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I mean whatever we say here or believe doesn't change what happened in Turkmenistan, it's just sad to be reminded what kind of hurdles exist when talking about making the world a little bit better :-/
I don't see it as a dismissal of real environmentalists, more a laugh at the hypocrite corporatist ruling class who take their private jets and mega yachts to conferences where they pat one another on the back and tell everybody else to eat bugs. Them, and the army of sycophants and apologists who they've fooled.
FWIW I more often see the "eat the bugs" meme in response to obscenely rich elites and politicians advocating policies that require sacrifice from commoners.
The last person who gave me this spiel said it right after suggesting I take the place from france to canada, and got mad I suggested they install an electric stove instead of a gas one.
For what it's worth, it's perfectly possible to be disillusioned and angry at the ruling class and their policies and their hypocrisy and profiteering at the expense of the environment, while also wishing for real uncorrupted environmental action. Some people are sick of it all and have given up on it. I place a lot more blame on the people who soured their attitudes.
There is an enormous distinction between pure waste or negligence such as what we see here, and genuine activity that benefits people.
If I were leaving my windows open with the AC/heating on full blast, or burning plastic in my garden - sure, that's not cool.
But going after genuine things with utility (eating meat, driving, having children, etc) is the quickest way to get me to completely ignore what you're saying.
These changes don't make the world better. They would make my life significantly worse, whilst potentially very slightly improving the lives of people who are ascetic.
Banning plastic bags was sensible, it just didn't go far enough. Banning plastic straws was sensible, but replacing them with PFAS paper was evil.
Do you think it was natural how much corporate media attention the plastic straw thing got? Do you think it's natural how little attention Coke get in the media for their plastic waste? Do you think environmentalists are unaware of this?
The main point you seem to be missing is that there are a small number of individuals making a lot of money from the "low hanging fruit" problems remaining unsolved. You're pointing fingers at an artificial straw-man, one created by PR teams those wealthy people hired.
I don't mean this to sound too confrontational; it sounds like our opinions mostly overlap. I just really dislike seeing environmentalists get tarred with a straw brush.
In the way that the number of trees I've seen covered in plastic bags has dropped > 99%. Seeing 5 or 6 plastic bags at once blowing in the wind, down > 99%. In the way that microplastics is a bad thing, and reducing the amount of them is good.
> We replaced recycled and sugar cane bags with awful cotton bags
What proportion of those plastic bags we banned were "recycled and sugar cane bags"?
And that's not what your initial argument was. I'd have liked to see them replaced with hemp, myself, but I'd rather see a cotton bag degrading peacefully than a plastic bag leeching random nasty shit everywhere.
>The sale of imported plastic bags skyrocketed.
Did it "skyrocket" to more than the number of bags we were producing before? No, not anywhere. In South Australia, for example, 400 million fewer plastic bags were used.
I've never seen that. There's no trash on the ground where I live. I hope you picked it up.
> What proportion of those plastic bags we banned were "recycled and sugar cane bags"?
I have no numbers but probably 80+ percent considering all food chains and the biggest retail stores had made the change many years ago. That's where most of the bags were coming from. The ones you used multiple times when purchasing food, before using it as a garbage bag.
> Did it "skyrocket" to more than the number of bags we were producing before?
Yes. In the past you bought a recycled plastic bag, used it a couple of times and then disposed it with the garbage such as tampons. Now you buy rolls of imported plastic bags and use them for garbage but since there's no incitament to buy fewer, you stock up when its cheap. With the added benefit that you also have to buy cotton bags that are absolutely terrible for the environment.
As a result, the change is being rolled back this year by the government. Everyone have deemed it to be a major failure.
There is nothing they hate more than widely popular and successful regulations to reduce fossil fuel use. So repeated attempts to discredit them are made.
https://reason.com/tag/plastic-bags/
They don't really stand up to scrutiny though:
Or you can pretend some investor or politician somewhere doesnt rub elbows directly or indirectly with the companies that do the shit in the article. They control everything on the planet, business and politics, stuff like this article is just what comes to light. It could be fixed with a fucking phone call, but they might have to pay some overtime, which hits the bottom line, and they wont lose a nickel to back up their bullshit because their 14th bathroom needs a new gold shitter and those things are expensive.
Its more cost effective for me to chip my tooth on a metal straw or stop eating altogether.
Gates "guilty pleasure" is collecting private jets
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/bill-gates-private-jets-guilty-... https://twitter.com/goddeketal/status/1655658051855065090 https://www.newsweek.com/bill-gates-defends-using-private-je...
Who is this "they"? The only rich rich person I can think of that actively advocates for policies combatting climate change, and isn't a "celebrity" type of rich person (e.g. footballer or actor/musician) is Bill Gates. Most other rich rich people, à la Arnault, Musk, Bezos flat out don't care and don't pretend they do. They spend their billions on whatever tickles their fancy, consequences be damned. As to why I exclude celebrities, it's because PR and their brand is a big part of what they are.