I quite agree with what you say about the camera industry being hardly relevant. So I'm sorry to single out your post. But I must disagree with the part underlined, that's a very comforting thing to tell ourselves, but as such very counterproductive. In fact "we" (the Western world) buy all those products that are made in China. And even with all this production for export, China isn't doing bad with emissions, per capita, at all compared to the West.
While I think that eventually politics need to get seriously involved, there is much we can do as individuals, and if you don't believe these changes are meaningful in their environmental impact, you should still understand that they would be an important signal to corporations and politics that the voters and consumers care. Things individuals can do don't revolve around photo equipment, but food, transportation and heating/AC are responsible for enormous parts of greenhouse gas emissions and most of us can do at least some initial changes with little cost to our comfort and account balance.
I’d basically agree with all of this, with one exception, this bit: “
China isn't doing bad with emissions, per capita, at all compared to the West. That’s both undeniably true and completely misleading in this context. When the subject is pollution and gross industrial malfeasance, it’s total tonnage that matters to the environment, not per capita anything. “Per capita” is a dodge, and it’s why even legitimate statistics can be twisted to make a point that can’t honestly be made. China is still the world’s biggest polluter, by a huge margin, in every industry they touch, steady streams of Chinese propaganda notwithstanding. The information is out there if anyone is interested, but China is the worst enemy the world’s environment has ever had. Small example, China gets 70% of its electricity from coal fired plants, is the world’s largest burner of coal, and currently has 300
new coal fired plants in the works, each of which has a projected useful life of 50-60 years.
The industrialized West, on the other hand, is the cleanest and has been for some time, because The West is where the naval gazers live. Of course, as has been mentioned, the West’s contribution to the ugliness is not in what it produces, or how it produces it, but in what it buys, and how much it buys. Much of which is unnecessary. And what it buys comes from China. The West hardly produces anything any longer except sophomoric, world conquering ideas like Facebook.
Hectoring Fuji to stop using (plentiful) titanium won’t heal the world. Western nations boycotting Chinese goods until they cleaned up their act, which the Chinese have the (stolen) technology to to, might go some way to cleaning up the planet, and would be the most meaningful thing that “ the world” could do, but that’s been on the table for a long time and “the world” won’t do it.
All I was saying originally, and I know I seem like a troll, is that, in the whole overall scheme of things, how Fuji makes a few top plates is completely irrelevant, because as far as the environment is concerned it’s only the whole overall scheme of things that matters. And that’s not being addressed by “the world” because everybody is afraid of China, on the one hand, and everybody likes cheap doodads on the other. Living a hair shirt existence is more likely to make us feel better about our inherent righteousness than it is to save the whales. I know all the arguments, “what if everybody recycled their own urine to save water (not making that up), and so on, the world would be saved from imminent catastrophe”. True enough, but they won’t, and you’ll go to your grave as the guy who drank his own urine, rode a bicycle to work, and wore old clothes, while everyone else was at the pub with their mates having a laugh. Perhaps that’s the solution, cannot say it’s not, but I am unconvinced.
I use aluminum foil over and over until it falls apart, and saran wrap as well. I almost never buy an item of new clothing, (ask my wife), and I despise waste of any kind as a moral issue, but I don’t think any of that helps the Earth, personally, though am sympathetic to other viewpoints, having once held them myself.
Thanks for listening to my rant
🙂
