People Twitter

Removing one billionaire will do more good for the planet than anything a regular individual can do

Yeah us normal civilians can make a miniscule difference by doing these things

But let's not act like the problem isn't billionaires like musk, swift, bezos etc and mega cooperations like nestle or even Boeing. They are the real problems. We will live to see the first trillionaire, yeah trillion. No one should have that much wealth. Eat the rich yo

We get it, billionaires bad, but it's in the effing tweet "what they can do as individual". All the options listed are solid.

The only answer is conquer the corporations and eat the rich.

Consensus seems to be: Yeah climate? I shouldn't do nothing as long as there's wealthy people.

No, I meant what can I do without inconveniencing myself.

The sad thing is, if I die today, nothing will change. The rich will still sell and eat the world until everyone is dead.

Not enough people seem to understand that you will have to sacrifice things for the sake of sustainability.

For example

There is no way to supply the amount of meat consumed sustainably. It doesn't matter if you cut off every billionaire's head and send all meat profits directly to industry workers. It does not change that people currently eat more meat than can be produced sustainably.

There are so many other cases where this is true. It's not just rich people and corporations. They are an entirely different symptom, solving one will not solve the other.

When you're poor, you already do 3-5 and 2 is usually taking a bus or walking anywhere.

Forgot the biggest one: don't have children (1)

All of these are individual actions. I'd add organizing with other folks trying to make a difference. Direct action or political advocacy can have a much more significant effect than an individual acting alone.

Individual efforts are cool & all, but… maybe it’s not entirely on the regular Schmoe

Back in the 90s I worked out the arithmetic and concluded that legalizing agricultural hemp (not marijuana but fiber) and reducing American beef consumption by 10%, would save the South American rainforests.

I forget the numbers now, but at the time almost all timber logging in the rainforests was to make paper. I remember buying some really nice plywood called "teppa" that came from I think Argentina, which became unavailable because all the logs were being pulped. Anyway, if the market for beef dropped 10%, forcing the beef industry to cut production, the drop in cattle feed consumption would reduce the demand for corn (a main component). If the land were used for hemp fiber instead it would produce enough paper to completely replace our paper imports from S.A.

This practical exercise probably taught me more economics than my college Econ 101 class.

Keep handy a list of the rich bastards responsible for the overwhelming majority of the problem, just in case.

What we can do is press for more regulation.

Eat the rich.

Number 3 should be number 2 in the list. Cars are terrible but meat industry is much worse.

We need to stop shipping things across the world for economic reasons. We need to produce and buy locally. The truth is, the global economy has to crash and rebuild itself if we want an eco friendly future. Worldwide shipping needs to go away. Commercial aviation needs to go away. These are things no one wants to hear but would do the most good. Sacrifice is key. We may need to live modestly for a generation in order for energy production to advance to the point where we no longer have to. Our modern growth is a result too hastly adopting dirty technologies.

We recommend four widely applicable high-impact (i.e. low emissions) actions with the potential to contribute to systemic change and substantially reduce annual personal emissions: having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year), living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year), avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic flight) and eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e saved per year). These actions have much greater potential to reduce emissions than commonly promoted strategies like comprehensive recycling (four times less effective than a plant-based diet) or changing household lightbulbs (eight times less).

^https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541/pdf^

Organize with Sunrise Movement or other similar groups. The US government is a oligarchy, our representatives don't represent it. The only way we will get any kind of change is through organizing and forcing them to listen to us.