Comment by ZeroGravitas
16 hours ago
What's the logic of dissing paper straws in a comment raging against war and AI as threats to the environment?
I see it a lot and assumed it was concern trolling from plastic manufacturers or libertarians funded by them but you seem genuine.
Have you just fallen for that concern trolling? Grown so cynical that nothing matters anymore? I don't understand the intention if you have a genuine desire to improve society.
What would we be doing differently in a world where we were still using plastic straws? Would that have freed up enough mental energy for a revolution? Would people be blowing up private jets while sipping their diet coke?
I think it's a reference to the frustrating pressure to make small personal sacrifices while those in charge burn down the world.
I don't mind paper straws (though I don't really use straws in general) but it is frustrating trying really hard to be sustainable and then hearing that Amazon is encouraging people to use as much computing power as possible.
Paper straws really, really suck for little kids though.
It is a distraction, the feel good for using paper straws instead of actions that actually make an impact, like improvements in the transport infrastructure, shutdown of factories that polluted the environment, flying people to meetings, limits of the kinds of engines that get produced, wars for profit, now AI data centers, and plenty of other examples that since covid the people big corps and governments could not care less.
Nah, one gets a cocktail with paper straw and feels like they are doing their part saving the planet.
Plastic straws aren't hard to find, by the way.
One of the three techniques discussed in the book "Rhetoric of reaction" is futility.
Reactionaries are often arguing against good things, which makes it difficult for them to directly attack them.
So they develop consistent techniques to attack them from oblique angles:
> Hirschman describes the reactionary theses thus:
> According to the Perversity Thesis, any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic status quo only serves, perversely, to exacerbate the very condition one wishes to remedy (compare: Unintended consequences).[4]
> The Futility Thesis holds that attempts at social transformation will be unavailing, that they will fail to "make a dent" in the problem, and the motives of those who keep attempting futile reforms are suspect.[5][6]
> The Jeopardy Thesis states that the risk of the proposed change is too great as it imperils some previous, precious accomplishment.[6][7]
> He characterizes these theses as "rhetorics of intransigence" that do not further constructive debate.[8] Moreover, he says they turn optimism about social advancement into pessimism.[9]
The futility (and perversity) ones are what I think of when people are angry about straws on the internet.
I just don't understand how complaining endlessly about leads to solving any of the bigger problems. Each of which could be dismissed in the same way.
Replacing plastic straws with paper straws is at best little more than greenwashing (and honestly, possibly even worse), since the environmental effects are so minimal. Contrast this with plastic versus paper bags, where plastic bags due to their extremely light weight have a much greater tendency to become windblown litter, so they do have a comparatively greater impact on the environment.
One of the real problems of greenwashing is that it's trying to sell an idea that with just a tiny, almost unnoticeable change to lifestyle, you can keep doing what you're doing and still have the peace of mind that you're not doing anything bad for the environment. Plastic recycling falls into this category--oh, just recycle this thing instead of throwing it away, that means there's no more guilt to be had over the environmental costs of plastic production (meanwhile ignoring the fact that plastic recycling is largely nonviable and so all of that goes straight to the waste stream anyways.)
The hope is that in the alternative world, instead of praising companies for taking what are ultimately only token steps towards environmental stewardship, we'd actually castigate them harder and get them to take real steps to improving the environmental aftereffects of their activities.