Tommy Siegel | Bluesky | website
Transcript
Comic in 4 Panels:
Header: It’s That Easy!
Panel 1: The year is 1994. A dad with short black hair, in a blue shirt, red shorts, and white sneakers with calf high white socks, kneels with one arm resting on a knee and the other raised demonstratingly in front of a kid in a green ball cap, yellow shirt, blue pants, and green sneakers. There is a round metal trash can behind them.
Dad: Pick up your litter and save the Earth!
Panel 2: The year is 2004. Same dad, but in brown cargo shorts, brown shoes, and ankle high white socks speaking to the same kid. There is a green recycle bucket behind them.
Dad: Recycle and you can save the Earth!
Panel 3: The year is 2014. Same dad, but wearing a bike helmet, black athletic pants, and black sneakers to the same kid. A bike is behind them.
Dad: Reduce your carbon footprint and you can save the Earth!
Panel 4: The year is 2024. Same dad, but he’s in the same outfit from panel 1. There is a massive fire behind them.
Dad: Completely restructure global economic systems and you may be able to save a remnant of humanity!
Yes and no.
With stricter ecological protections, corporations would be forced to decrease their carbon footprint. In their absence, the choice for the consumer is limited, and likely leaving you without a properly ecological option.
(Bad) Example: plastic straws. Before the ban, finding alternatives was difficult. Now suddenly it’s possible.
Same goes for computers with ecologically sourced rare metals. There is just no good option at the moment, and this will be the situation up until stronger regulations will come in effect.
We could ban single use plastic containers globally, we have alternatives that work quite well. Bamboo can replace all plastic utensils.
Hell most of the plastic alternatives if scaled would likely be a carbon sink. Grow plants to make packaging, as plants grow they absorb carbon, packaging is discarded, then sealed away in a land fill trapping the carbon.
It probably wouldn't be net 0 given the industry around production and transport, but still a lot better than what we're doing.
This is generally not how it works and/or a bad idea. Anaerobic bacteria tend to reduce carbon compounds to CH₄ (as opposed to CO₂ - makes sense). It is a lot worse as a greenhouse gas, and it will eventually bubble up and escape from the landfills, we can't realistically seal them in the same way as ancient peatlands did for our current oil and gas reserves.
A better way is to recycle that packaging into mulch/fertilizer of some kind so that this carbon is absorbed, directly or indirectly, by newly growing trees.
Companies will basically do the cheapest thing they can get away with, so it is again down to the ordinary people to make sure that the cheapest thing isn't harmful. Sure, criticise the companies for doing shitty things, but that alone won't achieve anything, and nor will trying to shift the blame "back" to them.