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Part of the problem is that many people who are passionate about battling climate change see the "no (significant) impact on ordinary people's lives" as a reall

Part of the problem is that many people who are passionate about battling climate change see the "no (significant) impact on ordinary people's lives" as a really bad thing. I've come across this time and time again. "Electric cars/planes are not a solution because it keeps lifestyles the same! There MUST be lifestyle change to battle climate change." It's baffling because it's so tone-deaf to the general public. It's as if there's a complete lack of understanding that wide acceptance of climate solutions is necessary for gaining the political capital to actually fight climate change.

Brakenshire 7y ago
Yes, I think that is true, and you can see this in a lot of green parties in Europe. To be fair to them, environmental damage is very widespread and goes a long way beyond climate change, we do need to rethink quite a few things to protect ecosystems and avoid continued mass death of wildlife. It’s a shame though that they are often not very scientific or practical about how to go about this. It’s why it’s so important for mainstream parties to embrace action on climate change and tackle it in a pragmatic way.
primroot 7y ago
Maybe they are thinking about such things as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox , or https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist... . Or perhaps they feel the modern lifestyle is not delivering happiness. Or, to be more specific, they may be noting as J.S. Mill did that paradoxically technology was improving and at the same time people were working more.
- Robotbeat 7y ago
  That's why we need tech that doesn't emit net CO2 at all, not just Priuses and improved combustion efficiency. The analogy would be the development of non-ozone-depleting refrigerants. Technology which emits greenhouse gases should simply be replaced with that which doesn't OR the greenhouse gases must be captured after-the-fact (and the emitters must fully pay for it).
asdff 7y ago
Lifestyles do need to change, or at least change enough so they aren't so extravagent. Not in terms of overt wealth, but in materials used to support a lifestyle. Buying a tesla really doesn't do you much good on your green karma if there's a beater honda sitting in a used car lot near you. Half the lifetime pollution from a car comes from it's production, so I hope you intend to have this tesla for the long haul (potentially long after tesla stops pushing you updates) because that's what it will take to recoup the environmental costs of you buying that brand new tesla instead of the 2k rust bucket honda that sounds like a weed wacker and still gets 40mpg. Then there is the costs of the suburban lifestyle centered around vehicle ownership. You have to maintain that road going 20 miles to work. You need to maintain utility connections out to the suburbs. Your amazon packages now have to come all the way out to you instead of you living near the central distribution center. You need a spot to put your car at home, you need one at work, you need one wherever you go, and you probably want it for free. Then you need room to actually move your car to these places; basically asking to freely move about the city and have everyone stand 6' away from you on the sides, 20' away front and back. Imagine everyone on the sidewalk walking like that--it would look absurd-- but that's what we get with cars and roads going into dense urban areas, and in midtown Manhattan cars can move slower than walking speed. It's all not very space efficient, which makes it not very time efficient, and more time to get to and fro means burning more gas (or coal, if you have a tesla) to go less distance; it all ends up being very wasteful. What we do need to do is build transit and remove residential zoning limits. There's no reason why we can't all live in dense knit communities of mid-to-high rise apartments and rely on extensive rail networks to move us around efficiently. That technology has existed for over 100 years, and if we weren't so beholden to supporting the suburban lifestyle centered on car ownership, maybe the LA metro rail map would look like a fisherman's net by now and we'd all be breathing a little cleaner. It's a little ironic, because transit was how cities used to function. Cars were the lifestyle change. Before that, people living in Los Angeles and most other major American cities got around using extensive streetcar systems. As car ownership lead to traffic that jammed up these streetcar networks, for the most part politicians responded by switching to buses and tearing up tracks for more lanes rather than giving streetcars signal priority and separating grades. Reverting back to a transit oriented lifestyle is reverting back to a lifestyle that American cities were originally designed to grow around.

Brakenshire 7y ago

Yes, I think that is true, and you can see this in a lot of green parties in Europe. To be fair to them, environmental damage is very widespread and goes a long way beyond climate change, we do need to rethink quite a few things to protect ecosystems and avoid continued mass death of wildlife. It’s a shame though that they are often not very scientific or practical about how to go about this. It’s why it’s so important for mainstream parties to embrace action on climate change and tackle it in a pragmatic way.

primroot 7y ago

Maybe they are thinking about such things as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox , or https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist... . Or perhaps they feel the modern lifestyle is not delivering happiness. Or, to be more specific, they may be noting as J.S. Mill did that paradoxically technology was improving and at the same time people were working more.

Robotbeat 7y ago
That's why we need tech that doesn't emit net CO2 at all, not just Priuses and improved combustion efficiency. The analogy would be the development of non-ozone-depleting refrigerants. Technology which emits greenhouse gases should simply be replaced with that which doesn't OR the greenhouse gases must be captured after-the-fact (and the emitters must fully pay for it).

asdff 7y ago

Lifestyles do need to change, or at least change enough so they aren't so extravagent. Not in terms of overt wealth, but in materials used to support a lifestyle. Buying a tesla really doesn't do you much good on your green karma if there's a beater honda sitting in a used car lot near you. Half the lifetime pollution from a car comes from it's production, so I hope you intend to have this tesla for the long haul (potentially long after tesla stops pushing you updates) because that's what it will take to recoup the environmental costs of you buying that brand new tesla instead of the 2k rust bucket honda that sounds like a weed wacker and still gets 40mpg. Then there is the costs of the suburban lifestyle centered around vehicle ownership. You have to maintain that road going 20 miles to work. You need to maintain utility connections out to the suburbs. Your amazon packages now have to come all the way out to you instead of you living near the central distribution center. You need a spot to put your car at home, you need one at work, you need one wherever you go, and you probably want it for free. Then you need room to actually move your car to these places; basically asking to freely move about the city and have everyone stand 6' away from you on the sides, 20' away front and back. Imagine everyone on the sidewalk walking like that--it would look absurd-- but that's what we get with cars and roads going into dense urban areas, and in midtown Manhattan cars can move slower than walking speed. It's all not very space efficient, which makes it not very time efficient, and more time to get to and fro means burning more gas (or coal, if you have a tesla) to go less distance; it all ends up being very wasteful. What we do need to do is build transit and remove residential zoning limits. There's no reason why we can't all live in dense knit communities of mid-to-high rise apartments and rely on extensive rail networks to move us around efficiently. That technology has existed for over 100 years, and if we weren't so beholden to supporting the suburban lifestyle centered on car ownership, maybe the LA metro rail map would look like a fisherman's net by now and we'd all be breathing a little cleaner. It's a little ironic, because transit was how cities used to function. Cars were the lifestyle change. Before that, people living in Los Angeles and most other major American cities got around using extensive streetcar systems. As car ownership lead to traffic that jammed up these streetcar networks, for the most part politicians responded by switching to buses and tearing up tracks for more lanes rather than giving streetcars signal priority and separating grades. Reverting back to a transit oriented lifestyle is reverting back to a lifestyle that American cities were originally designed to grow around.