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We keep hearing that individual actions don't matter and that we need a system change instead. I used to hold the same opinion for the very long time. However,

We keep hearing that individual actions don't matter and that we need a system change instead. I used to hold the same opinion for the very long time. However, since recently I started to turn around. For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. What makes us think it will be any different in the coming years. Scientists keep producing report after report after report. Every one grimmer then the preceding. And nothing happens. I begin to believe individual action is the only option left. I don't know the circumstances of every person on the planet and therefor don't know what they can do. But I think I know what HN crowd could do. - Stop flying to conferences. Go to a local meetup. It's fun. And cheaper. If you really need to get out of town, take a train. - Start working part time, and part of that part time remotely. Reduce your commute. If your boss won't let you, find a job that will. In the current job market you can negotiate almost anything, and remote work must be the easiest thing to negotiate. - Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. Don't go all the way vegan, but make meat a special treat not a commodity. - If you have any investments shift them from fossil to green. - Don't upgrade your phone. Seriously.

crispinb 7y ago
"Individual actions don't matter" would be overdoing it, but spontaneous "lifestyle" change can never be more than a minor contribution to change. The reason people emphasize system transformation is because it really is needed. That it looks unlikely to happen doesn't alter that fact. I agree it's unlikely, but if it were to happen it obviously wouldn't be initiated by 'governments and politicians'. It would come from populations, or significant portions thereof, pushing them in the right direction. Hence Extinction Rebellion, the school strike etc. I suspect though that the last century or so of corporate propaganda has captured enough people to make it all too little too late.
c22 7y ago
If the system isn't working that implies that there aren't enough committed individuals to change it. If we can't get enough people to work on fixing our relatively simple human-built systems it seems unlikely that they will have sufficient impact on the much larger and more complex natural systems of global health. So while these suggestions are great, I do think we should continue to focus on, explore, and advocate for broader systemic change. If the politicians of the world wont take these problems seriously then we have to vote in new politicians that will or else our failure is ultimately assured.
- pojzon 7y ago
  Im afraid nothing will change to the moment people start dying because of climate change effects. And by that i mean at leadt hundreds of ppl of not thousends. Fastest move would happen if what im talking about did happen in 1st world countries. Thats sad masses need such a strong shake up.
  - rypskar 7y ago
    That might be optimistic. The pessimistic version is that the 1st world would not react before it starts to see a large scale migration from developing countries because of climate change, and the first reaction would be to close the borders.
    - ptah 7y ago
      that is already happening yet people are still not moved to action http://climatemigration.org.uk/ http://climatemigration.org.uk/
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        They won't until the border pressure will be so hard the nations will start shooting people trying to cross them.
        DoctorOetker 7y ago
        I'm afraid that would have the potential to increase the "it's every man for himself" atmosphere...
- phs318u 7y ago
  It's not so much that there aren't enough individuals that are committed to change. I think it's partly that people would rather do than be done unto (the feeling of controlling your destiny rather than being controlled), and partly that people can be gamed to act against their own long term interest (ironically being controlled into thinking you're in control when you aren't).
icelancer 7y ago
>> Stop flying to conferences This is not tenable for executive-level staffers. >> Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. This is definitely an impactful idea, specifically red meat by quite a large difference comparative to other meats. >> If you have any investments shift them from fossil to green. This is not really a tenable suggestion either unless you are suggesting everyone take a giant hit to yield and also mass purge a lot of their index funds that necessarily have large investments in energy companies, especially if they are large-cap. >> Don't upgrade your phone. No one should be doing this anyway on a regular basis. It's ridiculous for non-environmental reasons.
- perfunctory 7y ago
  > This is not really a tenable suggestion either unless you are suggesting everyone take a giant hit to yield Some believe divestment won't have significant impact on returns: http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/the-mythical-peril-of-divesting-from-fossil-fuels/ http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/the-mythical-per...
- perfunctory 7y ago
  > This is not tenable for executive-level staffers. Well, if we don't go (as in the entire development community) then the executive-level staffers have nothing to do there either.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  > This is definitely an impactful idea, specifically red meat by quite a large difference comparative to other meats. This isn't exactly tenable for everyone, either. Some people [like me] need to fairly regularly eat red meat for the B12/Iron uptake benefits alongside supplementation. Instead the industry should be pushed toward larger changes like this: https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-eating-seaweed-can-help-cows-to-belch-less-methane https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-eating-seaweed-can-help-c... I'm increasingly convinced the solution isn't quitting everything that looks like a vice (good luck with that), but instead to develop methods for reducing or removing and reversing the harm they cause.
  - 7y ago
zpeti 7y ago
This. And also: The environment is an awesome way for people to virtue signal how much they care. But the fact is the real world consequences of what most environmentalists ask for would seriously affect the way of life they have. Politicians know this. Any serious attempt to change anything will not get you votes and out of government. That is not the governments fault. That is not the corporations fault. That is every individuals fault who talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk. How is a politician supposed to do anything about the environment when it WOULD make the poor poorer? Most people don't realise that the effects of the 2008 financial crisis is nothing compared to what sort of reduction in living standards you would need to get even close to being carbon neutral. In fact, its usually environmentalists complaining about inequality and cost of living. What would being carbon free mean for anyone individually? No flying, no cars. Buying solar panels. Insulating your home. No meat. No imported foodstuffs. How much sacrifice and cost is that for 1 person? Multiply that by everyone, it's INSANE.
- crispinb 7y ago
  > it's INSANE And the death of our living planet isn't? So-called 'economic growth' was never much more than a global entropy increase, as high quality self-organising evolved systems were ripped out to feed crude technological ones requiring endless inputs. This was always mere borrowing against the future. It was never 'growth' in any true sense. It ends because biology, chemistry & physics say it must, regardless of human pouting. We could perhaps 3 or 4 decades ago have made a collective decision to gradually reduce consumption and allow our home to survive in decent enough shape to sustain us. Or maybe it was a biological fait accompli that any species evolving capacities to escape population limits and spread like a devastating weed across the world would eventually outstip the world's capacity to absorb the change. We'll probably never know which.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > We could perhaps 3 or 4 decades ago have made a collective decision to gradually reduce consumption and allow our home to survive in decent enough shape to sustain us. One thing we know about humans is that, as a species, we were never and are not currently capable of making such collective decisions or otherwise coordinating at this scale. This is probably the root of most problems we have, except death and diseases.
neuronic 7y ago
> Don't upgrade your phone. Seriously. The market makes this easy nowadays. Unless your phone is broken/severely outdated there is next to zero benefit to upgrading at this time. Prices for flagships become prohibitive as well. Upgrading phones every 1-2 years is a dead tradition outside of contract incentives, only relevant to hyper enthusiasts (r/android etc...). Even then I am not sure why aside from corporation benefits. The differences are marginal at best (ok, Candy Crush 4D gets 8fps more nowadays), the value of upgrading has declined for years now. Of course these statement will have enthusiasts screaming and foaming because the newest FiveMinus 8T has 1mm less bezel while sporting 25 mAh more battery compared to last years model. Also NIGHT VISION CAMERA! All the not-quite photography-enthusiasts are salivating and throwing their money at phone makers year after year in order to participate in blog-jerk-offing and karma whoring. People who care about photography get DSLRs, people who care about functional functions in phones haven't had to react to significant changes for several generations now, unless lack of security updates (cough Google) forced people to. WhatsApp, Instagram, Firefox, Mail, Dial, Weather, Auth Apps, ToDo, ... they all run fine on still supported iPhone 5S/SE or older supported Androids. What app that an iPhone 5S cannot run is even truly useful and missed?
- glaurung_ 7y ago
  Two things I look for when replacing a phone: 1. Lineage OS support. (So you actually get security updates) 2. A decent repairability score on iFixit. (So you don't end up with a brick when your battery dies in a few years.) Right now I'm on a OnePlus 2. It will be 4 years old this summer and doesn't seem to have any issues with the newest Android (in the form of Lineage OS), or any apps I use!
  - neuronic 7y ago
    Sounds like a good strategy. It is utterly insane that consumers and the industry are fine with battery degradation coercing them into complete $600+ device replacements (further fueled by the "I got the newest phone!" social status incentive for some folks). Batteries should be swappable and at replacement time be properly recycled. Manufacturers need to be legally required to provide this option at all times, if they refuse to do so (do any?).
save_ferris 7y ago
The problem with individual action is that it requires a collective effort to make such sacrifices worth it, and most people aren’t willing able to make all or any of those sacrifices. For example: one cannot simply replace air travel with trains in the US. Amtrak is wholly inadequate to act in an interstate commuter transport capacity in the vast majority of the US. Also, I’m not at a point in my career where I can afford to work part time. Part time software engineering jobs are hard to find in the US, and part time jobs don’t provide benefits like healthcare. Individuals are going to look at this and say “why should I make these sacrifices when I know that others aren’t going to make them?”
- perfunctory 7y ago
  That's kind of the point. Stop thinking about "most people". Do it for yourself. If you believe in the climate emergency that is. You might be pleasantly surprised to see your friends around you follow the suit.
  - Redoubts 7y ago
    I can’t even get my friends and coworkers to vote.
    - jlokier 7y ago
      Perhaps they might be persuaded to do other things, whose effects they can see more directly. Also, encourage children in their activism. They are good at making complacent parents take notice at least, if only for social signalling :-) and hopefully some of it sticks when they grow up. Voting shouldn't be seen as the basic thing, which people need to do to show they care in the world. Many people see voting as mostly pointless, and they might even be right compared with other things they can do.
    - badNews 7y ago
      Realistically, voting is an absurd placebo at this point. I don't think opinions about voting, or votes as an expression of opinion work above values of 1,000 in human social systems. If you think about it, this hypothesis holds conceptual water. Head counts in the thousands are the region of sample size where statistics begin to aggregate into commoditized data and spherical cows. Thus, perpetuating the premise of democracy past small town population sizes really only serves as a useful plane of misdirection for social control. No one can realistically be held accountable for democratic blunders that cross large geographies or involve huge voter turnouts. It's essentially fantasy to buy into the narrative. All you need to do is watch 12 Angry Men to catch a glimpse of how and why voting, even with small numbers in extreme microcosms, is really unreliable. And at larger scales, just statistics with manipulated noise. Statistics are simply representative of accidental distributions of facts, monte carlo style. It's certainly blameless, but not well reasoned agency. I'm not saying this to be a cool, edgy pessimist. I'm thinking about everything I've seen happen with my own eyes, plus historical realities. We've avoided world wars since the 1940's like a slug avoids salt. This is not because of governance and democracy, but rather institutional memory. As a meta-organism, we remember the lethal burn of it. It will probably come to the same climactic realization with the biosphere, before this amoeboid sprawl of people recoils in anguish at the experience of disfiguring injury.
dsgriffin 7y ago
> Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. Don't go all the way vegan Why not go vegan/vegetarian? Most people who do handle it perfectly fine, unless there's another reason for suggesting this?
- gambler 7y ago
  Because most people who go 100% vegetarian break down and go back to eating meat anyway. Better be 98% vegetarian for decades than 100% vegetarian for a year.
  - dsgriffin 7y ago
    Maybe in the past things were different (although many studies into this tend to have ulterior motives), but I would say that Veganism has gone from an obscure lifestyle/diet to the acceptable mainstream very rapidly - e.g. U.S's population has gone from 1% vegan to around 6% in just the last couple of years (https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetforgrieve/2018/11/02/picturing-a-kindler-gentler-world-vegan-month/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetforgrieve/2018/11/02/pictu...). Even KFC are creating a vegan option.. sometimes change happens quick. I see it becoming more and more normalised.
  - bamboozled 7y ago
    I think people should really just aim for 50% vegetarian, I really think this would help and most people could manage. For example, eat meat 3-4 days a week and the rest vegetarian. Imagine if everyone did this? Yeah it's not perfect, but it's a start and it's more realistic. Here's my story and I've heard similar off others: I went vegetarian for 2 years (leaning to vegan) and found it hard to keep in shape and get enough protein, especially if you don't have time to cook and prepare meals. The only time I felt good was when I worked remotely and really had time to invest in cooking a lot of legumes and preparing meals with a lot of spices and variety to keep tings interesting. Eventually I moved overseas and worked full-time again and felt depressed because I was missing out on a lot of nice foods and was surviving off only Tofu (readily available protein source), the lack of variety got me down. I felt hungry quite often and often ended up supplementing with things like whey protein (probably has high Co2 footprint) anyway. Eventually I slipped into some kind of extreme depression and was quite unwell mentally, I pondered a lot for why this might be. I'm not sure if my body was deprived of something and then I thought back to when it all started and it seemed like a correlation with my diet changing. I hate saying (because I think the ethics of vegetarianism/veganism is superior) but my mental state improved quickly once I started consuming more animal products higher in protein with more variety of amino acids (whey protein, cheese and milk combined with lots of nuts and legumes). Eventually I went back to eating some chicken and fish and took some whey supplements and things continued improved for me and now I'm really quite content and working out / lifting a lot and feeling good physically and mentall. I eventually I just realized that I need to eat. I care a lot about climate change so I felt insane guilt for a while but it went away eventually. Like someone else said, maybe it's enough not to treat meat like a commodity, more like something we're lucky to have an eat it as necessary and sparingly. I think it's unfortunate and unhealthy to have to give up food and feel guilty for eating because people choose to drive their cars, have too many kids, drive to work, fly unnecessarily and burn fossil fuels to generate power. I'd prefer to see those issues addressed before going hungry and having health issues. I know people live vegetarian fine, maybe it's easier if you have a low body mass etc; However in the end my contribution has been to move very close to my office and ride to work every day and I eat vegetarian for breakfast and most evening meals, consume less stuff I don't need, repair things and only fly once or twice a year (maybe it's too much).
snarfy 7y ago
It's controversial, but don't have more than two kids. Consider adoption.
- c1sc0 7y ago
  It’s controversial, but consider genocide. I fear the day will come someone will actually put this option on the table. Our species seems to be particularly prone to bouts of this tendency.
Dumblydorr 7y ago
Individuals are absolutely on the hook for living high carbon footprint lifestyles, however governments have the power to incentivize low carbon, tax high carbon, and provide R and D and partnerships. It'll take govt, industry, and the people to lick our carbon addiction.
- perfunctory 7y ago
  Nobody is against government action. It's thoroughly needed. But I don't believe it will come around unless people demand it. And by demanding I don't mean signing a petition or shouting slogans at a demonstration. I mean real actions to adjust your lifestyle. And I don't believe it's necessary to immediately become carbon neutral on individual level. To begin with, even a small reduction can send powerful ripples across the economy.
radosc 7y ago
> Don't upgrade your phone. Seriously. In general, fix your stuff before buying new or buy used. Or at least try to extend the time between purchasing a replacement. Better yet if You think about new startup don't just create another super smart and sneaky ad technology but try to find an idea that contributes to humanity or the environment. After all, it's not the idea but your grit and perseverance that will take you to the top so why not make it matter.
bryanlarsen 7y ago
I believe this is an incredibly dangerous attitude. Kudos that you're doing your part, and leading by example is important. However, systemic change is possible. We have numerous counter-examples: the UN, the Montreal protocol, free trade deals, et cetera. So why don't we have systemic change for climate change, because people like you and I let our politicians get away with it! If it was obvious to politicians that doing something about climate change was required to get re-elected, they'd do it. It's an incredibly difficult task, which means we need to try harder, not that we should just give up on the planet.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  The next U.S. federal election is an excellent opportunity to address climate change. Ensure that the Democratic primary chooses a leader with a good plan, and then ensure that he/she wins in 2020.
  - tenpies 7y ago
    Except it's also not. As a continent, Asia is the largest polluter by far. What's worst, they're exporting those practices to Africa. Meanwhile, the Anglo-West is hyper-focused on the US because there's a president they don't like. This has been a blessing (now the average Anglo-Westerner at least pretends to care about the environment), but also a curse (they think the US is the only country that can save humanity).
    - _Microft 7y ago
      The per-capita emissions in the US are about twice to 2.5 times as high as that of a british citizen. Maybe it's just that there are the low hanging fruits? It's easier to reduce 1 ton of annual CO_2 emissions when you're producing 17 tons per year and person (like in the US) than when you're at 6 tons like the Brits. In either case, it would be 1 ton saved per year but it's only a 6% reduction for someone in the US but a 17% reduction of their yearly emission for a Brit.
    - MiroF 7y ago
SiempreViernes 7y ago
You leave out the most obvious way for individuals to alleviate the system level threats: accept that you need to get your hands dirty and go into politics.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ckastner 7y ago
> For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. That's just disingenuous. Climate change has been a major point for numerous governments, there have been huge pushes towards renewable energy sources through subsidies, legislation, international treaties, etc. Yes, much more could be done, but claiming that nothing has been done is just polemics. It's disingenuous to claim that 2019 is basically 1989.
- perfunctory 7y ago
  > It's disingenuous to claim that 2019 is basically 1989. Yes, it's much worth. Sorry, the governments might be doing something, but I just look at the PPM and global emissions charts and they just keep going up.
  - ckastner 7y ago
    You know what else keeps going up? The world population, from 5.2 billion in 1989 [1] to 7.7 billion today. Yes, the PPM and global emissions charts keep going up. However, they are doing so at a much smaller rate than would be the case if governments would be doing today what they were doing in 1989. Especially in Europe, we have see dramatic pushes towards renewable energy on the one side, and energy efficiency on the other. A headline such as "Germany produces enough renewable energy in six months to power country's households for an entire year" [2] would have been unthinkable 30 years ago, and to claim that this is not a major development is just BS. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates [2] https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/renewable-energy-germany-six-months-year-solar-power-wind-farms-a8427356.html https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/renewable-energy-g...
- jellicle 7y ago
  More subsidies today flowing toward the oil industry than in 1989; each year the amount of CO2 we add to the atmosphere is more than the year before. The subsidies for solar panels, etc., although well-publicized and well-criticized in the conservative press, tend to be about 3 to 5 orders of magnitude lower than subsidies for the oil industry, which get no press. 2019 isn't 1989. We'll do vastly more environmental damage this year than we did in 1989.
gambler 7y ago
Just don't be a douchebag who brags about being vegan (making everyone around hate the very concept), while simultaneously investing money into crypto mining and raving about AI toys that require showing terabytes of data into high-power video cards. Being reasonable and consistent works infinitely better than doing something to "make a statement".
- MiroF 7y ago
  This is definitely true! I do think that a lot of the stereotype about "obnoxious vegan" is something invented by people who eat to make themselves a little more comfortable with the moral tradeoffs they are making. I say this as someone who has met lots of vegans in my life (and also is not one). The vast majority are not very pushy at all. The pushy ones exist, but seem to be much more common in the collective imagination of meat-eaters.
tannhaeuser 7y ago
- Stop promoting/using power-inefficient, developer-centric webapps and start working on metrics for power efficiency - Stop churning through overpowered smartphones - Give up on "agile" project management ideas with daily standups in-person, fiddling with stories written on paper cards, and similar childish approaches
- prittgluestick 7y ago
  How does abandoning agile have anything to do with being greener? I do hold similar opinions on some agile practices as you do btw.
bad_user 7y ago
> “Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. Don't go all the way vegan, but make meat a special treat not a commodity.” No thank you. I know vegans have an anti-meat agenda and have been promoting this idea, however industrial agriculture as a whole is not sustainable, not just meat, and switching to a plants-based diet won’t save the planet. The elephant in the room is that sustainable farming needs to be local, it needs natural fertilizers and it needs grazing animals. Sustainable farming also needs to do away with pesticides because we are killing the insects. Also you have to take the cost to healthcare into account. The vegan diet is not sustainable and we already have a huge health issue on it hands, not from meat, but from all the cheap corn, wheat and sugar ;-) Sorry, but most vegans have serious nutrient deficiencies, like proteins, vitamin B12 or K2. Humans are meant to be omnivores, we do not have the digestive tract of herbivores to synthesize proteins or the ability to synthesize vitamin C like carnivores for that matter. If you want policy, ask the lawmakers to stop subsidizing corn and wheat. Making corn more expensive will make CAFO operations and thus meat more expensive, which will in turn increase demand for animals raised using more sustainable practices.
- Udik 7y ago
  > sustainable farming needs to be local, it needs natural fertilizers and it needs grazing animals. I suspect that the "sustainable farming" you're describing, if applied at scale (= enough to feed 7 billion people) would require so much land as to completely devastate and replace every natural environment still left on earth. Little crops and pastures, as pleasing as they are to the eye, are not a natural environment.
  - zdkl 7y ago
    Nothing "natural" would sustain 7b+ people anyway, so what's your point against "sustainable" as a reasonable (and considerable) improvement?
    - MiroF 7y ago
      The point is that local and "natural" is not sustainable. We need scale for a reason.
emptyfile 7y ago
>- Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. Don't go all the way vegan, but make meat a special treat not a commodity. Why? How will this help the environment? Real sources please.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- gambler 7y ago
  https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/660S/4690010 https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/660S/4690010 But really, it's common sense. Do you think it's more efficient to eat grain or to feed grain to a cow, wait until it matures and then eat the cow?
- _Microft 7y ago
  Reason is biology/physics. You need ten times the biomass to create an equivalent biomass at a trophic level that is one higher. It HAS to be more inefficient to eat meat instead of crops because it raises your trophic level by 1. (Worst case is eating what were apex predators like e.g. tuna fish) About trophic levels: Level 1 are producers like plants. Herbivores are level 2, carnivores eating herbivores are level 3, carnivores eating carnivores are level 4 and then there's the apex predator that is not eaten by anything, usually. Some links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency#Ten_percent_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency#Ten_perc...
  - eMSF 7y ago
    Well... except for the fact that I don't have a gut to make use of any of the biomass that grazing cattle can harvest from a field. And eaten or not, that biomass is part of active carbon cycle, and if left on the field, will decompose back into the atmosphere.
    - _Microft 7y ago
uhtred 7y ago
Why not go vegan? Sure, anything is better than nothing, but a vegan diet is best of all. Plus, dairy, especially when consumed as cheese, is worse than some meat in terms of environmental impact.
- MiroF 7y ago
  Personally I think that we need to change what it means to be standard vegetarian - add fish, remove dairy. Better for the environment and perhaps easier for people to switch to! Currently, I have to go around calling myself a "lacto-pescatarian" which is far too much of a mouthful
  - foobiekr 7y ago
    It would be far better for the planet for vegetarians to eat chicken than to continue to support the fishing industry.
    - MiroF 7y ago
      Fish farms are more environmentally sustainable than chicken farms. Overfishing is a problem but it's not the only way to get fish
      - foobiekr 7y ago
        I think it's more complex than that [1]. But I also think that seafood is inseparable from overfishing as an industry. [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa273/metahttps://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa273/meta https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa273/...
- jniedrauer 7y ago
  Going completely vegan is pretty difficult. You can get 95% of the way there with a pesco-vegetarian diet for half of the effort and cost.
akskos 7y ago
I think individual actions might be required for a system change. It would be way easier fe. to put high taxes on animal products if people wouldn't be so used to only eating meat. One person giving an example of alternative ways to consume is shifting the culture of consumption around him/her and therefore making a system change easier.
samatman 7y ago
The difficulty this poses is that the market may as well be designed to frustrate this approach. It works only in the absence of marginal consumers, which, in practice, never happens. Stop flying? The airlines still have to amortize the cost of their airplanes and bulk fuel purchases. You've subsidized discount flights, paying with your virtue. Work remotely, so you don't need to buy a car? That's one more car that's sold in a lot sale, or for a few hundred less on Craiglist if you buy used. Reduce meat consumption? More for the people of the developing world, many of whom eat as much as they can afford and would like more. Don't upgrade your phone? That's one more that gets sold next year, on sale, when the new models come out. Demand-side reduction doesn't work. We need actual solutions.
- perfunctory 7y ago
  > The difficulty this poses is that the market may as well be designed to frustrate this approach. You bet it does. I didn't say it was gonna be easy. > We need actual solutions. Sure. But those actual solutions will necessarily include mandated reduction in flying, driving, meat consumption etc. We might as well show that we are ready to accept it.
amelius 7y ago
> For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. That's because politicians are bound to follow roughly the public opinion, or they risk being not re-elected. Therefore (sadly), this proves that individual actions will not make much of a dent.
ivanhoe 7y ago
Individual actions in this context are like trying to put down the fire with a single glass of water. It will certainly not hurt if you do it, but for it to have any significant effect you need everybody else to do the same at the same time. And the best way to have everyone do it is to push politicians to commit to it and create public policies to enforce it. The huge problem with individual actions is that they make people feel good about themselves, makes them feel like they did their part, while actually the effects of it are minimal.
- perfunctory 7y ago
  > The huge problem with individual actions is that they make people feel good about themselves, makes them feel like they did their part, while actually the effects of it are minimal. How is this a huge problem? What's wrong about feeling good about yourself when you are doing something good? It's actually great. You help the climate AND you feel good. Win-win. Just imagine what a hell the life would be if doing something good felt bad.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ivanhoe 7y ago
    Problem is not that people feel good, problem is that they're concentrating on insignificant actions and it gives them a false sense of doing enough - so they stop at that, guilty-free, but without doing anything actually impactful. It's actually a very common form of self delusion, we all do that by drinking that diet-soda after we just ate a full box of ice-cream while on a diet, or in social media by liking and retweeting calls for help or action, while never really following through to actually help or take part in that action. It dilutes the outcome, lots of momentum gets wasted that way.
    - perfunctory 7y ago
      I know what you are saying but I wouldn't call abandoning flying and meat insignificant actions. Liking and retweeting might be. Actions I propose are also very visible. It wasn't the main reason, but meeting vegetarians at work and in the friend circle certainly served as a helpful encouragement to reduce my own meat consumption.
fsloth 7y ago
Dude, none of the things what you suggest would make any impact. For me, personally - but those were kind of personal suggestions. I haven't flown anywhere in three years, and certainly don't visit conferences. "- Start working part time, and part of that part time remotely. Reduce your commute. " Uh, what? I commute by bike and with the bus in the winter. I don't really see how stopping that would contribute. "- If you have any investments shift them from fossil to green." Uh, most of my investments are in index funds. I'm not going to change that, but I do hope my fund managers will. "- Don't upgrade your phone. Seriously." I don't upgrade. I buy replacements when the previous unit dies. I haven't seen any concrete benefits from upgrading from a top model in the past six years. See, it gets pretty weird if you try to engage on a some sort of grass roots movement beyond a very, very specific goal. People have wildly different lives.
- _Microft 7y ago
  Nope, you just have reached the point that others haven't yet. Your carbon footprint is much lower than theirs for sure and trying to convince someone with a higher footprint to change will be vastly more efficient than trying to squeeze the last kilogram of carbon emission reduction out of your own life. Thanks for the effort by the way!
  - fsloth 7y ago
    "Thanks for the effort by the way!" Uh, you are welcome, but these are not choices I've made due to any environmental reason. They are the most comfortable option for me personally at the moment.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      What's with all the condescending "uh"s? Are you roleplaying as Daria?
  - jlokier 7y ago
    > Nope, you just have reached the point that others haven't yet. That might be true. But I'm under the impression that: - Flying is often said to be the biggest individual climate-harming action by individuals. - Most people, even in the West, are kind of poor and haven't flown anywhere in the last decade. - Most people, even in the West, don't have "investments" unless you count a measly pension they don't have much control over anyway. - The mobile phone market is struggling because people aren't upgrading as consistently as they used to, older handsets are good enough, and newer ones aren't special enough. People have enough spares now that they pass old ones on to their poorer friends. If that impression is accurate, perhaps others are generally closer to the emissions levels reached by the GP commenter. Some other areas for improvement may be car use, home energy and food, as these are all things which can be significantly improved. I imagine most people (in the West) still drive a lot, have woefully inefficient homes, and buy food based on price and appeal rather than climate impact.
paulcole 7y ago
You’re missing the one that dwarfs the impact of all the rest: Don’t have kids.
swoongoonz 7y ago
>For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. you spelled corporations wrong. sorry friend, governments don't run the world.
rv-de 7y ago
The best reason for exactly these individual changes you are describing is that - and this is a really funny and convenient coincidence - you are benefiting of them first and foremost yourself! > - Stop flying to conferences. Go to a local meetup. It's fun. And cheaper. If you really need to get out of town, take a train. No unnecessary hassle and stress from flying to far away places or getting stuck in traffic jams. > - Start working part time, and part of that part time remotely. Not sure why this is beneficial to those species or climate or anything but working less gives you time to focus on family, friends and hobbies. > - Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. Don't go all the way vegan, but make meat a special treat not a commodity. Meat is unhealthy - period. It's a nice to have but it is at the end of the day just not good for you. > - Don't upgrade your phone. Seriously. Applied shift of focus away from materialism and unimportant fuss like whatever new feature and gadget just come out. You are the one gaining happiness and satisfaction of those steps right now! And on top of that - you're reducing your footprint :)
- mfatica 7y ago
  > meat is unhealthy - period. It's a nice to have but it is at the end of the day just not good for you. [citation needed]
  - rv-de 7y ago
    I just invested 17 seconds into your health, buddy :) Here you go: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26780279 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26780279
    - cbnotfromthere 7y ago
      "red meat and particularly of processed meat" Long story short: the findings are NOT about meat consumption.
    - whiskers08xmt 7y ago
      Important note here is that it's primarily red and processed meat. I think fish and poultry are still considered healthy in moderate amounts.
mc32 7y ago
There is one obvious thing you omitted. Population growth. We could do a lot to educate and help people in developing nations manage population growth better. China and to a great extent India have addressed the issue. Indonesia has not, for example.
- MiroF 7y ago
  As long as population growth is recognized as a problem in addition (and perhaps a bit less than) overconsumption - rather than a rhetorical guise used by people in the West to continue to justify overconsumption, I absolutely agree! Unfortunately, it far too often appears to be the latter
  - mc32 7y ago
    Of course it’s both. However more people means more clear cutting. More meat as more people can afford meat also means more clear cutting. We can consume less disposable products and also manage population growth responsibly (neither rise to fast nor contract too fast as both are destabilizing).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jlokier 7y ago
> - Start working part time, and part of that part time remotely. With the number of people currently having to work more than one job, it's hard to see how they can switch to part-time. I know some people who pay >50% of their income towards rent, and their rent isn't especially high. It's that their income per job isn't very high, and housing is set by competitive demand in areas with jobs, not by cost of provision. We're going to have to solve the cost-of-basics problem somehow, before many people can reduce their work hours to part time. But that doesn't stop people who can do it from doing it, and maybe that's enough to turn the tide for everyone.
- perfunctory 7y ago
  > With the number of people currently having to work more than one job, it's hard to see how they can switch to part-time. "I don't know the circumstances of every person on the planet and therefor don't know what they can do. But I think I know what HN crowd could do."
  - jlokier 7y ago
    I'm sure your comment is making a point, but to be honest I can't be sure what it is. My point was that switching to part-time seems unachievable to me for the majority of people, without changing other factors at the same time, and so we should simultaneously enquire how you recommend to deal with those other factors, for the advice to be most effective. I don't wish to dismiss the advice; I wish to understand how to solve the obstacles to actioning it. Is your point that HN crowd are relatively well off, so part-time and remote work is available to many of the HN crowd? (I'm pretty sure we're on the same side of the general debate, in favour of individuals taking actions that they can to improve their footprint.)
    - perfunctory 7y ago
      Well, so my thinking is along these lines. What we now call "full-time" - 40 hours a week - is not a law of nature. It's a social construct. In the beginning of the industrial revolution everybody worked 12 hours a day without the weekend. Labor movement (or was it Henry Ford? I don't know) pushed for shorter working week. It didn't seem to destroy the economy. So I don't see why we can't make it even shorter. And HN crowd, as indeed relatively well off, can lead the way. As more and more people work "part" time it might change the popular perception and eventually the rest of the society and regulation might follow.
nsxwolf 7y ago
Start working part time? And if my boss won't let me, find a job that will? You forgot to add "figure out how to live on 95% less income" to your list.
mistrial9 7y ago
this heartfelt yet trivial response makes the worst fodder for those seeking to block or ridicule those serious about this topic. Absolutely down-vote on this, due to more significant systemic approaches needing the attention.
belorn 7y ago
Since this article is about biodiversity, the usual advice to address pollution don't fit perfectly. Biodiversity require a multitude of biotope and the preservation of high bio density biotope such as rain forest and corals. Don't buy beef from places that burn down rain forests in order to raise cattle. Don't buy fish from trawling. Be extra careful with net caught fish and farmed fish, both which has higher risk of causing problem in the eco system. Similar with vegetables. Oils from rain forest is to be avoided. Food from farms next to lakes that suffer from eutrophication is a major problem. Signs of overpopulation in lakes is a final indication of harm. Sustainable fishing and wild game is one of few places where I know you can get some advice from governing bodies that tries to manage bio diversity. They are imperfect but at least they discuss the topic. Sadly there isn't much for other kind of food and ecological standards don't cover bio diversity or sustainability as criteria.
bob_doggo 7y ago
The "incapable politicians"-part, are you saying that this is the case globaly or that it is the case in your country? Because on a global scale I disagree. As an example, google "china and india planting trees". Edit: Just to clarify: I think that we need both systematic and personal change. And in a democracy, a good way to make politicians care about a subject, is to make sure that they know that you won't vote for someone who doesn't care.
kpennell 7y ago
On the don't upgrade your phone...check out lineageOS for giving it more time
maelito 7y ago
The impact of not changing your phone is < 100kg of CO2 eq. It's of course a good thing to do, but it won't replace doing the other more important changes you've listed.
simonebrunozzi 7y ago
It's easy to criticize you - one could simply argue that these will be measures taken only by a few, and therefore won't have an impact. I still admire the fact that you are trying - who am I to dismiss it? And yet, unfortunately I am more and more convinced that individuals won't change history. For a brief moment in my life (~2 years), I naively tried to do something to better the world, and of course didn't go anywhere. It's sad.
option 7y ago
Sorry, I think it is a silly dead end. Essentially you are proposing reducing action which has negative side effects to inaction. That is not how humanity solved it’s previous major challenges. The challenges we did mostly overcome (many horrific diseases, feeding more people, reducing lives lost to war) were all because of active actions taken towards outcomes we wished for. On an individual level, if you can afford it, get solar panels, drive electric cars, buy food grown on the certified farms, etc.

crispinb 7y ago

"Individual actions don't matter" would be overdoing it, but spontaneous "lifestyle" change can never be more than a minor contribution to change. The reason people emphasize system transformation is because it really is needed. That it looks unlikely to happen doesn't alter that fact. I agree it's unlikely, but if it were to happen it obviously wouldn't be initiated by 'governments and politicians'. It would come from populations, or significant portions thereof, pushing them in the right direction. Hence Extinction Rebellion, the school strike etc. I suspect though that the last century or so of corporate propaganda has captured enough people to make it all too little too late.

c22 7y ago

If the system isn't working that implies that there aren't enough committed individuals to change it. If we can't get enough people to work on fixing our relatively simple human-built systems it seems unlikely that they will have sufficient impact on the much larger and more complex natural systems of global health. So while these suggestions are great, I do think we should continue to focus on, explore, and advocate for broader systemic change. If the politicians of the world wont take these problems seriously then we have to vote in new politicians that will or else our failure is ultimately assured.

pojzon 7y ago
Im afraid nothing will change to the moment people start dying because of climate change effects. And by that i mean at leadt hundreds of ppl of not thousends. Fastest move would happen if what im talking about did happen in 1st world countries. Thats sad masses need such a strong shake up.
- rypskar 7y ago
  That might be optimistic. The pessimistic version is that the 1st world would not react before it starts to see a large scale migration from developing countries because of climate change, and the first reaction would be to close the borders.
  - ptah 7y ago
    that is already happening yet people are still not moved to action http://climatemigration.org.uk/ http://climatemigration.org.uk/
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      They won't until the border pressure will be so hard the nations will start shooting people trying to cross them.
      - DoctorOetker 7y ago
        I'm afraid that would have the potential to increase the "it's every man for himself" atmosphere...
phs318u 7y ago
It's not so much that there aren't enough individuals that are committed to change. I think it's partly that people would rather do than be done unto (the feeling of controlling your destiny rather than being controlled), and partly that people can be gamed to act against their own long term interest (ironically being controlled into thinking you're in control when you aren't).

icelancer 7y ago

>> Stop flying to conferences This is not tenable for executive-level staffers. >> Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. This is definitely an impactful idea, specifically red meat by quite a large difference comparative to other meats. >> If you have any investments shift them from fossil to green. This is not really a tenable suggestion either unless you are suggesting everyone take a giant hit to yield and also mass purge a lot of their index funds that necessarily have large investments in energy companies, especially if they are large-cap. >> Don't upgrade your phone. No one should be doing this anyway on a regular basis. It's ridiculous for non-environmental reasons.

perfunctory 7y ago
> This is not really a tenable suggestion either unless you are suggesting everyone take a giant hit to yield Some believe divestment won't have significant impact on returns: http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/the-mythical-peril-of-divesting-from-fossil-fuels/ http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/the-mythical-per...
perfunctory 7y ago
> This is not tenable for executive-level staffers. Well, if we don't go (as in the entire development community) then the executive-level staffers have nothing to do there either.
52-6F-62 7y ago
> This is definitely an impactful idea, specifically red meat by quite a large difference comparative to other meats. This isn't exactly tenable for everyone, either. Some people [like me] need to fairly regularly eat red meat for the B12/Iron uptake benefits alongside supplementation. Instead the industry should be pushed toward larger changes like this: https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-eating-seaweed-can-help-cows-to-belch-less-methane https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-eating-seaweed-can-help-c... I'm increasingly convinced the solution isn't quitting everything that looks like a vice (good luck with that), but instead to develop methods for reducing or removing and reversing the harm they cause.
- 7y ago

zpeti 7y ago

This. And also: The environment is an awesome way for people to virtue signal how much they care. But the fact is the real world consequences of what most environmentalists ask for would seriously affect the way of life they have. Politicians know this. Any serious attempt to change anything will not get you votes and out of government. That is not the governments fault. That is not the corporations fault. That is every individuals fault who talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk. How is a politician supposed to do anything about the environment when it WOULD make the poor poorer? Most people don't realise that the effects of the 2008 financial crisis is nothing compared to what sort of reduction in living standards you would need to get even close to being carbon neutral. In fact, its usually environmentalists complaining about inequality and cost of living. What would being carbon free mean for anyone individually? No flying, no cars. Buying solar panels. Insulating your home. No meat. No imported foodstuffs. How much sacrifice and cost is that for 1 person? Multiply that by everyone, it's INSANE.

crispinb 7y ago
> it's INSANE And the death of our living planet isn't? So-called 'economic growth' was never much more than a global entropy increase, as high quality self-organising evolved systems were ripped out to feed crude technological ones requiring endless inputs. This was always mere borrowing against the future. It was never 'growth' in any true sense. It ends because biology, chemistry & physics say it must, regardless of human pouting. We could perhaps 3 or 4 decades ago have made a collective decision to gradually reduce consumption and allow our home to survive in decent enough shape to sustain us. Or maybe it was a biological fait accompli that any species evolving capacities to escape population limits and spread like a devastating weed across the world would eventually outstip the world's capacity to absorb the change. We'll probably never know which.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > We could perhaps 3 or 4 decades ago have made a collective decision to gradually reduce consumption and allow our home to survive in decent enough shape to sustain us. One thing we know about humans is that, as a species, we were never and are not currently capable of making such collective decisions or otherwise coordinating at this scale. This is probably the root of most problems we have, except death and diseases.

neuronic 7y ago

> Don't upgrade your phone. Seriously. The market makes this easy nowadays. Unless your phone is broken/severely outdated there is next to zero benefit to upgrading at this time. Prices for flagships become prohibitive as well. Upgrading phones every 1-2 years is a dead tradition outside of contract incentives, only relevant to hyper enthusiasts (r/android etc...). Even then I am not sure why aside from corporation benefits. The differences are marginal at best (ok, Candy Crush 4D gets 8fps more nowadays), the value of upgrading has declined for years now. Of course these statement will have enthusiasts screaming and foaming because the newest FiveMinus 8T has 1mm less bezel while sporting 25 mAh more battery compared to last years model. Also NIGHT VISION CAMERA! All the not-quite photography-enthusiasts are salivating and throwing their money at phone makers year after year in order to participate in blog-jerk-offing and karma whoring. People who care about photography get DSLRs, people who care about functional functions in phones haven't had to react to significant changes for several generations now, unless lack of security updates (cough Google) forced people to. WhatsApp, Instagram, Firefox, Mail, Dial, Weather, Auth Apps, ToDo, ... they all run fine on still supported iPhone 5S/SE or older supported Androids. What app that an iPhone 5S cannot run is even truly useful and missed?

glaurung_ 7y ago
Two things I look for when replacing a phone: 1. Lineage OS support. (So you actually get security updates) 2. A decent repairability score on iFixit. (So you don't end up with a brick when your battery dies in a few years.) Right now I'm on a OnePlus 2. It will be 4 years old this summer and doesn't seem to have any issues with the newest Android (in the form of Lineage OS), or any apps I use!
- neuronic 7y ago
  Sounds like a good strategy. It is utterly insane that consumers and the industry are fine with battery degradation coercing them into complete $600+ device replacements (further fueled by the "I got the newest phone!" social status incentive for some folks). Batteries should be swappable and at replacement time be properly recycled. Manufacturers need to be legally required to provide this option at all times, if they refuse to do so (do any?).

save_ferris 7y ago

The problem with individual action is that it requires a collective effort to make such sacrifices worth it, and most people aren’t willing able to make all or any of those sacrifices. For example: one cannot simply replace air travel with trains in the US. Amtrak is wholly inadequate to act in an interstate commuter transport capacity in the vast majority of the US. Also, I’m not at a point in my career where I can afford to work part time. Part time software engineering jobs are hard to find in the US, and part time jobs don’t provide benefits like healthcare. Individuals are going to look at this and say “why should I make these sacrifices when I know that others aren’t going to make them?”

perfunctory 7y ago
That's kind of the point. Stop thinking about "most people". Do it for yourself. If you believe in the climate emergency that is. You might be pleasantly surprised to see your friends around you follow the suit.
- Redoubts 7y ago
  I can’t even get my friends and coworkers to vote.
  - jlokier 7y ago
    Perhaps they might be persuaded to do other things, whose effects they can see more directly. Also, encourage children in their activism. They are good at making complacent parents take notice at least, if only for social signalling :-) and hopefully some of it sticks when they grow up. Voting shouldn't be seen as the basic thing, which people need to do to show they care in the world. Many people see voting as mostly pointless, and they might even be right compared with other things they can do.
  - badNews 7y ago
    Realistically, voting is an absurd placebo at this point. I don't think opinions about voting, or votes as an expression of opinion work above values of 1,000 in human social systems. If you think about it, this hypothesis holds conceptual water. Head counts in the thousands are the region of sample size where statistics begin to aggregate into commoditized data and spherical cows. Thus, perpetuating the premise of democracy past small town population sizes really only serves as a useful plane of misdirection for social control. No one can realistically be held accountable for democratic blunders that cross large geographies or involve huge voter turnouts. It's essentially fantasy to buy into the narrative. All you need to do is watch 12 Angry Men to catch a glimpse of how and why voting, even with small numbers in extreme microcosms, is really unreliable. And at larger scales, just statistics with manipulated noise. Statistics are simply representative of accidental distributions of facts, monte carlo style. It's certainly blameless, but not well reasoned agency. I'm not saying this to be a cool, edgy pessimist. I'm thinking about everything I've seen happen with my own eyes, plus historical realities. We've avoided world wars since the 1940's like a slug avoids salt. This is not because of governance and democracy, but rather institutional memory. As a meta-organism, we remember the lethal burn of it. It will probably come to the same climactic realization with the biosphere, before this amoeboid sprawl of people recoils in anguish at the experience of disfiguring injury.

dsgriffin 7y ago

> Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. Don't go all the way vegan Why not go vegan/vegetarian? Most people who do handle it perfectly fine, unless there's another reason for suggesting this?

gambler 7y ago
Because most people who go 100% vegetarian break down and go back to eating meat anyway. Better be 98% vegetarian for decades than 100% vegetarian for a year.
- dsgriffin 7y ago
  Maybe in the past things were different (although many studies into this tend to have ulterior motives), but I would say that Veganism has gone from an obscure lifestyle/diet to the acceptable mainstream very rapidly - e.g. U.S's population has gone from 1% vegan to around 6% in just the last couple of years (https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetforgrieve/2018/11/02/picturing-a-kindler-gentler-world-vegan-month/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetforgrieve/2018/11/02/pictu...). Even KFC are creating a vegan option.. sometimes change happens quick. I see it becoming more and more normalised.
- bamboozled 7y ago
  I think people should really just aim for 50% vegetarian, I really think this would help and most people could manage. For example, eat meat 3-4 days a week and the rest vegetarian. Imagine if everyone did this? Yeah it's not perfect, but it's a start and it's more realistic. Here's my story and I've heard similar off others: I went vegetarian for 2 years (leaning to vegan) and found it hard to keep in shape and get enough protein, especially if you don't have time to cook and prepare meals. The only time I felt good was when I worked remotely and really had time to invest in cooking a lot of legumes and preparing meals with a lot of spices and variety to keep tings interesting. Eventually I moved overseas and worked full-time again and felt depressed because I was missing out on a lot of nice foods and was surviving off only Tofu (readily available protein source), the lack of variety got me down. I felt hungry quite often and often ended up supplementing with things like whey protein (probably has high Co2 footprint) anyway. Eventually I slipped into some kind of extreme depression and was quite unwell mentally, I pondered a lot for why this might be. I'm not sure if my body was deprived of something and then I thought back to when it all started and it seemed like a correlation with my diet changing. I hate saying (because I think the ethics of vegetarianism/veganism is superior) but my mental state improved quickly once I started consuming more animal products higher in protein with more variety of amino acids (whey protein, cheese and milk combined with lots of nuts and legumes). Eventually I went back to eating some chicken and fish and took some whey supplements and things continued improved for me and now I'm really quite content and working out / lifting a lot and feeling good physically and mentall. I eventually I just realized that I need to eat. I care a lot about climate change so I felt insane guilt for a while but it went away eventually. Like someone else said, maybe it's enough not to treat meat like a commodity, more like something we're lucky to have an eat it as necessary and sparingly. I think it's unfortunate and unhealthy to have to give up food and feel guilty for eating because people choose to drive their cars, have too many kids, drive to work, fly unnecessarily and burn fossil fuels to generate power. I'd prefer to see those issues addressed before going hungry and having health issues. I know people live vegetarian fine, maybe it's easier if you have a low body mass etc; However in the end my contribution has been to move very close to my office and ride to work every day and I eat vegetarian for breakfast and most evening meals, consume less stuff I don't need, repair things and only fly once or twice a year (maybe it's too much).

snarfy 7y ago

It's controversial, but don't have more than two kids. Consider adoption.

c1sc0 7y ago
It’s controversial, but consider genocide. I fear the day will come someone will actually put this option on the table. Our species seems to be particularly prone to bouts of this tendency.

Dumblydorr 7y ago

Individuals are absolutely on the hook for living high carbon footprint lifestyles, however governments have the power to incentivize low carbon, tax high carbon, and provide R and D and partnerships. It'll take govt, industry, and the people to lick our carbon addiction.

perfunctory 7y ago
Nobody is against government action. It's thoroughly needed. But I don't believe it will come around unless people demand it. And by demanding I don't mean signing a petition or shouting slogans at a demonstration. I mean real actions to adjust your lifestyle. And I don't believe it's necessary to immediately become carbon neutral on individual level. To begin with, even a small reduction can send powerful ripples across the economy.

radosc 7y ago

> Don't upgrade your phone. Seriously. In general, fix your stuff before buying new or buy used. Or at least try to extend the time between purchasing a replacement. Better yet if You think about new startup don't just create another super smart and sneaky ad technology but try to find an idea that contributes to humanity or the environment. After all, it's not the idea but your grit and perseverance that will take you to the top so why not make it matter.

bryanlarsen 7y ago

I believe this is an incredibly dangerous attitude. Kudos that you're doing your part, and leading by example is important. However, systemic change is possible. We have numerous counter-examples: the UN, the Montreal protocol, free trade deals, et cetera. So why don't we have systemic change for climate change, because people like you and I let our politicians get away with it! If it was obvious to politicians that doing something about climate change was required to get re-elected, they'd do it. It's an incredibly difficult task, which means we need to try harder, not that we should just give up on the planet.

bryanlarsen 7y ago
The next U.S. federal election is an excellent opportunity to address climate change. Ensure that the Democratic primary chooses a leader with a good plan, and then ensure that he/she wins in 2020.
- tenpies 7y ago
  Except it's also not. As a continent, Asia is the largest polluter by far. What's worst, they're exporting those practices to Africa. Meanwhile, the Anglo-West is hyper-focused on the US because there's a president they don't like. This has been a blessing (now the average Anglo-Westerner at least pretends to care about the environment), but also a curse (they think the US is the only country that can save humanity).
  - _Microft 7y ago
    The per-capita emissions in the US are about twice to 2.5 times as high as that of a british citizen. Maybe it's just that there are the low hanging fruits? It's easier to reduce 1 ton of annual CO_2 emissions when you're producing 17 tons per year and person (like in the US) than when you're at 6 tons like the Brits. In either case, it would be 1 ton saved per year but it's only a 6% reduction for someone in the US but a 17% reduction of their yearly emission for a Brit.
  - MiroF 7y ago

SiempreViernes 7y ago

You leave out the most obvious way for individuals to alleviate the system level threats: accept that you need to get your hands dirty and go into politics.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ckastner 7y ago

> For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. That's just disingenuous. Climate change has been a major point for numerous governments, there have been huge pushes towards renewable energy sources through subsidies, legislation, international treaties, etc. Yes, much more could be done, but claiming that nothing has been done is just polemics. It's disingenuous to claim that 2019 is basically 1989.

perfunctory 7y ago
> It's disingenuous to claim that 2019 is basically 1989. Yes, it's much worth. Sorry, the governments might be doing something, but I just look at the PPM and global emissions charts and they just keep going up.
- ckastner 7y ago
  You know what else keeps going up? The world population, from 5.2 billion in 1989 [1] to 7.7 billion today. Yes, the PPM and global emissions charts keep going up. However, they are doing so at a much smaller rate than would be the case if governments would be doing today what they were doing in 1989. Especially in Europe, we have see dramatic pushes towards renewable energy on the one side, and energy efficiency on the other. A headline such as "Germany produces enough renewable energy in six months to power country's households for an entire year" [2] would have been unthinkable 30 years ago, and to claim that this is not a major development is just BS. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates [2] https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/renewable-energy-germany-six-months-year-solar-power-wind-farms-a8427356.html https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/renewable-energy-g...
jellicle 7y ago
More subsidies today flowing toward the oil industry than in 1989; each year the amount of CO2 we add to the atmosphere is more than the year before. The subsidies for solar panels, etc., although well-publicized and well-criticized in the conservative press, tend to be about 3 to 5 orders of magnitude lower than subsidies for the oil industry, which get no press. 2019 isn't 1989. We'll do vastly more environmental damage this year than we did in 1989.

gambler 7y ago

Just don't be a douchebag who brags about being vegan (making everyone around hate the very concept), while simultaneously investing money into crypto mining and raving about AI toys that require showing terabytes of data into high-power video cards. Being reasonable and consistent works infinitely better than doing something to "make a statement".

MiroF 7y ago
This is definitely true! I do think that a lot of the stereotype about "obnoxious vegan" is something invented by people who eat to make themselves a little more comfortable with the moral tradeoffs they are making. I say this as someone who has met lots of vegans in my life (and also is not one). The vast majority are not very pushy at all. The pushy ones exist, but seem to be much more common in the collective imagination of meat-eaters.

tannhaeuser 7y ago

- Stop promoting/using power-inefficient, developer-centric webapps and start working on metrics for power efficiency - Stop churning through overpowered smartphones - Give up on "agile" project management ideas with daily standups in-person, fiddling with stories written on paper cards, and similar childish approaches

prittgluestick 7y ago
How does abandoning agile have anything to do with being greener? I do hold similar opinions on some agile practices as you do btw.

bad_user 7y ago

> “Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. Don't go all the way vegan, but make meat a special treat not a commodity.” No thank you. I know vegans have an anti-meat agenda and have been promoting this idea, however industrial agriculture as a whole is not sustainable, not just meat, and switching to a plants-based diet won’t save the planet. The elephant in the room is that sustainable farming needs to be local, it needs natural fertilizers and it needs grazing animals. Sustainable farming also needs to do away with pesticides because we are killing the insects. Also you have to take the cost to healthcare into account. The vegan diet is not sustainable and we already have a huge health issue on it hands, not from meat, but from all the cheap corn, wheat and sugar ;-) Sorry, but most vegans have serious nutrient deficiencies, like proteins, vitamin B12 or K2. Humans are meant to be omnivores, we do not have the digestive tract of herbivores to synthesize proteins or the ability to synthesize vitamin C like carnivores for that matter. If you want policy, ask the lawmakers to stop subsidizing corn and wheat. Making corn more expensive will make CAFO operations and thus meat more expensive, which will in turn increase demand for animals raised using more sustainable practices.

Udik 7y ago
> sustainable farming needs to be local, it needs natural fertilizers and it needs grazing animals. I suspect that the "sustainable farming" you're describing, if applied at scale (= enough to feed 7 billion people) would require so much land as to completely devastate and replace every natural environment still left on earth. Little crops and pastures, as pleasing as they are to the eye, are not a natural environment.
- zdkl 7y ago
  Nothing "natural" would sustain 7b+ people anyway, so what's your point against "sustainable" as a reasonable (and considerable) improvement?
  - MiroF 7y ago
    The point is that local and "natural" is not sustainable. We need scale for a reason.

emptyfile 7y ago

>- Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. Don't go all the way vegan, but make meat a special treat not a commodity. Why? How will this help the environment? Real sources please.

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gambler 7y ago
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/660S/4690010 https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/660S/4690010 But really, it's common sense. Do you think it's more efficient to eat grain or to feed grain to a cow, wait until it matures and then eat the cow?
_Microft 7y ago
Reason is biology/physics. You need ten times the biomass to create an equivalent biomass at a trophic level that is one higher. It HAS to be more inefficient to eat meat instead of crops because it raises your trophic level by 1. (Worst case is eating what were apex predators like e.g. tuna fish) About trophic levels: Level 1 are producers like plants. Herbivores are level 2, carnivores eating herbivores are level 3, carnivores eating carnivores are level 4 and then there's the apex predator that is not eaten by anything, usually. Some links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency#Ten_percent_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency#Ten_perc...
- eMSF 7y ago
  Well... except for the fact that I don't have a gut to make use of any of the biomass that grazing cattle can harvest from a field. And eaten or not, that biomass is part of active carbon cycle, and if left on the field, will decompose back into the atmosphere.
  - _Microft 7y ago

uhtred 7y ago

Why not go vegan? Sure, anything is better than nothing, but a vegan diet is best of all. Plus, dairy, especially when consumed as cheese, is worse than some meat in terms of environmental impact.

MiroF 7y ago
Personally I think that we need to change what it means to be standard vegetarian - add fish, remove dairy. Better for the environment and perhaps easier for people to switch to! Currently, I have to go around calling myself a "lacto-pescatarian" which is far too much of a mouthful
- foobiekr 7y ago
  It would be far better for the planet for vegetarians to eat chicken than to continue to support the fishing industry.
  - MiroF 7y ago
    Fish farms are more environmentally sustainable than chicken farms. Overfishing is a problem but it's not the only way to get fish
    - foobiekr 7y ago
      I think it's more complex than that [1]. But I also think that seafood is inseparable from overfishing as an industry. [1] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa273/metahttps://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa273/meta https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa273/...
jniedrauer 7y ago
Going completely vegan is pretty difficult. You can get 95% of the way there with a pesco-vegetarian diet for half of the effort and cost.

akskos 7y ago

I think individual actions might be required for a system change. It would be way easier fe. to put high taxes on animal products if people wouldn't be so used to only eating meat. One person giving an example of alternative ways to consume is shifting the culture of consumption around him/her and therefore making a system change easier.

samatman 7y ago

The difficulty this poses is that the market may as well be designed to frustrate this approach. It works only in the absence of marginal consumers, which, in practice, never happens. Stop flying? The airlines still have to amortize the cost of their airplanes and bulk fuel purchases. You've subsidized discount flights, paying with your virtue. Work remotely, so you don't need to buy a car? That's one more car that's sold in a lot sale, or for a few hundred less on Craiglist if you buy used. Reduce meat consumption? More for the people of the developing world, many of whom eat as much as they can afford and would like more. Don't upgrade your phone? That's one more that gets sold next year, on sale, when the new models come out. Demand-side reduction doesn't work. We need actual solutions.

perfunctory 7y ago
> The difficulty this poses is that the market may as well be designed to frustrate this approach. You bet it does. I didn't say it was gonna be easy. > We need actual solutions. Sure. But those actual solutions will necessarily include mandated reduction in flying, driving, meat consumption etc. We might as well show that we are ready to accept it.

amelius 7y ago

> For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. That's because politicians are bound to follow roughly the public opinion, or they risk being not re-elected. Therefore (sadly), this proves that individual actions will not make much of a dent.

ivanhoe 7y ago

Individual actions in this context are like trying to put down the fire with a single glass of water. It will certainly not hurt if you do it, but for it to have any significant effect you need everybody else to do the same at the same time. And the best way to have everyone do it is to push politicians to commit to it and create public policies to enforce it. The huge problem with individual actions is that they make people feel good about themselves, makes them feel like they did their part, while actually the effects of it are minimal.

perfunctory 7y ago
> The huge problem with individual actions is that they make people feel good about themselves, makes them feel like they did their part, while actually the effects of it are minimal. How is this a huge problem? What's wrong about feeling good about yourself when you are doing something good? It's actually great. You help the climate AND you feel good. Win-win. Just imagine what a hell the life would be if doing something good felt bad.
- deleted 7y ago
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- ivanhoe 7y ago
  Problem is not that people feel good, problem is that they're concentrating on insignificant actions and it gives them a false sense of doing enough - so they stop at that, guilty-free, but without doing anything actually impactful. It's actually a very common form of self delusion, we all do that by drinking that diet-soda after we just ate a full box of ice-cream while on a diet, or in social media by liking and retweeting calls for help or action, while never really following through to actually help or take part in that action. It dilutes the outcome, lots of momentum gets wasted that way.
  - perfunctory 7y ago
    I know what you are saying but I wouldn't call abandoning flying and meat insignificant actions. Liking and retweeting might be. Actions I propose are also very visible. It wasn't the main reason, but meeting vegetarians at work and in the friend circle certainly served as a helpful encouragement to reduce my own meat consumption.

fsloth 7y ago

Dude, none of the things what you suggest would make any impact. For me, personally - but those were kind of personal suggestions. I haven't flown anywhere in three years, and certainly don't visit conferences. "- Start working part time, and part of that part time remotely. Reduce your commute. " Uh, what? I commute by bike and with the bus in the winter. I don't really see how stopping that would contribute. "- If you have any investments shift them from fossil to green." Uh, most of my investments are in index funds. I'm not going to change that, but I do hope my fund managers will. "- Don't upgrade your phone. Seriously." I don't upgrade. I buy replacements when the previous unit dies. I haven't seen any concrete benefits from upgrading from a top model in the past six years. See, it gets pretty weird if you try to engage on a some sort of grass roots movement beyond a very, very specific goal. People have wildly different lives.

_Microft 7y ago
Nope, you just have reached the point that others haven't yet. Your carbon footprint is much lower than theirs for sure and trying to convince someone with a higher footprint to change will be vastly more efficient than trying to squeeze the last kilogram of carbon emission reduction out of your own life. Thanks for the effort by the way!
- fsloth 7y ago
  "Thanks for the effort by the way!" Uh, you are welcome, but these are not choices I've made due to any environmental reason. They are the most comfortable option for me personally at the moment.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    What's with all the condescending "uh"s? Are you roleplaying as Daria?
- jlokier 7y ago
  > Nope, you just have reached the point that others haven't yet. That might be true. But I'm under the impression that: - Flying is often said to be the biggest individual climate-harming action by individuals. - Most people, even in the West, are kind of poor and haven't flown anywhere in the last decade. - Most people, even in the West, don't have "investments" unless you count a measly pension they don't have much control over anyway. - The mobile phone market is struggling because people aren't upgrading as consistently as they used to, older handsets are good enough, and newer ones aren't special enough. People have enough spares now that they pass old ones on to their poorer friends. If that impression is accurate, perhaps others are generally closer to the emissions levels reached by the GP commenter. Some other areas for improvement may be car use, home energy and food, as these are all things which can be significantly improved. I imagine most people (in the West) still drive a lot, have woefully inefficient homes, and buy food based on price and appeal rather than climate impact.

paulcole 7y ago

You’re missing the one that dwarfs the impact of all the rest: Don’t have kids.

swoongoonz 7y ago

>For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. you spelled corporations wrong. sorry friend, governments don't run the world.

rv-de 7y ago

The best reason for exactly these individual changes you are describing is that - and this is a really funny and convenient coincidence - you are benefiting of them first and foremost yourself! > - Stop flying to conferences. Go to a local meetup. It's fun. And cheaper. If you really need to get out of town, take a train. No unnecessary hassle and stress from flying to far away places or getting stuck in traffic jams. > - Start working part time, and part of that part time remotely. Not sure why this is beneficial to those species or climate or anything but working less gives you time to focus on family, friends and hobbies. > - Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. Don't go all the way vegan, but make meat a special treat not a commodity. Meat is unhealthy - period. It's a nice to have but it is at the end of the day just not good for you. > - Don't upgrade your phone. Seriously. Applied shift of focus away from materialism and unimportant fuss like whatever new feature and gadget just come out. You are the one gaining happiness and satisfaction of those steps right now! And on top of that - you're reducing your footprint :)

mfatica 7y ago
> meat is unhealthy - period. It's a nice to have but it is at the end of the day just not good for you. [citation needed]
- rv-de 7y ago
  I just invested 17 seconds into your health, buddy :) Here you go: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26780279 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26780279
  - cbnotfromthere 7y ago
    "red meat and particularly of processed meat" Long story short: the findings are NOT about meat consumption.
  - whiskers08xmt 7y ago
    Important note here is that it's primarily red and processed meat. I think fish and poultry are still considered healthy in moderate amounts.

mc32 7y ago

There is one obvious thing you omitted. Population growth. We could do a lot to educate and help people in developing nations manage population growth better. China and to a great extent India have addressed the issue. Indonesia has not, for example.

MiroF 7y ago
As long as population growth is recognized as a problem in addition (and perhaps a bit less than) overconsumption - rather than a rhetorical guise used by people in the West to continue to justify overconsumption, I absolutely agree! Unfortunately, it far too often appears to be the latter
- mc32 7y ago
  Of course it’s both. However more people means more clear cutting. More meat as more people can afford meat also means more clear cutting. We can consume less disposable products and also manage population growth responsibly (neither rise to fast nor contract too fast as both are destabilizing).

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jlokier 7y ago

> - Start working part time, and part of that part time remotely. With the number of people currently having to work more than one job, it's hard to see how they can switch to part-time. I know some people who pay >50% of their income towards rent, and their rent isn't especially high. It's that their income per job isn't very high, and housing is set by competitive demand in areas with jobs, not by cost of provision. We're going to have to solve the cost-of-basics problem somehow, before many people can reduce their work hours to part time. But that doesn't stop people who can do it from doing it, and maybe that's enough to turn the tide for everyone.

perfunctory 7y ago
> With the number of people currently having to work more than one job, it's hard to see how they can switch to part-time. "I don't know the circumstances of every person on the planet and therefor don't know what they can do. But I think I know what HN crowd could do."
- jlokier 7y ago
  I'm sure your comment is making a point, but to be honest I can't be sure what it is. My point was that switching to part-time seems unachievable to me for the majority of people, without changing other factors at the same time, and so we should simultaneously enquire how you recommend to deal with those other factors, for the advice to be most effective. I don't wish to dismiss the advice; I wish to understand how to solve the obstacles to actioning it. Is your point that HN crowd are relatively well off, so part-time and remote work is available to many of the HN crowd? (I'm pretty sure we're on the same side of the general debate, in favour of individuals taking actions that they can to improve their footprint.)
  - perfunctory 7y ago
    Well, so my thinking is along these lines. What we now call "full-time" - 40 hours a week - is not a law of nature. It's a social construct. In the beginning of the industrial revolution everybody worked 12 hours a day without the weekend. Labor movement (or was it Henry Ford? I don't know) pushed for shorter working week. It didn't seem to destroy the economy. So I don't see why we can't make it even shorter. And HN crowd, as indeed relatively well off, can lead the way. As more and more people work "part" time it might change the popular perception and eventually the rest of the society and regulation might follow.

nsxwolf 7y ago

Start working part time? And if my boss won't let me, find a job that will? You forgot to add "figure out how to live on 95% less income" to your list.

mistrial9 7y ago

this heartfelt yet trivial response makes the worst fodder for those seeking to block or ridicule those serious about this topic. Absolutely down-vote on this, due to more significant systemic approaches needing the attention.

belorn 7y ago

Since this article is about biodiversity, the usual advice to address pollution don't fit perfectly. Biodiversity require a multitude of biotope and the preservation of high bio density biotope such as rain forest and corals. Don't buy beef from places that burn down rain forests in order to raise cattle. Don't buy fish from trawling. Be extra careful with net caught fish and farmed fish, both which has higher risk of causing problem in the eco system. Similar with vegetables. Oils from rain forest is to be avoided. Food from farms next to lakes that suffer from eutrophication is a major problem. Signs of overpopulation in lakes is a final indication of harm. Sustainable fishing and wild game is one of few places where I know you can get some advice from governing bodies that tries to manage bio diversity. They are imperfect but at least they discuss the topic. Sadly there isn't much for other kind of food and ecological standards don't cover bio diversity or sustainability as criteria.

bob_doggo 7y ago

The "incapable politicians"-part, are you saying that this is the case globaly or that it is the case in your country? Because on a global scale I disagree. As an example, google "china and india planting trees". Edit: Just to clarify: I think that we need both systematic and personal change. And in a democracy, a good way to make politicians care about a subject, is to make sure that they know that you won't vote for someone who doesn't care.

kpennell 7y ago

On the don't upgrade your phone...check out lineageOS for giving it more time

maelito 7y ago

The impact of not changing your phone is < 100kg of CO2 eq. It's of course a good thing to do, but it won't replace doing the other more important changes you've listed.

simonebrunozzi 7y ago

It's easy to criticize you - one could simply argue that these will be measures taken only by a few, and therefore won't have an impact. I still admire the fact that you are trying - who am I to dismiss it? And yet, unfortunately I am more and more convinced that individuals won't change history. For a brief moment in my life (~2 years), I naively tried to do something to better the world, and of course didn't go anywhere. It's sad.

option 7y ago

Sorry, I think it is a silly dead end. Essentially you are proposing reducing action which has negative side effects to inaction. That is not how humanity solved it’s previous major challenges. The challenges we did mostly overcome (many horrific diseases, feeding more people, reducing lives lost to war) were all because of active actions taken towards outcomes we wished for. On an individual level, if you can afford it, get solar panels, drive electric cars, buy food grown on the certified farms, etc.