It's replacing real action in place of a good feeling. It's THE plan to not do anything effective.

The normalization of needless single use products, like straws, by making them non plastic DOES make things worse. It delays real action, like removing straws altogether.

It’s greenwashing inherently unsustainable practices, just like introducing carbon capture technology on oil rigs or hyping electric cars as a way to keep the auto industry going (while suppressing more efficient means of transportation).

If we’re not going to fix shit, then why the fuck bother with mushy straws.

Sorry, but I am confiscating your moral license if the straw you use is justification.

The straw you use does nothing but make you feel better, which I would argue is harmful. You shouldn't feel better for doing nothing when such large problems exist.

Your use of the right straw is akin to you killing a single invasive ant in a rain forest, and saying you did your part to remove the invasive colony. You then spend every opportunity talking about how you killed that single ant, all while the ants have already multiplied and utterly nullified your non-effort contribution.

Shipping barges, data centers, meat production, gas and coal burning are all many orders of magnitudes greater problems than what straw you use. Gas, coal, and fossil fuel use is over 70% of all emissions, so that should be the primary conversation. In addition, these are all growing in use. Talk about that. Put your attention and action towards that.

The non mushy straws aren't terrible, but all rubberized tires are, whether on cars or bikes. The car ones are much worse.

And air travel is even worse still

But not close to industrial pollution which is exponentially greater.

The billionaires could care more and put some R&D into it. They just dont.

Test successful!

And yet, there aren't very many of them but there are billions of us.

Even if their lifestyles result in 1000x as much pollution, they only represent 0.00004% of the worldwide population, which is not enough to move the needle.

To put that in perspective, metro Tokyo has a population of approximately 38 million. If the fraction of billionaires in Tokyo matches the global ratio, there would be about 15 billionaires in Tokyo. Anything 15 people do in Tokyo will be just noise compared to what the other 37,999,985 people do.

Let's just pretend that all 3000 of the world's billionaires lived in the USA. They'd still only make up 0.001% of the entire US population. Even if they were flying around in personal jets, being followed by Airbus Beluga jets carrying their yachts, it would still pale in comparison to the sheer number of people currently suffering in economy class right now.

I still think billionaires should be squashed by a hydraulic press, but I'm not kidding myself into thinking that doing that will have any impact on the environment at all. I support it more because they're greedy assholes who are taking far more than their share, and who are using their immense wealth to distort the well functioning governing of the world.

They tricked us into taking all the blame for climate change

They tricked us into believing metric fucktons of single use plastics would keep us safe and healthy.

But we never had any direct control over climate policy, because we never had any direct control over the capital itself.

All we could do was blame ourselves.

The best I've found is sugarcane straws. They cost 15cad for a 100 pack compared to 10dollars for 100 plastic straws, which is small enough to not matter to me.

I know for a fact they dissolve as I throw them into my own compost, and also they dissolve to nothing if added to hot water (side note, you should never drink hot drinks out of straws).

I still propose that we just stop with the single use straws and if people want straws for their drinks that badly they can bring their own reusable one, and if it isn't takeout the restaurant can provide a reusable one.

Like seriously why does everything need a straw?

There is a hollow grass based solution used in asia which requires zero processing beyond cutting, drying and packaging. But I’ll keep the paper straws if the billionaires have to travel in paper planes and boats.

I despise how sprite changed to clear bottles claiming environmental reasons, when that reason was that they wanted to be less indentifiable in trash heaps and microplastic samples.

They're not doing it out of spite, most plastics can't be recycled, not the way aluminum can (ha).

Do they not elsewhere? Is it just Australia?

We want our packaging to have more than one life. In Australia, all our bottles and cans can be recycled and all our soft drink and water bottles under 1L are made from 100% recycled plastic*.

*Excl. cap and label

https://www.coca-cola.com/au/en/offerings/thank-you-for-recycling

It’s not like ”they” held a meeting to decide they were going to get everything for themselves. Rather they’re embracing this inevitable ”feature” of the ongoing collapse of market economics.

Increasing the concentration of financial capital in the hands of a few people changes the value of that capital. For normal people, the dollar value is measured in the cost of food and living space. Billionaires, who despite evidence to the contrary, are human beings, don’t need or demand more of those real resources – say potatoes or tenancy in small rental apartments – than anyone else. In fact, they can in many cases make do with less! They prefer to subside on lobster, filet mignon or whatever fad diet their longevity coach prescribes, and live in lavish palaces and/or bunkers.

Billionaires, and even down to the measly top 10 percent of earners, are the ultimate hedge when things go sideways in the real economy. They allow governments to keep printing money by diverting a tidy sum of it from potatoes and apartment leases to the lobster, filet mignon, yacht and private jet economy – and more importantly, their investment portfolios.

My point being, that malevolence isn’t the main driver here, but a widespread failure of people to acknowledge that the fantasy of limitless growth inevitably must be realized within the confines of the fantasy world of the financial economy by insulating it from the real economy. Because in the latter we eventually have to accept that we have reached the highest amount of potatoes and apartments possible. This failure is on everyone, not just billionaires.

At this point, though, I guess ”they” (Peter Thiel et al) have pretty much decided to help this collapse along with the help of every major government. So I guess you’re right.

Bruh if you so much as spit on said cruiser you'll be wanted by the police for terrorism, despite the definition of terrorism being to threaten harm to civilians....

Before I submit, I want to clarify that I have read the UK Government's definition of terrorism, and as it's a stupid ass definition, I elected to ignore it.

"..as the use or threat of.. ..serious damage to property.. ..designed to influence the government.. ..for the purpose of advancing [an].. ..ideological cause."

As we know, damaging property belonging to anyone else, regardless of how many people will be saved, is against the legal law and punishable. HOWEVER, going back to their own law...

"..as the use or threat of.. ..serious violence against a person [OR] endangering a person's life (other than that of the person committing the action) [OR] creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public.. ..which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism regardless of whether or not the action is designed to.. ..intimidate the public.. ..for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.. ..Action includes action outside the United Kingdom."

By their own law, any organisation intending to assist in the wilful and unprovoked violence against people, with explosives or firearms, is by their definition a terrorist. This defines the UK government and many companies as terrorists, coconspirators of Israel.
The disclaimer "other than that of the person committing the action" absolves anyone of the definition if they are doing so to stop the attacker. This defines Palestine Action as innocent as they were acting to stop the attacking arms company.

But the only reason these interpretations are not the case in reality is because the government a) choose which laws to uphold and when, and b) defend their decision by lying that the Palestinian people were the instigators of their own eradication by the various countries of the world.

Sorry, I know this is just a meme

Companies 3 years ago: helping the environment is part of our core values

The same companies one day later: start to heavily use and train AI

I mean yes, but it's not like they use an extra drop for every drop conserved, it's still okay to not be wasteful.

Just don't trip