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

141–150 of 164 posts

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

#141

Post by hutzlibu »

akomtu wrote: post #75
gruez wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In the future there will be an acid-like substance used to safely dissolve almost anything, except maybe metals and stones.

We already have them since quite a while, also to dissolve most metals and stones. But producing them in the required quantities would be kind of out of proportion to use it for garbage disposal. And disposing garbage in acid means still having lots of garbage basins with acid. You might want to check out some chemistry.

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

#142

Post by blueflow »

CatWChainsaw wrote: post #55
blueflow wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the problem is not honey/bees, its driving them around in a truck.

I don't know if I would say it's 100% on the trucks (the honeybees didn't ask to be driven everywhere, after all), but the honeybees do disrupt the native ecosystems when they get to their targets; call it a 90-10 or a 95-5 split of culpability perhaps. Smaller scale hive operations that produce honey in one location probably don't have the same outsized impact on so many locations as these truck operations do.

This sounds a bit like blaming cows for eating grass after you placed them on your neighbours lawn.

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

#143

Post by Schroedingersat »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #139

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 Res…

> The lighter weight helps offset the other environmental impacts.

Only when the minimal amount is used. Clamshell packaging is almost always incredibly wasteful and could be replaced by less weight of cardboard. Plastic jars and similar could often be bags or pouches. etc.

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

#144

Post by Schroedingersat »

jeffbee wrote: post #11

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.

Even tokyo has enough rooftops to provide most of its electricity, and your apartment building can be twice as dense if you make it twostories and cover the whole lot rather than dedicating half of the block to a driveway, dedicating the first floor to parking and making it three story.

If you limit the neighbor to n stories at the boundary and n+1 at a setback of the winter noon sun angle where n is the current building then you can get your solar cake and eat it too.

Agree on the urban farming front (delicious lead). Although when done right, high mass yield, refrigerated, low calorie produce can be a net neutral or minor win there and should he considered as reasonable as any other hobby. There is also something to be said for the follow on effects of praxis, even if the immediate effects are minor.

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

#145

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #143
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #139

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 Res…

> The lighter weight helps offset the other environmental impacts. Only when the minimal amount is used. Clamshell packaging is almost always incredibly wasteful and could be replaced by less weight of cardboard. Plastic jars and similar could often be bags or pouches. etc.

Yep, which EPR covers.

For example, British milk sellers mostly use the same shared milk container, with different labels.

They figured out how to lower the cost, because they were paying for it. They get really in depth in the specific amounts of dye to use in lids etc. to maximise recycling.

https://wrap.org.uk/resources/report/hdpe-milk-bottle-resear...

None of that needed specific regulations, just assigning the costs to the people responsible.

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

#146

Post by Schroedingersat »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #40
seasox wrote: post #4

Don‘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.

Honestly a “fuck carbon emissions” t-shirt is probably an easier and more direct way of communicating your membership to the “environmentalism” tribe while still doing fuck-all to reduce emissions. If you actually care about the environment, then you’re doing everything in your power to promote carbon pricing or other policies that have an outsized impact beyond shallow lifestyle choices. Personal responsibility stuf…

Using transit, walking, or cycling is promoting 'other policies that have an outsized impact beyond shallow lifestyle choices' because these modes all hage network effects. It becomes vastly easier for city planners to override idiotic traffic engineers with once a comparatively tiny threshold of people are using them. There is also a network effect in knowledge and experience. If you learn all the safe byways and tracks then it becomes immensely easier for anyone nearby who knows you to start walking, if twenty of you in an area start cycling then your local mechanic might be afford to stay in business and run an outreach event.

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

#147

Post by Schroedingersat »

dane-pgp wrote: post #13
seasox wrote: post #4

Don‘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?

> as per the Jevons paradox

You don't start eating 50kg a day if you become vegetarian, and you don't spend 30 hours a day travelling if you do it by train. Yes, universally switching from cars to any other form of transport would save people 1-3 hours a day to do other things, but if they spend that time doing anything other than sitting in a car it's a win.

You also don't get to use "what if noone did that" as a counter argument for something helping if everybody did it.

If everyone insulated their home properly, got rid of their cars, stopped eating beef, and cut the remaining animal proteins by half we'd be pretty close to net zero right now.

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

#148

Post by Schroedingersat »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #145
Schroedingersat wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The lighter weight helps offset the other environmental impacts. Only when the minimal amount is used. Clamshell packaging is almost always incredibly wasteful and could be replaced by less weight of cardboard. Plastic jars and similar could often be bags or pouches. etc.

Yep, which EPR covers. For example, British milk sellers mostly use the same shared milk container, with different labels. They figured out how to lower the cost, because they were paying for it. They get really in depth in the specific amounts of dye to use in lids etc. to maximise recycling. https://wrap.org.uk/resources/report/hdpe-milk-bottle-resear... None of that needed specific regulations, just assigning the…

There's still inertia and favouring of status quo even in that example.

Milk bags have been in use in some places for decades, pack better, are lighter and use less plastic than a bottle lid. Other places do not use them for no particular reason.

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

#149

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #148
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, which EPR covers. For example, British milk sellers mostly use the same shared milk container, with different labels. They figured out how to lower the cost, because they were paying for it. They get really in depth in the specific amounts of dye to use in lids etc. to maximise recycling. https://wrap.org.uk/resources/report/hdpe-milk-bottle-resear... None of that needed specific regulations, just assigning the…

There's still inertia and favouring of status quo even in that example. Milk bags have been in use in some places for decades, pack better, are lighter and use less plastic than a bottle lid. Other places do not use them for no particular reason.

I'm not promising immediate perfection, just economic incentives that point in that direction, rather than 180° opppsite.

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

#150

Post by dane-pgp »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #147
dane-pgp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> as per the Jevons paradox You don't start eating 50kg a day if you become vegetarian, and you don't spend 30 hours a day travelling if you do it by train. Yes, universally switching from cars to any other form of transport would save people 1-3 hours a day to do other things, but if they spend that time doing anything other than sitting in a car it's a win. You also don't get to use "what if noone did that" as a co…

My point about the Jevons paradox is that if, for example, 10% of people stopped eating meat (for climate reasons), that could mean that the price of meat goes down, which would make meat more affordable for other potential consumers, so a different 10% of people might end up starting to eat meat.

That's an extreme example, but it's not impossible to imagine that there are low-income occasional meat-eaters out there who might start consuming more meat if the price went down. Maybe the increase wouldn't completely reverse the initial reduction, but if the net result was equivalent to only 5% of people changing their lifestyle, then we're talking about a very small change in CO2 emissions.

Post reply on HN