[Tyrubias]

This is a cold-hearted way to think about it. The countless people who will suffer are not the ones causing the problem. The problem is caused by the billionaires willing to sacrifice human life and the environment for profit. They actively sow climate skepticism and encourage defunding of climate research to protect their bottom line. When extreme weather events kill millions, those billionaires will be safe in their bunkers. We can’t just condemn millions or even billions to death without trying to do anything about it.

[SoftTalker]

Kings have always sacrificed the common folk for their own benefit. This is also the way of human society. The experience of our own current lifetimes is quite the exception.

[jlarocco]

It's easier to blame climate change on a conspiracy theory around billionaires then it is to stop driving so much and reduce consumption.

[Tyrubias]

At least in the US, many people have to drive because US metropolitan areas are car-centric and lack public transit. This, in turn, is a direct result of lobbying by powerful companies like oil producers and automobile manufacturers.

As for your point about reducing consumption, there has been a deliberate effort by billionaire-controlled corporations to increase consumption. This has been done through a variety of methods, including limiting repairability, deliberate planned obsolescence through things like fast fashion and equipment designed to break down, and psychological manipulation to encourage consumption. Small ‘d’ democratic efforts to limit these techniques have been defeated by powerful lobbies backed by these billionaires.

Billionaires aren’t just responsible for consumption-driven climate change, they’re also responsible for subverting the democratic processes that could have reversed it at large scales.

[SoftTalker]

The car-centrism of the USA is IMO because people like the convenience of being able to go where they want, when they want, and not waiting for a bus that will take an indirect route and twice the time. People also like living in their own house with a fenced back yard and not having neighbors on the other side of the wall/ceiling/floor. This means we're more spread out (we have lots of land) and mass transit is less practical.

In dense urban areas we do have good mass transit and it's relatively more common for people to not own a car.

[keybored]

> conspiracy theory

What is the name for the theory that the most fantastically wealthy do not rule society? No kind adjectives come to mind.

[jlarocco]

At the end of the day it's unsustainable consumption of resources and increasing generation of waste that's killing the planet.

Even if the 4000 billionaires are ruling society, they're destroying the planet with the help of 8 billion poors.

[keybored]

At the end of the day it’s bullets fired from rifles, mortars, artillery shells, cruise ship missiles, etc. that are killing people in war.

If the executive branch of the government is commanding the military, and generals are commanding the military, they’re killing people with the help of tens of thousands of soldiers.