we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas

The money from the fountain gets collected and sent to Caritas, a catholic charity that focuses on health, disaster relief, poverty, and migration. I am a Queer atheist person in Spain that uses their services and they haven’t once made my queerness an issue. Nor have they exposed me to their religious views.
So, shrug, I’m not gonna shit on them doing the tradition that many diplomatic events in Rome do.
- Objectively, it sounds like it's an innocent tradition and a healthy charity.
  Subjectively, it's tone-deaf af, when the rule-makers perform superstition for such a massive world-changing problem. Basically "thoughts and prayers."
  
  I can guarantee you that nobody did this with the idea it'd help fight climate change
- +1 for Caritas. My mum, a non-religous person, worked for them for quite some time and I've never heard a bad thing from her.
- A friend once applied for a job at Caritas in Germany and got rejected for the reason of not being catholic, but christian. I think you could argue that is okay, but by German law it actually is not.
  
  I realy don't understand why the church still gets to do so many things that are simply not legal. It seems like the law that they have to follow is an older version.
- Wait what does Jesus have in common with vampires? I’ve always seen him represented more as a Zombie (?)

They are literally the people who can enact change, the fuck do they need luck for?
- Don’t be too hard on them… I’d be wishing for luck too, if I had problems and refused to solve them
  
  It's not that they refuse to do anything, they just refuse to do anything that would challenge the power of the capitalist class.
- Hoping that the situation solves itself without having to make hard decisions or, Gott bewahre, sacrifices.
- "We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it."
  Career politicians are a cancer.
- There are Rules for Rulers. In the background there are always nobels, clergy, bankers, businessmen, military and the common folk each with their own demands and reasons to pressure or remove the ruler of their demands are not met.
  There are a enough examples of leaders trying to change too much and being assassinated. Although these days that's more killed in the media.

Just like declining birth rates in the US.
"We need to have more babies! Our population is declining!"
Well we could subsidize child care.
"Fuck you! Oh whatever shall we do?!"
Well we could provide housing programs for people who want to have children.
"Fuck you! Oh we need to think of something."
Oh, I know, we could subsidize fertility treatments for parents that want children but are having difficulties and can't afford 10s of thousands of uncovered medical expenses at once!
"Fuck you! Oh, woe is me, there's nothing anyone can do!"
- Left out "we could just let more people move here"
  
  But then ~~our society wouldn't be white dominated anymore!~~ our culture! Oh our culture! Demographics! Crime! Ahhhh! Be afraid!
  
  100%
  
  Definitely not that simple. Immigration is good, but you need the physical and social infrastructure to manage it.
- I actually agree for the sake of the Earth and humanity long term, if there is such a thing anymore.
  I acknowledge though, that it will be very painful for humanity to adjust to downsizing, and in sociopolitical discourse, short medium term humanity is all most ever consider relevant. But yes, I agree with the long game position that humanity should strive to shrink and find equilibrium with our world.
  
  No no no, don't you see? The growth MUST continue... Or else

Is that Angela Merkel in the middle? If so this must be at least an old photo. She is not the German chancellor anymore. Not that that would make things any better...
- Just wanted to make sure. Not sure if any US representatives are in this picture though. But it kinda looks a bit like Merkel and Martin Schulz (2nd from the right, also a German politician and at the time probably President of the European Parliament - this guy looks like him) are on the lookout to see if our friends from America (on maps to the left/west from europe) would like to flip a coin as well.
- And Boris from the UK.
  I guess it didn't work. Any other lucky rivers or wishing wells around?

Punishing corporations for their misbehavior is too much work
- Especially when they barely pay your bills
  
  Right? There's nothing you defend, these major corporations and billionaires are literally ruining everything and offering no benefit. Most of the best stuff that happens is from publicly funded research or volunteer work.

When was this? Merkel and her party luckily aren't in the government anymore.
- October 2021. Not wishing for “good luck fighting the climate emergency.”
  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-31/g-20-leaders-pose-by-trevi-fountain-macron-and-johnson-face-off
  
  Thanks for the fact-check. I hate that we’ve gotten to ragebait on Lemmy as well.
- Boris Johnson was already 2 prime ministers ago.
  
  The rate they burn through them, that could have been last week.
- Well the current coalition isnt really doing any better in that regard. All they seem to care about is condemning climate protesters and the usual corrupt behaviour that we know from the CDU...
  
  There would never have been a Deutschlandticket with CDU. Fuck FDP but at least neither Grüne nor SPD is openly fellating the AfD Nazis like the current CDU is doing.

They did NOT toss coins for "good luck fighting the climate emergency." Maybe some did, who knows. It was not a collective wish for something, just a stage for a nice group photo.
https://www.yahoo.com/video/made-wish-g20-leaders-toss-113600490.html?guccounter=1
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-31/g-20-leaders-pose-by-trevi-fountain-macron-and-johnson-face-off
From the Yahoo article: "Of course the wishes can't be revealed to anyone if they are to become true - so who knows what British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel wished for."
- "I wish I didn't have to let the peasants elect me. I wish I could just have power so I could enrich myself! I wish I didn't have to stand here for this damn photo!"
  We know what they wished for whether they tell us or not lol
- Maybe instead of tossing coins they could sign binding agreements that actually accomplish something

Boris looks confused at the idea of throwing money at anything other than his mates.
- I'm surprised there isn't a follow up photo of him falling into the fountain somehow.

Due to reports of misinformation from users I'll post this comment here.
No. They were not actually tossing coins backwards for good luck fighting climate change. No one knows exactly what the people in this picture were actually wishing good luck for.
I don't want to come down too hard on people but one of my jobs as moderator is to prevent the spread of misinformation.
- Good mod
- Is it possible to pin comments on Lemmy? This one's kind of buried, it seems a bunch of people missed it.
- As long as they're having fun.
  Not like they'd do anything about the many global crises anyway, that would involve inconveniencing the owners.

Oceans 111°

well toss a coin for good luck while we let corporations rape the planet

Look at the average age of the people in that picture. You think they care for climate change? They know they'll be dead soon enough.
- I despise Modi but there's not one single Indian who doesn't care about climate change. It's at least one thing literally all politicians and people of all classes get behind here.

Would like to know how many fetch back their coin afterwards...
- You think these fuckers used one of their own coins? They were just props that was handed to them. They probably haven't touched an actual coin themselves in years.

This is literally worthy of nottheonion material lol. 🤣

Can't hurt or tell the rich what to do for the 99% /s

Words fail.

“Heads we live, tails we die.”

I'm always surprised about this ideas. I imagine this happening when the marketing intern comes up with it and somehow it climbs the ladder to a point where the person in charge says "let's do this". Amazing.