r/Glasgow Tools

It was an example, no other political parties are suggesting the kind of widespread change that is necessary. I don't think the greens are a pantheon on the issues but certainly the conservatives are having a completely opposite effect. What I'm saying is, unless you make these things illegal people and create affordable choices people who don't have much money will still make decisions for their wallet and not the environment and for parties that won't cost them more money. What we need is a greater number of parties actually committed to widespread change on these issues who aren't pandering to companies. What good is it if we all quit meat if the rest of the world is still polluting away?

As someone who doesn't eat meat, and tries to be as ethical as possible, quinoa is now unsustainable for the communities that relied on it and palm oil is in like every single dairy alternative to butter. Even if we are both super ethical what about the large amount of people who don't care? No amount of education is gonna stop the junkie tossing their rubbish into the clyde because they purposefully do not engage with these kinds of campaigns. I mean there is a comment in this thread even where some guy is taking the piss out of people who want to learn.

I'm not saying all working class people won't either. But if we are talking about consumer choices they are the least likely to be able to afford the kind of individual responsibility that people ask for. We cant completely change the manufacturing industry as it goes beyond our borders. Cheap things that are bad from the environment will still end up on our shelves. You can't expect people struggling to feed their kids to spend more money on something that is meat-free for the environment. It's not realistic, instead of more choice we need to put an end to the worst choices.

Someone in my building throws all the recycling bags I put on top of the overflowing recycling bin in the actual bin. I mean I can do my best but I think you're underestimating the sheer amount of people who are ambivalent, surely a large number of the comments on this thread make that point.

I have a book on my shelf at home that I'll look out and I'll provide a reference for global climate experts themselves who have said that individual consumer choices don't do much difference while China, Brazil etc continue to do much more significant harm to the environment. They said we needed significant change and decisions well before now to stop a climate catastrophe, as far as I can see just hoping education is gonna solve it is a little bit late. All of these things take significant time that we don't really have.