- cross-posted to:
- collapse@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- collapse@sopuli.xyz
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/1097575
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If you vote for parties that support these corporations it’s on you too.
To the people who are saying “Yeah but you’re the one who buys the oil!!!” Please stop. Please think about any of the context surrounding those supposedly individualist decisions. Please think about what the most practical solutions are for fixing the problem. You can do that and be helpful or you can be smug and look down on others.
Sure, you buy and drive the car, but you didn’t:
- Design towns and cities that can only be easily traversed by car.
- Decide where jobs and housing were located.
- Spend millions of dollars to lobby against public transit.
- Spend millions of dollars to lobby against regulations.
- Spend millions of dollars to lobby against green energy investments.
- Spend millions of dollars to lobby for imperialist wars to access oil.
- Spend millions of dollars to spread misinformation about climate change.
- Decide what cars were available to buy and at what price. (Demand driving supply only makes sense if consumers have a way to signal that they want something that isn’t being offered. The main market way of doing that would be to not buy anything until the right good is offered… but as stated above, people can’t just opt out of needing a car if the places where they can live and work are built around cars.)
- Decide to be too poor to buy luxury goods masquerading as green alternatives.
Framing the issue in terms of individual decisions lets the people who have most actively stood in the way of progress off the hook and ironically shirks any real responsibility to fix the issue. You think by saying that it’s us doing it that you take responsibility for your actions and therefore because YOU got a hybrid car or some shit, you did your part and everyone else needs to do the same and it’s not your responsibility anymore. Needing to put in the political struggle to take on the corporate interests destroying the planet takes effort that deviates from your normal life. You have to actually talk to people, work with them, and take part in collective action. And your responsibility isn’t over until the problem is solved.
Also, sort of related: I always take issue with how dealing with issues like climate change is framed in terms of making sacrifices. Like sure, are we going to be able to do as much excessive consumption as we do now? No. But there are so many climate policies that would also just make life better for people in the short/medium term. We would be happier, healthier, and safer in a world where we got rid of our dependence on cars and replaced it with walkable cities and good mass transit. But instead of talking about how good it could be, instead the message ends up being “You’re a bad person for diving a car. You need to give up using your car and go either walk to your job which is too far away and across a bunch of busy streets or cram yourself onto the underfunded public transportation that is crowded, slow, unreliable, and falling apart.” No wonder people get so defensive. We don’t want them to have to use the bad infrastructure. We want it to be so good that it’s the best option by far. Pitch that future instead of lecturing people.
TL;DR: I WANT TRAINS! GIVE TRAINS!
Sure, you buy and drive the car, but you didn’t:
If you vote for political parties that support these policies it’s on you too, with your vote you handle them your responsibility
I don’t understand this argument. On the one had you have sympathy for the average car user who hasn’t the time or resources to struggle with poor transport infrastructure and don’t necessarily have the resources to make preventative purchasing decisions, but then, on the other had you say
Needing to put in the political struggle to take on the corporate interests… takes effort that deviates from your normal life
You don’t seem to have avoided the responsibility being laid at the individual at all. You’ve kept it firmly in the same place. All you’ve done is allowed those individuals to keep their materialistic lifestyle because “It’s OK, I’m an ‘activist’”.
Activism, for most people, is not sacrifice. Its a jolly good day out with a cool social group, sometimes there’s even free music, circus acts, the works. You get to waive a flag, and everyone congratulates you on what an amazing person you are.
What’s properly amazing is taking a slightly less well-paying job because it’s on a bus route, or not going out twice a week so you can afford organic cotton instead of polyester, or avoiding that deal trip to Tibet to meditate with monks to save fuel. Zero social credit, zero visibility.
And if these big companies have the economic system so stitched up that individual choices barely matter, then what on earth makes you think they won’t have the political system similarly stitched up so that individual activism doesn’t make a difference either?
My point is, the important part isn’t assigning blame, it’s taking actions that actually have some path to success. You really can’t ethically consume your way out of climate change. Identifying the corporations and governments most responsible for blocking progress isn’t a mere moral victory, it’s focusing our efforts.
What’s properly amazing is taking a slightly less well-paying job because it’s on a bus route,
Sure, but not everyone can do that. And I don’t mean it’s just difficult, but literally there are a finite number of jobs and housing options that will fit that criteria. As our societies are set up now, it is not physically possible for enough people to make a sacrifice like that for it to make a difference. That’s why collective action is needed to make those big structural changes in the first place.
And if these big companies have the economic system so stitched up that individual choices barely matter, then what on earth makes you think they won’t have the political system similarly stitched up so that individual activism doesn’t make a difference either?
Oh 100%. I’m deeply concerned that there may be no peaceful, democratic way out of this. But that’s step 2. Step 1, regardless of what our strategy ought to be, is organizing. Whether we need voters, protestors, boycotters, or an army, we need people who are able to coordinate with others. It’s not individual activism, it’s collective action.
Yep. Solidarity, collectivism.
Which presumably is why the left wing spends 100% of it’s time and energy on purity tests, cancelling, essentailist identity politics, and knee-jerk tribalism…
… classic solidarity-building. We should have this problem sorted in no time.
That is exactly what I’m trying to push back against. Guilting people over their tiny contribution to climate change is hurting the cause, not helping it. It’s a problem intrinsic to the consumption-oriented liberal approach to climate activism, but not exclusive to it.
I agree. I was pointing out that (even if perhaps inadvertently), your post just ends up guilting people who don’t do enough activism instead. It turns, not on the problem (reducing carbon emissions), but on your comrades (those who share your concern, but disagree about how best to achieve it).
The responses blaming individuals don’t seem to be exculpating corporations. They’re just adding a dimension they felt was missing.
Solidarity is about accepting into the fold anyone who agrees with a broad aim and working toward that end.
So anyone concerned about our impact on the planet can work together to minimise it. Some by campaigning to reduce consumption, some by campaigning against corporate overreach, some by campaigning for political parties who have better agendas. And each campaign supports and nurtures the other.
What we get instead are endless (and often furious) arguments between each campaign about how they’ve got it wrong and their approach will never work.
I suppose in the vein of “the one thing I don’t tolerate is intolerance”, I’d say the one thing I will always say isn’t going to work is telling every other well-meaning activist that their campaign isn’t going to work.
(The obvious caveat here is determining ‘well-meaning’, but hey, no system is perfect)
You say it’s important not to assign blame, yet this entire thread is about blaming companies. You keep using the word “ethically consume”, as if consumption is this magical shield that saves you from all responsibility. If I want to see a woman raped and I rape a woman and tape it, that’s obviously horrible. But if I instead find someone to PAY to create the video so I can CONSUME it, that suddenly cancels ANY AND ALL responsibility. WTF?
Calling for people to do what they can, which absolutely includes consuming differently, is the only correct choice here. Stop picking and choosing the parts of activism that require no effort from you personally. Stop pretending like the “system” is some kind of nefarious being in a cave we can just slay. We are all the system, we are all responsible to the degree that we have the power to change.
You might agree a little, but then talk about how little power we have. For one, do you think that’s true for feminism, or anti-racism? Me not making sexist jokes has a tiny, tiny impact on patriarchy. Can I then just keep doing that, because it makes no real difference? A bunch of rich patriarchs have so much more power, therefore can I just sit on my lazy ass and never do anything feminist, expect call myself feminist? Secondly, again, you’re picking and choosing what effort is ok to ask for. You ask for political activism, but draw the line at changing your habits where you can. That is simply non-sensical. Finally, you’re just wrong. Global climate change is GLOBAL. You do not get to shirk your duty on the pretense of powerlessness. The average American has the power and influence of ENTIRE FAMILIES in poorer countries. You know, the countries likely most affected?
I don’t look at companies like people, because they’re not. They’re profit optimization machines. Thinking about it in terms of blame is like getting mad at a math equation. The truly depressing thing about all the evils of capitalism is that they’re entirely rational and expected outcomes of the incentives and structures of the system. To a company, spending money to make a thing they can sell is functionally equivalent to spending money lobbying the government to get more favorable regulations. There is no moral calculation involved. Sure there are people who make those decisions within the companies, but over time the ones that make less financially lucrative decisions lose out to those who will do anything for a buck.
Recognizing this dynamic as our greatest barrier to progress is a necessary step to solving the problem. In order to be able to fight against such a powerful and organized enemy, we need to get as many people on our side and activate them enough to take coordinate collective action. To this end, we’ve seen how this individualized blame game has hurt our cause. (And the fossil fuel industry is at least partially responsible for pushing that narrative to the forefront.) People are naturally going to be hesitant to do things that diminish their quality of life and seeing people judge them for not doing so when they’re already living with so little while the rich pollute to their hearts content can make people feel alienated from the struggle. It makes it seem like these activists and politicians don’t understand or care about their circumstances. It makes it seem like we’re being petty and disingenuous by going after relatively small things. Nobody likes to feel like the bad guy, so they may even overcorrect and be more receptive to climate denial. Even if they accept the premise and reduce their consumption, if they’re convinced that this is sufficient and take no additional action, we’re still screwed. It also doesn’t help that the gov has been doing things to make even individual consumption changes even harder. China has made great strides in making cheap solar panels and electric vehicles, but we can’t have that, think of the shareholders! Lets put trade barriers up on their import.
Don’t get me wrong. I would never tell someone NOT to modify their behavior. If you are in a situation where you feel you can drive less, eat less meat, etc… go for it. My problem is using this framework as an overall marketing strategy for climate action. Look, climate change has just gotten worse over my lifetime. In fact, it’s gotten worse at an accelerating rate. Whatever we’ve been doing… IT HASN’T BEEN WORKING! Whatever tiny gains have been made by changes in consumption have been totally eclipsed by the wastefulness of the elite. If something isn’t working… you do something else.
Trains and trams are based af
Buses are pretty great too, to connect the more rural areas
As long as they’re not routed through main commute hubs. Where I live (near a major german city, so there indeed is at least something) all the bus connections to the closest subway station of the city are routed over a small portion of a major street. That alone causes massive delays every morning and often also in the evening when everyone pours in- and out of the city in their gas guzzlers.
I’m very much for having waaay more (semi-subway) trains even in rural areas. Even if it’s just small ones that never exceed 50kmh or something, having a trustworthy schedule would be worth it. Connect every milk can! (After giving it 5G)
That is definitely true. Buses are way more susceptible to shitty traffic engineering than railways. Though buses can work really well at traffic choke points too, when good traffic engineering is employed. Where I live, the bus can always zip right past all of the morning rush hour traffic and there is nothing more satisfying than looking out of a bus’ window and laughing at all the car-idiots standing still, stuck in traffic :3
But yeah, railways rule, I meant buses for the really bumblefuck places out there where rails wouldn’t be economical.
I find it hard to be enthused for trains, trams, and busses any more, since discovering over 20 years ago that clean energy and many other technologies and man-made innovations have been suppressed to maintain out dependence on scarce polluting energy because it’s easier to put a meter on to extract rents by. … So much so… y’know we could have had spaceships each since the 1930s? T Townsend Brown was not the first nor the leading pinnacle. Even back to the mid 1800s, when they were rigging their hot air balloons with faraday cages and high freq e.m. fields to reduce, and even eliminate inertia [… 1 small vacuum-proofing hop, and you have rudimentary interstellar flight capabilities]… … we never needed rockets, we never needed planes. … we don’t really need buses either. Or cars.
But if we make a nice world, buses still could be very nice to have.
Semi-subway trains too.
And cars even too. Track day, anyone? :)
Whole lot of vertical space unused in this world [and beyond]. We have so much headroom without the crooks holding us down. Heck! Even the crooks, even with their billions and trillions, would be better off, if we availed, each and all, all the emancipatory technologies.
We’re all responsible. I’m sure a lot of Romans used this argument when their slaves came after them during the Servile Wars. And it probably didn’t go well.
Is it also not the fault of the 99% who vote for non-Green parties who then make the laws causing your bullet points?
Waaaaaaaay less than the people who have used their power to corrupt said system. Capitalists wouldn’t have spent this much money on lobbying and propaganda if it wasn’t needed. They try their best to keep some people from voting and the rest from having any viable choices that reflect what they want.
It’s just counterproductive to conceptualize our current situation in terms of individualized guilt. It’s not like going to privately check a box every few years is doing much more than choosing to consume a bit less. We need to be organized. Our enemies are and they’re winning.
Also the voting thing ignores the failure of electoral reform in preventing the two party system, and divorcing of the peoples intent from policy for the sake of lobbyist and corporate preference.
While more can be done locally, there have been think groups and other money-lead influencers affecting local efforts for as long as the heritage foundation has been supplying fascist mandates to USA presidents.
There were a lot of people trying to make that salient, and decide action in response to it, when suddenly all progressive groups decided the true threat was other progressive groups for some reason, and anyone trying to resolve that or encourage better communication or cooperation between progressive groups is actually secretly supporting the fascists somehow, because we out here dividing ourselves to be conquered.
Issue totally isn’t rich assholes with too much time and money pushing some policy sitting between feudalism, fascism, and whatever the fuck you would call what putin did to Russia.
I’ve been complaining about self segregation and communication issues for decades, and have been chastised/banned from a weird chunk of progressive spaces I’ve interacted with over this exact problem.
the two party system
The UK has a first-past-the-post system, yet the 2 parties that have won for decades (Labour and the Tories) are polling behind other parties like the horrible Reform and (in Feb and March) the ethical Greens.
People can choose to vote for Greens if they want, but most choose not to. The billions who fly and drive can stop, since there already are billions who don’t fly or drive (tho for the latter it’s mostly because they’re poor, not because they don’t want to be complicit in a mass-extinction event).
there’s a lot of “if you don’t vote for the establishment party you are throwing your vote away, and trump is 100% directly your fault” rhetorics that are meant to discourage that kind of stuff, but i absolutely do wish people didn’t just give up actually getting behind something that isn’t just a temporary slowdown on the road to corpo fascist dictatorship.
Is it also not the fault of the 99% who vote for non-Green parties who then make the laws causing your bullet points?
Waaaaaaaay less than the people who have used their power to corrupt said system.
In the 2024-11-05 US House election there were 149.5 million votes (I don’t know how many eligible total), and 0.2 million voted Green.
In the 2024-11-05 US presidential election there were 155 million votes (only a 64.3% turnout), and 0.8 million voted Green.
In the 2024-07-04 UK election there were 48 million eligible voters, and 1.9 million voted Green. However, polling shows that despite the UK’s first-past-the-post system, the Greens (in Feb and March) regularly polled ahead of both Labour and the Tories.
And regarding your other points, don’t forget urban planning. Trains and urban planning go hand in hand. You can’t transform transportation by trains alone if everything is suburbs and city jobs, for example.
110%. Walkable cities and trains. Let’s do it.
Yes, walkable cities and trains but also planning out where people live and work. Where people live is currently left up to the anarchy of the market, real estate speculation, where employment is located, etc. Then they have to get from where they live to other places they want or need to be, usually work. With some planning these things can be made intentionally dense, closer together, cheaper, and on transit lines.
I agree, I love trains too!
American comment is American
USA #1!.. at a bunch of things you don’t want to be #1 at.
Excellent comment!
Design towns and cities that can only be easily traversed by car.
Just to reiterate, there is something you can do about this. Lobby your local decision makers. They’re not waiting around to be guilted into anything, but they are generally happy to talk to residents and are open for reasonable arguments.
(That doesn’t mean local politicians are reasonable people. 90% of the ones who run things where I live are a lost case. But there are always the odd exceptions who are willing to listen and will work hard to make a difference.)
I posted a question about it a few days ago, but atm my tiny project is to get my town to plant more trees along the sidewalks so it isn’t so torturous to walk anywhere when it gets this hot. I tried emailing someone from a department I think handles this kind of thing, but not 100% sure and I haven’t heard back yet. I guess I’ll follow up soon if I don’t get a response.
>>“Spoiler alert: it’s not you”
>>proceeds to display a chart of companies who sell a fuel we all use
I hope big oil is paying you well for propagating their “personal carbon-footprint”-narrative.
What do do you say? They don’t even pay you? … Then why are you doing it?
Because I don’t trust anybody who tells me things I wanna hear like “you bear no responsibility; it’s somebody else’s fault”.
Oil companies couldn’t sell if nobody was buying. The idea that the world can be fixed and I won’t need to sacrifice a thing is a little too good to be true. Sure, maybe others will need to make more changes than me, and I’m certainly not gonna let them off the hook, but I’m not gonna let myself off the hook either, and anyone who tells me I can is selling me something.
The idea that the world can be fixed and I won’t need to sacrifice a thing is a little too good to be true
On one hand I don’t think people are saying that. On the other hand, there are some radical views here on Lemmy.
Sure, maybe others will need to make more changes than me, and I’m certainly not gonna let them off the hook, but I’m not gonna let myself off the hook either, and anyone who tells me I can is selling me something.
I am 100% with you here.
If you can spot me $30,000 I’ll get an electric car today
First, I have to get a new range hood, repair my foundation drain, regrade my yard, and earn a spare 30k after that.
I think I’d get close to $5 if I traded in my current car, if that helps
I’ll give you $3.50
Just do what you can, when you can. It’s all any of us can do.
Oh, the old “it’s the consumers responsibility” fallacy.
Nothing will change if it isn’t forced, or if electric cars get cheaper.
My sister has that as a tattoo (or some variation on that wording).
And yet, it seems to have become an excuse for why she’s allowed to buy a big gas-guzzling SUV, and drive it whenever she wants, wherever she wants, and fly around the world for fun.
If she’s ever asked, she’s an environmentalist who loves nature. But, she avoids ever having to make tough choices about her own lifestyle because she allows herself the grace to just do what she can do, and not agonize over the rest.
30,000? A domestically manufacturered, highway-capable EV is 10,000 USD here in vn and even cheaper over in China.
Who do you think is responsible for your inability to buy reasonably priced evs?
space karen
if you can repay it tomorrow i can spot you 30k today
just don’t ask where i got it
Whatcha gonna drive it on? The streets and roads are a major source of CO2 by themselves.
If someone can spot me $300 million, I’ll get functional public transit going in my city instead.
In the meantime, my options are drive a car, or be unemployed.
You’d also have to deal with all of the residents who pitch a screaming fit any time anybody suggests maybe possibly removing a parking space. Unfortunately, it’s a whole, self-reinforcing system, not just the fault of a few corporations.
I’d argue not having to burn your fuel is already a great improvement
“we all use”
Speak for yourself. I refuse to pay them a cent, and have taken every step I can to distance myself from them.
Most of the factories that manufacture the stuff you use are driven by fossil fuels. The food you eat is most likely grown using fertilizer that was made using natural gas. Unless you live in the forest and eat nuts and berries, you use fossil fuels.
The factories may use fossil fuels, but I do not.
The fossil fuel companies are responsible for their own actions, as are the companies and people who still choose to use fossil fuels.
The people who have made an active choice to avoid fossil fuels (or the people without a choice) are not at fault. Blaming them instead of the people who can make a difference helps no-one.
It’s trump diddling kids, not me!
- this guy, eating a trump steak on trump airlines.
Whoever said “instead”?
You realize that fossil fuels or natural gas are not evil by themselves, right?
What causes climate change is burning them and releasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
If you use it to create fertilizer, or plastic, or whachamacallit, it doesn’t create greenhouse effects.
it’s still putting energy into pumping it up. And what happens with the fertilizer, or plastic, or whachamacallit? It gets consumed.
The fertilizer best case becomes plant, gets eaten, pooped out yada yada eventually it becomes the greenhouse gasses. Worst case it’s spilled into the environment as overfertilizing runoff, where it offsets soil balance which helps to release… greenhouse gasses.
The plastic: after use: what happens with it? It gets burned best case, which will release greenhouse gasses. Or it end up in the ocean, not greenhouse i guess, but also not that fun.
When we extract fossil carbon from deep down to the surface, there is a very high chance it will become greenhouse gas. Some of it becomes greenhouse gas almost immediately, some of it only after a few decades, but it’s still offsetting the balance of the globe and adding to climate change.
Fossil fuels are not evil by themselves (how can anything without consciousness be evil?), but many other uses than burning it to go vroom vroom also pose problems to global environmental systems, many uses will also end into processes that will also have negative influence on greenhouse gas situation. Plastic is a miracle material with many very good uses, but the way it is still mostly used now (use once, throw out, burn) is still adding greenhouse gasses.
Fertilizer helps plants grow (and bind carbon from the atmosphere). Doesn’t “become plant”. Poop doesn’t become greenhouse gasses. Poop will exist anyway, with or without fertilizer. You got most of it wrong.
PS: Plastic can be recycled as well. Even if it’s not, you just don’t burn it at the end.
Poop decomposes and becomes greenhouse gas. Fancy new filtration plants capture some of that gas and produce electricity with it. Most is not captured.
Fertilizer mainly helps 1year crops grow, aka food. Not forests that will bind carbon for hundreds or thousands of years. The typical large scale agricultural industrial operations cause more release of carbon than they bind it.
A very large part of the produced fertilizer is used to, often on land where there used to be carbon binding forests, grow soy, corn etc to feed enormous amounts of livestock. Which we then eat. It is a manyfold less efficient way for humans to consume animal protein rather than plant proteins. Producing and using lots of artificial fertilizer is for sure not a positive effect on global climate change.
Are you using ChatGPT or just making stuff up as you go?
That’s even more of a reason to focus on buyers rather than sellers.
ohld on, i’m doing a google. how many Gs is electric grig supposeed to have?
Well i don’t create the system. Given the chance i would rather not be a part of it.
“We’re not evil for selling you something that will destroy the environment, you’re evil for being forced to buy it from us!”
Removed by mod
“I’m not a monster for choosing to drive a gas-guzzling SUV, it’s the evil oil companies!”
I’m not pretending these companies are blameless. They certainly lobby to reduce people’s alternatives. They probably break any environmental regulation they can get around, and just pay a fine if caught.
But, fundamentally, they’re a business. They wouldn’t be pumping oil out of the ground if people weren’t buying it.
Spoiler alert: if we weren’t 8 billion and fertilized our crops with fossil fuels, then we wouldn’t need that much fossil energy…
Yes, it’s you. It’s me. It’s your 5 kids. The oil didn’t pump itself out of the ground and set itself on fire for fun.
It’s your plane trip, it’s your military, it’s your proxy wars.
Whenever I see posts like this, I really don’t understand if people really think they produce oil/gas/fuel/food packaging, etc. for themselves.
If someone offers a money for a product, there will be someone else willing to sell it to you. You are the consumer.
Think of it like this - a electricity company generates electricity, as much as it’s needed for current demand. I’m the final consumer, the demander, the reason infrastructure exists. And I shall be happy burning my RTX 5080 while looking into ACs to cool the room from that PC at the same time, hitting 2kW usage just so I can do nothing and game, because who cares. I tried living green, but when you see MFs producing more footprint in their shitty trucks in a day than you do in a month using Ebike, and people still decide to blame some placeholder instead of our own society and way of living, then it’s quite clear nothing will change and it’s a lost cause.
Ah yes companies that famously refine oil only to pour it into a hole and light it on fire for their own amusement, no one else uses it at all.
If its just these companies that would be affected let’s just close them down. I’m sure it would make no difference what so ever.
Shell also dodge paying fair taxes. https://www.ftm.eu/articles/shell-shifted-billions-in-profits-to-tax-havens-leaked-files-reveal
Please, dodging taxes is the least of Shell’s atrocities.
I’m not sure about the data sources for this image but from some quick research it looks like this includes scope 3 (end user emissions) for shell and chevron by not the others. The data realistically looks a bit more like this:
🇸🇦 Saudi Aramco: ~2.0 Billion metric tons (Estimated; excludes Scope 3 from official tracking) 🇬🇧 Shell: ~1.1 Billion metric tons 🇺🇸 ExxonMobil: ~813 Million metric tons 🇺🇸 Chevron: ~600 to 780 Million metric tons (Varies by accounting method) 🇬🇧 BP: ~400 Million metric tons
Context: For all these companies, Scope 3 makes up 85% to 95% of their total climate impact. This is why state-owned giants like Aramco and US majors like Exxon/Chevron focus their climate targets almost entirely on their own drilling operations (Scope 1 & 2) while excluding the footprint of the products they sell.
In any case this is pretty bad and we are probably gonners.
I still feel like these numbers are not appropriately representative… iirc, the vast majority of world oil supplies come from nationalized oil companies, which keep the lions share of the profits of oil production as a source of national revenue. So assuming I havent been misled, my best guess is that the private firms are contracted for extraction and refinement, and so the total carbon footprint gets lumped together under them, rather than being split between the national governments who contract them
Y’know we could have had spaceships each since the 1930s, right?
Or even just running our cars on seed oils, like hempseed oil, or plant derived ethanol.
Or even just running our cars on water.
… If they’d stop killing inventors and stop abusing the patent system to secretize emancipatory technologies.
I believe they crush technologies, but most of the things you mentioned aren’t true. There were no spaceships possible in the 1930s. Why crush that technology when they could have conquered the world with it? It’s not possible to run cars on water. The thermodynamics just doesn’t make sense. We have cars that run on biofuel, but mass-converting vehicles to that would drive up costs of food. Ethanol for fuel already does that by using farmland that could grow food.
I believe they crush technologies, but most of the things you mentioned aren’t true.
Beliefism and contradiction asserted.
There were no spaceships possible in the 1930s.
Foo fighters only showed up in the 1940s are you thinking? Or not even aware of those? Or the bell (“die glocke”)? Nor my earlier examples looked into? Just presuming? If so, how? By mistaking absence of evidence as evidence of absence?
Why crush that technology when they could have conquered the world with it?
LOL. Fun way to answer your own question.
It’s not possible to run cars on water.
Indeed. Any who attempt to, seem to die or disappear. … iirc, Stanley Meyers’ famous moment, running out of the restaurant from a meeting with some potential “investors”, shouting “THEY POISONED ME”, just before he died, seems to serve (intentionally or not) as a warning and disincentive to even try.
The thermodynamics just doesn’t make sense.
Have seen each of the methods of catalysis and can refute each? That’d be thoroughly educational|entertaining|enthralling to see.
[Just remembered before posting… didn’t one method use a combination of lasers and plasma… one of the cavitation methods… idk, been decades since looking into this stuff. Hazy tidbits of memories for the curious and studious to chase if they want. … (Perhaps futilely) hoping websearch not so censored as cannot find this stuff any more. ~ Had to dig 100s of pages deep into search results even back then.]
Even before learning more about the states of matter that water can get into (including recent stuff on it being two different liquid states simultaneously), the magnetic alignment method has fascinated me (~ in passing… I’ve run no tests ~ dear industry, pls leave me be. lol.). It would be great to share an exploration of the various ranges, of state conditionals; of energy levels, types, frequencies and wave shapes; of cavitation, aperture, geometry; of ortho water and para water, ratios thereof; of water isotopes; ratios thereof; of impurities, solutes, salinity, ionisation, pH; and so on. To really draw out the more complete matrix of water’s potential (~ at least in the mundane material utility sense). [/*dreamer*]
Anyways, the claims are out there. Mere nay-saying is an unsatisfactory replacement for refutation, especially amidst conflicts of interest and dogmatic world views that salaries depend upon. Closed minds are never wrong.
That was a test to see if you were for real. I have a new technology they don’t want you to know about. I just need an investor to help me build it. It recycles your feces into more food than you originally ate. If McDonalds finds out they will kill me. I can get you in on the ground floor for $10000
the last point are just the current status. there are various approaches to solve those issues, which could be explored more.
one examples that comes to mind is ethanol from algae, which live in salty water. i remember seeing a documentary about it, staying that you could just place them in big tanks in the desert. there they wouldn’t compete with food for land.
I’m not saying that this example solves everything, just that there could definitely be more research.
Certainly a part, a potential.
I wonder about coupling such with things like mycelia too, that can grow from radiant energy besides light, and can form symbiotic relationships with plants, and so, maybe (if this isn’t too simple-thinking), yeast with algae, there could likewise by biological catalysis, synergies, mutual boons, that even then produce other useful stuff too.
~ that also got me thinking of the various pond surface plants, and how prolifically efficient growers they are too. Not sure how to put that to use, besides, idk, a source of protein and b12 for vegans.
~ and, not quite sure why, but that moonpool reforestation method springs to mind too. I don’t know how yet, but put all these things (and more) together, and, … good results. ;)
Bingo. I used to work for Shell. This is exactly what they do. And whenever I tell people I get told I’m a conspiracy theorist.
Heeh! :D I’ve just had effectively the exact same thing, except for advertising. “Mind control does not exist” they said, to the face of one saying they used to be one of those doing it!
Nah, they’d use it for themselves to build a Meth star, and blow up Earth, as they float off into space.
I hope the water thing is /s
I hope the water thing is /s
Why do you want that to be sarcasm?
Wouldn’t you prefer that to be true??
You hope differently to me.
Water powered car’s been invented more than just that once with the famous Stanley Meyer story. Y’know those blow torch thingies, that use water? Yeah, same basic principle. And remember in that special episode of Top Gear (I think it was maybe the Myanmar episode), where Hammond put a little water in his engine (in with the fuel) to give it more go at altitude? Same principle as many of the "water powered car"s use, where instead of (afaiu) electromagnetic alignment catalyst, they use chemical catalysts (and other starters and combustants etc), to which some eager naysayers throw the baby out with the bathwater and proclaim it all bunk because those designs were not using pure water. … I’m not sure any use entirely pure water, do they? Didn’t even Stanley Meyers design involve some kind of other chemical in the mix too? I’m not looking into it any further than is popularly known. I don’t want to be mistaken for an inventor, attracting the attention of the ruthless unscrupulous sorts with a lot invested in their rentier ride. ;)
Amusing aside… can haz steam powered car too. ;) Too contrived to call that water powered? Hehe. Even a Stirling engine?
I’m assuming they were hoping you don’t actually believe it to be possible, not hoping that it’s impossible.
As far as I know, there’s no viable way to get water out of energy. All the different hydrocarbons we burn tend to produce water as a result of the burning process (CO2 and H2O being the results of a clean burning hydrocarbon).
The trouble is, you need energy to break bonds between atoms, and energy gets released as bonds are created. H2O has some pretty strong bonds and there’s nothing you can easily make it react with to get more or stronger bonds in there.
Water can be used in internal combustion engines to cool down the combustion chambers if you’re running super high performance, but that doesn’t meant water injection is adding energy from water, you’d still be burning more fuel to get more power.
They make cars which run on hydrogen which you can get from water but that process is so inefficient they opt to get the hydrogen from natural gas instead thus defeating the entire purpose. Overall we have better tech now than “running a car on water” and doing that doesn’t help the bigger problem of unsustainable use of energy
The only practical way to get power from water is to break it apart and then burn the hydrogen, and it takes more energy to break it apart than you’ll get back.
The whole post is ridiculous. Putting cars on the water and inventing boats is pretty funny though.
A lot of the replies to this, in rough grok analysis of epistemics at play, to be fair, remind me more of those who kept insisting blue LED were impossible, and their arguments remind me more of “we cannot have spaceships because the string doors won’t work in space” type arguments, more than they remind me of industry agents intentionally sowing seeds of ignorance squared. [~ Mild confidence. Generously [amidst some redherrings and moved goalposts etc.].]
… And fun to think of the contrast of those two examples. They’re [/you’re] almost certainly seeing this with blue LED, and blue LED was sought by industry, did not obsolete their industry, but enhanced the demand for their product, while augmenting the appeal and profit margins and all kinds of other features (~ radically different world where we did not yet get blue led… smart phones wouldn’t have happened, for a start). They’re [you’re] almost certainly not seeing this while sat in their own spaceship, nor even a water powered car… probably not even a car fuelled with hemp oil or ethanol (~ radically different world where we did not get any of those suppressed… far fewer incentive for resource wars, far greater self empowerment and a better educated and empowered populace, resulting in better democracy from that better informed public, with a better practical grasp of energy, utility, facility, society, health and more, on the road to becoming polymaths in the making (~ rather than single-purpose slaves in training)).
We ought to seize all the top companies.
They’re just holding companies. They don’t make anything. They don’t produce anything. They just bleed off a kick, like a mob boss, and use those gains to amass political power.
Seize them all and use the assets (and annual profits) to fund American society.
Absolutely.
Take their wealth by force.
No thanks, BP and Saudi Aramco already prop up the US enough.
like a mob boss
Who do you think started the first big companies?
Put a garnishing order on their past 50 years of profits. All proceeds go to infrastructure investments for the developing world in climate mitigation and food security.
But it is us, secondarily because we run our gas cars and such.
Not even secondarily, imo, but like thirdly and fourthly. A lot of people don’t have the option to not drive. I’d say it’s a sad privilege to have a reliable public transportation system.
I’d say it goes a bit deeper than us.
It’s “us” because we keep voting for, and alongside, the people fucking us over. We like to blame the ruling class for buying our government, but it’s the stupid-ass workers that keep being herded like sheep and getting mad at anyone who calls it out.
In essence, most people deserve the state of the world because most people did nothing to stop it because they didn’t want to look bad in front of their idiot peers.
Anyone who legitimately fought back gets my condolences, but that certainly isn’t most of us.
Oligarchs. People own Shell, they make demands. Those shareholders demand profits over all else. Those companies are just constructs we’ve made to organize making money. Not to say you can’t go after them… well, you can’t because they own the governments… but you get my point
I thought it is me, because I’m Not recycling hard enough. Puh, got lucky here /s
Where does the money they get come from?
Oil extraction
You’re confused.
The money comes from you. I welcome you to no longer use a car and walk to the job. Poof, suddenly their profit falls. Multiply that by a society, and suddenly much of these firms can no longer exist.
The question has always been about how much humans are willing to sacrifice to save the earth, and the answer has pretty much always been “best I can do is blame a placeholder (some CEO/company, doesn’t matter which one, because it’s just demand from society and there will always be new companies as long as there is demand from you and me) and assume it’s 100% their fault”
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t really an individual problem, it’s how society/humans work. We’d vote for someone who speaks against oil, but hang them as soon as the oil price goes above 5$
I don’t own a gasoline car you fool
I want the price of oil to be $2028 a gallon
The products you buy were made in factories powered by fossil fuels, shipped across oceans in fossil fuel powered ships, and arrive at the shop in fossil fuel powered trucks. The food you eat is fertilized with fossil fuels, and the industrial growing, processing, and packaging process puts carbon into the atmosphere. The streets you walk on are made from concrete, which releases carbon into the atmosphere from the chemical process used to synthesize it. And even if you live some magical life where you can avoid personally paying the cost of all of these things, the same is not true of everyone else, who needs to drive cars to work on asphalt highways, heat their homes with wood/propane/ng stoves, eats industrially produced food, and have all this economic activity protected via a fossil fuel powered military. And an increased price of carbon means that their lives cost more, which means they need higher wages, which means everything they produce that you might buy also gets more expensive.
I don’t disagree with you that gas prices should be higher. In fact, I think the only way to get from here to there is to appropriately price carbon. But to act like there is no potential for hardship among average people - that there arent legitimate challenges to weening off the carbon-heavy economy we are used to - is disingenuous at best
Right, but why are you ready to live green when 8 out of 10 people would take the cheaper oil that you didn’t buy? Just keep doing whatever you like, we don’t matter on the grand scheme of things.
