271–280 of 422 posts
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My advice is to install air conditioning, and choose a place to live that will be affected as little as possible. Avoid the Maldives or New Orleans, perhaps choose somewhere a little hilly and cool with good connectivity.
Great suggestions. I will pass your advice on to literally all of humanity .
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Would you be ok if stores offered the option between a cheap plastic bag and a more expensive non-plastic one? (All the stores here already do it, btw).
I think the externalities of plastic recycling must be internalized economically by requiring all manufacturers of items to pre-pay for the recycling of said items up front, as part of the manufacturing cost. Similar to how bottle returns are managed, which has been very successful. Items which are provably biodegradable or designed to facilitate repair may be exempt.
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> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…
It is still everyone's responsibility, just not to equal extent. That petrolstate also rose to power through democratic elections.
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I think the externalities of plastic recycling must be internalized economically by requiring all manufacturers of items to pre-pay for the recycling of said items up front, as part of the manufacturing cost. Similar to how bottle returns are managed, which has been very successful. Items which are provably biodegradable or designed to facilitate repair may be exempt.
Plastic bags are already taxed where I live. Consumers pay that tax, obviously. Other costs imposed on producers of plastic items will just be passed down to consumers.
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> it’s not like companies are making a bunch of product just to throw them in the trash Sure they do. You even mention one in the venerable plastic bag. Is it the best bag? No, of course not. Is it a good bag? Absolutely not. Is it the cheapest bag to produce? You betcha. Consumers are often presented the least expensive option with the worst outcomes. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
I remember when that switch at grocers from paper to plastic was taking hold, and you could choose. "Paper or plastic?" was the question asked. Some comedian (probably) had a good one liner: "That'll be 42.39. Kill a tree or choke a fish?"
Plantation lumber is a very sustainable industry, and plastic's environmental impact is highly context dependent.
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For how long though? Solar and wind are very competitive now, electric cars have been good enough to transition to for over a decade, other industries can be decarbonized with the right incentives and enough investment. It's not like there aren't any ideas for how to farm or produce steel cleanly. And nuclear reactors can be made safer and cheaper now. Seems more like a lack of political will with powerful lobbying i…
For a long time to come. The energy density of fossil fuels is very high (about 50x higher than that of lithium ion batteries), there's a ton of infrastructure for handling and transporting them and a ton of infrastructure for using them. They get turned into plastics and energy, two things which civilization feeds on voraciously. It's not just inertia that keeps them going.
That doesn't make sense. Batteries are an energy container, they're not energy itself. How can it be compared to a fuel? The direct counterpart to oil or coal is wind or solar radiation itself, batteries are used to amortize the supply and store an excess for emergency use, but otherwise those types of energy just immediately go into powering the grid.
The economic case for renewable power is actually extremely good, because unlike fossil fuels, they're effectively infinite and don't need complex infrastructure to extract. They're free. You only need a power plant that directly converts them into power. If we were just able to shift fossil fuel demand towards producing goods like plastics, this would already be massive. However, a lot of powerful people are deeply invested into fossil fuels and will do anything to tip the scales into their favor, despite gradually losing in the energy sector.
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> I feel like especially the West is regressing on climate change with the rise of the far right Is it the "far right"? Or is it that technology and fertility have actually lowered the risks substantially? Solar plus batteries, right now, seems to be the cheapest form of new energy. Given that, you would expect most of new energy to be "green". (And if you look at the stats, that seems to be coming true.) Electrifica…
Yep, its the far right. The Heritage Foundation (Project 2025, far-right, anti-climate) is working with the Heartland Institute (spreading climate science denial across UK / EU) / Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC, Jordan Peterson) They do not like EU rules that hold US firms accountable to climate laws. https://www.desmog.com/2026/02/10/donald-trump-uk-eu-maga-sl...
I just meant that I don't think the lack of concern is necessarily due to them. I think it may have more to do with the reality that we are already on a good path.
Bill Gates famously wrote a "note" about it last year: https://www.gatesnotes.com/work/accelerate-energy-innovation...
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Where does the chain end? I burn diesel in my tractor to harvest corn. Should the feedlot that buys my corn pay for the tractor’s emissions? Should the slaughterhouse that processes the cattle pay? Should the supermarket that stocks the beef pay? Should the family who grills the steak on Sunday pay? Or just the one who eats the largest portion?
You either tax the fuel and pass the cost down to the consumers, or decide as a society to share the cost of the externalities and use general taxation for that.
And obviously, you tax the fuel at the source, right when it comes out of the ground. Higher prices get passed down, changing behavior because the products externalities are priced correctly from the start.
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Work on local things to make your own city better. Plenty of stuff that's not too difficult, even if it won't fix everything: * Multifamily housing is much more energy efficient. Is it legal to build throughout your city, or does zoning prevent it? * Is there good bicycle infrastructure so people don't have to drive for everything? * Does your city still have expensive parking mandates that lock in car dependency? Ge…
Individual habits will not be decisive in fighting climate change. Telling people to follow this advice will (a) inconvenience them in the short term (b) lull them to a false sense of security that they are fighting climate change (c) set them up for disappointment when climate change happens anyway, and (d) worst of all, these suggestions let the real perpetrators off the hook. If you want to see real progress on th…
So maybe the people who aren’t having kids due to climate change were right after all?
Go ask Google about China and the 3rd world contribution to global pollution. The West is bending over backwards to 'fight climate change' and a huge chunk of the world is just doing whatever they want, completely negating all of the west efforts.
China's doing better than the US: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45108292. Please don't lie.