Green policy makers and dirty consumption

[Angst]

Green politicians use airlines, and Danes don't like it.

In Denmark, we've had another minor debacle about this hypocrisy. This time, Theresa Scavenius - who I happen to really like - has flown a lot from Aalborg to Copenhagen over the last two years, and it's been published in a fringe online newspaper. As she is basically a one issue politician, being all about changing climate policy, this has caused a minor stir, for now. She herself brought the news to attention and said, well yea, people fly. She states in her response upfront that individual actions don't change much. Policy does. The individualization of climate responsibility is a dangerous one, particularly because it doesn't work. Individual action is infinitisemal compared to the structure of Western industry and consumption, which governments repeatingly enable, actively. This doesn't take away from the hard work people do to recycle, use public transit, buy green-ish products, and such - because it is hard work. I used to be a vegetarian with a vegan girlfriend. We were doing all these things, never flying, only buying what I thought was as feasible as possible, and it took a lot of work just orienting myself in this whole mess. But in the end, what I and my ex did does not really matter.

Let's take a step back for a bit. Theresa Scavenius is an interesting character. She used to have a comfortable life doing university research on climate policy. Since little changed and she felt like she was yelling at a wall (even if it was calm, constructive yelling), she decided to go into politics to try and actually make a difference. She joined Radikale Venstre (Social Liberals), switched to Alternativet shortly after it formed (new party, basically Green Party), then made her own party, Momentum, after Alternativet had some major issues with a power scramble, and then after Alternativet had again scrambled and fixed itself, and Momentum failed to get seats, she joined Alternativet again. After the latest election, Scavenius is finally in parliament under Alternativet, and now she can actually get to work. (Alternativet's story is kind of crazy, and would warrant its own thread.) So that's the situation. Scavenius was sick of it and clawed tooth and nail to actually do policy making. I knew about her from back then, and my vote basically followed her when possible. Even to Danes, she's generally obscure.

Four years ago, Scavenius actually wrote an article on this issue. I've decided to quote the abstract here, since the abstract is freely available and sums up her position about individual responsibility:

A prominent argument in the climate ethical literature is that individual polluters are responsible for paying the costs of climate change.1 By contrast, I argue that we have reason to excuse individual agents morally for their contributions to climate change. This paper explores some of the possible constraints agents may face when they try to avoid harming the climate, constraints that might be acceptable reasons for excusing people’s contributions to climate change. Two lines of arguments are discussed. The first concerns the soft internal constraint: that democratic citizens do not experience their individual failures as failures per se. In other words, they do not psychologically ‘feel’ they are doing anything wrong.2 The second argument concerns the soft external constraint: a number of studies have shown that many consumers report that while they are concerned about environmental issues, they struggle to translate their concern into green acts.3 Put differently, while individual citizens may think they are morally obliged to avoid harming the climate, they struggle to fulfill these obligations. I argue that these constraints do not constitute reasons for not blaming individual agents. Instead, individual agents can be morally excused for contributing to climate change because external constraints on agency make climate change a case of imperfect duty, that is, a duty that is hard to fulfill.

To a reader, it may seem rhetorically dangerous. I understand. A lot of people, when faced with the difficulty of the climate crisis, throw their hands up in the air, and then continue dirty consumption. What Scavenius wants to do is not complicated. She wants people to vote green, she wants to do real work in changing production so that green is the better option for people, and she wants people to be OK with their situation after production is fixed.

Because the problem is not whether your neighbour is vegan or not. The problem is entrenchment and interdependency of dirty industries that Western governments actively promote. Technology as is has green energy the best option. Governments keep actively investing massively to keep oil alive. Denmark continuously tries to expand its meat industry. All is backed by tax payer money. It's all active policy, it's all subsidies - always were. Scavenius knows that our massive carbon footprint is a choice, but not a choice by my vegan ex, it's particularly and dwarfingly a choice of governance. It's investments and handholding by dirty industries. It would be a nice world if people all went vegan, if they all moved to houses with green energy, if they all bought green products - but they aren't. People are, mostly, aware of the issues, but even those with inclinations will spend an incredible amount of time finding obscure shops, checking and rechecking opaque production lines, only to make practically no difference. Practically, just telling people to individually go vegan if they want a vegan world, does not work in the face of governments that are handholding dirty industries, actively trying to trounce what could be good consumption.

And this brings us back to the planes. Politicians fly a lot. They just do. There's a lot to be done very quickly when campaigning and making policy, in places all over the world. When we travel for leisure, we also fly. It's the fastest, and often cheapest, unless you know where to look. The industrial web is as such, as an active choice, it's the material case - making sure fuel is cheap, lining out production for the planes, tax breaks for the airlines, throttling unions (whether actively or because of inaction). Scavenius doesn't want this.

Like, can a smoker be for a hard ban on smoking without being a hypocrite? I think most people would think, yes, a smoker could be for such a ban. Whether a ban on smoking would be feasible or not (criminalizing drugs usually doesn't work), one emotionally understands the practicality of being a smoker, the material conditions and dependency that's in this weird space of part-enforcement-part-punishment under the government, that it's due to commercial interests that we're in a culture creating addicts. There's generally a more innate connection to the material and cultural conditions that created the smoker to begin with, and one can understand the smoker's wish to just be stripped of their ability to get the drug. In extension, I don't think people actually have the same, innate understanding of the interwoven nature of their dirty creature comforts. (And sidenote, having the public be aware of what smoking entailed was a huge deal historically, with the tobacco companies clawing tooth and nail to give people cancer.)

Do you eat meat? Do you buy any electronics? Do you drive a car? Do you buy fruit? Do you recycle? Oh you do! Are you aware that most recycling is not recycled further down the line? Yes? Then you're morally square, not practically, but let's move on. Do you buy clothes from H&M? No? You buy from a local green clothes shop for 10X the price? Have you checked the whole product line, each associated company, digging into affiliates online, knowing how it's transported from production to production to production to your local area? Good. Anyways. Do you drink coffee? Do you have internal heating in your house? Do you use straws, cans, bottles? Do your food products come in any sort of container? Do you ever buy from McDonald's? What kind of paper do you use for your printer? Do you take the bus for a few minutes or walk for an hour? Do you buy from Nestlé? Do you know what you buy that Nestlé actually owns? Do you watch videos online? [etc.] Do you fly?
- If any of these, you can't actually be for change, can you? You hypocrite. I'm gonna ignore your qualms and level this forest over here.
- If none of these: unironically, I'm impressed and I applaud you. But I question its material consequences, because the difficulty of this consumption is intentional - not personally intentional, but structurally so - and it will be difficult for everyone else. We're living in an active, industrial choice, vested interests of companies, not because they're good for us, but because they don't want to die out.

Again, I don't want to minimize the work and awareness one does as an ethical consumer. For God's sake, keep doing it. I'm just saying that the material impact is infinitesimal and the cultural impact, while there, is ephemereal and uncertain. All while the Danish government, at least, invests absurd amounts of money in pigs and oil. Much more than you'll ever earn, so that others will spend their earnings on that.

.

So, the god damn airplanes.

Hypocrisy like this matters. Not because of its material situation, but because people do care about public performance. Detractors don't like it, because they don't like green policy, and think hypocrisy a proof they are right, that there is no alternative. Supporters don't like it, because it takes away from the purism. It can be said that it's rhetorically bad to follow dirty consumption patterns this way. And I have some ambivalence and sympathy as to thi.

There's just two issues as to whether this is rhetorically bad.
Firstly, the issue of practicality. Opponents will keep flying, green advocates would basically have to live in trains if they were to abandon flight. It's practical kneecapping, interestingly enough in the favor of dirty policy makers, which none of the detractors seem to have any issue with. Time is removed as an equalizer in favor of money (and is, instead, schewed towards dirty industry).
Secondly, the issue that this is just all spin. Flight is particularly in the public consciousness as a dirty industry, but the moment it's not useful anymore as a rhetorical device, the issue will switch to any other dirty consumption pattern. Pick any from the list above. If green advocates communally stopped flying, it wouldn't change the "outings", since basically all consumption is interwoven in dirty industry. And a person that completely opts out, moving into the woods, and making their own isolated, green system, abandoning the internet, etc., they can't really make policy.

The issue, rather, is... What can be done? For Scavenius, I like her views, but she's not really a great negotiator, and she doesn't seem to well embrace the emotional element of politics. She has switched parties a lot, has a very academic approach to what she says, and I know that she is often experienced as shrill. (There's a host of issues with this that I don't have the energy going into, let me just say that I don't like her being received like she is.) I think her as a situation points to some of the issue here. Again, she believes the solution is to vote green and have green parties push through green policy. But it has an emotional component - people will need to want to vote green. That green politicians fly reveals the hypocrisy of the whole situation, and people don't like it. But they don't like it for the wrong reasons. They don't like it because of the apparent hypocrisy, and because of the purism, instead of not liking it, because, like, air travel shouldn't be like that in Denmark. And here's a politician who wants to change that fact.

So my position & question is more... We can't do anything but embrace hypocrisy. Detractors can only point towards it, since it's ingrained in active policy making. So, rather, the question isn't how to abandon hypocrisy, but how do we talk about it, so we can remove its material conditions? How do we rhetorically navigate the doomscape?

For me, just trying to outline the above is my way of talking about it. Some people will listen to me, for some reason. But my way of ranting doesn't quite reach Brian in Ringkøbing. And I'm not sure Scavenius' academics will speak much to Søren Swineheard.

---

Notes on this thread:
This is a thread about public performance by climate policy makers, not:

• whether parliamental climate action is possible or useful
• whether it's an issue of capitalism (because yes, it is). I'm as red as you are, but we're not having a revolution within five years. These are the cards that we are dealt right now
• whether it's actually good for the climate to fly (even if, yes, there are instances where it is, such as the airline from Copenhagen to Rønne)
• whether the climate crisis is real

I want to hear people's thoughts on the nature of hypocrisy here.

Let's focus, please.

 

[Synobun]

Is there a train from Aalborg to Copenhagen? The bus seems to be 7 hours, while the plane is 40 minutes. For a politician, that's a pretty significant time savings—not to mention average everyday people. I was going to say the hypocrisy in this case was questionable because Europe has fantastic train coverage usually, so why not take a train, but maybe there isn't any accessibility.

I don't overly care about public performance unless the behaviour is egregious. So long as their policy choices are correct, personal failure (if it can even be called that) isn't extremely relevant.

 

[Angst]

lowercase again now <3

Is there a train from Aalborg to Copenhagen? The bus seems to be 7 hours, while the plane is 40 minutes. For a politician, that's a pretty significant time savings—not to mention average everyday people. I was going to say the hypocrisy in this case was questionable because Europe has fantastic train coverage usually, so why not take a train, but maybe there isn't any accessibility.

I don't overly care about public performance unless the behaviour is egregious. So long as their policy choices are correct, personal failure (if it can even be called that) isn't extremely relevant.

you're absolutely right re: trains being both there and fast enough for transportation. denmark has quite good train coverage, from aalborg to copenhagen it's just above 4 hours. so trip back and forth is 80 minutes on plane vs 8½ hours on train. this isn't so bad that i think she should take plane over train, but it is a significant time difference.

i agree with you on the second part - problem is, though - while you think like that, people in general don't. they want purism, even if they call it integrity. which is, well, kind of fine, but they want purism where things cannot be pure.

 

[r16]

there is this Club of Rome which says there are too many people . And oil will run out . 1960s or so . Turns out to be wrong . Then the talk is , from real science people that there is too much pollution and that might cause real issues in coping with the cycles of nature . You can't stop the world spinning but you sure can destroy yourself . They invent evidence that a new ice age is coming up , there is no heating up . When it can no longer be countered they are fully "converted" with the excesses of tree huggers and so on . Finally there is a case for Green Economy . Money can be made on it . And just as "the future" seems possible ... Putin getting fooled by the West that it is just a small ploy to prolong the use of hydrocarbons and keeping him and his oligarks safe and richer for a little more seems to have hurt the ecology somewhat more than a Danish politician ı never heard of and probably will never hear off again . What's her name you said ? Hmm , ı might maybe write her name correctly , ı know because ı just checked it again . Dirty it is . (Involves delay of the return of investments somewhere along the line) Money is not made from actually doing real things , that's some real problem .

 

[Farm Boy]

Celibate priests that molest children discredit the very foundations of the ideals they preach. The wealthy don't want change, they're wealthy. They just want little people to stop screwing up their playground. That change is what they don't like. No meat diets for east Asians.

 

[W|M]

there is this Club of Rome which says there are too many people . And oil will run out . 1960s or so . Turns out to be wrong . Then the talk is , from real science people that there is too much pollution and that might cause real issues in coping with the cycles of nature . You can't stop the world spinning but you sure can destroy yourself . They invent evidence that a new ice age is coming up , there is no heating up . When it can no longer be countered they are fully "converted" with the excesses of tree huggers and so on . Finally there is a case for Green Economy . Money can be made on it . And just as "the future" seems possible ... Putin getting fooled by the West that it is just a small ploy to prolong the use of hydrocarbons and keeping him and his oligarks safe and richer for a little more seems to have hurt the ecology somewhat more than a Danish politician ı never heard of and probably will never hear off again . What's her name you said ? Hmm , ı might maybe write her name correctly , ı know because ı just checked it again . Dirty it is . (Involves delay of the return of investments somewhere along the line) Money is not made from actually doing real things , that's some real problem .

environmentalism is treated as a joke even among many "advocates"

 

[r16]

interesting link but ı had an uncontrollable itch to have a walk outside . Made me skim through , ı don't think ı got everything right or in full . So . It is the year 2100 and while it specifically concentrates on Africa , the Amazon basin is completely cleaned with the egzotic woods fetching an higher price every year as rare antiques and replaced by trees . Because as closing in you generally discern the blue of the planet first , but the green is so rare out in the galaxy and everybody likes the green . Because there are space hotels in orbit and they need to see the forests . No doubt made of trees owned and patented down to their DNA by major corporations . How cool it is to show other people in the hotel that green square of half a million square kilometers is yours ? And we haven't covered the entire continent of Africa with solar panels because increased efficiencies call for dangerous material that risks the precarious balance of the nature . Instead these people burn wood . On the eve of the 22nd Century . Because we haven't yet replaced every single power station of any and all types with fusion . How are we mining on Titan if we don't have fusion ? And apologies for the hate , but these people in South have no place to grow food , so yet more American corn . Please tell me at least we have developed tourism for these people , so that they can pay for their American corn . So there are tomtoms and various drums for these people so that semi naked women can dance around the communal fire at night and the forest owner can play Tarzan , king of the forest , if he gets bored in space hotels ...

 

[EnglishEdward]

I am not sure how much flying a lot is, in this case.

Well Greta Thunberg made an effort to minimise the environmental impact of her travel.

And I have voted for a local green candidate noting her dedication to using a bicycle rather than a car.

A question I ask is why is Theresa Scavenius travelling from Aalborg to Copenhagen?

With the internet and zoom, policy making and meetings can be done from home.

Four hours on a train isn't that bad for commutting on a weekly basis.

 

[Angst]

I am not sure how much flying a lot is, in this case.

Well Greta Thunberg made an effort to minimise the environmental impact of her travel.

And I have voted for a local green candidate noting her dedication to using a bicycle rather than a car.

A question I ask is why is Theresa Scavenius travelling from Aalborg to Copenhagen?

With the internet and zoom, policy making and meetings can be done from home.

Four hours on a train isn't that bad for commutting on a weekly basis.

a lot of times over the last 1½ years. i don't remember the # of times, but it was above 10. it was during the campaign period, after she rejoined Alternativet and during the election cycle. our election was in october this year. it's unclear for me how much was leisure and how much was necessary for campaigning in different ways.

i agree that with video chat having superceded the need for physical presence in most meetings. it's also one of those strange things, though. in person meetings simply means more soft power, easier to convince people with your purpose and perspective when you're analog. maybe this is changing after covid. i hope so. again, one of the reason travel for meeting is still mostly the default is because it's too subsidized and therefore affordable - active policy.

 

[amadeus]

I have a fairly simple opinion, that being if someone wants me to take one for the team then they should too. If the government subsidizes something to my benefit, that’s not really an unfair advantage in my book because regardless I am still absolutely and relatively of fewer means.

 

[Angst]

I have a fairly simple opinion, that being if someone wants me to take one for the team then they should too. If the government subsidizes something to my benefit, that’s not really an unfair advantage in my book because regardless I am still absolutely and relatively of fewer means.

so if i can parse this - you don't like the hypocrisy, and you don't think the mismatch in prospects if they avoid hypocrisy is a problem?

my question is, then - if my parsing is the case of your view here - do you understand that the material situation is that the hypocrisy can never be abandoned? what's needed, and what scavenius is working for, is a thorough restructuring of many things. everything, as it is, is part of the destruction.

in regards to flying, for example - she has no plan to ban air traffic. but she wants it to reflect its real costs in the world instead of keeping it artificially disastrous.

like, i'll go to my long list. should she abandon meat? streaming? internet? electricity? clothes?

 

[Angst]

bonus post. i just learned more about the nature of the flights. scavenius didn't think the nature that relevant, and honestly as i understand what she's about elsewhere, i understand why she thinks the purpose and the nature of the flights weren't relevant.

but people that think it relevant might care.

the vast majority of them had neither anything to do with campaigning or leisure. rather, it was done under her work at her university. because they wanted her to. it was under her employer's directions.

i think it's interesting that she didn't bring it up. she's hiding a better framing of the situation than it sounds like. it has to do with her mindset, i believe. she, again, doesn't care about the nature of the flights, but that the flights, as a system, is a wrong way to structure things. and otoh i think it speaks, again, to the core issue of the question. how does one talk about these things? i think, again, she deliberately did not color this in a better way. whether this is due to a lack of understanding of the emotional component of voting, or a frustration that the emotional component is there, she chose not to talk about the fact that they were business trips under her employer.

people don't know her, but she's long been frustrated with the hollowing of proper procedure and rigidity in politics. like, the lack of actual procedure and rigidity - politics instead of public performance. most of her articles (public ones, too, not the academic articles) are about this. the dismantling of expertise in government was not just an american thing in the 20th century, but was done by fogh in denmark in the start 2000s. voting is issue voting, policy is issue policy, there's little attempt to systematically listen to the people that know about the conditions of things; at the booth, policy is generally personalized in embodiments of virtue and emotionality. posture, to her, draws in more votes than concretely done policy. and she thinks this is wrong. it's the throttling by entrenched material practices that insist that there is no alternative - if you believe the alternative is there, your alternative is forced into ephemereality. you must abandon your access to life if you want an alternative.

 

[Farm Boy]

Does she ask I go without meat, streaming, internet, electricity, or clothes? Or is growing food unimportant enough of a calling(or an evil enough one) that I literally rate less as a human existence than she?

Did she breed?

...am I being lectured by a toddler? Or not?

 

[amadeus]

so if i can parse this - you don't like the hypocrisy, and you don't think the mismatch in prospects if they avoid hypocrisy is a problem?

Sorry, I’m walking home from work so this is a short answer. Answer your question here is mostly no, recognizing there are certain unavoidable elements and I suppose whatever you call the industrialized world. However, if they’re jet setting off to Geneva and eating caviar with Bill Gates then I think they can dummy up for a bit.

 

[EnglishEdward]

a lot of times over the last 1½ years. i don't remember the # of times, but it was above 10. it was during the campaign period, after she rejoined Alternativet and during the election cycle. our election was in october this year. it's unclear for me how much was leisure and how much was necessary for campaigning in different ways.

i agree that with video chat having superceded the need for physical presence in most meetings. it's also one of those strange things, though. in person meetings simply means more soft power, easier to convince people with your purpose and perspective when you're analog. maybe this is changing after covid. i hope so. again, one of the reason travel for meeting is still mostly the default is because it's too subsidized and therefore affordable - active policy.

Thank you for your reply.

In general I believe that people should try to follow to a certain extent what they preach.

I don't wish to get involved in following the internal details of continental state politics.

In the UK, King Charles (as Prince) claimed to be an environmentalist but lost credibility by often flying.

There is an english expression about the cooking "pot calling the kettle black" (i.e. dirty).

But if her university employer says it will pay for daily communiting flights, but not trains
and overnight stays, she might apply her soft skills to sorting her employer's policies out.

 

[El_Machinae]

I have a fairly simple opinion, that being if someone wants me to take one for the team then they should too. If the government subsidizes something to my benefit, that’s not really an unfair advantage in my book because regardless I am still absolutely and relatively of fewer means.

This resonates. What I've learned is that people will always find an excuse to criticize the moral actor as a 'hypocrite' and then dismiss them. But yeah, there is also a line of excessive consumption that the advocate just cannot cross. And it becomes incredibly difficult when there are things like offsets and the like.

If GM lobbyists can fly when they could be driving their Chevrolet Equinox and if Suncor CEOs can take airplanes to advocate for looser policy, then obviously so should green advocates. What's weird is that I think most people understand this, that there needs to be an even playing field, but will still feel this contempt for the actions of the advocates.

I guess it's "if it's not convincing to you, then why should it be convincing to me?" can also kick in.

--------------------------
There are so many ironies in the world. One of my favorite is how Bill Clinton got super-rich doing guest speeches for charities at their $2,000 plate dinners (etc.). Like, he believes so much in the charity that he actually took millions of dollars from it rather than giving money to it?
________________


Sometimes I think the advocate's line is kinda easy. Do what you're asking other people to do, and then a bit more. That's just signalling, but signalling works on some people. It's costless if it doesn't erode morale, and morale is one of those weird things that are so individually personalized that making rules-of-thumb seems impossible.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

"dirty consumption" is not a desirable tag. not that i'm speaking from experience of course

 

[innonimatu]

So my position & question is more... We can't do anything but embrace hypocrisy. Detractors can only point towards it, since it's ingrained in active policy making. So, rather, the question isn't how to abandon hypocrisy, but how do we talk about it, so we can remove its material conditions? How do we rhetorically navigate the doomscape?

Talk? In terms of talk it's easy. We see things for what they are, talk of things as they are, and reject going along with the performances. We withdraw support and cooperation the performers. They are a current plague in politics, so reject them.

The problem is action. We reject the political regime ultimately. So it eventually gets tolled when no one is willing to defend it anymore. We're the USSR in the 1980s, but without the delusion their people had about the west being better. We're thoroughly cynical. And that makes all the difference. They perform because they know we're too cynical to embrace anyone intending to topple them: we don't defend them, but we don't take them down either.

Doomscape? Eras of cynicism also pass. But don't ask me how, thios cassanda has no clue on that!

 

[Angst]

Talk? In terms of talk it's easy. We see things for what they are, talk of things as they are, and reject going along with the performances. We withdraw support and cooperation the performers. They are a current plague in politics, so reject them.

The problem is action. We reject the political regime ultimately. So it eventually gets tolled when no one is willing to defend it anymore. We're the USSR in the 1980s, but without the delusion their people had about the west being better. We're thoroughly cynical. And that makes all the difference. They perform because they know we're too cynical to embrace anyone intending to topple them: we don't defend them, but we don't take them down either.

Doomscape? Eras of cynicism also pass. But don't ask me how, thios cassanda has no clue on that!

for this thread, i want to discuss the calls about hypocrisy within the system. if this is you expressing that you just blanket want capitalism gone, i understand, but it's not what i want to discuss.

Does she ask I go without meat, streaming, internet, electricity, or clothes? Or is growing food unimportant enough of a calling(or an evil enough one) that I literally rate less as a human existence than she?

Did she breed?

...am I being lectured by a toddler? Or not?

she does not ask you to do any of those things. she is value-liberal, which is kind of a right wing values position in denmark. she is not about blanket bans on anything, not even airplanes. the issue is that dirty consumption, as is, is actively chosen, subsidized, heavily invested in, and that's just bad policy.

she is very concerned with farming, of course, since farming as is is a dirty industry. it's a big issue in denmark in particular since our soil quality ain't great, but we're still mostly farmland. the material situation of industrial farming doesn't take away from the hard work farmers do, and doesn't remove the fact that farming is not just done by generally good people, but necessary work. we need to eat.

what she wants to do is to restructure conditions of production so that the farming that actually works, ie doesn't sink denmark into the god damn ocean, is the preferable model of agricultural industry. in addition, dirty pork farming in denmark is necromancy. it's active investment into a heavily indebted and unprofitable industry because of vested interests, not because it works. so it's keeping something artificially afloat that, on a broad scale - not the fault of the individual farmers - actually puts us underwater.

there's a difference in perspective here, a particular framing a lot of people (all over the aisles) have a hard time wrapping their head around. there's some inclination towards purism and boxing concepts into natural states, as if any of the conditions today are not structurally manufactured. let's say, well, electricity, from your list. we have a concept of electricity and a natural state of it and its conditions.

she wants to restructure the conditions for electricity. since the conditions of consumption changes, this means that some things will naturally change too. it's not the same as taking electricity away from you. especially because the current dirty industries and nature of electricity are vested, active choices, meaning the alternatives are artificially more expensive. some creature comforts may go, but that's the state of the matter when we've embraced things that simply don't work.

when you farm and hear these things, you know the practical situations of farming. you know what fodder costs, you know appx fuel costs for machines, you know about maintenance, you have a sense of the demand for your goods next spring. you see change coming from above that disrupt those models of production. many farmers then believe there's some inclinations against farming, fuel, and machinery. but green politicians don't want to abandon farming. they want to restructure the production lines so that you can afford & do what actually works, not what is artificially affordable.

none of what she wants to do doesn't take into account fuel costs, the market, or anything. infact, she's very much for getting expertize onboard that can research & direct about changes instead of doing blind policy.

if you have an issue with that, or think that is a toddler lecturing you... to put it metaphorically, i just want not to drink my water from lead pipes. doesn't mean i don't want to drink water. if you think this is a toddler position, i don't know what to tell you.

-

sidenote about toddlers, since you can't seem to unscrew this individualization of the structure from what's happening here. which is, again, the subject of the thread.

i have to say something that may sound a little bleak. so, i'm just a god damn writer. i'm used to being told by people that since what i do doesn't work - doesn't earn money - i shouldn't expect to have it work. i'm completely fine with that. i understand the material conditions of my work and adapt accordingly. maybe choose another profession. as i do this, there's this frankenstein of industry, something i grew up as a literal neighbour of, and its people are, well, toddlers about the fact that the thing they do, the thing that doesn't work, should earn them money. how dare the government stop keeping them artificially afloat.

but it's all individualization. because here's the kicker. i'm actually completely fine about that, too. in itself, there's nothing wrong with people producing things people want and the government prioritizing, at least i don't care. good for them. it's not their fault they were put into this situation, and i don't want to moralize about their demeanour - or jump into a longform OP text about someone being framed as morally inferior, and then immediately start throwing mud about the subject person acting like a baby. the latter, infact, is quite tone deaf, and missing the whole point.

what i'm not fine with is the fact that farming practices has the literal spot i'm sitting right now underwater in 200 years. it's insane.

so people tell me, maybe if you don't like your job, maybe get another job. "i want this candy!" "you can't afford it. maybe you should get a job." should i say this to farmers, since they can't unscrew their head from their frankenstein situation, or should i change the conditions for them, so that farming will be possible where they are? y'know, preventing submersion and stuff. i think that's pretty pro farming, even if it doesn't feel like that during necromancy.

who the toddler is is, to me, irrelevant. i want any toddler to have a future. i like to have toddlers not submerged.

 

[r16]

greta Thunberg is a thing in America , at a situation perhaps Europeans might not be fully advised of . The luxurious life she "lives" is really covered in many random places as a link that appears as advertisement as the perfect example of the hypocracy here . One perhaps could imagine she is covered in an even harsher light in the US domestic market . This ı say as a person who knows her "grooming up for global influence" was engineered with something else in mind , not just as a provocation against the Green Movement , because the Corporations have decided they can not stop the Global Warming , and they can get much higher profits if they "adapt" , instead of "resisting" it ...