I don't know man. I know some of those kids in Africa, and they don't all prioritize the environment over things like food and shelter.
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
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For sure, but when we total up the list of top contributors, they're nowhere near the top. So let them, because they're not "the cause".
I think that comment was sarcastic.
Yes, but sadly also no. They don't play in the big leagues, but taken over the whole continent it adds up.
literally nobody thought that was the case. this is just holier-than-thou fartsmellery.
For climate activists it's very unlikely, but there are people who believe Africans are the issue because of high birth rates, conveniently ignoring that richer countries do the most damage by far.
I do agree that this is very rare take from climate activists. Those folks usually know their shit and are pretty radical.
However, this line of reasoning is definitely a thing among laypersons. It has historical precedent that has its roots in Malthusian population theory.
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"Humans are destroying the planet" has been a great way of off-loading the social responsibility aspect from multi-billion dollar gas guzzling AI-generated farts factory to Grandma, who forgot to put out her recycling last week.
the prefix "some" is implicit there. but also, like, the hundreds of millions of people commuting to work is a bigger problem than the thousands of people driving loud sports cars. it's just that the hundreds of container ships going around the world is a way bigger problem still.
the hundreds of millions of people commuting to work is a bigger problem than the thousands of people driving loud sports cars
Sure. But it's not the individual commuters who are setting national transportation policy.
The folks driving the sports cars (and in the yachts and private jets), on the other hand...
that's why i continued my post. to illustrate that the issue is not the individual within the system, but the system itself and the people who shape it.
are you sure about that? the "oh, humans are so evil, we’re destroying our planet! i wish all humans were dead" sentiment is extremely common
yeah that's called ecofascism. it's about as well thought through an ideology as anarchocapitalism.
i mean, it has its roots in how we discuss climate change. we call it "human-made", so yes, people will jump to "humanity is to blame for climate change". it’s a very logical leap, and not entirely wrong, even if it doesn’t tell the whole story (which part of humanity is responsible?)
i feel like that part comes naturally. it's pretty easy to go from "i'm trying to help" to "no matter how much i help i can't make a difference because the system makes it useless" to "who designed the system?"
Yes, but much more commom
Unfortunately the misanthropic sentiment is the foundation for a whole plethora of ecofascist tendencies, both intentionally and unintentionally so, that are shockingly common.
Neither is the average human being anywhere, just trying to survive a hostile narcissistic environment they have no control over
Rich people are destroying the planet. It's nobody else's fault.
Let's call that greedy people. I would not mind them being rich if they chose to be a little less rich to pay their people well and earn their money while respecting the environment and protecting the climate.
It could be. We might be stabbing it with a pretty scary knife it wouldn't survive, but the capitalists stuff a hydrogen bomb down its throat every day so that doesn't really matter.
Did someone fucking print this tweet out and then scan it?
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Right!? Why is it slightly askew?
There's one word that combines the three and more.
maybe if yall spent less time on wordplay and more time on finding out where these people live something might get done
Oh, we know where they live. You'll see. We just need critical mass. A revolution doesn't happen over night and certainly not all at once everywhere.
It's easy to forget that sadly most people do no support actually doing anything about it at all. Either they'd rather believe it's OK, or they'd rather believe that we're nearly winning.
This enemy classification includes the settler/colonialist workers in the Amazon who are working as the frontier of capital accumulation.
I thought Amazon workers for a bit and was thoroughly confused
Yeah, libs have been slipping on the eco-fascism like a pair of custom-made shoes.
Its easy to criticize, but when you ask for a solution, they've got nothing. Literally zero.
Except for a large scale die off of humanity.
something something, the planet can only support 1 billion
As if 80% population loss is somehow a solution
Uh... who's "they?" Because I've seen plenty of people propose solutions (usually some combination of renewable energy and environmental protection at the national level).
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Well akshually, the rising standard and of living in the developing world in general and sub-Saharan Africa in particular means that kids in Africa are contributing to climate change. Now when you ask why kids in Africa can't fuel their improving standards of living with solar panels instead you're going to end up at these things, but still.
AI datacenters woth their gas turbines
I love when people reinvent ethnic essentialism. Every single culture that had the means and the opportunity to rape the land for profit has done it. The ones that didn't simply couldn't.
South American natives fight mining companies, but if they had the right to exploit the land themselves, do you think they would be any different from the North American natives who found oil on their lands and are happily fracking for it?
I agree, we gotta address the root of the problem: Extractivism, colonialism and infinite growth economies are just human by-products.
Every single culture that had the means and the opportunity to rape the land for profit has done it. The ones that didn't simply couldn't.
This is wildly inaccurate and borderline racist. Your culture revolving around resource extraction doesn’t mean everyone’s does, and it doesn’t mean that’s a cope they have because they’re too stupid to figure out how to do it.
As a single example, the Menominee developed commercial forestry practices in the 19th century that allowed them to perpetually harvest from a sustainable old growth forest instead of clear cutting everything. After decades of battling the US government over control of their forest, today it still stands. Anyone who thinks that they’re incapable of renting and operating a chainsaw and cutting everything down is just a racist. They don’t do it not because they can’t, they don’t do it because they don’t want to.
This story isn’t unique, indigenous groups all over the world do what they can through legal systems and direct action to protect the environment. This isn’t to say every indigenous person is morally pure or has these politics, it’s just that if you deny it’s a trend that exists you’re closing your eyes to reality.
To add onto this the Klamath peoples were notoriously individualistic and "industrious" in comparison to their neighbors and during the reservation period they did, comparitively, exceptionally well as there were similar cultural virtues around "profit". Thanks, in part, to both location and pre-contact culture they build a thriving lumber industry and by 1950 were one of the wealthiest tribes within the US and were the only tribes in the United States that paid for all federal, state and private services used by their members.
Obviously a 'worst case' for "raping the land for profit" right?
No. By 1950 the reservation has turned the "undesirable woodland" into a highly productive, healthy and sustainable forest and pastureland with by far the largest remaining stand of ponderosa pine in the west.
This, of course, could not stand and so the 1954 Klamath termination act was enacted. Originally the plan was to sell it all to private industry like Crown-Zellerbach, however the "lumber industry's concern with how the increase in Klamath Forest timber would saturate the industry" resulted instead in creating the Winema and Fremont National Forests. Which of course have been heavily logged and largely mismanaged, but not nearly as bad as the plan was and certainly worse than when humans were more active in helping to maintain it.
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Every single culture that had the means and the opportunity to rape the land for profit has done it.
Weird way of deflecting the consequences of the industrial revolution to millennia of subsistence farmers.
this ain't it, fam
Every single culture that had the means and the opportunity to rape the land for profit has done it. The ones that didn't simply couldn't.
How did you come to this conclusion? From my perspective there is no way to demonstrate a culture had the means to exploit the land for profit unless they did it. I'd be interested in knowing if I missed something.
Possible counterpoints would be the existence of sustainable foraging practices and taboos around greed, or practices like potlatch. These exist in various forms around the world today.
Ethnicity is a tricky concept to apply here but I think you are getting at the concept of idealizing "primitive" cultures. I don't think that's what was going on in the OP. I think they are saying humanity has a choice, the choice that is being made is to allow these behaviors to continue.
It's not ethnic essentialism to acknowledge that there are cultures that long knew of the dangers of exploiting the land too much and put more emphasis on sustainability in their usage of the land. Extractivism, colonialism and infinite growth are parts of our culture and culture can change as a result of conscious decisions. Indigenous cultures can be part of the motivation to do so at all and be inspiration for where to go instead.
Wow misanthropy. So cool, so intellectual.
Not particularly helpful though.
i dunno, the indus valley civilization did minimal ecological damage compared to all the other civilizations
Someone desperately needs to read Graeber and abandon this misanthropic mentality.
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