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me_irl (lemmy.ml)
submitted 11 months ago by BuddyTheBeefalo@lemmy.ml to c/me_irl@lemmy.world
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[-] TWeaK@lemm.ee 91 points 11 months ago

A generation's fault =/= the fault of every individual in that generation

[-] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 99 points 11 months ago

Correct. But climate change is specifically the fault only of this Grandma.

[-] sour@feddit.de 54 points 11 months ago

Correct. What many don't know is that this Grandma used to be an Exxon Executive.

[-] spudwart@spudwart.com 22 points 11 months ago

She also burnt our crops, poisoned our water supply and sent a plague unto our houses.

[-] brey1013@lemmy.world 20 points 11 months ago

And that grandma's name? Ronald Reagan.

[-] Smoogs@lemmy.world -2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Ftr industrial era started in 1700s. First car was 1886. Petroleum 1859. First combustible engine 1876. Lead in gasoline was introduced 1920’s(and started getting removed in the 1970s). This Shit was doomed well before Reagan was even born let alone a president or anyone voting for him.

[-] Comment105@lemm.ee 11 points 11 months ago

If she voted for the cowboy, she's to blame.

[-] Smoogs@lemmy.world -4 points 11 months ago

So long as we’re going ‘generational’ logic: Trump is considered the millennial president. Good luck explaining on how you let that one get in to future generations. Get comfortable with getting accused for voting him in. Even if you didn’t. You’re ‘of a generation’ and that’s all it will take.

[-] NotSoCoolWhip@lemmy.world 29 points 11 months ago

No snowflake thinks they're responsible for the avalanche

[-] NickwithaC@lemmy.world 27 points 11 months ago

Except it literally is the fault of like 30 people. We can directly pinpoint the cause of the problem onto the actions of specific individuals.

[-] bus_factor@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Everyone else could have voted for regulation to prevent them from doing those things. You can't just expect corporations to not do evil if you allow them to. They're heavily incentivized by the system to be as evil as possible. The solution is to limit the amount of evil they're allowed to do.

[-] floppade@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago

No but snowflakes are arguably more equal in their role and function than humans in society are. Powerless people exist, and it’s most people.

[-] bus_factor@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

In democracies people have the option to vote for people who will regulate businesses. A business will only optimize for profit, if you want them to make environmentally friendly choices you must either make those choices mandatory or profitable. The way to do that is through politics, and people who voted for the avalanche share the blame for it.

[-] TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 points 11 months ago

But snowflakes literally aren't responsible for an avalanache. A cow in a stampede has no choice but to follow the herd, it's the whoever or whatever started the stampede/avalanche that's responsible.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Except for cows at the edge and back, who could get out.

Which makes a new edge of the herd, which lets more cows out, and all of a sudden the stampede is just one angry bull.

No metaphor is perfect, but I think this one demonstrates rather handily that much of the "stampede" is social pressure that would dissipate rapidly if the people who could leave it did.

[-] ParsnipWitch@feddit.de 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I wish people would see it that way. But on Lemmy when it comes to climate change the majority seems to be in favour of not doing anything personally, because it wouldn't have lot of an impact.

Making jokes about how not using plastic straws is a scam, a vegan diet too hard for the effect it has or how the cars of individuals don't matter in the greater scheme...

That's exactly like people in past generations thought as well.

[-] NotSoCoolWhip@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

If snowflakes aren't responsible for an avalanche then what is?

[-] TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

The thing that causes an avalanche, the loud noise or whatever it was.

You could try and blame the snowflake for being there, but even if that was a valid criticism it would only give them limited responsibility for the avalanche happening. Blaming the snowflake is like blaming tinder for the fire, when without the spark no fire would have happened.

[-] NotSoCoolWhip@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

An avalanche cannot occur without an outside force acting upon it?

[-] TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

Yes, something needs to trigger it.

Thinking a bit more though, I was only thinking of a snowflake in the avalanche, rather than a snowflake falling on the top causing everything to fall down - like messing up the last card in a house of cards. If that's what they meant then it makes a little more sense, but still doesn't really hold true. 90% of all avalanche disasters are triggered by humans.

An avalanche requires that certain types of snowflake form a "weak layer" in the snow. Some snowflakes are kind of smooth on the sides, these don't have the jagged edges that hook onto other snowflakes. When a force is applied, this weak layer breaks and the snow on top of the layer slides down the slope. A single snowflake will not apply enough force to break the weak layer - the amount of force it applies would be negligible even compared to things like the wind. Something else will trigger the avalanche before a snowflake ever could.

The snowflake provides the conditions for an avalanche, but doesn't apply the force that triggers it.

[-] TheSanSabaSongbird 0 points 11 months ago

That's because they literally aren't.

[-] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 22 points 11 months ago

All this rhetoric does is make people feel good about not doing anything, though. If your government is ruining the world and you blithely sit by and even actively vote for that very same government, you are absolutely to blame.

We all have a moral obligation to fight for what's right, obviously not everyone can be an armed revolutionary but almost everyone can organize and spread knowledge.

[-] Smoogs@lemmy.world -4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Well passing blame to the parallel tangent and doing nothing upstream is still being compliant. That’s this generation’s decision to act this way.

And not voting just to be compliant to a trump monster making shit worse was also this generation’s decision.

This generation will have a lot to answer for until the day they die.

Especially what with their memes like this one boasting inaction while they just sat on their phones blaming the random parallel tangents of generations of people while they do absolutely nothing to face these political issues head on.

Blaming a geriatric in a wheel chair who probably burned more bras than they ever did doesn’t make waves in the political sea. But these people know that cuz they have absolutely no intention of doing anything productive. This meme is just further disappointment of the absolute trash and failure of the current generation inaction. It screams how they refuse to do anything effective. They like their life the way it is. They just don’t want any responsibility of the choices they make that could be different. So it’s just easier for them to pretend it’s the previous generation (each and every person of it) somehow withholding their power of choice.

[-] DreBeast@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

The oil production sure didn't help

[-] Retrograde@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah but my grandma in the peace corps wasn't responsible for that

[-] deaf_fish@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago

Your correct. The USA is a democratic country and climate change was known about for a while now. So it's probably more accurate to say that most of the individuals in that generation. Had a responsibility to address it and they didn't.

Now, I sympathize. A lot of the corporate pressure to do nothing about it back then is still here today. But it doesn't change the fact that nothing was done.

I am not placing morale judgement on anyone here. Life is hard and complicated and when you have big business working against you it is doubly so. But that doesn't change the fact that they messed up and it's causing a lot of damage.

Let's learn from their mistakes so we don't mess up in the same way.

[-] uis@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

The USA is a democratic country and climate change was known about for a while now.

I've seen some videos where US citizens are proud that it is not democracy and does not have national elections, instead it has electoral college. Well, at least USA did something good and sanctioned putin's rocketmaker.

[-] TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 points 11 months ago

I mean, it's reasonable to say they could have done something and failed to do so. However, when you start to dig into what they could have done, it's hard to think of anything particularly effective and easy to see why they could have been convinced into inaction. So you could say they made a mistake, but were not fully at fault. The ones at fault are the ones who have been convincing them.

I like to say that responsibility isn't neatly divided up into percentages. Someone can be fully 100% responsible for something that happened, but other people can have some minor responsibility also. There's no threshold between being responsible or not, either, it's a sliding scale. When assigning responsibility and blame it's important to remember these things.

[-] HardlightCereal@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago

it's hard to think of anything particularly effective

A communist revolution. And don't give me that "they didn't know" crap, there were communists fighting the good fight back then.

[-] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

Hey man, I love communism as much as any far left lemmy user, but can you explain how a communist revolution would have impacted climate change?

[-] HardlightCereal@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

The primary motive to pollute was the profit motive of fossil fuel companies, and automotive manufacturers. Today, the biggest argument against closing mines is jobs, and the biggest argument for cars is getting to work. A communist system has universal basic income. Better planned neighbourhoods such as the Soviet 15 minute cities would also reduce transport emissions, though the soviets were not communist. There should exist no such thing as mining or energy companies, and under communism, that's the case.

[-] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

Hmm. Under communism, even with UBI, people would still have jobs, or hobbies, or would go on road trips or vacations, so you'd still have people driving cars.

I agree that better, more walkable city planning and functional public transit is important for reversing climate change, but lots of people think that, not just communists. I don't see what a communist revolution has to do with that - even your example is of Soviet cities, not communist cities.

And even if there are not energy companies under communism, there still need to be power plants, electricity would still need to be generated. What about communism would make those power plants be powered by renewables instead of coal?

[-] HardlightCereal@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Isn't it obvious that a people who work to better society would do more altruistic work?

this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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