this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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I always hate that most people are happy to blame corporations, forgetting we are consuming that's why corporations are creating.
yeah, it is like blaming china for a pollution, when that pollution is externality of cheap shit we buy from them. it is our pollution in the end.
that isn't an argument for blaming the end consumer, because that problem is not going to be solved from the bottom, but it is also childish to pretend like we, the consumers, are not complicit.
You should read Terry Pratchett's Boots Theory. Many people don't have the option to pay more up front to consume less, if there is even an option to buy a more expensive but longer-lasting item in a given market any more.
well many do and they will buy cheap shit anyway. and i am not talking about boots, i am talking about people who have a dog, which is clearly non-essential expense, and they buy him shitty toy from temu. is that rubber toxic? who knows, who cares, look how cheap it is!
Well said
I agree. It's obvious to me that it will never be a tidy "it's just them to blame" scenario but people really want it to be, regardless. I suspect the downvote crew will show up soon...
The corporations blame the consumer, the consumer blames the corporations and everyone gets to consume and profit blamelessly.
Yeah, that's a nice fairy tales to keep burning the planet.
In reality the main consumers are a handful of rich people including those owning the corporations and paying off politicians and media while 95% of the people would not consume anything if not forced to do it and are also contributing only a miniscule amount to the total consumption.
Not true. Our cars account for more than 15% of the problem. Our meat is about the same. With just those two things, we are over the 25% of the "factor 4" from Rio. It is oversimplified, but it gives the idea: if the Ultra richs stop polluting, we are still doomed if the rest of us doesn't do something either.
Sure... people spend hours in congested traffic because they love their cars so much, not because they lack alternatives for transportation. And it's totally normal that I can pay less for 500g of cheap meat than for a 500g bag of rice, and that's not caused by insane subsidies for meat producers.
The issues are systemic and guess what... the majority is not in power to change the system.
The top 10% of people create something like 50% of the carbon footprint which means 90% of people create the rest of it.
No one's blameless.
But that also means that if the top 10% cut their consumption by half, we would have blown past the required targets to not have global warming pass 1.5° C, even if the other 90% didn't change a thing. And they would have still been engaging in massive consumption by anyone else's standards.
I also they've that a large amount of the bottom 90% are paying the top 10% to do it.
Also the difference between create and consume is important. even if shell only had 1 employee and 1 shareholder, that person would have many customers paying. you can measure both of course.