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> If you know about climate change and you still fly, invest in fossil fuel, consume extravagantly you are just a bad person. Sorry. I do these things, but I d
by rlpb 7y ago
> If you know about climate change and you still fly, invest in fossil fuel, consume extravagantly you are just a bad person. Sorry.
I do these things, but I don't think I'm a bad person.
I believe that collective action is the only effective way to make progress, and I choose accordingly at the polling booth. I believe that taxation of activity that accurately takes into account environmental damage is our current best way of deciding what should and should not be acceptable, and again I support this at the polling booth. Unfortunately the majority seem to disagree with me currently, which I believe is true by definition as otherwise we'd have made more political progress.
I don't believe that individual action (by self-censoring) can make any significant difference. I will be pleased to abide by restrictions society places on me for the good of the environment, including limiting or paying taxes to compensate for my own consumption, etc. Until that happens, it seems to me that unilaterally doing this myself only harms me compared to the majority who don't seem to care. I still have to play by the economic rules set by others, and suffer the consequences. I don't see why I should harm myself while others, who do not care and form the majority, gain.
You might think this is hypocritical. I disagree: I play the game I am forced to play, while advocating the changing of the rules. If you choose to harm your own position in the game by following the rule changes you wish for, then that's fine, but it's a step that I don't believe makes a difference and one I'm not prepared to take.
> You don't throw litter into the street even though it's a drop in the ocean.
Society has figured out that this costs us environmentally, has rules against littering, and I follow them. (Also littering has quite an obvious effect on the appearance of the general area, so there is an obvious localised benefit to not littering).
> You don't bully somebody just because everybody else does, even though it makes little difference.
Actually, it does make a difference. Localised changes in behaviour aren't that difficult to achieve.
- igor47 7y agoi'm not trying to attack you personally, and i don't think you're a bad person, but i think you're mistaken. we are living in sodom, and you have the choice to be Lot or to be a random citizen, and you chose to be a random citizen because "everyone else is doing it". i understand the resistance to unilateral action, but that doesn't change what the right thing to do is.
- rlpb 7y ago> and you chose to be a random citizen because "everyone else is doing it". You're projecting. That is not the reason I gave. The reason I gave is that it would cause me either economic harm or reduce my enjoyment of life to do so, for what I perceive to be no practical gain (it does not, IMHO, advance the environmental cause).
- igor47 7y agodoing a little market research for a side project i'm working on -- https://spaceshipearth.org https://spaceshipearth.org -- if you thought that taking individual action actually does advance the environmental cause, would you take the action? in our project, we hope to get you to take individual action with a group of your friends, so your collective impact is amplified. we're also hoping to show you the quantitative impact of your contribution. would this help to change your mind at all? or do you a-priori think individual action has no benefit?
- rlpb 7y ago> if you thought that taking individual action actually does advance the environmental cause, would you take the action? That's a very general question. We were talking about merely modifying behaviour to reduce consumption. Now it seems that you're talking about something else. It depends on if you're asking me to modify existing behaviour or take some new action, the actual details, the cost to me (including social cost) for taking that action, and the quantified expected benefit to the environment. "You deferred climate catastrophe by one year" would probably be worth doing. "You deferred climate catastrophe by 0.00004 seconds" would probably not - I'd rather have spent that effort convincing one other person to vote differently.