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If we HAD trains and public transit, I would LOVE to take them!

This reply misunderstands the fundamentals of market economics. If we, the consumers, start making the global climate more of a factor in our purchasing decisions, that will directly affect what gets produced in a capitalist system. Not trying to absolve these corporations of responsibility for the problems they’ve caused, just saying that if enough people start taking the bus/train instead of driving or substituting meats for plant based foods, we can have a significant impact. Of course the best thing we can do is vote to get ignorant climate science deniers out of office.

IIRC the study that the "X% of companies are responsible for X% emissions" is somewhat misleading. For example they use the combined output of everyone's car exhaust and attribute that to the major oil companies since they provide the gas. Not saying that large corporations and the wealthy in general contributing to climate change exponentially more than the average person, but its misleading to say that as an individual it doesn't matter if we try to use less energy.

They’re not just wrecking the environment for no reason, they make products people consume

Ok CNN. I'll follow your lead and start using public transportation.

That just involves me leaving my house at 4am and driving 9 minutes to the local bus stop, then take a bus ride for 37 min, transfer from there to another bus for another 19 min ride, transfer to another bus and ride for an hour, then either call an Uber for a 3 min ride or I can walk for 30 minutes to reach my workplace.

Or... I can just drive and reach my workplace in 40min.

I would love to use public transportation, and when I lived in Japan that's all I ever used, which I much preferred to a car.

America first needs to get serious about establishing actual reliable and accessible transportation in order for more people to use it.

Swap your car or plane ride for a bus or train

Kinda hard to do when there's nowhere near enough investment in public transit

This is such a fucking stupid argument to make.

The reason airlines make x% of CO2 emissions is because people want to fly, they're an airline, and there is no emissions free way to power a plane.

The reason the plastic company makes x billions of plastic sporks every year is because I want a spoon to eat my Taco Bell Nachos in my car. They're not making all the plastic pollution because they just hate the Earth.

They're not cartoon villains like in Captain Planet that pollute just to make pollution.

Corporations create the heat and cooling, build the cars and airplanes, and raise the meat for... wait for it... consumers. These things go hand in hand. Asking people to make changes to their lifestyles that will help the environment IS demanding the corporations to stop producing so much pollution. No one wants to take the blame.

When the world is on fire, no one will care, but the idea that corporations are somehow a separate entity from the consumers/individuals that line their pockets with profits is equally irresponsible. It does come down to daily choice, because the corporations follow demand. But no one wants to suffer the inconvenience of changing their lifestyle, so we blame the corporations that we then buy gas, electricity, meat, and cars from. It's blindingly dumb from either direction.

Spiderman points at Spiderman.

Note that the IPCC acknowledges that no one is paying the true cost of energy or food. You could decapitate all corporate executives, and, if we truly wanted to pay the environmental costs of heating, cooling, and food, all prices would go up. If you think things are hard now, give it a decade. Prices for everyone for everything will go up. You could kill all the rich people on the planet, and it wouldn't change that fact, and it wouldn't suddenly make the environment sound. It truly does come down to fundamental lifestyle changes that none of us want to enact.

You cannot eat money.

The 100 corporations include oil companies you rely on to put gas in your car, so it's not like they are the one polluting directly.

That statistic is flawed it counts downstream combustion of coal oil and gas for energy purposes (this is 90% of the total company emissions in the metric) which means you can buy a fossil fuel car fill it with petrol and burn it and that will be counted as corporate emissions

And my favorite tidbit not included here is how much pollution the US military causes. We know it's off the charts BUT they're allowed to operate with zero oversight and accountability regarding the bugfuck amount of pollution and wrecked ecosystems that military exercises have caused. We don't even know for sure how bad they are but you just look at how much fuel an single idling M1 tank uses and it's insane

A tank will need approximately 300 gallons every eight hours; this will vary depending on mission, terrain, and weather. A single tank takes 10 minutes to refuel. Refueling and rearming of a tank platoon--four tanks--is approximately 30 minutes under ideal conditions. 0.6 miles per gallon.

It's pretty accepted that the US military is the worst polluter on earth, but this never gets brought up

It's so strange to see all the comments here defending CNN of all things.

Imagine a game where you can buy sustainable, ethically sourced resources for $5 and unethically sourced resources for $3. The manual tells you it's nice of you to buy ethically sourced but there's no governmentally enforced consequences. Which ones are you going to buy as a consumer?

Now worse, which ones are you going to buy as a downstream corp CEO? Your shareholders demand maximum profit and you are required to give them maximum profit. Justifying that you're "doing your part" for the environment gets you thrown out as CEO.

At the end of this game, it's cheaper, and necessary, to buy the shit that kills us all.

People unironically saying we're all to blame. No shit, the system is designed so we are all complicit. It takes authoritative intervention to prevent corps from using and selling unethical and unsustainable products. You could also tax it for things like carbon emissions

Every time you suggest to meat eaters to eat less meat, they become violent.

Even if you suggest them cutting their 14 meat meals per week down to maybe 12 meat meals (skip one day), they flip their shit.

So ya, good luck suggesting to anyone to eat 30% less.

Do all that and a single cruise ship will undo it in about 3 second

Swap your car or plane ride for a bus or train

Ok one sec lemme just book a train across the Atlantic ocean rq...

That and all the rich that take a private jet instead of walking for 15 minutes

Also disgusting that people think that paying for an innocent animal to die is somehow capitalisms fault

"Methane leaks from Turkmenistan’s two main fossil fuel fields caused more global heating in 2022 than the entire carbon emissions of the UK, satellite data has revealed"

71% of corporations is the new climate denial were at the bargaining stage now: "well the drastic sacrifice were going to have to make doesnt matter because corporations need to do something before I even attempt to start living in line with earths resources"

What an absolutely tonedeaf argument from CNN.

It's both really.

Finger pointing at corporations while doing nothing may not be as bad as corps finger pointing at us while doing nothing. But it's still bad.

Everyone needs to make an effort on this.

Hoping corporations will somehow grow a conscience isn't accomplishing anything.

Imagine if nearly everyone was using public transit instead of voting out politicians because gas prices got a little too high. That might make the corps think there was more money in green energy than drilling up more oil.

Corporations are not going to fix the problem out of the goodness of their hearts no matter how much people whine about it. It's only going to happen when voters (and consumers) demand it.

We SHOULD be telling people to use planes less though.

Those things still help though, and we have no control over what big ass corporations do