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>If the light switch was connected to clean energy, who the hell cares if you left it on? The problem is not so much the consumption, it’s the supply. And your

>If the light switch was connected to clean energy, who the hell cares if you left it on? The problem is not so much the consumption, it’s the supply. And your scrap paper did not hasten the end of the world. The major issue this misunderstands is that transportation is the lynch pin of a global economy and transportation has and for the foreseeable future will continue to require high energy density fuels to continue running. Quality of life in modern society is heavily dependent on the import and export of resources. Look around your living space and ask yourself where did all of these things come from? It doesn't matter if it's a "local" farm 40 miles outside your city, it still took considerable fossil fuels to bring them to you. The issue isn't that global warming is happening because we're too lazy to turn off the lights, but rather because we refuse to accept a drastically lower standard of living. To prevent global warming we would have had to radically alter modern life decades ago, and who would have voted for the politician that had the platform of "lower standard of living for longer living" in the early 90s or 80s or ideally the immediate post-war period?

btrettel 8y ago
> rather because we refuse to accept a drastically lower standard of living I don't think it's as drastic as most people imagine, or necessarily worse. I'm a transportation cyclist. People seem to assume this some sort of massive "sacrifice", yet I actually prefer to do this mostly because it costs less and helps me stay in shape. If I need a car, I can rent one. (And despite having a zipcar membership for over 5 years, I just recently cancelled it because I never used it once.) I am hopeful that what superficially seems like a massive downgrade in other areas is just an illusion. It might be different, even "worse" in some senses, but ultimately I hope people will find climate friendly solutions acceptable or even better in the long run. We can't know until we try, and I don't see many people in the US willing to try.
- baron_harkonnen 8y ago
  How do you come to the conclusion that biking to work does anything significant to offset the 20 tons of co2 emission you produce? Let alone bring it anywhere near 0? If you want to get a sense of what 0 per capita emissions looks like you need to look at countries that have 0 co2 emissions per capita. Here's a list of countries with less that 0.1 tons of co2 per capita: Burundi, Somalia, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo Dem. Rep., Ethiopia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Rwanda,South Sudan, Uganda Biking to work is hardly the sacrifice that would be required to seriously offset global co2 emissions. It's not just about driving in your car, it's about the transportation energy required to sustain your entire lifestyle. The food you eat, the goods you consume, the income you make, the concrete that grows the city around you. All of this requires moving things around the globe which in requires substantial amounts of high energy density fuels. It turns out that, independent of how environmentally conscious you are, emissions foot print is closely tied to personal income [1]. But nobody wants to hear that to live sustainably we must live a dramatically reduced quality of life. The fact that my comment is being downvoted is evidence of how strongly people don't want to hear this. And again, I don't blame anyone for not wanting to reduce the quality of their life. But it's ridiculous to be dishonest about how much our civilization has overshot what a truly sustainable civilization looks like. [1]. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/12/1/16718844/green-consumers-climate-change https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/12/1/1671884...
  - btrettel 8y ago
    > How do you come to the conclusion that biking to work does anything significant to offset the 20 tons of co2 emission you produce? Let alone bring it anywhere near 0? I never claimed that it did. I think it helps, but I don't know how much. It was only an example of one thing that people think is a sacrifice that I don't. As for the Vox article you linked to, a correlation between income and energy usage is just that, a correlation. I don't see any particular reason why that needs to hold in the future. Anyway, as a graduate student I don't make a lot of money, so perhaps by your own estimates I'm relatively green, even ignoring the cycling.
    - Arnt 8y ago
      You live and work in buildings whose construction needed a lot of energy, for example, and the construction business uses a lot of fossil fuel. But I agree. Belgium is richer than Burundi, but not because construction in Belgium uses cement mixers driven by petrol engines while those in Burundi use electric power. It's richer because it has structures such as your university (buildings and institutions) that educates people to a level quite different from Burundi. The dirty or clean power used to build is a detail. Like, in a way, your cycling. Compared to a car, your cycling cuts the relevant emissions drastically with ~zero impact on your actual quality of life. Belgium didn't turn poor like Burundi when it stopped burning coal, it kept the good parts (like that university) and just used less dirty power sources. It didn't even grow poorer.

btrettel 8y ago

> rather because we refuse to accept a drastically lower standard of living I don't think it's as drastic as most people imagine, or necessarily worse. I'm a transportation cyclist. People seem to assume this some sort of massive "sacrifice", yet I actually prefer to do this mostly because it costs less and helps me stay in shape. If I need a car, I can rent one. (And despite having a zipcar membership for over 5 years, I just recently cancelled it because I never used it once.) I am hopeful that what superficially seems like a massive downgrade in other areas is just an illusion. It might be different, even "worse" in some senses, but ultimately I hope people will find climate friendly solutions acceptable or even better in the long run. We can't know until we try, and I don't see many people in the US willing to try.

baron_harkonnen 8y ago
How do you come to the conclusion that biking to work does anything significant to offset the 20 tons of co2 emission you produce? Let alone bring it anywhere near 0? If you want to get a sense of what 0 per capita emissions looks like you need to look at countries that have 0 co2 emissions per capita. Here's a list of countries with less that 0.1 tons of co2 per capita: Burundi, Somalia, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo Dem. Rep., Ethiopia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Rwanda,South Sudan, Uganda Biking to work is hardly the sacrifice that would be required to seriously offset global co2 emissions. It's not just about driving in your car, it's about the transportation energy required to sustain your entire lifestyle. The food you eat, the goods you consume, the income you make, the concrete that grows the city around you. All of this requires moving things around the globe which in requires substantial amounts of high energy density fuels. It turns out that, independent of how environmentally conscious you are, emissions foot print is closely tied to personal income [1]. But nobody wants to hear that to live sustainably we must live a dramatically reduced quality of life. The fact that my comment is being downvoted is evidence of how strongly people don't want to hear this. And again, I don't blame anyone for not wanting to reduce the quality of their life. But it's ridiculous to be dishonest about how much our civilization has overshot what a truly sustainable civilization looks like. [1]. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/12/1/16718844/green-consumers-climate-change https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/12/1/1671884...
- btrettel 8y ago
  > How do you come to the conclusion that biking to work does anything significant to offset the 20 tons of co2 emission you produce? Let alone bring it anywhere near 0? I never claimed that it did. I think it helps, but I don't know how much. It was only an example of one thing that people think is a sacrifice that I don't. As for the Vox article you linked to, a correlation between income and energy usage is just that, a correlation. I don't see any particular reason why that needs to hold in the future. Anyway, as a graduate student I don't make a lot of money, so perhaps by your own estimates I'm relatively green, even ignoring the cycling.
  - Arnt 8y ago
    You live and work in buildings whose construction needed a lot of energy, for example, and the construction business uses a lot of fossil fuel. But I agree. Belgium is richer than Burundi, but not because construction in Belgium uses cement mixers driven by petrol engines while those in Burundi use electric power. It's richer because it has structures such as your university (buildings and institutions) that educates people to a level quite different from Burundi. The dirty or clean power used to build is a detail. Like, in a way, your cycling. Compared to a car, your cycling cuts the relevant emissions drastically with ~zero impact on your actual quality of life. Belgium didn't turn poor like Burundi when it stopped burning coal, it kept the good parts (like that university) and just used less dirty power sources. It didn't even grow poorer.