Shocking if true

Excellent 😁

Japan is probably the cleanest country I've ever been to and you rarely see a bin on the street. Easily accessible bins promote carelessness with the trash you produce. If there are no bins you need to think ahead and plan how you'll dispose of your trash.

Exactly. I was in Sweden recently and it's opressive how difficult it is to use cash. For everything it's only card or apps, I didn't even bother to get any local cash. But I had a few SEK from years ago and I couldn't use them.

In Portugal is not on the constitution but it's law, a business cannot force the client to pay by other means if the client has enough cash to make the payment for payments under 3000€ (above this you actually can't pay cash by the same law :P).

I don't have much hopes for the average African leader... many of them will by this. Europe should definitely focus help and investments on the few African nations with reasonable leaders that don't treat Europe as the threat and Russia as the friend. Investing one cent in the countries with leaders educated in the former USSR is a waste of ressources, they're brainwashed since youth. We need to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I eat meat myself. But I reduced a lot my consumption, most people in Western countries consume far too much, even for their own health. We should consume less and better, chosing meat from sustainable farming instead of cheap meat from pastures where there should be the Amazon..

This is a wild choice of metaphor.

“This is like restricting the other side to wear outdated swimwear in a swimming contest while you yourself (are) wearing a Speedo,” he added.

Maybe China should show some good will and stop banning American websites there, for example... just a thought.

I don't have time for this, I'm blocking them all, a few are popping up here. The Fediverse was supposed to be a safe space, safe from this kind of Russian trolls.

Although many people on the left in general don't like to admit it, I do believe that some radical actions can be counterproductive to your cause, especially if your cause depends on convincing people from other sides of the political spectrum. This is valid for environmentalist or LGBT acceptance etc you need to get more people on board, not to repel the moderates.

That said, the difficulty is to find the right balance. And some radical action by fringe groups can help moderates to be more easily accepted by the mainstream. I would expect environmentalism to be now so ingrained in mainstream politics in Europe that some more radical actions wouldn't jeopardize the main cause.

But, far-right politics is going up everywhere in the continent and they're eager to profit from some small radical actions. We're still very far from any form of "ecoterrorism" but we already see them echoing the word.. European elections next year will be crucial, the risk of the EU giving a sharp turn right, with the EPP siding with the far-right is real. And that would be a catastrophe for our environment.

Websites could simply have no cookies and not bother us with them or the note.

There's some redundancy, but a ban solves the issue instantly and also creates a strong incentive for better ground transport.