Canadian Oil Company Facing Backlash Over Disturbing Greta Thunberg Poster
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In which case you have achieved a fail grade at critical analytical thinking.Dreiko said:
What you're trying to call "baggage" is actually wider context, because there isn't a single, discrete human action in this world that doesn't derive from wider circumstances, actions, ideologies, etc. Critical analysis means bringing in evidence and reason from wider context to explain events and actions. Not stripping them out and trying to pretend that something exists in glorious isolation from all the factors that provide a rationale for us to usefully understand it.
Given that sentence, I'm not sure you understand what "plausible" means.
I found and shared a comic with that pigtail-pull picture in the middle sometime last year. Panel 1) Annoyed Greta, 2) fucked from behind 3) Smiling Greta. This is old news. I mean, it made news now, I guess.
Climate-enthusiasts want to lower my quality of life so... not interested. Or to be honest, it's comparably low right now, but they would be content to keep it that way while everyone around me gives no shits.
Climate-enthusiasts want to lower my quality of life so... not interested. Or to be honest, it's comparably low right now, but they would be content to keep it that way while everyone around me gives no shits.
Everyone is such a large amount of people. A growing amount too.bluegate said:
Besides, I'm a university student and the takes I hear about the matter are completely "hopeless" from the point of view of a climate-conscious consumer. "Future looks grim, so let's enjoy the present." Absolutely no shits given. Just because I recognize the issue isn't enough for me to lead an ascetic life while all of it is annihilated by my parents going on two to three trips abroad each year.
Your personal life makes absolutely zero difference. Well, not quite zero I suppose, but it makes so little difference that it does not matter one tiny bit. Noone actually cares how you live your life. You're not that important. Get over yourself.McElroy said:
There are only three things you can possibly do in your life which will have a measurable effect on your climate footprint.
* Vote for politicians who have serious policies to tackle climate change, and who are willing to utilize national resources to reduce emissions.
* Switch to a primarily plant based diet.
* Avoid regular flying.
Even if you did all these things (which I certainly don't, only the first one is really important) you would in no way be required to live an ascetic existence. Pretending this is all about you and your personal circumstances as a means of deferring responsibility would only make sense if you were literally a oil billionaire.
If you are actually poor, then you are already living an ascetic existence. The odds that your personal life makes any difference to the world are close to zero, because you are not powerful enough to have any impact or choice. That's capitalism, baby.
Hold on a second, there's a lot to unpack here. Firstly, absolutely nobody is advocating turning all the electricity off. Scientists and environmentalists are advocating transitioning the sources of that electricity to less polluting, renewable avenues. And, yes, a lot of that responsibility rests with the energy companies (and the governments that refuse to regulate them)-- they choose to derive the electricity from finite, filthy sources because it's more immediately profitable.tstorm823 said:
Of course, the line of thought that it doesn't matter what we consumers do is bollocks anyway, because that transition would be a lot less painful and more manageable if we minimised our rampant levels of demand.
That preparation is coming from the scientific community, and the scientific community is constantly being fought, undermined, and defunded by the industrial lobbies and various governments.
And the scientific community itself stresses the vital importance of speed.
I more or less agree, but I'll elaborate a bit.evilthecat said:
How does reducing emissions get to a person who says they are worried about their carbon footprint, but won't change their lifestyle? That's most people I reckon. Well, take away their choice. Implement policies that change their lifestyles for them. This is something I'm worried will happen, but things are going okay thus far. And because it's been going fine I arrive at my current predicament: I want to be just as much of a consumer as my parents or my peers are so I can't cheer on the Thunbergs of the world or even a local politician who thinks similarly, but something in the back of my head keeps nagging about it.
Relatively ascetic. Finnish carbon footprint per capita is among the highest in the world, and I won't be a poor student forever.
Transition periods only exist when the technology being transitioned to already exists.Transitioning to immature solutions just means you're going to have to retransition shortly thereafter anyway, and you've spent a bunch of resources on it.CaitSeith said:
If you spent a billion dollars on solar panels 10 years ago, you'd get half (or less) as much value out of the investment as if you waited and spent that billion now, because of the current pace of technological advancement. Considered macroeconomically, it gets even worse, because renewables and batteries to support them have costs driven in part by rare materials. Mass implementation of technology that isn't yet capable to meet demands will make the cost of later implementations higher. And like, not just in the sense of money. In the sense of strip mining away the environment agressively to try and recoup all the metals we used in crappy, old solar panels
Technological advancement is to a considerable degree a matter of chucking money at a problem. There are lots of ways we could have been well ahead of where we are now in renewables, except that numerous powerful people and companies were invested in us not being so.tstorm823 said:
The main reason there is political resistance to renewables is because high-carbon producing companies (chiefly the oil industry) have thrown vast quantities of money at it. We've all sat through the slow retreat of their arguments over last 30 years, which will go down as one of the great rearguard actions of all time. They knew what the truth was long ago, and they lied because it made their profits easier.
The point you're arguing now is really just the final phase of that long fighting retreat; finally conceding but trying to argue all the people who have - potentially - dropped the future Earth deep into the shit shouldn't be blamed or feel bad about it.
Sorry, but that is secondary to your point. People will still have power even with immature solutions, because the end goal is to mature those solutions in something sustainable. Or do you think that electric light companies waited until the technology was ready to replace gas and oil-based lighting over all of the country before wiring up the first borough?tstorm823 said:
a) Are you suggesting that no renewables have been attempted?CaitSeith said:
b) Electric grids were being built before commercial lighting was adopted, electricity isn't for just that one thing.
This is actually a perfect comparison though. The first electric lights were made in the early 1800s, but for almost the entire century saw very limited usage. The incandescent light bulb is made, it's better and more efficient than gas lighting, and most of the gas lighting at least in America is replaced in half the time it took to get from the idea of electric lighting to effective electric lighting. Do you think anything would be better off if people had more aggressively adopted carbon arc lamps?
No, the energy industry that powered society to this point isn't going to go down as villians in history because the modern people who think Thanos snapping would be a good thing say so. When (and I mean when, not if) we move ahead to clean energy in the future, nobody is going to look back and care to villainize fossil fuels. It's just going to be another in the list of technological eras. The only people who might be judged harshly are the Luddite environmentalists who think the path forward is some fantasy return to a purely agrarian society.Agema said:
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but your average environmentalist is in favour of wind, hydroelectric and solar power, not a return to the medieval era. Nor is it likely that people who didn't run the place so didn't make the decisions that did the damage are going to excite a lot of criticism.tstorm823 said:
And if things go badly enough, then yes, people of the future will be writing about the fossil fuel industry in absolutely scathing terms. If the shit hit the fan and no-one were really aware of the underlying problem, it'd go down as one of those things of live and learn. But they have known... for decades.
You know who didn't run the place or make major decisions? The Luddites.Agema said:
You know who is holding back nuclear, while simultaneously inciting fears that there are just too many people and we need fewer? Environmentalists. Because beneath everything, there is still an argument within environmentalism between the conservationists, those who want to maintain and be involved in the environment, and preservationists, who think that human involvement is bad and pretty much oppose human society and development as a rule. And if you look at the cultures in things like PETA or Greenpeace, and hear people in fear of overpopulation, you can tell which of these philosophies is currently dominating the environmentalist movement.
The taboo on nuclear is kinda like a secular version of the opposition to stem cell research. People are just traumatized by the bomb and the few accidents and are not looking to find ways of improving the technology as much as they should. It's definitely preferable to burning coal which a lot of places still do, though I don't know if every country in the world is capable enough of safely maintaining these plants. Either way, I'm all for exploring it more.
I am not afraid of the person who talks publicly about these things, I'm afraid of the guy who is repressing these thoughts, cause those are the people who actually snap, not those who just say a dirty joke and that's the worst of it. At least I know what I'm dealing with, it's better than the alternative of being completely in the dark.
And yeah I am describing this because I am an actual straight man and I see having sex with someone as benefiting them as opposed to humiliating them, so your response doesn't make sense. In fact, if you just replaced that term for a term that refers to protected groups to whom this applies, you could have been called a phobe of some sort by people of your ideological persuasion.
In any case, you have to narrow down your grouping quite a bit more. Maybe old-fashioned religiously influenced straight jocks? That sounds more accurate than just straight men lol. Because, yeah, only in some honor based system where a woman is dishonored if she has sex outside of wedlock or some such would a foundation for such an insult make sense. You would have been more accurate to for example say "muslims of both sexes" than "straight men" in this context, though again, that's prolly some type of phobic to say and doesn't fit in with your intersectional nonsense, despite being more accurate than your go-to blame-group (though again still pretty inaccurate overall).
If we are to judge people by their darkest thought or their worst moment, when those did not manifest in ways that affected others and had to be described after the fact and without that act nobody would even be cognizant of them, then everyone would have to be judged as irredeemable.evilthecat said:
I am not afraid of the person who talks publicly about these things, I'm afraid of the guy who is repressing these thoughts, cause those are the people who actually snap, not those who just say a dirty joke and that's the worst of it. At least I know what I'm dealing with, it's better than the alternative of being completely in the dark.
And yeah I am describing this because I am an actual straight man and I see having sex with someone as benefiting them as opposed to humiliating them, so your response doesn't make sense. In fact, if you just replaced that term for a term that refers to protected groups to whom this applies, you could have been called a phobe of some sort by people of your ideological persuasion.
In any case, you have to narrow down your grouping quite a bit more. Maybe old-fashioned religiously influenced straight jocks? That sounds more accurate than just straight men lol. Because, yeah, only in some honor based system where a woman is dishonored if she has sex outside of wedlock or some such would a foundation for such an insult make sense. You would have been more accurate to for example say "muslims of both sexes" than "straight men" in this context, though again, that's prolly some type of phobic to say and doesn't fit in with your intersectional nonsense, despite being more accurate than your go-to blame-group (though again still pretty inaccurate overall).
The Luddites involved numerous uprisings that overwhelmed the local authorities and ended suppressed with military force. That's very different from a PR campaign.tstorm823 said:
We don't need nuclear - or at least, not much. And they're not exactly wrong that nuclear has some significant environmental problems and risks attached to it.
PETA is an animal rights organisation largely active against factory farming, animal research, and meat eating. It is at best tangentially involved with wider environmental issues, and not really relevant. Greenpeace has consistently sought replacement of fossil fuels and nuclear with renewables, and energy efficiency. It does not campaign for dropping our living standards (although it is critical of consumerism and hyperconsumption). It's not like there aren't some environmentalists and environmental groups who favour mass population reduction and drops in living standards, but they aren't very numerous, nor represented in the tenets of major organisations.
You are at least correct that there are different types of environmentalist, with different focuses. For instance, a wildlife or local ecology group might oppose a tidal energy scheme because it could devastate the local environment, even if it is good for cleaner energy. That's all a big toss-up that can be debated case by case on the various merits.
I can quite assure you, however, in my country the biggest resistance to things like wind power is from rich people who've bought a second home in the countryside and don't want their scenic views spoiled by turbines. I'm guessing it might be like that in the States too, given Trump launching embarrassing tirades against wind power because turbines reduce property prices, he doesn't like the look of them and (so he claimed) the noise gives people cancer. He might at least be right that they can pose a threat to birdlife, even if he grotequely overstated the case. [footnote]To put in context, estimates of bird deaths from turbines in the UK run as high as about 100,000 a year: but 55 million are killed a year by pet cats. And no-one's estimated how many birds potentially die from fossil fuels, but it's probably a lot - respiratory problems, cancer, etc.[/footnote]
We do, and there really aren't significant environmental problems.Agema said:
Even if we reach the point of replacing fossil fuels completely with renewables, actually sustainability is going to require a lot more energy than we produce now. We currently aren't recycling most of the resources we use, we currently have pollutants filling the atmosphere that we'd love to remove, we may need to make ocean water potable, we could grow food in buildings in any climate... all of these are eventual sustainability factors that we can solve only with a lot more energy than we currently produce, and paving over another 10% of the world with solar panels isn't a solution. Nuclear is.
That's a pretty dire estimation of the impact of stem cell research.Dreiko said:
Frankly, this militant belief in the benefits of nuclear power are really no less pathological than absolute opposition to it. It's just as much a cultural thing. People associate green energy with idealism and environmentalism and just assume nuclear must be better because fuck hippies, basically.
But the reality is nuclear has a lot of problems even once we bracket out the occasional major accident (which has huge consequences, children born in Belarus today will still face reduced quality of life because of environmental radiation). It's certainly not practical for most of the world. It's a provenly dangerous form of power which has some economic benefits over intermittent renewables, but probably only really for right now.
So, you seem to have missed the point.Dreiko said:
When you make your "darkest thoughts" or "worst moments" public, they do affect others.
We aren't talking about some private moment of sexual sadism. The target of this cartoon has seen it. She has commented on it. She is aware of its existence. She is affected because she knows about it. What exactly is she supposed to assume the implication is? How is she supposed to feel about the fact men who clearly hate her are fantasizing about her getting violently fucked?
That is a genuinely terrible policy.Dreiko said:
Men do not have an interior supply of rape-energy which they need to use up by telling rape jokes otherwise it will build up and explode into actual raping.
Men who joke about having sex with women they dislike as a means of punishing, controlling or silencing them are doing that because they actually have a view of sex which is inherently bound up with male domination and male pleasure at a woman's expense.
That is an extreme red flag.
Yeah, but if I did that, it wouldn't be true.Dreiko said:
Look, maybe you actually are free of the neurotic bullshit most straight men seem to carry around. Maybe you are unaffected by a culture which relentlessly devalues the worth of your body and thus seeks the continual humiliation of anyone who finds it attractive. Maybe the word "slut" (or variations thereof) has never crossed your lips. I don't want to invalidate any personal experience you think you've had. I'm just saying if so you're the extreme minority, and if you've never noticed what the straight men around you are like, then I'm also not entirely sure I trust your self-perception.
Here's the thing.McElroy said:
Whatever banal, middle class existence you think you or your parents are about to be punished for by environmental puritans literally does not matter in the scope of the world. Your parents flying abroad three times a year isn't really doing anything. The relatively high carbon footprint of Finnish people is not because they live lives of unsustainable hedonistic excess, it's largely due to geographic and demographic factors which can only be solved at the national, infrastructural level.
The fact that the middle class is slowly vanishing and that most of us will never have the lifestyles or security of our parents isn't due to environmentalism.
Really? I recommend you watch the recent TV dramatisation about the Chernobyl disaster. Also Fukushima, Three Mile Island, etc.tstorm823 said:
We can also consider the uranium extraction and purification, which turns out to be pretty bad. And in practice, a lot of the disposal has been shoddy too, because people will keep deciding that cost savings are more important than safety. One of the major problems with nuclear of course is that it isn't even cheap after all costs are considered. With a considerable expansion of nuclear, costs would become substantially worse because of supply and demand limitations; reprocessing of first-use fuel will also considerably increase cost.
I'm in favour of nuclear fission to some degree: I just don't think it's anything like the panacea many seem to. We'll maybe have nuclear fusion in a few decades, anyway (although I suspect that might be quite dangerous too, mind.)