementioned vehicle choices, buying larger houses than they need, hiring out every simple job that 99% of people could easily do with a 2 minute video (like replacing the flap in a running toilet), annual extravagant vacations, etc. I think the paycheck to paycheck claims need to be calculated by household size, local cost of living, and income. These people would both reduce their contribution to GHG emissions AND be in a financially better position if they made better choices.
As far as food choices, non beef options are available pretty much everywhere food is available. Beef is generally more expensive than other meats. Beef is the biggest contributor to GHG emissions. A person of limited means could easily choose the cheaper AND environmentally better options.
Not entirely true. I can choose to buy a monster truck to commute to work or a small car. Ideally that choice would include transit, bike, etc. I can choose beef, pork, chicken, or lentils for my protein. Even at corner stores, fast food, etc, it is pretty easy to avoid beef. Sure, there are problems like car dependency and the ideal choice would include transit, bike, etc. To claim no choice isn’t really true. The kicker is, the greener option is often the cheaper option.
Its not that people have to make new choices it’s that the general patterns of how goods flow under capitalism require the resource consumption we see now. Food in general is a huge one, but also disposable items, the length of work, cars, housing patterns, etc.
Everyone (will say in the us for simplicity, but most industrialized places) is going to have to live differently if you stop those 100 companies from polluting. It takes effort to upkeep non disposable items, to live in a world where objects have purpose. Change must take place in how people live if you remove capitalism to remove pollution.