Tommy Siegel | Bluesky | website
Transcript
Comic in 4 Panels:
Header: It’s That Easy!
Panel 1: The year is 1994. A dad with short black hair, in a blue shirt, red shorts, and white sneakers with calf high white socks, kneels with one arm resting on a knee and the other raised demonstratingly in front of a kid in a green ball cap, yellow shirt, blue pants, and green sneakers. There is a round metal trash can behind them.
Dad: Pick up your litter and save the Earth!
Panel 2: The year is 2004. Same dad, but in brown cargo shorts, brown shoes, and ankle high white socks speaking to the same kid. There is a green recycle bucket behind them.
Dad: Recycle and you can save the Earth!
Panel 3: The year is 2014. Same dad, but wearing a bike helmet, black athletic pants, and black sneakers to the same kid. A bike is behind them.
Dad: Reduce your carbon footprint and you can save the Earth!
Panel 4: The year is 2024. Same dad, but he’s in the same outfit from panel 1. There is a massive fire behind them.
Dad: Completely restructure global economic systems and you may be able to save a remnant of humanity!
The vast majority of emissions are to serve the desires of the masses. The "pollution of corporations" is mostly used in making stuff for ordinary people, not private jets.
You make it seem like these desires arise spontaneously. Corporations have been using advertising in a systematic way since the 20th century to induce demand and shift behavior patterns of the masses.
With your logic, all business decisions can be laid at the feet of common people. "Yes, shrinkflation exists and is terrible, but it is for ordinary people, so they are to blame." "Sure, companies sell bullshit insurance to consumers, but the people buy it, so it's really the masses who cause it." And so on.
Then you should direct your attention in two directions to deal with that, I think:
Look, I get it. We've been fed a story about individual responsibility for generations. It's hard to break free from that mindset.
I experience this myself when I see cigarette butts on the side of the path when walking my dog. "Fucking smokers!" is my first reaction. But then I remember that people who smoke are suffering from an addiction they were tricked into and the only thing they get out of smoking is poverty, sickness, and possibly death. On the other hand, the immoral corporations who sold them the cigarette butt lying on the ground have made a tidy profit of the smoker, as well as the trash that the company generated.
Look, I get it, you hate corporations and so don't want to criticise anyone else. And you feel like you're better than other people so you write patronising replies that start, "look, I get it."
But no tobacco corporation created propaganda to discourage smokers from putting their fag end in a bin. No level of nicotine addiction prevents that basic act of care. That was a choice the smoker made. Your understandable displeasure with harmful corporations is giving you a blind spot to the actions everyone else needs to take.
Remember that two groups can need to change their behaviour.
It's not about some kind of petty hate for corporations, it's about facts and reality. Systematic problems require systematic solutions. Most ordinary people are just trying to survive and will utilize whatever the lowest common denominator is at the moment.
You realize that the "carbon footprint" and "personal responsibility" campaigns were all started by oil corporations, right? You realize all the recycling ads and "nonprofits" were started by oil and plastic companies? You realize that the anti-smoking campaigns were also run by big tobacco corporations? There's a reason all of these ad campaigns put the responsibility on the regular person, and not the multi billion dollar corporations making the actual things and making things accessible.
Arguments like this always sound like they're trying to be "logical", like "obviously everyone needs to just start doing the right thing" while completely ignoring the material reality, the "personal responsibility" argument goes completely against human psychology and leads to defeatism, "well, not enough people will start caring enough to recycle or stop using plastic, etc, so humanity is doomed anyways 🤷". Stop defending corporations, they're literally the ones that create the world around us that we have access to.
Stop pretending anything other than systematic solutions will solve any of this, and systematic solutions start with public discourse, like what we're doing right here.
According to Wikipedia (so happy to be corrected) the term was coined in 1999 by the BBC, and only later taken up by oil giants.
So no, I don't "realise" anything of the kind, and casting your opinions, which seem to be contrary to reality, as facts that I merely have to realise is again patronising.
All the while you've ignored the last line of my comment, and ignored all the people, including me, who have changed their behaviour.
I've had enough of that. I'm sure your condescension and blinkered immunity to discussion will convert a lot of people to your worldview, but not me. Bye.
I didn't say they "coined the term", I said they "started the campaigns", which I treat as a fact because it IS a fact, not an opinion, it's an established part of our history at this point. Corporations did massive PR campaigns inundating us with advertising about saving our planet one plastic bottle at a time, and our entire culture of recycling is built off this messaging. The recycling symbol was also not created by plastic companies, but they took it and lobbied Congress into creating the plastic standards that put a strikingly similar logo on plastic that doesn't actually mean it's recyclable, just signifies the type of plastic, but failed to mention that, instead we just saw ads on TV telling us "look for this symbol and that means recycle!", even today millions of people still think it means they can just toss it in the recycle bin, and it created the false impression that plastic companies are doing more than they actually are.
The fact that the thing you're outraged about is "maybe corporations have most of the responsibility here" is wild to me. What you're calling my "world view" is actually just a desire for people to hold power accountable and stop licking boots and making excuses. What I'm sick of is people acting like the small guy is making excuses for not doing better when most are barely surviving out here, meanwhile mega corps are pouring their fecal matter everywhere and saying "you can clean that up one carbon step at a time!".
Not once did I ignore the fact that a lot of people have changed their behavior, and not once did I suggest that we shouldn't all do our best as well, but our best on its own will literally never fix the problem, not even close to enough people recycle, or worse, have access to actual recycling. Take plastic for example, the vast majority of plastic is not recyclable from a functional standpoint, what I mean by that is most people's local recycling plants do not have the means to recycle many of the plastics that are technically recyclable, and that's not even to mention all the plastic that literally cannot be recycled regardless of access.
Literally all I'm suggesting is "maybe we should focus on systematic solutions since it's such a big problem", and you're acting like that's some extremist political standpoint.
Also I didn't miss your last sentence, but I'm not sure if you realize, but pretending the responsibility is equally on individual people recycling and big corporations, you're actually dismissing the amount of power and influence that corporations have when it comes to this issue.
I'm glad you are recycling and have better habits, I do my best as well, and I have mad respect for anyone doing their best to save this planet, but let's not pretend that even close to enough. I am only trying to get it across that we must hold corporations responsible and should not be diminishing that. If my comment came off as "who cares if individuals recycle", then I do actually apologize as that was not what I was getting at. Even if it's not going to change anything in the biggest picture, we should absolutely still be doing what we can on an individual basis, if anything, just out of principle.
Yes and no.
With stricter ecological protections, corporations would be forced to decrease their carbon footprint. In their absence, the choice for the consumer is limited, and likely leaving you without a properly ecological option.
(Bad) Example: plastic straws. Before the ban, finding alternatives was difficult. Now suddenly it’s possible.
Same goes for computers with ecologically sourced rare metals. There is just no good option at the moment, and this will be the situation up until stronger regulations will come in effect.
This point exactly. It seems to me that a lot of people don't really understand how profit motive works in our capitalist world. Corporations will burn the entire planet so long as the burning is far enough down the road that it doesn't affect today's profit projections. I find it sad, because we as a species learned quite a while back that the only way capitalism can actually work is with a strong hand steering it to make sure it doesn't drive us right off (another) cliff. This is the entire reason for the rise of modern liberalism (not talking liberals as in Democratic party, talking liberalism as in liberal democracy, which was a political/economic movement to protect capitalism from eating it's own tail).
Of course this is why I'm not a liberal, I think the idea that capitalism is a beast that can be tamed is flawed, liberalism and capitalist regulations are just Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill. Ultimately under capitalism we have individuals with far too much power, basically kings, but instead of kings of land, kings of industry, which is actually a far more dangerous form of power, because it's significantly more versatile and can reshape itself for survival when needed, it can even run PR campaigns to fool the populace into thinking it's changed, when in reality it's just the abusive narcissistic spouse convincing you to come back for another beating.
Anyways, I digress, corporations will ONLY prioritize profits in the short term, to ensure things are built that benefit society we must have strong regulations guiding them, paired with charismatic leaders who can push back against the "wah wah baby doesn't like big bag government" messages coming from their corporate PR campaigns, claiming "we can't possibly survive" even though they are swimming in massive profits.
We could ban single use plastic containers globally, we have alternatives that work quite well. Bamboo can replace all plastic utensils.
Hell most of the plastic alternatives if scaled would likely be a carbon sink. Grow plants to make packaging, as plants grow they absorb carbon, packaging is discarded, then sealed away in a land fill trapping the carbon.
It probably wouldn't be net 0 given the industry around production and transport, but still a lot better than what we're doing.
This is generally not how it works and/or a bad idea. Anaerobic bacteria tend to reduce carbon compounds to CH₄ (as opposed to CO₂ - makes sense). It is a lot worse as a greenhouse gas, and it will eventually bubble up and escape from the landfills, we can't realistically seal them in the same way as ancient peatlands did for our current oil and gas reserves.
A better way is to recycle that packaging into mulch/fertilizer of some kind so that this carbon is absorbed, directly or indirectly, by newly growing trees.
Fair enough, my understanding was that most modern landfills were so full and sealed that they limited the ability for waste to breakdown significantly.
If we get the infrastructure there mulch and compost away
Companies will basically do the cheapest thing they can get away with, so it is again down to the ordinary people to make sure that the cheapest thing isn't harmful. Sure, criticise the companies for doing shitty things, but that alone won't achieve anything, and nor will trying to shift the blame "back" to them.
I want regulation to bound what companies can do, such that “the cheapest thing” is not harmful. We can’t and shouldn’t expect the population to take on such gargantuan task as figuring out its own personal carbon footprint. That’s insane, but has been normalized since for ever, thus we do.
We need a carbon tax, and we need to get people on board with a carbon tax. Which we can campaign for at the same time as campaigning for individuals to make what choices they can do.
Flying less, cycling more, eating less meat, buying less, delaying replacement of things, making replacements greener - these are all things everyone can and should do, now, while the world drags its feet on making emissions cost money.
Personally I don't think that encouraging people to think about their carbon footprint absolves companies at all and despite the popularity online of this line of thinking, I have never once seen evidence that it was devised by companies to do that. I think instead it helps foster a shared purpose, which will ultimately help generate the consensus needed to resist wealth.
If you look through the other comments you'll see numerous people patronisingly imply that I can't think straight about this because I've just swallowed the propaganda, yet mysteriously the "propaganda" hasn't actually managed to get me to think that companies' actions are OK.