the "quality of life" question is rather meaningless, animals that exist in the food supply chain were literally born so they could be turned into food.
And if someone bred humans to be slaves, these would be meant to be slaves, so it would actually be moral to keep them as slaves.
Solid logic. Abolishion was a mistake, guys!
There's always a supplier and a consumer. The pollution of these 100 corporations is caused on behalf of their customers who fund them in exchange for fossil fuels, directly or indirectly. They are both responsible, it's 2 sides of the same coin.
Of course, much of this pollution isn't really avoidable at this point. We can't have 100% renewable power and electric cars tomorrow. Some really polluting industries will take decades to decarbonize, like steel and cement production. But this makes it even more urgent to adress the low hanging fruit asap, i.e. big sources of pollution that can easily be cut. Private jets are a prime example.
You could say just a few private jet flights or chopping down one single forest won't make a dent in global carbon emissions, but that doesn't mean that thousands around the world can keep on doing it indefinitely without consequences for all of us. Especially if they are idols for millions of people, normalizing harm to society that we can't afford.
A land rover isn't nearly as polluting and doesn't drive nearly as far. More importantly, the heart surgeon isn't a role model in terms of lifestyle aspirations for literally hundreds of millions of followers.
People shouldn't be judged on a single data point.
It's not like we're talking about stealing some sweets from children or something. Climate change just gets worse and worse and worse until we reach net zero co2 emissions. As long as it's culturally accepted to cause massive amounts of completely unnecessary emissions, we don't have the slightest chance of fixing this.
The only way a decent person could be doing this is if they were completely uneducated about climate change and their impact as a role model.
Admittedly I don't know much about her as a person, but how can someone who uses a private jet in 2024 be considered a decent person by any stretch?
Having such a ludicrously unsustainable lifestyle in a climate emergency that will kill millions and displace hundreds of millions in just a few decades is a crime against humanity, change my mind.
in order to learn a language we have to buy a book and read it, so we did pay someone for our knowledge we then sell.
What if an artist got inspiration from a Google image search, without paying the creators for that? I think that's fine, and I don't see why it's suddenly wrong when a machine learning algorithm does it.
Much worse for who?
My point is: if police were completely abolished, conservatives and the far right would feel very unsafe and immediately form militias that enforce their values. That would be much worse for everyone who doesn't share their values, of course.
I get that in many countries, police is badly regulated and you might say that this wouldn't actually change much, but I'd rather seek more accountability for police, compared to a complete abolishion, leaving a power vaccum that'll be filled by right wing militias with zero accountability.
Divesting seems good to me though, much of the police is certainly overfunded (due to law and order populism) and does useless shit (like the war on drugs), while education, social workers and programs against poverty are severely underfunded. Changing this would surely help a lot with crime reduction and other issues.
Thanks for the links by the way, I will look more into them when I have more time to see if my concerns regarding abolishion are addressed.
So what's the alternative to police? Just getting rid of them would just lead to militias taking their place which would be much worse.
We could tax greenhouse gas emissions to internalize the environmental cost.
If the beef burger would cost 2x more than the plant-based burger (which basically tastes the same but has 90% fewer emissions), most people would choose the plant-based one. That would massively reduce food related ghg emissions, and also create a huge incentive to develop better alternatives/lab meat.
There's no way they would do that since climate change is a "tradegy of the commons" problem.
The tragedy of the commons is a metaphoric label for a concept that is widely discussed in economics, ecology and other sciences. According to the concept, should a number of people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource such as a pasture, they will tend to over-use it, and may end up destroying its value altogether. To exercise voluntary restraint is not a rational choice for individuals – if they did, the other users would merely supplant them – yet the predictable result is a tragedy for all.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Currently, every country seeks to maximize the emissions that they are still allowed to have without being penalized (internationally, and by their own population).
So 0°F was defined as the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride (why in the world?). Originally, 90°F was set as human body temperature, which was later changed first to 96°F, and now it's about 98.6°F.
Celsius is just: 0°C is the freezing temperature of water 100°C is the boiling temperature of water
Nobody uses a scale between -18 and 38. People in countries using Celsius just learned as a child that body temperature is 38°C, that's all. -18°C has no special meaning to us.
At 0°C outside it's freezing (32°F). 10°C is quite cool (50°F), you'll need a jacket. 20°C is a comfortable temperature for me, if it's sunny (68°F). 30°C is getting rather warm (86°F). 40°C is hell outside, or a bad fever (104°F). To boil water, heat it to 100°C (212°F).
I get that this seems confusing at first when you're used to completely different orientation points, but for people who are used to C, it's very intuitive.
The good ones tend to do something in-between, with a market based economy, but good regulations, solid welfare, and democracy. Scandinavian countries have the happiest populations in the world, maybe we should try to learn from them.
Unfortunately corporations get more power over time instead of less. They have an ever growing pile of money to buy media and politicians to push their interests, that's probably the greatest challenge of democracy.
Weird that this takes so long, with an ongoing war right here in Europe...