I'm not saying Americans are innocent. The point of intervention responsibility is to pry apart responsibility in the moral or casual sense and responsibility in the ability-to-effect-meaningful-change sense. The idea that climate change is happening because ordinary people won't give up their SUVs and stop eating beef is wrong and deliberate misinformation on the part of companies and governments who want you to think that you bear individual accountability for the problem. That's insane. The overwhelming majority of damage is being done by the wealthiest 1,000 people in the world, the 100 largest companies, and the US Military. Those people (and those institutions) bear the intervention responsibility here, because they're in a position in which changes to their behavior will meaningfully affect the global environment. Becoming a vegan or never flying as a consumer are morally good, but they're not meaningful interventions in the grand scheme of things, even if the overwhelming majority of ordinary people pursue them.
Consider the inverse case: white supremacy and systemic racism. Virtually none of us bear moral responsibility for this: we never owned slaves, didn't design a racist oligarchy of a government, and so on. That doesn't mean we don't have intervention responsibility to fix it, though, because we can enact meaningful resistance to white supremacy in our day-to-day lives by being anti-racist in our actual deeds, fighting for the dignity and rights of marginalized people, and generally enacting resistance.
The idea that climate change is happening because ordinary people won't give up their SUVs and stop eating beef is wrong [… because] the overwhelming majority of damage is being done the 100 largest companies.
Exxon, Alphabet, Tyson are all guilty of pollution, but they only exist — indeed, they can only exist — because people pay them to do so. Americans elect the politicians who shield Exxon from consequences, they endorse the policies that enable the ownership of private jets, of mansions, of sports cars, of cruise ships.
Exxon is literally the manifestation of their desires. If people weren’t willing to die over access to cheap fossil fuels we wouldn’t be in this predicament.
You think Americans care that Tyson tortures chickens? Have you met average Americans?? They do not give a fuck! They love cheap, unregulated, dirty meat. They love cheap gas. They love big cars, big houses, cruise ships, and they will die to stop you from taking these things from them.
It’s funny because folks keep saying this over and over: they say it at the polls, in voting booths, at primaries, and you don’t listen. There’s this fantasy that if only we could educate the 50% of Americans who are irremediable shitheads, they’d change their minds. No. They won’t. Only generational turnover can fix this issue. We wait for them to die out until we can outnumber them at voting booths. There’s no other practical option. Unless you have another pandemic up your sleeve?
Generational politics doesn't work, you just end up with Buttigieg with a Boomer Brain implant, and if you're hoping for it just being the old to die I have bad news for you about the current pandemic
I'm not saying Americans are innocent. The point of intervention responsibility is to pry apart responsibility in the moral or casual sense and responsibility in the ability-to-effect-meaningful-change sense. The idea that climate change is happening because ordinary people won't give up their SUVs and stop eating beef is wrong and deliberate misinformation on the part of companies and governments who want you to think that you bear individual accountability for the problem. That's insane. The overwhelming majority of damage is being done by the wealthiest 1,000 people in the world, the 100 largest companies, and the US Military. Those people (and those institutions) bear the intervention responsibility here, because they're in a position in which changes to their behavior will meaningfully affect the global environment. Becoming a vegan or never flying as a consumer are morally good, but they're not meaningful interventions in the grand scheme of things, even if the overwhelming majority of ordinary people pursue them.
Consider the inverse case: white supremacy and systemic racism. Virtually none of us bear moral responsibility for this: we never owned slaves, didn't design a racist oligarchy of a government, and so on. That doesn't mean we don't have intervention responsibility to fix it, though, because we can enact meaningful resistance to white supremacy in our day-to-day lives by being anti-racist in our actual deeds, fighting for the dignity and rights of marginalized people, and generally enacting resistance.
Exxon, Alphabet, Tyson are all guilty of pollution, but they only exist — indeed, they can only exist — because people pay them to do so. Americans elect the politicians who shield Exxon from consequences, they endorse the policies that enable the ownership of private jets, of mansions, of sports cars, of cruise ships.
Exxon is literally the manifestation of their desires. If people weren’t willing to die over access to cheap fossil fuels we wouldn’t be in this predicament.
You think Americans care that Tyson tortures chickens? Have you met average Americans?? They do not give a fuck! They love cheap, unregulated, dirty meat. They love cheap gas. They love big cars, big houses, cruise ships, and they will die to stop you from taking these things from them.
It’s funny because folks keep saying this over and over: they say it at the polls, in voting booths, at primaries, and you don’t listen. There’s this fantasy that if only we could educate the 50% of Americans who are irremediable shitheads, they’d change their minds. No. They won’t. Only generational turnover can fix this issue. We wait for them to die out until we can outnumber them at voting booths. There’s no other practical option. Unless you have another pandemic up your sleeve?
Generational politics doesn't work, you just end up with Buttigieg with a Boomer Brain implant, and if you're hoping for it just being the old to die I have bad news for you about the current pandemic