The "no-wash" movement is an absurd belief that systemic collapse can be solved by individual consumer choices, absolving the actual culprits of all responsibility.
a year ago by cm0002 to c/actualsocialism
Great for 99% of the population. Really only detrimental to those 2800 people and the bootlickers protecting them.
I never bought into "you have to suffer to save the planet" thing.
It's all about replacing fossil fuels with renewables and nuclear, not about "using less energy"
It's also about replacing the high-carbon car-dependent lifestyle that's making you poorer, sicker, and depressed with a lower-carbon walking/biking one that's better for you in all sorts of ways on top of being better for global warming.
I'm all for less car. However, when I think of all the shit me family normally buys every week on a supermarket on the other side of town… it already can sometimes be complicated getting it all up the stairs (and you better believe I am NOT gonna go for round two). I can't imagine how difficult it'd be… nay, IMPOSSIBLE, to carry all that shit on foot or bike across town
Granted, back when I had a job and lived alone, going by the supermarket on the way back home was easy. Did it on a daily basis, and never needed too much. Stack shit on my backpack and get going
Other than that, yeah, I walk around a lot. Don't drive much. I imagine, though, travelling could be difficult depending on destination. I can get places with public transport, but I don't know if a back and forth to the beach, for instance, could be easily done (though I've never checked)
doing a costco/sams club would be hard without car!
What if all that stuff were on every corner in smaller packages, or delivered on a regular train route right to your front door every couple weeks in the gratuitous quantities you love?
Not sure if you're proposing more local stores near people around cities, or a retro-futuristic tech bro supermarket delivery train idea (in the past, people will get their groceries via a mini-clay-tablet-thing called Oober Feasts, delivered to their door by a train.) Make it a subscription thing and we talking
I empathize with you and understand your position. That being said, if everyone in your community were to be willing to pay higher prices at a more local grocer, they would be able to reduce prices over time. That would also require zoning deregulation and such, but our capitalistic system demands that the larger corporation (with the ability to tank losses more easily,) amasses more consumer loyalty, and therefore drive smaller grocers out of business.
I don't know, I'm drunk and lost the plot halfway through this comment.
Yeah, there is a place close by. 2-3 min. on foot, if not less. But I hear it's pricier. I do go there from time to time, when needed urgent, but am big dumdum, no see price
That would also require zoning deregulation and such,
The solution to sub-optimal regs isn't to discard the regulations; slap the Republican child-labour advocate who told you that.
Problem is, as you add new ways to use energy, often the addition of renewables is at a pace that simply covers that new use of energy, but isn't enough to actually reduce existing fossil fuel use. So it leaves you running in place in a world that desperately needs to lessen fossil fuel use to survive as a species.
Degrowth is necessary to actually lower energy demand so we can quickly get to net zero. Only once we reach that point should we consider being more wasteful with additional renewable energy.
And that's just your opinion.
It might be necessary to scrimp and save pennies
But doing that while you're still at the roulette table is pretty silly.
Sorry but that’s not going to solve all of the problems. Microplastics pollution and freshwater shortages won’t be solved by renewables. Copper prices and critical minerals shortages will only get worse as the push to more renewables accelerates. Problems with grid loading, grid forming, and grid energy storage only get more challenging with more renewables replacing base load fossil fuel plants and more EVs and electrified household heating and cooking come online.
And last but not least is the issue of NIMBYs who will not go away if all the billionaires suddenly disappear. “Let’s get rid of a few thousand rich guys” is now looking more and more like “let’s get rid of half the population” which really means a brutal civil war with the billionaires siding against you. Sounds pretty bad!
Sorry but that’s not going to solve all of the problems.
I'm talking about the general method of solving problems.
Microplastics pollution
Just use biodegradable packaging. No need to live like a monk
Fresh water
This is a renewable resource. We will never "run out"
The general method of problem solving doesn’t put more copper in the ground for us to mine. It doesn’t get rid of all the toxic slags produced by refining electronics critical minerals (which is why no Western country wants to touch them; the reason China has cornered the refining market).
Microplastics come from a lot more than food packaging. Car tires, for example, are a major source of microplastics.
What happens when fresh water ends up in the ocean? Or polluted with microplastics or other forever chemicals? Now we need to put in more energy to clean it up. That may be affordable for drinking water but it’s absolutely not so for agricultural irrigation. And guess what? Climate change alters rainfall patterns which ends up drying up the freshwater reservoirs.
Anything synthetic - especially but not limited to microfleeces we've been collectively adoring for 30+ years now - constantly breaks down into microplastics which are embedded in your lungs, your loved one's lungs, and every water source on Earth. Damn depressing. Try not to let your young kids around microfleece, we put it everywhere around their mouths :(
Title is bunch of whataboutism mixed with a strawman. Just because billionaires are destroying the planet, doesn’t absolve anyone else from the damage they are doing.. Article itself is about of bunch of rich people being weird anyways. It’s fashion designers who like the look of no-wash raw denim so they stink up everyplace they go. No different than the Russel Brands who spend vast sums to look like vagabonds.
This is, in my opinion, a high burden placed on an individual to to always research how every company they interacts with operates.
Unfortunately, as a consumer many ecological decisions are forced on me because corporations aren't regulated properly. Blaming the consumer to make better choices is asking someone to become intimately familiar with something that they shouldn't be concerned about, and to stay up to date since corporations change their business practices frequently.
This is something ultimately that needs to end up on governments to regulate businesses, and trying to shift the blame to consumers is quite frankly unfair. And even worse, it's ineffective and disheartening to them. People can make better choices for themselves and their local environment. But don't saddle Bob and Sally with saving the planet. It's an untenable ask.
It's not simply changing a behavior of an individual, it's a dramatic shift to their lifestyle. Not in choosing the more ecological option, but asking them to remain interested and vigilant on every decision they make. Picking what fish to buy at the supermarket shouldn't involve figuring out who caught the fish, googling the company, researching what their fishing practices are, and then figuring out if that is a sustainable practice. It's not simple or quick, and most people just really want to figure out what everyone in their family will all eat for dinner that night. We can't expect someone to do a half hour or more of research for every purchase.
This is why government needs to regulate these industries for us. They have the time and knowledge to assess all of that and the power to enforce companies adhere to those practices. We need to help educate people that regulating a business is not the same as regulating their choices or their behavior as an individual. That these sorts of regulations and legislation simply do not, and will not, ever apply to them so that they will encourage their legislators to push for regulation.
Market forces are there, sure. There is no denying that having a demand leads to these practices. But regulators who are compromising between sustainability and corporate interests, aren't truly regulating. Regulators need to have hard stances on these things and it should be up to the corporations to deal with the limits. Consumers are going to have to deal with products having seasons again, limited availability, or higher prices. The system will stabilize, but it's going to end up there anyway as the climate changes or resources get depleted.
And I apologize. I didn't mean to misrepresent your opinion. I ended up on a bit of a rant there that was only sparked by a notion in your opinion.
People only need to do the best they can, for them, in whatever situation they are in. I get frustrated with the messaging that corporations push that it's up to us as individuals to be responsible and prevent climate change or save the planet when it's our collective responsibility as a society through government regulation.
How about just asking them to make the obvious choices they don't have to think about or research as much? As an example, switching to plant based meat alternatives like impossible meat or quorn. Not only are they a 1-to-1 drop in replacement, they also haven't skyrocketed in price like real meat has, so they might even save money.
Or at least cutting out red meat and replacing it with impossible. That requires very little thought for both environmental, ethical, and health gains.
I doubt you'll get much traction on that. Meat is delicious. We've been eating meat as long as the human race existed and I don't think there is anything you can say or do that would get the majority of the population to give it up.
While you may consider it a 1 to 1 replacement, and while I've no doubt it's gotten closer to real meat than it was when impossible burgers first came out, I don't think it's an identical product and am unlikely to switch. I also may be wrong in this, but as far as I know, it only replaces ground meats and processed meats like burgers and chicken nuggets. It isn't a product that can replace steaks, roasts, shanks, or ribs. There is nothing I enjoy eating more than a prime rib, and there just isn't going to be a plant based replacement for that.
All my food comes in plastic. My potatoes come in plastic bags. My lettuce has a plastic label and twist-tie on it. My shredded wheat cereal is in plastic. Even my eggs, which are in cardboard cartons, are put in disposable plastic bins for shipments. As a consumer in my area, the only choice I have that isn't plastic, is nothing. Consumers cannot make this change. The only people in the market who can change it are the suppliers who decided to put everything in plastic to begin with. This not something we can consume our way out of. It takes either personal accountability on the part of the suppliers, or it takes a government mandate.
I mean, you really don't have to wash jeans every time you wear them unless you smoke or hang out with smokers.
That said, it seems that the last part of that statement aligns with the title more than the first half suggests. Yes, it's first world people being performative about a dumb thing out of a mix of fashion choice and greenwashing. I think you guys can find common ground there.
I think we can discuss whether the focus on stuff like this has the aggregate effect of absolving corporations or not. It probably does to some extent. I would argue that if you want to act on the damage individuals are doing you still need to set up new incentives for individuals at the legislative or regulatory level. The propaganda side of things is a complement at best.
The no wash people aren’t doing it for conservation, there is no performative nature there about being green. The title is what OP editorialized about an article about fashion designers and isn’t the real title. One even specifically says he guesses that could be a benefit as well but it’s not the goal. They really do just think it looks cool… I’m definitely on the side of rewearing clothes until they need to be washed, but this is literally attacking people who want to do good in whatever small way by comparing them to fashion designers who do not even reflect on the conservation issue.
Just because billionaires are destroying the planet, doesn’t absolve anyone else from the damage they are doing
Under capitalism, industrial titans squander thousands of hectacres and billions of gallons of water to build a machine that stack ranks the population based on their loyalty to their corporate overlords.
Under socialism, industrial scale services are provided as near at-cost as possible, in order to improve the quality of life for the most people across the largest territory.
One of these systems allows an individual's conservation efforts to echo through the larger population and afford one's neighbors access to resources that would be otherwise exhausted. For the other, you simply don't matter. Your actions are dwarfed by the capricious whims of the dominant economic force. Pretending that you've saved a thimble of water when you're living next to the mega-liter chugging machine isn't absolving you of anything.
If you can’t convince the average citizen to care about conservation, you will never be able to convince the average citizen to hold billionaires accountable for their destruction. Demoralizing people on their efforts to reduce pollution, etc does just as much harm as convincing them that plastic recycling makes it all better. Me saving a thimble of water may only save a thimble of water, but by doing so I have actively worked towards a better future as opposed to passing it off. Its the same as the ‘your vote doesn’t matter’ people. Do not discourage those who want to help.
Yeah I feel like many commenters are missing that it's a change in mindset more than any massive impact. Once you start monitoring your plastic waste/water usage/diet, you're out of the inactive inertia. You can really start to grasp the scale of the problem and who's causing it.
One person cutting back doesn't change anything and 100,000 might not make a splash either. But it's easier to motivate societal change when 100,000 people are vocal and invested.
Hot take but capitalism is not deliberately wasteful. No seriously, there's no point in deliberately wasting time or money expending a resource that you have no use for. Now, does that mean capitalism is efficient with resources? No not really, at least not from a conservation perspective. But any company that consumes resources does so in order to provide goods or services to someone. And a large portion of those resources are to provide goods and services to consumers like you and me. Worried about water consumption? Here are the biggest water withdrawal sources in the US:
-thermoelectric power: directly tied to electricity consumption, about half of which is residential
-irrigation: different types of food use massively different amounts of water.
-public supply: goes without saying
Those 3 things are more than 90% of us water demand. If people could cut their power bills by 30%, stop eating meat and conserve water personally by say 50%, US freshwater withdrawals would easily go down by more than a third, if not more. And that's with zero change in behaviors from billionaires or corporations (apart from producing less in general in response to reduced demand).
My point is that about 2/3 of water usage in the US is to provide food, electricity and water to the 99%. We have agency and our actions are not insignificant.
not deliberately wasteful
Planned obsolescence has entered the chat. And that's just one of probably dozens of counterpoints. Conspicuous consumption is another one.
Planned obsolescence, sure, and that's a bad practice. That's probably 0.5% of the world's water consumption idk. Conspicuous consumption is on the consumer though.
Those 3 things are more than 90% of us water demand. If people could cut their power bills by 30%, stop eating meat and conserve water
Electricity usage is largely inelastic without structural changes. 60% of our electricity is lost in transmission, for instance. Individual consumption habits won't change that.
An enormous amount of our meat production ends up as waste. Again, just telling random people to become vegetarian doesn't change this, unless the participants are concentrated enough to reshape how meat is produced and delivered. Even then, the US exports of meat range from 10% (beef) to 30% (pork) of gross production, with plenty of room to rise. Trade barriers, ecological limits, and land use policy go vastly farther to curbing animal methane emissions than politely asking people to stop eating meat.
And water is even less elastic than electricity. Municipal pipe leaks in your neighborhood will have a bigger impact on your street's water consumption rate than any amount of conservation or efficiency within the home.
You're fooling yourself if you think you have any influence on the macro scale through consumer habits. You're missing a forest of waste and misallocation of resources out of a personalized guilt trip.
My point is that about 2/3 of water usage in the US is to provide food, electricity and water to the 99%.
That's a fully made up statistic even before the advent of superusers like the AI farms. You're straight up ignoring our enormous agricultural export markets, our municipal waste, and the impact of major pollutants.
Ok a few points. First off, I'm a power engineer. You're completely wrong about transmission losses. Those are (almost) completely proportional to current, which is (almost completely proportional to load. So if you reduce grid power consumption by 50% you will reduce transmission losses by 45% or more (allowing for corona losses and current to ground etc).
Same thing with meat. It's a supply and demand problem- the less demand for meat the less livestock, and proportionally less waste there. Livestock are expensive and people aren't just going to raise them if they can't sell them for a profit.
Agriculture and livestock can be exported, true, but that's the same situation as before just on a global scale. Less global demand for meat, fewer livestock, less water usage. It's really that simple. There are no "super-users" of meat, the 1% might eat more than the average person but not 10x more.
Municipal pipe leaks, sure, that does reduce the elasticity by up to half... with the caveat that in places that have serious water restrictions are much more vigilant because it really matters. Phoenix, AZ has a statutory limitation of 10% loss.
My stat is just some back of the envelope math based on my above statements.
As far as AI goes, it's the same thing all over again. They (the AI companies) are offering a service to US, the consumer. We have the choice to not have AI generate pictures of snails wearing astronaut helmets. Actually AI is probably one of the things we need the least, relative to how much we use it.
We now have 1-to-1 plant based meat replacements like Impossible that are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing without the environmental, ethical, or health concerns of real meat. Society collectively picking that at the meat isle would have make a tangible difference with no effort.
And water is even less elastic than electricity. Municipal pipe leaks in your neighborhood will have a bigger impact on your street’s water consumption rate than any amount of conservation or efficiency within the home.
Civil engineer who works with municipalities on repairing pipe infrastrucure. I'm in Canada, so YMMV, but they're ON it with leaking pipes. We're typically brought in to design new watermains when the old ones reach ~5-10% leakage.
If you don't like anecdotal evidence, here's a paper from 2000- This was at the start of when municipalities began examining for this, and even then they only found losses of 20-30%. A personal reduction of 20-30% isn't that hard.
s/no wash/buy local/
I don't think getting a majority of people to change habits will ever work. Did you see how people acted during the pandemic? So, once again, relying on individual action to solve systemic issues is still not a viable solution.
Aside from buying food from your local farmers, buying local does nothing for the environment because those businesses are buying from the same sources that you would have bought from.
First of all, not supporting billionaires does a lot for the environment.
Second of all, the local grocery stores in my neighborhood also buy from local farms. Major corporations buy produce from all over the world.
the local grocery stores in my neighborhood also buy from local farms.
I already said that.
@lemmy.dbzer0.com
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. This is a place for undogmatic and constructive discussion from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
A certain knowledge of socialism is expected, if you are new to/interested in socialism, please visit c/Socialism101 before participating here. Socialism101 will gladly help you by answering questions, providing resources etc.
Memes go in c/Lefty Memes
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, upvoting good contributions and downvoting those of low-quality!
Rules
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith discussion is enforced here.
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such,
as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavour.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" (read: Dengist) (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Xenial Xerus" when answering question 2)
6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
7. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
go to feed...
@lemmy.dbzer0.com
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. This is a place for undogmatic and constructive discussion from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
A certain knowledge of socialism is expected, if you are new to/interested in socialism, please visit c/Socialism101 before participating here. Socialism101 will gladly help you by answering questions, providing resources etc.
Memes go in c/Lefty Memes
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, upvoting good contributions and downvoting those of low-quality!
Rules
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith discussion is enforced here.
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such,
as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavour.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" (read: Dengist) (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Xenial Xerus" when answering question 2)
6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
7. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
go to feed...
Let’s go hunting billionaires. 2800 people, good for 50% of the worlds pollution.
save