Guardian (but mostly Adrian Chiles)

I get what you’re saying, but as a small business owner, if someone asked me to stop my business, I would hardly feel compelled to do so. If my business employed hundreds of thousands, and the supply chain further hundreds of thousands (or millions), why would I want to “stop” my day-to-day business? It’s a lovely idea, but I don’t get how it would work in practice.

And yet by far the largest amount of plastic in the ocean is from the fishing industry rather than plastic bags so we’ve successfully effected incredibly minor change and made lots of people feel like they’re doing their bit

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nobody’s saying stop your business. People are saying stop parts of your business that cause horrendous degradation of the planet. Also, no business has a right to exist just because it already does so.

e: what @marckee said

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Legislative changes are made that require businesses to change their practices all the time, and yes, sometimes firms do go out of business as a result, so why draw the line here?

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or made people more conscious of decisions they make and the downstream impacts of those.

That is (or should be) the aim of these kinds of schemes. Step 1 of 100.

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This is the thing, as far as I can see - it’s not a case of finding The Thing That Fixes Everything. It’s a case of finding lots of things that fit together into a solution

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I’d unionise and push the union to care about the interests in the global south. Like, XR peeps should all teach themselves oil sciences and go work for some oil companies.

I find the plastic bag charge thing a bit depressing to be honest. I don’t know what the current figures are, but my own personal observations are that customers have now become accepting of loading up with new bags for life every trip and the supermarkets are presumably rubbing their hands with glee at this great new revenue stream. Quite rare for me to see someone reusing bags in my local supermarkets.

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Should this subthread get moved to the climate change thread, or does it belong here because the Grauniad are making it their current thing?

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Shit I thought this was the environment thread.

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yes it should be the aim.

it’s a fucking win win for supermarkets isn’t it. Funny how the big businesses always seem to find a way of benefitting from these changes

Step 2 is getting people in towns & cities to stop driving to work

Step 10 is a 95% marginal tax-rate on incomes above £150,000 pa

Step 50 is to shut down the main core of the reactor before it explodes.

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Step 1.5 is to stop building car-orientated housing developments.

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Yeah not saying it’s perfect by any means, it’s created a bit of a whack-a-mole situation, but it’s a good example of what needs to be done and probably a good lesson in how to properly implement these kinds of things.

Step 2 is making travelling to work in cities on public transport easier and cheaper than the car.

I know this might sound like the same thing but this is about changes to infrastructure rather then people. And that’s important.

edit: what marckee said

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You’re right, obvs, but it was an over-arching step. I’ve been getting involved with several non-car transport groups in the last few months, and it gives me some degree of hopefulness.

Getting TfGM services as a more connected, franchised setup soon* would be a good start.

*soon as in within 3 years

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I kind of realised that after I pressed reply.

and yet we continue to sit here, macrkeeing one another

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It is such a part of the Guardian now, that it may as well stay here. I guess the ‘climate’ discussions could carry on there and the ‘Guardian approach to the climate discussions’ could stay here?

So, as an example, could you require O&G to match-fund renewables (or require a % of profit to be invested in renewables), across the board, and globally (so they can’t just move their base of operations outside the reach of legislation - this latter bit being my point that surely companies will move to the easiest operating environment)? Certainly, I think most people probably take the alleged commitment to renewables by oil majors with a MASSIVE pinch of salt at present (probably rightly). You can’t legislate to stop an oil company drilling for oil, surely?