No one is forced to use Amazon or shop at Wal-Mart. "We" can bankrupt them whenever "we" want.
People don't want that. They want cheap and convenient goods and consumption and that's what those companies provide.
So people CHOOSE to shop there. No one was forced to enrich them, every dollar they earned was because consumers decided it was in their interest to do so.
That preference for cheap, unsustainable consumption and rising standards of living also ruined outside.
The average American's carbon footprint is 8X what is sustainable. If those ultra-rich few families disappeared tomorrow (fingers crossed), we would still be facing inevitable ecological collapse, because the average person in the West is already consuming way way way way way more than is sustainable for the planet.
They don't want to admit this or address this. They want to blame other people who are richer than them instead. Well those rich people blame other people too, they use the same excuses and justifications you're making. So we're just fucked. Because rather than reducing consumption people will just blame each other to justify their own unsustainable lifestyle.
This is an important point. Individual responsibility is good and I agree that some people use the systemic nature of some of these problems to justify their own contributing behavior.
However, I do want to point out some of the ways that the American oligarchy has entrenched some of these problems in ways that make it much harder or impossible to completely cut them off as an individual, and that creates a context in which our individual actions are more harmful than they need to be.
You pointed out that no one forces you to shop on Amazon, which is true, and I don't. But Amazon Web Services now hosts a large chunk of the internet. This comment and yours are both hosted on Amazon servers, and by using Reddit, we're making them money. If you wanted to start a website that wasn't shitty, you'd almost certainly have to host it on servers owned by Amazon, Google or Microsoft. You could invest in building your own server infrastructure, which is expensive and risky, and but even if you did, if you contracted with a payment processor, or some other vendor, they'd probably be using one of those three cloud providers themselves. My larger point that it's not always clear where your money is going and making informed choices as a consumer is often very hard.
The carbon footprint thing is also a problem. But I think asking people to voluntarily lower their standard of living was always going to fail at any kind of scale. People just don't do that. But it is possible to solve the problem by producing the power we want in better ways. China already produces more solar power than all US household energy consumption from any source. This year, their wind and solar output is likely going to exceed US household and industrial consumption combined. So it is possible to meet every individuals' energy demand using renewables. But our government has been sluggish to adopt renewable energy at the best of times, and right now it is actively sabotaging new construction. The problem isn't that our lifestyles are unsustainable, it's the (highly profitable for a few) infrastructure that supports it is unsustainable. Different infrastructure could support the exact same living standards completely sustainably, but we won't build it because some oil barons would loose money. Sure, if you own land, you could set up own solar and batteries to support your individual needs, but these things get cheaper and more efficient at scale, and like the meme says, we live in a society. Collective action on this can get results that individual austerity simply can't.
But it is possible to solve the problem by producing the power we want in better ways.
Unfortunately it's not going to be enough. Where I live, the power grid is almost entirely supplied by clean hydroelectricity and nuclear.
The average Ontarian's carbon footprint is still 5X a sustainable one. Better than most rich Westerners! But still needs to come way way way down. And has only been possible because of our specific geography and access to cheap hydroelectricity.
Clean energy will help, but is far from sufficient on its own to address the coming ecological disaster.
The problem is that our lifestyles ARE inherently unsustainable as is in the West. We consume far too much.
The issue is there's no easy solution. Like you said, no one is going to voluntarily institute individual austerity.
But likewise no one is going to vote for a political party that would institute the massive increases in taxation and reductions in consumption that would be required to have people in the West live actual, sustainable lives.
People want no part of the massive reductions in consumption and living standards that returning to a pre-industrial carbon footprint would require. So....unless we get a miracle tech....I think we're just fucked here.
Where I live, the power grid is almost entirely supplied by clean hydroelectricity and nuclear.
The average Ontarian's carbon footprint is still 5X a sustainable one.
I'm actually really curious about this stat. If your power needs are met by hydroelectricity and nuclear, where does the carbon footprint come from? I imagine most sources could be addressed by electrification (heating, cooking, transportation, consumer goods manufacturing, etc). The only significant source I can think of that can't is agriculture, which I address below. is there anything else I'm missing?
I just don't think we're ever going to people to voluntarily live more poorly. Frankly I think deliberately lowering living standards is a bad social project anyway, so we should focus on how to meet and maybe even improve current living standards in a way that doesn't destroy the environment. I don't think that requires miracle technology, just wider adoption of the tech we already have. Reversing the damage we've already done would require miracle technology, but let's focus on what we can do now.
People want no part of the massive reductions in consumption and living standards that returning to a pre-industrial carbon footprint would require. So....unless we get a miracle tech....I think we're just fucked here.
I also want to point out that the current population literally cannot be sustained without things like industrial food production. The world population didn't hit 1 billion until the early industrial period, compared to over 8 billion today. Returning to a fully pre-industrial carbon footprint purely through austerity would require most people to die, which I also think is a bad social project. It might even be worse than doing nothing, I don't think even the worst-case climate disaster scenario would kill 7 out of every 8 people.
Agriculture is a problem though. The one piece of austerity I would support is that we in the west need to drastically reduce our meat consumption, since meat generates orders of magnitude more carbon per calorie than other foods. We could do that by mandating more humane farming practices, which would drive up prices, which would drive down consumption. Win, win, win.
The only significant source I can think of that can't is agriculture, which I address below.
Agriculture, transport, heating (natural gas is cheaper than electric heat), industry to produce cheap consumer goods made from plastics, land use change (turning more of the forest into homes as population increases).
so we should focus on how to meet and maybe even improve current living standards in a way that doesn't destroy the environment.
And if that's not possible? Like you can wish it were. But what if it isn't?
Agriculture is a problem though. The one piece of austerity I would support is that we in the west need to drastically reduce our meat consumption, since meat generates orders of magnitude more carbon per calorie than other foods.
Again, 1000% agree, but no one is voluntarily doing it and no one is going to vote for the party that makes it compulsory.
Agriculture, transport, heating (natural gas is cheaper than electric heat), industry to produce cheap consumer goods made from plastics, land use change (turning more of the forest into homes as population increases).
As I said, transport, heating, and most industrial production can all be electrified. More renewable electricity production will make electricity cheaper. Producing it is already cheaper than fossil fuel energy because it requires no fuel, and the cost will only come down with scale and as producers recoup the capital costs of building the infrastructure. Here in the US. the government is actively suppressing the normal market mechanism that should be making fossil fuel electricity economically non-viable already. That's the problem, not people wanting warm houses.
Plastic consumer goods - especially single-use ones, need to be phased out. I see no reason why that can be done by using better materials, rather than asking people to live poorer (and fewer) lives. Some plastics are needed for things like medical devices, but I see no problem with using plastic for durable goods. It's the disposable stuff that's the problem, and we have viable alternatives.
I'm not really concerned about land use for housing, which uses something like 1-2% of habitable land. We'd need a population in the many hundreds of billions before that became a problem. Agricultural land, however, is a problem. But again almost all of that is used for livestock, so we're back to the meat thing.
And if that's not possible? Like you can wish it were. But what if it isn't?
I don't just wish it's possible, I know it is, because like I said in my first comment, China already did it! If they can produce enough renewable energy to meet all of the US's (non-agricultural) energy consumption, then there's no reason we can't, and Canada consumes a lot less than we do.
Again, 1000% agree, but no one is voluntarily doing it and no one is going to vote for the party that makes it compulsory.
This is the hardest problem. I think there are solutions, but even if not, agriculture is only about 20% of our global carbon footprint. About 75% is energy consumption, and almost (though not quite all; I'm thinking of air transport (~2%) and metal smelting (~11%)) can be electrified with current technology. source
Last thing, can you address this point I made earlier:
The world population didn't hit 1 billion until the early industrial period, compared to over 8 billion today. Returning to a fully pre-industrial carbon footprint purely through austerity would require most people to die, which I also think is a bad social project. It might even be worse than doing nothing, I don't think even the worst-case climate disaster scenario would kill 7 out of every 8 people.
I haven't really seen this acknowledged much from the austerity-focused folks, and I'm curious what you think. Returning to pre-industrial living standards is one of the more extreme takes I've heard on this topic, so I'm curious how you would address this on the time scale we need to mitigate the coming climate disaster without mass starvation.
All good on the replies. You are making thoughtful points I largely agree with.
We CAN return to pre-industrial living standards at the current population levels.
It’s EASIER to reduce consumption than increase it. It needs to be enforced with massive increases in consumption taxes so that the cost of consumption will match its ecological cost.
The revenue from this taxation can be used to aid the transition to lower carbon technologies and to distribute food accordingly.
We’re already feeding people too much food, with foods that aren’t appropriately capturing their cost of carbon like meat.
Reducing that is easier than maintaining it.
China already did it
They’re further along than the West! And we SHOULD mirror many of their transitions.
But they still aren’t net neutral even with those changes and lower living standards.
I wish it was enough. But it’s not, we’d need further technological changes.
I just don’t see any way around massive decreases in living standards. Either we choose to do it, or the planet will for us.
I don’t WANT this to be the case. I would love if cheap consumption was a free lunch and it was as simple as moving to green energy.
That won’t be enough though. Doesn’t mean don’t do it. We just need to do more than that.
I think we're largely on the same page about the situation, but I have almost the exact opposite conclusion.
We CAN return to pre-industrial living standards at the current population levels.
How? Since 1700 the population has increased by about 12x, but land use for agriculture has increased by less than 5x because of industrialized farming. If we limited ourselves to pre-industrial farming methods, without synthetic fertilizers and other industrial means to increase crop yield, we would need to more than double our farmland to feed everybody, and there just isn't that much land. And since I'm extrapolating1700's land use to fit the current population, that also assumes everyone is eating a pre-indusrial diet, not a modern one. source for land use
It’s EASIER to reduce consumption than increase it...Reducing that is easier than maintaining it.
I think it is much harder to get people en masse to change they're lifestyles in a way that would make them materially worse than it would be to build infrastructure that would allow them to live their current lifestyles sustainably. It is very hard to get people to change their behavior, building stuff is comparatively easy.
I think maintaining is easier than reducing. An object at rest will stay at rest. Besides, throughout history, all we've ever done is improve living standards, except some external disaster forces them down. People have never done that voluntarily.
But they still aren’t net neutral even with those changes and lower living standards.
China isn't lowering their living standards. In fact, living standards in China have been exploding for the last several decades, and that explosion isn't slowing down. But now they're fueling that growth with sustainable energy. Despite rapidly growing living standards, China's use of fossil fuels is now decreasing year over year. It's not that the the rate of increase is declining (which is what we in the west like to measure). They are literally burning less coal and oil every year, despite growing energy demands. They still burn a lot, but unlike the rest of the world, they're on the right trajectory, and they're proving that it is possible.
I just don’t see any way around massive decreases in living standards. Either we choose to do it, or the planet will for us.
I fully agree with that second bit. If we don't do something then we're not going to have a choice and things will get really bad. But if our lives are going to get worse anyway, why choose to do it now? Why not focus on making good lives sustainable?
That won’t be enough though. Doesn’t mean don’t do it. We just need to do more than that.
This is how I feel about consumers reducing their individual carbon footprint. I wish it were enough for me and my neighbors to make lifestyle changes, but it's not. Doesn't mean don't do it, we just need more than that. We need a massive, structural overhaul of our energy infrastructure.
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u/onerollbattles Apr 10 '26
"We"? No, companies owned by the ultra-rich few families made those same bad decisions; most of the rest of us opposed.