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Comment by rocgf | Hacker News Reader

I honestly never understood this argument.

Corporations don't just emit greenhouse gases for the fun of it, like some sort of villain, they do it because they produce the stuff that we, the "ordinary citizens" buy like mad every Christmas or whenever we have $200 extra in our bank accounts.

Corporations will do anything permitted by the law and that's no secret. That includes evading taxes, sub-living wages or pollution. Ordinary citizens allow this by buying the products of those corporations and by not voting for more green policies.

To assign the blame solely on corporations and remove "ordinary citizens" from the equation is short-sighted at best.

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> Corporations will do anything permitted by the law ...

A bit off-topic, but corporations will also do things not permitted by the law if the potential penalties are likely to be significantly lower than the potential profits.

And, of course, they also expend significant resources to shape the law to serve their interests, and appear to be significantly more effective at this than "ordinary citizens".

Ordinary citizens could always opt out of supporting this situation by killing themselves, but on an individual basis I don't think that would make much of a difference, and killing yourself before someone can kill you is a pyrrhic victory.

The reason people blame corporations is because it's very difficult to find the people who own them, and because they have a realistic view of power.

Well, look, you said it yourself:

"will do anything permitted by the law"

Exactly. So start changing the law. Blaming consumers will get us nowhere. Change the law. Enforce the law. Force corporations to act.

The only effective law would be a sufficient tax on fossil fuels to force reduction in consumption.

But it will be heavily unpopular as it will reduce people’s quality of life in the short term, even for the rest of their life, plus globally, other populations would be happy to pick up the demand.

And?

I was not contradicting you, just expanding on my thoughts for what the relevant laws would need to be.

Consumers are also the ones voting for the politicians who aren't changing the law. So again, it's on us. We need to actually want to change before we actually will.

Can't vote for someone who doesn't exist.

I think I've seen a sociology video talking about a pyramid. The base needs the top and vice versa.

I don't like citizen going crazy on corporations (which I despise often). Because most of the product they buy are conscious and free decision. Blame corps for tapping into human reflexes (rule 1 of any commercial anything).

I don't think that spreading the externalities of climate change onto ordinary citizens socialistically is the right approach.

For you, the buck stops at whatever citizens currently exist on the planet/continent/country/state/city/town.

For me, the buck stops at the corporations and governments who are more than responsible for the current mess we are in. You do realize these chucklef*cks are still flying around on private jets, right?

These two things can both be true. As you say, assigning blame primarily to citizens is just incorrect - corporations/governments have the most direct effect on the problem. At the same time, suggesting that the actions of citizens are meaningless until corporations/governments act is demoralizing and obscures people's power and agency. Given that most of us are ordinary citizens, shouldn't we use the levers available to us, and encourage others to do the same? For example, voting, advocacy, reducing consumption, etc.

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