Ah Blane we meet again
Fuck the billionaires that do that, but that doesn’t mean that me using a straw isnt still making the shit worse. At least I can sleep at night knowing I am not making the situation worse, and I will still try to vote for politicians that are fighting against the billionaires
It’s replacing real action in place of a good feeling. It’s THE plan to not do anything effective.
The normalization of needless single use products, like straws, by making them non plastic DOES make things worse. It delays real action, like removing straws altogether.
It’s greenwashing inherently unsustainable practices, just like introducing carbon capture technology on oil rigs or hyping electric cars as a way to keep the auto industry going (while suppressing more efficient means of transportation).
If we’re not going to fix shit, then why the fuck bother with mushy straws.
Agree with this take. It’s like yeah electric cars are technically better, but any advantage they have over combustion engines is blown away by things like public transportation, or designing walkable/cyclable cities.
Our solutions can’t just rely on swapping out for “greener” tech. We need radical changes to how we are currently living in order to ensure a livable future.
There is no future that is not radical. This gradualist, neolib (let’s make sure all the investors get a chance to divest from dirty tech before switching!) fantasy will fuck us. It’s been fucking us for a hundred years. It’s time to try literally anything else.
Sorry, but I am confiscating your moral license if the straw you use is justification.
The straw you use does nothing but make you feel better, which I would argue is harmful. You shouldn’t feel better for doing nothing when such large problems exist.
Your use of the right straw is akin to you killing a single invasive ant in a rain forest, and saying you did your part to remove the invasive colony. You then spend every opportunity talking about how you killed that single ant, all while the ants have already multiplied and utterly nullified your non-effort contribution.
Shipping barges, data centers, meat production, gas and coal burning are all many orders of magnitudes greater problems than what straw you use. Gas, coal, and fossil fuel use is over 70% of all emissions, so that should be the primary conversation. In addition, these are all growing in use. Talk about that. Put your attention and action towards that.
The non mushy straws aren’t terrible, but all rubberized tires are, whether on cars or bikes. The car ones are much worse.
And air travel is even worse still
But not close to industrial pollution which is exponentially greater.
The billionaires could care more and put some R&D into it. They just dont.
Test
Oh totally. billionaires carbon footprint is many orders of magnitude larger than multiple lifetimes and generations of us normies. Abolish billionaires. Redistribute that wealth. The environmental future we want - NOW.
And yet, there aren’t very many of them but there are billions of us.
Even if their lifestyles result in 1000x as much pollution, they only represent 0.00004% of the worldwide population, which is not enough to move the needle.
To put that in perspective, metro Tokyo has a population of approximately 38 million. If the fraction of billionaires in Tokyo matches the global ratio, there would be about 15 billionaires in Tokyo. Anything 15 people do in Tokyo will be just noise compared to what the other 37,999,985 people do.
Let’s just pretend that all 3000 of the world’s billionaires lived in the USA. They’d still only make up 0.001% of the entire US population. Even if they were flying around in personal jets, being followed by Airbus Beluga jets carrying their yachts, it would still pale in comparison to the sheer number of people currently suffering in economy class right now.
I still think billionaires should be squashed by a hydraulic press, but I’m not kidding myself into thinking that doing that will have any impact on the environment at all. I support it more because they’re greedy assholes who are taking far more than their share, and who are using their immense wealth to distort the well functioning governing of the world.
They tricked us into taking all the blame for climate change, so we’re busting our ass off to reduce and they don’t even pretend to care. In truth we could do more for the environment with guillotines than paper straws
They tricked us into taking all the blame for climate change
They tricked us into believing metric fucktons of single use plastics would keep us safe and healthy.
But we never had any direct control over climate policy, because we never had any direct control over the capital itself.
All we could do was blame ourselves.
Did they?
I can’t recall anyone ever being anything but nonplussed and skeptical about paper straws. From what I can tell, it was a product of a think tank that pushed into the news, which then caused businesses to treat that as though it were public demand and pushed it out to everyone, and most people shrugged, used the obviously inferior product (because it was free and the alternatives require attention), and then people got on with their day.
On the wider scale this was pitched as ‘the only thing you can personally do to combat climate change’ - but I suspect it is the literal strawman of a figurative progressive position, purposely pushing a manufactured defective solution as a means to distract and suppress more substantive change and organization thereof.
paper straws were about trash, not C02.
they used to make them with a wax coating so they would not get mushy.
Always remember that coke and pepsi do not use recycled plastic in their coke or pepsi packaging, yet they are outwardly huge proponents of recycling the waste they create
I despise how sprite changed to clear bottles claiming environmental reasons, when that reason was that they wanted to be less indentifiable in trash heaps and microplastic samples.
They’re not doing it out of spite, most plastics can’t be recycled, not the way aluminum can (ha).
Me switching to European cans of cola :3
if we reduced wealth inequality to the point noone could afford that kind of shit i bet we could ride the plastic straw wave for a few centuries before it really came back to bite us.
Metal straws are nice
Just don’t trip
I love my metal straws. Great for smoothies and milkshakes. They don’t collapse!
Wheat stalk straws are surprisingly good. Don’t need to wash them like metal and silicone ones.
Yeah, but I’m terrible about carrying them with me
Start a cocaine or ketamine habit and you will always remember to have it on hand.
Do they have to be 3 feet long novelty straws?
Metal straws are annoying to clean. You can’t just put them in the dishwasher, but have to use more water washing by hand and need to buy a specific tool just for that.
But why are we using straws at all? Just say no
some people’s necks don’t bend right. straws are a medical device
That’s where you’re going? Out of the billions of straws used every day, you’re concerned about the edge case where it’s medically useful? By all means go for the plastic single use. Medicine is a huge user of that and there’s no realistic alternative. Hospitals and nursing homes get universal exemptions. It’s also a tiny fraction of single use plastic straw waste.
can i interrupt your whine to remind you i answered your question
Thank you for interrupting our discussion of zebras where everything is striped black or white, by reminding us they’re striped light gray and dark gray
you wanted to know why people use them and “PFFF THATS AN EDGE CASE” do you feel this way about all disadvantaged groups or just the disabled?
it’s literally the edge case, and insignificant to the actual point being made. you excused like a few thousand uses of the straw, maybe. don’t excuse the thousands of metric tons thrown out every year
Be the change you want to see in the world.
throws a Molotov at the next flying cruiser
Bruh if you so much as spit on said cruiser you’ll be wanted by the police for terrorism, despite the definition of terrorism being to threaten harm to civilians…
Before I submit, I want to clarify that I have read the UK Government’s definition of terrorism, and as it’s a stupid ass definition, I elected to ignore it.
“…as the use or threat of… …serious damage to property… …designed to influence the government… …for the purpose of advancing [an]… …ideological cause.”
As we know, damaging property belonging to anyone else, regardless of how many people will be saved, is against the legal law and punishable. HOWEVER, going back to their own law…
“…as the use or threat of… …serious violence against a person [OR] endangering a person’s life (other than that of the person committing the action) [OR] creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public… …which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism regardless of whether or not the action is designed to… …intimidate the public… …for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause… …Action includes action outside the United Kingdom.”
By their own law, any organisation intending to assist in the wilful and unprovoked violence against people, with explosives or firearms, is by their definition a terrorist. This defines the UK government and many companies as terrorists, coconspirators of Israel.
The disclaimer “other than that of the person committing the action” absolves anyone of the definition if they are doing so to stop the attacker. This defines Palestine Action as innocent as they were acting to stop the attacking arms company.But the only reason these interpretations are not the case in reality is because the government a) choose which laws to uphold and when, and b) defend their decision by lying that the Palestinian people were the instigators of their own eradication by the various countries of the world.
Sorry, I know this is just a meme
BORTLES!
That’s why the billionaires have decided to hoard all the wealth among a smaller and smaller proportion of the population. They’re trying to save the planet! When 10 people have everything and the rest are all dead - boom, planet saved.
It’s not like ”they” held a meeting to decide they were going to get everything for themselves. Rather they’re embracing this inevitable ”feature” of the ongoing collapse of market economics.
Increasing the concentration of financial capital in the hands of a few people changes the value of that capital. For normal people, the dollar value is measured in the cost of food and living space. Billionaires, who despite evidence to the contrary, are human beings, don’t need or demand more of those real resources – say potatoes or tenancy in small rental apartments – than anyone else. In fact, they can in many cases make do with less! They prefer to subside on lobster, filet mignon or whatever fad diet their longevity coach prescribes, and live in lavish palaces and/or bunkers.
Billionaires, and even down to the measly top 10 percent of earners, are the ultimate hedge when things go sideways in the real economy. They allow governments to keep printing money by diverting a tidy sum of it from potatoes and apartment leases to the lobster, filet mignon, yacht and private jet economy – and more importantly, their investment portfolios.
My point being, that malevolence isn’t the main driver here, but a widespread failure of people to acknowledge that the fantasy of limitless growth inevitably must be realized within the confines of the fantasy world of the financial economy by insulating it from the real economy. Because in the latter we eventually have to accept that we have reached the highest amount of potatoes and apartments possible. This failure is on everyone, not just billionaires.
At this point, though, I guess ”they” (Peter Thiel et al) have pretty much decided to help this collapse along with the help of every major government. So I guess you’re right.
I get what you’re saying and it is probably true from a macro standpoint, but don’t be too hasty to minimize the role of malevolence. If a rich person were so inclined, they could read the same articles and books as me and conclude that systemic problems are already pervasive and still growing. They could then withdraw their support for politicians like Trump (or even most democrats, to be fair) who do anything and everything to amplify those problems for the simple reason that rich people stand to gain from them. I am so furious with people like Thiel because i think they DO know what they’re doing, but they care more about the gains than the people they hurt.
But who will clean the cruise ship jets for them?!
Out of Elon’s 35 or so kids, some will have been Bokanovskied into Epsilon Pluses, just enough to push a broom.
Robots, probably. ChatGPT will figure it out, probably.
We need the international court to set hard caps that will result in prison time.
International? We need the Intergalactic Court!
Nobody:
Larry Ellison: Buys an entire 90,000 acre Hawaiian Island just because
Fixed:
Larry Ellison: Buys an entire 90,000 acre Hawaiian Island just because
Nobody:
Absolutely no one:
OP: I’m going to use this meme format that is dumb for multiple reasons.
Look, if living in a densified treeless hellscape of concrete towers that all look the same, filled with 350 sq. ft. windowless suites furnished with sawdust furniture, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for the ruling class to continue living well.
This fat cat gets 350 sq ft!!
Sure but it’s a 5 foot ceiling. Like Alfred Jarry.
Oh no. The Fats will be rounded up and rendered for cruise ship airplane fuel.
I never had any issues with paper straws. Is it a skill issue?
Same.
The people I’ve noticed complain seem to buy giant drinks and let them sit around for a while.
Never been a fan of flat warm soft drinks myself.
I’ve definitely noticed paper straws come in different qualities, and are affected differently depending on what you’re drinking. But the ones that turn mushy were largely phased out of use because I’m sure a lot of people complained. I haven’t had a mushy straw in years.
When people first started using them there were some that were pretty rough. Like flop over the side of your cup levels of structural failure.
I gotta be honest, I would personally insert a straw into the nose of every baby seal on earth for a flying cruise ship.
That’s sad as hell tbh
I don’t know, there’s a lot of baby seals
Not with the pollution this thing makes there is not.
