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Convincing people this is real is only the tiniest first step. Even amongst über-liberals who fully acknowledge climate change is real—and that we're causing it

Convincing people this is real is only the tiniest first step. Even amongst über-liberals who fully acknowledge climate change is real—and that we're causing it—they're still eating their steak dinners, driving their cars, drinking bottled water, and flying to vacation in far-away lands. Until we each do our tiny parts of reducing our consumption, Earth's temperature will continue its steady march upward. Getting political consensus here would be nice. But individuals can lead by example by living more sustainable lives.

semi-extrinsic 9y ago
> Until we each do our tiny parts of reducing our consumption, Earth's temperature will continue its steady march upward. Now we're getting into the meat of the problem. If everyone worked less, got less money to spend on stupid plastic shit, drove less in our cars, threw away less perfectly edible food, and spent more time with the people we care about, both we the people and the planet would be better off. But for our debt-fueled micro- and macro-economies, it would spell utter disaster. Financial crisis writ large. Housing market would go to shit. Banks would default. The state would get less taxes, so deficit would skyrocket. Meanwhile national debt, which is measured relative to GDP, would blow up much quicker than the deficit since GDP would drop sharply. So nobody will ever actually make it happen.
LeifCarrotson 9y ago
The causes of the problem are not evenly distributed. I could eat steak dinners for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and not contribute 1% of some awful industrial-scale disasters. If I have the personal will to devote an hour a week or $20 of my budget to sustainability, that energy is inordinately more effective when spent pressuring my boss to upgrade our fleet of derelict 4 mpg coal-rollers that do hundreds of miles a week, or writing a letter to my congressman to tryto convince him that global warming isn't a scam, rather than enduring the inconvenience of carpooling so that between my wife's 25mpg and my 30 mpg cars we can save 30 miles a week. I can contribute a tiny part through personal life changes, or a big part through advocacy, with the same effort.
dialtones 9y ago
Who’s more at fault: me for eating a steak or the entire meat industry for destroying millions of acres of forest and farmland to raise cattle? I didn’t make the decision to ruin the environment, some CEO and board did.

semi-extrinsic 9y ago

> Until we each do our tiny parts of reducing our consumption, Earth's temperature will continue its steady march upward. Now we're getting into the meat of the problem. If everyone worked less, got less money to spend on stupid plastic shit, drove less in our cars, threw away less perfectly edible food, and spent more time with the people we care about, both we the people and the planet would be better off. But for our debt-fueled micro- and macro-economies, it would spell utter disaster. Financial crisis writ large. Housing market would go to shit. Banks would default. The state would get less taxes, so deficit would skyrocket. Meanwhile national debt, which is measured relative to GDP, would blow up much quicker than the deficit since GDP would drop sharply. So nobody will ever actually make it happen.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago

The causes of the problem are not evenly distributed. I could eat steak dinners for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and not contribute 1% of some awful industrial-scale disasters. If I have the personal will to devote an hour a week or $20 of my budget to sustainability, that energy is inordinately more effective when spent pressuring my boss to upgrade our fleet of derelict 4 mpg coal-rollers that do hundreds of miles a week, or writing a letter to my congressman to tryto convince him that global warming isn't a scam, rather than enduring the inconvenience of carpooling so that between my wife's 25mpg and my 30 mpg cars we can save 30 miles a week. I can contribute a tiny part through personal life changes, or a big part through advocacy, with the same effort.

dialtones 9y ago

Who’s more at fault: me for eating a steak or the entire meat industry for destroying millions of acres of forest and farmland to raise cattle? I didn’t make the decision to ruin the environment, some CEO and board did.