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What can I do about climate change?

bbc.com

141–150 of 243 posts

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#141
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal, but I went vegan 3 years ago and in those 3 years, quite a few of my very close friends went vegan or vegetarian as well. It really does give me a lot of hope. Even my parents started eating meat a lot less, basically only for big events and startet using oat milk for their coffee!

> startet using oat milk for their coffee Are you and they using honey or white sugar from farmed sugarcanes? For the environment sake I wish that vegan diet would include honey as it has a big net-positive effect on the environment compared to farmed sugarcanes by not causing eutrophication or water pollution, and helps with pollination both for wild forests and agriculture.

While I'm with you on the issue of honey vs. sugar, it's not quite so simple... Where's that honey coming from?

Locally harvested? Great! But likely not the bulk of supply.

Supermarket honey? Transported from Goodness Knows Where -- very likely China or Chile, where the bees are intensively fed... (you guessed it!) sugar! That's why the honey is so flavourless, not to mention the Carbon footprint of all those honey-kilometres.

Bees are almost as intensively farmed as anything else, and, while the effects and outcomes are nowhere near as severe as other forms of intensive husbandry, the honey is not necessarily the pure and innocent product you might think it is.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#142
post #17

> 9. But if I eat less meat or take fewer flights, that’s just me – how much of a difference can that really make? > > Actually, it’s not just you. Social scientists have found that when one person makes a sustainability-oriented decision, other people do too. This is the thing that still gives me hope. Try to do good, and people will notice - and, without so much as telling others to something, they will emulate you…

the delusion that millions, if not billions of people are going to undergo what amounts to a spiritual revolution that directly goes against the highly pervasive & manipulative social conditioning that surrounds nearly every aspect of their lives is more absurd than even the most grandiose technological panacea. consumers can't even exercise the self restraint not to consume themselves to death.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#143
post #20
post #6

This article's quality is higher than many others on the same topic and that's a pleasant surprise. That being said, I can't help being reminded about German language lessons I had ~10 years ago where the teacher was preaching that we must all ditch electric kettles for the sake of the planet. I asked her how is this going to help -- even if 100_00 people do it today -- if corporations are happy to let toxic waste se…

Ugh, I once read a booklet that had the same premise of the article. One of the suggested solutions: use less soap when doing the dishes, to preserve packaging. As I mention in a different comment, individual action is important. However, there is a large difference in effectiveness, and promoting obviously ineffective ones isn't going to convince people to do the ones that are likely to be effective.

It's always a good idea to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Do you need to use that much soap? Do you need to keep the lights on everywhere? Do you need to use a tumble-dryer or could you let your clothes air dry instead? Do you need that shiny new phone or is your current one good for another couple of years?

Yes, all of these are absolutely small things individually, but put together and done by many people, it does make a difference.

A big thing you can do individually is to Buy Less Stuff. Be happy with the TV you have, don't change your wardrobe just because of fickle changing fashion nonsense, don't replace stuff that works just fine. Break the cycle of consumerism. Don't support the polluting corporations.

The very biggest thing you can do is to be politically active. Vote for pro-environment politicians and parties, be part of political initiatives.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#145

A concrete step we have taken with my girlfriend over the past few months is buying second-hand items. It's crazy how much you save, and to know you have not contributed to creating more stuff. There is an awesome campaign in France right now, encouraging this kind of behaviour : https://riendeneuf.org

That's a really big thing, in the scope of individual action. If you buy less new stuff, less stuff needs to be produced and less environmental impact happens.

Nobody needs a brand new coffee table, when there are plenty of perfectly decent ones for sale second-hand.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#147

Science is never settled, already there they start the misinformation which is being used so often these days. These kind of articles are so misguided yet people are so hysterical they actually think the individual can do things. There is nothing individuals can do that would actually help besides creating solutions to the ever changing consequences of the world we live in. Even if we by some magical event could stop…

> Science is never settled, already there they start the misinformation Science is never settled, but arrives at increasingly accurate approximations of reality. If climate science's best approximation is doom, the rational collective response is not ignorance, but simultaneously to explore and exploit (address) the problem. Exploration by better modeling of the climate, and exploitation by pursuing known best soluti…

"Science is never settled, but arrives at increasingly accurate approximations of reality."

Not necessarily and that's certainly not settled. Kuhns paradigms is another way to think about it than Poppers idea of building knowledge as bricks that create a house. I am not convinced knowledge works the way we normally think about it.

Furthermore "climate science" is not actually following the scientific principles as it's not falsifiable for obvious reasons.

"Climate science" is metascience in the sense that it builds on and interprets data which has its own set of issues besides the issues with data modeling.

There are plenty of examples of mistakes, false predictions, cheating with the data etc. that anyone who wants to have an opinion on this should be really really really careful how much we actually can demonstrate vs. how much is speculated. Just taking it on faith that the scientific community is in agreement about a lot of the details is simply misguided.

There are plenty of theories around natural fluctuations even big ones like this (and bigger) so the trick IMO is not discussion whether humans are affecting it as we can't change that and will not change that, in fact, if we did it probably would lead to more death than the consequences of flooding and it certainly will lead to more poor people without any means to deal with the ever-changing climate.

You and others seem to be of the impression that nature is fundamentally friendly and safe towards us and we are destroying it, my position is that nature is fundamentally hostile and dangerous and that we are using technology to be safer from it. Yes, that has consequences but I take those any day compared to becoming paralyzed by trying to solve a problem that is many times more complex than any other things we have ever solved before. CopX is a great example of just how little our global initiatives help.

Flying less, eating less meat isn't the solution to the problem, more actual science, engineering and entrepreneurship and making people richer so they start caring about their close environment is.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#148
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what about if there was some kind of global system of decision-making where others could influence or incentivise your day-to-day actions? e.g. hypothetically would you support a global carbon tax* priced high enough so that driving somewhere wasn't by default a sensible decision? * supposing, hypothetically, we had some effective way of reaching such an agreement and enforcing it

If the alternative was just as comfortable and fast, I would be the first to throw away my car. I have zero ego attachments to such objects, I am after their comfort and practical value.

Do you hold similar stance to other things that require effort? For example: recycling?

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#149
Nothing. Climate change happens with or without humans. I'm so sick of the climate change fearmongering already. What we will do is adapt, like we always have. The earth is always in a state of "climate change". Humans have experienced experienced climate change for much of our existence. We even lived through a "global warming" and a "little ice age" just a few hundred years ago.

https://www.britannica.com/science/Little-Ice-Age

These people always have to sell fear. The climate change fearmongering is no different than the failed malthusian prophecy of the 19th century. Or the global cooling fearmongering the BBC and much of the media were peddling before "global warming" became the "cool" thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

If the BBC was truly worried about climate change, why don't they shut down their operation? How many kids, vacations, cars, etc are created because BBC exists? Why not follow their own rules?

BBC should lead by example if they truly believed the nonsense they spout everyday.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#150
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you taking into consideration the loss of energy in power transmission and distribution? (I also find the argument hard to believe, but I'd be interested in seeing a proper comparison)

Well, yeah, that's basically equivalent to saying that you'd save money by running an internal combustion engine at home, rather than buying electricity from the grid. Sounds unlikely - although there are potential savings to be had if you take into account the heat generated, which is lost from the powerplant but a household could use it for heating - check out mCHP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_combined_heat_…

It's more like saying that you'd save fuel by running an equivalent ICE at home. You'd be unlikely to save money, because of economies of scale.
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