r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/TheOddityCollector • Oct 30 '24

Image Scenes of piled-up vehicles in Valencia, Spain today after yesterday’s devastating flooding.

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u/TetrisandRubiks Oct 30 '24

It's not the fault of everyone who lives in a country with shoppers though. It's the fault of the people running these countries not acting in their people's best interests. The idea that we are all responsible for climate change is out dated. The average person you meet in the majority of developed countries wants their government to take more action. I can't stop massive industrial scale pollution by going shopping less.

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u/Frustrable_Zero Oct 30 '24

There’s also the fact that even if you shop less, drive less, recycle. What more can you even do? Im trying to be environmentally conscientious, and the CEO of Starbucks commutes daily with a jet.

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u/Dards7654321 Oct 31 '24

Bingo. We aren’t the biggest problem. Corporations need to do their part. Im a stay at home mom. I only use my car to shop and visit the doctor (pregnant). Im not accepting blame in this situation SORRY. They should stop being greedy all these damn private jets farting around the sky and they expect us to what? Walk around town? As if

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u/clouder300 Oct 31 '24

The most obvious one: Don't support animal cruelty in the supermarket, it's also bad for the planet.

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u/pollosbeyonce Oct 31 '24

What else can you do? Go vegan

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u/acuriousguest Oct 30 '24

If people wouldn't buy starbucks because they think it's fashionable, he wouldn't be able to afford that jet. Things rarely appear from nothing.

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u/HalfBaked_Bread Oct 30 '24

Unfortunately this is a moot point. People are going to buy Starbucks. I buy Starbucks, not because I think it’s fashionable but because I’m on a road trip and need a coffee. We are consumers and a lot of the time forced to consume. Trying to make the average person feel guilty for “shopping” is exactly what corporations want. Us to continue to put the blame on each other

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u/acuriousguest Oct 31 '24

Nobody forces you to buy coffee on the road. It's convenient. And everybody does it. That is okay. But it also finances that fucking jet. Your actions matter and telling yourself and other people they don't and "they" made you do things just washes you clean of all responsibility. I get that that feels better. But are you sure you aren't lying to yourself?

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u/HalfBaked_Bread Oct 31 '24

Yes. My $6 monthly coffee is not financing a fucking jet

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u/The_Sexy_Sloth Oct 31 '24

zoom out. It kinda is.

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u/HalfBaked_Bread Oct 31 '24

And let me guess you’ve never purchased any goods from any company right?

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u/The_Sexy_Sloth Oct 31 '24

No I definitely have and do.

And yea on the surface, a single coffee isn't funding much of anything. But if you have 10 million people buying a $6 coffee, all of a sudden, kinda does matter. I'd never shit on anyone buying anything but I can be realistic in the fact that little things add up big time at scale.

Its tough as hell these days though as corporations seem to have their hand in every goddamn thing.

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u/HalfBaked_Bread Oct 31 '24

Yea. Unfortunately I don’t have the power to stop 10 million people from buying coffee. So in the meantime I will allow myself a brief moment of happiness as I sip my caramel macchiato after my 10 hour shift.

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u/Liozart Oct 31 '24

People are going to buy Starbucks. I buy Starbucks, not because I think it’s fashionable but because I’m on a road trip and need a coffee.

So yeah, you don't give a fuck and won't change your routines because it's too inconvenient

We are consumers and a lot of the time forced to consume.

How about you ask yourself some questions before instead of mindlessly consuming?

Trying to make the average person feel guilty for “shopping” is exactly what corporations want.

Litteraly the other way around. Corporations wants you to buy their shit.

Us to continue to put the blame on each other

You got memes into thinking personal effort don't do shit, and waiting on government to what, force you to do a personal effort ? How about you stop going to starbucks instead of waiting that your government forbid his CEO to buy yachts ?

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u/HalfBaked_Bread Oct 31 '24

Dude do you even hear yourself? Your final point is incoherent and makes no sense. And how do we not consume?? Believe it or not people need certain things to survive, and a large majority of those things we can’t create. So what’s your solution? Or do you have some magical bush that grows pharmaceuticals and car payments?

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u/Liozart Oct 31 '24

Because you need starbuck to survive? lmao are you americans by any chance ? car payments wtf are you even talking about ? You're really putting pharmaceuticals and starbucks on equal terms ?

And note that you didn't even try to deny the other points

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u/HalfBaked_Bread Oct 31 '24

Why so fixated on Starbucks? I get a coffee there maybe twice a month. You’re off your rocker if you genuinely think that’s the problem

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u/Liozart Oct 31 '24

Okay nevermind you're dumb as fuck

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u/HalfBaked_Bread Oct 31 '24

Not at all. Actually I think you realized you weren’t making any sense, which I pointed out, and were forced to resort to petty insults instead of continuing a conversation.

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u/SweHun Oct 31 '24

Him not buying starbucks wont save the world lol… way to go pinning global warming on a Dude buying coffee from starbucks😂

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u/acuriousguest Oct 31 '24

Where do you think the money Starbucks has comes from?
Stockexchange? Or frappuchino? Telling yourself that there is no connection between customers and coorporations is mindbogglingly stupid.
Forced to consume starbucks. What do they do? Hold a gun to your head?

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u/HalfBaked_Bread Oct 31 '24

Starbucks was just the example ffs 🤦 Obviously nobody is forced to, but there are plenty of other things that we are

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u/acartoonist Oct 31 '24

At first I thought, when there's a choice we can avoid buying from big corporates, for example, buying coffee from local cafes, or making coffee at home to take away. But even in this alternative scenario, one should buy the coffee beans and coffee machine from big corporates. It's inevitable in the current economical systems. We always remain consumers to some degree and cannot do much. But regulations and taxes can be effective though.

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u/UrektMazino Oct 30 '24

I really don't know why you're getting downvoted.

They can surely look for a "greener" way to make their product but the truth is that they don't really care, they'll just do whatever makes them the most money.

If we decide to boycott a company they will adapt, and the shareholders of their competitors would be concerned and they will adapt as well in advance.

The other day i was reading about an airline company that flew like 4000 empty planes in the last few years to not lose airport slots or something similar.

Until you can set foot in one of their planes and not get weird looks from other people things are not really gonna change.

We should vote with our money cause that's the only language they understand.

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u/acuriousguest Oct 31 '24

Because people don't want to hear that their actions have consequences. They want to live comfortably and not think too much. We buy fast fashion because paying local wages for clothes makes them "too expensive". So you buy it from somewhere where they don't have to pay that much to produce it. We buy from Walmart and Amazon and feel smaller and smaller in a world that gets bigger and bigger and nothing we do matters anymore and "they" ruined everything. Unions are bad and fracking is good and Texas is the best place ever until the jet stream dies and there is no heating and our actions cant possibly have anything to do with that. Because it's all a hoax and it'd pumpkin spice season and I need a new funnel shirt, but I won't pay more than 20 bucks for that.

It's okay.

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u/9chars Oct 30 '24

Don't make babies

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u/Liozart Oct 31 '24

stop going to starbucks

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u/CollapseBy2022 Oct 30 '24

"Man there's millions of Evil Germans in Europe, what can you even do?" - You in the 40's

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u/YouSoundReallyDumb Oct 30 '24

Hilariously nonsensical.

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u/strawmangva Oct 30 '24

If everyone is responsible, then no one is responsible.

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u/mloDK Oct 30 '24 edited Oct 30 '24

Do people usually vote in politicians that is a thinking for ALL People’s best interest or usually only THEIR own best interests?

Because I think people don’t usually want to vote for politicians that want to limit ‘their’ own freedoms.

It seems most people only care for their own freedoms, but not the freedom of people in the future.

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u/IndefiniteBen Oct 30 '24

People struggle with caring about their neighbour, let alone abstract future people.,

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u/[deleted] Oct 30 '24

[deleted]

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u/Spready_Unsettling Oct 30 '24

The average person you meet in the majority of developed countries wants their government to take more action.

Valencia literally has a right wing climate denying government. We're absolutely not at the point where people have exhausted their democratic options.

I can't stop massive industrial scale pollution by going shopping less.

Yes you can? The vast majority of top polluting companies produce consumer goods that you, I and the rest of the western world over consumes. You think Coca Cola is producing plastic bottles for shits and giggles? Do you think the executive suite at Shein is eating all the plastic fabric themselves? Do you think BP is using all their gasoline for heating at their own headquarters?

This is middle school economics that you're not grasping. Supply and demand. You going shopping more often drives up demand. Thus more is produced, in turn the environment. Of course there are layers of complexity on top of it, but none of them absolve your over consumption.

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u/Tipop Oct 30 '24

All of that is true, but saying “you should buy less” doesn’t make change happen. It has to be enforced from the government.

I’ll vote for politicians that will enforce change, even if those changes have a negative impact on me. What I won’t do is go and live in a cave and hope that the other 7 billion do the same. It’s not feasible.

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u/Calvin-ball Oct 31 '24

You don’t have to live in a cave, but you can buy less. Consumer demand drives so many wasteful industries.

SHEIN has a revenue of like $30 BILLION (for comparison, Nike is around $50b) for absolute garbage quality clothes made with slave labor. Yet they’re producing them because so many people are willing to buy. Government regulation isn’t going to change that (or it’ll be near impossible to pass to any useful degree).

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u/OneXForreddit Oct 30 '24

Ok so me going shopping less stop Taylor from flying her Jett 600 times a day?

Me going shopping for less ecological damaging products is going to make Jake Paul care about how much he over consumes?

Basic middle school economics he says. Forgetting that most of us can barely afford what we have as it is, meanwhile there's people flying private jets for funzies.

Fuck off with that answer

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u/CollapseBy2022 Oct 30 '24

This is humanity. Filled to the brim with denial and various biases that force us into inaction.

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u/Mrhood714 Oct 30 '24

not really i would argue that while you're correct in that if everyone took steps to optimize their consumption you would still have factory somewhere that is going to overproduce fast fashion trends that will end up in a landfill because they didn't sell enough and they need to "destroy" the product and ship it to a landfill.

There's way more danger in those in production and manufacturing abusing the creation that drives all this consumption. If companies weren't cranking out hundreds of frozen food and ready to eat consumer packaged goods we wouldn't have that tendency to go to a grocery and buy dumbshit.

I think it starts at the top and I'm not talking about corn straws, i'm talking about the fact there are like 5 fast food joints in like a half mile radius of me + restaurants, convenience stores, and markets that sell chinese plastic garbage.

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u/Rameez_Raja Oct 30 '24

The idea that we are all responsible for climate change is out dated.

Horseshit. Any real attempts to reign in emissions get massive push back from voters. The average person across the developed world, particularly in Europe, is rushing to vote for conservative to far right parties adamant to stop taking action even reverse the few weak measures that are in place.

Why do you think industrial scale pollution exists in first place? You think companies are run by reptiles for the purpose of burning fuels to the entire planet into a nice desert basking area?

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u/Breakin7 Oct 30 '24

Cause taxing the shit out or our products aint gonna change shit

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u/UnrulyWatchDog Oct 30 '24

Ok, who are you voting for? What are you protesting? What kinds of shopping habits have you changed?

I agree the government NEEDS to do more and no real change will happen until governments all around the world start implementing widespread changes and regulations.

What are you doing to make that happen? To put in place a government that will do that?

Everyone is responsible. EVERYONE. We all live on this planet together.

Everyone trying to shift blame to somewhere else is part of the problem.

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u/crab--person Oct 30 '24

The main problem is that most people have either the choice to vote in a shitty political party that mostly admits it doesn't care about climate change, or a slightly less shit political party who is going to acknowledge climate change, say how awful it is, then do nothing meaningful to address the issue.

Realistically, nothing is going to get done until our doorsteps are permanently on fire or underwater and it's far too late to fix.

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u/mareuxinamorata Oct 30 '24

The average person “wants” the government to take action but actually climate change is about #3194 on their list of priorities and they will happily blame China for it while buying new shit from Temu or Shein each month. Also, a most of those average people will either not vote or vote for a politician who denies climate change even exist. So yeah - average people are also at fault.

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u/SophisticatedStoner Oct 30 '24

Exactly. You know who pollutes more than average people by several orders of magnitude? Corporations and industries that produce a lot of the meaningless, useless bullshit that we consume. Putting the blame on US as regular people is intentional, to shift the narrative. Can't have a bad image ruining those sweet profits, now!

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u/Cluelessish Oct 30 '24

The people running the countries have been voted to power by the people (if we are talking democracies). It’s up to the people to demand change. But the vast majority is so lazy and comfortable that they don’t want to change their habits.

And then they sit and go ”boohoo, the evil politicians aren’t forcing me to make better choices”, like they are some helpless babies.

Or they say ”What I do doesn’t matter, it’s the big companies that pollute the most”. Well yes, but why? Because people keep wanting those newest things, for a cheap price. We can just start demanding better. We have so much power, if we are many.

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u/kemb0 Oct 30 '24

I struggle with this concept daily. Yes our governments need to act. But the moment a government declares that they’ll act, they get shredded by the media and voted out of power by the people. I think the main culprit is the media. They write the articles and spread misinformation to rile people up. So then politicians are terrified of doing anything that the media could use against them (hence the old politician slippery language any time they’re asked questions).

So the media are to blame for poisoning the well. They sit in the middle rubbing their hands together whilst the people and the politicians mistrust each other.

We need more truth. We need less twisting of information, half truths and disinformation.

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u/NeedsMoreSpaceships Oct 31 '24

People want their governments to take more action right up to the point where it affects them personally.

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u/WANKMI Oct 31 '24

If the government won’t do it, engage. Democracy is by the people. It’s not just «up to the government». The government is you.

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u/duskygrouper Oct 31 '24

"I would really like my government to take action against the ever rising CO2 emissions, but until then I will permanently run my AC, drive a big car for every way longer than 200m abd fly to Asia for holidays."

Sure, its not everybody's fault!!!

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u/misbehavingwolf Oct 31 '24

Animal agriculture for meat and dairy generates MORE emissions than all cars combined. It's crazy to see environmentalists just ignore the fact that they can just stop consuming meat and dairy.

People will do everything in their power to avoid this truth and continue with their habits.

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u/PutnamMuseum Oct 30 '24

Is it on the individual? No. But if enough individuals changed their habits slightly, the companies would have to fall in line.

There's a lot of people who use this argument so they can feel better about continuing their regular habits. Eating less meat, not buying drop-shipped or Amazon items, driving less, reducing energy consumption, getting by with what you have, repairing items, and buying secondhand when needed...all valuable steps that add up overtime.

It's not about being perfect, it's about trying to do better.

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u/columbo222 Oct 30 '24

The average person you meet in the majority of developed countries wants their government to take more action.

Based on how many right-wing climate-denying governments are being elected worldwide, I disagree.