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Come on. I'm not talking about rolling out a green logo or planting just a handful of trees, I'm saying what if LEGO took the money from their efforts and appl

Come on. I'm not talking about rolling out a green logo or planting just a handful of trees, I'm saying what if LEGO took the money from their efforts and applied it to more powerful conservation efforts. The reality is that every climate-saving action costs money and effort, and some are drastically more helpful than others. Turning off my laptop at night helps, but just barely (@10Wh/night, power from a dirty coal plant = 3.6kWh/yr = 3.6kg CO2/yr.) Biking instead of driving to work helps; say your commute is 10km/6 miles return trip, you save ~2.5kg CO2/day [0], 260 workdays = 650 kg CO2/yr. But even if you did that, and many other little things to reduce your footprint, it would still be absolutely dwarfed by one transatlantic return flight at nearly 3000kg CO2 produced. Two points I'm trying to make here: 1) Some ways of reducing emissions are very powerful, others are not. It's worthwile to spend our efforts on the biggest polluters, because: 2) Climate change is an extremely urgent problem that must be tackled NOW. LEGO's efforts are noble, but even if successful they have a small cumulative effect that builds year over year. Depending on what LEGO invests they'll take one to five hundred years to pay off. Meanwhile, the planet will become an unliveable hellscape far sooner. Why not invest the money in something with a more immediate and powerful effect? [0] https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...

lapinot 8y ago
Sure sure (i mostly agree until your point 1), but what else could LEGO plausibly do themselves? I already hinted at it but i really don't believe that giving money for someone else to do something will get us far. It's a short term feel good & do nothing hit. I'm a bit tired of all the intellectual masturbation (no offense meant, it's a general comment) on finding the exact best solution that will solve everything. There is no such thing and we're in there for a while. Currently anything will be better so lets just do that, it'll be something less to do and we'll get better ideas going. It's funny how the current state of action is for people to do "concrete personal actions" (like you said, biking, recycling, etc) but for companies/states to shove money around designing abstract plans and do PR explaining how they couldn't care more. We have to keep it real whatever the level of power and especially big structures need to get going. So, LEGO. Their manufacturing process is probably mostly robotized electric industrial chains which i'm not sure has the room for large improvement (maybe they can lower the energy cost but probably not that much). Another obvious spot is the distribution but i'm not sure they handle it themselves, most of it is probably done by subcontractors. And it's not like LEGO is gonna bring back freight trains instead of trucks, this kind of things has to come from large scale transporters and from public policies. Worrying about material then feels natural. The reason we can't just "shut off" Exxon or Total is because virtually all our industry depends on some sort of petroleum derivative. So on your point 2: something like what? Right now a reasonable thing to do is probably to work downstream on cutting these dependencies on oil companies, taking away power and eventually shutting them down. It's not because it's urgent that we have to think on short term.

lapinot 8y ago

Sure sure (i mostly agree until your point 1), but what else could LEGO plausibly do themselves? I already hinted at it but i really don't believe that giving money for someone else to do something will get us far. It's a short term feel good & do nothing hit. I'm a bit tired of all the intellectual masturbation (no offense meant, it's a general comment) on finding the exact best solution that will solve everything. There is no such thing and we're in there for a while. Currently anything will be better so lets just do that, it'll be something less to do and we'll get better ideas going. It's funny how the current state of action is for people to do "concrete personal actions" (like you said, biking, recycling, etc) but for companies/states to shove money around designing abstract plans and do PR explaining how they couldn't care more. We have to keep it real whatever the level of power and especially big structures need to get going. So, LEGO. Their manufacturing process is probably mostly robotized electric industrial chains which i'm not sure has the room for large improvement (maybe they can lower the energy cost but probably not that much). Another obvious spot is the distribution but i'm not sure they handle it themselves, most of it is probably done by subcontractors. And it's not like LEGO is gonna bring back freight trains instead of trucks, this kind of things has to come from large scale transporters and from public policies. Worrying about material then feels natural. The reason we can't just "shut off" Exxon or Total is because virtually all our industry depends on some sort of petroleum derivative. So on your point 2: something like what? Right now a reasonable thing to do is probably to work downstream on cutting these dependencies on oil companies, taking away power and eventually shutting them down. It's not because it's urgent that we have to think on short term.