This is also implying that common everyday people actually have control or can influence the situation.
While a wealthy few in the world are the ones that can actually drive change for the better but refuse to because it would affect their wealth and power.
90% of the population wants to do something
10% of the population owns everything
The 10% who have all the control don’t mind watching the world burn as long as they keep their mansion.
90% of the population can’t do anything because they don’t have the wealth to influence anything
100% of the world is completely fine with this situation.
I think most of us are resigned to this situation.
We’re not good at popular organizing. We’re very good at finding ways of othering factions, which the elite are glad to utilize.
We’re good at consolidating power. We’re not good at utilizing that power to serve the public. Hence billionaires don’t even think of charity work except as a means to preserve power.
The human species may be doomed to extinction or a cap on technological progress. We may just be tribal hunters too attached to dominance hierarchy to reach into space and colonize other worlds.
Or we may be stuck in a perpetual cycle where we just form feudal empires that poison the world for another epoch.
The solution — if there is one — is sociological. We figure out a way to diffuse political power so it can’t be consolidated. We fix dominance hierarchy and tragedy of the commons. We figure out a way to teach people that everybody (even the ones that disgust us) are part of the community and deserve regard.
Until we find it, we’ll continue to let elites hold all the resources and poison the earth with impunity.
I get into this headspace often, but try to remember that all human systems are subject to being disrupted and dismantled, no matter their power or influence.
This is also implying that common everyday people actually have control or can influence the situation.
Here’s why I take issue with this statement:
- this ignores collective/mass action
- this disregards the few government entities that actually do serve public interests, albeit imperfectly
An example of an individual creating meaningful positive change is teachers. Most people have had a great teacher, and larger schools have greater reach and influence, thus an individual with many students over a period of time can make a big difference at the local level. And one of those students can rise to prominence and do further good.
Another is some benevolent nonprofits that seek government funding to maximize their reach and support of the community. Often they’re run by one or a small handful of folks. If they’re lucky, and prepared, they can affect positive change for many, like community garden organizers.
There can be a large volume of good change from a single person’s actions because of influence. Not saying that it’s a fast mechanism for change, but I refuse to abandon it. Because although it’s likely the only solution we have, it’s still one that is fueled by will and daily choice, which most everyone can enact in small and big ways.
Frankly, if we could just put solidarity of the working class first, we outnumber them.
I agree with you.
An apathetic populace is how despots or oligopolies consolidate or retain their power.
Activism doesn’t always work, but there are plenty of historical examples of big social changes coming on the back of direct action by the people.
On the specific topic here, of greenhouse emissions, the U.S. has been decreasing its per capita emissions for something like 15-20 years. We have a long way to go, and should be going faster, but we are making progress right now. And none of this progress was inevitable. It was specific efforts by nonprofits, by governmental entities, by private industry, and by individuals to demand lower emissions.
Past environmental successes include the elimination of acid rain, the reversal of the hole in the ozone layer, and the vast improvement in outdoor particulate pollution and smog in the past few decades. This stuff matters, we have been making a difference, and the moment we give up we will start backsliding.
If you follow this, this is the “give up” argument. Fuck that. I’m not giving up.
Common everyday people can influence the situation. For example, we can build bombs and set them off inside gas plants.
No, I don’t expect you to become a suicide bomber. But this is the truth: how much change you can accomplish is directly proportional to how much effort you put in. I’m putting in effort.
Despite the fediverse’s reputation for leaning leftist, I feel like such a stranger with how often I find myself arguing that the collective action and solidarity of the working class can and has improved the material outcomes of nations, with or without the capital of the owner class, and with or without the approval of the government.
Fight in whatever way makes sense to you. Some people will carpool or use less hot water. Some will put peer pressure on wealthy acquaintances. Some will alter design requirements or RFQs. Some will [redacted] a pipeline. It all works towards the same end.
Yes, this is the fault of the owner class, but who do you think is going to force them to change if we all sit on our hands and say, “I dunno, man, that sounds like someone else’s responsibility.”
To me the saddest part is that it’s more like 99.99% of us want and know how to fix things, but 0.01% control everything. There are something like around 3000 billionaires worldwide…
Unless people raise militias to fight against the superpower governments backing powerful megacorporations, we’re entirely fucked.
I’m not advocating violence.
But, some people are saying that it won’t take a milita but only a small amount of brave individuals acting separately and willing to sacrifice their own freedom to agressively disempower a tiny set of billionaires. One at a time and as a surprise.
No, this is not the way. Lone sacrificial actors hurting wealthy people wouldn’t work - they’ve got a whole system lined up to keep their generational wealth and power and it is extremely robust and every time you got rid of a billionaire you would get a handful more billionaires popping up where they were. Not only that, it would embolden reaction. You thought the BLM protests caused a violent police reaction? Assassinate one billionaire and just watch what happens. The reactionary machine would go ballistic. Maybe you want that, but that’s called accelerationism and it has never once worked to achieve anything good. Similarly the act of lashing out as a lone wolf has a name: revolutionary adventurism. It also doesn’t work.
The actual method that can work is prefiguration, building the new society in the shell of the old. We make the world better for ourselves and our neighbours right here and now and we don’t wait for permission from conservative and reactionary systems. We make them irrelevant to our projects.
When the CNT-FAI dispossessed the wealthy of their private property, they didn’t purge them. They offered them a place in their new society. Many took them up on the offer and admitted it was a good life. That’s a much more profound victory than just ganking someone.
we should all take meth so we can speed it up even more
No, we should all take bath salts so we’re more likely to literally eat the rich. That’ll speed it up overnight.
IT’S ALL A LIE UNLESS THEY SAY THE TRUTH : BIG COOPERATIONS POLLUTE.
Original source: https://rosemarymosco.com/comics/climate/climate-truths
It’s never too late, obviously.
However
It is VERY important to get the size of Themis problem. We’ve been dumping CO2 by extracting energy since the start of the industrial revolution, and without going into details, if you want to extract that CO2, it will take about the same amount of energy we’ve spent for the last ~250 years. Converting and storing and losses might double that.
We’ll be able to generate more and more energy in the future (yay fusion, hopefully!) but basically, we can spend 50% of the world’s energy budget on this and it will still take one or more centuries to get CO2 levels restored back to pre industrial levels.
And ALL that energy must be carbon free, or you’re doing it for nothing.
This is an absolutely enormous problem that will be fixed, but none of us will see it 100% fixed in our lifetimes
This ignores exponential scaling. Most of the marginal carbon in the atmosphere was added recently; the early Industrial Revolution is a rounding error compared to what we’re pumping out now.
Similarly, with exponentially scaling technologies, capturing the carbon (somehow) could also accelerate incredibly quickly, with the right technologies and investment.
Even ignoring fusion, the Earth gets a lot of energy from the Sun. We could solve this problem within a decade once we figure out the technology and political will to get it done.
within a decade
Yeah, no. Even with our help, even with having all our energy being carbon neutral, and not adding any additional carbon into the air, spending over half our energy budget, earth co2 levels would take decades, or more around a century to get back to normal.
And remember that CO2 comes from more places that are hard to stop. Concrete emits CO2, airplanes likely won’t ever become electoral and will always emit CO2, same likely for large cargo trucks.
Fusion must be ignored because that has been “juuuust around the corner” for 5 decades now. Big strides were made recently, but it still will likely be decades away at best and then building a commercial reactor in the multi GW ranges will also take another decade.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of our energy still is carbon based and will continue to be so for the coming decades.