[Cthulhu_]

The problem with a post like this is that it tries to guilt the individual and their consumerism - but individuals cannot have enough of an impact. It's up to our chosen representatives to e.g. ban the import of soy and beef from Brazil. The net effect to the individual will be that beef is either more expensive or simply no longer available - and that's fine, there's plenty of local and renewable alternatives.

No, focusing on and guilting the individual is, pardon my conspiracy theory language, what They want. They want you to buy more expensive organic produce, They want you to buy a new lower-emissions car at a premium price, and most importantly, They want to blame you for what They are doing - They don't care about the amazon in particular, They care about profits, and if you're too distracted with changing your own lifestyle, They can push forward with their own policies to make more money.

If a whole country stops e.g. consuming soy from Brazil, there's going to be ten others that will buy it anyway because profits or deals will almost always beat morals.

And even if a country bans importing soy from Brazil, there's plenty of produce laundering going on - China will move their products to e.g. Malaysia and rebrand it as "made in Malaysia" to avoid trade tariffs or quotas.

And it doesn't stop there. A country can claim to recycle plastic in a renewable fashion for example, but what they aren't aware of - or turn a blind eye to - is that the recycling company they trust just bales up the plastics and ships it off to Asia, where they just burn it or chuck it in landfills. As soon as it crosses the border, it's no longer their problem. (Trash exports should be banned worldwide)

[oddeyed]

I'm curious how you think that a country would ever stop consuming soy from Brazil unless there was a strong desire from the populace of the country to stop doing so.

Markets allow you to vote every time you buy something on what your values are. Every time you choose to buy something from, say Brazil, that will be read as an endorsement of Brazil whenever someone looks at a balance sheet of imports and decides whether they can afford to instigate some kind of ban.

I think that people making personal choices about their own consumption is a very reasonable way for them to signal their desires and so the changes you say (and I agree) are required can be worked towards through grassroots community (e.g. asking people to individually boycott products).

[imtringued]

> Every time you choose to buy something from, say Brazil, that will be read as an endorsement of Brazil

But that decision was not made by the consumer. It was made by the executives of Burger King who decided to buy beef from a factory farm that has decided to buy soy from Brazil which has farmers that have decided to exploit the rain forest because the government has decided to not do anything against it.

[distances]

I don't think consumer choices are good for this at all. Society has to have structure where you can buy the things you need without doing a background check on everything. I don't want to research that each and every piece of electronics I buy is free of conflict minerals and slavery!

It's a job for our chosen representatives. We've given the mandate, it's up to them to create market frameworks with this through policies and trade agreements. And it works: EU doesn't import hormone laden meat, and could similarly decide on environmental requirements too.

Policy can be affected by voting, public discourse, and demonstrations, whereas active consumer choice would be very poor driver for that.