this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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Ban straws! (even though disabled people need them and they create negligible pollution)
Replace your car with an electric one! (even though it still works fine and will end up in landfill, never mind the environmental cost of producing the new one, or the source of the electricity it uses)
Reduce your carbon footprint! (even though its a term we invented ourselves to shift responsibility to you, while we fly our private jets around creating more pollution than you ever could in 10 lifetimes)
Recycle! (even though 90% of it ends up in landfill anyway because we don't want to pay to actually recycle it)
All equates to
Look the other way while we continue to rape the planet and blame it on you!!!
Never forget - capitalists (and the governments they're co-dependent on) only want more money, they don't car about you or me or the planet, only about themsleves and the numbers in their accounts, and they will never willingly stop doing whatever it takes to make more.
Oh, quit this noise. In the same countries where electric cars are becoming common, wind/water/sun-produced energy is also on the rise. Electric cars decouple the energy used from the means of production in ways that gasoline will never have, and the potential outweighs the temporary conditions of power generation in socially backward areas like Darfur and America.
You are literally commenting on an article where one of those countries has shut down a wind farm to go back to miming coal (never mind that my point still stand regardless because renewables are still just a fraction of electricity production, or that it is the wealthy people buying the electric cars who contribute more emissions than the poorest 50% of the population, but good to see the greenwashing has worked so well on you), so which of us is actually making noise, and which is addressing the problems we face?
Might be a good idea for you to read the article
Do you believe every headline you read on the internet? Looks like it. This isn’t „Germany end all wind farms“, the people who wrote that headline want you to think that. Don’t be such an easy mark.
The title, paired with an expensive paywall and the fact that the quote below is the only part visible for free would certainly suggest that this comment is true.
Here's the un-paywalled article intro:
"German energy giant RWE has begun dismantling a wind farm to make way for a further expansion of an open-pit lignite coal mine in the western region of North Rhine Westphalia.
One wind turbine has already been dismantled, with a further seven scheduled for removal to excavate an additional 15m to 20m tonnes of so-called 'brown' coal, the most polluting energy source."
I think this article from last year is relevant to this story: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/26/german-windfarm-coalmine-keyenberg-turbines-climate
What I’m saying is RWE is a privately owned company. The headline says „Germany begins…“ which is objectively untrue.
It is trying to suggest that Germany passed a decree to disassemble all windfarms. Yet the opposite is true.
I agree, that's what I'm saying. I used "this" ambiguously, I just realized. I edited "this" to "this comment", and added another clarifying sentence before the quote.
Here's an excerpt from the older article which isn't paywalled, that I linked in my comment (before the edit):
"Constructed more than 20 years ago, the turbines at the small Keyenberg wind park are less powerful than modern equivalents, with each producing about 1MW of energy per hour at a wind speed of 15 metres per second, roughly a sixth of the output of a more efficient state of the art turbine.
Since windfarms in Germany are no longer eligible for subsidies after 20 years in operation, the park would probably have been “repowered” with new technology or wound down even if it were not for the nearby mine.
Nonetheless, North-Rhine Westphalia’s ministry for economic and energy affairs on Monday urged RWE to abort its plans to dismantle the windfarm.
“In the current situation, all potential for the use of renewable energy should be exhausted as much as possible and existing turbines should be in operation for as long as possible,” a spokesperson said."
Got ya
Electric cars contribute less emissions than ICE cars even if the grid's electricity supply is entirely coming from coal. Of course cars in general are a much worse solution to transport than really any form of public transportation, but that's no reason to spread pro-ICE car propaganda.
While I partly agree with your argument at the end of your comment, I think your examples are really unfitting.
Only single-use plastic straws are banned. There is also an exemption for straws that are necessary for medical reasons. The needs of disabled people are included in the exemption. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2021-003536-ASW_EN.html
If people buy a new car, the old one (if still functional) typically enters the second-hand market, not the landfill. There is no reason why this would be different if the new car is an electric vehicle.
The carbon footprint is a perfectly fine concept on its own, the problem is just that some people shit on it with their private jets, which are a legitimate concern. Some people also argue that "most of the pollution is done by corporations, not individuals", completely ignoring the fact that these corporations only do it while producing goods for the people. That does not mean that we can just blame the people for it, but everybody has the responsibility to vote for policies that keep the corporations in check.
Recycling is really bad in some countries, but works pretty well in others. For example in Germany 56% of plastic waste is recycled, 44% burned. 90% of paper is recycled. https://www.quarks.de/umwelt/muell/das-solltest-du-ueber-recycling-wissen/#l%C3%B6sung4
We've made electric powered airplane jet turbines. If the rich want private jets, we should require those to be EVs. I don't give a shit that the tech is untested, and neither do they judging by that "submarine."
The problem is we are only talking about a small fraction of the trash. >90% of waste is industrial waste, of that a third is just from Construction/Demolition.
Consumers can recycle everything, but it won't make more than a 10% impact. We need to start forcing industry to recycle and we can start with concrete. 8% of all global emissions are from concrete production, that's not even accounting the energy to haul it around. We have the ability today to use concrete to make down cycled products on site (road base, filler, non structural blocks, etc) eliminating transportation and other impacts. But few even consider it, companies and customers don't want to wait the extra day that it takes, and it's not always profitable either.
I doubt your numbers are factual. Depending on the industry, you'll have very specific, non mixed waste materials, which would be way easier to recycle than mixed trash from households.
I just had to do a project on this for work and almost if not all of those numbers most likely came from the EPA's site from the studies they reference. Other sources, including international sources are similar, I have no reason to doubt the veracity or the figures.
When rereading your comment I get the impression you think I am saying only 10% of industrial waste is recycled. That is not that statement, the statement is simply 90% of waste in landfill is industrial.
Do you think cars are immortal, and are just passed on from owner to owner for all eternity?
Only East German ones. Then the pigs eat some rotten parts off of them, and the remainder is reassembled into fewer cars. The circle of life. The last people on this planet will still be driving a Trabi.
No? Nobody thinks that?
My comment was just a response to the following:
...which for some reason suggests that the introduction of electric cars leads to premature scrapping of existing cars - which is bullshit.
Cuban cars are
That's a lot of words to say "I lick boot".
But just to address my pet peeve (mostly because I can copy pasta my own comment, and no I'm not going to edit out the "ableist" because even if you don't mean t, advocating and making excuses for the straw ban is ableist)
There are many reasons people can't use different alternatives.
Never mind that to deny access to a literal lifeline for the sake of 0.003% of the plastics in the ocean (literally a drop in an ocean) because it makes you feel better and requires zero effort or sacrifice (from you), instead of actually acting to resolve the problem (like being anti-capitalist rather than just trying to apply band aids to its symptoms) is not only gross and ableist, but also a colossal counterproductive waste of time.
As for medical exemptions - disabled people shouldn't need to ask for basic accessibility, nor should they have to disclose personal medical information to get it, but now that ableists like you have forced this situation to boost your own egos, they do, and are often denied, because wait staff are not medically trained, and are often abelists like you (or have bosses that would fire them for "handing out straws willy nilly" if they even have straws available which now many places don't), so they get refused and called liars and accused of destroying the environment.
Never mind that expecting people to always have their own accessibility aids, rather than have them freely available creates an inaccessible society.
Which is exactly what ableists like you are fighting for.
I was exclusively talking about the EU ban, not about some random US cities' bans (This is a thread about Germany after all). None of your points really apply to the EU ban.
It does not ban the distribution (you can still legally buy leftover stock - my local cinema seems to have a century's worth of supply), just the first-time sale of newly produced non-medical single-use plastic straws.
The "medical exemption" is not on an individual basis, but an exemption for a production line of straws. Everybody can buy the straws afterwards. The EU ban is not cutting a "lifeline" for disabled people.
The links you provided talk about bans by local city councils in the USA, which have their own (apparantly stupid) rules.
A new EV breaks even with a used car in less than a decade. It does not matter if it is getting its energy from coal, it still will emit less carbon within a decade.
90% of plastic recycling. That is thanks to the oil companies who saw backlash against the ridiculous amount of plastic in the 70s and decided to invent a resin code whose symbol mimicked the recycling symbol. Recycling centers were flooded with a ton of plastic which they did not have infrastructure to actually recycle. China took it for a couple decades and then it became unprofitable for them. Basically only resin codes 1 and 2 are recyclable. But most people think all of it is. Absolutely recycle metals. If your city has recycling pickup and you are not recycling stuff like aluminum, you kind of suck.
I'm from Sweden, we're among the best in the world at recycling. We have closed all our landfills and even import combustible trash to burn for energy (we clean the fumes extremely well).
Every time I see a discussion about trash anywhere in the world I get sad that people are so uninformed about what's possible.
One Swedish company, Swedish Plastic Recycling, is currently building a recycling plant that will be able to handle ALL of the country's plastic waste and automatically recycle almost all of the kinds of plastic there are.
This is even profitable if done right.
Sources upon request.
You don't need to; all trash, no matter the bin, goes under a magnet that will pick out anything ferromagnetic, and through an induction trap that will pick out non-ferromagnetic metals. Even if for some reason it gets dumped in a landfill, it's still possible to mine it out.
Aluminum in particular is more expensive to mine+refine than to recycle. Some places you can even throw it on the ground, and someone will pick it up to sell for recycling. Copper you can get even stolen from you, and don't start me on Palladium, some people will "recycle" the catalytic converter from your car if you don't park it in a safe place.
I read somewhere that this is false and all of them are recyclable. Don't quote me on it though.
I think you can technically recycle probably almost any plastic, perhaps almost any material in general. It's just a question of if the recycling process is affordable and competes in price with just buying the unrecycled version of that plastic. So other plastics besides PET and HDPE I'm sure you can recycle, it's just that the cost is prohibitive.
Technically yes but there has to be the infrastructure to do it. Most cities cannot process them. It's also generally not profitable and does not save much from an emissions standpoint either.
Luckily many people live in democracies where they can simply vote to enact climate policies.
Sadly most people living in those democracies choose to continue enabling climate change.
The reason nothing is being done against climate change isn't corrupt politicians. It's the millions of people voting for them.
Lol, no.
The fault lies with those who built and benefit from the system, not those trapped in it who are merely given the illusion of choice.
Get off your high horse and aim your anger at the right people, otherwise all you are doing is enabling their rigged system.
Your first link is US only, your second link is about a completely seperate issue. You don't need to dismantle capitalism to protect the climate.
In Germany, where I live, the voters could easily vote for the greens "Grüne" and the left "Linke".
If those two parties had a majority in government, we'd have a climate friendly system in no time.
But they don't. We had a conservative government for 16 years. Now we have a center government, which sadly includes the small government / free market party "FDP", blocking all significant progress.
No systemic oppression stops people from voting Left/Greens. But they never did, and never will.
There's now an uprise of the far right party "AfD" in Germany, to the point it's becoming one of the major parties.
In Germany people have the choice readily available to stop actively damaging the climate.
But every couple of years, they freely choose to not do that.
I feel like many left-wing people regularly forget about the billions of people who genuinely do not care to do anything about climate change.
You absolutely do. If it was profitable to destroy the envrionment capitalism would do it in a heartbeat. And guess what it IS profitable to destroy the environment, that is why it is happening! You cannot protect the environment under capitalism.
When you try to dismantle capitalism... you get capitalism under a different name, with a dictator on top of it. Better hope the dictator wants to protect the environment, and that he knows how to! (see: Great Chinese Famine)
You can limit capitalism without abolishing it.
In Germany people are guaranteed 20/24 paid vacation days. That's not profitable.
That's a limit imposed on capitalism. It can be done and has been done without abolishing capitalism.
That's just one of the thousands of policies that limit capitalism.
You can limit capitalism (as literally every capitalist nation does) without abolishing it.
Enforcing climate friendlyness would be just another limit.
When you try to limit capitalism you get nuclear plants being shut down and coal plants being opened and the environment still being destroyed.
Most people don't have a 'green' option for which they can vote.
-Doug Ford, 2018
-CBC news, 2023
Not that he was a green leaning politician to begin with but this is just another example of blatant lies used by politicians to get elected and totally fuckover their country.
I do not believe the majority of people don't know about the effects of climate change. I believe that the majority of people voting against climate friendly policies simply choose to not think long term.
Someone who votes to continue the status quo is to be blamed for the status quo.
We must elect a Supreme Chancellor to get us through these tough times.
No they can't? If it was as simple as voting for green policies we'd see more of them. The only thing people can do is vote for greenwashed policies that do not impact the bottom line of industry.