Those 100 companies are fossil fuel companies, they distribute fuel and petroleum products to every other industry/sector. The only way to get those 100 companies to stop being the biggest polluters is to stop using their products. Which relies on us all changing our habits, to stop the supply chain upstream of us from using their products
If we instead subsidised green industries and technologies, we could artificially lower the price of making the right choice.
It can work but only to a limited degree, if you really push the thing then it becomes more likely that people will catch on to the "trick" and elect people who will undo it. They'll do that happily because there's no commitment.
Just where is that getting us? How is this search for who is most to blame going to do anything to help solve the problem? Seems like it's a tactic for avoiding the very real truth that each and everyone needs to do something, what needs to be done doesn't care about what is fair or what is convenient. The reason assigning blame to someone else seems to work is that we are all to blame. Almost whoever you point to, you are almost certainly correct: They are to blame. But so are you.
Productive change always starts with individuals making changes to themselves. We are all humans. The consumers are humans. The producers are humans. The politicians are humans. The voters are humans. It is humans that need to act.
On the other hand, if we are serious about global warming and pollution, we need nuclear energy immediately (including the safe nuclear fission technologies which we've had for a few decades now, as well as continued research into fusion).
Based on everything I've read, I think we need to do a bunch of different things all at once to address global warming and reduce emissions as quickly as possible. Yes, solar and wind are intermittent sources, but they're cheap and available now. Yes, we need to upgrade our grids to be able to handle all of the new electric vehicles. We also need to change over building heating/cooling. Find better means of making concrete.
You may not have meant only do nuclear, but I see politicians saying "nuclear & carbon capture" as if that's going to get the job done, but I haven't seen any analysis that supports those things alone doing the job.
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/scientists-pour-cold-water-on-bill-gat... [2] https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/bill-gates-fund...
Renewables are quicker, cheaper and sufficient.
A 3x overbuild of solar+wind in an optimal mix, along with a continental grid and 3 hours worth of batteries is all you need for 99.99% reliability over an entire year.
> The whole neoliberal period was basically class war. It had nothing to do with the markets or anything else. Just class war.
For products with no green alternative, what do you expect people to do? How to do you compare the supply chains of products given they are intentionally as opaque as possible.
Everything is shipped over polluting airplanes stored in polluting plastic containers and manufactured with polluting nonrenewable power.
Not to mention there are other ethical concerns to care about. I don't want to support companies with bad labor practices either. But once you filter out the companies doing obviously horrible things the remaining list is terribly short.
And I shouldn't have to worry about this! It's not my job to audit every company. If you can't make a product without shoving externalities on everyone else you shouldn't be making a product, period.
The normal solution people have been hoping for is regulations: a carbon tax makes so much sense, as does outright banning particularly harmful practices like we have with old refrigerants. But this hasn't worked yet, and a wishy washy consumer-driven market solution hasn't worked either
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oi...
We must condemn equally the rhino poachers and the horn-buyers.
There are plenty of choices that are obviously better. Buy a bike rather than a car. A small house rather than a big one. Holiday locally rather than flying.
Everyone can make some positive change. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just needs to move the needle, and in doing so we can unlock the next layer of feasible actions.
To be clear, I do think everyone is capable of making positive change in this way but just 'moving the needle' isn't nearly enough and I don't see why we can't simultaneously push for a very sensible carbon tax and additional environmental protections.
Especially since the biggest polluting companies are so big because everyone buys from them and there are not many alternatives. Saying the problem is that we are buying from these companies seems as much a "darn consumers, amirite?" shrug.
Point is- we should do both. But expecting all consumers to be able to make an informed choice about the entire ecological effects of every product is not possible when there often isn't information or a choice. Especially since under the current system companies are actively incentives to pollute as much as possible since they don't pay the cost of cleanup, and to lie about it with glitzy ads and campaigns.
Oil is a dense fuel source that is easily transported. If we somehow magically permanently capped all current and future oil wells today we'd be in the middle of a crisis that would dwarf any concerns we might have about climate change down the road. We're making great progress on renewable energy sources, but we're not there yet. More protests isn't going to change that. Personally I wish we'd go all-in on nuclear power and work to remove the road blocks that make that so expensive and take so long to bring up new power plants, so that we could add that to the mix and get to the point where a complete loss of the flow of oil wouldn't end civilization as we know it.
Why are these not worth protesting over? And yes, oil companies are forcing it on us by blocking progress for renewables paying off politicians and using fracking which is one of the most polluting things possible.
Nobody is suggesting we turn off all oil wells immediately. But the pace of progress is FAR too slow given that we've known the issues since the 60s.
How do you suggest getting renewable energy plants constructed if not via protests
See here for example, there are many others:
https://www.marxist.ca/article/why-there-is-no-ethical-consu...