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We are not sustainable

frame.work

51–60 of 138 posts

Re: We are not sustainable

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know anti-car attitudes annoy some people, but we really should drive this home(pun not intended but taken advantage of). People keep using "a tank of gas" as a fungible, graspable unit of carbon emissions while not realising reducing that very thing often has an out-sized impact on carbon emission, sometimes more than other things like reusing clothes, internet usage of this or that services or saas, and so on. Tr…

When I've pointed out to people that if they really want to be green then they should stop driving their car, I got a response along the lines of "the top ten producers of CO2 are all private companies. It's not about changing public behaviours, it's about regulating corporate behaviours". I never buy this, because corporate behaviours are driven by the market, which is driven by public behaviours. If we all stopped…

That's the great thing about 'game theory'. The rules can so easily be set up to funnel 'players' inexorably into "WarGames"-like resolutions. I.e., no matter how well the game is played, everyone loses (phrased rather more effectively in the movie, though).

Realistically, though, the comparatively slow march - in "WarGames" terms, but not human lifespan terms - towards the conclusion for our species, clearly won't result in equal losing over given near-term timeframes. That is almost certainly one of the calculations* for some players who continue to push destructive patterns.

Human activity (think economic) is incredibly interdependent as well as massively interwoven with an incredible array of aspects of our planet. There are always 'externalities' - i.e., the cost of goods and services probably ALWAYS (even in really 'primitive' economies) is missing a little bit in the accounting, so-to-speak. For example, when Virginia was fairly well-settled by Europeans, with many of the original inhabitants pushed out, tobacco was king. But growing tobacco is very hard on the land - tobacco is a crop that depletes soil very quickly. The solution, at the time, was to just develop a new plot after several years. Land was absurdly abundant from the perspective of the colonists of the time - and people like Lord Fairfax had tremendous tracts (his represented a substantial part of the current state). All of the decades and centuries that went into producing soil that led to great tobacco production was an externality. The environment, original inhabitants of all types (including ALL organisms), etc. contributed to ... or, perhaps better, SUBSIDIZED the tobacco production for those who moved in. And those who moved in generally never paid any of that back. It did cause problems for some, and people did switch crops grown over time ... were generally forced to adopt more sustainable practices ... (as well as ceasing, ultimately, other ways of externalizing costs generally FAR more reprehensible), but, the debt wasn't really repaid in just about any real way be those responsible. And, who actually, in some sense, effectively stole (beyond all of the other shades and types of stealing in the whole story, as we might frame it today) a massive amount of 5hit that it's not clear they had such a 'right to'.

All of this can get quite complicated, and that itself illustrates some of the problem - there is no 'analytical solution'. There are always trade-offs of various types, and practical 'solutions' come together one way or another over time. But, a lot of current issues don't have the solution of 'just move to another plot', no matter what dimwits like Musk think or say. And, even those who have some conscience and conscientiousness are always faced with the sort of impossible problems of ethics you are touching on. But, the passage of time will always lead to practical solutions - one way or another.

* Or part of a set of rationalizations, for those with a conscience of some sort - possibly even coupled w/ true delusions or grandeur, such as saving the species as a whole. Likely delusional in some heads, outright dishonesty in others.

Re: We are not sustainable

#52
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I've pointed out to people that if they really want to be green then they should stop driving their car, I got a response along the lines of "the top ten producers of CO2 are all private companies. It's not about changing public behaviours, it's about regulating corporate behaviours". I never buy this, because corporate behaviours are driven by the market, which is driven by public behaviours. If we all stopped…

Nobody wants to sacrifice anything, and yet that's exactly what is needed from humanity. Can't even change the small things, as we see through outrage over plastic straws still, nevermind trying to get people to eat less meat. I will add however that oil companies wouldn't stop processing so much oil right away, they will do what desperate powers do which is cling to remaining power as tightly as they can. This isn't…

A survey sticks in my mind; it found that people were considerably more willing to pay higher taxes if they trusted everyone else would pay their share too. I think the same lesson can be applied here. Nobody wants to personally make big sacrifices while everyone else is living large, and I can’t blame them.

If the producer has to deal with the problem and prices rise, no one can opt out of sharing the burden.

Re: We are not sustainable

#53
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to get rid of it, multiple months for a good-as-new product is long enough to suggest they just keep it and give you the full money back instead. Laws may be different where you live, I'm not a lawyer, but that should work

I suppose the laws where I am don’t work in my favour. I firmly insisted I get a refund after about 45 days, but they flatly refused and shortly after agreed to a replacement. I still don’t have that, though.

I would never take a vendor’s word for what the laws are. Many will simply violate the law, and see what they can get away with.

Look up your local consumer protection laws, and see if their behavior is allowed. If not, write to them demanding the refund, citing to the specific consumer protection laws, and informing them that if they don’t resolve the issue your next step is to file a complaint with your state AG.

Edit: to make this slightly more useful, you can search “(your state) uniform commercial code”, and you can look at this resource for a quick summary of the UCC obligation on a manufacturer: https://www.mclane.com/insights/know-the-law-uniform-commerc...

I could see an AG complaint prompting them to complete the replacement soon.

Re: We are not sustainable

#55
Everyone forgets the first two Rs of conservation. Buying one electronic gadget and holding on to it for 5-7 years or longer, including being able to make repairs and upgrades, is vastly better for the planet then getting that new iDevice every year or two and feeling better about yourself because it is advertised as "sustainably made".

Re: We are not sustainable

#57
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Studio Display has a 1 year warranty. Absolutely take it back for a new one.

They refused to replace it for quite a while and just recently agreed to replace it, but that was a week ago. It’s been a brutal customer service experience. It got 2 new logic boards while they tried to track down the problem. At this point I still don’t know when I’ll have a working display in my possession.

You could consider filing in small claims court.

Re: We are not sustainable

#58
Cost aside, is an i5 cpu and nvme laptop from 6yrs ago noticably underperformant enough to consider an upgrade under standard web browing and document editing workloads?

I think plastic-free metallic casing is a big deal for ewaste. But also, SoC convergence is a terrible thing. It would have been nice if components were modular.

Imagine if the 4g/5g, bluetooth and wifi modules if the billions of phones out there could be reused. Even CPU and memory might be reused on servers.

From a security perspective as well, the whole VM thing isn't working out. If server racks had like 100 cpus each with dedicated 4GB ram all in 2U, you can pin a process per cpu/related ram, but the best part is if the components are reused from consumer devices, they might be dirt cheap, and you can build a much more reliable setup where cpu/ram failing just means reduced capacity until you hotplug more.

Re: We are not sustainable

#59
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> out of a total estimated 200kg - roughly 86L of gasoline Five year CO2 production roughly equivalent to two tanks of gas in a honda civic. It's not nothing, but if you're looking to reduce your CO2 footprint I'm not sure this is what I'd look towards as the low hanging fruit for just about anyone who can afford their product. For instance for most people driving less, or driving smaller vehicles, would be far more…

I know anti-car attitudes annoy some people, but we really should drive this home(pun not intended but taken advantage of). People keep using "a tank of gas" as a fungible, graspable unit of carbon emissions while not realising reducing that very thing often has an out-sized impact on carbon emission, sometimes more than other things like reusing clothes, internet usage of this or that services or saas, and so on. Tr…

I don’t have the numbers for US wildfires this year. But the emission caused by the wildfires in Canada this year was about 2x the annual emissions generated by transportation.

Re: We are not sustainable

#60
post #58

Cost aside, is an i5 cpu and nvme laptop from 6yrs ago noticably underperformant enough to consider an upgrade under standard web browing and document editing workloads? I think plastic-free metallic casing is a big deal for ewaste. But also, SoC convergence is a terrible thing. It would have been nice if components were modular. Imagine if the 4g/5g, bluetooth and wifi modules if the billions of phones out there cou…

Web browsing is rough on my circa-2015 laptop.
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