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 seep into the ocean and lobby to never close coal plants. And we're talking thousands of tons a day. She wasn't pleased that I attacked her agenda.
So alright, I know we all can do better, individuals included. That's unequivocally true.
But let's not ignore the fact that the biggest fault lies in organizations that are happy to pay people to whisper stuff in the ears of the people with power.
Climate change is real and the more we delay the solution, the more urgent and extreme the measures to swing it around will become. And that means to start breaking the warm and cozy positions that many corporations are in -- and enjoy the lack of supervision of.
> 9. But if I eat less meat or take fewer flights, that’s just me – how much of a difference can that really make?
>
> Actually, it’s not just you. Social scientists have found that when one person makes a sustainability-oriented decision, other people do too.
This is the thing that still gives me hope. Try to do good, and people will notice - and, without so much as telling others to something, they will emulate you to some extent. At least, that's what I've anecdotally observed.
The other side of this is important as well: you don't necessarily need to be a leader in everything that can be improved. However, if you see someone taking the lead, being the first follower can get a movement going, and is less effort than leading the change to boot.
Anecdotal, but I went vegan 3 years ago and in those 3 years, quite a few of my very close friends went vegan or vegetarian as well. It really does give me a lot of hope.
Even my parents started eating meat a lot less, basically only for big events and startet using oat milk for their coffee!
Why is this the side of the ledger to work on? http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ seems like a much more effective means of mitigating the issues.
The worst things that could happen to the environment would actually be whatever happens that results in a surprise cold spell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age was such a period.
If there is a cold snap, that will likely mean MORE coal burnt in Europe, which will put greater amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, and when the cold period ends, even worse greenhouse affects.
There is virtually no situation in which carbon removal will be anything other than a net gain. We need to start removing carbon ASAP, irrespective of whether or not we can, collectively as a world of 7+Billion, reduce emissions.
The carbon removal side of the ledger is the one I think we can make meaningfully changes in fastest and with the least controversy.
the delusion that millions, if not billions of people are going to undergo what amounts to a spiritual revolution that directly goes against the highly pervasive & manipulative social conditioning that surrounds nearly every aspect of their lives is more absurd than even the most grandiose technological panacea.
consumers can't even exercise the self restraint not to consume themselves to death.
If 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 the people stay at home or do they run down the bank nonetheless? We do not propose individual action on other matters but we expect individual action to work on climate change.
> we expect individual action to work on climate change.
Don't regulations come into play? In the EU, inefficient light bulbs have been phased out [0]
In France, we have free energy market since 2010 [1], with some players [2] focusing on green energy, etc.
Diesel & gas (for cars) prices are sky-rocketting (taxes !! [3]). Not cool for people who don't have the choice to keep using their old cars (students, unemployed, etc.) but the goal is to make combustion-engine cars so expensive they become unattractive.
[0] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-09-368_en.htm : On 18 March 2008, the Commission adopted a regulation on non-directional household lamps which would replace inefficient incandescent bulbs by more efficient alternatives (...) between 2009 and 2012.
Banks can be shut down to prevent bank runs, but only temporarily. You can't just close the bank down or heavily restrict withdrawals forever without significant negative consequences. Fighting climate change is not a short term proposition.
Even if you are totally correct, it's irrelevant unless (A) you can maintain democratic support for such collective actions, or (B) you get rid of democracy.
In the US at least, even the democrats don't propose climate regulation strong enough to have a measurable impact on the climate over ten years. People will absolutely resist the moment energy prices go up notably, which will be necessary to measurably affect climate.
The problem isn't that collective action needs to be taken, it's that sufficient collective action won't sufficiently be supported by voters. That's why Democrats aren't proposing it, and that's the actual hurdle that needs to be overcome.
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?
While the title isn't very clear, the article mentions collective actions as well. Political action also stems from individuals and should of course be part of our actions against climate change.
> 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 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".
Taking a practical view that we want to preserve the world for, say, 3 generations into the future, answers like nuclear starting 30 years ago make a lot of sense.
> 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.
The resolve to this apparent paradox is easy. You can like the civilization on this planet yet not care one iota about the gene pool (of course you have to care about it to the extent needed to reproduce humans, on which the civilization relies for the foreseeable future, but no more than that).
Let me give you an analogy. Is teaching meaningless? I mean, why do it, when you're not going to be around when people you teach will run things. You're trying to give advice to someone else, without being sure that they will follow it when you're not around.
So, I posit, not having kids and working on resolving climate change is useful, just like it is useful to teach or do your job properly to be an example for further generations doing that job.
If you insist upon cherry-picking an incoherent viewpoint from a basic principle: "I wish to live", I suppose one could concur with your premise.
See:
1) I, myself, my spawn, any reasonable proxy for me. a human?
2) Wish, desire, seek, want.
3) to live, life. continuance. reproduction, etc.
See, we are currently trashing the entire ball we live on:
1) too many of us. We did a good job at the whole "Go forth and multiply" thing. (talk about an incoherent philosophy: how about "the underpinnings of our civilization" for 2 points.)
resulting in:
A) loss of biodiversity. We killed the other animals
B) a HUGE footprint (land area) required for making our STUFF
C) hubris. we think OUR STUFF and OUR ECONOMY (read: make-believe silly nonsense we pretend is real) is more important than LIFE itself! The hacker news crowd is extremely guilty of this, as many people live in a simulated screen reality so much that they forgot about the wetware underpinnings of LIFE. your life.
2)We have no sense of collective responsibility, no sense of collective existence at all. It's not the squirrels fault that you can't understand why sustaining life on earth might be a worthy goal.
Collectively speaking, humanity is a dud. We didn't manage to organize anything with regards to our collective selves. We just ignorantly pursue selfish aims because some 18th century English "economist" (phlebotomist?) told us about "invisible hands"...
Maybe you should devote your vast brainpower to explaining the coherence involved in justifying industry and human "civilization" thus far?
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 Japan is decreasing people talk about it as if it's a catastrophe. But Japan is very densely populated right now and I think they'll be fine either way (maybe some short term economic struggles, but they won't go extinct).
These topics can be politically taboo, but they shouldn't be. These issues are too important and long term effects can be catastrophic for the environment and the general quality of life on Earth.
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!
I'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 not a radically different experience to driving an ICE car. Telecommuting and working more days from home is, for many people, a desirable change to the way we work.
Once coal and then gas has been eliminated, 99% of new model cars are electric and lab grown beef matches the taste and texture a real cow the problem will be 80% solved. All of this can be achieved without a single person needing to change their lifestyle.
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 live carless but I can't imagine a single person I know giving up their car or moving somewhere they don't need it for for purpose of helping the environment
3. don't travel
zero friends would give this up. even the most eco "aware"
Hi I'm Rudy, nice to meet you! Now you have one :)
On a more serious note:
1. have one less kid.
I really don't like how this one is worded, I always read it as "get rid of one of your kids". Though, except going from 1 to 0, it's not that bad. I definitely wanted more than one, but I can settle with the one I have.
2. go carless
You get used to it. I even lived in small cities (~30k inhabitants) and while it's harder when your city isn't supporting a carless lifestyle (never lived in any that does that, sadly), it's definitely doable.
3. don't travel
Maybe a bit extreme to give it up entirely. But you can still travel less, do it with more eco-friendly travel options (carpooling, etc.) or go to destinations which do not require planes. I guess it depends on where you live, but in Europe there's definitely lots of wonderful places I can go to with a low carbon impact.
But I still am responsible for a lot more carbon emission than I should. I'm taking it slow (changing food habits, etc.) but there's still domains in which I am really bad (using too much tech, ordering things online..).
This is exactly why I think offsets are a better short-term solution. Don't travel is too big of an ask even for the "eco aware". Would they pay an extra 17 cents to offset their driving that day or $3 for a flight across the US? It is shockingly cheap and much easier to say yes to that change. It isn't as direct as just not traveling in the first place, but will get much more adoption.
I'm working on an app to make a personal travel offset pledge and track your impact publicly. If anyone is interested in keeping in the loop on progress: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance
- 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.
> 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 challenges may mean we will need more problem-solvers in future generations, not fewer.
Way to make the quantitative answer on this question ambiguous when it is clear that unless your kids will work or donate much more than average to climate change, they will add to the problem.
Just be honest and admit that this possible solution (fewer kids!) conflicts with your ideology.
i selfishly don't want to take the necessary individual action where my personal cost-benefit analysis comes out negative.
for example, i could become a vegan. if i did so, the net benefit to humanity would be positive. but i don't want to, as i'd have to privately pay the cost (no more delicious chicken) while the benefits (in terms of reduced global cumulative greenhouse gas emissions) are spread across the billions of the rest of you.
however, i really want you all to take individual action to limit your greenhouse emissions so i can benefit. go vegan, have fewer children, get your economies to install carbon taxes. yes please, i'd love the lot of you to do that.
i'm very willing to trade you something of value in return for you making lifestyle changes that don't locally benefit you.
how do we make this kind of trade happen? how do we make this kind of collective agreement to change behaviour happen faster?
There is a simple answer, really, but you won't like it.
"i'm very willing to trade you something of value in return for you making lifestyle changes that don't locally benefit you"
If it's true, then you can make the next small step. For example, for every vegan you have as a friend you can decide to eat less meat. Or for every friend without a car, you can take a bus once in a while. And so on.
That would be a valuable gift to these people, who decided to selflessly take the first step.
Expecting 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.
Yes, but not without developping the alternatives. For example, in France, the government decided to raise the taxes on gas and especially diesel — but at the same time, the small train lines are being shut down, so people living in the country aren't to happy.
It doesn't take that many people to shift a society to a different behavior.. We used to slave and human-zoos not that long ago and everybody was like, that won't change soon.
Have you thought about going vegetarian yourself?
On the one hand, I think individual action is quite useless to stop climate change. Too many people still do too many things that have a more negative impact. For example, SUVs is still a fast-growing car segment (the fastest?). The number of SUVs in Germany (where I live) have significantly increased over the years. People want their fat cars.
On the other hand, if more and more people demand certain things, for example organic food, then it causes companies and politics to change their behavior. If nobody wants microplastic-free soap and shampoo, nothing will change. If 50 people per day ask in a supermarket for microplastic-free soap and shampoo, management might notice.
But then: One big supermarket chain in Germany (REWE) ditched plastic bags altogether for paper bags and reusable cotton bags. I don't know what caused this – customers asking for it, politics, or some marketing guy with a "go green" mission. But obviously, this has a much larger impact on the environment than educating the masses about "reusing their shopping bags".
In a way, "saving the enviroment" is something that starts on an individual level, but the real useful stuff is actually implemented through politics, laws, and ultimately corporations chaning their behavior (or forcing a certain behavior on the masses, like REWE did).
Edit: The question now is: What can I do to make political changes happen on an individual level? Is it really my behavior that changes anything? Or can I have more leverage in any other way?
One option that doesn't get mentioned often enough, also not in this article, is simply working less. For most of the HN crowd it shouldn't be that hard.
A concrete step we have taken with my girlfriend over the past few months is buying second-hand items. It's crazy how much you save, and to know you have not contributed to creating more stuff.
There is an awesome campaign in France right now, encouraging this kind of behaviour : https://riendeneuf.org
That's a really big thing, in the scope of individual action. If you buy less new stuff, less stuff needs to be produced and less environmental impact happens.
Nobody needs a brand new coffee table, when there are plenty of perfectly decent ones for sale second-hand.
We've been doing the same thing, and it's great. We've also taken more time to sell unused items, even if they're only worth $10-$20. I look at it as a more effective form of recycling.
> Other than that, what’s the best daily action I can take?
While obviously well-intended, I fear this question might do more harm than good. The question stems (imho) from the fear of being helpless or the desire to be active, to do something in the face of a problem. The issue is that the desire to do good is trumped by the desire to feel good about yourself doing good. This might skew people to look for actions that are easy (therefor low-cost to feeling good) rather than helpful. For example I might decide to not use plastic straws, deliberately take shorted showers, and recycle and therefor feel good about doing my part for the environment. The risk is that doing negligible things might allow me to avoid doing the important ones. (I call these actions negligible because personal changes are hard to sustain, they don't scale, and the overall impact is relatively minute)
The important things were stated simply before the "Other than that", namely: "...
system-wide basis – like revamping our subsidy system for the energy and food industries" and what people should be doing is "... putting pressure on their governments and on companies to make the system-wide changes that are needed."
That's it. Make it a political agenda. Everything else is (relatively) fluff.
> 8. Should I think about how many children I have (or don’t have)?
Maybe the worst point of the whole article, here is my point of view : educated and people aware of environment change have fewer kids, people with the opposite way of thinking have more kids and have the same education. We create a world where the people who don't care outnumber those who care, since the most praised government system is Democracy the power goes to the number.
Path to idiocracy (great message for a comedy movie).
You are getting awfully close to eugenics. That points not only at the moral problem with your willingness to sort human life into desirable/undesirable. It also offers a clue as to the accuracy of this mechanism: If these fascists one hundred years ago were making the exact same prediction you are making, and yet the world today is not overrun by these supposedly reproduction-happy Untermenschen... then maybe it just doesn't work like that?
More specifically: this fear is based on observed heritability of traits like intelligence, and also social status etc. While these are indeed hereditary, they quickly dissipate when considering more than a single generation.
Science is never settled, already there they start the misinformation which is being used so often these days.
These kind of articles are so misguided yet people are so hysterical they actually think the individual can do things.
There is nothing individuals can do that would actually help besides creating solutions to the ever changing consequences of the world we live in. Even if we by some magical event could stop all co2 emissions the climate would still change we would still need to move or fortify against changing sealevels for example.
But right now everyone is coming up with all sorts of irrational solutions to a problem that havent been properly defined and even if it was going to be as catastrophic as some have built themselves up to believe, flying less is going to have no useful effect.
Only way out of this is through the very technology that have created the cars, products etc. to begin with. The genie is out of the bottle and cant be let back in again unfortunately.
> Science is never settled, already there they start the misinformation
Science is never settled, but arrives at increasingly accurate approximations of reality. If climate science's best approximation is doom, the rational collective response is not ignorance, but simultaneously to explore and exploit (address) the problem. Exploration by better modeling of the climate, and exploitation by pursuing known best solutions to the problem. To use a personal example of a complex system, if a person should show signs of cancer, or a virulent disease, even if medicinal knowledge is not sufficiently advanced to flawlessly diagnose the symptom, drastic action even under imperfect information is very reasonable.
In the case that drastic corrections were not necessary with respect to the climate, this nevertheless furthers the global society's resilience and response for when such drastic correction is needed.
> These kind of articles are so misguided yet people are so hysterical they actually think the individual can do things.
Without contending whether or not 'the individual can do things', the article does not give me that impression. Whereas indeed the article advocates individuals to change their individual behavior, the article is written for an audience of many. When advocacy articles like these acquire a sufficiently large megaphone, like the BBC, they cause significant collective action.
> But right now everyone is coming up with all sorts of irrational solutions to a problem that havent been properly defined and even if it was going to be as catastrophic as some have built themselves up to believe, flying less is going to have no useful effect.
The problem is the recent increase in global temperature corresponding to the recent increase in greenhouse gas production. To use the personal analogy, the elimination of mutated cells causing the tumors.
> Only way out of this is through the very technology that have created the cars, products etc. to begin with.
I think that this is a very irrational or ignorant notion. Collective action plays a very important part in very many big problems. For example, the abolition of slavery and women' suffrage are made possible (in the former case) by technology, but collective action was needed to enable these events.
Some people echo the irrational notion you seem to express that that just because individual action is useless then so is collective action, and so therefore the individual action should not be pursued. But this is clearly not the case, since collective action happens. If it seems that most big changes are performed by organizations and institutions and not individuals, this nevertheless does not negate the thesis that collective action effects changes, since sufficiently developed and mature collective action tends to organize when able, so that they are more self-sustaining.
[+] [-] pdimitar|7 years ago|reply
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 seep into the ocean and lobby to never close coal plants. And we're talking thousands of tons a day. She wasn't pleased that I attacked her agenda.
So alright, I know we all can do better, individuals included. That's unequivocally true.
But let's not ignore the fact that the biggest fault lies in organizations that are happy to pay people to whisper stuff in the ears of the people with power.
Climate change is real and the more we delay the solution, the more urgent and extreme the measures to swing it around will become. And that means to start breaking the warm and cozy positions that many corporations are in -- and enjoy the lack of supervision of.
[+] [-] Vinnl|7 years ago|reply
This is the thing that still gives me hope. Try to do good, and people will notice - and, without so much as telling others to something, they will emulate you to some extent. At least, that's what I've anecdotally observed.
The other side of this is important as well: you don't necessarily need to be a leader in everything that can be improved. However, if you see someone taking the lead, being the first follower can get a movement going, and is less effort than leading the change to boot.
[+] [-] KitDuncan|7 years ago|reply
Even my parents started eating meat a lot less, basically only for big events and startet using oat milk for their coffee!
[+] [-] mikemotherwell|7 years ago|reply
The worst things that could happen to the environment would actually be whatever happens that results in a surprise cold spell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age was such a period.
If there is a cold snap, that will likely mean MORE coal burnt in Europe, which will put greater amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, and when the cold period ends, even worse greenhouse affects.
There is virtually no situation in which carbon removal will be anything other than a net gain. We need to start removing carbon ASAP, irrespective of whether or not we can, collectively as a world of 7+Billion, reduce emissions.
The carbon removal side of the ledger is the one I think we can make meaningfully changes in fastest and with the least controversy.
[+] [-] odessacubbage|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lumberjack|7 years ago|reply
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 the people stay at home or do they run down the bank nonetheless? We do not propose individual action on other matters but we expect individual action to work on climate change.
[+] [-] moviuro|7 years ago|reply
Don't regulations come into play? In the EU, inefficient light bulbs have been phased out [0]
In France, we have free energy market since 2010 [1], with some players [2] focusing on green energy, etc.
Diesel & gas (for cars) prices are sky-rocketting (taxes !! [3]). Not cool for people who don't have the choice to keep using their old cars (students, unemployed, etc.) but the goal is to make combustion-engine cars so expensive they become unattractive.
[0] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-09-368_en.htm : On 18 March 2008, the Commission adopted a regulation on non-directional household lamps which would replace inefficient incandescent bulbs by more efficient alternatives (...) between 2009 and 2012.
[1] https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFT...
[2] https://ekwateur.fr/offre-electricite : I'm a happy customer
[3] https://www.zagaz.com/stats.php
[+] [-] moduspol|7 years ago|reply
Even if you are totally correct, it's irrelevant unless (A) you can maintain democratic support for such collective actions, or (B) you get rid of democracy.
In the US at least, even the democrats don't propose climate regulation strong enough to have a measurable impact on the climate over ten years. People will absolutely resist the moment energy prices go up notably, which will be necessary to measurably affect climate.
The problem isn't that collective action needs to be taken, it's that sufficient collective action won't sufficiently be supported by voters. That's why Democrats aren't proposing it, and that's the actual hurdle that needs to be overcome.
[+] [-] Vinnl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joelthelion|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roenxi|7 years ago|reply
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 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".
Taking a practical view that we want to preserve the world for, say, 3 generations into the future, answers like nuclear starting 30 years ago make a lot of sense.
[+] [-] jpetso|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] js8|7 years ago|reply
Let me give you an analogy. Is teaching meaningless? I mean, why do it, when you're not going to be around when people you teach will run things. You're trying to give advice to someone else, without being sure that they will follow it when you're not around.
So, I posit, not having kids and working on resolving climate change is useful, just like it is useful to teach or do your job properly to be an example for further generations doing that job.
[+] [-] justaaron|7 years ago|reply
See:
1) I, myself, my spawn, any reasonable proxy for me. a human?
2) Wish, desire, seek, want.
3) to live, life. continuance. reproduction, etc.
See, we are currently trashing the entire ball we live on:
1) too many of us. We did a good job at the whole "Go forth and multiply" thing. (talk about an incoherent philosophy: how about "the underpinnings of our civilization" for 2 points.)
resulting in:
A) loss of biodiversity. We killed the other animals
B) a HUGE footprint (land area) required for making our STUFF
C) hubris. we think OUR STUFF and OUR ECONOMY (read: make-believe silly nonsense we pretend is real) is more important than LIFE itself! The hacker news crowd is extremely guilty of this, as many people live in a simulated screen reality so much that they forgot about the wetware underpinnings of LIFE. your life.
2)We have no sense of collective responsibility, no sense of collective existence at all. It's not the squirrels fault that you can't understand why sustaining life on earth might be a worthy goal.
Collectively speaking, humanity is a dud. We didn't manage to organize anything with regards to our collective selves. We just ignorantly pursue selfish aims because some 18th century English "economist" (phlebotomist?) told us about "invisible hands"...
Maybe you should devote your vast brainpower to explaining the coherence involved in justifying industry and human "civilization" thus far?
[+] [-] KnightOfWords|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adask|7 years ago|reply
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 Japan is decreasing people talk about it as if it's a catastrophe. But Japan is very densely populated right now and I think they'll be fine either way (maybe some short term economic struggles, but they won't go extinct).
These topics can be politically taboo, but they shouldn't be. These issues are too important and long term effects can be catastrophic for the environment and the general quality of life on Earth.
[+] [-] eeZah7Ux|7 years ago|reply
There is no meaningful "average" child, or average lifestyle, to base the last column on.
No, I'm not implying that we shouldn't decrease population, just pointing out energy inequality.
Also the chart severely underestimate the impact of diet.
[+] [-] tomp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sridca|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thunderbong|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joelthelion|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheSmiddy|7 years ago|reply
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 not a radically different experience to driving an ICE car. Telecommuting and working more days from home is, for many people, a desirable change to the way we work.
Once coal and then gas has been eliminated, 99% of new model cars are electric and lab grown beef matches the taste and texture a real cow the problem will be 80% solved. All of this can be achieved without a single person needing to change their lifestyle.
[+] [-] tokyodude|7 years ago|reply
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 live carless but I can't imagine a single person I know giving up their car or moving somewhere they don't need it for for purpose of helping the environment
3. don't travel
zero friends would give this up. even the most eco "aware"
[+] [-] k_|7 years ago|reply
On a more serious note:
1. have one less kid.
I really don't like how this one is worded, I always read it as "get rid of one of your kids". Though, except going from 1 to 0, it's not that bad. I definitely wanted more than one, but I can settle with the one I have.
2. go carless
You get used to it. I even lived in small cities (~30k inhabitants) and while it's harder when your city isn't supporting a carless lifestyle (never lived in any that does that, sadly), it's definitely doable.
3. don't travel
Maybe a bit extreme to give it up entirely. But you can still travel less, do it with more eco-friendly travel options (carpooling, etc.) or go to destinations which do not require planes. I guess it depends on where you live, but in Europe there's definitely lots of wonderful places I can go to with a low carbon impact.
But I still am responsible for a lot more carbon emission than I should. I'm taking it slow (changing food habits, etc.) but there's still domains in which I am really bad (using too much tech, ordering things online..).
[+] [-] bskinny129|7 years ago|reply
I'm working on an app to make a personal travel offset pledge and track your impact publicly. If anyone is interested in keeping in the loop on progress: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance
[+] [-] xapata|7 years ago|reply
I used to travel for work, flying nearly every week. I quit, party because of the environmental concern.
[+] [-] folbec|7 years ago|reply
- 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 ?
[+] [-] shoo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw1118|7 years ago|reply
> 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 challenges may mean we will need more problem-solvers in future generations, not fewer.
Way to make the quantitative answer on this question ambiguous when it is clear that unless your kids will work or donate much more than average to climate change, they will add to the problem.
Just be honest and admit that this possible solution (fewer kids!) conflicts with your ideology.
[+] [-] jmcgough|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shoo|7 years ago|reply
for example, i could become a vegan. if i did so, the net benefit to humanity would be positive. but i don't want to, as i'd have to privately pay the cost (no more delicious chicken) while the benefits (in terms of reduced global cumulative greenhouse gas emissions) are spread across the billions of the rest of you.
however, i really want you all to take individual action to limit your greenhouse emissions so i can benefit. go vegan, have fewer children, get your economies to install carbon taxes. yes please, i'd love the lot of you to do that.
i'm very willing to trade you something of value in return for you making lifestyle changes that don't locally benefit you.
how do we make this kind of trade happen? how do we make this kind of collective agreement to change behaviour happen faster?
[+] [-] js8|7 years ago|reply
"i'm very willing to trade you something of value in return for you making lifestyle changes that don't locally benefit you"
If it's true, then you can make the next small step. For example, for every vegan you have as a friend you can decide to eat less meat. Or for every friend without a car, you can take a bus once in a while. And so on.
That would be a valuable gift to these people, who decided to selflessly take the first step.
[+] [-] matt4077|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gman83|7 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ealhad|7 years ago|reply
Yes, but not without developping the alternatives. For example, in France, the government decided to raise the taxes on gas and especially diesel — but at the same time, the small train lines are being shut down, so people living in the country aren't to happy.
[+] [-] JiIIj|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WA|7 years ago|reply
On the other hand, if more and more people demand certain things, for example organic food, then it causes companies and politics to change their behavior. If nobody wants microplastic-free soap and shampoo, nothing will change. If 50 people per day ask in a supermarket for microplastic-free soap and shampoo, management might notice.
But then: One big supermarket chain in Germany (REWE) ditched plastic bags altogether for paper bags and reusable cotton bags. I don't know what caused this – customers asking for it, politics, or some marketing guy with a "go green" mission. But obviously, this has a much larger impact on the environment than educating the masses about "reusing their shopping bags".
In a way, "saving the enviroment" is something that starts on an individual level, but the real useful stuff is actually implemented through politics, laws, and ultimately corporations chaning their behavior (or forcing a certain behavior on the masses, like REWE did).
Edit: The question now is: What can I do to make political changes happen on an individual level? Is it really my behavior that changes anything? Or can I have more leverage in any other way?
[+] [-] perfunctory|7 years ago|reply
https://thecorrespondent.com/4373/the-solution-to-just-about...
[+] [-] louismerlin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KozmoNau7|7 years ago|reply
Nobody needs a brand new coffee table, when there are plenty of perfectly decent ones for sale second-hand.
[+] [-] sudofail|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jatsign|7 years ago|reply
https://350.org/350-campaign-update-divestment/
[+] [-] air7|7 years ago|reply
While obviously well-intended, I fear this question might do more harm than good. The question stems (imho) from the fear of being helpless or the desire to be active, to do something in the face of a problem. The issue is that the desire to do good is trumped by the desire to feel good about yourself doing good. This might skew people to look for actions that are easy (therefor low-cost to feeling good) rather than helpful. For example I might decide to not use plastic straws, deliberately take shorted showers, and recycle and therefor feel good about doing my part for the environment. The risk is that doing negligible things might allow me to avoid doing the important ones. (I call these actions negligible because personal changes are hard to sustain, they don't scale, and the overall impact is relatively minute)
The important things were stated simply before the "Other than that", namely: "... system-wide basis – like revamping our subsidy system for the energy and food industries" and what people should be doing is "... putting pressure on their governments and on companies to make the system-wide changes that are needed."
That's it. Make it a political agenda. Everything else is (relatively) fluff.
[+] [-] sashimy|7 years ago|reply
Maybe the worst point of the whole article, here is my point of view : educated and people aware of environment change have fewer kids, people with the opposite way of thinking have more kids and have the same education. We create a world where the people who don't care outnumber those who care, since the most praised government system is Democracy the power goes to the number.
Path to idiocracy (great message for a comedy movie).
[+] [-] SmellyGeekBoy|7 years ago|reply
Are you arguing that climate change denial is a genetic trait?
[+] [-] matt4077|7 years ago|reply
More specifically: this fear is based on observed heritability of traits like intelligence, and also social status etc. While these are indeed hereditary, they quickly dissipate when considering more than a single generation.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ThomPete|7 years ago|reply
These kind of articles are so misguided yet people are so hysterical they actually think the individual can do things.
There is nothing individuals can do that would actually help besides creating solutions to the ever changing consequences of the world we live in. Even if we by some magical event could stop all co2 emissions the climate would still change we would still need to move or fortify against changing sealevels for example.
But right now everyone is coming up with all sorts of irrational solutions to a problem that havent been properly defined and even if it was going to be as catastrophic as some have built themselves up to believe, flying less is going to have no useful effect.
Only way out of this is through the very technology that have created the cars, products etc. to begin with. The genie is out of the bottle and cant be let back in again unfortunately.
[+] [-] jhanschoo|7 years ago|reply
Science is never settled, but arrives at increasingly accurate approximations of reality. If climate science's best approximation is doom, the rational collective response is not ignorance, but simultaneously to explore and exploit (address) the problem. Exploration by better modeling of the climate, and exploitation by pursuing known best solutions to the problem. To use a personal example of a complex system, if a person should show signs of cancer, or a virulent disease, even if medicinal knowledge is not sufficiently advanced to flawlessly diagnose the symptom, drastic action even under imperfect information is very reasonable.
In the case that drastic corrections were not necessary with respect to the climate, this nevertheless furthers the global society's resilience and response for when such drastic correction is needed.
> These kind of articles are so misguided yet people are so hysterical they actually think the individual can do things.
Without contending whether or not 'the individual can do things', the article does not give me that impression. Whereas indeed the article advocates individuals to change their individual behavior, the article is written for an audience of many. When advocacy articles like these acquire a sufficiently large megaphone, like the BBC, they cause significant collective action.
> But right now everyone is coming up with all sorts of irrational solutions to a problem that havent been properly defined and even if it was going to be as catastrophic as some have built themselves up to believe, flying less is going to have no useful effect.
The problem is the recent increase in global temperature corresponding to the recent increase in greenhouse gas production. To use the personal analogy, the elimination of mutated cells causing the tumors.
> Only way out of this is through the very technology that have created the cars, products etc. to begin with.
I think that this is a very irrational or ignorant notion. Collective action plays a very important part in very many big problems. For example, the abolition of slavery and women' suffrage are made possible (in the former case) by technology, but collective action was needed to enable these events.
Some people echo the irrational notion you seem to express that that just because individual action is useless then so is collective action, and so therefore the individual action should not be pursued. But this is clearly not the case, since collective action happens. If it seems that most big changes are performed by organizations and institutions and not individuals, this nevertheless does not negate the thesis that collective action effects changes, since sufficiently developed and mature collective action tends to organize when able, so that they are more self-sustaining.
[+] [-] chunkyslink|7 years ago|reply