Ah, I see, I definitely agree with everything you’re saying; I just got a bit confused. When you talked about “green option”, I was thinking something like fast fashion vs clothes that will last, for example.

I’m not completely sure of what point you’re making. Would you buy the cheaper product even if you could afford the more expensive green one?

Because if the answer is “no”, then you are still agreeing with OP; and if the answer is “yes” then you are saying you want to knowingly buy something that is harmful for the environment and encourage a company to make more of it, while deflecting responsibly and saying that corpos and govs are the ones who have to do something.

Alright, I’m only going to address your first paragraph because … THAT’S LITERALLY WHAT IS BEING DONE. Like, wtf are you talking about?

Any time a post or comment says something about personal responsibility, in comes some one getting mad and complaining, trying to shift all the blame away, just like in the comment I replied to.

Meanwhile, the opposite never happens. I’ve never seen some who talks about personal responsibility who doesn’t also agree that governments and corporations are responsible.

Me and OP were not the ones to go into posts criticizing the government and corporations, and get mad and act condescendinly while saying that that it’s all about personal responsibility and you shouldn’t blame corpos and govs. I talk plenty of shit about them, I bet so does OP; the difference is that we don’t pretend like personal choices by everyday people doesn’t play into it.

If I’m so close, then help me cross the gap. Just in your other comment you said you wished “we could have grown up discussions”, and now that you have an opportunity to have one and educate people you instead chose to go with a childish condescending jab with no substance or value behind it. Almost like everything you say is just virtue signaling BS fluff so you can throw blame at other people and avoid having to make changes in your life.

Apart from the fact that “taking action” is still not a concrete plan and your comment is still void of any real substance, are you planning on taking whatever “action” alone? Are you going to be a one-man army? Because otherwise you need to raise awareness and bring people to your side.

By “action” do you mean voting? Are you going to do it alone?

By “action” do you mean blowing up a pipeline? Are you going to do it alone?

Who is electing your government? Who is feeding the corporations by buying their products? If you think your three friends not caring, and my three friends not caring, and OP’s three friends not caring is all inconsequential and there’s no point in changing their minds, then how do you envision change happening? That is a geniune question; do you actually have a plan of action, or is it just “the corporations and governments are the ones who have to do something”?

Like the saying goes, “no individual drop of rain sees themselves as responsible for the flood”, or something along those lines.

Governments and large industrial and commercial organisations are overwhelmingly more responsible for climate change than individuals like you and me

Right, but those governments and commercial organizations are supported by individuals like you and me; they do not exist in a vacuum. It doesn’t take a long conversation with an average person to realize they do not want to make the necessary changes to their life (either directly, or indirectly through significant change in the system) to fix the problem.

If most people were actually in favour of strong action to make significant change, then most democratic governments would be more in favour of more significant action as well, because at the end of the day most of them just want to be elected. But even in countries with a parliamentary system and multiple parties, greens barely have any power, and people keep choosing governments that either do nothing, or just the bare minimum.

For a small example of what I mean, just look how many people go out of their way to show up on vegan/vegetarian threads to talk about how much they love meat and won’t stop eating it - despite the fact it’s one of the largest contributors to climate change. And this is on Lemmy too, which is a lot more left leaning than the average social media platform, and even more than the real world. Then add in how many people are pro-car, especially gas, or how many people are addicted consumerists and can’t stop buying things they don’t need in plastic packaging; and for some more sprinkles you can also add all the “environmentalists” who campaign in favour of shutting down nuclear plants despite the fact that a) it’s the second safest energy source b) even with nuclear, by 2026 fossil fuels will still be responsible for over 50% of energy production.

If anyone wants to be a grown up and have a grown up discussion, then they need to stop shifting blame around and acting like governments exist in a vacuum and corporations aren’t selling anything.

If Coke decided to stop producing plastic bottles then Pepsi would up their production and their profits would skyrocket; if a government had the balls to issue laws about plastic reduction that would stop them from producing them, they would almost certainly lose the next election and there might be protests and riots; but if people just stopped buying soft drinks in plastic bottles, Coke and Pepsi would both stop producing them regardless of what the government does.

I would like to add David Graeber to that, and Kropotkin even. I don’t mean to start a snowball effect that turns this into a huge list, but I feel like not enough people (especially the average person) know about them; especially Graeber who is a lot more modern.

They very clearly were wrong for painting technology as the problem. The problem is and was capitalism.

Yeah, the post is only true if we start implementing a bunch of copyright laws for the training and use of AI; ironically that is something most anti-AI people support.

It does bring up the topic of climate change several times, and yet’s still more than the protest that do happen, but you never hear about because they don’t inconvenience anyone. There have been plenty of instances of protests vandalizing rich people’s yachts, for example, but that doesn’t make the headlines and people don’t care, so no attention is raised and it’s ultimately meaningless.

I think it’s just part of how languages work and people communicate, at least for people learning a second language - but I even do it in my native tongue, so I think it’s general.

For example, if when you are learning English you hear a lot of people say “God dammit” when they are frustrated, then when you are frustrated you’ll probably also start saying the same without ever even thinking about God. It’s essentially just a series of sounds when you learned to make to express frustration.

“When nuclear fallout happens”

How would using nuclear as a source of energy (not weapons) result in a nuclear fallout, exactly? A nuclear fallout would result of nuclear superpowers (countries that possess nuclear warheads) initiating a nuclear war; meaning there would be nuclear warheads flying and detonating all over the world. There’s no reason a nuclear fallout would result from using fission as an energy source.

The materials you mention are classified as “low level waste”, and they are “materials which contain small amounts of mostly short-lived radioactivity”, and they actually make up 94% of waste in the Uk, but according to this article, it’s 95%.

96% of spent nuclear fuel is Uranium, which can be reused.

Waste storage so far was managed so corruptly and incompetently that it is already failing after 50 years

Purely anecdotal; here’s a different anecdote.

Here’s is also a National Geographic article about this topic, and here is another.

Here is also the mortality rate of different sources of energy in 2012, and here it is in 2022. You’ll notice that after heavy R&D in renewables, nuclear is still the second safest; with all top three being really close, but hydro being a far 4th.

Please stop with the fear based, anti-scientific, rhetoric. I shouldn’t feel like I’m arguing with climate deniers or pro oilers when talking with supposed environmentalists. Which reminds of the reason why this is so important: renewables alone still can’t meet the energy demand without the assistance of fossil fuels, and the energy requirements keep rising:

“Clean sources of generation are set to cover all of the world’s additional electricity demand over the next three years” - they are accounting for nuclear, but nevertheless: “Low-emissions sources are expected to account for almost half of the world’s electricity generation by 2026”.

Almost half, by 2026, accounting for nuclear. And we are still getting warmer.

It has already been solved, and a search should tell you all about it.

I’m still on mobile, so sharing links is still a pain, but a few key things:

Nuclear waste is produced quite slowly, so whatever cost you associate with storage is over a large period of time; we have the technology to build centrals that can use that waste to produce more energy, reducing waste even further.

No, you have one safer option (solar), and just barely. And again, that is after a decade of heavy investment and development. The data doesn’t lie. You can’t just just throw out science and data when it doesn’t serve you. Stop spreading BS. You are quite literally spreading misinformation.

Don’t know, you’d have to ask the experts; what I do know is that the data shows nuclear is safer than wind and much safer than hydro.

I’m on mobile right now so it’s convenient to find and post it, but if you want you can scroll my profile and you should some older comments with the data and sources.

Again, this is baseless, unscientific, fear mongering. Nuclear is the second safest energy source, not far from solar. And still far safer than for ex. hydro, which destroys environments, and in that case it’s not an “if”.

Honestly,I feel like I’m back in like 2005 arguing against pro-oil people; in this case it’s about renewables, but the arguments are still unscientific and usually based around “But tHe ecOnOMy”.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Edit: Here is the mortality rate of different sources of energy in 2012, and here it is in 2022.

Most of the benefits and drawbacks you mention only became a reality after a decade of heavy focus and investment on renewables, with no similar focus on nuclear. It could be argued that if the same investment and focused had been applied to it, then none of those arguments would be true. In fact, back then those were the same arguments used against renewables.

In other words, the arguments of “but money, and look at the economy” are absolute shit, and they are the reason we spent so long on oil. The facts it’s now used in favor of renewables and to shut down discussion of other alternatives is quite ironic.

Edit: To add, as I’ve mentioned somewhere else:

“Low-emissions sources are expected to account for almost half of the world’s electricity generation by 2026.”

That’s half, by 2026, and they are accounting for nuclear. That means the other 50% will still be fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the planet is getting warmer, some places are going underwater, and we are getting extreme weather events more and more frequently. “But-but, the economy!”

Because it’s still the second safest energy source, very close behind solar. And about 10 years ago, before heavy investment in renewables, it was the safest.

This is like being afraid of airplanes because things only have to go wrong once for hundreds to die.

Edit: Here is the mortality rate of different sources of energy in 2012, and here it is in 2022.