Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
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Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
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Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#2Although "environmentally friendly" is not strictly equal to "minimum possible GHG footprint". The plastic bag may have a lower carbon footprint, but it isn't going to biodegrade as quickly, and may end up turning into microplastics that persist for a long time.
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#3An “effective environmentalism” might be a good meme to attempt a rebrand of nuclear, microwaves, and factory farming. But there’s nothing about how to prevent effective environmentalism from becoming performative just like how the author notes environmentalism has.
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#4Don‘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.
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#5This is what happens when you optimize for only a single variable.
And the end result won't be what you want it to be. It doesn't do us any good to stop climate change if the ecosystem still collapses out from under us.
Creating a sustainable environment is a systems problem and carbon is just one of many variables in that system. Yes, it's a really important one and in many ways it is the most pressing. But biodiversity and maintaining ecosystem services are close seconds, and if you optimize your eating for carbon in the way the author is describing you inevitably end up doing more net harm by undercutting those other two.
Further, a lot of the "data" she's linking is completely with out method or context. And method and context can make a huge difference in these sorts of lifecycle analyses. They are fraught with pitfalls. It's one of the reasons it's been so fucking hard to pin down exactly what the most environmental behavior is.
And this whole mess is one of the prime motivators behind my current effort to write an open academic publishing platform [1] that would allow review to be crowdsourced so that we can open and centralize the whole literature. Because then we actually could get a complete picture of what the best current answer to these questions is with out having to go through secondary sources like this which inevitably cherry pick studies, data, and lack context.
[1] https://blog.peer-review.io/we-might-have-a-way-to-fix-scien...
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#6Don‘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.
Why would stop buying honey from beekeepers?
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#7Don‘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.
A few extra:
Get your house insulated. Helps with both heating and cooling.
Use a fan rather than AC if you can.
Do not buy unneeded stuff, buy durable, sell or repair rather than junk.
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#8An “effective environmentalism” might be a good meme to attempt a rebrand of nuclear, microwaves, and factory farming. But there’s nothing about how to prevent effective environmentalism from becoming performative just like how the author notes environmentalism has.
Factory farming does not get to be put in there, eating animals is very expensive ecologically. Only agriculture.
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#9Although "environmentally friendly" is not strictly equal to "minimum possible GHG footprint". The plastic bag may have a lower carbon footprint, but it isn't going to biodegrade as quickly, and may end up turning into microplastics that persist for a long time.
The point is to reuse for ages a tough plastic bag rather than use single use bags.
Re: Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one
#10Don‘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.
If you live in the US, your order is wrong.
1. Walk or bike.
1a. If you can't do the above, use public transport.
1b. If you can't do that, consider moving to a city where you can do all of the above (if you can afford it). If you're rural, seek a land trust or farmer to buy your land when you do.
2. Insulate your house.
3. Get solar if you can afford it.
3a. Replace all gas appliances with electric (Heat pump, electric water heater, ec)
4. Don't fly.
5. Dietary changes, but remember to include ecosystem services and impact in your analysis. A little carbon is worth it if it means more land stays free of pesticides and continues to provide for the ecosystem.
At least, this is the best I've been able to make of it after a decade of study using open sources. Agriculture is important, but whenever I've actually dug into the referenced data I always find they're optimizing for the wrong things, leaving out important variables, or just all around cherry picking data with an end goal in mind.