This meme is so wrong it is deliberate misinformation. The Guardian made an article which is probably this meme’s source. It even linked to the original source, the Carbon Majors Report. But blatantly misquoted the CMR. For example, CMR says something like “100 fossil fuel producers responsible for 71% of industrial GHG emissions”, but The Guardian (and meme posters) omit the italic bits.
What do they mean with producers? Not companies like Apple or Heinz, but simply organizations which produce fossil fuels. Duh. Shell, BP, but also entities like China’s coal sector (which they count as one producer, although it consists of many entities). CMR also states 3rd type emissions are included. Which means emissions caused by “using” their “products”, e.g. you burning gasoline in your car.
So yes, the downvoted guy saying “Consumer emissions and corporate emissions are the same emissions” is pretty spot on in this case, albeit most likely by accident. Rejected not for being wrong, but for not fitting into a narrative, which I call the wrong reasons. Please check your sources before posting. We live in a post-factual world where only narratives count and truth is just another feeling, because of “journalism” and reposts like this. Which is the infuriating part in this particular case. I guess you want to spread awareness about the climate crisis, which is good, but you cannot do so by propagandizing science and spreading lies.
All that from the top of my head. Both the ominous TG article and the fairly short report are easy to find. In just a couple of minutes you can check and confirm how criminally misquoted it was.
There’s a second more obvious component that people neglect in any statement like OPs.
These companies exist because people buy their products. We can blame companies, but fossil fuel use is a collective problem.
Exactly. If you eat bananas that arrive in a port on a ship, that ship spewed out a lot of CO2. If everybody changed their habits and ate something locally grown instead, those emissions would not happen (but other emissions might happen instead). Every CO2 emission by a profit-driven company is going to be the result of a person buying one of their products.
We live in a society, and the amount of difference one person can make is pretty small. Often all of the options available to us are bad. But, this meme is worse.
The ridiculous aspect of this meme is that it shifts the blame onto companies, and allows people to pretend that their lifestyles and choices deserve none of the blame, and instead it’s just some evil companies that are ruining the world. The unfortunate fact is that in this modern society, if you’re living like a typical European or North American, even if you think of yourself as an environmentalist, your lifestyle probably results in a ton of CO2 emissions.
While you guys kind of have a point, the specific argument you put forward is rather weak. Transportation accounts for an almost negligible part of the overall emissions of a product. Bulk freight cargo is super efficient. If you want to moan about transportation emissions, look at single people sitting in tons of steel making short trips.
The point you still have is that emissions are caused in the process of satisfying a demand. Consumers do have a partial responsibility. However I would object in that the problem cannot be solved from the consumer’s position. It is a market failure. Markets have no incentive to internalize their externalities, that has to come from a different place; e.g. politics. Carbon pricing is an interesting mechanic, since it utilizes that same argument for good.
the specific argument you put forward is rather weak
I wasn’t claiming to pick the most environmentally destructive thing that people do. I was just picking a random, easy-to-understand thing that seems innocuous but still contributes to climate change. People know that driving cars is bad for the environment, but often don’t stop to consider that eating a banana could also be bad because of the shipping.
the problem cannot be solved from the consumer’s position
Not completely, but consumers can change their habits and make a significant dent in the problem. For example, “people sitting in tons of steel making short trips”. If people stopped driving, or at least significantly reduced it, that would have a real effect.
I’d argue that the problem can’t currently be solved by voting either. Yes, government regulation eventually has to be the answer, but right now there are too many people who would vote against that kind of a change, or who at least wouldn’t make it a priority. And, with all the fossil-fuel special interest money flowing into politics, even if it is a priority for a voter, there will often be elections where both major party candidates are in the pocket of the oil industry.
If people change their own personal habits (i.e. stop driving) that makes a small dent in the problem. But, it also motivates them to try to campaign, run for office and vote for other people who will make that kind of a change. If you stop driving you realize how much cities are geared around driving. How many hidden subsidies drivers get, etc. If you keep driving but just vote for candidates who talk a good game about carbon taxes, when they back down on those promises you sigh but you aren’t highly motivated to keep pushing.
I’m sorry, but this is just foolish and very naive.
Let me just buy some locally grown bananas, in the north… Or locally produced computer monitor…
It is totally up to the governments to regulate emissions, with regulations.
Now, WHAT governments are elected IS down to people, but unfortunately, caring about the environment is stil not a priority to prople (in part due to said governments being in the pockets of the biggest emission producers).
If I want a banana, I’ll get a banana. I will have no idea or information whether it’s shipped with the shittiest fuel burning ship, or an electric locomotive.
Now if the government regulated what fuel burning ships can enter the port, etc, etc, we’d have change. Fewer, more expensive bananas, of course (people will be unhappy about that), but at least the emissions would be reduced, with little to no change of the individuals’ habits.
Let me just buy some locally grown bananas, in the north…
That’s my point. You can’t. If you want to not be responsible for those CO2 emissions you have to eat something else.
It is totally up to the governments to regulate emissions, with regulations.
Sure, but you also have personal agency. You can choose to eat beets instead of bananas. You can choose to pay to have an old monitor fixed by a local repair shop instead of buying a new one. Instead, people use the lack of government rules as an excuse to continue to live the way they want to live. They choose to blame corporations for polluting instead of their own choices as consumers.
If I want a banana, I’ll get a banana. I will have no idea or information whether it’s shipped with the shittiest fuel burning ship, or an electric locomotive.
Yes, because you don’t want to know. You will never do that research. Admittedly, the research is hard to do. It’s hard to do a complete calculation of all the CO2 costs of the entire chain of events that results in a banana on sale at a local supermarket vs. a locally grown beet.
People could choose to try to do that research, but they don’t. It’s hard, and it’s depressing. Instead they’ll feel good about recycling an aluminum can, and never think about the environmental impact of driving around the city in a car.
And will people vote for stricter emissions laws and/or carbon taxes? Some people will, many people will vote against it. Many of the supporters will also not make it a priority. And, if the party that promised carbon taxes and/or stricter emissions wins but then gets lobbied and doesn’t enact those new laws, very few people are going to go out and protest.
The government’s lack of action and the idea that corporations are really to blame for CO2 emissions is a convenient way for people to continue to live their massive energy footprint lives, while shifting the blame to someone else.
To add to your last two paragraphs: even if the elected parties enact the more environmentally friendly policies, many voters will be unsatisfied with that because they imagined a solution would pop up where they themselves would not be required to make sacrifices. I imagine memes like this could be a reason for that as they imply that corporations emit greenhouse gases totally decoupled from the people’s consumption. I fully demand that corporations take more actions to reduce emissions although it will lower their profits, but I also ask (mainly) the privileged people who live in the global north to accept necessary reductions in lifestyle and consumption as a necessary consequence.
they imagined a solution would pop up where they themselves would not be required to make sacrifices
Exactly what’s happening in Canada with the carbon tax. If you emit more CO2 than the average you pay a tax. If you emit less you get a rebate. But, now people who emit more than the average think that their case is special and they shouldn’t have to make a sacrifice because they’re not the real problem.
they imply that corporations emit greenhouse gases totally decoupled from the people’s consumption
Yes! Or, they think that corporations are maliciously burning fossil fuels for the hell of it. While corporations might not care about the environment, they do care about profits. They will burn oil to make profits, but if they can find a way to burn less oil and use that to make more profits, they’ll do that too. Now, sure they’ll also burn more oil if they can make a business case to do it. But, unless you’re talking entertainment companies like Las Vegas casinos, corporations are generally not burning oil just for the hell of it.
It seems to me like you are saying this from a point of privilege where you hve infinite choice and no regard for the cost.
By that logic, I should only eat what’s local, because everything else is certainly more emissions. If I live in a rural territory, where they only grow pigs and onions, that’s what I should eat to ‘reduce’ CO2? That’s just strictly false, and absolutely detrimental to your health.
People need a large variety of food for good nutrition and most rural certainly do not profuce such variety. If you live in a large city, “locally” produced stuff comes in from hundreds of miles, which have to be travelled somehow.
You can try your best as an individual to reduce your CO2, but that will only a miniscule amount of what makes the cogs turn in the economy. The only actually impactful, sweeping change is through regulation. Everything else is pretty much high-horsing and virtue signalling.
The best thing an individual can do to reduce emissions, is to vote accordingly.
People need variety in their diet, but they almost certainly do not need things like bananas, you can, in most places around the world, get nutritionally complete diets from locally grown sources, which will often be of higher quality, tastier and usually cheaper. I certainly can’t think of anything that I need, that couldn’t be bought at a farmers market. Now I can imagine some dietary restrictions and choices will have those needs, but restrictions can’t be helped and choices are probably more environmentally conscious anyway (vegetarians, vegans).
Local does not have to be in your rural community. Something that is trucked to your local store a hundred(s) miles is certainly better than something that was trucked to a port, shipped halfway across the globe, and trucked again.
“Doing something that Joe isn’t doing is not worth it” is a bad mindset, especially since Joe might not be doing it for the same reason. You can’t expect everyone to start doing it the same day. The more people buy local, the cheaper it becomes to buy locally and less profitable to import.
Regulations would be great, but Id prefer living in a society that can self regulate.
How much do you think it will change, if people really do the minimum consumption within their possibilities?
And how much will it change, including people’s habits, if you make laws that force companies to consider their co2 output as a problem?
answer
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About maybe at max 20 - 30% probably much less.
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Probably about 60 - 90%.
The key is to do both because they are principally coupled and nothing happens as long as consumers and corporations just point at each other and use it as an excuse to keep on going like before.
Of course you are right that the focus should lie at changing CO2 output at the producer side because the influence is much more focused there. N my opinion it is also dangerous arguing that the companies only supply what the consumers want because that statement is based on the consumption and is biased too much by what the companies offer and at which price. Consumers usually socioeconomically do not have the choice to buy a product at 1.5 times the price, even if they would prefer it for environmental reasons while these companies have immense profits and can and must afford to reduce and finally stop emissions.
I mean of course, but laws will change people’s behaviour indirectly. If it is more expensive to consume co2 heavy products, people will buy the co2 less product.
And, how likely do you think that any laws are going to actually get passed?
People’s consumption is the only real thing they have agency over. They can vote, but if voting is more a placebo than an actual way to change things.
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That’s true. A lot more could be said about this, on various levels in various directions. Ultimately I don’t think this systemic crisis can be solved on a consumer level. The attempt leads to the status quo; different subcultures with some people paying extra to calm their consciousness, while most don’t care or cannot afford. I’m afraid if we try to work with individual sacrifice against economic incentives, the latter will win.
It’s also true that some companies use their economic power as a political lever, to influence legislation in their favor. Or as a societal lever, to sway public opinion in their favor. I guess this meme here tries to address that. I honor the motive. Just the chosen vehicle is broken. With mountains of evidence supporting the cause, however, there are plenty of other, perfectly fine vehicles available.
Tfw companies only exist because customers buy their stuff
Sure, but why aren’t these companies having to pay for the damage they cause? People wouldn’t buy their stuff if it was the true price.
I don’t know, probably because they are somehow stronger than the local government and/or the country they operate in bend over backwards for ‘job creators’. How come we bail them out with taxpayer money when they go tits up? I don’t know.
why aren’t these companies having to pay for the damage they cause?
Because it’s too difficult to measure, and it affects the entire world in a diffuse way, instead of affecting a small group of people in a really concentrated way.
If a factory’s process resulted in extremely loud noise for their neighbors, the neighbors would try to get the factory shut down. They’d get involved in local politics. They’d show up to town meetings, etc.
If a factory’s process resulted in a river getting polluted, affecting hundreds of thousands of people, but in a way that is hard to measure and tough to notice, they might get away with it. It would be hard to figure out exactly what damage is being done. Maybe cancer rates in the area are slightly higher than usual, but it takes scientists and doctors to notice that. Maybe that gets people outraged enough that some of them try to get the place shut down, but other people are going to be out there saying the factory is a source of jobs, and that maybe it wasn’t actually pollution that caused the cancers.
With CO2 emissions, the effect is global, and any one factory’s emissions are extremely tough to nail down. The affected people mostly aren’t local, they’re around the entire world. Even if they want a factory to be shut down, they have no leverage because they might not even be in the same country as the factory. And, since every factory does it, you can’t easily narrow the focus down on one individual factory. Plus, that factory employs people, and if you shut it down they lose their jobs.
So, that’s the problem with trying to focus on a form of pollution that is diffuse and worldwide.
The other issue is how would you determine the “true price”. The price of something being sold is based on the cost of the goods needed to produce it, any fees, fines or taxes the company needs to pay, what they think people will spend, etc. So, maybe you think the price should be higher. How do you arrange that? You could increase the price of the items the company is buying. But, that just shifts the problem to a different company. You could add fees or fines, but a lot of people hate the idea of carbon taxes, and when governments threaten them, companies threaten to move somewhere else where those taxes don’t exist.
It seems like you haven’t really thought this through.
~~they wrote a new one, which is about industry in general https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04/just-57-companies-linked-to-80-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-since-2016~~
EDIT: I was made aware that the headline is misleading
This new report is the same story all over again. From the linked report:
Applying this factor to the standardized production results in the emissions from the combustion of marketed products, comprising nearly 90% of total emissions tracked by the database. These are scope three category 11 emissions, corresponding to “use of sold products”
The vast majority of emissions attributed to these companies, nearly 90%, are those emitted by the consumers who buy the crude oil/natural gas/etc. But news outlets are obscuring that fact in their headlines, which makes it seem like the gas companies themselves are wholly responsible.
Do not cast fossil fuels into the fire, unless you want to fucking explode 🤯
Isn’t casting it into the fire the main issue with fossil fuel?
It’s 57 doing 80% now 🙃🙃Capitalism working as intended
EDIT: I was made aware that the headline is misleading
Only the it’s not companies but entities which include China, the former soviet union and the Russian federation. This is such a fucking missleading title the guardian ran here.
https://carbonmajors.org/briefing/The-Carbon-Majors-Database-26913
Maybe it’s a stupid question, but aren’t the companies that burn the fossil fuel responsonsible for the emmisions?
Lmao global citizens asking for that, when I bet most don’t give a shit
Because oil companies paid millions or even billions for propaganda that climate change isn’t real or not their fault.
I think that’s mostly just Western world shit. I’m talking about the vast majority of the world’s population who aren’t as comfortable that they’d care or willing to worsen their quality of life or pay for more etc. They’re not victims of oil company propaganda, they are victims of their circumstances.
Isn’t that basically why laws need to be put in place ensuring that these high emitting companies (which are mostly from the global north) reduce their carbon emissions? The circumstances are often consequnce of ongoing western exploitation and they will just get worse if nothing is changed because it is not the rich countries which will suffer most from climate change.
Unfair comparison – Isildur was a great leader, defeated Sauron and resisted the dark pull of the One Ring for decades. Corporativist scum, on the other hand, brings no benefit to anyone.
Isildur: BTW I’m selling these cool new One Ring™ limited edition rings, forged in darkness and bound to the One Ring…we’ve got sizes for men, women, elves, and dwarves!
Elrord: O shit gimme 5 of those bad boys
Use paper straws so Whole Foods can sell individual slices of candied bacon in sealed plastic bags.
I mean I feel like 90% of that would require inventing a way to achieve trans oceanic shipping without the use of fossil fuels, and the answers to that have basically been ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think they did that in the time of Columbus
Yeah just build a wooden frigate that can handle 100 megatons of containers, simple.
I’ve seen legitimate proposals for basically just raising tower sails on a cargo vessel, and I always am flabbergasted that these people never seem to consider that super tall sails can cause the boat to capsize.
Torque increases the further you get from the center of rotation, and windspeeds pick up damn quick when you start building upwards.
If you wanted to protect the ship from a capsize you’d need to make it into something like a Polynesian style double hull to act as a buoyant force against the wind trying to push the boat over, and voila, now you’ve made a bunch of major canals unnavigable to your ship.
I mean I could see there might be clever optimizations, ways to handle wind power or even some kind of tidal/wave harnessing. But it definitely won’t be the way Columbus did it.
I honestly don’t think we need to settle on trans oceanic shipping as a hard requirement.
Also, in terms of transportation-based emissions, personal vehicle usage accounted for 58% of the total emissions in the US in 2019. This number doesn’t need to exist. The fossil fuel industry has structured cities the way they are and lobbied against efficient transportation in order to make themselves more money.
Like even if we’re accepting trans oceanic freight as a given, which I don’t think we should on the scale we do now, emissions could be drastically reduced mostly by better planning of transportation.
100%
Consumer emissions and corporate emissions are the same emissions
except that consumers do not have meaningful control over the companies and the corporate leaders do
Youve got all the control. Without you theyre not emitting anything
No, I don’t, “the population” does. I have control over myself, 1 teeny tiny sliver of the group that is “the population.” If there’s one thing “the population” is known to put the effort into doing, it’s twiddling their thumbs. It’s nothing more than a huge writhing mass of opinions. To expect it to coordinate effectively enough to make change happen is just as ridiculous as to expect all the molecules in a glass of water to suddenly converge on one side. “The population” doesn’t make change, it buffers against it.
“Oh, all we have to do is get 8 billion people of different backgrounds, opinions, socioeconomic standards, and every other metric to agree on something. Surely that’s a feasible task!”
that’s how society works man, we agree to do things a certain way. Lead used to be a really popular component in a lot of consumer products that ended up with a lot of awful health effects. And basically, science let people know it’s bad and should be avoided, and society changed to fix it.
We got rid of lead products because governments put out new regulations that prevented companies from making products with lead, not because the population collectively decided not to buy products with lead in them. If companies had been allowed to continue making lead products, they’d have done so, and people would have continued buying them despite the science pointing to them being bad for you.
Companies will do whatever is profitable unless prevented from doing so by regulations, and people will buy what companies sell because most people don’t know, and don’t have the time to figure out what products they buy are harmful to themselves and others. Even when they do, they often don’t have the wealth to make a change to buying safer, more expensive products.
“How society works” is that people have to buy products to survive, and often have little choice among what products they can afford. If we want companies to start lowering their emissions, we need to force them to do so with regulations, just like we had to do with lead.
I do not have the control because I have limited means and if they do not offer an ecological option within those means then I have to choose from non-ecological options within those means
You have control over whether you eat pork or tofu, don’t you? You have control over whether you buy a new iPhone or a used FairPhone, don’t you? You have control over whether you plan a trip via airplane or via train, don’t you?
Shifting the blame to the individual plays precisely into the hands of massive corporations. People buy what is available and cheapest, and without government intervention that’s going to be plastic packaging wrapped in more plastic.
Why not both? Companies that peel bananas and wrap them in plastic for sale are garbage companies. And people who buy them are garbage people.
Environmentalists remember that disabled people exist challenge: impossible.
So you’re telling me that there are people who cannot peel a banana, but who can simultaneously peel the plastic off a container and then eat the banana?
Oh, you meant bananas and only bananas? Every other prepared fresh food is fine? 🙄
But yes, there are people who can perform some tasks but not others. Until you have a solution for them that isn’t “just don’t have fresh food lol” or “just hire someone to do it for you lol” then the problem is and remains the plastic, not the person who is buying food.
Yes, and I deliberately make choices to reduce my footprint. But it’s not enough, people are naturally greedy and think only as far as next quarter’s earnings, hence the need for regulation to account for long-term costs to the world.
a train ticket cross country costs thousands of dollars more than an equivalent class of airplane tickets so no, no I do not have that control
NY–LA via Amtrak: $291. Greyhound, a bus company: $139
The $300 ticket is for a coach seat for a trip that takes 70-90 hours one way. Hope you don’t like laying down to sleep or showering!
I can only assume you’ve never taken Greyhound if you’re suggesting it for a cross country trip. In addition to having the same problems as trains but worse (try spending 12 hours in a bus stop halfway through your trip because of overbooking!), if you do want to take Greyhound then be sure to sleep on top of anything on your person that you don’t want stolen. Once I had shit stolen from me before I even made it onto the bus!
Can you acknowledgedyou’ve moved the goalposts from train to bus?
I did provide the price for a train ticket that is significantly cheaper than Match!!’s “thousands of dollars”, didn’t I?
Well yes, but you’ve also failed to explain how someone with a limited budget can enjoy all the comforts and conveniences of modern life without making any sacrifices, which makes you wrong.
No, a bus isn’t a train. Is this perhaps a language barrier problem?
Well, in the US trains probably aren’t an option. But you’re exactly right. The reason corporations pollute is because we buy their stuff.
corporation pollute because the governments let them, and its cheapest. governments let them because they are corrupted by the corporations.
if/when executives can get the death penalty for crimes against earth, they will still find a way to supply stuff to market.
For sure, they optimize for profits, and that means being irresponsible with the world.
Let’s take meat for example. It’s not like a ranch is going to raise and slaughter millions of cattle just for the lulz. If nobody is buying it, there’s no economic incentive and the problem goes away.
Consumers are unwilling to change to more expensive, ethical products. It follows that corporations are unwilling to produce them. Until something like lab meat becomes cheaper and easier than natural meat, this will persist. This could be done through taxes on natural meat, (maybe a methane emissions tax).
But consumers fundamentally hold all the power here. They could simply switch to eating less meat and the producers would automatically correct themselves. You just can’t convince people to do it.
i agree with you, except scale. individual consumers have no power. if consumers/citizens were collectively organized at a substantial percentage, they could change everything. thats why the corporatioms and rich and govt will do anything to not let the people be united like this. and even if they could organize on that scale, it could just be corrupted or turn authoritarian/fascist itself.
1 person trying to change the world by eating less meat doesn’t even blip the radar.
The argument is that corporations do what they want, often not because we want to buy their stuff, but because:
- we don’t have a choice
- they hide what they’re doing through propaganda, lies, obfuscation, etc. so we don’t know about it
- powerful lobbying
Here’s some examples:
- Cigarette companies spent decades convincing people their product was harmless and Even good for you. The oil industry has been covering up climate change the same way.
- Trains are rarely an option in the US, because of subsidies to planes, roads, etc. Car companies pushed hard to actually remove public transportation.
- Don’t like your ISP? Too bad, you probably don’t have another choice
- Look at the PG&E story and how they contaminated drinking water, then just lied about it while people died. You don’t really have a choice about who supplies electricity to your city.
Yes, you could choose to live off of the grid and walk everywhere and grow your own crops, but that’s hardly a choice. And it doesn’t have to be that way. Shitty people at the top of these companies make ungodly money by screwing everyone else over anyway they can, regardless of the cost to humanity. That is the point.
Maybe if you’re on shrooms or LSD, yeah “it’s all the same if you use what they make maaaaaaan”
But only if you ignore the power dynamics behind wealth, and aren’t aware of the concepts of bribery, temptation, and unlimited influence.
Or the fact that people want greener options but they are intentionally unavailable, sabotaged, prohibitively expensive (but never subsidized), or publicly demonized in media with disinformation and propaganda.
Between consumers and corporations, only one gets to call all the shots
prohibitively expensive (but never subsidized)
…while the unsustainable options are, massively…
Sustainable energy is heavily subsidised in Europe. Thanks to that we have 80% renewable energy production in Austria (and buy some non-renewable energy from other countries but still, we’re on a good way).
I think you’re being downvoted a bit unfairly because you’re strictly correct
That said, fossil fuel companies also spend a considerable amount of money and effort keeping us dependent on oil
The Drilled podcast and Climate Town have both done excellent reporting on this
I think you’re being downvoted a bit unfairly because you’re strictly correct
No, he’s not. Deliberately ignoring the larger context is blatantly incorrect. He’s pushing corporate propaganda. The downvotes are well-deserved, and maybe even a ban would be too.
I think that’s a valid opinion to have but also the person could have just been a bit glib and not careful with their words
They’re a commenter on Lemmy, not a politician. I don’t expect them to always have well crafted takes
There’s always a corpo-fucker in these threads.
if you wanna reduce global emissions, you should at least know where it’s coming from. You hear how most emissions are coming from corporations, mostly oil companies, but that’s not quite it. If you went to their corporate headquarters you wont find the emissions they’re talking about. If you went to their oil drilling operations, you wont find them there either. The pipelines, the oil tankers, still no. Oil companies emissions are coming from your tailpipe. I mean it literally when I say consumer emissions and their emissions are the same.
Its important to know, think about it for a bit, you’re demanding oil companies to take responsibility for those emissions. Imagine they do what you want for a change, and they stop their emissions. That means no gas available to consumers. And oil companies are the biggest targets, but any corporate emissions work the same way, them taking responsibility for their emissions means halting what they produce. Because corporate emissions and consumer emissions are the same, consumers have to deal with the consequences no matter what, either by stopping buying themselves, or no longer having products available to buy.
