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Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

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Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#211

Post by Tadpole9181 »

zhann_dc wrote: post #9
WarmWash wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not much of a surprise. Government action has been anemic at best. Industry action (overall) has been net negative. And individual action has switched to just holding governments and industry responsible. Which basically amounts to giving up. "Welp, just gonna buy this truck, enjoy my burgers, set the AC at 68 and fly on all vacations this year because it's nothing compared to Big Oil."

Well, truth be told.. It _is_ nothing compared to Big Oil.

Using corporate externalities to trivialize individual contribution is utter nonsense, though. Coke does not make plastic bottles because they think it's fun. Big oil executives don't just fill big Scrooge McDuck swimming pools of the black stuff.

Individuals purchase products from companies, driving that demand. Then are absolutely unwilling to make even the tiniest, temporary sacrifices to demand those companies reduce those externalities.

Hell, half of these individuals don't even both to vote. That's straight-up the bare minimum participation trophy level of effort.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#212

Post by zdragnar »

vincnetas wrote: post #178
drfloyd51 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religious and too poor to eat meat. Not exactly selling the idea of “strict vegan diet” to a bunch of people with enough cash for meat and incisors in their jaws. You got any examples of cultures en mass with “strict vegan diets” because lentils taste delicious?

why does it matter why they eat vegan? they just demonstrate that its feasable.

Because the incentive is what drives change. You're not going to convince America or Western Europe to live strict vegan lifestyles if they are adverse to it. Further, as the poor people grow wealthier, they begin to eat more meat unless they have a religious reason (I.e. an incentive) to do so.

Converting to a vegan diet alone won't stop human driven climate change. Therefore, the prospect of climate change won't be enough to convince people to give up meat en masse. That drum has been banged on enough for long enough for that to be obvious.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#213

Post by chrisnight »

drfloyd51 wrote: post #75
sagarm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need cars because we designed our environments to require them. It was a choice, not an inevitability.

And here we are. Needing cars. Unless you want to spend the big money of rebuilding cities.

To be clear, the money is already being spent, it’s just a question of what we make the priority. Even just keeping the current roads useable costs billions of dollars, let alone the amount of money spent on highway expansion (which, due to induced demand, causes even more traffic).

In 30 years, every road that exists currently will have been replaced. The question is if it should be replaced with another road, or should some of them have larger sidewalks, bike lanes, bus lanes. Amsterdam has been doing this for decades and it’s going very well. They spent money that would’ve been spent rebuilding a road on making it a better general transportation option.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#214

Post by xienze »

b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #95
Smoofer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh a lot of people need trucks for their work

Yeah? We need millions of personal, individual trucks? For work, of course, ignore all those white collar job parking lots full of extended cab pickups that get 10mpg.

Have you considered that sometimes people buy automobiles that can accommodate multiple use cases? Just because you don't need to haul hundreds of pounds of supplies every single day doesn't mean that you don't need to do it a couple times a month, or sometimes every day for short bursts of time.

With vehicles being as expensive as they are, some people prioritize the one vehicle that can suit their regular _as well as_ occasional needs.

To put it into terms this crowd might understand better, to a lot of regular people the wildly expensive and overpowered computing hardware we own seems like a ridiculous waste. And certainly, we don't need all that horsepower every minute of the day. But we need it from time to time.

I can see what you're about to say though: those people who buy trucks should just drive some crappy little three cylinder for day-to-day use and rent a truck when they need it. To which I'd ask, how would you react if someone who knew absolutely nothing about what you do on a daily basis told you that you should just buy a dinky little Chromebook and spin up a beefy EC2 instance every time you need some horsepower?

Maybe you don't understand people's needs and motivations as much as you think you do. And this is frankly where a lot of resentment to the climate action stuff comes from. A lot of know-it-alls lecturing people on how their lifestyle is completely idiotic based on very little understanding of how those people might actually be living their lives.

"I see a pickup truck with nothing in the back, therefore in my expert opinion you don't need it."

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#215

Post by hallole »

guy200 wrote: post #173
jkahrs595 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget eating meat, the easiest thing to stop doing (people needs cars and trucks for work, they don’t need cheeseburgers). People can’t be bothered to make any changes, it’s always someone else’s problem. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/27/meat-gas...

Even mildly advocating for veganism as a vegan would be infuriating if it wasn’t so comedic. The mental contortions that even intelligent people will put themselves into in order to either avoid the topic or keep their head in the sand are truly something to behold. And ultimately it often feels like arguing with a past version of yourself, who perhaps held some of the same views.

I just don't advocate, at least not without prompting; it's too maddening. That I'm vegan often becomes known naturally, and once it's established, people in the know tend to start bringing it up on their own. I hardly ever go into advocacy unprompted. I think this is more effective. Just by being present, you might spark the thoughts that lead someone to changing their mind... :)

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#216

Post by breuleux »

fullshark wrote: post #22
ThrowawayIP wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technology-will-save-us mentality is part of the reason we are here. We live in a society that doesn't do anything unless it makes money for some set of decrepit old men. We had the means to avoid this (strict vegan diets, ground based mass transit, dense development & re-wilding, energy transition) but people made money doing the opposite. And more people made money sabotaging solar+battery pricing in the US. So…

Technology is more feasible than politically driven "degrowth" or any of the other proposals.

Would it work as well, though? The basic idea of "degrowth", to me, is to slow down the car until the braking distance is smaller than the viewing distance, so we're safe no matter what. Whereas technology is more like swerving constantly to avoid obstacles. The latter is just intrinsically more likely to get us into a crash.

I'm not saying degrowth is feasible, mind you. I agree that it probably isn't. But the fact we can't do something doesn't mean the alternatives must be good. It might just mean we're cooked.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#217

Post by kubelsmieci »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #91
epistasis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't, the idea that strict vegan diets would have stoped climate change is just nonsense. Run the numbers. "Strict vegan diets" is the attitude of US activists telling the developing world that they need to change their behavior before the US activist is willing to accept driving less or adopting dense urban infill housing. "Making money" is the incentive system of society. Technology has now aligned society's…

> People who refused to acknowledge the reality of human society, refused to acknowledge that the profit system exists whether they want it to or not, are responsible for focusing action on ineffective means of change. Thank you for writing that, because I think it is the key point. It's very easy to blame "decrepit old men" because that makes it someone else's fault - and I get it, as I think that there are a bunch…

That's simply not true. Politicians have always known how to convince young men to go to war and die for them. Nothing is more selfless. So politicians could also convince people to change their lifestyles for the worse to prevent catastrophe.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#218

Post by lukeify »

ch4s3 wrote: post #168
fullshark wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology is more feasible than politically driven "degrowth" or any of the other proposals.

No country will ever vote for degrowth so it either has to be done secretively which will cause a populist backlash like in the UK or at gun point. Degrowthers are IMO all basically eco fascists.

The reality of the situation is if you don’t embrace degrowth principles, the planet will probably do it for you. Think mega-wildfores that cause so much devastation that hundreds of thousands of people die from air pollution, or collapse of entire crops and food supply chains due to drought, or mega-heatwaves that wipe out millions.

Degrowth is coming. And you don’t have a say in the matter.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#219

Post by Faaak »

internet2000 wrote: post #171

It's hard to have people use data in these types of conversations, so I'll just link two charts. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita and https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re... Notice which countries are going down. Notice which countries are going up.

That's such a narrow minded point of view. Yeah, who produces your laptop ? Your lawnmower ? Heck, even your knifes ?

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#220

Post by rrr_oh_man »

croes wrote: post #184
epistasis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't, the idea that strict vegan diets would have stoped climate change is just nonsense. Run the numbers. "Strict vegan diets" is the attitude of US activists telling the developing world that they need to change their behavior before the US activist is willing to accept driving less or adopting dense urban infill housing. "Making money" is the incentive system of society. Technology has now aligned society's…

> "Making money" is the incentive system of society. Then explain voluntary work or all the people risking their lives for other people they don’t even know. Human society existed before money. And nobody said that a vegan diet would have stopped climates change, they said strict vegan diets, ground based mass transit, dense development & re-wilding, energy transition. Just picking one and say that would help is a na…

> Human society existed before money.

That is a very broad claim that can be challenged easily.

Maybe it would make more sense to say: "Money is not everything, and pockets of altruism exist"?

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