211–220 of 525 posts
The article wasn't very clear, how does extinction of one million species affect my well being?
Will you enjoy your life transporting pollen with a paintbrush? https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/5193-De...
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Dude, none of the things what you suggest would make any impact. For me, personally - but those were kind of personal suggestions. I haven't flown anywhere in three years, and certainly don't visit conferences. "- Start working part time, and part of that part time remotely. Reduce your commute. " Uh, what? I commute by bike and with the bus in the winter. I don't really see how stopping that would contribute. "- If…
Nope, you just have reached the point that others haven't yet. Your carbon footprint is much lower than theirs for sure and trying to convince someone with a higher footprint to change will be vastly more efficient than trying to squeeze the last kilogram of carbon emission reduction out of your own life. Thanks for the effort by the way!
That might be true. But I'm under the impression that:
- Flying is often said to be the biggest individual climate-harming action by individuals.
- Most people, even in the West, are kind of poor and haven't flown anywhere in the last decade.
- Most people, even in the West, don't have "investments" unless you count a measly pension they don't have much control over anyway.
- The mobile phone market is struggling because people aren't upgrading as consistently as they used to, older handsets are good enough, and newer ones aren't special enough. People have enough spares now that they pass old ones on to their poorer friends.
If that impression is accurate, perhaps others are generally closer to the emissions levels reached by the GP commenter.
Some other areas for improvement may be car use, home energy and food, as these are all things which can be significantly improved. I imagine most people (in the West) still drive a lot, have woefully inefficient homes, and buy food based on price and appeal rather than climate impact.
I have a theory, and I have no evidence to back this theory up. The increases in anxiety in the general public over the last decade or so is in large part to people knowing we're on an unsustainable path. We're all collectively marching towards the edge of the cliff to jump off together. More people than ever have anxiety because we subconsciously (or consciously) know this. We're unsustainable with how we pollute an…
What's the theory? So far you just stated a premise...
That's the theory, or at least that's how I read it.
Is a globalized, industrial economy is still considered “progress”? I haven’t seen the stars in over a decade. We’ve lost so much. > We need to link it to human well-being, that’s the crucial thing. Otherwise we’re going to look like a bunch of tree-huggers God forbid someone thinks you love nature.
The current forms of government we have in most countries seem to reward only economical success. Any attempts to tackle any environmental issues are invariantly watered down, postponed, or downright dismissed because enacting them has consequences for the electorate, and a large part of the electorate is willing to vote for parties or people that don't quite feel the urgency, or even downright deny the need to act.…
It's not the form of government, it's not the form of society, it's a psychological vulnerability that has been exacerbated by the invention of agriculture, currency, paper money, and now digital money. It's about accumulation of goods as a hedge against future insecurity, when the irony is that the pursuit of the accumulation of goods and earthly wealth is exactly the thing that has given rise to constant change, from which insecurity arises. It's literally because we cannot collectively chill the fuck out. There's a game theoretic problem in that defectors from the "chill" have a leg up on the chillers and get more money, wealth, goods, social cred, sexual mates, etc. The more humans there are, the worse it all gets.
And it will just go boom. Planet scale.
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The next U.S. federal election is an excellent opportunity to address climate change. Ensure that the Democratic primary chooses a leader with a good plan, and then ensure that he/she wins in 2020.
Except it's also not. As a continent, Asia is the largest polluter by far. What's worst, they're exporting those practices to Africa. Meanwhile, the Anglo-West is hyper-focused on the US because there's a president they don't like. This has been a blessing (now the average Anglo-Westerner at least pretends to care about the environment), but also a curse (they think the US is the only country that can save humanity).
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I believe this is an incredibly dangerous attitude. Kudos that you're doing your part, and leading by example is important. However, systemic change is possible. We have numerous counter-examples: the UN, the Montreal protocol, free trade deals, et cetera. So why don't we have systemic change for climate change, because people like you and I let our politicians get away with it! If it was obvious to politicians that…
Maybe I wasn't very clear. I am not against systemic change. Surely we need to keep pushing for it. It's not either/or. We should use every method we can. On the other hand, recently I've been thinking about this. According to some theory it takes about 3.5% of the population to take part in active resistance to cause change ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=YJSehRlU34w ). Now, 3.5% is clearly not a m…
This is something I hope people will soon recognize on a much broader scale. We should forget about fuel cells vs. batteries, wind vs. solar vs. nuclear, CO2 capture or not, etc.
We need all of the emission reduction technologies we can muster ASAP.
We keep hearing that individual actions don't matter and that we need a system change instead. I used to hold the same opinion for the very long time. However, since recently I started to turn around. For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. What makes us think it will be any different in the coming years. Scientists keep producing report after repor…
This. And also: The environment is an awesome way for people to virtue signal how much they care. But the fact is the real world consequences of what most environmentalists ask for would seriously affect the way of life they have. Politicians know this. Any serious attempt to change anything will not get you votes and out of government. That is not the governments fault. That is not the corporations fault. That is ev…
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I believe this is an incredibly dangerous attitude. Kudos that you're doing your part, and leading by example is important. However, systemic change is possible. We have numerous counter-examples: the UN, the Montreal protocol, free trade deals, et cetera. So why don't we have systemic change for climate change, because people like you and I let our politicians get away with it! If it was obvious to politicians that…
Maybe I wasn't very clear. I am not against systemic change. Surely we need to keep pushing for it. It's not either/or. We should use every method we can. On the other hand, recently I've been thinking about this. According to some theory it takes about 3.5% of the population to take part in active resistance to cause change ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=YJSehRlU34w ). Now, 3.5% is clearly not a m…
So let's just imagine some chunk of this group starts engaging in civil disobedience and so on. You'd need less than 12% participating to hit that magic 3.5% from which it supposedly literally "never fails" according to our researcher. So now what? Clearly we're not going to now just go overturn Roe vs Wade. And even if we did it would create even more chaos. The protests themselves would also likely lead to violence due to the inevitable emergence of counter protesters. It may be the case that 3.5% works in some cases, but that's going to need to come with several asterisks after it to clarify what, when, where, why, how, and against whom.
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>quick google search reveal the bee is important for pollination. I suspect that you might not be the best informed person out there.
Ok, can u elaborate ? you mention about bees. I response that bee might be able to be replaced by some other method.
edit - please don't let this dissuade you from googling information on basic subjects. But also be aware that if you find yourself doing so, then you know very little on the subject and cannot at all rely on intuition.
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The US gets the attention because they’re the only powerful country fighting against the sort of collective action we need to take.
Would you mind substantiating that claim a bit? It seems false on the face of it, but I don’t want to strawman your argument just to shoot it down if there’s more to it. Russia and China are not fighting against the sort of collective action we need to take?