this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 96 points 1 year ago (7 children)

And just like that, conservatism was outlawed.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Cool beans!

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Start by taking away private jets and private flights from rich people. As all laws do, this one will also apply only to regular and poor people, not even big companies and certainly not for rich. Just look at what Musk is doing to nature reserve nears his launch pad. He was warned, didn't get launch permissions, doesn't have permission for letting untreated water into ground from cooling... and yet he does all that and no one bats and eye. Just look at the main page of Lemmy and you'll see news of some dude flying alone in 747 because he can. Royal family has been known to fly across the ocean to get lunch.

I meant you can live as carefully as possible, walk everywhere, never fly a plane and live only on solar for multiple lives and you couldn't offset what they fuck up in a day.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (4 children)

All the rich would be arrested

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

No, they'd be able to afford the best lawyers. It's the poor who would be punished the most. We already have fines for not recycling properly, even though the rubbish all gets mixed back together in Turkey or China and burned anyway. We have to use soggy paper straws with our drinks while the rich blanket the atmosphere in burned fuel from the private jets.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thats a true revolutionary cry. But since being "rich" is quite a relative term, you might wake up in the realization that most of the world considers you rich and your lifestyle complicit in the mass destruction of the global environment.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (5 children)

That's quite the stretch. Don't regulate the rich cause we might be caught up?

I don't take private flights from one side of a city to another. I don't own a yacht (or 6). I don't own a fleet of vehicles with a staff that drives them around. I don't throw away more food than most people eat. I don't horde dozens of acres of land that contain nothing but wasteful lawn.

There's a pretty stark contrast between the ultra wealthy, and the vast majority of people living in highly developed countries.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

This is a form of slippery slope fallacy. Rich in this context refers to portion of society contributing to pollution on a massively higher scale than even an upper middle class American. How many 'rich' Americans regularly fly private jets or take yachts? How many average joes own and operate a cruise line or a refinery?

I think with regards to poorer people in other countries, they'd be on the same page with 99.99% of Americans about who's considered so rich that they alone pose a threat to global health.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

No, we would just abolish corporations

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not like we punish war criminals that strictly either...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

L m a o

This. Everything looks so tasty on paper tho!

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I love the idea but wonder how it would be handled for things like oil spills in the international waters space. Those are more more often accidental versus the types of just bad practice things like forrest destruction or such. Take that along with the notion of it being in international space would make even deciding jurisdiction a mess.

[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are they truly accidental? Or are they because of cutting corners on maintenance etc and then “just happen”

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

And is it really cutting corners? Or is it saving your life and family while your job/government 'threatens' to cut you off money and food?

(Rhetorical/Sarcasm)

Climb the ladder, find the cause, and grab it by the neck.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago

I think those responsible should be fined the same as you or I would be for dumping used motor oil down a storm drain.

By the quart.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Jurisdiction would be based on nationality of the business, just like it is now for other crimes. You can't just commit a crime in international waters and go home scot-free.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Same way we would handle a vehicle accident that kills people, I assume.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

Looks like the non-profit founded by Higgins and Mehta is active in promoting this law on a worldwide scale, with ongoing legislative efforts in Spain, Finland, and Brazil. Here's their action page to get involved and offer support.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (5 children)

"On oil and gas companies who have spent decades burning fossil fuels - ramping up the world’s carbon emissions - Mehta said the law couldn’t go back in time and punish past activities."

Since we gave people the death penalty at the Nuremberg trials ex post facto, we can do the same with anthropogenic climate change. I would support such death penalties now already, tho I suspect more than a hundred million people would have to die directly from unambiguous climate change events within a short period like a week, before more people would agree. The problem is that the climate-change tipping-points will cascade, which means that the 1st one may cause other tipping points to be triggered, at which point billions of people will die unnecessarily in a Mad Max world.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think we need to address this not just at individuals or corporations, but at nation states in which those individuals reside and are licensed.
We need to kick them in the wallet. Allowing rampant pollution? Extra trade tariffs, and exclusion from various international groups/events. Complicit in rampant pollution? Punitive economic Sanctions, and loss of access to certain technologies, financial networks, etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Trade tariffs hurt both countries and now is not really the time to be shooting your economy in the foot.

Targeted sanctions would be referable but are a much more serious form of leverage and will damage credibility.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

It's self defense. We have to get things under control before greed kills us all

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Make it retroactive.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That'll be the same Scotland with a shitload of oil rigs off the coast, would it?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Are the rigs purely Scottish, idk how the UK works

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