Am I financialy enabling child labor in 3rd world country by buying second hand fast fashion from Thrift shop and Vinted? Because I am not the one who originally bought the clothes from Shein. But buy buying it again from someone else I still use it uhhuhh this is complicated.
I’m actually of the opinion that humanity needs to get off this rock as soon as possible. The uncomfortable truth is that fewer humans would in fact help the environment, and none would be even better.
The problem is with how to implement that without it turning into murder.
Hence, we leave.
I have a big problem with that, namely that that is what Elon Musk wants you to think, it’s what Jeff Bezos wants you to think. And when you’re defending the position of ultra capital, you should at least understand why they truly want this. What they truly want is to keep this system intact, they don’t want change, they don’t want responsibility. Going somewhere else to get what you want, is the colonialist mindset, the white mindset. It’s the idea that you as a person have the right to your lifestyle, that you ‘earned’ it. It’s the way that your consumption is tied up with your identity. That your behavior is only secondary to your consumption. Your self worth is rooted in accumulation.
That’s what they are afraid to give up, and ultimately what you’re parroting. While it’s absolutely not trivial to leave, and systemic change is very much necessary far far far before we, poor people, are remotely close to living among the stars in any form of comfort or luxury. Have set up anything close to the insanly complex international trade and knowledge base, rhat depends on billions of people to function. It’s going to take hundreds if not a thousand years. All the while being completely and utterly depending on this very planet.
I don’t think that because the rich b-stards think that. I think that because I believe our species - regardless of race - has outgrown its environment. If I got this idea from somewhere else, it wasn’t from Musk or Bezos or others like them. It might even have come from watching Star Trek or reading sci-fi.
We’re like a virus or a cancer that will ultimately end up killing the host. Earth’s biosphere in this instance.
The correct course of action is to destroy the infection or cut it out.
And if you want what’s being cut out to survive afterwards, yes, you have a lot of work ahead of you before you do so to ensure its continued existence once it’s somewhere else.
We need to consider what it would take to get every single one of us off this planet and living somewhere else.
But you’re doing the exact same thing with the same outcomes.
Do you consider yourself a virus? Your loved ones? Friends, family? Nobody sees themselves as a blight. It’s always society at large. It’s the decisions we make as a collective.
And then the question is why we are making such decisions. And that’s what i mean with the need for systemic change. It’s not inherent in humans to be like a virus.
Well, certain people do consider me to have some undesirable traits like ideas about getting our species off the planet, and if I didn’t exist, I’d generate considerably less CO₂.
Uncomfortable though it may be, the latter applies to everyone I’ve ever known, cared about or who has cared about me.
And it is inherent. The singular purpose of certain genes is to make more of the same gene, and they’ve gotten very good at it. Humans and viruses are both emergent phenomena.
But then, I suppose if we don’t leave, we don’t spread the disease elsewhere… so OK. You’re right. We should never ever leave…
And the only way to save the biosphere is to do something we’re completely incapable of. We’re screwed. Neat!
Let me try and put this into a bit of a different perspective. There is a huge effort to individualise global warming, to accomplish two things. First to guilt trip you and second to create apathy. Because it’s very easy to understand that what creates global warming isn’t going to be solved by changing your individual consumption patterns. And you’re completely correct.
80 percent of total human made greenhouse gas production is done by 57 companies. Who have increased, not decreased, their co2 emissions since the 2016 paris agreement. Because companies aren’t countries. They actually aren’t bound by any such agreements.
Imagine the future without those fuckers. It’s only a couple of companies. It’s not as if we need to destroy half of humanity or flee the planet. Chill out.