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For the love of Earth, stop traveling

washingtonpost.com

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Re: For the love of Earth, stop traveling

#21

Post by mbrock »

chillingeffect wrote: post #18
mbrock wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, like, my life is a nightmare for reasons X Y and Z and now I can't even go on vacation to a warm place when the winter comes? How much of flying is business travel anyway? You think people are going to tell their bosses they're not taking the plane for that sales meeting because of teh climate? Maybe a tiny amount of virtuous people, but generally hell no. The vegetarianism and animal rights movement has had many…

> The vegetarianism and animal rights movement has had many decades to convince people to give up meat and it's just not happening. People eat more and more meat. Where are you getting your stats from? Vegetarianism seems on the rise to me. There are some stats to Back it up, too: 2.5% in 2009 to 5% in 2014. [1] http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/is-2014-the-year-of-the-v...

I'm on mobile and can't find great sources, but there's OECD statistics and it seems like global meat consumption per capita rises.

https://ensia.com/articles/these-maps-show-changes-in-global...

I first heard about it in Swedish statistics when all my friends were vegetarians or vegans and I really expected the trend to be reversing but Swedes were indeed eating significantly more meat (this was a few years ago).

From what I see in restaurants it seems obvious that meat eating is at no risk at all of declining except within a small enclave of virtuous herbivores.

And from what I understand of human nature, a juicy steak or burger is way more vividly satisfying than the idea of marginally improving the climate prognosis. It's like if sex turned out to be harmful to coral reefs—people would kill themselves rather than go celibate.

Re: For the love of Earth, stop traveling

#22

Post by mbrock »

cousin_it wrote: post #20
mbrock wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you volunteer to be the one to inform business owners and small art house cinema operators that they're now forbidden to engage in any marketing of their goods and services, and all the media that the majority of their revenue is now illegal? This is a completely unrealistic fantasy unless you want to provoke a large scale uprising.

I'm in favor of a more creeping push. For example, banning roadside billboards is a great idea, every city that's done it is happy with the results. (I've lived in a city where every major road was lined with billboards, ugh.) Or banning cigarette ads - in fact it's a boon to cigarette companies, because it curtails the spending arms race but doesn't shrink the market (the buyers are addicted anyway). Or blocking pop…

Sounds reasonable, but in the context of the need for an urgent screeching halt to avoid global disaster, such legislation has only a slim chance of passing in the most "enlightened" districts, so it seems kind of useless to talk about.

I may seem pessimistic and indeed I am. But like other people do their part by encouraging people to consume less, I try to do my pathetic part by telling them to stop wasting time on hopeless utopian ideas.

Re: For the love of Earth, stop traveling

#23

Post by extra88 »

chillingeffect wrote: post #18
mbrock wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, like, my life is a nightmare for reasons X Y and Z and now I can't even go on vacation to a warm place when the winter comes? How much of flying is business travel anyway? You think people are going to tell their bosses they're not taking the plane for that sales meeting because of teh climate? Maybe a tiny amount of virtuous people, but generally hell no. The vegetarianism and animal rights movement has had many…

> The vegetarianism and animal rights movement has had many decades to convince people to give up meat and it's just not happening. People eat more and more meat. Where are you getting your stats from? Vegetarianism seems on the rise to me. There are some stats to Back it up, too: 2.5% in 2009 to 5% in 2014. [1] http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/is-2014-the-year-of-the-v...

A few more Americans not eating meat is nothing compared to all the other Americans continuing to eat more (particularly by eating more chicken) but more importantly the rest of the world.

https://ourworldindata.org/meat-and-seafood-production-consu...

Re: For the love of Earth, stop traveling

#24

Post by coldtea »

mbrock wrote: post #19
cousin_it wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you're selling product X at price Y. There are three kinds of people you could reach with advertising: * People who have an unmet need for product X at price Y. * People whose need for product X at price Y is already met, but who can be manipulated into buying from you rather than someone else. * People who don't need product X at price Y, but can be manipulated into needing it. Advertising is only good for…

Do you volunteer to be the one to inform business owners and small art house cinema operators that they're now forbidden to engage in any marketing of their goods and services, and all the media that the majority of their revenue is now illegal? This is a completely unrealistic fantasy unless you want to provoke a large scale uprising.

>Do you volunteer to be the one to inform business owners and small art house cinema operators that they're now forbidden to engage in any marketing of their goods and services, and all the media that the majority of their revenue is now illegal?

Actually, small business owners and small art house cinema operators would (or should) be delighted from such a change -- it means the films they play could get as much marketing revenue (0) as the blockbusters now advertised all across town.

This would TURN people towards the more quirky, smaller scale and generally the less able to advertise today, not the opposite...

Re: For the love of Earth, stop traveling

#25

Post by mnm1 »

Sure, once corporations are regulated properly and prevented from contributing unnecessarily to emissions, I will stop taking leisure flights. That's a promise I know I can make because I will never have to keep it. Until then, I don't see what the point is and I actively refuse to make changes when the entities most responsible for emissions, corporations, are allowed to do nothing and go on about their polluting ways. Nothing I do will make a difference. The plane I gave up my seat on will still fly and still use about as much fuel. My not flying on said plane will not prevent thousands of other planes from, for example, delivering tomatoes from the other side of the world when there are plenty of local ones. Pass legislation addressing the 80% of the problem (corporate pollution) and then ask individuals to address the other 20%. Doing things in reverse is not only dumb but quite ineffective.

Re: For the love of Earth, stop traveling

#26

Post by mbrock »

coldtea wrote: post #24
mbrock wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you volunteer to be the one to inform business owners and small art house cinema operators that they're now forbidden to engage in any marketing of their goods and services, and all the media that the majority of their revenue is now illegal? This is a completely unrealistic fantasy unless you want to provoke a large scale uprising.

> Do you volunteer to be the one to inform business owners and small art house cinema operators that they're now forbidden to engage in any marketing of their goods and services, and all the media that the majority of their revenue is now illegal? Actually, small business owners and small art house cinema operators would (or should) be delighted from such a change -- it means the films they play could get as much mar…

Depends on how you define advertising. It's fundamentally impossible to have a market without marketing. The cinema gets its audience by posting events on Facebook, and that's advertising, right?

Re: For the love of Earth, stop traveling

#27

Post by [deleted] »

mbrock wrote: post #26
coldtea wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you volunteer to be the one to inform business owners and small art house cinema operators that they're now forbidden to engage in any marketing of their goods and services, and all the media that the majority of their revenue is now illegal? Actually, small business owners and small art house cinema operators would (or should) be delighted from such a change -- it means the films they play could get as much mar…

Depends on how you define advertising. It's fundamentally impossible to have a market without marketing. The cinema gets its audience by posting events on Facebook, and that's advertising, right?

[deleted]

Re: For the love of Earth, stop traveling

#28

Post by coldtea »

mbrock wrote: post #26
coldtea wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you volunteer to be the one to inform business owners and small art house cinema operators that they're now forbidden to engage in any marketing of their goods and services, and all the media that the majority of their revenue is now illegal? Actually, small business owners and small art house cinema operators would (or should) be delighted from such a change -- it means the films they play could get as much mar…

Depends on how you define advertising. It's fundamentally impossible to have a market without marketing. The cinema gets its audience by posting events on Facebook, and that's advertising, right?

>The cinema gets its audience by posting events on Facebook, and that's advertising, right?

No, that's just posting their events on their own channel that people have to subscribe to to see.

But even if we classify that as advertising we can still allow that -- we're inventive, as humans -- without still not allowing for 90% of what today is used for advertising.

Re: For the love of Earth, stop traveling

#29

Post by coldtea »

apk-d wrote: post #10
Auricoma wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Making advertising illegal Might as well make money illegal.

I keep coming across this idea and as much as I dislike advertising, I have trouble seeing how making it illegal would reduce consumption. Intuitively, I've always perceived it as a zero sum game. Never heard of anyone who started sitting on top of a pile of cash after installing uBlock either.

>I keep coming across this idea and as much as I dislike advertising, I have trouble seeing how making it illegal would reduce consumption.

There are some books about how the advent of modern mass advertising (and a lot of pushing) made people turn to consumption. I've also remember reading some accounts about how tv strikes (that thus prevent ads being air) resulted in reduced consumption but don't have a reference.

I think it's the same idea behind banning cigarette ads to reduce smoking, and similar to banning very thin models to reduce anorexia etc.

Even if it doesn't work that way, banning advertising could be its own reward!

Re: For the love of Earth, stop traveling

#30

Post by rendall »

siliconc0w wrote: post #16
coldtea wrote: post #2

Or stop consuming so much. Traveling, especially without airplanes (which is perfectly possible in lots of parts of the world -- vacationing to a train/car-accessible country that is), is trivial compared to industrial production of crap. Making advertising illegal would decrease needless consumption (and pollution) by a ton, plus all the benefits for our quality of life.

This would be a cool black mirror episode. All the billboards are just white with large black font: "COKE". "FARMERS INSURANCE". Or maybe instead of brands you just get assigned some short ID. EAT SUGAR CEREAL#21. TV commercials can only have average looking actors dispassionately read off product features that have been empirically validated by a third party. Store shelves just have Dharma Initiative style plain car…

Why was this downvoted? This is amazingly imaginative!
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