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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

#131

Post by nyokodo »

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…

> if i have it already, then using it more comes with zero additional impact.

Except using it more means more wear and tear which means replacing it sooner. So unfortunately it doesn’t make the math easier.

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

#132

Post by s17n »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #17
dbingham wrote: post #5

This 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 Green…

"Environmentalism" didn't originally have anything to do with preserving human life. If you don't regard the preservation of human life/civilization as the goal, what's the argument for CO2 emissions being an emergency?

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

#133

Post by jshen »

yesco wrote: post #129
jshen wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, no where in your list of what we should do did you include meat consumption. When you talk about these methods, that are unproven at scale, you do NOT mention the implications regarding the amount of meat that can be produced that way. My suggestion that people eat one less meat based meal per day is far less drastic that if all meat was produced with the methods you are advocating. Yet, you imply that I am th…

Not him, but I think I can provide a blunt answer, though I'll caveat that it is likely different than what he may have provided, and one you will probably not like: I do not take people requesting me to eat less meat seriously. My family, my friends, my colleagues not only do not take you seriously, we have in fact already stopped listening to you. The internet over represents vegans, so you and many others are natu…

No where did I advocate for veganism or anything like that. I wouldn’t ever want to push for anything like that. Im suggesting people eat less meat, not zero meat. But it doesn’t really matter what I say, we’ll either figure out how to get their voluntarily, or it will be forced on us by nature with immense suffering.

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

#134

Post by Schroedingersat »

rkallos wrote: post #130
photochemsyn wrote: post #89

These kind of articles usually have a summary buried in them, this might be it: > "Lab-grown meat, dense cities, and nuclear energy need a rebrand. These need to be some of the new emblems of a sustainable path forward." 1) Lab-grown meat is nowhere near commercialization. At best we have plant-based meat substitutes that have similar nutritional profiles (high protein) to meat that can be produced at scale. 2) Dense…

> Dense cities don't really matter that much Are you sure? My understanding is that people who live in dense cities rely less on automobiles, have their waste treated more efficiently, and consume less energy per capita in order to enjoy clean air and water. Those factors are more important than the land mass required to feed someone.

Depends on grandparent's definition of dense and city. You need density but you don't need tokyo, you don't need high rise and you certainly don't need lab grown meat or vertical farms.

You can pack a lot of people into a 3km^2 circle at fairly moderate density when you're not wasting 500m^2 (8 parking spaces @ 40m^2 then roads, misc infrastructure and setbacks) per person forcing them to own cars.

A well connected walkable rural town full of 3 story fourplexes and 2 story cottages all clustered within 1km around a main street and train station is completely fine.

A walkable city which is almost all under 8 stories and where large portions of the population live in row houses or five over ones is fine.

Houston or Phoenix is not fine.

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

#135

Post by Out_of_Characte »

waffle_ss wrote: post #115
simple-thoughts wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

How did the pandemic melt down our consolidated food supply?

AFAIK only food delivery to restaurants was slightly affected

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

#136

Post by rini17 »

leereeves wrote: post #49
rini17 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody does napkin math anymore? One use bag is about 2-10 grams of plastic. 100x that is 200 grams to 1kg.

The math is easy, but I don't have a tiny scale or specs on the weight of either bags. Where did you get 2-10 grams?

In stores we have selfservice weighting scales for fruits and veggies that print the barcode. There's an option "with one-use bag/without bag" and the one-use bag option subtracts 2 grams.

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

#137

Post by ETH_start »

photochemsyn wrote: post #89

These kind of articles usually have a summary buried in them, this might be it: > "Lab-grown meat, dense cities, and nuclear energy need a rebrand. These need to be some of the new emblems of a sustainable path forward." 1) Lab-grown meat is nowhere near commercialization. At best we have plant-based meat substitutes that have similar nutritional profiles (high protein) to meat that can be produced at scale. 2) Dense…

>>Dense cities don't really matter that much, as each human requires a similar amount of arable land to grow the food they need each year.

People use much less resources per unit of quality of life when they live in dense cities. Density provides massively more productivity with a given amount of natural resource consumption.

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

#138

Post by rypskar »

jshen wrote: post #111
dbingham wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cit…

>>Below is the list you provided, and no where in it do you call for a reduction in meat consumption

Reduction of meat consumption is part of 5. Dietary changes

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

#139

Post by ZeroGravitas »

I support the use of plastic for many packaging tasks. The lighter weight helps offset the other environmental impacts.

Still support plastic bag and straw 'bans' though.

One small factor to add to the mix is giving less money and power to fossil fuel producers, which I think has an outsize effect.

So I'd like to see most plastics move towards non-fossil feedstocks and better recycling.

Luckily, Extended Producer Responsibility laws lead to both less packaging, less harmful packaging and more recycling of packaging by putting the cost of disposal onto the people with the ability to make systematic change.

The people pushing the "all regulations backfire" line are just anti-regulation because they know they can foist the costs onto other people. If they'd lie about climate change then they've kind of blown their trust with me.

I agree environmentalalsim should be data driven, in both identifying problems and potential solutions. I believe that the meme that it's not is an obvious political fabrication by genuinely bad people.

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

#140

Post by ZeroGravitas »

leereeves wrote: post #64
liminvorous wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The breakeven point seems to be around 50-100 uses depending on the exact kind of reusable bag, so you’re probably winning: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental...

I never would have imagined the environmental impact of cotton bags was that high. It would take me several lifetimes to get 7000 uses.

This very similar to the "if you wash recycling in water heated via coal burn generated electricity then it creates CO2" argument.

Okay, let's stop burning coal then, because we use electricity for a lot more things than just recycling.

Similarly, if cotton is that bad for the environment, maybe we need to fix that generally rather than just switch to disposable plastic bags for this one minor use case?

https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/cotton

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