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What can I do about climate change?

175 points by joelthelion 8y ago

joelthelion 8y ago
I'm posting this because it's a good comprehensive overview of the question. Most similar articles give a superficial overview with two or three ideas. However, climate change is not a simple issue where you can just change a thing or two to fix it; it requires deep changes in most aspects of life. And this change has to happen right now.
- TheSmiddy 8y ago
  I don't think individuals require deep change in order to solve climate change. Most sources of emissions when broken down by industry ultimately just point back to the energy generation. The only deep change that an individual can do that will make an actual impact is going vegan. Adding solar panels to your roof is not a drastic change, in fact in Australia it makes good economic sense. Driving an electric car is not a radically different experience to driving an ICE car. Telecommuting and working more days from home is, for many people, a desirable change to the way we work. Once coal and then gas has been eliminated, 99% of new model cars are electric and lab grown beef matches the taste and texture a real cow the problem will be 80% solved. All of this can be achieved without a single person needing to change their lifestyle.
  - philjohn 8y ago
    Got any scientific studies to back up that going Vegan is better for the environment?
    - KnightOfWords 8y ago
      http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-06-01-new-estimates-environmental-cost-food http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-06-01-new-estimates-environmen... "High-impact beef producers create 105kg of CO2 equivalents and use 370m2 of land per 100 grams of protein, a huge 12 and 50 times greater than low-impact beef producers. Low-impact beans, peas, and other plant-based proteins can create just 0.3kg of CO2 equivalents (including all processing, packaging, and transport), and use just 1m2 of land per 100 grams of protein."
      - philjohn 8y ago
        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5522483/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5522483/ Shows Vegan and Ovo-Lacto Vegetarian neck and neck. As another poster pointed out, in many areas living a pure vegan diet is far WORSE for the environment as you have to expend considerable CO2 getting the correct foodstuffs there. There's also the open question about many countries where the land is only suitable for pasture as it's not arable.
    - jamil7 8y ago
      I think this would be pretty difficult to study since there isn't "one" vegan diet. It differs radically depending on where someone is and what they choose to eat and the complexity of food distribution. On the surface removing meat, diary and eggs from your diet is definitely better for the environment and you can easily find scientific studies to back this up. I find the problems start to arise when you take into account what kind of fats and proteins vegans are supplementing with, eg a vegan living in Scandinavia that's buying imported avocados from South America is probably having a considerable environmental impact by doing so.
      - philjohn 8y ago
        Exactly - which is why I take offence to people insisting it's a panacea. For some people in some regions it may very well be, but it's not for all, and trying to sell it that way is a little disingenuous.
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    Why is going vegan a "deep change"? What if everyone ate one beefy burger a year? I keep seeing this bandied about but it really feels like people pushing their ideology as the answer to whatever question was asked.
  - mjevans 8y ago
    Cheap clean energy is indeed the core problem. With enough energy even inefficient processes like creating synthetic high energy fuels to condense more energy in to less weight for air travel are possible. Short term: Build MODERN, waste reducing, nuclear (fission) plants. If proliferation is a concern, require the military be hired to protect them and the logs/supervision open to the public with short delay. Long term: I like the 3001 / Gundam OO / generic scifi solution. Solar collectors. Point lots of solar energy at a focal location and do useful things with it.
  - DomreiRoam 8y ago
    Without going full vegan, you can already reduce the meat consumption and also switching from red meat to poultry meat. We overeat meat and it is both bad for our body and our environment.
  - Theodores 8y ago
    I think it is also important to get an education on how we have ended up in a society where these meat products are considered normal. I was 'born vegetarian' and I struggled to eat meat. I tried my hardest and genuinely believed that if I did not eat meat like everyone else then I would end up physically weak, without a fully developed brain etc. I endured eating burgers in the belief that they were really good for me. I never learned to cook the stuff and got over my fears of not eating meat. Laziness really, not wanting to have the hygiene problems of a contaminated kitchen. A few meat food scares (BSE) helped me to take the easy route (for me) of living without eating meat. Haven't died of a lack of B12 yet and I know plants don't have any need for B12 but we do. Anyway, I have had time since the days of teenage fear to think more positively about what I do and do not eat. There are notable athletes, thinkers and Hollywood stars that are strictly vegetarian. My meat eating friends only seem to know of Hitler as being famous for being vegetarian but I know not everything in this world is black and white, just because Hitler didn't eat burgers doesn't mean that I should. Now role models are all well and good, however, the history of food is far more fascinating and I really like understanding how we got here. The Chicken Tax is what got me to do my own thinking on the history of food. My grandmother was the last generation to remember when chickens were not what you ate every day. There was a time - not so long ago - when people saved up to eat a chicken based meal, this would be Christmas or a birthday, as a treat. Chicken is now wolfed down as part of a sandwich, sat at the desk, not savoured or enjoyed in some special ritual as per seventy years ago. The farmers in the USA changed the game to the intensive farming we have for chickens, the Chicken Tax that petrol heads know of was the gateway for me to learn that story. Eggs were not a year round product, there was Easter and maybe a 'second brood' later in the year. So even eggs - a substitute for meat - are not actually what we think they are, we have forgotten the seasonal aspect. Then there is the the cow. For most of mankind's history with the cow the cow was a beast of burden with added milk. You didn't eat your cows in times gone past when a cow was more like a domestic appliance, for pulling the plough. Only if there was plague and famine would you want to eat the cow. Doing so meant harsh times. The Dutch invented a new harness for the horse in the 17th century that enabled horses to pull the plough. This put the cow out of work so there was a change on the farm. At around the same time the guy that inspired Darwin and did all the selective breeding made cows into the beef product every burger scoffer so enjoys. The cows that pulled the plough were nearer goat sized, albeit podgy goat sized, hey were not these giant things we have today, stuffed with corn and killed before the diseases from their corn fed diet kill them. Then there are the sheep. I grew up in an area where wool was what mattered. I have studied the local history and absent from it is any mention of eating lamb or mutton. The products that were shipped out of the area were wool, more wool and more wool. The world was getting clothed not fed. Clearly our ancestors had many uses for the animals they lived with and every scrap went to 'good' use. Unless you were lord of the manor then game was off the table too. People were not at all well nourished with the chemicals we sprinkle on the land today - doors in old houses are only 5 foot 6 inches tall, they didn't need them to cater for 6' tall people. I think it is really important to understand a little bit about how we got here and why it is that we think we need beef. The ethics of the slaughterhouse is divisive, an in-depth appreciation of history is not. Really we have been conned into believing so much of the modern life, tricked into believing we need things that we do not.
KnightOfWords 8y ago
This graphic give a pretty good summary of the relative impact: https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hires/2017/themosteffec.jpg https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hire...
- thunderbong 8y ago
  This is really a very good infographic - The biggest way we can impact climate change as individuals is to have fewer children. Yet, in most discussions I've seen, we talk about hybrid cars and vegetarian diet!
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    Your children's contribution to climate change is their contribution, not yours. The goal of combating climate change is to make the planet more liveable. You don't achieve that by not living.
    - ForHackernews 8y ago
      > Your children's contribution to climate change is their contribution, not yours. It's not some moral game of attribution of blame, it's just maths. Fewer people produce less CO2.
      - doombolt 8y ago
        Yes, your children don't get to live to benefit some other people's children. That, or we end as species. Guess what? Worst case of global warming, mankind extermination. "Best" case, also mankind extermination.
        ForHackernews 8y ago
        What a bunch of tosh. You're worried about "extinction" from people having fewer kids? Meanwhile, we're on track to 10 billion people before 2050. Talk about premature optimisation!
throw1118 8y ago
> 8. Should I think about how many children I have (or don’t have)? ... > Nicholas’s study concluded that having fewer children is the best way to reduce your contribution to climate change, with almost 60 tonnes of CO2 avoided per year. But this result has been contentious – and it leads to other questions. ... > And we could ask if having children is necessarily a bad thing for solving climate change: our challenges may mean we will need more problem-solvers in future generations, not fewer. Way to make the quantitative answer on this question ambiguous when it is clear that unless your kids will work or donate much more than average to climate change, they will add to the problem. Just be honest and admit that this possible solution (fewer kids!) conflicts with your ideology.
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  It's also way too late to be banking on "future generations". Every credible report signals that either the adult generation in power today takes immediate action to curb climate change, or the effects will be catastrophic and, in most cases, irreversible. The recent UN report says we need to cut emissions worldwide by 50% by 2030. Your 11 year old child will not fix the climate. All this warm-fuzzy nonsense about leaving the solution to "future problem solvers" is how we got here.
  - shoo 8y ago
    Quoting Donella Meadows: > The world can respond in three ways to signals that resource use and pollution emissions have gone beyond their sustainable limits. One way is to disguise, deny, or confuse the signals. Generally this takes the form of efforts to shift costs to those who are far away in space and time. > A second way is to alleviate the pressures from limits by employ- ing technical or economic fixes. [...] These approaches, however, will not eliminate the causes of these pressures. > The third way is to work on the underlying causes, to recognize that the socioeconomic system has overshot its limits, is headed toward collapse, and therefore seek to change the structure of the system. Leaving the hard decisions to "future problem solvers" is exactly response #1, "shift costs to those who are far away in space and time", i.e. future generations. http://donellameadows.org/archives/a-synopsis-limits-to-growth-the-30-year-update/ http://donellameadows.org/archives/a-synopsis-limits-to-grow...
pdimitar 8y ago
This article's quality is higher than many others on the same topic and that's a pleasant surprise. That being said, I can't help being reminded about German language lessons I had ~10 years ago where the teacher was preaching that we must all ditch electric kettles for the sake of the planet. I asked her how is this going to help -- even if 100_00 people do it today -- if corporations are happy to let toxic waste seep into the ocean and lobby to never close coal plants. And we're talking thousands of tons a day. She wasn't pleased that I attacked her agenda. So alright, I know we all can do better, individuals included. That's unequivocally true. But let's not ignore the fact that the biggest fault lies in organizations that are happy to pay people to whisper stuff in the ears of the people with power. Climate change is real and the more we delay the solution, the more urgent and extreme the measures to swing it around will become. And that means to start breaking the warm and cozy positions that many corporations are in -- and enjoy the lack of supervision of.
- joelthelion 8y ago
  As the article mentions, individuals can do something about corporate pollution: - Buy less stuff. Corporations produce waste because we buy their stuff. Get the stuff you still buy from more environmentally-friendly companies, if possible. - Political action. Corporations need to be regulated and that can only happen through political action. Lobbies may have a lot of power, but in the end, it's the citizens who vote.
  - pdimitar 8y ago
    > Buy less stuff. This is becoming harder and harder with time. Believe me, I would love to buy my kitchen stove, washing machine, refrigerator, aspirator, air conditioner and vacuum cleaner from a local manufacturer. But there are none. How many household brands do really exist and how many are actually known and bought by almost everyone? Additionally, even if you are an idealist who wants to be the change they want to see, you will still need a bunch of tech gadgets to connect with the world and try to change it -- like a good smartphone and laptop that don't suck. Not every $100 piece of trash will do the job. And the cheaper tech might have actually had much more negative impact on the planet's CO2 footprint. It's very complex and thus no black-and-white solutions exist. Some corps like Apple and Samsung seem hellbent on testing the customers' patience with higher prices every year and it will definitely bite them back at one point. That much is true. > Political action. Never in my life, not once, have I seen citizens voting actually change anything of significance in a country. Have you? And we're talking less than 10 years here. "These things take time" seems pretty shallow and empty as a justification for things not happening.
jmcgough 8y ago
Related to this, Bill Gates recently wrote about some of the major sources of co2 pollution and the challenges of addressing them: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-climate-change https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-clima...
ForHackernews 8y ago
Another good site attacking this problem is https://www.drawdown.org/ https://www.drawdown.org/
chunkyslink 8y ago
I found this useful too. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/climate-change-what-you-can-do-campaigning-installing-insulation-solar-panels https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/climate-...
lumberjack 8y ago
If people were not so stuck up on individual action, that would be some progress towards solving climate change. One of the big obstacles is admitting that we need collective action to solve this worldwide problem. Would ee propose individual action when less dangerous situations occur in society? Say, a bank run is imminent. Does individual action work? Does the government broadcast it on the 8 o'clock news and do the people stay at home or do they run down the bank nonetheless? We do not propose individual action on other matters but we expect individual action to work on climate change.
- joelthelion 8y ago
  While the title isn't very clear, the article mentions collective actions as well. Political action also stems from individuals and should of course be part of our actions against climate change.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  Do you think there's anyone promoting individual action who'd be against collective action? Or could a small individual action be a gateway to participating in collective action?
  - oppzixi00 8y ago
    > Do you think there's anyone promoting individual action who'd be against collective action? Yes. A lobbyist who wants to avoid new legislation to control climate change, but still claim they care about it.
    - Vinnl 8y ago
      Ah sorry, it should indeed have said: is there anyone who is in favour of individual action, but against collective action.
  - kiliantics 8y ago
    There are many people who seem to enjoy the aesthetics of consumerist-oriented environmental action but are horrified by the idea of mass protest, civil disobedience, worker's strikes, etc.
Vinnl 8y ago
> 9. But if I eat less meat or take fewer flights, that’s just me – how much of a difference can that really make? > > Actually, it’s not just you. Social scientists have found that when one person makes a sustainability-oriented decision, other people do too. This is the thing that still gives me hope. Try to do good, and people will notice - and, without so much as telling others to something, they will emulate you to some extent. At least, that's what I've anecdotally observed. The other side of this is important as well: you don't necessarily need to be a leader in everything that can be improved. However, if you see someone taking the lead, being the first follower can get a movement going, and is less effort than leading the change to boot.
- KitDuncan 8y ago
  Anecdotal, but I went vegan 3 years ago and in those 3 years, quite a few of my very close friends went vegan or vegetarian as well. It really does give me a lot of hope. Even my parents started eating meat a lot less, basically only for big events and startet using oat milk for their coffee!
  - belorn 8y ago
    > startet using oat milk for their coffee Are you and they using honey or white sugar from farmed sugarcanes? For the environment sake I wish that vegan diet would include honey as it has a big net-positive effect on the environment compared to farmed sugarcanes by not causing eutrophication or water pollution, and helps with pollination both for wild forests and agriculture.
    - petecox 8y ago
      I'd have suggested planting more sugar maples as a carbon sink but climate change is impacting the production of maple syrup: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/the-plate/2015/12/02/global-warming-pushes-maple-trees-syrup-to-the-brink/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/t...
    - mikro2nd 8y ago
emmelaich 8y ago
Campaign for nuclear power plus wind and solar. That's it.
- wilgertvelinga 8y ago
  A thorough explanation why: https://youtu.be/YjFWiMJdotM https://youtu.be/YjFWiMJdotM (don't forget to turn on captions if your Dutch is lacking)
  - oppzixi00 8y ago
    There's no way to scale up nuclear power at the rate needed. Too expensive, needs too much capital, too slow to build.
    - wilgertvelinga 8y ago
      Do you have the source for that? (it's not that I don't believe you, just curious)
- shoo 8y ago
  that doesn't fix the systemic causes of the mess we're in -- population growth, and environmental impact per person. climate change isn't the problem, it's the second major global-scale symptom of the problem (the first one was the ozone layer). it's highly concerning! but suppose we manage to slow or reverse or mitigate climate change, at great expense, without addressing the underlying problem --- then we're going to have less resources to address the next global issue: https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaaries/planetary-boundaries/about-the-research/the-nine-planetary-boundaries.html https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-bound...
gman83 8y ago
Expecting some kind of mass-shift in lifestyle in the population at large isn't going to work, because not enough people are going to do it. I think the best thing to do is to advocate for solar, wind, nuclear and hydro power. Personally I think we should be building more nuclear power plants as well as deploying giant battery storage facilities to store energy from wind and solar. We should also start taxing carbon emissions. So advocating political change to achieve collective action seems like the only feasible way to do anything effective to me.
- ealhad 8y ago
  > We should also start taxing carbon emissions. Yes, but not without developping the alternatives. For example, in France, the government decided to raise the taxes on gas and especially diesel — but at the same time, the small train lines are being shut down, so people living in the country aren't to happy.
  - WA 8y ago
    People in the country usually pay a lot less rent/housing. Paying more for transportation is to be expected if you don't live in a city. If they don't like it, they could try to move to a city and swap their high transportation cost for higher rent.
- JiIIj 8y ago
  It doesn't take that many people to shift a society to a different behavior.. We used to slave and human-zoos not that long ago and everybody was like, that won't change soon. Have you thought about going vegetarian yourself?
shoo 8y ago
i selfishly don't want to take the necessary individual action where my personal cost-benefit analysis comes out negative. for example, i could become a vegan. if i did so, the net benefit to humanity would be positive. but i don't want to, as i'd have to privately pay the cost (no more delicious chicken) while the benefits (in terms of reduced global cumulative greenhouse gas emissions) are spread across the billions of the rest of you. however, i really want you all to take individual action to limit your greenhouse emissions so i can benefit. go vegan, have fewer children, get your economies to install carbon taxes. yes please, i'd love the lot of you to do that. i'm very willing to trade you something of value in return for you making lifestyle changes that don't locally benefit you. how do we make this kind of trade happen? how do we make this kind of collective agreement to change behaviour happen faster?
- js8 8y ago
  There is a simple answer, really, but you won't like it. "i'm very willing to trade you something of value in return for you making lifestyle changes that don't locally benefit you" If it's true, then you can make the next small step. For example, for every vegan you have as a friend you can decide to eat less meat. Or for every friend without a car, you can take a bus once in a while. And so on. That would be a valuable gift to these people, who decided to selflessly take the first step.
- matt4077 8y ago
  That's called the "collective action problem", and the single most effective solution is called "law".
- uxcolumbo 8y ago
  FYI, Veganism isn't about reducing your carbon footprint or living healthily, those things are an added bonus. Being vegan means saying no to cruelty towards other sentient and intelligent beings and enslaving them for our culinary pleasure purposes. So having a friend who is vegan wouldn't really eliminate cruelty towards chickens for example, as your craving for delicious chicken would still require chickens to be slaughtered, i.e. Is cruelty ok, so you can continue to experience culinary pleasures? Tough questions... Edit: mainly referring to factory farming and large scale meat industry, where most of the meat we consume comes from.
tokyodude 8y ago
I don't have a single friend or even. aquaintence who would do any of the top 3 things long the list of 148 most impactful things an individual can do they were 1. have one less kid. I can maybe imagine a friend choosing not to have 3 but I can't imagine someone wanting 2 to go to 1 or someone wanting 1 to go to 0 for this reason 2. go carless Sone friends live in a city that supports a carless lifestyle and already live carless but I can't imagine a single person I know giving up their car or moving somewhere they don't need it for for purpose of helping the environment 3. don't travel zero friends would give this up. even the most eco "aware"
- shoo 8y ago
  would your friends agree to give this up if, in return, everyone else gave them up too?
  - pdimitar 8y ago
    I would not. Whether I want to go somewhere 20km away (the other end of my city) or not has zero correlation if other people have cars or not.
    - shoo 8y ago
      what about if there was some kind of global system of decision-making where others could influence or incentivise your day-to-day actions? e.g. hypothetically would you support a global carbon tax* priced high enough so that driving somewhere wasn't by default a sensible decision? * supposing, hypothetically, we had some effective way of reaching such an agreement and enforcing it
      - pdimitar 8y ago
        If the alternative was just as comfortable and fast, I would be the first to throw away my car. I have zero ego attachments to such objects, I am after their comfort and practical value.
adwhit 8y ago
I agree this article isn't as terrible as average. Going vegetarian and cycling to work once a week might make you feel good but it ain't gonna make a difference. It's a political problem. It needs a political solution. Agitate and vote for the most left-wing party you can (that has a realistic chance of winning/influencing an election). Campaign for them to institute a ban on fossil fuels. Protest. Climb smokestacks. Make headlines. Break the law. If you work in the media, subvert their agenda as much as possible. Capitalism is crisis. Of course, the BBC would never state these things. But given how little has been achieved in the last 40 years by playing by the rules, at this point they are obviously necessary, if not sufficient.
- JiIIj 8y ago
  You are completely right, going vegetarian or even vegan plus cycling won't fix all problems. But it would be a start, what do you think? So why don't do it still aditionally, instead of just waiting for others to change?
- dev_north_east 8y ago
  > Agitate and vote for the most left-wing party you can What's that got to do with the price of fish? The main left parties in my area still harp on about the coalmines. Then you have the Greens who are anti-nuclear, anti-Gm, anti-everything who seem to spend most of their time now involved in infighting over trans nonsense.
Antifragile1 8y ago
Encourage eco terrorists like Columbine High School shooter and Unabomber.
corradio 8y ago
We wrote a more in-depth guide to climate change (what it is and what we can do) here, as part of our startup called Tomorrow: http://tmrow.com/climatechange.html http://tmrow.com/climatechange.html Feedback is welcome!
JiIIj 8y ago
I'm so happy that the factor reducing meat consumption is mentioned... By going vegan, vegetarian or just (really) reducing one owns meat consumption is a major factor where you can start like today. Also fewer cows, pigs and chicken slaughtered in your name ^^^ It is hard for many, and I might expect to get some comments of disaprovel. Before that, pleasae watch Melanie Joy Authentic food choices on youtube for an clearer understanding where I might be comming form. Thank you so much :)
roenxi 8y ago
> Nicholas’s study concluded that having fewer children is the best way to reduce your contribution to climate change Environmentalism as a philosophy isn't all that coherent, and this suggestion in point 8 really encapsulates the heart of my problems with it. If we are saving the planet "for" someone else, who are they? If we are saving the planet for ourselves, do minor actions of deprivation make sense? The extreme logical extension of the philosophy in point 8 that isn't "if I care about the future, and if all life is equal, I should remove myself from the gene pool and build a society that doesn't value the environment". Taking a practical view that we want to preserve the world for, say, 3 generations into the future, answers like nuclear starting 30 years ago make a lot of sense.
- js8 8y ago
  The resolve to this apparent paradox is easy. You can like the civilization on this planet yet not care one iota about the gene pool (of course you have to care about it to the extent needed to reproduce humans, on which the civilization relies for the foreseeable future, but no more than that). Let me give you an analogy. Is teaching meaningless? I mean, why do it, when you're not going to be around when people you teach will run things. You're trying to give advice to someone else, without being sure that they will follow it when you're not around. So, I posit, not having kids and working on resolving climate change is useful, just like it is useful to teach or do your job properly to be an example for further generations doing that job.
  - roenxi 8y ago
    > Is teaching meaningless? I mean, why do it, when you're not going to be around when people you teach will run things. You might be underestimating how much personal benefit a selfish materialist can wring out of teaching people things. I, for example, love teaching people basically anything I know. To the point where I'm probably unhelpful. There have been numerous instances where there is a skill gap between me and someone else that I have closed and benefited greatly from closing. Usually this is in academic and workplace settings, but I suspect most parents would also see this dynamic. It also works socially when they return the favour and find some interesting idea for me in return at a later time. If they don't follow my advice, that is often even better for me in the medium-long term because it suggests my advice is bad and I get an opportunity to correct my mistakes and misconceptions. One of the most fortunate outcomes of the modern era is the more you want to maximise your own material success, the more advantage you can get from maximising the ability and resources available to those around you. I've been led to believe that a sample of most serious leadership groups will pick up an unusually high concentration of clever sociopaths - I suspect at least some of them will be excellent leaders because they figured this little factoid out. The scenario is extremely different from someone asking me to give up driving because someone else will hypothetically benefit. As an interesting anecdata, I gave up driving because of economic and safety concerns, which are far more convincing to me personally.
belorn 8y ago
When ranking different actions one can take to limit pollution I also like to include actions which has a net-positive effects. There are so many small things which might not be the cheapest or cultural popular but they do directly help the environment.
louismerlin 8y ago
A concrete step we have taken with my girlfriend over the past few months is buying second-hand items. It's crazy how much you save, and to know you have not contributed to creating more stuff. There is an awesome campaign in France right now, encouraging this kind of behaviour : https://riendeneuf.org https://riendeneuf.org
- sudofail 8y ago
  We've been doing the same thing, and it's great. We've also taken more time to sell unused items, even if they're only worth $10-$20. I look at it as a more effective form of recycling.
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  That's a really big thing, in the scope of individual action. If you buy less new stuff, less stuff needs to be produced and less environmental impact happens. Nobody needs a brand new coffee table, when there are plenty of perfectly decent ones for sale second-hand.
ThomPete 8y ago
Science is never settled, already there they start the misinformation which is being used so often these days. These kind of articles are so misguided yet people are so hysterical they actually think the individual can do things. There is nothing individuals can do that would actually help besides creating solutions to the ever changing consequences of the world we live in. Even if we by some magical event could stop all co2 emissions the climate would still change we would still need to move or fortify against changing sealevels for example. But right now everyone is coming up with all sorts of irrational solutions to a problem that havent been properly defined and even if it was going to be as catastrophic as some have built themselves up to believe, flying less is going to have no useful effect. Only way out of this is through the very technology that have created the cars, products etc. to begin with. The genie is out of the bottle and cant be let back in again unfortunately.
- jhanschoo 8y ago
  > Science is never settled, already there they start the misinformation Science is never settled, but arrives at increasingly accurate approximations of reality. If climate science's best approximation is doom, the rational collective response is not ignorance, but simultaneously to explore and exploit (address) the problem. Exploration by better modeling of the climate, and exploitation by pursuing known best solutions to the problem. To use a personal example of a complex system, if a person should show signs of cancer, or a virulent disease, even if medicinal knowledge is not sufficiently advanced to flawlessly diagnose the symptom, drastic action even under imperfect information is very reasonable. In the case that drastic corrections were not necessary with respect to the climate, this nevertheless furthers the global society's resilience and response for when such drastic correction is needed. > These kind of articles are so misguided yet people are so hysterical they actually think the individual can do things. Without contending whether or not 'the individual can do things', the article does not give me that impression. Whereas indeed the article advocates individuals to change their individual behavior, the article is written for an audience of many. When advocacy articles like these acquire a sufficiently large megaphone, like the BBC, they cause significant collective action. > But right now everyone is coming up with all sorts of irrational solutions to a problem that havent been properly defined and even if it was going to be as catastrophic as some have built themselves up to believe, flying less is going to have no useful effect. The problem is the recent increase in global temperature corresponding to the recent increase in greenhouse gas production. To use the personal analogy, the elimination of mutated cells causing the tumors. > Only way out of this is through the very technology that have created the cars, products etc. to begin with. I think that this is a very irrational or ignorant notion. Collective action plays a very important part in very many big problems. For example, the abolition of slavery and women' suffrage are made possible (in the former case) by technology, but collective action was needed to enable these events. Some people echo the irrational notion you seem to express that that just because individual action is useless then so is collective action, and so therefore the individual action should not be pursued. But this is clearly not the case, since collective action happens. If it seems that most big changes are performed by organizations and institutions and not individuals, this nevertheless does not negate the thesis that collective action effects changes, since sufficiently developed and mature collective action tends to organize when able, so that they are more self-sustaining.
tiktoktek 8y ago
fix ourself for littering, plant trees and use electric vehicles
WA 8y ago
On the one hand, I think individual action is quite useless to stop climate change. Too many people still do too many things that have a more negative impact. For example, SUVs is still a fast-growing car segment (the fastest?). The number of SUVs in Germany (where I live) have significantly increased over the years. People want their fat cars. On the other hand, if more and more people demand certain things, for example organic food, then it causes companies and politics to change their behavior. If nobody wants microplastic-free soap and shampoo, nothing will change. If 50 people per day ask in a supermarket for microplastic-free soap and shampoo, management might notice. But then: One big supermarket chain in Germany (REWE) ditched plastic bags altogether for paper bags and reusable cotton bags. I don't know what caused this – customers asking for it, politics, or some marketing guy with a "go green" mission. But obviously, this has a much larger impact on the environment than educating the masses about "reusing their shopping bags". In a way, "saving the enviroment" is something that starts on an individual level, but the real useful stuff is actually implemented through politics, laws, and ultimately corporations chaning their behavior (or forcing a certain behavior on the masses, like REWE did). Edit: The question now is: What can I do to make political changes happen on an individual level? Is it really my behavior that changes anything? Or can I have more leverage in any other way?
- danielbln 8y ago
  Whatever REWE did is certainly working to keep me as a customer. The amount of plastic I buy with my groceries is ludicrous, every measure to reduce this amount is highly welcome.
sashimy 8y ago
> 8. Should I think about how many children I have (or don’t have)? Maybe the worst point of the whole article, here is my point of view : educated and people aware of environment change have fewer kids, people with the opposite way of thinking have more kids and have the same education. We create a world where the people who don't care outnumber those who care, since the most praised government system is Democracy the power goes to the number. Path to idiocracy (great message for a comedy movie).
- matt4077 8y ago
  You are getting awfully close to eugenics. That points not only at the moral problem with your willingness to sort human life into desirable/undesirable. It also offers a clue as to the accuracy of this mechanism: If these fascists one hundred years ago were making the exact same prediction you are making, and yet the world today is not overrun by these supposedly reproduction-happy Untermenschen... then maybe it just doesn't work like that? More specifically: this fear is based on observed heritability of traits like intelligence, and also social status etc. While these are indeed hereditary, they quickly dissipate when considering more than a single generation.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  I certainly don't share my parents' political views. Do you? Are you arguing that climate change denial is a genetic trait?
Torakfirenze 8y ago
Whilst this article has some points of merit, its premise infuriates me. Shifting the blame to the consumer and shielding corporates is toxic. The Carbon Majors report last year illustrated pretty clearly that 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. Me going vegan and not using straws isn't going to save the planet.
air7 8y ago
> Other than that, what’s the best daily action I can take? While obviously well-intended, I fear this question might do more harm than good. The question stems (imho) from the fear of being helpless or the desire to be active, to do something in the face of a problem. The issue is that the desire to do good is trumped by the desire to feel good about yourself doing good. This might skew people to look for actions that are easy (therefor low-cost to feeling good) rather than helpful. For example I might decide to not use plastic straws, deliberately take shorted showers, and recycle and therefor feel good about doing my part for the environment. The risk is that doing negligible things might allow me to avoid doing the important ones. (I call these actions negligible because personal changes are hard to sustain, they don't scale, and the overall impact is relatively minute) The important things were stated simply before the "Other than that", namely: "... system-wide basis – like revamping our subsidy system for the energy and food industries" and what people should be doing is "... putting pressure on their governments and on companies to make the system-wide changes that are needed." That's it. Make it a political agenda. Everything else is (relatively) fluff.
ed_balls 8y ago
Author wants people to make huge sacrifices and it's written in a similar style like articles about startups or losing weight. The Fetishization of Redemptive suffering. I do not believe this to be effective. It's much better to show them value e.g. electric cars tend to be safer, because of the battery pack, instant torque make the car zippy and they're quiet. I was thinking about getting an aircon, but I'll get a celling fan instead. It's cheaper and doesn't require much maintenance. Showing people value proposition is more effective.
rogergr3 8y ago
That’s a LOT of good information and we do agree that we all need to take action. We are not even close to be on target for the deadlines so every small individual effort counts. We do our bit as well. We believe we should be cleaning after ourselves, especially in cities, that’s why we are working on placing our units which do just that. Cleaning up our mess is also a very important requirement which has been quite left as a secondary actor when is indeed a very important one.
RickJWagner 8y ago
It seems like climate change is almost inevitable with a constantly rising population base. More people means more pollutants. Encouraging people to marry later, have fewer kids, etc. seems like the real way to stop climate change.
jatsign 8y ago
I think 350.org has the right approach to getting companies to divest from fossil fuel holdings. https://350.org/350-campaign-update-divestment/ https://350.org/350-campaign-update-divestment/
qubax 8y ago
Nothing. Climate change happens with or without humans. I'm so sick of the climate change fearmongering already. What we will do is adapt, like we always have. The earth is always in a state of "climate change". Humans have experienced experienced climate change for much of our existence. We even lived through a "global warming" and a "little ice age" just a few hundred years ago. https://www.britannica.com/science/Little-Ice-Age https://www.britannica.com/science/Little-Ice-Age These people always have to sell fear. The climate change fearmongering is no different than the failed malthusian prophecy of the 19th century. Or the global cooling fearmongering the BBC and much of the media were peddling before "global warming" became the "cool" thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling If the BBC was truly worried about climate change, why don't they shut down their operation? How many kids, vacations, cars, etc are created because BBC exists? Why not follow their own rules? BBC should lead by example if they truly believed the nonsense they spout everyday.
- matt4077 8y ago
  Your argument is: - Contradicting almost all of current science on the topic, without even a cursory attempt to make an argument for such a vast conspiracy - Extrapolating from a grand total of one example (Malthus), without explaining why that should be relevant 200 years later. You could just as easily point to predictions of doom before each world war, and marvel how accurately those came true. - Engaging in the good ol' it-is-therefore-it-ought fallacy: just stating that we survived the little ice age does not negate the suffering it caused. "Widespread crop failure, famine, and mass death" certainly don't sound like something I'd want to risk just to avoid the minimal changes in lifestyle this article lists. - Using references that actually contradict it: Did you read your wikipedia link on "Global Cooling"? It does an excellent job of showing that the idea was simply one possibility arising from the nascent realisation that humans affect climate. The uncertainty was communicated in the relevant documents, and this period of competing possibilities only lasted around eight years, far less than the current consensus. - Drawing distinctions without a difference: At this point, adaptation and prevention have started to merge. Is eating less meat intended to lower methane levels and energy usage, or trying to prevent erosion and deforestation? The former are preventative, the latter both preventative as well as adaptive. - ...going complete off the deep in the end. As in "How many kids, vacations, cars, etc are created because BBC exists?", a sentence that makes me understand how my dog feels when they tilt their head just so, and look at me with their big, questioning eyes.
robotsquidward 8y ago
Vote. At the ballot box and with your dollar. Tell your friends.
- qnsi 8y ago
  This is the most important action you can take, especially if you live in America. USA should lead, together with Europe, but you chose climate denialist as a president. https://youtu.be/O34JM4Xdf3g https://youtu.be/O34JM4Xdf3g
  - lolsal 8y ago
    We don't actually need our president's permission before we take action to address climate change, believe it or not. The president is not actually a dictator. We have power in other ways. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Climate_Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Climate_Alliance
Bantros 8y ago
Nothing
perfunctory 8y ago
One option that doesn't get mentioned often enough, also not in this article, is simply working less. For most of the HN crowd it shouldn't be that hard. https://thecorrespondent.com/4373/the-solution-to-just-about-everything-working-less/168119985-db3d3c10 https://thecorrespondent.com/4373/the-solution-to-just-about...
- kiliantics 8y ago
  For most workers this is much harder though. Low wage workers want more work, if anything. I think the only way around this is more unionised workers that can successfully fight for changes that would allow this. It would be nice if the article addressed this and proposed more union support.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dkarl 8y ago
We're so consistent and principled when it comes to socially stigmatizing the behavior of people we never meet, living vastly different lives from ours, but when it comes to our social class, or own people, we're very careful about which environmental ethics we enforce on each other, because any pressure we apply might boomerang back on us. So we're extremely selective. Anything associated with a more exclusive and more expensive lifestyle is a no-brainer, of course. Organic, locally-sourced food is de rigeur. Sustainable fashion. How could you NOT? These ethics make life more fun. Also, when your lunch/shirt is sustainable, you can pass it off as virtuous discipline, but if it isn't, it's not really a big deal. Solar panels are controversial. They're expensive, but they're also unattractive, and they're pretty nerdy, and even worse, they're technology. It's very hard for them not to be declasse. You can thread the needle with these if they're unobtrusive and you make it very clear that you never personally touch or operate them yourself. But there are so many other braggable efficiencies you can add to your house (brise-soleil made from sustainable wood!) that it probably isn't worth the effort. Vegetarianism and veganism are out, because duh, buzzkill (how do you even brunch?) but saying you eat less meat is in, as long as you're eating some kind of artisanal, locally-sourced charcuterie when you say it. Driving is in, of course. The alternatives are too much work, and it's very hard to make them look cool. So driving is an important thing to defend. Cycling is the most visible threat to the virtuousness of driving. It's eminently feasible, unless you're elderly or differently-abled, and it's sweaty and very very hard to look cool (congrats if you look cool, and please fuck off) so it needs to be stigmatized. Luckily, you can lean on the stereotype of cyclists being (ominous voice) affluent white males who are privileged to have disposable income to throw away on expensive toys. Whew. Thanks to that, there's zero stigma for an adult, able-bodied person to spend twenty minutes idling their car a mile and a half home during rush hour. The alternative is supporting a sexist, ableist, and otherwise elitist solution, presumably at the expense of more equitable ones. Same thing with scooters, except they're worse because they're tech. Techbros did this! Your car will always be in the street where it never blocks the path of the differently abled, and by contributing to traffic you're ratcheting up the pressure on that darned city government to provide equitable, egalitarian mass transit which when it arrives will make your 1.5 mile drive to work so much easier. An effective response to climate change has to be collective, and individualistic solutions just distract and dissipate energy from collective ones. (Don't worry. Nobody will use this argument to undermine your artisinal, locally-sourced charcuterie.) You might think riding the bus would be even worse than cycling, but in reality, it's not really a threat, because it's so ostentatiously hair-shirt. (Rule #1: we're supposed to be enjoying ourselves.) Also, when someone else talks about riding the bus, it gives you a great excuse to show off your knowledge of transit issues when you explain how you can't ride the bus because service coverage is so awful and we really need to do something about this! They might be trying to shame you, but they're really doing you a favor. Because come on, the bus? Ha. Taking your batteries and fluorescent bulbs to the hazardous household waste facility instead of putting them in the garbage? Nobody is going to bring that up unless they actually do it. Don't hold your breath. Xeriscaping... this one sucks. It's impossible to criticize it, and worst of all, every time someone looks at your grass and asks if you've thought about it, you have to admit that you're renting and you're afraid that if you remind your landlord that you exist they'll raise your rent and price you out of the neighborhood.
bskinny129 8y ago
> What if I just can’t avoid that flight, or cut down on driving? If you simply can’t make every change that’s needed, consider offsetting your emissions with a trusted green project > we are still decades away from commercial flights running on solar energy Offsets need to be a bigger part of the conversation. This article buried it at #10, behind a bunch of changes no one is likely to do. It is so incredibly cheap, they should have brought it up earlier in the article and give exact numbers in order to result in more personal actions. I'll quote you some numbers to show just how accessible offsets are for people who fly. A rough estimate is about 1% of the ticket: - SF to San Diego: 68 cents - SF to New York: $3.87 - SF to Paris: $8.43 Driving is similar, to offset a gallon of gas it is about 9 cents, tack on 2-3% more than what you pay at the pump. I understand that it isn't ideal to pollute then clean it up [0], but this is a much more practical solution than asking people to stop traveling. The cost is so low that just about everyone who is doing the flying and driving can afford it. The concern is that by putting a price to clear your conscience for a bad behavior you will induce more of that behavior [1]. I would argue that personal travel isn't very correlated in this manner. How many people cut back their travel now because of their emissions? Very few. Would the average person who hasn't cut back suddenly start traveling more? Doubtful. It's not like they will suddenly drive for fun or it was factoring in on their vacation decisions [2]. So while I would be hesitant to put a price on all bad environmental behaviors, I think travel is safe. > Social scientists have found that when one person makes a sustainability-oriented decision, other people do too. That's good news! First make it easier to take an action, then make it easier for it to be public. That's why I'm working on an app that is a personal pledge to balance the negative impact of your travel. While carbon offsets exist, they are an infrequent action that cost a lot at once, and are opaque. We will make it more frequent for smaller amount of money, give a scoreboard of your continued impact, and help make it visible for inspiring others to join. If anyone is interested in keeping in the loop on progress: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance [0]: YC recently asked for carbon removal technology startups. It will continue to get more impactful than simply planting trees, and those projects that prove successful will need money to scale. http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ [1]: Freakonomics looked at a daycare that added a small fee for late pick up. The rate of late pickups quickly shot up. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/freakonomics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/freakonomi... [2]: If anything, this vast majority who aren't changing their actions now would become more aware and cut back.
Markoff 8y ago
in long time i haven't read such stupid article, to sum it up following logic of the article the best thing you can do it's kill yourself, since article basically recommend that you should stop eating what you like, you should stop traveling, stop having children and other retarded ideas the truth it's if you live in Europe or northern America you don't need to do anything, developing world it's polluting planet on such scale that our individual actions are pointless, so for starters China and India should stop their destruction of environment and then we can talk about doing something in western world the article doesn't also mention scale at which are freight megaships polluting environment, compared to what it's flying nothing
shambolicfroli 8y ago
Vote for people that belong to a party that accepts the science about severity of the problem and want to fix it.
benj111 8y ago
So can anyone add some hard figures to this? How much meat is acceptable? I could be flexitarian, eating 200g meat 5 days a week, or a meatitarian eating 100g meat every day. I might have a petrol car, but only use it once a month, or an electric car that I commute in 3 hrs a day. Everything seems to be presented it terms of doing something 'less' or 'more'. I'm doing those things but I don't really have a good idea if I'm doing my bit, more than my bit or just making myself feel better. And I'm not asking for one of those carbon footprint calculators that ask you how many times a week you eat meat, then confidently predicting that adds up to X tonnes of carbon.

175 points by joelthelion 8y ago

I'm posting this because it's a good comprehensive overview of the question. Most similar articles give a superficial overview with two or three ideas. However, climate change is not a simple issue where you can just change a thing or two to fix it; it requires deep changes in most aspects of life. And this change has to happen right now.

TheSmiddy 8y ago
I don't think individuals require deep change in order to solve climate change. Most sources of emissions when broken down by industry ultimately just point back to the energy generation. The only deep change that an individual can do that will make an actual impact is going vegan. Adding solar panels to your roof is not a drastic change, in fact in Australia it makes good economic sense. Driving an electric car is not a radically different experience to driving an ICE car. Telecommuting and working more days from home is, for many people, a desirable change to the way we work. Once coal and then gas has been eliminated, 99% of new model cars are electric and lab grown beef matches the taste and texture a real cow the problem will be 80% solved. All of this can be achieved without a single person needing to change their lifestyle.
- philjohn 8y ago
  Got any scientific studies to back up that going Vegan is better for the environment?
  - KnightOfWords 8y ago
    http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-06-01-new-estimates-environmental-cost-food http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-06-01-new-estimates-environmen... "High-impact beef producers create 105kg of CO2 equivalents and use 370m2 of land per 100 grams of protein, a huge 12 and 50 times greater than low-impact beef producers. Low-impact beans, peas, and other plant-based proteins can create just 0.3kg of CO2 equivalents (including all processing, packaging, and transport), and use just 1m2 of land per 100 grams of protein."
    - philjohn 8y ago
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5522483/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5522483/ Shows Vegan and Ovo-Lacto Vegetarian neck and neck. As another poster pointed out, in many areas living a pure vegan diet is far WORSE for the environment as you have to expend considerable CO2 getting the correct foodstuffs there. There's also the open question about many countries where the land is only suitable for pasture as it's not arable.
  - jamil7 8y ago
    I think this would be pretty difficult to study since there isn't "one" vegan diet. It differs radically depending on where someone is and what they choose to eat and the complexity of food distribution. On the surface removing meat, diary and eggs from your diet is definitely better for the environment and you can easily find scientific studies to back this up. I find the problems start to arise when you take into account what kind of fats and proteins vegans are supplementing with, eg a vegan living in Scandinavia that's buying imported avocados from South America is probably having a considerable environmental impact by doing so.
    - philjohn 8y ago
      Exactly - which is why I take offence to people insisting it's a panacea. For some people in some regions it may very well be, but it's not for all, and trying to sell it that way is a little disingenuous.
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  Why is going vegan a "deep change"? What if everyone ate one beefy burger a year? I keep seeing this bandied about but it really feels like people pushing their ideology as the answer to whatever question was asked.
- mjevans 8y ago
  Cheap clean energy is indeed the core problem. With enough energy even inefficient processes like creating synthetic high energy fuels to condense more energy in to less weight for air travel are possible. Short term: Build MODERN, waste reducing, nuclear (fission) plants. If proliferation is a concern, require the military be hired to protect them and the logs/supervision open to the public with short delay. Long term: I like the 3001 / Gundam OO / generic scifi solution. Solar collectors. Point lots of solar energy at a focal location and do useful things with it.
- DomreiRoam 8y ago
  Without going full vegan, you can already reduce the meat consumption and also switching from red meat to poultry meat. We overeat meat and it is both bad for our body and our environment.
- Theodores 8y ago
  I think it is also important to get an education on how we have ended up in a society where these meat products are considered normal. I was 'born vegetarian' and I struggled to eat meat. I tried my hardest and genuinely believed that if I did not eat meat like everyone else then I would end up physically weak, without a fully developed brain etc. I endured eating burgers in the belief that they were really good for me. I never learned to cook the stuff and got over my fears of not eating meat. Laziness really, not wanting to have the hygiene problems of a contaminated kitchen. A few meat food scares (BSE) helped me to take the easy route (for me) of living without eating meat. Haven't died of a lack of B12 yet and I know plants don't have any need for B12 but we do. Anyway, I have had time since the days of teenage fear to think more positively about what I do and do not eat. There are notable athletes, thinkers and Hollywood stars that are strictly vegetarian. My meat eating friends only seem to know of Hitler as being famous for being vegetarian but I know not everything in this world is black and white, just because Hitler didn't eat burgers doesn't mean that I should. Now role models are all well and good, however, the history of food is far more fascinating and I really like understanding how we got here. The Chicken Tax is what got me to do my own thinking on the history of food. My grandmother was the last generation to remember when chickens were not what you ate every day. There was a time - not so long ago - when people saved up to eat a chicken based meal, this would be Christmas or a birthday, as a treat. Chicken is now wolfed down as part of a sandwich, sat at the desk, not savoured or enjoyed in some special ritual as per seventy years ago. The farmers in the USA changed the game to the intensive farming we have for chickens, the Chicken Tax that petrol heads know of was the gateway for me to learn that story. Eggs were not a year round product, there was Easter and maybe a 'second brood' later in the year. So even eggs - a substitute for meat - are not actually what we think they are, we have forgotten the seasonal aspect. Then there is the the cow. For most of mankind's history with the cow the cow was a beast of burden with added milk. You didn't eat your cows in times gone past when a cow was more like a domestic appliance, for pulling the plough. Only if there was plague and famine would you want to eat the cow. Doing so meant harsh times. The Dutch invented a new harness for the horse in the 17th century that enabled horses to pull the plough. This put the cow out of work so there was a change on the farm. At around the same time the guy that inspired Darwin and did all the selective breeding made cows into the beef product every burger scoffer so enjoys. The cows that pulled the plough were nearer goat sized, albeit podgy goat sized, hey were not these giant things we have today, stuffed with corn and killed before the diseases from their corn fed diet kill them. Then there are the sheep. I grew up in an area where wool was what mattered. I have studied the local history and absent from it is any mention of eating lamb or mutton. The products that were shipped out of the area were wool, more wool and more wool. The world was getting clothed not fed. Clearly our ancestors had many uses for the animals they lived with and every scrap went to 'good' use. Unless you were lord of the manor then game was off the table too. People were not at all well nourished with the chemicals we sprinkle on the land today - doors in old houses are only 5 foot 6 inches tall, they didn't need them to cater for 6' tall people. I think it is really important to understand a little bit about how we got here and why it is that we think we need beef. The ethics of the slaughterhouse is divisive, an in-depth appreciation of history is not. Really we have been conned into believing so much of the modern life, tricked into believing we need things that we do not.

KnightOfWords 8y ago

This graphic give a pretty good summary of the relative impact: https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hires/2017/themosteffec.jpg https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hire...

thunderbong 8y ago
This is really a very good infographic - The biggest way we can impact climate change as individuals is to have fewer children. Yet, in most discussions I've seen, we talk about hybrid cars and vegetarian diet!
- Vinnl 8y ago
  Your children's contribution to climate change is their contribution, not yours. The goal of combating climate change is to make the planet more liveable. You don't achieve that by not living.
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    > Your children's contribution to climate change is their contribution, not yours. It's not some moral game of attribution of blame, it's just maths. Fewer people produce less CO2.
    - doombolt 8y ago
      Yes, your children don't get to live to benefit some other people's children. That, or we end as species. Guess what? Worst case of global warming, mankind extermination. "Best" case, also mankind extermination.
      - ForHackernews 8y ago
        What a bunch of tosh. You're worried about "extinction" from people having fewer kids? Meanwhile, we're on track to 10 billion people before 2050. Talk about premature optimisation!

throw1118 8y ago

> 8. Should I think about how many children I have (or don’t have)? ... > Nicholas’s study concluded that having fewer children is the best way to reduce your contribution to climate change, with almost 60 tonnes of CO2 avoided per year. But this result has been contentious – and it leads to other questions. ... > And we could ask if having children is necessarily a bad thing for solving climate change: our challenges may mean we will need more problem-solvers in future generations, not fewer. Way to make the quantitative answer on this question ambiguous when it is clear that unless your kids will work or donate much more than average to climate change, they will add to the problem. Just be honest and admit that this possible solution (fewer kids!) conflicts with your ideology.

ForHackernews 8y ago
It's also way too late to be banking on "future generations". Every credible report signals that either the adult generation in power today takes immediate action to curb climate change, or the effects will be catastrophic and, in most cases, irreversible. The recent UN report says we need to cut emissions worldwide by 50% by 2030. Your 11 year old child will not fix the climate. All this warm-fuzzy nonsense about leaving the solution to "future problem solvers" is how we got here.
- shoo 8y ago
  Quoting Donella Meadows: > The world can respond in three ways to signals that resource use and pollution emissions have gone beyond their sustainable limits. One way is to disguise, deny, or confuse the signals. Generally this takes the form of efforts to shift costs to those who are far away in space and time. > A second way is to alleviate the pressures from limits by employ- ing technical or economic fixes. [...] These approaches, however, will not eliminate the causes of these pressures. > The third way is to work on the underlying causes, to recognize that the socioeconomic system has overshot its limits, is headed toward collapse, and therefore seek to change the structure of the system. Leaving the hard decisions to "future problem solvers" is exactly response #1, "shift costs to those who are far away in space and time", i.e. future generations. http://donellameadows.org/archives/a-synopsis-limits-to-growth-the-30-year-update/ http://donellameadows.org/archives/a-synopsis-limits-to-grow...

pdimitar 8y ago

This article's quality is higher than many others on the same topic and that's a pleasant surprise. That being said, I can't help being reminded about German language lessons I had ~10 years ago where the teacher was preaching that we must all ditch electric kettles for the sake of the planet. I asked her how is this going to help -- even if 100_00 people do it today -- if corporations are happy to let toxic waste seep into the ocean and lobby to never close coal plants. And we're talking thousands of tons a day. She wasn't pleased that I attacked her agenda. So alright, I know we all can do better, individuals included. That's unequivocally true. But let's not ignore the fact that the biggest fault lies in organizations that are happy to pay people to whisper stuff in the ears of the people with power. Climate change is real and the more we delay the solution, the more urgent and extreme the measures to swing it around will become. And that means to start breaking the warm and cozy positions that many corporations are in -- and enjoy the lack of supervision of.

joelthelion 8y ago
As the article mentions, individuals can do something about corporate pollution: - Buy less stuff. Corporations produce waste because we buy their stuff. Get the stuff you still buy from more environmentally-friendly companies, if possible. - Political action. Corporations need to be regulated and that can only happen through political action. Lobbies may have a lot of power, but in the end, it's the citizens who vote.
- pdimitar 8y ago
  > Buy less stuff. This is becoming harder and harder with time. Believe me, I would love to buy my kitchen stove, washing machine, refrigerator, aspirator, air conditioner and vacuum cleaner from a local manufacturer. But there are none. How many household brands do really exist and how many are actually known and bought by almost everyone? Additionally, even if you are an idealist who wants to be the change they want to see, you will still need a bunch of tech gadgets to connect with the world and try to change it -- like a good smartphone and laptop that don't suck. Not every $100 piece of trash will do the job. And the cheaper tech might have actually had much more negative impact on the planet's CO2 footprint. It's very complex and thus no black-and-white solutions exist. Some corps like Apple and Samsung seem hellbent on testing the customers' patience with higher prices every year and it will definitely bite them back at one point. That much is true. > Political action. Never in my life, not once, have I seen citizens voting actually change anything of significance in a country. Have you? And we're talking less than 10 years here. "These things take time" seems pretty shallow and empty as a justification for things not happening.

jmcgough 8y ago

Related to this, Bill Gates recently wrote about some of the major sources of co2 pollution and the challenges of addressing them: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-climate-change https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-clima...

ForHackernews 8y ago

Another good site attacking this problem is https://www.drawdown.org/ https://www.drawdown.org/

chunkyslink 8y ago

I found this useful too. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/climate-change-what-you-can-do-campaigning-installing-insulation-solar-panels https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/climate-...

lumberjack 8y ago

If people were not so stuck up on individual action, that would be some progress towards solving climate change. One of the big obstacles is admitting that we need collective action to solve this worldwide problem. Would ee propose individual action when less dangerous situations occur in society? Say, a bank run is imminent. Does individual action work? Does the government broadcast it on the 8 o'clock news and do the people stay at home or do they run down the bank nonetheless? We do not propose individual action on other matters but we expect individual action to work on climate change.

joelthelion 8y ago
While the title isn't very clear, the article mentions collective actions as well. Political action also stems from individuals and should of course be part of our actions against climate change.
Vinnl 8y ago
Do you think there's anyone promoting individual action who'd be against collective action? Or could a small individual action be a gateway to participating in collective action?
- oppzixi00 8y ago
  > Do you think there's anyone promoting individual action who'd be against collective action? Yes. A lobbyist who wants to avoid new legislation to control climate change, but still claim they care about it.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    Ah sorry, it should indeed have said: is there anyone who is in favour of individual action, but against collective action.
- kiliantics 8y ago
  There are many people who seem to enjoy the aesthetics of consumerist-oriented environmental action but are horrified by the idea of mass protest, civil disobedience, worker's strikes, etc.

Vinnl 8y ago

> 9. But if I eat less meat or take fewer flights, that’s just me – how much of a difference can that really make? > > Actually, it’s not just you. Social scientists have found that when one person makes a sustainability-oriented decision, other people do too. This is the thing that still gives me hope. Try to do good, and people will notice - and, without so much as telling others to something, they will emulate you to some extent. At least, that's what I've anecdotally observed. The other side of this is important as well: you don't necessarily need to be a leader in everything that can be improved. However, if you see someone taking the lead, being the first follower can get a movement going, and is less effort than leading the change to boot.

KitDuncan 8y ago
Anecdotal, but I went vegan 3 years ago and in those 3 years, quite a few of my very close friends went vegan or vegetarian as well. It really does give me a lot of hope. Even my parents started eating meat a lot less, basically only for big events and startet using oat milk for their coffee!
- belorn 8y ago
  > startet using oat milk for their coffee Are you and they using honey or white sugar from farmed sugarcanes? For the environment sake I wish that vegan diet would include honey as it has a big net-positive effect on the environment compared to farmed sugarcanes by not causing eutrophication or water pollution, and helps with pollination both for wild forests and agriculture.
  - petecox 8y ago
    I'd have suggested planting more sugar maples as a carbon sink but climate change is impacting the production of maple syrup: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/the-plate/2015/12/02/global-warming-pushes-maple-trees-syrup-to-the-brink/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/t...
  - mikro2nd 8y ago

emmelaich 8y ago

Campaign for nuclear power plus wind and solar. That's it.

wilgertvelinga 8y ago
A thorough explanation why: https://youtu.be/YjFWiMJdotM https://youtu.be/YjFWiMJdotM (don't forget to turn on captions if your Dutch is lacking)
- oppzixi00 8y ago
  There's no way to scale up nuclear power at the rate needed. Too expensive, needs too much capital, too slow to build.
  - wilgertvelinga 8y ago
    Do you have the source for that? (it's not that I don't believe you, just curious)
shoo 8y ago
that doesn't fix the systemic causes of the mess we're in -- population growth, and environmental impact per person. climate change isn't the problem, it's the second major global-scale symptom of the problem (the first one was the ozone layer). it's highly concerning! but suppose we manage to slow or reverse or mitigate climate change, at great expense, without addressing the underlying problem --- then we're going to have less resources to address the next global issue: https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaaries/planetary-boundaries/about-the-research/the-nine-planetary-boundaries.html https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-bound...

gman83 8y ago

Expecting some kind of mass-shift in lifestyle in the population at large isn't going to work, because not enough people are going to do it. I think the best thing to do is to advocate for solar, wind, nuclear and hydro power. Personally I think we should be building more nuclear power plants as well as deploying giant battery storage facilities to store energy from wind and solar. We should also start taxing carbon emissions. So advocating political change to achieve collective action seems like the only feasible way to do anything effective to me.

ealhad 8y ago
> We should also start taxing carbon emissions. Yes, but not without developping the alternatives. For example, in France, the government decided to raise the taxes on gas and especially diesel — but at the same time, the small train lines are being shut down, so people living in the country aren't to happy.
- WA 8y ago
  People in the country usually pay a lot less rent/housing. Paying more for transportation is to be expected if you don't live in a city. If they don't like it, they could try to move to a city and swap their high transportation cost for higher rent.
JiIIj 8y ago
It doesn't take that many people to shift a society to a different behavior.. We used to slave and human-zoos not that long ago and everybody was like, that won't change soon. Have you thought about going vegetarian yourself?

shoo 8y ago

i selfishly don't want to take the necessary individual action where my personal cost-benefit analysis comes out negative. for example, i could become a vegan. if i did so, the net benefit to humanity would be positive. but i don't want to, as i'd have to privately pay the cost (no more delicious chicken) while the benefits (in terms of reduced global cumulative greenhouse gas emissions) are spread across the billions of the rest of you. however, i really want you all to take individual action to limit your greenhouse emissions so i can benefit. go vegan, have fewer children, get your economies to install carbon taxes. yes please, i'd love the lot of you to do that. i'm very willing to trade you something of value in return for you making lifestyle changes that don't locally benefit you. how do we make this kind of trade happen? how do we make this kind of collective agreement to change behaviour happen faster?

js8 8y ago
There is a simple answer, really, but you won't like it. "i'm very willing to trade you something of value in return for you making lifestyle changes that don't locally benefit you" If it's true, then you can make the next small step. For example, for every vegan you have as a friend you can decide to eat less meat. Or for every friend without a car, you can take a bus once in a while. And so on. That would be a valuable gift to these people, who decided to selflessly take the first step.
matt4077 8y ago
That's called the "collective action problem", and the single most effective solution is called "law".
uxcolumbo 8y ago
FYI, Veganism isn't about reducing your carbon footprint or living healthily, those things are an added bonus. Being vegan means saying no to cruelty towards other sentient and intelligent beings and enslaving them for our culinary pleasure purposes. So having a friend who is vegan wouldn't really eliminate cruelty towards chickens for example, as your craving for delicious chicken would still require chickens to be slaughtered, i.e. Is cruelty ok, so you can continue to experience culinary pleasures? Tough questions... Edit: mainly referring to factory farming and large scale meat industry, where most of the meat we consume comes from.

tokyodude 8y ago

I don't have a single friend or even. aquaintence who would do any of the top 3 things long the list of 148 most impactful things an individual can do they were 1. have one less kid. I can maybe imagine a friend choosing not to have 3 but I can't imagine someone wanting 2 to go to 1 or someone wanting 1 to go to 0 for this reason 2. go carless Sone friends live in a city that supports a carless lifestyle and already live carless but I can't imagine a single person I know giving up their car or moving somewhere they don't need it for for purpose of helping the environment 3. don't travel zero friends would give this up. even the most eco "aware"

shoo 8y ago
would your friends agree to give this up if, in return, everyone else gave them up too?
- pdimitar 8y ago
  I would not. Whether I want to go somewhere 20km away (the other end of my city) or not has zero correlation if other people have cars or not.
  - shoo 8y ago
    what about if there was some kind of global system of decision-making where others could influence or incentivise your day-to-day actions? e.g. hypothetically would you support a global carbon tax* priced high enough so that driving somewhere wasn't by default a sensible decision? * supposing, hypothetically, we had some effective way of reaching such an agreement and enforcing it
    - pdimitar 8y ago
      If the alternative was just as comfortable and fast, I would be the first to throw away my car. I have zero ego attachments to such objects, I am after their comfort and practical value.

adwhit 8y ago

I agree this article isn't as terrible as average. Going vegetarian and cycling to work once a week might make you feel good but it ain't gonna make a difference. It's a political problem. It needs a political solution. Agitate and vote for the most left-wing party you can (that has a realistic chance of winning/influencing an election). Campaign for them to institute a ban on fossil fuels. Protest. Climb smokestacks. Make headlines. Break the law. If you work in the media, subvert their agenda as much as possible. Capitalism is crisis. Of course, the BBC would never state these things. But given how little has been achieved in the last 40 years by playing by the rules, at this point they are obviously necessary, if not sufficient.

JiIIj 8y ago
You are completely right, going vegetarian or even vegan plus cycling won't fix all problems. But it would be a start, what do you think? So why don't do it still aditionally, instead of just waiting for others to change?
dev_north_east 8y ago
> Agitate and vote for the most left-wing party you can What's that got to do with the price of fish? The main left parties in my area still harp on about the coalmines. Then you have the Greens who are anti-nuclear, anti-Gm, anti-everything who seem to spend most of their time now involved in infighting over trans nonsense.

Antifragile1 8y ago

Encourage eco terrorists like Columbine High School shooter and Unabomber.

corradio 8y ago

We wrote a more in-depth guide to climate change (what it is and what we can do) here, as part of our startup called Tomorrow: http://tmrow.com/climatechange.html http://tmrow.com/climatechange.html Feedback is welcome!

JiIIj 8y ago

I'm so happy that the factor reducing meat consumption is mentioned... By going vegan, vegetarian or just (really) reducing one owns meat consumption is a major factor where you can start like today. Also fewer cows, pigs and chicken slaughtered in your name ^^^ It is hard for many, and I might expect to get some comments of disaprovel. Before that, pleasae watch Melanie Joy Authentic food choices on youtube for an clearer understanding where I might be comming form. Thank you so much :)

roenxi 8y ago

> Nicholas’s study concluded that having fewer children is the best way to reduce your contribution to climate change Environmentalism as a philosophy isn't all that coherent, and this suggestion in point 8 really encapsulates the heart of my problems with it. If we are saving the planet "for" someone else, who are they? If we are saving the planet for ourselves, do minor actions of deprivation make sense? The extreme logical extension of the philosophy in point 8 that isn't "if I care about the future, and if all life is equal, I should remove myself from the gene pool and build a society that doesn't value the environment". Taking a practical view that we want to preserve the world for, say, 3 generations into the future, answers like nuclear starting 30 years ago make a lot of sense.

js8 8y ago
The resolve to this apparent paradox is easy. You can like the civilization on this planet yet not care one iota about the gene pool (of course you have to care about it to the extent needed to reproduce humans, on which the civilization relies for the foreseeable future, but no more than that). Let me give you an analogy. Is teaching meaningless? I mean, why do it, when you're not going to be around when people you teach will run things. You're trying to give advice to someone else, without being sure that they will follow it when you're not around. So, I posit, not having kids and working on resolving climate change is useful, just like it is useful to teach or do your job properly to be an example for further generations doing that job.
- roenxi 8y ago
  > Is teaching meaningless? I mean, why do it, when you're not going to be around when people you teach will run things. You might be underestimating how much personal benefit a selfish materialist can wring out of teaching people things. I, for example, love teaching people basically anything I know. To the point where I'm probably unhelpful. There have been numerous instances where there is a skill gap between me and someone else that I have closed and benefited greatly from closing. Usually this is in academic and workplace settings, but I suspect most parents would also see this dynamic. It also works socially when they return the favour and find some interesting idea for me in return at a later time. If they don't follow my advice, that is often even better for me in the medium-long term because it suggests my advice is bad and I get an opportunity to correct my mistakes and misconceptions. One of the most fortunate outcomes of the modern era is the more you want to maximise your own material success, the more advantage you can get from maximising the ability and resources available to those around you. I've been led to believe that a sample of most serious leadership groups will pick up an unusually high concentration of clever sociopaths - I suspect at least some of them will be excellent leaders because they figured this little factoid out. The scenario is extremely different from someone asking me to give up driving because someone else will hypothetically benefit. As an interesting anecdata, I gave up driving because of economic and safety concerns, which are far more convincing to me personally.

belorn 8y ago

When ranking different actions one can take to limit pollution I also like to include actions which has a net-positive effects. There are so many small things which might not be the cheapest or cultural popular but they do directly help the environment.

louismerlin 8y ago

A concrete step we have taken with my girlfriend over the past few months is buying second-hand items. It's crazy how much you save, and to know you have not contributed to creating more stuff. There is an awesome campaign in France right now, encouraging this kind of behaviour : https://riendeneuf.org https://riendeneuf.org

sudofail 8y ago
We've been doing the same thing, and it's great. We've also taken more time to sell unused items, even if they're only worth $10-$20. I look at it as a more effective form of recycling.
KozmoNau7 8y ago
That's a really big thing, in the scope of individual action. If you buy less new stuff, less stuff needs to be produced and less environmental impact happens. Nobody needs a brand new coffee table, when there are plenty of perfectly decent ones for sale second-hand.

ThomPete 8y ago

Science is never settled, already there they start the misinformation which is being used so often these days. These kind of articles are so misguided yet people are so hysterical they actually think the individual can do things. There is nothing individuals can do that would actually help besides creating solutions to the ever changing consequences of the world we live in. Even if we by some magical event could stop all co2 emissions the climate would still change we would still need to move or fortify against changing sealevels for example. But right now everyone is coming up with all sorts of irrational solutions to a problem that havent been properly defined and even if it was going to be as catastrophic as some have built themselves up to believe, flying less is going to have no useful effect. Only way out of this is through the very technology that have created the cars, products etc. to begin with. The genie is out of the bottle and cant be let back in again unfortunately.

jhanschoo 8y ago
> Science is never settled, already there they start the misinformation Science is never settled, but arrives at increasingly accurate approximations of reality. If climate science's best approximation is doom, the rational collective response is not ignorance, but simultaneously to explore and exploit (address) the problem. Exploration by better modeling of the climate, and exploitation by pursuing known best solutions to the problem. To use a personal example of a complex system, if a person should show signs of cancer, or a virulent disease, even if medicinal knowledge is not sufficiently advanced to flawlessly diagnose the symptom, drastic action even under imperfect information is very reasonable. In the case that drastic corrections were not necessary with respect to the climate, this nevertheless furthers the global society's resilience and response for when such drastic correction is needed. > These kind of articles are so misguided yet people are so hysterical they actually think the individual can do things. Without contending whether or not 'the individual can do things', the article does not give me that impression. Whereas indeed the article advocates individuals to change their individual behavior, the article is written for an audience of many. When advocacy articles like these acquire a sufficiently large megaphone, like the BBC, they cause significant collective action. > But right now everyone is coming up with all sorts of irrational solutions to a problem that havent been properly defined and even if it was going to be as catastrophic as some have built themselves up to believe, flying less is going to have no useful effect. The problem is the recent increase in global temperature corresponding to the recent increase in greenhouse gas production. To use the personal analogy, the elimination of mutated cells causing the tumors. > Only way out of this is through the very technology that have created the cars, products etc. to begin with. I think that this is a very irrational or ignorant notion. Collective action plays a very important part in very many big problems. For example, the abolition of slavery and women' suffrage are made possible (in the former case) by technology, but collective action was needed to enable these events. Some people echo the irrational notion you seem to express that that just because individual action is useless then so is collective action, and so therefore the individual action should not be pursued. But this is clearly not the case, since collective action happens. If it seems that most big changes are performed by organizations and institutions and not individuals, this nevertheless does not negate the thesis that collective action effects changes, since sufficiently developed and mature collective action tends to organize when able, so that they are more self-sustaining.

tiktoktek 8y ago

fix ourself for littering, plant trees and use electric vehicles

WA 8y ago

On the one hand, I think individual action is quite useless to stop climate change. Too many people still do too many things that have a more negative impact. For example, SUVs is still a fast-growing car segment (the fastest?). The number of SUVs in Germany (where I live) have significantly increased over the years. People want their fat cars. On the other hand, if more and more people demand certain things, for example organic food, then it causes companies and politics to change their behavior. If nobody wants microplastic-free soap and shampoo, nothing will change. If 50 people per day ask in a supermarket for microplastic-free soap and shampoo, management might notice. But then: One big supermarket chain in Germany (REWE) ditched plastic bags altogether for paper bags and reusable cotton bags. I don't know what caused this – customers asking for it, politics, or some marketing guy with a "go green" mission. But obviously, this has a much larger impact on the environment than educating the masses about "reusing their shopping bags". In a way, "saving the enviroment" is something that starts on an individual level, but the real useful stuff is actually implemented through politics, laws, and ultimately corporations chaning their behavior (or forcing a certain behavior on the masses, like REWE did). Edit: The question now is: What can I do to make political changes happen on an individual level? Is it really my behavior that changes anything? Or can I have more leverage in any other way?

danielbln 8y ago
Whatever REWE did is certainly working to keep me as a customer. The amount of plastic I buy with my groceries is ludicrous, every measure to reduce this amount is highly welcome.

sashimy 8y ago

> 8. Should I think about how many children I have (or don’t have)? Maybe the worst point of the whole article, here is my point of view : educated and people aware of environment change have fewer kids, people with the opposite way of thinking have more kids and have the same education. We create a world where the people who don't care outnumber those who care, since the most praised government system is Democracy the power goes to the number. Path to idiocracy (great message for a comedy movie).

matt4077 8y ago
You are getting awfully close to eugenics. That points not only at the moral problem with your willingness to sort human life into desirable/undesirable. It also offers a clue as to the accuracy of this mechanism: If these fascists one hundred years ago were making the exact same prediction you are making, and yet the world today is not overrun by these supposedly reproduction-happy Untermenschen... then maybe it just doesn't work like that? More specifically: this fear is based on observed heritability of traits like intelligence, and also social status etc. While these are indeed hereditary, they quickly dissipate when considering more than a single generation.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
I certainly don't share my parents' political views. Do you? Are you arguing that climate change denial is a genetic trait?

Torakfirenze 8y ago

Whilst this article has some points of merit, its premise infuriates me. Shifting the blame to the consumer and shielding corporates is toxic. The Carbon Majors report last year illustrated pretty clearly that 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. Me going vegan and not using straws isn't going to save the planet.

air7 8y ago

> Other than that, what’s the best daily action I can take? While obviously well-intended, I fear this question might do more harm than good. The question stems (imho) from the fear of being helpless or the desire to be active, to do something in the face of a problem. The issue is that the desire to do good is trumped by the desire to feel good about yourself doing good. This might skew people to look for actions that are easy (therefor low-cost to feeling good) rather than helpful. For example I might decide to not use plastic straws, deliberately take shorted showers, and recycle and therefor feel good about doing my part for the environment. The risk is that doing negligible things might allow me to avoid doing the important ones. (I call these actions negligible because personal changes are hard to sustain, they don't scale, and the overall impact is relatively minute) The important things were stated simply before the "Other than that", namely: "... system-wide basis – like revamping our subsidy system for the energy and food industries" and what people should be doing is "... putting pressure on their governments and on companies to make the system-wide changes that are needed." That's it. Make it a political agenda. Everything else is (relatively) fluff.

ed_balls 8y ago

Author wants people to make huge sacrifices and it's written in a similar style like articles about startups or losing weight. The Fetishization of Redemptive suffering. I do not believe this to be effective. It's much better to show them value e.g. electric cars tend to be safer, because of the battery pack, instant torque make the car zippy and they're quiet. I was thinking about getting an aircon, but I'll get a celling fan instead. It's cheaper and doesn't require much maintenance. Showing people value proposition is more effective.

rogergr3 8y ago

That’s a LOT of good information and we do agree that we all need to take action. We are not even close to be on target for the deadlines so every small individual effort counts. We do our bit as well. We believe we should be cleaning after ourselves, especially in cities, that’s why we are working on placing our units which do just that. Cleaning up our mess is also a very important requirement which has been quite left as a secondary actor when is indeed a very important one.

RickJWagner 8y ago

It seems like climate change is almost inevitable with a constantly rising population base. More people means more pollutants. Encouraging people to marry later, have fewer kids, etc. seems like the real way to stop climate change.

jatsign 8y ago

I think 350.org has the right approach to getting companies to divest from fossil fuel holdings. https://350.org/350-campaign-update-divestment/ https://350.org/350-campaign-update-divestment/

qubax 8y ago

Nothing. Climate change happens with or without humans. I'm so sick of the climate change fearmongering already. What we will do is adapt, like we always have. The earth is always in a state of "climate change". Humans have experienced experienced climate change for much of our existence. We even lived through a "global warming" and a "little ice age" just a few hundred years ago. https://www.britannica.com/science/Little-Ice-Age https://www.britannica.com/science/Little-Ice-Age These people always have to sell fear. The climate change fearmongering is no different than the failed malthusian prophecy of the 19th century. Or the global cooling fearmongering the BBC and much of the media were peddling before "global warming" became the "cool" thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling If the BBC was truly worried about climate change, why don't they shut down their operation? How many kids, vacations, cars, etc are created because BBC exists? Why not follow their own rules? BBC should lead by example if they truly believed the nonsense they spout everyday.

matt4077 8y ago
Your argument is: - Contradicting almost all of current science on the topic, without even a cursory attempt to make an argument for such a vast conspiracy - Extrapolating from a grand total of one example (Malthus), without explaining why that should be relevant 200 years later. You could just as easily point to predictions of doom before each world war, and marvel how accurately those came true. - Engaging in the good ol' it-is-therefore-it-ought fallacy: just stating that we survived the little ice age does not negate the suffering it caused. "Widespread crop failure, famine, and mass death" certainly don't sound like something I'd want to risk just to avoid the minimal changes in lifestyle this article lists. - Using references that actually contradict it: Did you read your wikipedia link on "Global Cooling"? It does an excellent job of showing that the idea was simply one possibility arising from the nascent realisation that humans affect climate. The uncertainty was communicated in the relevant documents, and this period of competing possibilities only lasted around eight years, far less than the current consensus. - Drawing distinctions without a difference: At this point, adaptation and prevention have started to merge. Is eating less meat intended to lower methane levels and energy usage, or trying to prevent erosion and deforestation? The former are preventative, the latter both preventative as well as adaptive. - ...going complete off the deep in the end. As in "How many kids, vacations, cars, etc are created because BBC exists?", a sentence that makes me understand how my dog feels when they tilt their head just so, and look at me with their big, questioning eyes.

robotsquidward 8y ago

Vote. At the ballot box and with your dollar. Tell your friends.

qnsi 8y ago
This is the most important action you can take, especially if you live in America. USA should lead, together with Europe, but you chose climate denialist as a president. https://youtu.be/O34JM4Xdf3g https://youtu.be/O34JM4Xdf3g
- lolsal 8y ago
  We don't actually need our president's permission before we take action to address climate change, believe it or not. The president is not actually a dictator. We have power in other ways. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Climate_Alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Climate_Alliance

Bantros 8y ago

Nothing

perfunctory 8y ago

One option that doesn't get mentioned often enough, also not in this article, is simply working less. For most of the HN crowd it shouldn't be that hard. https://thecorrespondent.com/4373/the-solution-to-just-about-everything-working-less/168119985-db3d3c10 https://thecorrespondent.com/4373/the-solution-to-just-about...

kiliantics 8y ago
For most workers this is much harder though. Low wage workers want more work, if anything. I think the only way around this is more unionised workers that can successfully fight for changes that would allow this. It would be nice if the article addressed this and proposed more union support.

deleted 8y ago

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dkarl 8y ago

We're so consistent and principled when it comes to socially stigmatizing the behavior of people we never meet, living vastly different lives from ours, but when it comes to our social class, or own people, we're very careful about which environmental ethics we enforce on each other, because any pressure we apply might boomerang back on us. So we're extremely selective. Anything associated with a more exclusive and more expensive lifestyle is a no-brainer, of course. Organic, locally-sourced food is de rigeur. Sustainable fashion. How could you NOT? These ethics make life more fun. Also, when your lunch/shirt is sustainable, you can pass it off as virtuous discipline, but if it isn't, it's not really a big deal. Solar panels are controversial. They're expensive, but they're also unattractive, and they're pretty nerdy, and even worse, they're technology. It's very hard for them not to be declasse. You can thread the needle with these if they're unobtrusive and you make it very clear that you never personally touch or operate them yourself. But there are so many other braggable efficiencies you can add to your house (brise-soleil made from sustainable wood!) that it probably isn't worth the effort. Vegetarianism and veganism are out, because duh, buzzkill (how do you even brunch?) but saying you eat less meat is in, as long as you're eating some kind of artisanal, locally-sourced charcuterie when you say it. Driving is in, of course. The alternatives are too much work, and it's very hard to make them look cool. So driving is an important thing to defend. Cycling is the most visible threat to the virtuousness of driving. It's eminently feasible, unless you're elderly or differently-abled, and it's sweaty and very very hard to look cool (congrats if you look cool, and please fuck off) so it needs to be stigmatized. Luckily, you can lean on the stereotype of cyclists being (ominous voice) affluent white males who are privileged to have disposable income to throw away on expensive toys. Whew. Thanks to that, there's zero stigma for an adult, able-bodied person to spend twenty minutes idling their car a mile and a half home during rush hour. The alternative is supporting a sexist, ableist, and otherwise elitist solution, presumably at the expense of more equitable ones. Same thing with scooters, except they're worse because they're tech. Techbros did this! Your car will always be in the street where it never blocks the path of the differently abled, and by contributing to traffic you're ratcheting up the pressure on that darned city government to provide equitable, egalitarian mass transit which when it arrives will make your 1.5 mile drive to work so much easier. An effective response to climate change has to be collective, and individualistic solutions just distract and dissipate energy from collective ones. (Don't worry. Nobody will use this argument to undermine your artisinal, locally-sourced charcuterie.) You might think riding the bus would be even worse than cycling, but in reality, it's not really a threat, because it's so ostentatiously hair-shirt. (Rule #1: we're supposed to be enjoying ourselves.) Also, when someone else talks about riding the bus, it gives you a great excuse to show off your knowledge of transit issues when you explain how you can't ride the bus because service coverage is so awful and we really need to do something about this! They might be trying to shame you, but they're really doing you a favor. Because come on, the bus? Ha. Taking your batteries and fluorescent bulbs to the hazardous household waste facility instead of putting them in the garbage? Nobody is going to bring that up unless they actually do it. Don't hold your breath. Xeriscaping... this one sucks. It's impossible to criticize it, and worst of all, every time someone looks at your grass and asks if you've thought about it, you have to admit that you're renting and you're afraid that if you remind your landlord that you exist they'll raise your rent and price you out of the neighborhood.

bskinny129 8y ago

> What if I just can’t avoid that flight, or cut down on driving? If you simply can’t make every change that’s needed, consider offsetting your emissions with a trusted green project > we are still decades away from commercial flights running on solar energy Offsets need to be a bigger part of the conversation. This article buried it at #10, behind a bunch of changes no one is likely to do. It is so incredibly cheap, they should have brought it up earlier in the article and give exact numbers in order to result in more personal actions. I'll quote you some numbers to show just how accessible offsets are for people who fly. A rough estimate is about 1% of the ticket: - SF to San Diego: 68 cents - SF to New York: $3.87 - SF to Paris: $8.43 Driving is similar, to offset a gallon of gas it is about 9 cents, tack on 2-3% more than what you pay at the pump. I understand that it isn't ideal to pollute then clean it up [0], but this is a much more practical solution than asking people to stop traveling. The cost is so low that just about everyone who is doing the flying and driving can afford it. The concern is that by putting a price to clear your conscience for a bad behavior you will induce more of that behavior [1]. I would argue that personal travel isn't very correlated in this manner. How many people cut back their travel now because of their emissions? Very few. Would the average person who hasn't cut back suddenly start traveling more? Doubtful. It's not like they will suddenly drive for fun or it was factoring in on their vacation decisions [2]. So while I would be hesitant to put a price on all bad environmental behaviors, I think travel is safe. > Social scientists have found that when one person makes a sustainability-oriented decision, other people do too. That's good news! First make it easier to take an action, then make it easier for it to be public. That's why I'm working on an app that is a personal pledge to balance the negative impact of your travel. While carbon offsets exist, they are an infrequent action that cost a lot at once, and are opaque. We will make it more frequent for smaller amount of money, give a scoreboard of your continued impact, and help make it visible for inspiring others to join. If anyone is interested in keeping in the loop on progress: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance [0]: YC recently asked for carbon removal technology startups. It will continue to get more impactful than simply planting trees, and those projects that prove successful will need money to scale. http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ [1]: Freakonomics looked at a daycare that added a small fee for late pick up. The rate of late pickups quickly shot up. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/freakonomics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/freakonomi... [2]: If anything, this vast majority who aren't changing their actions now would become more aware and cut back.

Markoff 8y ago

in long time i haven't read such stupid article, to sum it up following logic of the article the best thing you can do it's kill yourself, since article basically recommend that you should stop eating what you like, you should stop traveling, stop having children and other retarded ideas the truth it's if you live in Europe or northern America you don't need to do anything, developing world it's polluting planet on such scale that our individual actions are pointless, so for starters China and India should stop their destruction of environment and then we can talk about doing something in western world the article doesn't also mention scale at which are freight megaships polluting environment, compared to what it's flying nothing

shambolicfroli 8y ago

Vote for people that belong to a party that accepts the science about severity of the problem and want to fix it.

benj111 8y ago

So can anyone add some hard figures to this? How much meat is acceptable? I could be flexitarian, eating 200g meat 5 days a week, or a meatitarian eating 100g meat every day. I might have a petrol car, but only use it once a month, or an electric car that I commute in 3 hrs a day. Everything seems to be presented it terms of doing something 'less' or 'more'. I'm doing those things but I don't really have a good idea if I'm doing my bit, more than my bit or just making myself feel better. And I'm not asking for one of those carbon footprint calculators that ask you how many times a week you eat meat, then confidently predicting that adds up to X tonnes of carbon.