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The members of the creative class who live in the major cities and take mass transit or bike or walk to work have the right idea. Bonus points for working at h
by scottlegrand2 10y ago
The members of the creative class who live in the major cities and take mass transit or bike or walk to work have the right idea. Bonus points for working at home or going full Mr. Money Mustache.
Unfortunately that's not practical for most people. Also, we overinvest in our highways and cars because there seems to be almost no collective will to build a national transportation network beyond that.
And I don't want to completely rag on one side of the political spectrum because if we could build a whole bunch more nuclear reactors we could solve a lot of this very quickly in the short-term.
Finally we could all eat a whole lot less beef. But I don't see any of this happening even if the current crop of leaders is kicked out the next round of elections.
There are solutions to a lot of the problems we face here in America but many of them are going to annoy both sides of the political fence differently therefore they're not going to happen. I'd love to see that change but I'm not holding my breath.
- coldpie 10y agoIt'd be great if the conversation were about how we can solve these problems, but currently the conversation is about whether the scientific reality of climate change is actually a hoax invented by the Chinese. So long as these yahoos keep getting elected, we've got a long ways to go before we start talking about cutting beef out of our diet.
- snomad 10y agoThen don't take about global warming. Talk about conserving water, talk about providing cheaper forms of energy for cars / home, talk about enhancing federal / state parks, etc.
- NotSammyHagar 10y agoIt sounds good on first thought as a strategy for those anti g.w. folks to move on to your second step. But tons of those yahoos act like cheaper energy in bad for people. It's bad for people selling oil, but good for everyone else.
- obstinate 10y agoThey (we, I should say, as a city slicker myself) have the right idea, provided we don't wipe out all our annual carbon savings in one go by flying to Thailand for holiday.
- s_kilk 10y ago> provided we don't wipe out all our annual carbon savings in one go by flying to Thailand for holiday. I fear this is the thing that'll prevent any real progress toward managing climate change. While everyone will accept using canvas bags instead of plastic, they also want to keep the luxuries they've become accustomed to.
- obstinate 10y agoIf we as a world get serious about it and begin taxing carbon emissions from flights (and other sources), I'm confident that we'll be able to handle the problem. There is going to be some extreme global discomfort in 2100-2200, but we're not going to go extinct and things will be getting better by 2400-2500.
- scriptkiddy 10y agoI'd only be comfortable with taxing carbon emissions from flights if all of the tax money was directly funneled into clean energy research and development. Otherwise, it's just going into the pockets of politicians and funding defense contractors.
- ZeroGravitas 10y agoThe other alternative is to use the tax income to offset other taxes, or even return it directly to citizens as a dividend.
- scriptkiddy 10y agoThen what's the point of the tax? I can see how airlines may funnel some effort into R&D to reduce carbon emissions, but only to the point where it becomes profitable to them. Returning the tax as a dividend to the consumer is just as pointless as the consumer is in no way obligated to be climate conscious with their capital.
- treehau5 10y agoCan I still eat lots of poultry and pork? If so, I'd be down with less beef. I'm down to about one hamburger and one steak a week.
- obstinate 10y agoYes. Cutting beef from your diet and replacing it with other meats cuts about 80% of the difference in carbon emissions between the typical American diet and a vegetarian diet. (Although the total difference in carbon emissions from diet are subsumed by the emissions of one cross-country plane flight [1] [2], so if you're concerned about optimizing the inner loop, that's what you, as a typical reader of this site, probably need to look at.) [1]: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet [2]: http://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=3 http://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=3
- ZeroGravitas 10y agoBut to extend the metaphor, fixing your own code is kind of pointless if all the other code running on the box runs unchanged. Fixes need to be made to shared libraries to have any impact. This means promoting politicians who aren't taking advantage of the situation to earn kickbacks from corporations who feel they will be negatively affected by fixing the problem, and implementing things like carbon taxes so that every decision made in the economy bakes in the real costs of carbon.
- obstinate 10y agoFortunately, this is not an either-or situation. :) I advocate all of the above, but it's important not to be in ignorance about where the real issue lies.
- ZeroGravitas 10y agoIn reality, it is an either-or situation. A small number of concerned and informed individuals trying to reduce their own carbon footprint is pointless. There's no way it pencils out to anything even vaguely worthwhile, even if they went to extremes. Even if they committed suicide and left their entire inheritance to carbon reductions it simply doesn't add up. On the other hand, a carbon tax that introduces virtually imperceptible changes across the entire economy of the world, would actually fix the problem. So yes we can do both, but one makes effectively no difference, even if it feels like a big deal to the person doing it.
- holtalanm 10y agoYou'll have to pry the beef from my cold, dead fingers.
- 0xfeba 10y agoHey, I'll take a synthetic meat burger. Just get some fat on it and I'm good.