Campaign for nuclear power plus wind and solar.
That's it.
What can I do about climate change?
21–30 of 243 posts
Re: What can I do about climate change?
#22> 8. Should I think about how many children I have (or don’t have)? ... > Nicholas’s study concluded that having fewer children is the best way to reduce your contribution to climate change, with almost 60 tonnes of CO2 avoided per year. But this result has been contentious – and it leads to other questions. ... > And we could ask if having children is necessarily a bad thing for solving climate change: our challenge…
It's also way too late to be banking on "future generations". Every credible report signals that either the adult generation in power today takes immediate action to curb climate change, or the effects will be catastrophic and, in most cases, irreversible. The recent UN report says we need to cut emissions worldwide by 50% by 2030. Your 11 year old child will not fix the climate. All this warm-fuzzy nonsense about le…
Quoting Donella Meadows:
> The world can respond in three ways to signals that resource use and pollution emissions have gone beyond their sustainable limits. One way is to disguise, deny, or confuse the signals. Generally this takes the form of efforts to shift costs to those who are far away in space and time.
> A second way is to alleviate the pressures from limits by employ- ing technical or economic fixes. [...] These approaches, however, will not eliminate the causes of these pressures.
> The third way is to work on the underlying causes, to recognize that the socioeconomic system has overshot its limits, is headed toward collapse, and therefore seek to change the structure of the system.
Leaving the hard decisions to "future problem solvers" is exactly response #1, "shift costs to those who are far away in space and time", i.e. future generations.
http://donellameadows.org/archives/a-synopsis-limits-to-grow...
Re: What can I do about climate change?
#23If people were not so stuck up on individual action, that would be some progress towards solving climate change. One of the big obstacles is admitting that we need collective action to solve this worldwide problem. Would ee propose individual action when less dangerous situations occur in society? Say, a bank run is imminent. Does individual action work? Does the government broadcast it on the 8 o'clock news and do t…
Do you think there's anyone promoting individual action who'd be against collective action? Or could a small individual action be a gateway to participating in collective action?
Re: What can I do about climate change?
#24This graphic give a pretty good summary of the relative impact: https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hire...
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!
Your children's contribution to climate change is their contribution, not yours.
The goal of combating climate change is to make the planet more liveable. You don't achieve that by not living.
Re: What can I do about climate change?
#25I'm posting this because it's a good comprehensive overview of the question. Most similar articles give a superficial overview with two or three ideas. However, climate change is not a simple issue where you can just change a thing or two to fix it; it requires deep changes in most aspects of life. And this change has to happen right now.
I don't think individuals require deep change in order to solve climate change. Most sources of emissions when broken down by industry ultimately just point back to the energy generation. The only deep change that an individual can do that will make an actual impact is going vegan. Adding solar panels to your roof is not a drastic change, in fact in Australia it makes good economic sense. Driving an electric car is n…
Without going full vegan, you can already reduce the meat consumption and also switching from red meat to poultry meat. We overeat meat and it is both bad for our body and our environment.
Re: What can I do about climate change?
#26This 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…
Off-topic but what's wrong with electrical kettles? was her position to not boil water or to use a different kind of kettle? My Kitchen has electric range so I doubt using a non-electric kettle on it would be any more efficient.
Re: What can I do about climate change?
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think individuals require deep change in order to solve climate change. Most sources of emissions when broken down by industry ultimately just point back to the energy generation. The only deep change that an individual can do that will make an actual impact is going vegan. Adding solar panels to your roof is not a drastic change, in fact in Australia it makes good economic sense. Driving an electric car is n…
Got any scientific studies to back up that going Vegan is better for the environment?
http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-06-01-new-estimates-environmen...
"High-impact beef producers create 105kg of CO2 equivalents and use 370m2 of land per 100 grams of protein, a huge 12 and 50 times greater than low-impact beef producers. Low-impact beans, peas, and other plant-based proteins can create just 0.3kg of CO2 equivalents (including all processing, packaging, and transport), and use just 1m2 of land per 100 grams of protein."
Re: What can I do about climate change?
#28Earlier 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!
Your children's contribution to climate change is their contribution, not yours. The goal of combating climate change is to make the planet more liveable. You don't achieve that by not living.
> Your children's contribution to climate change is their contribution, not yours.
It's not some moral game of attribution of blame, it's just maths. Fewer people produce less CO2.
Re: What can I do about climate change?
#29Campaign for nuclear power plus wind and solar. That's it.
A thorough explanation why: https://youtu.be/YjFWiMJdotM (don't forget to turn on captions if your Dutch is lacking)
Re: What can I do about climate change?
#30Expecting some kind of mass-shift in lifestyle in the population at large isn't going to work, because not enough people are going to do it. I think the best thing to do is to advocate for solar, wind, nuclear and hydro power.
Personally I think we should be building more nuclear power plants as well as deploying giant battery storage facilities to store energy from wind and solar.
We should also start taxing carbon emissions. So advocating political change to achieve collective action seems like the only feasible way to do anything effective to me.