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What can I do about climate change?

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191–200 of 243 posts

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#191
We're so consistent and principled when it comes to socially stigmatizing the behavior of people we never meet, living vastly different lives from ours, but when it comes to our social class, or own people, we're very careful about which environmental ethics we enforce on each other, because any pressure we apply might boomerang back on us. So we're extremely selective.

Anything associated with a more exclusive and more expensive lifestyle is a no-brainer, of course. Organic, locally-sourced food is de rigeur. Sustainable fashion. How could you NOT? These ethics make life more fun. Also, when your lunch/shirt is sustainable, you can pass it off as virtuous discipline, but if it isn't, it's not really a big deal.

Solar panels are controversial. They're expensive, but they're also unattractive, and they're pretty nerdy, and even worse, they're technology. It's very hard for them not to be declasse. You can thread the needle with these if they're unobtrusive and you make it very clear that you never personally touch or operate them yourself. But there are so many other braggable efficiencies you can add to your house (brise-soleil made from sustainable wood!) that it probably isn't worth the effort.

Vegetarianism and veganism are out, because duh, buzzkill (how do you even brunch?) but saying you eat less meat is in, as long as you're eating some kind of artisanal, locally-sourced charcuterie when you say it.

Driving is in, of course. The alternatives are too much work, and it's very hard to make them look cool. So driving is an important thing to defend.

Cycling is the most visible threat to the virtuousness of driving. It's eminently feasible, unless you're elderly or differently-abled, and it's sweaty and very very hard to look cool (congrats if you look cool, and please fuck off) so it needs to be stigmatized. Luckily, you can lean on the stereotype of cyclists being (ominous voice) affluent white males who are privileged to have disposable income to throw away on expensive toys. Whew. Thanks to that, there's zero stigma for an adult, able-bodied person to spend twenty minutes idling their car a mile and a half home during rush hour. The alternative is supporting a sexist, ableist, and otherwise elitist solution, presumably at the expense of more equitable ones.

Same thing with scooters, except they're worse because they're tech. Techbros did this! Your car will always be in the street where it never blocks the path of the differently abled, and by contributing to traffic you're ratcheting up the pressure on that darned city government to provide equitable, egalitarian mass transit which when it arrives will make your 1.5 mile drive to work so much easier. An effective response to climate change has to be collective, and individualistic solutions just distract and dissipate energy from collective ones. (Don't worry. Nobody will use this argument to undermine your artisinal, locally-sourced charcuterie.)

You might think riding the bus would be even worse than cycling, but in reality, it's not really a threat, because it's so ostentatiously hair-shirt. (Rule #1: we're supposed to be enjoying ourselves.) Also, when someone else talks about riding the bus, it gives you a great excuse to show off your knowledge of transit issues when you explain how you can't ride the bus because service coverage is so awful and we really need to do something about this! They might be trying to shame you, but they're really doing you a favor. Because come on, the bus? Ha.

Taking your batteries and fluorescent bulbs to the hazardous household waste facility instead of putting them in the garbage? Nobody is going to bring that up unless they actually do it. Don't hold your breath.

Xeriscaping... this one sucks. It's impossible to criticize it, and worst of all, every time someone looks at your grass and asks if you've thought about it, you have to admit that you're renting and you're afraid that if you remind your landlord that you exist they'll raise your rent and price you out of the neighborhood.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#192
post #66

> Nicholas’s study concluded that having fewer children is the best way to reduce your contribution to climate change Environmentalism as a philosophy isn't all that coherent, and this suggestion in point 8 really encapsulates the heart of my problems with it. If we are saving the planet "for" someone else, who are they? If we are saving the planet for ourselves, do minor actions of deprivation make sense? The extrem…

> If we are saving the planet "for" someone else, who are they?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question, but there are billions of people in the world already, and another few billions that will be born in the next little bit regardless of our individual actions. Do those not matter much? Does it have to be something "of your own" in order to make it worthwhile?

> The extreme logical extension of the philosophy in point 8 that isn't "if I care about the future, and if all life is equal, I should remove myself from the gene pool and build a society that doesn't value the environment".

I don't quite see how you arrive from "I remove myself from the gene pool" at "build a society that doesn't value the environment". Is it because you don't have someone to raise and tech who will carry your values forward? If so, then there's a good alternative: Teach someone else, be a mentor, get your message out to other people who are not your dependents. Sure they may not adopt your philosophy entirely, but then again, even one's own kids will make up their own mind and you're only one of many influences.

Moreover, by influencing people who already exist out there, you'll make a direct (hopefully positive) impact compared to the baseline of you not being involved in any way in the first place. If you have a kid to "build a society that values the environment", it'll be a net win for the environment if (a) your kid offsets its natural carbon impact by dedicating a significant effort to climate action, (b) same goes for any of their descendants, and (c) they make up for the time that you could have spent on climate action instead of raising your kid, such as mentoring or getting involved in politics. Building a society that values the environment isn't worth much if the outcome is still a net negative.

I feel that "continuing my legacy" is a widespread desire among hopeful parents. It's important to recognise that if your legacy is mainly to raise a child without making much of a direct contribution otherwise (because raising a child is a heck ton of work) then it's not unlikely for your kid to do the same. How long do we want to pass down the baton until one of those descendants makes a sizeable contribution by themselves? And how many lives will have been created, producing carbon and love and all, in order to get there?

I think there's a great deal of power to multiplying one's own efforts and get others to carry on one's torch, but really, having kids is by far not the only way to do this.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#193
> What if I just can’t avoid that flight, or cut down on driving? If you simply can’t make every change that’s needed, consider offsetting your emissions with a trusted green project

> we are still decades away from commercial flights running on solar energy

Offsets need to be a bigger part of the conversation. This article buried it at #10, behind a bunch of changes no one is likely to do. It is so incredibly cheap, they should have brought it up earlier in the article and give exact numbers in order to result in more personal actions.

I'll quote you some numbers to show just how accessible offsets are for people who fly. A rough estimate is about 1% of the ticket: - SF to San Diego: 68 cents - SF to New York: $3.87 - SF to Paris: $8.43

Driving is similar, to offset a gallon of gas it is about 9 cents, tack on 2-3% more than what you pay at the pump.

I understand that it isn't ideal to pollute then clean it up [0], but this is a much more practical solution than asking people to stop traveling. The cost is so low that just about everyone who is doing the flying and driving can afford it.

The concern is that by putting a price to clear your conscience for a bad behavior you will induce more of that behavior [1]. I would argue that personal travel isn't very correlated in this manner. How many people cut back their travel now because of their emissions? Very few. Would the average person who hasn't cut back suddenly start traveling more? Doubtful. It's not like they will suddenly drive for fun or it was factoring in on their vacation decisions [2]. So while I would be hesitant to put a price on all bad environmental behaviors, I think travel is safe.

> Social scientists have found that when one person makes a sustainability-oriented decision, other people do too.

That's good news! First make it easier to take an action, then make it easier for it to be public. That's why I'm working on an app that is a personal pledge to balance the negative impact of your travel.

While carbon offsets exist, they are an infrequent action that cost a lot at once, and are opaque. We will make it more frequent for smaller amount of money, give a scoreboard of your continued impact, and help make it visible for inspiring others to join.

If anyone is interested in keeping in the loop on progress: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance

[0]: YC recently asked for carbon removal technology startups. It will continue to get more impactful than simply planting trees, and those projects that prove successful will need money to scale. http://carbon.ycombinator.com/

[1]: Freakonomics looked at a daycare that added a small fee for late pick up. The rate of late pickups quickly shot up. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/freakonomi...

[2]: If anything, this vast majority who aren't changing their actions now would become more aware and cut back.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#194
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Never in my life, not once, have I seen citizens voting actually change anything of significance in a country Do you mean in the US? Examples that spring to mind in other countries are: gay marriage equality (Australia), independence (East Timor, plus probably others... Scotland and New Caledonia rejected independence by plebiscite), conscription (Austria), abortion (Ireland), migrant intake (Hungary) etc... and of…

I am from Eastern Europe. Here nothing ever changes politically-wise. The politicians expend a lot of PR effort to make things look like they are changing but they don't and it's pretty visible even for the not very well educated population.

That generally describes the US, except the propaganda has a larger budget.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#195
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the GP was not referring to the harm to bees as horrific, but to the harm done to our living environment by harming bees.

I wondered, but couldn't make sense of that. How is providing commercial bees in bulk a detriment to the environment? When is another bee a problem?

I have no personal anecdotes to bring in here, but they said:

> Part of the reason wild bee colonies are collapsing is because of the diseases cultivated by commercial colonies.

So if another bee comes at the cost of multiple existing bees, that's a problem.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#196

I don't have a single friend or even. aquaintence who would do any of the top 3 things long the list of 148 most impactful things an individual can do they were 1. have one less kid. I can maybe imagine a friend choosing not to have 3 but I can't imagine someone wanting 2 to go to 1 or someone wanting 1 to go to 0 for this reason 2. go carless Sone friends live in a city that supports a carless lifestyle and already…

Then the short answer is :

- Die. In large numbers. Preferably people from the developped world.

- The planet may maybe be able to afford half a billion developped world people.

There is a link to a Bill Gates blog post in the thread, look at it : agriculture (feeding people) is 25% of the CO2 budget, manufacturing+housing is 27%. Basically reducing these means reducing the population. That's the reason why having one less child is the biggest contribution you can do, short of dying.

Any volunteer ?

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#197
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…

I always find the below statement interesting because it is 2,000 years old. But it shows that even 2,000 years ago, the tendency of the human species to destroy the planet was already clear:

"But the nations became wrathful, and your own wrath came, and the appointed time came...to bring to ruin those ruining the earth." -- Revelation 11:18

It's interesting that the human tendency to "ruin the earth" is still a problem 2,000 years later.

Given that scientists are now saying we're close to the point of no return on climate change, I don't have much confidence humans are going to turn this around...

If this problem was listed in a 2,000 year old book, and we're still "ruining the earth" in 2018, I'm not convinced humans as a species are going to have a sudden change of heart in the next 10 years...

Just saying..

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go further: ever thought about turning off your computers and not carrying a smartphone that requires charging every day? The internet and related hardware consume an ever-increasing percentage of total electrical output. We could just turn it all off if we were serious about climate change. Nothing really bad would happen. Seriously.

In the UK, to fully charge an iPhone twice a day for a year takes £0.70 of electricity annually; the average 3- or 4-bedroom home uses £500+ of electricity a year. Anyone who has told you smartphones are a significant consumer of power doesn't know what they're talking about.

Sure, but how many servers are running to ensure that Big Tech can maintain 24/7 surveillance through those phones?

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#199
post #137

This graphic give a pretty good summary of the relative impact: https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hire...

This is a good illustration. People should look at it not only from their personal POV, but in terms of general policies regarding population size... There are parts of the world (for example, Africa) where population has been increasing ridiculously fast for decades and the estimates are that this will continue. A lot of this is thanks to the financial support from the West. When there's news that the population of…

> There are parts of the world (for example, Africa) where population has been increasing ridiculously [...]

Africa is big, so it's a very coarse way of narrowing down a location. Population pressure is a multiplier, so people in poor countries with few cars and a diet that does not depend on cross-country transport of food have a smaller impact on environment than fewer people accustomed to a more expensive life style.

> When there's news that the population of Japan is decreasing people talk about it as if it's a catastrophe.

An aging or decreasing population can be a catastrophe, but not because of environmental effects; the concerns are of a social nature, as a shrinking population usually means a reduction in essential services. The one child policy that was active for years in China has left a characteristic mark on the demographics, leading to a small population of young people supporting a large population of old people.

Re: What can I do about climate change?

#200
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really a very good infographic - The biggest way we can impact climate change as individuals is to have fewer children. Yet, in most discussions I've seen, we talk about hybrid cars and vegetarian diet!

Mandatory link to "Idiocracy" and holding back on having children (it seemed like a joke back then!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N9nVLXMhPc

I always roll my eyes when Idiocracy is brought up in this context. It has this old smell of eugenics, as people who take the premise seriously misunderstand the role of education and vastly overestimate genetics.

If you are unhappy with the level of education of the public, then try to work on that instead of feeling encouraged to spread your superior genes.

I recommend Carl Zimmer's latest book "She Has Her Mother's Laugh" for a look at the past and the present through the prism of heredity.

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