or I think the desire to earn personal assets of that level should really be classified as a mental disease, like gambling addiction. And be treated accordingly
If you wanna get technically, according to Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene (1976) which first coined the term "meme", a meme is "a unit of culture—such as “tunes, ideas, catch‐phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or building arches.”
So yes, your post would count as a meme, but so would pegging
the vast majority of pollution is created by the richest people in the world.
99% of the planet could produce zero pollution for the rest of our lives and it wouldn't even make a dent in the amount of pollution created by the billionaire class.
This is just not true, unless you're counting manufacturing as part of the pollution from the billionaires. We consume the products produced in those factories, so we're not free from that blame.
That's true, manufacturing is a huge part. I just wish there were more regulations and enforcement of those. Maybe even some standardized labels on products for certified carbon neutral manufacturers. Otherwise it's next to impossible for most people to avoid certain products.
Take a look at the Cargill family, 14 billionaires. From the wiki about the current CEO:
In 2019, former U.S. Congressman Henry A. Waxman, in a report by Mighty Earth, called Cargill "the worst company in the world" and noted that it drives "the most important problems facing our world" (deforestation, pollution, climate change, exploitation) "at a scale that dwarfs their closest competitors."
Do you think that is because they use every cent to burn coal and oil in their backyard, or
do you think it is because they produce and sell products to consumers which can not be produced without harm to the environment?
99% of the planet could produce zero pollution for the rest of our lives and it wouldn’t even make a dent in the amount of pollution created by the billionaire class.
How do you think they would create that damage to the environment if nobody would buy their products?
They would sell $165 billion worth of meat, 22% of all meat products consumed in the US to a handful of billionaires and the US government? Ignoring the international business.
How can you possibly think the US military, or any sovereign country, will magically spend an extra $165B a year on meat a year if all of the current consumers magically go vegetarian? Who exactly is going to eat a bunch of extra meat? There will just be fewer meat sales, period, ignoring a short term price drop if everyone magically goes vegetarian on the same day.
You think that after 99% of the US population decided to stop supporting climate change by not buying meat from billionaires, those 99% would still allow them to continue? Not for their own taste and convenience but for some billionaires profits?
The general public has sadly been guilted into the idea that dealing with the vast majority of pollution is their problem. Don't get me wrong, there is some personal responsibility, but much of it is out of our hands.
Systemic issues require systemic solutions, not individual efforts. The current state of our society is a clear manifestation of this principle. It's time to address the root cause which is capitalism.
Capitalism is too broad of a term to make any type of useful argument. Democratic socialism is still a capitalist way of doing things when it's miles apart from corporatism. Both still fall under Capitalism umbrella, however one is definitely worse than the other.
Ultimately, commerce will never cease, resources will always cost, etc. Just update your terminology and you'll find much more reception to your point.
It's not too broad a term at all. Capitalism is an economic system where the capital owning class holds power in society. Whatever flavor you have leads you down the same path in the end. Ultimately, commerce should not be equated with capitalism. Just try thinking more broadly instead of trying to carry water for a deplorable system that's killing us all.
I mean, there are good uses as well. Just as an example:
Providing helpful information: People are looking for information to reduce their environmental footprint. Fuel-efficient routing in Google Maps uses AI to suggest routes that have fewer hills, less traffic, and constant speeds with the same or similar ETA. Since launching in October 2021, fuel-efficient routing is estimated to have helped prevent more than 2.4 million metric tons of CO2e emissions — the equivalent of taking approximately 500,000 fuel-based cars off the road for a year.
Predicting climate-related events: Floods are the most common natural disaster, causing thousands of fatalities and disrupting the lives of millions every year. Since 2018, Google Research has been working on our flood forecasting initiative, which uses advanced AI and geospatial analysis to provide real-time flooding information so communities and individuals can prepare for and respond to riverine floods. Our Flood Hub platform is available to more than 80 countries, providing forecasts up to seven days in advance for 460 million people.
Optimizing climate action: Contrails — the thin, white lines you sometimes see behind airplanes — have a surprisingly large impact on our climate. The 2022 IPCC report noted that contrail clouds account for roughly 35% of aviation's global warming impact — which is over half the impact of the world’s jet fuel. Google Research teamed up with American Airlines and Breakthrough Energy to bring together huge amounts of data — like satellite imagery, weather and flight path data — and used AI to develop contrail forecast maps to test if pilots can choose routes that avoid creating contrails. After these test flights, we found that the pilots reduced contrails by 54%.
Even something like household phantom power currently uses more energy than AI at data centers.
I'm all for putting pressure on corporate climate impact and finally putting to rest the propaganda of personal responsibility dreamt up by lobbyists, but I don't know that 'AI' is the right Boogeyman here.
I agree with your overall sentiment, but I personally find googles fuel savings optimistic and/or flat out misleading. "Hey, you could turn off your usual route here and get there in a similar time.... Or you could stay on your usual route and save 2% on gas" seems to be a very frequent occurrence for me.
I also don't think that needs AI. The pathfinding algorithm just needs to apply different weights to the choices based on things like changes in elevation, number of stop signs, total distance, etc. Navigation systems from yester-year could do this well before the prevalence of AI. That said, AI can be used to develop and/or tune these algorithms instead of having a dedicated team of humans focused on this specific area.
If the conditions are suitable, emissions of soot and water vapour can trigger the formation of contrails (Kärcher 2018), which can spread to form extensive contrail-cirrus cloud coverage. Such cloud coverage is estimated to have a combined ERF that is about 57% of the current net ERF of global aviation (Lee et al. 2021), although a comparison of cirrus cloud observations under pre- and post-COVID-19 pandemic conditions suggest that this forcing could be smaller (Digby et al. 2021). Additional effects from aviation from aerosol-cloud interactions on high-level ice clouds through soot (Chen and Gettelman 2013; Zhou and Penner 2014; Penner et al. 2018), and lower-level warm clouds through sulphur (Righi et al. 2013; Kapadia et al. 2016) are highly uncertain, with no best estimates available (Lee et al. 2021).
The 2 papers listed which quantify the effect:
Lee, D.S. et al., 2021: The contribution of global aviation to anthropogenic climate forcing for 2000 to 2018. Atmos. Environ. , 244, doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2020.117834. Link to paper
Digby, R.A.R., N.P. Gillett, A.H. Monahan, and J.N.S. Cole, 2021: An Observational Constraint on Aviation-Induced Cirrus From the COVID-19-Induced Flight Disruption. Geophys. Res. Lett. , 48(20) , e2021GL095882-e2021GL095882, doi:10.1029/2021GL095882. Link to paper
With a cheap crappy product and a high ratio spent on marketing you can successfully sell absolute garbage to a large number of people and still turn a calculated profit. That shouldn't be possible. Taxation on advertising should be high enough to crush businesses that are almost exclusively marketing machines (I'm looking at you sugar drink industry).
