6 ms·

> 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

> 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).

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
esotericn 7y ago
What 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]
- wastedhours 7y ago
  > What if we _can't_ make the alternatives more appealing? > We _need_ to start pricing in externalities I might've been arguing the OP at crossed purposes, as my point seems compatible with yours, just framed differently at the point of delivery. We can't rely on the population to just decide "I'm going to do the right thing today". We make it a non-choice as you say. That can either be "it's cheaper/easier/better" or "you'll be locked up if not". It's quite a compelling narrative either way. Just expecting large swathes of quite evidently moronic people (without delving too far into politics, if you agree the current political climate is as the result of ignorance, that's a sh*t-tonne of ignorant people out there - on the order of billions of people worldwide) to decide to look out for the interests of us as a collective is frankly wrong. I agree with you - but I think we need to move past the "do it for the planet/species" argument as there's a lot of people who don't care and will be ridiculous in their stubbornness. The scale of it just doesn't work when trying to convince people. But show them how their heating bills will be cheaper and that they'll get a 6-month suspended if they throw a bottle in the sea, and things might change sooner.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    Sure. I mean, it's not "them". It's us. Everyone. I do bad things all the time because I have little agency. I'm planning to make some major changes to move towards that, but still, if every store around me uses plastic in food etc I can't skip it. We need to price in externalities. It's that simple. We need to cut this bullshit about the 'short-term economy' or phasing things out over 40 years or whatever; this isn't an emotional argument. If we don't account for the cost of pollution we are going to kill ourselves.
- snikeris 7y ago
  > 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. Hmm, no it's not on the same level. Perhaps you can deal with it because you can afford to spend more on goods, but people in poverty will rightly moan.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    Do you not understand the meaning of "need"? Moaning does not change the outcome. Again, we either reduce consumption, stop emitting (and likely have to capture) CO2, etc, or we kill ourselves. It does not matter how much the child wails, if it is time to leave the arcade, one must go. > can afford to spend more on goods We must all use less. This is not a matter of bits of coloured paper; externalities must be priced in to force the market in the correct direction. To take an example: if plastic bottles were banned worldwide tomorrow, or suddenly cost 10 USD per, this would have approximately zero effect on those in poverty other than shuffling some jobs around a bit.
    - snikeris 7y ago
      I'm with you on pricing in externalities. However that's a tricky business and is not anywhere on the level of mandating that people wear seatbelts. > If plastic bottles were banned worldwide tomorrow What happened to pricing in externalities?
      - esotericn 7y ago
        You made a silly ad hominem about me potentially being able to afford to ignore increased prices. So let's go ahead and assume the externalities are priced so high that it's an effective ban for all but 0.1% or whatever. It doesn't make a difference. We are not playing some identity politics game about who gets more or less. I'm tired, sorry. But really. Just do it. They will be poorer if you don't.
        snikeris 7y ago
asgard1024 7y ago
> 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 These people often have kids, and they do a lot for them. They need to understand that it is all in vain if they don't do anything.
- wastedhours 7y ago
  > These people often have kids, and they do a lot for them. They need to understand that it is all in vain if they don't do anything. And yet, lots of those same people with kids are the reason we're in the current political climate. Deliberate choices designed to cause outweighted impact on the younger generations. I don't want to veer too much off course here, but look at the demographics around the Brexit vote. Those are large swathes of parents across the country who've made a decision that they wont live to see the ramifications of, with those younger generations almost entirely voting in the opposite direction. Personally, I believe it's because the issues at play are far too large to comprehend. We need to change the message, and it needs to be localised and individualised as much as possible. However, that's expensive, and the people with the money are the ones less likely to want to help get that message out there...
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    > Those are large swathes of parents across the country who've made a decision that they wont live to see the ramifications of, with those younger generations almost entirely voting in the opposite direction. Disagree. Leave/remain is just as 50/50 among my generation (young people) in my area. Anecdotal to be sure.
    - wastedhours 7y ago
      Whilst it's non ideal, various polls peg the youth vote at being around 70-75% remain [0] [0] https://fullfact.org/europe/how-did-young-people-vote-brexit-referendum/ https://fullfact.org/europe/how-did-young-people-vote-brexit...
Fnoord 7y ago
> I think we overestimate most people's desire to do anything for the benefit of others. True, which is why we need a legislation framework to combat this problem. We need to do this together, as one human race (also helping certain other races who have it tough such as other mammals). Which won't happen when a country as important as the USA elects someone who "does not believe in climate change".
- wastedhours 7y ago
  > We need to do this together, as one human race As per my other comments here - we need to do that 100%, but I don't believe that's a compelling way to get individuals to change their own behaviour. "I don't have to do my bit as other people are much worse than me. Why aren't the other 6,999,999,999 other people doing their bit too?"
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    Hence: > True, which is why we need a legislation framework to combat this problem. I'm sorry to say, we're barely trying. We're doing far too little on an international level. On a national level, I just saw on Wikipedia [1] my country is on 5% for renewable energy. For a rich country, that's terrible. Yet we're voting on retards who deny climate change? Not only is the evidence there, right now we're experiencing it. Which is, I suppose, a good way to stimulate momentum in supporting change. And it is even worse. I saw the other day that my aunt who lives in Amsterdam (a city where Green Left party has won, and they have a mayor from that party as well) that they're still not separating some garbage such as biodegradable waste and plastic. How on earth? I'm not from Amsterdam so I don't know the details but I felt flabbergasted when I learned about that. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/European-union-renewables-new.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/European...
leetcrew 7y ago
> We need to make the alternatives more appealing (or, at least some decent narrative to make them seem more appealing). so you want to deceive people at scale to get them to do what you want? not sure I can get behind that.
- wastedhours 7y ago
  > deceive people at scale Without want to slander my own profession, but: "marketing".

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

esotericn 7y ago

What 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]
wastedhours 7y ago
> What if we _can't_ make the alternatives more appealing? > We _need_ to start pricing in externalities I might've been arguing the OP at crossed purposes, as my point seems compatible with yours, just framed differently at the point of delivery. We can't rely on the population to just decide "I'm going to do the right thing today". We make it a non-choice as you say. That can either be "it's cheaper/easier/better" or "you'll be locked up if not". It's quite a compelling narrative either way. Just expecting large swathes of quite evidently moronic people (without delving too far into politics, if you agree the current political climate is as the result of ignorance, that's a sh*t-tonne of ignorant people out there - on the order of billions of people worldwide) to decide to look out for the interests of us as a collective is frankly wrong. I agree with you - but I think we need to move past the "do it for the planet/species" argument as there's a lot of people who don't care and will be ridiculous in their stubbornness. The scale of it just doesn't work when trying to convince people. But show them how their heating bills will be cheaper and that they'll get a 6-month suspended if they throw a bottle in the sea, and things might change sooner.
- esotericn 7y ago
  Sure. I mean, it's not "them". It's us. Everyone. I do bad things all the time because I have little agency. I'm planning to make some major changes to move towards that, but still, if every store around me uses plastic in food etc I can't skip it. We need to price in externalities. It's that simple. We need to cut this bullshit about the 'short-term economy' or phasing things out over 40 years or whatever; this isn't an emotional argument. If we don't account for the cost of pollution we are going to kill ourselves.
snikeris 7y ago
> 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. Hmm, no it's not on the same level. Perhaps you can deal with it because you can afford to spend more on goods, but people in poverty will rightly moan.
- esotericn 7y ago
  Do you not understand the meaning of "need"? Moaning does not change the outcome. Again, we either reduce consumption, stop emitting (and likely have to capture) CO2, etc, or we kill ourselves. It does not matter how much the child wails, if it is time to leave the arcade, one must go. > can afford to spend more on goods We must all use less. This is not a matter of bits of coloured paper; externalities must be priced in to force the market in the correct direction. To take an example: if plastic bottles were banned worldwide tomorrow, or suddenly cost 10 USD per, this would have approximately zero effect on those in poverty other than shuffling some jobs around a bit.
  - snikeris 7y ago
    I'm with you on pricing in externalities. However that's a tricky business and is not anywhere on the level of mandating that people wear seatbelts. > If plastic bottles were banned worldwide tomorrow What happened to pricing in externalities?
    - esotericn 7y ago
      You made a silly ad hominem about me potentially being able to afford to ignore increased prices. So let's go ahead and assume the externalities are priced so high that it's an effective ban for all but 0.1% or whatever. It doesn't make a difference. We are not playing some identity politics game about who gets more or less. I'm tired, sorry. But really. Just do it. They will be poorer if you don't.
      - snikeris 7y ago

asgard1024 7y ago

> 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 These people often have kids, and they do a lot for them. They need to understand that it is all in vain if they don't do anything.

wastedhours 7y ago
> These people often have kids, and they do a lot for them. They need to understand that it is all in vain if they don't do anything. And yet, lots of those same people with kids are the reason we're in the current political climate. Deliberate choices designed to cause outweighted impact on the younger generations. I don't want to veer too much off course here, but look at the demographics around the Brexit vote. Those are large swathes of parents across the country who've made a decision that they wont live to see the ramifications of, with those younger generations almost entirely voting in the opposite direction. Personally, I believe it's because the issues at play are far too large to comprehend. We need to change the message, and it needs to be localised and individualised as much as possible. However, that's expensive, and the people with the money are the ones less likely to want to help get that message out there...
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  > Those are large swathes of parents across the country who've made a decision that they wont live to see the ramifications of, with those younger generations almost entirely voting in the opposite direction. Disagree. Leave/remain is just as 50/50 among my generation (young people) in my area. Anecdotal to be sure.
  - wastedhours 7y ago
    Whilst it's non ideal, various polls peg the youth vote at being around 70-75% remain [0] [0] https://fullfact.org/europe/how-did-young-people-vote-brexit-referendum/ https://fullfact.org/europe/how-did-young-people-vote-brexit...

Fnoord 7y ago

> I think we overestimate most people's desire to do anything for the benefit of others. True, which is why we need a legislation framework to combat this problem. We need to do this together, as one human race (also helping certain other races who have it tough such as other mammals). Which won't happen when a country as important as the USA elects someone who "does not believe in climate change".

wastedhours 7y ago
> We need to do this together, as one human race As per my other comments here - we need to do that 100%, but I don't believe that's a compelling way to get individuals to change their own behaviour. "I don't have to do my bit as other people are much worse than me. Why aren't the other 6,999,999,999 other people doing their bit too?"
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Hence: > True, which is why we need a legislation framework to combat this problem. I'm sorry to say, we're barely trying. We're doing far too little on an international level. On a national level, I just saw on Wikipedia [1] my country is on 5% for renewable energy. For a rich country, that's terrible. Yet we're voting on retards who deny climate change? Not only is the evidence there, right now we're experiencing it. Which is, I suppose, a good way to stimulate momentum in supporting change. And it is even worse. I saw the other day that my aunt who lives in Amsterdam (a city where Green Left party has won, and they have a mayor from that party as well) that they're still not separating some garbage such as biodegradable waste and plastic. How on earth? I'm not from Amsterdam so I don't know the details but I felt flabbergasted when I learned about that. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/European-union-renewables-new.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/European...

leetcrew 7y ago

> We need to make the alternatives more appealing (or, at least some decent narrative to make them seem more appealing). so you want to deceive people at scale to get them to do what you want? not sure I can get behind that.

wastedhours 7y ago
> deceive people at scale Without want to slander my own profession, but: "marketing".