4 ms·

Support conservation orgs. The best ones are not just focused on nature but on sustainable systems that include humans.

ars 8y ago
Like who? Every conservation org I've come across has been misanthropic. Just as an example, people who advocate for getting rid of parking, to make it harder to drive.
- zaksoup 8y ago
  The example you cite sounds reasonable and not misanthropic to me. Disincentive personal car user/ownership and incentivize public transit use. Can you expand more on why you find that problematic?
  - ars 8y ago
    Because you are doing that by making life harder for people. Instead, make life easier, so they want to use public transit. And that means not making existing solutions worse, but rather focus only on making the new stuff better. And if that turns out to be impossible to do, then public transit is simply not a solution.
    - KozmoNau7 8y ago
      It's not really possible to improve public transport beyond a certain point without impacting parking and personal car transport. If you want to improve buses, you need more of them, you need dedicated bus lanes, you need to give buses priority at intersections, and you need to modify road layouts in regards to things like one-way streets. All of these markedly improve quality of life for bus passengers, but also reduce the quality and convenience of personal car transport. Similarly, if you need to expand a rail or subway network, you need a lot of roadworks and construction, which inconveniences drivers. For streetcars, you combine the impacts of bus and rail improvements. Simply put, car drivers have been receiving preferential treatment in cities for far too long, and it's about time they were relegated to second-class transport, behind buses and rail.
      - ars 8y ago
        And if I don't want to improve public transport, because I think it's worthless? Why should I allow you to make my preferred transport worse, just because you think yours is better? If you think it's better, go for it, make it so good people want it, and maybe I'll go for it. But do so without making things worse for anyone else. I know what you are thinking "but my way is so obviously so much better, that of course we should give it priority". Except I disagree, I think public transit is horrible. And I'm saying this because I tried it, using it exclusively in a city with probably the worlds best public transit. It was horrible, I would never trade my car for that. And I would never live in a city that required me to.
        KozmoNau7 8y ago
        Because public transport is objectively better on a number of very important points. It reduces pollution and congestion. It frees up space otherwise used for parking for better purposes. It is massively cheaper for the individual. Like I said, after a certain point, you will have to choose to downgrade other forms of transport, in order to optimize the ones you choose. Why do you think public transport is horrible and worthless? Where did you live? Because I live in Copenhagen, which in my experience has the very best public transport system in the world. Usage and popularity is very high, and a lot of people bike as well, also great for easing congestion. Is it annoying when the bus is packed full and you get squeezed a bit? Yeah, but it generally only happens when there's an unforeseen delay on one of the main lines in the middle of rush hour. Another bus will come in 5 minutes, with fewer people on it. Are some routes a little odd? Yeah, it takes me 35 minutes to get to my girlfriend, compared to 15 minutes by car. But on the other hand I don't have to look for parking, and it takes less than half the time to get to work from her place, compared to driving. Since selling my car, I am saving so much money, it's a little bit silly. I pay DKK 375/month for the two main zones, and that covers 90% of my monthly travel. With my car, I filled the tank twice a month for around DKK 600 each time, not to mention parking fees, insurance, yearly tax, plus repairs and maintenance. I'd much rather use that money for more traveling and other experiences.
  - garretraziel 8y ago
    Not OP, but I have strong opinion about this: I believe that if you want to motivate people so they would do something, positive motivation ("Let's make someone's life better/easier by doing what we want him to do") is much more effective than negative motivation ("Let's complicate someone's life so he would have no other option than doing what we want him to do"). It's easier to hate/rebel against when someone is punishing me for doing something than hate when someone is rewarding me for doing it differently.
    - zaksoup 8y ago
      I recently read the book Nudge, if you haven't read it I strongly recommend it. [0]. The author just won a nobel prize for his work in socio-economics and it discusses exactly this. One of the fascinating examples discussed is a study that showed offering somebody $100 to do something is significantly less effective at motivating (whether or not they're about about it, their behavior changes) them than fining somebody $100 if they fail. [0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A5DCALY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A5DCALY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
      - ars 8y ago
        The problem is that people are 100% certain their way is the best way, so disincentivizing those who disagree seems perfectly fine with them. I'm not OK with this. If you truly believe your way is better, then put it out there and lets see if people adopt it. You don't get to "cheat" by making the other options worse, just to make yours seem better.
- sharp11 8y ago
  One of my favorite initiatives is the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund [1]. They identify ecological hotspots and convene (and fund) a diverse team of local organizations. If you read their description, you'll see that they view sustainable development for humans as an integral part of nature conservation. IMO, this is now the mainstream view among most conservation NGOs. (Twenty years ago, perhaps, it was not; but it is now.) [1] https://www.cepf.net/our-work https://www.cepf.net/our-work
- Firadeoclus 8y ago
  Where people advocate for getting rid of parking just to make it harder to drive, you have a point. But often the argument is that repurposing parking space (e.g. as bus lanes, bike lanes, pedestrian space, or to increase density) is better than the status quo, where a huge amount of infrastructure is dedicated to cars.
krageon 8y ago
The kinds of organisations paying literal tons of euros/dollars/whatever to their CEO's? I have yet to find a charitable organisation that doesn't basically funnel my money into the pocket of someone like that.
- sharp11 8y ago
  If you object to high CEO compensation for large NGOs, support small NGOs. They are typically run on a shoe-string, and the leaders are idealists who are definitely not in it for the money. One of my favorites is the Alliance for Tompotika (http://tompotika.org http://tompotika.org), run by a true visionary and very effective.

ars 8y ago

Like who? Every conservation org I've come across has been misanthropic. Just as an example, people who advocate for getting rid of parking, to make it harder to drive.

zaksoup 8y ago
The example you cite sounds reasonable and not misanthropic to me. Disincentive personal car user/ownership and incentivize public transit use. Can you expand more on why you find that problematic?
- ars 8y ago
  Because you are doing that by making life harder for people. Instead, make life easier, so they want to use public transit. And that means not making existing solutions worse, but rather focus only on making the new stuff better. And if that turns out to be impossible to do, then public transit is simply not a solution.
  - KozmoNau7 8y ago
    It's not really possible to improve public transport beyond a certain point without impacting parking and personal car transport. If you want to improve buses, you need more of them, you need dedicated bus lanes, you need to give buses priority at intersections, and you need to modify road layouts in regards to things like one-way streets. All of these markedly improve quality of life for bus passengers, but also reduce the quality and convenience of personal car transport. Similarly, if you need to expand a rail or subway network, you need a lot of roadworks and construction, which inconveniences drivers. For streetcars, you combine the impacts of bus and rail improvements. Simply put, car drivers have been receiving preferential treatment in cities for far too long, and it's about time they were relegated to second-class transport, behind buses and rail.
    - ars 8y ago
      And if I don't want to improve public transport, because I think it's worthless? Why should I allow you to make my preferred transport worse, just because you think yours is better? If you think it's better, go for it, make it so good people want it, and maybe I'll go for it. But do so without making things worse for anyone else. I know what you are thinking "but my way is so obviously so much better, that of course we should give it priority". Except I disagree, I think public transit is horrible. And I'm saying this because I tried it, using it exclusively in a city with probably the worlds best public transit. It was horrible, I would never trade my car for that. And I would never live in a city that required me to.
      - KozmoNau7 8y ago
        Because public transport is objectively better on a number of very important points. It reduces pollution and congestion. It frees up space otherwise used for parking for better purposes. It is massively cheaper for the individual. Like I said, after a certain point, you will have to choose to downgrade other forms of transport, in order to optimize the ones you choose. Why do you think public transport is horrible and worthless? Where did you live? Because I live in Copenhagen, which in my experience has the very best public transport system in the world. Usage and popularity is very high, and a lot of people bike as well, also great for easing congestion. Is it annoying when the bus is packed full and you get squeezed a bit? Yeah, but it generally only happens when there's an unforeseen delay on one of the main lines in the middle of rush hour. Another bus will come in 5 minutes, with fewer people on it. Are some routes a little odd? Yeah, it takes me 35 minutes to get to my girlfriend, compared to 15 minutes by car. But on the other hand I don't have to look for parking, and it takes less than half the time to get to work from her place, compared to driving. Since selling my car, I am saving so much money, it's a little bit silly. I pay DKK 375/month for the two main zones, and that covers 90% of my monthly travel. With my car, I filled the tank twice a month for around DKK 600 each time, not to mention parking fees, insurance, yearly tax, plus repairs and maintenance. I'd much rather use that money for more traveling and other experiences.
- garretraziel 8y ago
  Not OP, but I have strong opinion about this: I believe that if you want to motivate people so they would do something, positive motivation ("Let's make someone's life better/easier by doing what we want him to do") is much more effective than negative motivation ("Let's complicate someone's life so he would have no other option than doing what we want him to do"). It's easier to hate/rebel against when someone is punishing me for doing something than hate when someone is rewarding me for doing it differently.
  - zaksoup 8y ago
    I recently read the book Nudge, if you haven't read it I strongly recommend it. [0]. The author just won a nobel prize for his work in socio-economics and it discusses exactly this. One of the fascinating examples discussed is a study that showed offering somebody $100 to do something is significantly less effective at motivating (whether or not they're about about it, their behavior changes) them than fining somebody $100 if they fail. [0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A5DCALY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A5DCALY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
    - ars 8y ago
      The problem is that people are 100% certain their way is the best way, so disincentivizing those who disagree seems perfectly fine with them. I'm not OK with this. If you truly believe your way is better, then put it out there and lets see if people adopt it. You don't get to "cheat" by making the other options worse, just to make yours seem better.
sharp11 8y ago
One of my favorite initiatives is the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund [1]. They identify ecological hotspots and convene (and fund) a diverse team of local organizations. If you read their description, you'll see that they view sustainable development for humans as an integral part of nature conservation. IMO, this is now the mainstream view among most conservation NGOs. (Twenty years ago, perhaps, it was not; but it is now.) [1] https://www.cepf.net/our-work https://www.cepf.net/our-work
Firadeoclus 8y ago
Where people advocate for getting rid of parking just to make it harder to drive, you have a point. But often the argument is that repurposing parking space (e.g. as bus lanes, bike lanes, pedestrian space, or to increase density) is better than the status quo, where a huge amount of infrastructure is dedicated to cars.

krageon 8y ago

The kinds of organisations paying literal tons of euros/dollars/whatever to their CEO's? I have yet to find a charitable organisation that doesn't basically funnel my money into the pocket of someone like that.

sharp11 8y ago
If you object to high CEO compensation for large NGOs, support small NGOs. They are typically run on a shoe-string, and the leaders are idealists who are definitely not in it for the money. One of my favorites is the Alliance for Tompotika (http://tompotika.org http://tompotika.org), run by a true visionary and very effective.