stabby_cicada

Unfortunately, I think the United States will take exactly the wrong message from its internal climate refugees.

Lifeboat ethics.

"We have to close our borders and deport refugees from other countries so we can help our own climate refugees."

"Millions of illegals!"

"Actually, the people you're referring to are legally in the United States with temporary protected status..."

"They're still here illegally because I say so, illegal illegal lalala"

"Climate change isn't real, but if it was, we would need to pump more oil and natural gas in the United States to make our energy sector strong for the oncoming crisis."

"Oh, and don't buy solar panels from China, because they're dirty foreigners."

And Walz, who spent the whole debate staring at the podium scowling like a rotten jack-o'-lantern, was so out of it he couldn't effectively call out Vance's bogus definition of clean energy and bring up the Build Back Better plan and Biden's investments into the US energy economy.

What the fuck.

On the one hand, yes, I can see your point.

On the other hand, let's not minimize American prison slavery by saying "we're all slaves". If you strain the definition you can argue all workers under capitalism are enslaved, but even then, some forms of slavery are far more brutal and dehumanizing (and racist. Let's not forget racist) than others.

Here's the beginning of the "fascist sounding video" you mention:

The west is a dystopian wasteland of moral degeneracy.

Usually when you hear a white person talk about moral degeneracy it’s some wingnut denouncing LGBTQ rights or women’s reproductive rights or whatever, but that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about real things here.

The real moral decay of our society is illustrated in the way all mainstream political candidates can openly support war crimes currently being inflicted on people in the global south without being immediately removed from power. The way monstrous war criminals of past administrations can endorse a liberal candidate without causing self-proclaimed progressives to recoil from that candidate in horror. The way you can have the two viable candidates for the world’s most powerful elected position both pledge to continue an active genocide without instantly sparking a revolution.

The moral degeneracy of this civilization looks like living lives of relative comfort built on the backs of workers in the global south whose labor and resources are extracted from their nations at profoundly exploitative rates, while raining military explosives on impoverished populations who dare to disobey the dictates of our government, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, and acting like this is all fine and normal.

Sounds just like Hitler, don't it?

Sure. The Google term you're looking for is called "discourses of delay".

Tldr: The propagandists recognize the global consensus, that climate change is real and must be addressed, is too strong to attack directly. Instead, they work to discredit potential solutions and discourage people from acting. The hope is to delay action on climate change until fossil fuel companies run out of oil to sell.

The four ways corporate propaganda encourages climate delay are by redirecting responsibility ("someone else should act on climate change before or instead of you"), pushing non-transformative solutions ("fossil fuels are part of the solution"), emphasizing the downsides ("requiring electric vehicles will hurt the poor worst"), and promoting doomerism ("climate change is inevitable so we may as well accept it instead of trying to fight it").

And here's the thing. We need both individual and collective action to mitigate climate change.

Arguing that only individual action can stop climate change is delayist propaganda used to discourage climate action.

Arguing that only collective action can stop climate change and individual action is useless is also delayist propaganda used to discourage climate action.

The propaganda takes an extreme position on both sides and encourages people to fight with another instead of unifying and acting - much like how foreign propagandists in the United States take aggressive, controversial positions on the far left and far right to worsen dissent and discourage unity.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2020/08/05/scientists-dissect-the-tactics-of-climate-delayers/

European scientists last month catalogued what they call the “Four Discourses of Climate Delay”—arguments that facilitate continued inaction.

1 Redirecting Responsibility

U.S. politicians blaming India and China, Irish farmers blaming motorists, organizations blaming individuals—these common techniques evade responsibility and delay action.

“Policy statements can become discourses of delay if they purposefully evade responsibility for mitigating climate change,” the scientists say.

The scientists label as “individualism” the claim that individuals should take responsibility through personal action. I asked if it weren’t also a discourse of delay when activists insist that individual climate action is pointless, that only systemic action can address the problem.

That too is a discourse of delay, replied Giulio Mattioli, a professor of transport at Dortmund University. The team considered including it under the label “structuralism,” but decided it’s not common enough to include.

(Depends on where you are. I'd argue that's very, very common among high consumption American activists.)

A fascinating study about how much people have internalized these discourses of delay is here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378024000797#:~:text=Consisting%20of%20four%20overarching%20narratives,with%20its%20own%20emotional%20resonance)%2C

How do you expect to change those few dozen companies?

Especially if the majority of us really wouldn't be able to survive without them?

We're actually to the point where wanting people to consume fewer fossil fuels makes me a fossil fuel shill.

Wow.

The absolute state of rhetoric today.

Your vote is also 1 in 26 million. Do you believe that has an effect?

Again, carbon footprint is not a BP talking point. It was a pre-existing concept that was appropriated by BP to prevent climate change legislation by shifting responsibility for climate change to individual consumers.

And then, some years later, once corporations had more solid control of legislatures and were no longer afraid of legislation, they started using the carbon footprint idea in reverse as propaganda - they claimed individual responsibility was a myth, only legal action against corporations will help with climate change, so eat whatever you want and buy all the gas you want and buy all the corporate products you want, and don't feel guilty about it, because it doesn't matter.

In reality, both individuals and corporations bear responsibility for climate change, and both of the above arguments are corporate propaganda aimed at getting you to give up, do nothing, and buy shit.

BP oil company pushed the idea that our individual carbon footprints matter so that everyone can share the blame of what the fossil fuel industry has done.

The article discusses this, yes - along with how the carbon footprint is a good metric for individual consumption even if corporate propaganda abuses it.

The most significant difference individuals can make is to create political and legal pressure by voting and protesting.

I agree with you that political action is vital. I don't agree that it's necessarily more significant than personal action. Feminists used to say "the personal is political", and it's still true. How you act in private demonstrates your commitment to the values you endorse in public and gives your voice more weight when you speak your values.

If you reduce your personal footprint, but never talk about it or encourage other people to do the same, your impact is limited to yourself. If you reduce your personal footprint, and make your actions contagious by talking about them with people you know and encouraging them to do the same, you can impact many more people, encourage them to follow your lead and reduce their footprint, and then they can encourage others to reduce their footprint, and so on and so forth.

Limiting the damage from climate change takes collective action. And collective action requires a community, and a community requires communication.

If you assume you are a lone individual and your personal decisions have no effect on anyone else, it's easy to imagine reducing your personal footprint is meaningless. If you see yourself as part of a community, and by reducing your personal footprint you encourage others in your community to do the same, you can see how much larger your impact can be.