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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 (

by 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
    I guess if you have a limited budget to spend, I would put political action at the top of the list. However, I think typically people have several limited budgets which are kind of incommensurable. For example for me, the decision never to fly again has not cost me any action points to spend on my involvement in political campaigns, nor has that limited my decision to work in this field for a reduced wage than I could get in adtech, or whatever. Where efforts are not orthogonal like this I'd say go for politics first though. So we are in agreement!
Ma8ee 7y ago
In the end the change each and everyone can do is to stop buying products from those companies (and from companies buying products from them). As long as everyone is blaming someone else for the problem political action is worthless. Americans says it doesn’t matter what the US does as long as China is much worse (even though US per capita is 4 times worse than China). It’s cute how you use demeaning expressions like “it’s nice to feel in control”. If you think anyone with a brain think they are in control of climate change, then you utterly delusional. Everyone with a brain should be on the brink of panic. And just leave the Titanic. As I said, the simile was stupid from the start.
- cyphar 7y ago
  > It’s cute how you use demeaning expressions like “it’s nice to feel in control”. It wasn't meant to be demeaning. I earnestly believe the reason a lot of people buy into the rhetoric of personal responsibility is because the alternative (they have no control over the situation and need to trust politicians to solve the problem) is more terrifying than blaming themselves for the situation. The bad-faith argument would've been to say that you they were peddling anti-science climate change propaganda. I didn't say it because (while it does happen to be something pushed by deniers of climate-change, in order to divert attention away from political solutions) most people who say it do honestly believe it. But yes, the US and other first world countries need to take responsibility for the situation. I don't think getting individuals to blame themselves is helping move towards the goal of stopping this crisis.
sokoloff 7y ago
> 100 companies are responsible for ~70% of emissions. End consumers are buying and using the products of those emissions. Companies don’t create emissions out of economic isolation and a purely evil desire to ruin the planet. They do it because someone is paying them to do it. When I buy and burn gas from Shell, I’m the one responsible for those emissions, not Shell, IMO.
- cyphar 7y ago
  Yes and no. It is definitely true that companies aren't just burning coal for the fun of it, but the primary problem is that companies have no (economic) incentive to use processes that are less environmentally damaging. In fact, given that we know for a fact that fossil fuel companies knew about global warming in the 70s and tried to hide it from the public[1] shows that they have a profit incentive to stop research into alternatives. Getting those 100 companies to cut their emissions even down by 50% (or spend significant amounts of their massive profits on renewable energy research) would have a larger impact than any individual action you could attempt (and fail) to get the public to do. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10... is an article on the figure if anyone is interested. [1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...
mrmonkeyman 7y ago
They emit, to produce, for us to buy. Stop buying, they stop emitting.

by cyphar 7y ago

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
  I guess if you have a limited budget to spend, I would put political action at the top of the list. However, I think typically people have several limited budgets which are kind of incommensurable. For example for me, the decision never to fly again has not cost me any action points to spend on my involvement in political campaigns, nor has that limited my decision to work in this field for a reduced wage than I could get in adtech, or whatever. Where efforts are not orthogonal like this I'd say go for politics first though. So we are in agreement!

Ma8ee 7y ago

In the end the change each and everyone can do is to stop buying products from those companies (and from companies buying products from them). As long as everyone is blaming someone else for the problem political action is worthless. Americans says it doesn’t matter what the US does as long as China is much worse (even though US per capita is 4 times worse than China). It’s cute how you use demeaning expressions like “it’s nice to feel in control”. If you think anyone with a brain think they are in control of climate change, then you utterly delusional. Everyone with a brain should be on the brink of panic. And just leave the Titanic. As I said, the simile was stupid from the start.

cyphar 7y ago
> It’s cute how you use demeaning expressions like “it’s nice to feel in control”. It wasn't meant to be demeaning. I earnestly believe the reason a lot of people buy into the rhetoric of personal responsibility is because the alternative (they have no control over the situation and need to trust politicians to solve the problem) is more terrifying than blaming themselves for the situation. The bad-faith argument would've been to say that you they were peddling anti-science climate change propaganda. I didn't say it because (while it does happen to be something pushed by deniers of climate-change, in order to divert attention away from political solutions) most people who say it do honestly believe it. But yes, the US and other first world countries need to take responsibility for the situation. I don't think getting individuals to blame themselves is helping move towards the goal of stopping this crisis.

sokoloff 7y ago

> 100 companies are responsible for ~70% of emissions. End consumers are buying and using the products of those emissions. Companies don’t create emissions out of economic isolation and a purely evil desire to ruin the planet. They do it because someone is paying them to do it. When I buy and burn gas from Shell, I’m the one responsible for those emissions, not Shell, IMO.

cyphar 7y ago
Yes and no. It is definitely true that companies aren't just burning coal for the fun of it, but the primary problem is that companies have no (economic) incentive to use processes that are less environmentally damaging. In fact, given that we know for a fact that fossil fuel companies knew about global warming in the 70s and tried to hide it from the public[1] shows that they have a profit incentive to stop research into alternatives. Getting those 100 companies to cut their emissions even down by 50% (or spend significant amounts of their massive profits on renewable energy research) would have a larger impact than any individual action you could attempt (and fail) to get the public to do. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10... is an article on the figure if anyone is interested. [1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...

mrmonkeyman 7y ago

They emit, to produce, for us to buy. Stop buying, they stop emitting.