crazy I’m up 15% this year on my portfolio heavily un-diversified in oil and uk banks
I decided to diversify my oil and gas portfolio and invest in an electric car maker. Tesla. Dooohhh 🙁
Dazh and I aligned
Blimey
We need to step away from measuring everything by profit and gdp
Continued growth isn't a sustainable option
Wake the f*** up.
An ironic comment considering my argument is to tell you to do something about it, and your argument is that you can't help yourself but buy shiny things and fossil fuels.
The biggest components of individuals carbon footprints aren't their 1/70millionth share of what for want of a batter term I'll call 'baseline industrial rate' over which they have limited control*. It's their household heating, their car's fuel, their diet and their holidays.
*n.b. there's actually a massive project around Teesside of which BP are a major stakeholder to replace the industrial fuel gas used over Wilton, Seal Sands, Billingham, the former steelworks/new freeport industrial area etc with 'blue' hydrogen. I'm not entirely convinced by the environmental case, but actual progress still beats hypothetical perfection.
These discussions are quite interesting as they always seem to evolve into a bit of a defence of free-market capitalism rather than an examination of the social and environmental impacts of that drive to monetise everything and constantly increase growth at all costs.
The staunchest defenders immediately reach for the "You're all part of the problem!" argument pointing to pension funds and widespread car or central heating ownership, but We all know that's a bad faith argument meant to divert attention. I'll happily take a Tesla, some solar panels and a ground-sourced heat pump if the billionaires are offering to fund these things, but they're not and a good chunk of our own financial resources are earmarked to go to them anyway via energy expenditure and other fixed costs we're pretty much powerless to change at present.
I still think this is all a wealth gap/greed issue. We really shouldn't have a "Top 1%". Huge near imaginary sums of money that nobody could ever actually spend, tied up under the control of a tiny proportion of the global population. Where capitalism inevitably keeps falling down is fair redistribution.
I know we can't actually levy a windfall on overseas profits BP have made which still probably contribute to the chain of costs us plebs are dealing with ourselves, but I can see why people want to, it seems a lot like the bastards are robbing us, telling us it's all our own fault at the same time and pointing out that we can't just change a flawed system because of an incrementally different concept of "Fairness".
This current cost of living crisis illustrates it, we need to keep pointing to the (shameful) existence of food banks, now the forced installation of pre-pay meters, spiralling housing and food costs, inflation on top of interest rate rises and public sector pay not keeping pace (not all of the private sector is managing either), there's only so much you can squeeze out of people before they start noticing the small number of people who aren't suffering as much.
The numbers of people on pretty reasonable incomes coming under increased financial pressure despite playing their part in a "Functioning capitalist economy" just highlights the lie of work equating to reward. Capital or rather the ability to invest it is what brings rewards the rest of us are just revenue generating units for that 1%... That has to change IMO.