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What can I do about climate change?

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Re: What can I do about climate change?

#181

Post by belorn »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #167
mikro2nd wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Bees are almost as intensively farmed as anything else, and, while the effects and outcomes are nowhere near as severe as other forms of intensive husbandry, the honey is not necessarily the pure and innocent product you might think it is. Thankyou for pointing this out. I say the same about almond milk and other products hyped by vegans that are pollinated by bees. The commercial beekeeping industry is horrific. P…

Everytime I have seen a article or documentary on the subject the primary cause of wild bee colonies collapsing it is pesticides and herbicides, commonly used in for example sugarcane plantations.

Would you say that the average bee farming is causing more harm to wild bees than the average sugarcane farmer?

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#182

Post by ElBarto »

pdimitar wrote: post #104
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a fallacy with this type of thinking. It's something to the effect that "the big bad wolf is causing the trouble, therefore, I'm powerless to do anything" The reason corporations do what they do is because they are providing a service to millions of customers at the lowest cost and the highest profits for them. We, consumers, like to shift all the blame to someone else, it lets us continue as we have without…

I, and many others, can definitely do a lot -- but other people have done the math and concluded that we don't amount for anything but a blip in statistics. There is a link in this thread giving the same perspective as well. I'd like the world to start attacking the source of issues top-to-bottom and not bottom-to-top. Can the citizens help? Absolutely. Will they amount for much unless corporations start taking actio…

A very effective way to make corporations take action is citizens making them to.

Are you willing to?

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#183

Post by bskinny129 »

tokyodude wrote: post #39

I don't have a single friend or even. aquaintence who would do any of the top 3 things long the list of 148 most impactful things an individual can do they were 1. have one less kid. I can maybe imagine a friend choosing not to have 3 but I can't imagine someone wanting 2 to go to 1 or someone wanting 1 to go to 0 for this reason 2. go carless Sone friends live in a city that supports a carless lifestyle and already…

This is exactly why I think offsets are a better short-term solution. Don't travel is too big of an ask even for the "eco aware". Would they pay an extra 17 cents to offset their driving that day or $3 for a flight across the US? It is shockingly cheap and much easier to say yes to that change. It isn't as direct as just not traveling in the first place, but will get much more adoption.

I'm working on an app to make a personal travel offset pledge and track your impact publicly. If anyone is interested in keeping in the loop on progress: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#184

Post by Vinnl »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #171
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bees are almost as intensively farmed as anything else, and, while the effects and outcomes are nowhere near as severe as other forms of intensive husbandry, the honey is not necessarily the pure and innocent product you might think it is. Thankyou for pointing this out. I say the same about almond milk and other products hyped by vegans that are pollinated by bees. The commercial beekeeping industry is horrific. P…

Really? We have to be sympathetic to mindless insects now? For instance, folks raise millions of crickets in my state for flour and protein - we eat them - but the bees deserve special empathy because they're not free-range or something? I understand folks like bees, see them in a kindly light. But they're little automatons with maybe a neuron or two total. If we raised them, crushed them and ate them, it'd be no dif…

I think the GP was not referring to the harm to bees as horrific, but to the harm done to our living environment by harming bees.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#185

Post by troyvit »

pdimitar wrote: post #50
joelthelion wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Buy less stuff. This is becoming harder and harder with time. Believe me, I would love to buy my kitchen stove, washing machine, refrigerator, aspirator, air conditioner and vacuum cleaner from a local manufacturer. But there are none. How many household brands do really exist and how many are actually known and bought by almost everyone? Additionally, even if you are an idealist who wants to be the change they wan…

> This is becoming harder and harder with time. Believe me, I would love to buy my kitchen stove, washing machine, refrigerator, aspirator, air conditioner and vacuum cleaner from a local manufacturer. But there are none. How many household brands do really exist and how many are actually known and bought by almost everyone?

Buy used, it's totally worth it!

> Never in my life, not once, have I seen citizens voting actually change anything of significance in a country. Have you? And we're talking less than 10 years here. "These things take time" seems pretty shallow and empty as a justification for things not happening.

Start local. National politics is a distraction anyway; it's your city and state politics that matter. Our town, through a popular measure, banned fracking in the city limits. We got sued and the ban was struck down by the supreme court, but now we pay oil companies to stay out of the city limits. It's money the town spends because its citizens want to stay healthy.

Now there's a statewide proposal on the ballot today that does a similar thing (https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_Proposition_112,_Minimum_Di...). Our town contributed to this proposition. Political action at a local level works.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#186

Post by kiliantics »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #78
pdimitar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Buy less stuff. This is becoming harder and harder with time. Believe me, I would love to buy my kitchen stove, washing machine, refrigerator, aspirator, air conditioner and vacuum cleaner from a local manufacturer. But there are none. How many household brands do really exist and how many are actually known and bought by almost everyone? Additionally, even if you are an idealist who wants to be the change they wan…

Political action is much more than just voting and it's been the major source of social changes in the last 200 years.

Yes, everyone seems to forget how those social changes were brought about: large unionised workforces that threatened strikes that would topple the economy, or mass protests and civil disobedience on similarly threatening scales. Of course, it's much nicer for those in power to have us believe that voting is all you need.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#187

Post by qnsi »

robotsquidward wrote: post #157

Vote. At the ballot box and with your dollar. Tell your friends.

This is the most important action you can take, especially if you live in America. USA should lead, together with Europe, but you chose climate denialist as a president.

https://youtu.be/O34JM4Xdf3g

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#188

Post by dbuder »

pdimitar wrote: post #31
ido wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off-topic but what's wrong with electrical kettles? was her position to not boil water or to use a different kind of kettle? My Kitchen has electric range so I doubt using a non-electric kettle on it would be any more efficient.

The main argument against them was along the veins of that it draws big amounts of wattage in an initial burst and that we must use "slower" and thus allegedly more sustainable tech. Which is ridiculuous because every electrician will tell you that your home-grade fuses and the switchboard of your house/block handle such loads quite well without much additional strain on... anything, really. I quickly wrote her off a…

It is strain on the grid they are worried about I think.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#189

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Vinnl wrote: post #184
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? We have to be sympathetic to mindless insects now? For instance, folks raise millions of crickets in my state for flour and protein - we eat them - but the bees deserve special empathy because they're not free-range or something? I understand folks like bees, see them in a kindly light. But they're little automatons with maybe a neuron or two total. If we raised them, crushed them and ate them, it'd be no dif…

I think the GP was not referring to the harm to bees as horrific, but to the harm done to our living environment by harming bees.

I wondered, but couldn't make sense of that. How is providing commercial bees in bulk a detriment to the environment? When is another bee a problem?

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#190

Post by doombolt »

ForHackernews wrote: post #135
doombolt wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then, truly, you live to benefit some other people's children. Basically you are a monk. Monks also known for not making the difference in all that removing sin business.

Heaven forbid you do something with your life except reproduce, or accidentally help anyone beyond your own progeny...

This is what you say, not me.
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