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I don't think the solution is less flying and less driving, as we obviously can't take a step back in our mobility. This kind of "solutions" is what puts people
by trilila 7y ago
I don't think the solution is less flying and less driving, as we obviously can't take a step back in our mobility. This kind of "solutions" is what puts people off. The solution is more green tech and more green power production. And driving those can be done by buying more of those products, and boycotting any products that generate pollution.
- Johnny555 7y agowe obviously can't take a step back in our mobility. Why not?
- HunOL 7y agoAny "solution" that does not take into account human nature is not a solution.
- Johnny555 7y agoSociety already has many conventions and laws that regulate human nature -- why is transportation off limits?
- westiseast 7y agoI think that’s the point - simply asking people to fly less and drive less and eat les meat will never ever ever work. We need big carrots and big sticks in order to achieve things like less flying - that means government regulation, huge material incentives for not flying/driving/etc.
- the_seraphim 7y agosomebody should tell the UK government... if they could only fix the trains and drop the prices, we could easily meet our carbon targets
- lm28469 7y agoI'm sure when half of africa and south america will migrate north to avoid dying the carrot will be big enough. But it'll be too little too late.
- netsharc 7y agoIf only a politician could get elected by saying "more green stuff, then there'll be less refugees!". The populace would not bother to understand the relationship. Also, yeah, maybe it's too late now. If only one could reload from a savegame and learn from experience next time around. Amazingly now a lot of the "Western world" would prefer those other human beings die rather than suffer a downgrade of their comfortable lives...
- Johnny555 7y agoThe incentive model is simple -- just tax carbon sources, the markets will figure out the rest themselves. Of course, it would have been better to phase in the taxes decades ago since some solutions (mass transit, for example) can take a decade or more to build.
- ionised 7y agoHuman nature has been changed countless times throughout history.
- re-actor 7y agoWhat human nature? If the last few centuries have thought us anything is that "human nature" doesn't really mean anything. It's way more arbitrary than people trying to find truths in lobster hierarchies would let you believe.
- scotty79 7y agoCommunists thought the exactly same thing and see how it turned out. Greed and lazyness are so innate that you could probably trace them back to lobsters.
- jf22 7y agoBeing able to overcome greed and laziness is human nature. Lobsters are a slave to their instincts, humans are not.
- scotty79 7y agoLobsters thing was a joke. And communism was based exactlyu on the idea that people will be able to overcome greed and laziness for common good. They are but just occasionally and briefly.
- graeme 7y agoIf this were true we couldn't read Machiavelli, Baltasar Gracian, Francis Bacon, Dale Carnegie. Even Shakespeare. Superficial customs have changed. Not how underlying perceptions of interests are governed.
- re-actor 7y agoOur "underlying perceptions" for most things concerned with society are nigh completely incompatible with that of Shakespare and most certainly Machiavelli. Sure we can still understand thinkers of old in a limited capacity, but that's not due to us thinking like them or even experiencing the world like them as our experience is coloured by the concepts we use. We can understand them because of the continuity of society, the constant translation of the old into the new. Capitalism can only exist now because of how much those underlying assumptions have changed.
- lm28469 7y agoI don't think taking the plane to go to cheap generic touristic destinations, driving 2000kg of steel to move 1 human being, eating fruits and veggies shipped from the other side of the world or eating meat 2 times a day, everyday is intrinsically part of the human nature. And if it is let's continue and end it all because it's just plain sad. What a way to go !
- netsharc 7y agoThis whole debate is like a doc telling a lung cancer patient who has recently started coughing blood to cut out smoking, but he's saying "but I need to smoke!"...
- smolder 7y agoBased on the expectation that humans can't possibly, at this scale, organize themselves around good ideas like reducing consumption and fossil fuel use, we have no options at all and we're on a trajectory to extinction. If that seems extreme to say, just look at the evidence. Believing some other solution will appear is blind faith bordering on delusion.
- bouncycastle 7y ago> we're on a trajectory to extinction Let them carry on. Perhaps our exction will be exactly what saves the planet! Our archeological records will serve only as a warning for whatever "intelligent" life evolves in the future ;-)
- Johnny555 7y agoNot sure why this was voted down, it's true, extinction (or mass population reduction) of humans will go a long way towards letting the planet restore its biodiversity. It seems like a flippant attitude, but it seems to be the way many people are treating climate change (probably because the worst effects won't hit for decades, when many of the people responsible (i.e. voters) will be dead.) We're leaving an unsustainable mess for our children, I'd like to see some action in their lawsuit: https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/juliana-v-us https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/juliana-v-us Since they are the ones that will be paying the full price of climate change.
- dfilppi 7y agoWell we had a good run.
- thatcat 7y agoYour political beliefs and culture are not inherent to human nature. Plenty of historical cultures have lived sustainably.
- sfink 7y agoLet's say someone comes to you and says that if you don't change certain behaviors then they will cook your children. Like, literally cook them to death. And you (maybe not at first, but eventually) believe the threat is real. Then I would say that it is wholly compatible with human nature for you to change your behavior even with no other benefit to yourself, even if you are very attached to that behavior. At the same time, you're right -- the 2 missing pieces are believing the threat is real, and thinking that you can get by if lots of other people change their behavior instead. Which they won't any more than you will, but that leads us back to human nature again.
- thepangolino 7y agoWhy don’t YOU take two steps back in your comfort of living for me?
- point78 7y agoErrr... I think the point is we all need to. But you completely missed it.
- yetihehe 7y agoNo, this was an example of why it won't work. THAT is essentially also THE reeason why communism doesn't work. When people are not forced to work to survive, they won't work. Those who work will see that people who don't work still get benefits, so why should they work? Soon nobody wants to work, because why should they. The same is with cutting back on comfort of living. If I cut my comfort, but my neighbor don't and payoff is equal for us both, why should I suffer more than him? This is our basic species morality which we found even in apes [0]. [0] https://www.theemotionmachine.com/what-great-apes-teach-us-about-emotions-morality-and-civilization/ https://www.theemotionmachine.com/what-great-apes-teach-us-a...
- perfunctory 7y ago> When people are not forced to work to survive, they won't work. Seriously? You mean Bill Gates works because otherwise he'd starve to death? More seriously, I challenge you to hold a poll among your friends - given $x per month where x is enough to survive, would they stop working? Everyone I speak to about this says that he/she personally would not, but the "other people" certainly will.
- lm28469 7y agoI'd quit any job on the spot for 80% of the min wage of any 1st world country (excluding the US).
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- bamboozled 7y agoBecause politicians can't sell going backwards. They can definitely sell going forwards, ie Green tech to the masses. If they weren't lobbied so hard by resources companies and unions we'd have been there along time ago. So let's put self-regulation aside, you will never see it happen on a policy level because it won't be popular. Same for emissions trading schemes, they're actually great things, but they aren't popular with the masses. Anyway, let's drop The War on Terror and The war on Drugs and begin the War on Climate Change?
- stupidcar 7y agoWhy is less mobility necessarily "going backwards"? We have the technology for large-scale remote working, but companies still require employees to be on-site mostly for historical cultural reasons. If the government brought in regulations requiring companies to provide remote working as a choice, unless there was a good reason to require employees to be on-site, I don't think people would see that as "going backwards", so much as being forced to go forwards.
- bamboozled 7y agoYour food is shipped (often by air), you go on holidays by plane, you drive cars etc, stopping that _is_ going backwards. I'm not entirely saying I agree with people just flying around for the sake of it, but let's be honest, putting an end to most transport doesn't exactly seem like progress, let's also think of it this way, the problem is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, not traveling. "companies still require employees to be on-site mostly for historical cultural reasons." If you're a Doctor, truck driver, pilot, builder, fisherman etc, then how do you work remotely? The majority of the workforce can't just work remotely because knowledge workers can. Besides, data-centers also have a large environmental cost, remote work creates it's own mess. I'm also a knowledge worker, but I just choose to live in the city close to my office and ride to work so I have a very small / no carboon footprint from transport. I've also worked remote full-time, it wasn't for me, I think it has it's own set of issues.
- lm28469 7y ago
- jtx22 7y agoReducing human capability should never be an option.
- Kaiyou 7y agoIf the cure is worse than the disease, why take it?
- simianparrot 7y agoTough luck, we're all going to be inconvenienced whether we like it or not, that's the hard truth. People will need to change their habits to help out, or they'll eventually be forced to. Easier to transition of our own volition.
- wastedhours 7y ago> People will need to change their habits to help out > or they'll eventually be forced to I think we overestimate most people's desire to do anything for the benefit of others. My fear is that a lot of the worst offenders of that are people who are quite likely operating on the basis they'll be dead before we feel the absolute effects. As much as it's the only real solution, I don't think we can rely on regression to drive action. That's why the sugar for the pill of renewables will be eventual cheaper prices. We need to make the alternatives more appealing (or, at least some decent narrative to make them seem more appealing).
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- esotericn 7y agoWhat if we _can't_ make the alternatives more appealing? What if, for example, infinite disposable plastic bottles are actually the easiest solution, and the sustainable solutions are actually a bit more work (e.g. water fountains and bottles you carry around). Yes, sure, perhaps we can fix landfill. Devil's advocate though - it is definitely not the case that every aspect of our current ecological nightmare has a win-win solution. We _need_ to start pricing in externalities, whether people moan about it or not. Seriously - this is putting the seat belt on in a car level stuff. Deal with it. Is the morning after a night out a regression? Not the hangover; the every-day life. No - it's absurd to paint it that way - the high life was the abnormality.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
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- malka 7y ago> we obviously can't take a step back in our mobility. We'll have to. It can either come from us, from policy, or from the laws of nature. Our choice.
- nicoburns 7y agoFrankly, I think your attitude is precisely what we need to change in order to solve the climate crisis. The solution, the only solution is to change people's perspective such that they see that these things are important. The kind of "solutions" that involve not changing any of the behaviours that are causing the problems are the ones that are not really solution.
- kd5bjo 7y agoOn the flip side, the “solutions” that boil down to admonishing people not to do patently useful things are politically impossible, unless they propose a solution to the new problem they’re creating.
- thatcat 7y agoThe people so egar to keep up these behaviors should solve that problem themselves. They aren't entitled to have other people carry the burden of supporting their wasteful lifestyle.
- kd5bjo 7y agoRecent history notwithstanding, politics is fundamentally about consensus and compromise. Regardless of the strength of your personal belief, change won’t happen until you convince a majority of people (or their representatives) to vote for your specific plan. Ostracism strengthens the opinions of people on both sides of the issue; it works directly against what has to happen to make actual progress.
- trilila 7y agoFrankly, you are jumping to conclusions. I don't drive a car, despite being a former “petrol head”. I am stating a hard truth, but apparently hard truths are hard to swallow on either side. If anything, you should chance your attitude.
- nicoburns 7y ago