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What can I do about climate change?

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151–160 of 243 posts

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#151
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yeah, that's basically equivalent to saying that you'd save money by running an internal combustion engine at home, rather than buying electricity from the grid. Sounds unlikely - although there are potential savings to be had if you take into account the heat generated, which is lost from the powerplant but a household could use it for heating - check out mCHP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_combined_heat_…

It's more like saying that you'd save fuel by running an equivalent ICE at home. You'd be unlikely to save money , because of economies of scale.

But I imagine that fuel is the vast majority of the cost, at least operational cost... and the initial investment is also at least to some extent dependent on the resources used (energy, matter).

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#152

This graphic give a pretty good summary of the relative impact: https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hire...

This is really a very good infographic - The biggest way we can impact climate change as individuals is to have fewer children. Yet, in most discussions I've seen, we talk about hybrid cars and vegetarian diet!

This sounds a lot like the stale argument that dying can reduce CO2 emissions.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really a very good infographic - The biggest way we can impact climate change as individuals is to have fewer children. Yet, in most discussions I've seen, we talk about hybrid cars and vegetarian diet!

This sounds a lot like the stale argument that dying can reduce CO2 emissions.

But the opposite is the argument that population increase/decrease is completely out of our control, which is just false.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#154
post #17

> 9. But if I eat less meat or take fewer flights, that’s just me – how much of a difference can that really make? > > Actually, it’s not just you. Social scientists have found that when one person makes a sustainability-oriented decision, other people do too. This is the thing that still gives me hope. Try to do good, and people will notice - and, without so much as telling others to something, they will emulate you…

Anecdotal, but I went vegan 3 years ago and in those 3 years, quite a few of my very close friends went vegan or vegetarian as well. It really does give me a lot of hope. Even my parents started eating meat a lot less, basically only for big events and startet using oat milk for their coffee!

Have you been finding the jokes regarding vegans forcing veganism on others to be on the decline or is it still pretty bad?

If that sort of 'stigma' goes away I would imagine a lot more people would be going vegetarian/vegan.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, electric kettles are sort of a problem for british energy system which had someone watching BBC 1 and 2 for a decade (IIRC) in the evenings so they could handle peaks in a national grid at the very first minute of pauses between shows.

As I mentioned in another sibling comment here -- that's not my problem. I pay my bills and the rest is for them to figure out. I work, I buy my tech fairly, I don't see what else I could do. I am not a law regulator, I am not a technician, I am not an environmentalist. I buy tech because it helps me save time and effort in my busy day. It's the corps and the governments responsibility to make sure the tech is eco-fr…

> It's the corps and the governments responsibility to make sure

* that my car doesn't do 70mph in 20mph school zones * that my gun doesn't go off when I'm pointing it at someone innocent etc.

> I buy my tech fairly, I don't see what else I could do.

Have some personal responsibility and seek out eco-friendly tech to buy.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#156
post #6

This article's quality is higher than many others on the same topic and that's a pleasant surprise. That being said, I can't help being reminded about German language lessons I had ~10 years ago where the teacher was preaching that we must all ditch electric kettles for the sake of the planet. I asked her how is this going to help -- even if 100_00 people do it today -- if corporations are happy to let toxic waste se…

As the article mentions, individuals can do something about corporate pollution: - Buy less stuff. Corporations produce waste because we buy their stuff . Get the stuff you still buy from more environmentally-friendly companies, if possible. - Political action. Corporations need to be regulated and that can only happen through political action. Lobbies may have a lot of power, but in the end, it's the citizens who vo…

Stop travelling to work.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#158
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> startet using oat milk for their coffee Are you and they using honey or white sugar from farmed sugarcanes? For the environment sake I wish that vegan diet would include honey as it has a big net-positive effect on the environment compared to farmed sugarcanes by not causing eutrophication or water pollution, and helps with pollination both for wild forests and agriculture.

While I'm with you on the issue of honey vs. sugar, it's not quite so simple... Where's that honey coming from? Locally harvested? Great! But likely not the bulk of supply. Supermarket honey? Transported from Goodness Knows Where -- very likely China or Chile, where the bees are intensively fed... (you guessed it!) sugar! That's why the honey is so flavourless, not to mention the Carbon footprint of all those honey-k…

Locally harvested is the only good option, but I would like to comment that when food is bought at lowest offer then you are likely to pay carbon-kilometres regardless if its corn, avocado, olive oil or what have you. Cheapest product in a global economy means that transportation cost is simply part of the competition to press prices down, and food prices has almost not moved at all in the last 50 years.

But for honey in particular I would say its is even more important to buy locally. It is better, safer, and better for the environment. Mixed honey has none of the unique taste that specific environments can create (my personal favorite is pollen from mixed coniferous forest, preferable with a gps coordinate to the hive). Imported mixed honey also share the same problem that plague olive oil, which is food fraud. Because honey is expensive it often get mixed with cheaper syrups or worse stuff. From a ecological perspective it is also good if the colonies are in areas that need pollination, which locally harvested usually are. Bonus points if its a small business by someone personally invested in it.

As for costs, the difference in prices from cheapest to expensive locally produced ones is normally for me about $1-2 dollar per jar. It such a small increase that just the security against food fraud is worth it (assuming you trust the local producer).

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#159
post #149

Nothing. Climate change happens with or without humans. I'm so sick of the climate change fearmongering already. What we will do is adapt, like we always have. The earth is always in a state of "climate change". Humans have experienced experienced climate change for much of our existence. We even lived through a "global warming" and a "little ice age" just a few hundred years ago. https://www.britannica.com/science/L…

Your argument is:

- Contradicting almost all of current science on the topic, without even a cursory attempt to make an argument for such a vast conspiracy

- Extrapolating from a grand total of one example (Malthus), without explaining why that should be relevant 200 years later. You could just as easily point to predictions of doom before each world war, and marvel how accurately those came true.

- Engaging in the good ol' it-is-therefore-it-ought fallacy: just stating that we survived the little ice age does not negate the suffering it caused. "Widespread crop failure, famine, and mass death" certainly don't sound like something I'd want to risk just to avoid the minimal changes in lifestyle this article lists.

- Using references that actually contradict it: Did you read your wikipedia link on "Global Cooling"? It does an excellent job of showing that the idea was simply one possibility arising from the nascent realisation that humans affect climate. The uncertainty was communicated in the relevant documents, and this period of competing possibilities only lasted around eight years, far less than the current consensus.

- Drawing distinctions without a difference: At this point, adaptation and prevention have started to merge. Is eating less meat intended to lower methane levels and energy usage, or trying to prevent erosion and deforestation? The former are preventative, the latter both preventative as well as adaptive.

- ...going complete off the deep in the end. As in "How many kids, vacations, cars, etc are created because BBC exists?", a sentence that makes me understand how my dog feels when they tilt their head just so, and look at me with their big, questioning eyes.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We, consumers, like to shift all the blame to someone else, An analogue: committing a crime is punishable, inciting it in some cases may be. It is the companies who dig up fossil fuels and use them --- "consumers told me to do it" is not an excuse that absolves from responsibility. Those trading in fossil fuels do what they do on their own accord, for financial gain, and hence carry the responsibility.

As long as all the world requires increasingly more energy, there will be political support and policies which allow the extraction of fossil fuels. This is the situation we have now. The companies digging up fossil fuel would go out of business if there was no demand for fossil fuels. The problem is that the change in behaviour that this demands is great: ever thought about selling your car? or paying twice as much…

Go further: ever thought about turning off your computers and not carrying a smartphone that requires charging every day? The internet and related hardware consume an ever-increasing percentage of total electrical output. We could just turn it all off if we were serious about climate change. Nothing really bad would happen. Seriously.
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