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If everyone with a brain and a conscience would do their best, independently of everyone else, this wouldn’t even be a problem. Now too many uses everyone’s els

by Ma8ee 7y ago

If everyone with a brain and a conscience would do their best, independently of everyone else, this wouldn’t even be a problem. Now too many uses everyone’s else inaction as an excuse for their own.

madaxe_again 7y ago
Yes, if everyone on the titanic had just believed a bit harder then it would have floated. It’s not about inaction being an excuse, it’s about realising that trying to put out a house fire with a water pistol isn’t going to work - particularly if half the neighbourhood is there chucking gasoline on it. I live responsibly, recycle, grow my own food, built my house out of traditional and local materials, plant trees, pay for other people to plant trees. None of it is going to make the damnedest bit of difference, other than mildly soothing my conscience. If I really cared about my impact, I would kill myself. I’ve done the next best thing and had myself sterilised - no children, ever. The world is still going to die. I’ll just be in a happier place when the food riots start.
- Ma8ee 7y ago
  > Yes, if everyone on the titanic had just believed a bit harder then it would have floated. That was one of the stupidest similes I’ve heard. A more accurate one would be: if everyone just stopped hauling up buckets of water from the sea to pour them into the intact ship, we could avoid the disaster. And this is illustrates something very important. Climate change isn’t an inevitable catastrophe out of our hands. It is a catastrophe everyone of us us creating with our individual actions every day. If each of us just stoped, there would be no catastrophe.
  - cyphar 7y ago
    100 companies are responsible for ~70% of emissions. To argue that an ordinary person switching to reusable bags and an electric car will make a difference is (sadly) wishful thinking. It's nice to feel in control, so I understand why you might want that story to be true -- but I'd suggest a better use of your energy would be political action. The only way this problem can be solved is through significant political action that is proportional to the climate catastrophe we are facing. Anything else is adjusting deckchairs on the Titanic. Your analogy makes no sense by the way -- nobody was pouring buckets of water into the Titanic. The hull was breached -- there was a fundamental problem with the state of the ship. In fact, everyone getting pails and throwing water off the Titanic wouldn't have saved the ship or the people. Individual philanthropic action can't fix problems that an entire economic system has created.
    - larkery 7y ago
      I agree with most of what you have said - we need to exert political pressure by taking action. This action probably needs to be disruptive and unpleasant to work, like the actions taken by the civil rights movements of the last century. However, I would also like to put forward the following argument for why your own efforts could make a difference: Imagine a trolley, speeding toward a junction. On one branch is a child, tied to the rails. You are in the plant room and can cut power to the trolley, but this will only slow it down - the trolley's momentum alone will kill the child. However, you see across the way a stranger in the signal box, surrounded by levers controlling the points in the station. They are frantically pulling levers, but so far they haven't hit on the one which diverts the trolley. Should you cut the power to slow the trolley? We are on the tracks - if we survive, it will be because of a political or technical breakthrough before it's too late. We don't know precisely when too late is - it could be ten years, or twenty, or ten years ago and we're buggered. Each individual's emissions savings make too late a little later, which changes the odds of survival a little bit (or our estimate of the odds - this is probably the philosophical weak spot in the argument). Maybe the plane trip you don't take or the car you stop driving or the product you choose not to buy is the marginal decision that gives time to avert disaster. If we do avert disaster, one of these decisions must be that marginal decision, somewhere, somewhen. These choices are tickets in the not-extinction lottery, and it makes sense to play when you can, as much as you can.
      - cyphar 7y ago
        If you have a (virtually) unlimited amount of time and energy to expend on thinking about climate change and its impacts, go for it. My point is that you will get far more bang for your buck if you spend energy on political action. Most ordinary people don't have time to spend on HN arguing about the best way of stopping climate change, they have other things to do in their lives -- and we should be convincing them to take political action (with us) instead of wasting their limited amounts of spare energy on minor personal changes that won't have as much of an impact.
        larkery 7y ago
  - madaxe_again 7y ago
    You are labouring under the misapprehension that we are not yet at the point of no return. We have already shot by it, and are falling through the air having driven off the cliff. If everyone just stopped (the probability of industrialised society stopping dead in its tracks overnight is nil, and despite four decades of hand waving nothing has changed, apart from emissions inexorably increasing, and more and more chaotic systems being kicked into action), there would still be a catastrophe of immeasurable proportions. Our time under the sun is done. I think hope is insidious - having faith that everything will somehow be ok despite all evidence to the contrary is deeply counterproductive. The best advice I can give anyone, and the advice I myself have acted upon, is to enjoy what remains of our short lives.

by Ma8ee 7y ago

madaxe_again 7y ago

Yes, if everyone on the titanic had just believed a bit harder then it would have floated. It’s not about inaction being an excuse, it’s about realising that trying to put out a house fire with a water pistol isn’t going to work - particularly if half the neighbourhood is there chucking gasoline on it. I live responsibly, recycle, grow my own food, built my house out of traditional and local materials, plant trees, pay for other people to plant trees. None of it is going to make the damnedest bit of difference, other than mildly soothing my conscience. If I really cared about my impact, I would kill myself. I’ve done the next best thing and had myself sterilised - no children, ever. The world is still going to die. I’ll just be in a happier place when the food riots start.

Ma8ee 7y ago
> Yes, if everyone on the titanic had just believed a bit harder then it would have floated. That was one of the stupidest similes I’ve heard. A more accurate one would be: if everyone just stopped hauling up buckets of water from the sea to pour them into the intact ship, we could avoid the disaster. And this is illustrates something very important. Climate change isn’t an inevitable catastrophe out of our hands. It is a catastrophe everyone of us us creating with our individual actions every day. If each of us just stoped, there would be no catastrophe.
- cyphar 7y ago
  100 companies are responsible for ~70% of emissions. To argue that an ordinary person switching to reusable bags and an electric car will make a difference is (sadly) wishful thinking. It's nice to feel in control, so I understand why you might want that story to be true -- but I'd suggest a better use of your energy would be political action. The only way this problem can be solved is through significant political action that is proportional to the climate catastrophe we are facing. Anything else is adjusting deckchairs on the Titanic. Your analogy makes no sense by the way -- nobody was pouring buckets of water into the Titanic. The hull was breached -- there was a fundamental problem with the state of the ship. In fact, everyone getting pails and throwing water off the Titanic wouldn't have saved the ship or the people. Individual philanthropic action can't fix problems that an entire economic system has created.
  - larkery 7y ago
    I agree with most of what you have said - we need to exert political pressure by taking action. This action probably needs to be disruptive and unpleasant to work, like the actions taken by the civil rights movements of the last century. However, I would also like to put forward the following argument for why your own efforts could make a difference: Imagine a trolley, speeding toward a junction. On one branch is a child, tied to the rails. You are in the plant room and can cut power to the trolley, but this will only slow it down - the trolley's momentum alone will kill the child. However, you see across the way a stranger in the signal box, surrounded by levers controlling the points in the station. They are frantically pulling levers, but so far they haven't hit on the one which diverts the trolley. Should you cut the power to slow the trolley? We are on the tracks - if we survive, it will be because of a political or technical breakthrough before it's too late. We don't know precisely when too late is - it could be ten years, or twenty, or ten years ago and we're buggered. Each individual's emissions savings make too late a little later, which changes the odds of survival a little bit (or our estimate of the odds - this is probably the philosophical weak spot in the argument). Maybe the plane trip you don't take or the car you stop driving or the product you choose not to buy is the marginal decision that gives time to avert disaster. If we do avert disaster, one of these decisions must be that marginal decision, somewhere, somewhen. These choices are tickets in the not-extinction lottery, and it makes sense to play when you can, as much as you can.
    - cyphar 7y ago
      If you have a (virtually) unlimited amount of time and energy to expend on thinking about climate change and its impacts, go for it. My point is that you will get far more bang for your buck if you spend energy on political action. Most ordinary people don't have time to spend on HN arguing about the best way of stopping climate change, they have other things to do in their lives -- and we should be convincing them to take political action (with us) instead of wasting their limited amounts of spare energy on minor personal changes that won't have as much of an impact.
      - larkery 7y ago
- madaxe_again 7y ago
  You are labouring under the misapprehension that we are not yet at the point of no return. We have already shot by it, and are falling through the air having driven off the cliff. If everyone just stopped (the probability of industrialised society stopping dead in its tracks overnight is nil, and despite four decades of hand waving nothing has changed, apart from emissions inexorably increasing, and more and more chaotic systems being kicked into action), there would still be a catastrophe of immeasurable proportions. Our time under the sun is done. I think hope is insidious - having faith that everything will somehow be ok despite all evidence to the contrary is deeply counterproductive. The best advice I can give anyone, and the advice I myself have acted upon, is to enjoy what remains of our short lives.