Two that I hear constantly: rooftop solar and urban gardening (or "farming" if you must). Both are ecological catastrophes when they prevent the effective use of cities to house people in energy-efficient buildings with low demand for transportation. Protecting rooftop solar with "solar access rights" is something that some find superficially green but is actually ruinous.
Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
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Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#12Although "environmentally friendly" is not strictly equal to "minimum possible GHG footprint". The plastic bag may have a lower carbon footprint, but it isn't going to biodegrade as quickly, and may end up turning into microplastics that persist for a long time.
The point is to reuse for ages a tough plastic bag rather than use single use bags.
I have 5 reusable bags that I've used for a few years.
That means I've used them maybe 100 times. Now they're starting to fall apart, and soon I'll need new ones.
I wonder, since they're much heavier and clearly use a lot more plastic, whether I would have used less plastic with the disposable ones.
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#13Don‘t think about microwave vs. stove. Instead, do the following: 1. stop buying meat 2. stop eating meat 3. stop buying dairy-based products 4. stop eating dairy-based products 5. stop eating eggs, honey, fish 6. use public transport, if possible 7. don‘t fly, if possible Congrats, you now are an environmentalist.
Let's say you could convince an extra 10% of the world to follow those rules, and that it doesn't cause a rebound effect (as per the Jevons paradox). How much extra time would that buy us before an unstoppable climate catastrophe?
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#14Don‘t think about microwave vs. stove. Instead, do the following: 1. stop buying meat 2. stop eating meat 3. stop buying dairy-based products 4. stop eating dairy-based products 5. stop eating eggs, honey, fish 6. use public transport, if possible 7. don‘t fly, if possible Congrats, you now are an environmentalist.
Congrats, you are actually just an inconsequential stooge. Environmental corruption and depletion is not a consumer problem, at least not directly. It is a product of industrial production processes. Eat meat, eat dairy, preserve your health and your brain in doing so, and find ways to create industry that is clean, that would make you an environmentalist... maybe... if you successfully altered the system.
Stop pretending like climate change is created by consumers and can be controlled by "turning your lights off."
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#15An “effective environmentalism” might be a good meme to attempt a rebrand of nuclear, microwaves, and factory farming. But there’s nothing about how to prevent effective environmentalism from becoming performative just like how the author notes environmentalism has.
Factory farming does not get to be put in there, eating animals is very expensive ecologically. Only agriculture.
Factory farming animals is specifically mentioned in the article as causing less environmental damage than organic or cage free methods. Whether true or not doesn’t prevent effective environmentalism from becoming as performative as environmentalism.
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#16Don‘t think about microwave vs. stove. Instead, do the following: 1. stop buying meat 2. stop eating meat 3. stop buying dairy-based products 4. stop eating dairy-based products 5. stop eating eggs, honey, fish 6. use public transport, if possible 7. don‘t fly, if possible Congrats, you now are an environmentalist.
If you live in the US, your order is wrong. 1. Walk or bike. 1a. If you can't do the above, use public transport. 1b. If you can't do that, consider moving to a city where you can do all of the above (if you can afford it). If you're rural, seek a land trust or farmer to buy your land when you do. 2. Insulate your house. 3. Get solar if you can afford it. 3a. Replace all gas appliances with electric (Heat pump, elect…
Dramatically reducing meat consumption is the single best thing the average westerner could do to limit their environmental impact. Why did you remove it?
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#17This is what happens when you optimize for only a single variable. And the end result won't be what you want it to be. It doesn't do us any good to stop climate change if the ecosystem still collapses out from under us. Creating a sustainable environment is a systems problem and carbon is just one of many variables in that system. Yes, it's a really important one and in many ways it is the most pressing. But biodiver…
By the way, this is exactly what a climate change denier would write, except that that would talk about collapsing the economy if we focused too much on reducing carbon emissions.
The truth is reducing CO2 emissions is an emergency, and any other environmental considerations other than doing that is just arguing about deck chairs on the Titanic.
At this point, we would have been in a much better position if the Greens had no been so rabidly anti-nuclear. Germany is restarting coal plants now.
At some point, as the article argues, following “environmental intuitions” is self-defeating.
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#18Don‘t think about microwave vs. stove. Instead, do the following: 1. stop buying meat 2. stop eating meat 3. stop buying dairy-based products 4. stop eating dairy-based products 5. stop eating eggs, honey, fish 6. use public transport, if possible 7. don‘t fly, if possible Congrats, you now are an environmentalist.
If you live in the US, your order is wrong. 1. Walk or bike. 1a. If you can't do the above, use public transport. 1b. If you can't do that, consider moving to a city where you can do all of the above (if you can afford it). If you're rural, seek a land trust or farmer to buy your land when you do. 2. Insulate your house. 3. Get solar if you can afford it. 3a. Replace all gas appliances with electric (Heat pump, elect…
Burning 1 gallon of motor gasoline emits the same carbon as producing 1.3lb of finished beef. Flying once from U.S. to Europe has the same GHG impact as producing 80 pounds of beef. For a typical U.S. household, transportation is a bigger source of greenhouse gas emissions than food.
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#19The author confuse being environmentalist with trying to reduce her carbon footprint.
Environment is not all about carbon footprint. Reducing...or rather not increasing as much global warming doesn't help reducing the 7th continent or the micro plastics/graphene/whatever life threatening microscopic waste we are sending in the environment.
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#20An “effective environmentalism” might be a good meme to attempt a rebrand of nuclear, microwaves, and factory farming. But there’s nothing about how to prevent effective environmentalism from becoming performative just like how the author notes environmentalism has.
Factory farming does not get to be put in there, eating animals is very expensive ecologically. Only agriculture.
I don't think the author, or anyone who eats meat (and is intellectually honest and invested in environmental impact), is trying to argue that it's not expensive. But if you've already made the ethical choice that you still want to eat meat, it's worthwhile to study what methods for producing it are less impactful and more sustainable.