Can we talk about how it is not my responsibility to fix the problems major corporations created by being greedy?
I get it I should do my small insignificant part to help reduce, reuse, and recycle. That being said I am tired of being preached to and talked down to by politicians and corporations about how I need to do my part. I do a lot of stuff to help the environment. My partner is the spearhead of this initiative and it has caused full on arguments because I sometimes think her measures are extreme and she is allowing the capitalist’s make her feel guilty about enjoying some things.
Here’s the thing, I pay to use solar and wind power through the power company. I could save money by just not doing that but I spend the little extra to be environmentally conscious. I recycle every damn thing on the planet that has that little recycle symbol on it. I even hold onto toothpaste tubes and toothbrushes to send off to recycle. We reuse almost every plastic bag that comes into our house, sometimes multiple times. I have an electric car and a hybrid car and I barely drive the hybrid. I don’t hardly ever water my lawn and my partner insists that we only have to flush when we do number 2. Yet every day they are looking for more ways we can “save the environment”.
I don’t have the heart to tell her that capitalism is the reason she feels this guilt about destroying the earth. We are not responsible for the death of our planet, unless you are running a multi-national corporation that has been slowly polluting the planet for the last 50+ years then you are responsible for it. I do my part and I would like corporations to be held more accountable for their place in this disaster.
Now all that being said I have a confession to make, I don’t care. Now I know that if we want humans to survive for a long time we should care and I would love for my children and their potential children and so on and so forth to have happy healthy lives on this planet. That being said the planet will survive. Humans won’t, but the planet will. Unless we blow it to pieces there will be some form of life that survives under the soil, or in the depths of the ocean, that will evolve and change and fill the void we left. Part of me would love to see what that is in a few million years.
So I think corporations should be forced to operate in a way that slows down climate change. I also think this is a net benefit for them as well. If all humans die they will not be able to make money. If all humans live and can breath and walk around in parks and stuff they will be able to sell stuff to make money. It is the biggest flaw of capitalism that they don’t look more then a year into the future when making plans. It is all about profits and how next quarter can be the last.
I will digress for a second here so bare with me. I used to work in a kids clothing retailer in the mall where I live. We had goals and we were always trying to beat the last years numbers, more customers and more money every single day. I was discussing it with my manager and mentioned that there is a point in which the population of any given area reaches critical mass, so to say. As in there are only so many places and people in a given area that will have kids that need clothes. So why is our goal to always be better than the year before? We also have the slight disadvantage of only selling to children, who grow up, and grow out, of the clothing we sell. So what happens if instead of hitting a critical mass of children we hit a critical low of children?
I don’t expect the population to grow exponentially or to plummet any time soon I was just pointing out the flaw in the goal. A goal should be constantly obtainable. So we could raise prices and make more money but then how do you get more people? We could make the store bigger with more options and lower prices but then how do we make more money? The point is that the goals of corporations and capitalism in general is to always be selling and always be making more money for the rich fat cats around the big table. So the idea of sustainability is never something they actually think of. A company has to make more money so those rich fat cats can buy more boats or Botox or something. So to be sustainable and just make the same as last year is abhorrent to them.
This is like military spending. Every year the American government increases the amount of money spent on the military. Currently the United States spends $800 BILLION more than the next biggest military spender1. This is do to yearly increases of roughly 3-6% depending on the year. We spend and spend on stuff like planes that never go anywhere, tanks that no one knows how to drive, and ridiculous ad campaigns to get people to enlist.
While I have veered off topic here I am trying to point out that some of that billions of dollars could be spent on creating commercial composting programs across the country. In fact some estimates say that with all costs added up one year of a commercial composting facility would be less than a million dollars2, that’s million, so only 0.1% of the military budget for one year. So by reducing the military budget by $100 million dollars (or only 0.011%) we could build 100 commercial composting facilities across the country. That’s 2 in every state. So why not up it by another 100 million? no we get 4 in every state and the military budget has only been reduced by 0.022%. Do you know what that looks like if you write the whole number out?
The current military budget written out is: $876,940,000,000
Reducing it by 0.022% written out budget is: $876,740,000,000
Do you realize that number is so big you can’t actually visualize that money. It is just too large for our brains to actually understand.
I have gone way off topic now. Suffice it to say I do my part and I would like it if the rest of the world helped a little bit as well. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
The Fresh Persepctive 