Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one

worksinprogress.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 164 posts

Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one

#111

Post by jshen »

dbingham wrote: post #102
jshen wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is suggesting people become vegan. You keep constructing strawmen, and proposing things that will in fact dramatically increase the costs of meat and force the things you say you don’t want. It’s non-sensical. “… while shifting to a vegetarian meal one day a week could save the equivalent of driving 1,160 miles.” https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/sustainability...

The root comment had "stop eating eggs, honey, and fish" before "take public transportation". The comment above mine includes eating fake cheese. Come on, it's pretty clear what they're driving at. Also, nowhere have I said I don't want a reduction in meat consumption. In multiple comments I have said that it is a necessary part of the solution, whether by personal choice or driven by market forces as people shift to…

Below is the list you provided, and no where in it do you call for a reduction in meat consumption. You have some weird ax to grind, because telling people to not fly is a far bigger sacrifice than asking them to eat a plant based meal once a day instead of a meat based meal.

Here is you’re list.

“ 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, electric water heater, ec)

4. Don't fly.

5. Dietary changes, but remember to include ecosystem services and impact in your analysis. A little carbon is worth it if it means more land stays free of pesticides and continues to provide for the ecosystem.”

Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one

#112

Post by prmoustache »

willis936 wrote: post #106
prmoustache wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really want to curb co2 emissions significantly, the only effective way would be to nuke the USA, Europe, China and sterilize all but 5% of the remaining world population. Anything else is just greenwashing at this point.

That is not true. The all-or-nothing mentality is why vegetarian purists do little to curb mass meat consumption. We don't need to choose between industrial society and destroying our habitat. We can have both if we're thoughtful about what indulgences we allow.

> We can have both if we're thoughtful about what indulgences we allow.

Which we don't because we fear losing comfort/commodity and can't agree on modalities.

Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one

#113

Post by em-bee »

dqv wrote: post #99
Jill_the_Pill wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do make cloth reusables

The cloth reusables are a little more harsh on the environment for initial acquisition, but I like that if they get holes, I can patch them. I'm not sure how feasible that is with the thicker plastic bags, and a cursory search doesn't bring anything up, but it's worth looking into patching the plastic bags.

duct tape, but now we need to take into account the environmental impact of that.

though the biggest problem with reusable plastic bags is the weakness of the handles. i'd rarely get more than a dozen uses out of a plastic bag before the handle rips. and that is not as easily to fix because of the stresses involved.

also, i feel the math is off, because cloth bags are a lot stronger and they get uses that no plastic bag is even designed for. so the reality is that even if i use plastic bags for shopping, i'd have a cloth bag anyways for other needs. and if i have it already, then using it more comes with zero additional impact.

plastic bags only have less impact on the environment than the cloth bags that i don't already own.

Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one

#114

Post by ZeroGravitas »

dbingham wrote: post #32
jeffbee wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Source please. There's currently a propaganda war between multiple powerful lobbies - the animal rights lobby, the meat producers, conventional ag producers, and more - which means there is a ton of misinformation flying around about the actual environmental impacts of eating meat. Really, of all things dietary. Meanwhile there are a bunch of people exploring alternate agriculture systems through agroecological appro…

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/food-footprints

Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one

#115

Post by waffle_ss »

simple-thoughts wrote: post #15
AstralStorm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's specifically very wrong. It links to this study for that claim:

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa6cd5

Which only looks at greenhouse gas emissions (and only then compares grass feeding to grain feeding), and does NOT consider the effects to local groundwater, surface water, or air quality from CAFOs.

Here's a CDC resource that goes into depth about the swathe of negative effects on local resources CAFOs create: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/docs/understanding_cafos_nalboh...

Besides things like frequent manure spills that pollute surface and groundwater, children living near these CAFOs have elevated rates of asthma.

The piece is very focused on greenhouse gases and the benefits of "economies of scale" but doesn't say a peep about the meltdown of our consolidated food supply when the pandemic subjected it to supply shocks.

Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one

#116

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

seasox wrote: post #108
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s extreme and I think most of your point comes from a belief in being vegan as an ethical way of life rather than from a genuine willingness to limit people environmental impact. The proper way to frame it provided someone has no desire to be vegetarian would be limit your consumption of meat - only eat red meat as an exceptional treat and favour poultry a few times a week - and switch to plant based milk. Eggs…

Honeybees‘ environmental impact: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-...

That’s only an American things. Honey bees are native species where I live. Also foreign honey bees displacing native species are not really what people have in mind when they think of protecting the environment. Just import foreign honey if that makes you feel better.

Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one

#117

Post by BigRedDog1669 »

ryukafalz wrote: post #100
xor99 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but the potential must be possible given existing resources and political systems and not inhuman or utopian. EVs are possible and not utopian for the most part and so you are right. Although the energy crisis will heavily impact manufacture of EVs. Another point: fertility drops massively in cities and this is an environmental concern as you need labour to transition industries at scale (e.g. nuclear plants, s…

Low-traffic neighborhoods, grassy tram tracks for sound dampening, protected bike lanes, etc are also possible and not utopian. We do ourselves a disservice if we think about them as some unattainable ideal. They exist, right now.

Yes, they exist, but are only implemented in very small pockets of neighborhoods in cities across the US and there is usually huge hurdles in expanding them. They seem like window dressing in wealthy neighborhoods rather than as solutions being expanded citywide.

Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one

#118

Post by Jill_the_Pill »

em-bee wrote: post #113
dqv wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cloth reusables are a little more harsh on the environment for initial acquisition, but I like that if they get holes, I can patch them. I'm not sure how feasible that is with the thicker plastic bags, and a cursory search doesn't bring anything up, but it's worth looking into patching the plastic bags.

duct tape, but now we need to take into account the environmental impact of that. though the biggest problem with reusable plastic bags is the weakness of the handles. i'd rarely get more than a dozen uses out of a plastic bag before the handle rips. and that is not as easily to fix because of the stresses involved. also, i feel the math is off, because cloth bags are a lot stronger and they get uses that no plastic…

Well ok, in the "already have it" vein, how about just taking stuff home in the boxes that the store receives its goods in? Ours has a pile near the registers. Then we break them down and use them as sheet mulch.

Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one

#119

Post by xor99 »

BigRedDog1669 wrote: post #117
ryukafalz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low-traffic neighborhoods, grassy tram tracks for sound dampening, protected bike lanes, etc are also possible and not utopian. We do ourselves a disservice if we think about them as some unattainable ideal. They exist, right now.

Yes, they exist, but are only implemented in very small pockets of neighborhoods in cities across the US and there is usually huge hurdles in expanding them. They seem like window dressing in wealthy neighborhoods rather than as solutions being expanded citywide.

Exactly.. and believing that this will distribute evenly across the population magically and solve the issues relating to dense and unhealthy post-climate cities is the kernel of moderate climate-utopic thinking. Sure these interventions exist but so do Ferraris. They may or may not scale.

Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one

#120

Post by b3morales »

gruez wrote: post #73
b3morales wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on what proper disposal looks like?

landfill (properly engineered and regulated[1]) or incineration. [1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40/chapter-I/subchapter-I...

Interesting, thanks.
Post reply on HN