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> Nothing one person could ever do could hold a light to the amount of carbon released by industries. I feel this creates a bizarre boundary between "individua

> Nothing one person could ever do could hold a light to the amount of carbon released by industries. I feel this creates a bizarre boundary between "individuals" and "industries." "Industries" didn't just magically spring up, created by an unknown exogenous force. They are created by, for, and sustained by individuals. I want a iPhone -> I buy it from Apple -> Apple sources said iPhone from a host of companies wrecking extreme environmental havok. Because I didn't directly create strip mine the precious metals required, I am somehow absolved of all responsibility for the effects of someone else doing it? To me this just seems like a big guilt laundering scheme. It doesn't feel fair to lop on the blame on industries when we are consumers supporting them.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
It's not about forcing a divide, it's about recognizing that you can't solve it from the customer side. This is a coordination problem. Yes, all the individuals on the market for an iPhone combined create the environment for a bunch of companies to damage the environment. But in trying to tackle it on consumer end, you're basically asking each individual in isolation to make a big personal sacrifice (of all the personal, social and productivity benefits coming from a high-quality smartphone) for distant, abstract, and completely uncertain gains. Uncertain, because they depend on most other individual to decide the same way. Most, not every, so maybe I'll buy my iPhone but tell everyone else not to buy it - every single one thinks. There are many other situations where this happens in life, and the solution is universally to not depend on individuals, but create coordination mechanisms that help force the issue from the top. Like environmental regulations in this case. Or worker unions in case of employee/employer power imbalance.
- candiodari 8y ago
  Well, that's the whole thing about environmental regulation. The problem is energy expenditure. Everything you do, down to breathing, expenses energy. Some things more. Some things less. A good proxy for energy is price. This is a heuristic of course, it's not perfect. So if you want to know what it would take to do good for the environment, imagine that you can only spend half as much on everything. Your backpack, your iPhone, ... everything. Not because you don't have the money, but because environmental regulation means you can't spend it like that. So only $20 restaurants. No iPhones, only cheap androids (no flagships) (or of course, if you like featurephones that's fine). No BMW 5-series or SUV, just a hatchback, and one of the smaller ones. And so on and so forth. If you want to regulate this, that means those products would simply become out of reach of the normal person. Not even because they don't have the money, but because it's forbidden for them to spend it like that.
  - hndamien 8y ago
    I think that may have the opposite effect. If consumers are willing to spend less, then the practices used to produce those things are necessarily going to need to be cheaper. This means that they will use dirtier means as a necessity.
  - Regardsyjc 8y ago
    Renewable energy like solar are getting more cost efficient. One report says that renewable energy will be consistently cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2018/01/13/renewable-energy-cost-effective-fossil-fuels-2020/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2018/01/13/renewa...
- jaredklewis 8y ago
  Sure, I agree it requires coordination, but that doesn't absolve one's share of responsibility. One might similarly argue that there is no point in voting (or feeling bad for not voting in elections) as no individual voter can expect to change the outcome of an election. Elections also require coordination. Industries face the same coordination problem as individuals. Choosing to be environmentally friendly in most situations puts your company at a distinct competitive disadvantage (which often means your company goes out of business). I'm sure many companies would only be too happy to adhere to environmental regulations if all their competitors in all countries adhered to the same standards. If we want environmental change, need to stop waiting for everyone else does to clean up their act first. Why shouldn't we start with ourselves?
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > One might similarly argue that there is no point in voting (or feeling bad for not voting in elections) as no individual voter can expect to change the outcome of an election. Elections also require coordination. Yes. No individual voter can't expect to change the outcome, so if you really want to change something in your country, this is by far the least effective thing you could do. It's also very much low-cost, so you may as well do it anyway. I see voting more like ensuring your opinion is heard, with no expectation whatsoever of it making a difference. After all, the point of democracy is to weigh your opinion equally with everyone else's. > Industries face the same coordination problem as individuals. Choosing to be environmentally friendly in most situations puts your company at a distinct competitive disadvantage (which often means your company goes out of business). I'm sure many companies would only be too happy to adhere to environmental regulations if all their competitors in all countries adhered to the same standards. My point exactly! That's just the same problem one level up, and that's why the solution usually involves regulations. Free market is an extremely efficient mechanism for ensuring everyone defects on everyone else. (Then again, countries face the same problem one level up. They compete for money and influence too. Corporation exploit this to get themselves out of inconvenient regulations by threatening to move jobs they create to another country. There's no global meta-government one level above to solve those coordination issues.) > Why shouldn't we start with ourselves? But how come that we don't start with ourselves? Because it's a coordination problem. Starting with ourselves means life-quality sacrifice on individual level - and life-threatening sacrifice on company level - for zero gain, as almost nobody else bothers with that sacrifice. Proclaiming that "[we] need to stop waiting for everyone else does to clean up their act first" doesn't really make anyone stop waiting and do the changes. (And if it happens that your proclamation resonates enough to simultaneously capture minds of enough individuals, what happens is the market economy exploits it immediately. Like with every other fashion, the market will provide you with products and services that fulfill your heart's need to be environmentally friendly. Products that make you feel you did your duty, even though those products at best are environmentally negative by very virtue of existing, and at worst they do much more damage. Compare to how this plays out with "healthy" food via this subthread about restaurants from half a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17020635. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17020635.) -- Ultimately, it's not about absolving one's share of responsibility. It's about recognizing that the problem can not be realistically tackled by making individuals feel responsible and directly asking them to change their behaviour. If it could, then by the same method we could also solve poverty and world peace. I don't really see good, reliable methods of winning. Couple strong contributions I see are: - People with money and power growing a spine and putting their influence to use in solving those issues. Not democratic, but works. See cases like Gates Foundation or Tesla. - Governments growing a spine and passing environmentally sound regulations. There are basically only four that matter - the US, the EU, Russia and China. Everyone else will follow. - People inventing new tech and doing their best to ensure it's not misused. New technology means the same market incentives can result in a more environmentally friendly outcomes, without requiring any kind of spontaneous large-scale coordination. Beyond those, I have no idea.
Regardsyjc 8y ago
If you really want to feel guilty about buying an iPhone or an electronic product- you should look into cobalt mining in the Congo. The Democratic Republic of Congo is believed to have half the world's supply of cobalt and two thirds of the world's cobalt supply originate from here. The price of cobalt has doubled in the past year yet children are still part of their cobalt mining process... [1] Are you guilty that Apple or other big tech companies allow a child to mine for your tech products? Or is this a problem that big companies would have better power to fix than you? On the other hand, I think Apple is buying their own cobalt mines so hopefully, your Apple products are or will be child labor free... [2] [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cobalt-children-mining-democratic-republic-congo-cbs-news-investigation/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cobalt-children-mining-democrat... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-21/apple-is-said-to-negotiate-buying-cobalt-direct-from-miners https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-21/apple-is-...

TeMPOraL 8y ago

It's not about forcing a divide, it's about recognizing that you can't solve it from the customer side. This is a coordination problem. Yes, all the individuals on the market for an iPhone combined create the environment for a bunch of companies to damage the environment. But in trying to tackle it on consumer end, you're basically asking each individual in isolation to make a big personal sacrifice (of all the personal, social and productivity benefits coming from a high-quality smartphone) for distant, abstract, and completely uncertain gains. Uncertain, because they depend on most other individual to decide the same way. Most, not every, so maybe I'll buy my iPhone but tell everyone else not to buy it - every single one thinks. There are many other situations where this happens in life, and the solution is universally to not depend on individuals, but create coordination mechanisms that help force the issue from the top. Like environmental regulations in this case. Or worker unions in case of employee/employer power imbalance.

candiodari 8y ago
Well, that's the whole thing about environmental regulation. The problem is energy expenditure. Everything you do, down to breathing, expenses energy. Some things more. Some things less. A good proxy for energy is price. This is a heuristic of course, it's not perfect. So if you want to know what it would take to do good for the environment, imagine that you can only spend half as much on everything. Your backpack, your iPhone, ... everything. Not because you don't have the money, but because environmental regulation means you can't spend it like that. So only $20 restaurants. No iPhones, only cheap androids (no flagships) (or of course, if you like featurephones that's fine). No BMW 5-series or SUV, just a hatchback, and one of the smaller ones. And so on and so forth. If you want to regulate this, that means those products would simply become out of reach of the normal person. Not even because they don't have the money, but because it's forbidden for them to spend it like that.
- hndamien 8y ago
  I think that may have the opposite effect. If consumers are willing to spend less, then the practices used to produce those things are necessarily going to need to be cheaper. This means that they will use dirtier means as a necessity.
- Regardsyjc 8y ago
  Renewable energy like solar are getting more cost efficient. One report says that renewable energy will be consistently cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2018/01/13/renewable-energy-cost-effective-fossil-fuels-2020/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2018/01/13/renewa...
jaredklewis 8y ago
Sure, I agree it requires coordination, but that doesn't absolve one's share of responsibility. One might similarly argue that there is no point in voting (or feeling bad for not voting in elections) as no individual voter can expect to change the outcome of an election. Elections also require coordination. Industries face the same coordination problem as individuals. Choosing to be environmentally friendly in most situations puts your company at a distinct competitive disadvantage (which often means your company goes out of business). I'm sure many companies would only be too happy to adhere to environmental regulations if all their competitors in all countries adhered to the same standards. If we want environmental change, need to stop waiting for everyone else does to clean up their act first. Why shouldn't we start with ourselves?
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > One might similarly argue that there is no point in voting (or feeling bad for not voting in elections) as no individual voter can expect to change the outcome of an election. Elections also require coordination. Yes. No individual voter can't expect to change the outcome, so if you really want to change something in your country, this is by far the least effective thing you could do. It's also very much low-cost, so you may as well do it anyway. I see voting more like ensuring your opinion is heard, with no expectation whatsoever of it making a difference. After all, the point of democracy is to weigh your opinion equally with everyone else's. > Industries face the same coordination problem as individuals. Choosing to be environmentally friendly in most situations puts your company at a distinct competitive disadvantage (which often means your company goes out of business). I'm sure many companies would only be too happy to adhere to environmental regulations if all their competitors in all countries adhered to the same standards. My point exactly! That's just the same problem one level up, and that's why the solution usually involves regulations. Free market is an extremely efficient mechanism for ensuring everyone defects on everyone else. (Then again, countries face the same problem one level up. They compete for money and influence too. Corporation exploit this to get themselves out of inconvenient regulations by threatening to move jobs they create to another country. There's no global meta-government one level above to solve those coordination issues.) > Why shouldn't we start with ourselves? But how come that we don't start with ourselves? Because it's a coordination problem. Starting with ourselves means life-quality sacrifice on individual level - and life-threatening sacrifice on company level - for zero gain, as almost nobody else bothers with that sacrifice. Proclaiming that "[we] need to stop waiting for everyone else does to clean up their act first" doesn't really make anyone stop waiting and do the changes. (And if it happens that your proclamation resonates enough to simultaneously capture minds of enough individuals, what happens is the market economy exploits it immediately. Like with every other fashion, the market will provide you with products and services that fulfill your heart's need to be environmentally friendly. Products that make you feel you did your duty, even though those products at best are environmentally negative by very virtue of existing, and at worst they do much more damage. Compare to how this plays out with "healthy" food via this subthread about restaurants from half a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17020635. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17020635.) -- Ultimately, it's not about absolving one's share of responsibility. It's about recognizing that the problem can not be realistically tackled by making individuals feel responsible and directly asking them to change their behaviour. If it could, then by the same method we could also solve poverty and world peace. I don't really see good, reliable methods of winning. Couple strong contributions I see are: - People with money and power growing a spine and putting their influence to use in solving those issues. Not democratic, but works. See cases like Gates Foundation or Tesla. - Governments growing a spine and passing environmentally sound regulations. There are basically only four that matter - the US, the EU, Russia and China. Everyone else will follow. - People inventing new tech and doing their best to ensure it's not misused. New technology means the same market incentives can result in a more environmentally friendly outcomes, without requiring any kind of spontaneous large-scale coordination. Beyond those, I have no idea.

Regardsyjc 8y ago

If you really want to feel guilty about buying an iPhone or an electronic product- you should look into cobalt mining in the Congo. The Democratic Republic of Congo is believed to have half the world's supply of cobalt and two thirds of the world's cobalt supply originate from here. The price of cobalt has doubled in the past year yet children are still part of their cobalt mining process... [1] Are you guilty that Apple or other big tech companies allow a child to mine for your tech products? Or is this a problem that big companies would have better power to fix than you? On the other hand, I think Apple is buying their own cobalt mines so hopefully, your Apple products are or will be child labor free... [2] [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cobalt-children-mining-democratic-republic-congo-cbs-news-investigation/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cobalt-children-mining-democrat... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-21/apple-is-said-to-negotiate-buying-cobalt-direct-from-miners https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-21/apple-is-...