151–160 of 525 posts
But I fear it will actually lead us towards an "Interstellar" future: where our inter-planetary progress is hampered by this single planet that we want to save.
We keep hearing that individual actions don't matter and that we need a system change instead. I used to hold the same opinion for the very long time. However, since recently I started to turn around. For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. What makes us think it will be any different in the coming years. Scientists keep producing report after repor…
The best reason for exactly these individual changes you are describing is that - and this is a really funny and convenient coincidence - you are benefiting of them first and foremost yourself! > - Stop flying to conferences. Go to a local meetup. It's fun. And cheaper. If you really need to get out of town, take a train. No unnecessary hassle and stress from flying to far away places or getting stuck in traffic jams…
"...A number of studies (e.g. Knight et al. 2012, Rosnick and Weisbrot 2006) have found that shorter work hours are associated with lower greenhouse gas emissions and therefore less global climate change. The relationship between these two variables is complex and not clearly understood, but it is understandable that lowering levels of consumption, holding everything else constant, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This paper estimates the impact on climate change of reducing work hours over the rest of the century by an annual average of 0.5 percent. It finds that such a change in work hours would eliminate about one-quarter to one-half of the global warming that is not already locked in"
-- Reduced Work Hours as a Means of Slowing Climate Change. http://cepr.net/documents/publications/climate-change-worksh...
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The next U.S. federal election is an excellent opportunity to address climate change. Ensure that the Democratic primary chooses a leader with a good plan, and then ensure that he/she wins in 2020.
Except it's also not. As a continent, Asia is the largest polluter by far. What's worst, they're exporting those practices to Africa. Meanwhile, the Anglo-West is hyper-focused on the US because there's a president they don't like. This has been a blessing (now the average Anglo-Westerner at least pretends to care about the environment), but also a curse (they think the US is the only country that can save humanity).
USA is doing terribly thanks to having by far the largest emissions per head, dramatically in excess of anywhere else.
Asia is doing poorly thanks to having larger populations, developing apace and being home to much of the world's manufacturing.
UK is just about world's worst for historic cumulative emissions thanks to being home of the industrial revolution.
Shall I go on? It's everyone's problem, and needs addressing everywhere, at every election. Anything else is just finger-pointing excuses not to act.
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Like with most things, it depends. Something jumps in and shakes up the simplicity Sometimes it's an eskimo getting his vitamin C from animal organs.
Never do I hear so many ordinary people caring about the Inuit as when I mention veganism. Really makes you think
Inuit is probably used as a living reference to what other cultures did in the past.
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This. And also: The environment is an awesome way for people to virtue signal how much they care. But the fact is the real world consequences of what most environmentalists ask for would seriously affect the way of life they have. Politicians know this. Any serious attempt to change anything will not get you votes and out of government. That is not the governments fault. That is not the corporations fault. That is ev…
> it's INSANE And the death of our living planet isn't? So-called 'economic growth' was never much more than a global entropy increase, as high quality self-organising evolved systems were ripped out to feed crude technological ones requiring endless inputs. This was always mere borrowing against the future. It was never 'growth' in any true sense. It ends because biology, chemistry & physics say it must, regardless…
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Why not go vegan? Sure, anything is better than nothing, but a vegan diet is best of all. Plus, dairy, especially when consumed as cheese, is worse than some meat in terms of environmental impact.
Personally I think that we need to change what it means to be standard vegetarian - add fish, remove dairy. Better for the environment and perhaps easier for people to switch to! Currently, I have to go around calling myself a "lacto-pescatarian" which is far too much of a mouthful
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Scale is not sustainable either. What we REALLY need is population reduction.
Silly to advocate for population reduction when people in the developed world (esp. the US) emit multiple times as much as those in the developing world. This is largely an overconsumption problem, not an overpopulation problem. Most of the people born today will emit less than you or I ever will.
It's true, and it's enraging. But at the same time, are you wishing for the people in the developing world to keep producing so few emissions per capita? Because they would emit as much as we do if they could, and I'm sure they dream they'll be able to do it one day. And it's fair: but then we need to think of a recipe for sustainability that factors in much higher consumption levels for the now developing countries- instead of much lower ones for the developed world.
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> meat is unhealthy - period. It's a nice to have but it is at the end of the day just not good for you. [citation needed]
I just invested 17 seconds into your health, buddy :) Here you go: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26780279
Long story short: the findings are NOT about meat consumption.
Is there a link to the actual paper for categorizing the number of species going extinct?
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There is one obvious thing you omitted. Population growth. We could do a lot to educate and help people in developing nations manage population growth better. China and to a great extent India have addressed the issue. Indonesia has not, for example.
As long as population growth is recognized as a problem in addition (and perhaps a bit less than) overconsumption - rather than a rhetorical guise used by people in the West to continue to justify overconsumption, I absolutely agree! Unfortunately, it far too often appears to be the latter