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The main issue is this: We need to reduce consumption overall! It is well known that Americans consume far more natural resources and live much less sustainabl
by benevol 9y ago
The main issue is this: We need to reduce consumption overall!
It is well known that Americans consume far more natural resources and live much less sustainably than people from any other large country of the world. “A child born in the United States will create thirteen times as much ecological damage over the course of his or her lifetime than a child born in Brazil,” reports the Sierra Club’s Dave Tilford, adding that the average American will drain as many resources as 35 natives of India and consume 53 times more goods and services than someone from China.
Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/american-consumption-habits/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/american-consumpt...
- booblik 9y agoThis is a very bad extrapolation that doesn’t acount for the constant increase in consumption in those countries, whereas the US consumption leveled.
- benevol 9y agoI actually don't even want to compare numbers or countries directly. I just want to remind that consumption in Western countries exceeds available resources by far. We're bankrupting the planet, it's the wrong path and it simply can't last.
- occultist_throw 9y agoWell, yes and no. We've finally cracked the nut with renewable resources. Its cost a great deal of environmental damage, but I see no good progression to go from hunter-gatherer to high tech. That's just entropy laws. Now, it could certainly be argued that certain trajectories should be followed and aren't. But progress costs.
- wiz21c 9y agoIn Europe, any thing one buys must be guaranteed by the supplier for 2 years. If one could just push that up to, say, 4 years, it'd nice....
- KozmoNau7 9y agoWarranty for 6 months, right to complain for 18 months after that. The difference is the burden of proof. For the initial 6 months, the manufacturer/store has to prove the item was not somehow defective from the beginning, due to manufacturing errors or similar mishaps, even if it broke 5 months and 29 days after the sale. In the following 18 months, the burden of proof shifts to the buyer, to prove that the fault did not happen to due mistreatment during (ab)use of the item. That's how it is in Denmark, at least.
- pc86 9y agoDoesn't that make sense, though? If you have a physical product that you use daily, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to ask how a failure after 700+ uses (or many, many more) can be confirmed as a manufacturing issue and not use [over|mis|ab]use.
- Filligree 9y agoHow can a user prove they didn't misuse an item, though?
- pc86 9y agoThat would depend on the specific item, I'm sure. For example you can tell if a phone has ever been wet because there will be signs on the interior. No situation will be perfect but at some point the burden of proof has to shift from the company to the user. I think six months is probably a bit soon but sometime between that and two years seems reasonable to me.
- efreak 9y agoSix months, not two years. I personally tend to ignore warranty periods of under a year anyways, since products with such short warranty periods (30-90 days is common here in the US) tend to be cheaper to replace than to get warranty service on anyways. On the other hand, warranty here in the US can be annoying to deal with anyways--I've failed twice at getting replacements for Samsung flash memory cards that have been in production for less than their warranty period. There a some problems (microsd becoming read-only) that can't be caused by user misuse. That might be more reflective of Samsung as a company, however I've had similar issues with other companies as well.
- lr4444lr 9y ago... controlling for income distribution?
- m0llusk 9y agoMake trees drop fewer leaves for the environment!