And that’s the “no ethical consumption under capitalism” issue. Sure, you need a house to live in, and goods to purchase, and places to buy those goods (ie, malls and other commercial stuff). But how can you absolve yourself from blame for purchasing necessities and not offer that same grace to the companies that produce those necessities for you?

Pointing fingers and placing blame is a distraction. The right thing to do is for you to reduce your environmental impact where you can, purchase goods from the least bad producers, and encourage others to do the same.

Yes, and, who’s buying the products of those industries? The construction industry doesn’t build houses and tear them down again for no reason, you know? Consumers bear a share of the responsibility for the environmental impact of production.

Of course, in exploited colonized nations where products are extracted and shipped overseas and locals are left with nothing, the dynamic is different. But somehow I doubt this is happening in the EU.

I think “we” (secular Westerners) are more likely to appropriate spiritual indigenous narratives, take them out of context, and trivialize them into meaninglessness - as the article describes we did with the concept of mindfulness - than we are to erase them. And I think this will happen because we, secular Westerners, are living lives devoid of spiritual meaning, and it’s terribly tempting to steal other people’s beliefs in the hope we can find a fraction of their meaning in life.

And though I’m sure people online are going to go full Reddit atheist on me and tell me belief in a higher power is ignorant and primitive, every society in human history that we know anything about has either had some sort of belief in higher powers or has aggressively suppressed such belief, and that belief served a function of social cohesion that a lot of the left no longer have.

Honestly, I think part of the reason Trump won - and part of the reason populist, religious nationalism is surging worldwide, Trump being just one example - is that the secular West threw out its own spiritual narratives without replacing them with anything. We condemned Christianity as ignorant, bigoted, and repressive, but we didn’t create anything in its place to serve its role. We walked away from the churches, which were the “third places” of our towns, the centers of our social and cultural lives, and we replaced them with what? Coffee shops?

People need something to believe in, and we told them “do your jobs and vote blue, but it won’t matter anyway because the environment is fucked”.

The environmental left needs the warning not to engage in empty spirituality because so many people in it are desperate for the kind of meaning spirituality gives.

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Yeah. Two years ago, mainstream studies were estimating 3°C by 2100 - and it’s well documented at this point how climate scientists deliberately underestimate predicted rates of warning to avoid being seen as alarmist.

At this point I agree with 2°C by 2040 and bet on 3°C by 2050. 5°C by 2100, 10°C if some of the worst case feedback loops exist.

I think that was also why Qanon got so much play in the right-wing media ecosystem - getting conservatives comfortable with authoritarian big government conservatism.

Trump is going to declare martial law and have liberals killed or sent to camps? Qanon influencers have been telling conservatives that was the plan since 2017. And about 25% of the United States either believed it or thought “yeah, it’s crazy, but wouldn’t it be cool if it was real?”

This is so incredibly short-sighted. Support for solar energy really should be a Republican priority too - it’s business, it’s industry, it’s making money. China, India, the entire continent of Africa, are all going solar. The United States could be a world leader in this trillion-dollar industry - hell, there’s a national security argument that we need American scientists and workers to support the American solar industry.

Never mind the climate issue for now. Walking away from solar leaves billions on the table that other countries are going to snap up. Republicans love subsidizing industry. This is a braindead bipartisan opportunity.

But little Donnie hates solar energy personally, threw a tantrum about it, and no one in the 80-year-old boy king’s court dares to disagree with him.

Thank you!

BP coined the term “carbon footprint”. BP didn’t invent the idea of measuring or reducing individual consumption. Fossil fuel propaganda has very effectively promoted the idea that you can either reduce your individual consumption or fight for societal and governmental change, playing one off against the other. But it’s not either / or. It’s both.

I’ve been challenged in lectures I give, even by scientists, who said, “Ricardo, this cause of yours is minor. We’re discussing the survival of extremely important biomes.” And I said, “Buddy, who decides whether the biome will be preserved or not? Do you think the landowners in the Amazon live on their farms? They don’t. They live in rich neighborhoods in São Paulo.”

Most of the people who elect the politicians who will care about what’s left outside the cities are urban dwellers. If, since childhood, they saw (native) embaúbas and juçara palm trees, you create a bond between people and their territory.

If we don’t convince city dwellers that our biodiversity is incredible, wonderful, and worth preserving, it won’t be.

I think this is incredibly important to remember. It exemplifies two sayings that are not just advice for activism but antidotes to despair: the personal is political, and all politics are local. Your little pollinator garden, your plant-based meals, your creek cleanup project, will have ripple effects far beyond their immediate impact on the environment, because of how it impacts the social environment and the people around you.

And on a side note, using an AI generated TLDR is almost painfully ironic given the content. I’m not really a fan.

Very few western vegans want to imagine that, in a vegan world, domestic pets would go the way of domestic livestock. But a world that takes animal rights seriously is not a world that uses animals for human pleasure, whether that pleasure comes from food or companionship. Vegans aren’t “pet owners” because vegans don’t see animals as things to be owned.

Which is all to say, healthy plant based pet food may or may not be possible, but either way it’s not going to be vegan.

The CCP was founded in 1921 with less than fifty “thoughtful, committed citizens” as members.

Ralph Nader created modern automotive safety regulations practically single-handedly.

Hell, Jesus started with twelve apostles.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead

To get systemic changes in any sort of representative government, you need a critical mass of people to support that systemic change. You don’t need “every single individual making the right choice”. But you need enough people to make the right choice that politicians can pass laws supporting that choice without getting kicked out of office and their laws revoked by the next administration.

I mean, how do you expect to pass laws that make meat more expensive when 90% of the people in your country eat meat and are worried about their budgets?

The idea that changing your diet won’t make a difference is, unironically, meat industry propaganda. We build the consensus for systemic change one meal at a time.

And you’re right to feel that way. Sharing dumpstered food with other dumpster divers who share your values is one thing - plenty of urban communes with shared kitchens do it. Sharing dumpstered food with random people on the street? I wouldn’t do that either 😆

Probably very few people will change their mind. It might sway a few Catholics who are on the fence about global climate change (somehow).

But what the Pope says will have an impact on young people from Catholic families who haven’t learned much about climate change. Especially in places like the Philippines where climate change is quite literally lapping at their shores.

The idea that all Catholics have to do what the Pope says, or even agree with the Pope, is, frankly, anti-Catholic bullcrap - back when I was a very very small child, John Birch Society bigots were passing out pamphlets claiming JFK would be taking his orders from the Vatican.

But what the Pope does have is moral and persuasive authority. And when teenagers are growing up and learning about the world, and TikTok and right wing news are spewing all sorts of climate denial garbage at them, and they’re being bombarded from all sides by the message that all politicians are liars and everybody’s out to take your money and trying to change anything is hopeless - don’t underestimate the influence of someone who’s respected as not just a world leader but a good man.

My dumpster diving days are far behind me, but that attitude used to be called “freegan”.

For me, I wouldn’t criticize anyone who chose to eat animal flesh sourced in this manner - no one in the capitalist supply chain is going to make any money off you, you’re not increasing demand for animal flesh, eating that flesh does no harm to any living animal and makes it no more or less likely that more animals will be killed.

At the same time, the personal is political, and part of that is living your values in a way that is not only consistent but appears consistent to others. Publicly eating like a vegan, and sharing how your diet reflects your system of ethics, normalizes veganism and encourages people to respect and consider your point of view. Every time you, as a vegan, share a meal with others, you are also sharing your values, even if you unobtrusively choose a vegan meal option and don’t say a word about other people’s choices.

But if you call yourself a vegan, and then you eat meat, or wear leather, or otherwise consume animal products, it taints you with perceived hypocrisy, discredits your words and actions, and makes other vegans look bad by association.

Also, it just feels icky.

OP, I would ask, are you part of a collective? Are you in contact with other dumpster divers you could share or trade food with? Because I hate the waste involved, too, and though I wouldn’t eat the animal flesh myself I would be willing to give it to someone whose ethics permit it.

Distance also matters a lot. I know where a bunch of little free libraries (no trademark) are in my community, but I don’t visit them because they’re too far away - I can check out books from Libby, I’m not going to take a bus ride for free books 😆

So advertising something like a free farm stand has diminishing returns, because you’re going to reach a lot of people for whom the stuff at the stand isn’t worth the time and effort to get to even if it’s free.

Which is to say, instead of creating a farm stand and then trying to advertise it, one might want to figure out what the people in walking distance want in a farm stand first. Then you set up an email chain or something similar and let the locals know what’s ripe when.

If you’re in the United States, don’t worry. Between tariffs and mass deportations, ordinary grocery store veggies are going to be more expensive than farmers’ markets pretty soon.

Arable land. The issue is the vertical farms rely on jute fibers, which are farmed conventionally, and take up more land than the crops grown in the vertical farms normally would.

The article discusses some workarounds to this problem, but currently it’s another entry in the “technological solutions to climate change are predominantly scams” column.

Look at Trump and his techbro social media cronies (Elon, Jeff, Tim Apple, etc). Those are the billionaires who control the world, or at least the West, and it’s very clearly a he man woman haters boy’s club. And I mean this literally. They are men who hate women, with Trump and Musk as exhibits A and B respectively.

I’m sure there are hundreds of women billionaires, but they’re not the ones lining up to kiss Trump’s ring and promising not to fact check his posts.

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