Without electric VEHICLES* climate change cannot be addressed. Expensive new electric cars are not the solution. Electric public transport, retrofitting old vehicles, making current vehicles last, and people adopting two wheeled electric solutions will be the solution. Cars like Teslas are awful and buying one shouldn't be considered making a difference.
That's just symptomatic of Americans inability to advocate for themselves, either in the workplace or by what they buy. When Americans should have been unionizing and buying local, they were blissfully filling their houses with plastic crap and voting poorly. Also, small but important distinction; wages have grown as well as quality of life, just not in line with productivity.
Ok, so continue to make the most immediately expedient choice for your personal circumstances with no regard for the wider impact of your actions and hope the Government will just elegantly and efficiently legislate our way out of our rapid and inevitable civilisational decline. It'll be great. We can just blame the corporations!
That's the decision. They made a decision there, to buy the cheaper product without thought of the consequences. We continue to pay for the average consumer's lack of discretion.
It's not pointless. It's one step of many to get us off destructive products. You're going out of your way to make it harder to recycle and to make it more dangerous for wildlife. Ideally you should have already been avoiding plastics, but I guess the government will have to drag you kicking and screaming into living sustainably and for the future. It sure would be great if people could take an ounce of personal responsibility for what needs to happen, so we don't need slow government interventions that will be too little too late.
Well the responsibility is on the consumer, I know it's scary, but every person has a responsibility to make moral choices, like avoid exploitative foreign made products, buying nationally produced foods etc. Obviously it will never be 100%, but that is no reason to just shrug all responsibility in defeat. Change is slow. I manage pretty well with not much money to buy products from US/UK/EU nations, buy mostly local or ethically sourced foods. Does it mean I don't get to have some things? Maybe, but that's the choice most people seem unable to make. Luckily the market is correcting for this consumer desire for more ethical products, and my local supermarkets all have products in that vein in every category.
When these companies started moving their manufacturing, a choice could be made to buy domestically. That continued lack of discernment by the consumer compounded the problem. Everyone happily shopped at the big stores, watching their local shops dry up around them. Luckily these days I think people are starting to make the choices we all should have been making this entire time, and I find sustainably made / eco, zero waste plastic free, domestic products in every category at most supermarkets. It's also very easy with online retail to avoid Chinese rubbish and buy US/UK/EU made products for everything. It's 100% possible with some intentionality, financial literacy and self control to ethically consume while not being loaded. I do it. I'm not American though, Americans need to do something about every part of their society it seems.
No. It's all bullshit. I bought a traditional Japanese futon. My back has never felt better, posture improved. Its just technically 'harder'. Western mattresses sink and sag and fuck your back and neck up, and then you have buy a new one. They're environmentally bad, bad for your wallet, bad for your back, and they take up loads of space. Futons can be folded away easily in a cupboard. Hammocks are another potential solution.
Without electric VEHICLES* climate change cannot be addressed. Expensive new electric cars are not the solution. Electric public transport, retrofitting old vehicles, making current vehicles last, and people adopting two wheeled electric solutions will be the solution. Cars like Teslas are awful and buying one shouldn't be considered making a difference.