Environmental advocates understand the announcement as a reversal, calling it “absolutely devastating.”

Environmental advocates understand the announcement as a reversal, calling it “absolutely devastating.”

The Biden administration has backtracked from supporting a cap on plastic production as part of the United Nations’ global plastics treaty.

This represents a reversal of what the same groups were told at a similar briefing held in August, when Biden administration representatives raised hopes that the U.S. would join countries like Norway, Peru, and the United Kingdom in supporting limits on plastic production.

Nearly 70 countries, along with scientists and environmental groups, support the latter. They say it’s futile to mop up plastic litter while more and more of it keeps getting made.

  • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
    334·
    8 months ago

    I noticed something weird about the comments here.

    20 minutes after the post, treefrog posted his comment defining a “Fuck the Democrats … I’m done voting for them” narrative. I’ve noticed that a lot of topics on Lemmy get tied back to not voting for the Democrats.

    There then followed about an hour of, basically, silence, with that “Fuck the Democrats” comment as the top comment. Then I posted my response, disagreeing with treefrog.

    After that, the next hour or so featured, not 0 comments like the previous hour, but 4 different comments. The only comments that got made, outside of my discussion with treefrog, were:

    • A top-level comment saying “Fuck the Biden administration” which took over the comment top spot
    • Other replies to treefrog’s top level comment, pushing my response down

    The total result is that the top two comments say “Fuck the Biden administration” and “Fuck the Democrats”, and then there’s general less focused conversation after that. The narrative is back, in these comments, that the right response to this is not to vote for the Democrats.

    Maybe this sounds like conspiracy theory rock, but I’ve noticed this pattern before, where there’s a “fuck the Democrats” narrative in the top comments, with the comments otherwise being quiet, and if something changes that narrative among the top comments, there’s a little flurry of activity until the narrative is reestablished, and then things quiet down again.

    Maybe I’m nuts. It definitely was notable to me, though. Especially given the weirdness of reacting to this particular story by instantly reaching for “Let’s not vote for Democrats anymore!” as the solution to environmental problems. Like… out of all the strategies or reactions you could have, that’s the first one that comes to mind?

    Edit: Clarifications

    Edit 2: The person who reported this for “incivility”… lol.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
        91·
        8 months ago

        It’s so weird. It’s like a mad libs that only comes up with one answer.

        “US Government fucked something up again because of course they did.”

        “Let’s n͟o͟t͟ ͟v͟o͟t͟e͟ ͟f͟o͟r͟ ͟D͟e͟m͟o͟c͟r͟a͟t͟s͟!”

        Like yeah, Biden did some unexpectedly good stuff on the climate, and some standard Democrat stuff which definitely isn’t great. This is part of the latter. I’m not even sure it matters, since Trump will be in charge of implementing this treaty so it was DOA anyway, but regardless of that: Did you guys forget the real life Nazis are going to be in charge in a couple of months? It’s going to take a ton of work to even have elections in four years that we can not-vote-for-Democrats in, let alone some good progressive change to keep pushing the Democrats towards something resembling a decent environmental policy. Just not voting, and then sitting back all satisifed like “that oughta do it,” is such a mind-boggling strategy… and yet it’s the one that always gets consistent airplay.

    • Vivian (they/them)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      61·
      8 months ago

      Maybe it’s just a popular opinion on here, so when people click on the thread and see their opinions being mentioned they don’t add more comments saying the same stuff as there’s no point.

      But then when they see someone else say something that differs from their own opinions, it’s not unlikely that people tend to reply more to try and express themselves if they feel their opinions are no longer in the majority.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
        31·
        8 months ago

        Yeah, could be. The other thing I thought of was maybe there’s something about sorting by “Active” that means that my comment pushes it up into being seen by more people, and that’s why there are more comments when that happens.

        It’s just odd, though. The flurry of responses that come in-between a stable “fuck the Democrats” narrative at the top of the comments, and another “fuck the Democrats” narrative at the top of the comments, aren’t really any kind of disagreement with me. It’s just other top-level comments and random conversation. I would have to be able to show a little snapshot of how the comments looked at different points in time to really put across what it is about it that makes it seem really weird to me, honestly.

    • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
      21·
      8 months ago

      a large contingent of americans looove blaming the left for everything up to and including the actions of the right. It means they don’t have to do any introspection

  • nothingcorporate@lemmy.today
    11·
    8 months ago

    The US never did; we’ve just reached the phase where villains don’t feel like they need to hide their atrocities any more.

    • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
      6·
      8 months ago

      Honestly, why the fuck did anyone ever expect any US administration to actually take meaningful action.

      They’re bought and fucking sold, the entire country

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
      267·
      8 months ago

      “My babysitter has clearly been drinking. That’s not ideal. I think I’ll let this serial killer watch the kids for a while, instead.”

        • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
          79·
          8 months ago

          Advocate for environmental groups? Give grief to the Democratic party, try to extract concessions from them, since they can at least be bargained with on environmental issues, where the Republicans literally want to have the environmental groups shot by the National Guard? Support particular independent candidates, inside or outside the Democratic party? Advocate for voting reform that gives third parties a realistic chance, to put pressure on the Democrats?

          Nope. It’s just “Let’s do the Republicans.” In the current system, that’s what will happen if you don’t vote for Democrats. Changing that system sounds great, but disengaging entirely isn’t the way to do that.

          At a broad foundational level, the American system is based on this: Concentrations of money and power will always attract corruption and tyranny. Always. It’s just how government works. The Democrats are like that, the Republicans are like that. The Green Party is too. They pretty much instantly folded to malign influence, before they even really got started, and now they’re a tragic explicit spoiler candidate puppet that isn’t even making a convincing pretense of environmental progress as the goal. Even if your goal could succeed completely, and starving the Democrats could make them wither and get replaced by one-party Republican rule, and then something better arose in their place, without the generation-spanning catastrophe that would be that one-party Republican rule… whatever replaced them, would still be open to corruption.

          There is a way to make progress. You have to fight for what you actually want. It’s not easy. But the strategy of simply refusing to engage with the power-brokerage system, because the people currently in charge of it are bad people, brings broad smiles to the faces of all those corrupt Democrats who are annoyed they had to pass a little bit of climate change legislation and corporate tax increases under Biden. They love hearing that you’re getting out of caring about politics. It means they can start to cater more to their core constituency. And they’ll be fine, whether the Democratic Party does an inch to benefit the working class or not, or even if it stays around or not.

          It’s only the people in Washington who are trying to work for working people or the environment who will be hurt by your strategy.

            • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
              85·
              8 months ago

              You mentioned a lot of strategies we can use to fight for what we want, and then said that none of those will work.

              No, I said all of those will work, to some degree. Even refusing to vote within a targeted framework, where you’re demanding certain concessions in exchange for your vote as part of an organized coalition, putting effective pressure on the party to make specific changes, is a pretty good strategy. It’s how some key environmental legislation has gotten passed in decades past.

              Letting Democrats know that they can’t buy my vote with corporate campaign donations, is me fighting for what I want.

              In exactly the same way that refusing to touch the steering wheel until the car starts going a better direction is fighting not to crash the car.

    • jaemo@sh.itjust.works
      195·
      8 months ago

      Hey, as a non American, fuck your country, fuck the idiots leading it, and fuck every eligible voter for what the rest of us are about to endure as a result of your staggering, unbelievable ineptitude.