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The core problem I feel is people are straining for ingenious tech and taxation solutions that allow them to keep their exact same current lifestyle instead of

The core problem I feel is people are straining for ingenious tech and taxation solutions that allow them to keep their exact same current lifestyle instead of looking for solutions that require lifestyle changes. Nobody seems to discuss how we collectively work towards being happy with traveling less and eating more substainably. Were people not happy before we took flights so often and ate meat for every meal? What about changes to work and social culture so frequent and global travel is no longer the norm? The uncomfortable truth to me is that if everyone is always chasing the new next best thing, nothing we do is going to make our lifestyles substantial. We need to adapt to being happy with what we have or less rather than looking for solutions that feed into an entitlement of always wanting more.

dageshi 7y ago
People will concentrate in cities even more than they do now. Perhaps that is the inevitable solution.
- noobermin 7y ago
  That is probably 60%-70% of the solution, especially when you consider in the US the leading causes of climate change (Transpo and Electricty usage add up to nearly 60%) is driven quite directly by sprawl.
darawk 7y ago
> The core problem I feel is people are straining for ingenious tech and taxation solutions that allow them to keep their exact same current lifestyle instead of looking for solutions that require lifestyle changes. That is actually what taxation-based solutions do. They make travel cost more, so fewer people do it.
- onion2k 7y ago
  That is actually what taxation-based solutions do. They make travel cost more, so fewer people do it. People aren't happy about it though, so promising to remove the taxes is a way to win votes at the next election. The incentive becomes a voter bargaining chip rather than an practical long term solution. We need a solution that actually stops a majority of people wanting to fly so much, then removing the taxation isn't a way to win votes, and consequently it remains in place as disincentive to those who do want to fly.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    Rather than chasing a goal of changing what luxury everyone wants, I’d favor chasing technical solutions like carbon neutral fuel. Take renewable energy and synthesize (non-fossil) jet fuel from atmospheric CO2, then burn that in conventional jets. We have all the key tech elements now except for scale. Tomorrow’s emissions (of CO2 anyway) are offset by today’s sequestering. If you tax CO2 emission (and credit sequestering), this might be financially competitive. (Obviously, if you tax it enough, it would be.) I see scaling up existing tech as far more possible/plausible than changing everyone’s desires.
    - onion2k 7y ago
      Tomorrow’s emissions (of CO2 anyway) are offset by today’s sequestering. Sequestering is useful but it tends to assume it doesn't matter where the CO2 is released so long as it's captured. There could be a big difference in the impact between CO2 released at ground level and CO2 released at 40,000 feet from a 747. NASA launched a satellite in 2014 to examine this exact issue - https://ocov2.jpl.nasa.gov/ https://ocov2.jpl.nasa.gov/
      - sokoloff 7y ago
        Agreed that they could be different. Whether they are or aren't, I think it's a huge win to re-emit today's carbon tomorrow than 80 million year old carbon tomorrow, regardless of where it's emitted.
  - amelius 7y ago
    > We need a solution that actually stops a majority of people wanting to fly so much Perhaps we could remove all comfort from airplanes and airports. Aluminum seats. No windows. No flight attendants. And a poster on the back of every seat saying "flying hurts the planet" (similar to the graphic warning labels on cigarettes in many countries).
    - noobermin 7y ago
      Or we can offer a nicer alternative to flying, for example, actual trains like every other country.
- frobozz 7y ago
  > That is actually what taxation-based solutions do. They make travel cost more, so fewer people do it. Which is fine, but it punishes us for travelling rather than encouraging us not to. Those with significant disposable income who might go on three or more leisure flights per year (e.g. one ski trip, one beach holiday, one city break) may not notice until it gets really expensive. They can often downgrade their hotel/restaurant/activity choices to compensate. It also has the potential to just move the problem until the overall price balances out: Those who are budgeting for a week in the Balearics may choose cheaper areas like Dalaman or Burgas to offset the extra cost elsewhere. The other thing is that it pushes up the income level at which one is too poor to travel. This is good in that because it means fewer people do it, there are fewer passenger miles undertaken overall. However, it's a similar issue to arguments of an unfair eco burden being placed on developing countries - Those of us who have already benefitted from poisoning the world are now telling others that they have to rein in their emissions. If the richer people I mention above have to drop one of their annual foreign holidays due to the expense are still going on two more return trips than the ones who have to drop their only holiday. All of this is a long winded way of saying that certain kinds of taxation solution can allow certain people to maintain their current lifestyle, by pricing others out of it.
  - darawk 7y ago
    > Which is fine, but it punishes us for travelling rather than encouraging us not to. Why do you think this distinction is important, though? They seem like two sides of the same coin to me. > Those with significant disposable income who might go on three or more leisure flights per year (e.g. one ski trip, one beach holiday, one city break) may not notice until it gets really expensive. They can often downgrade their hotel/restaurant/activity choices to compensate. Sure that's true. But as you ratchet up the tax, fewer and fewer people can afford it. And if you set the tax at its efficient point, you can use the revenue it generates to offset the carbon the planes emit. > However, it's a similar issue to arguments of an unfair eco burden being placed on developing countries - Those of us who have already benefitted from poisoning the world are now telling others that they have to rein in their emissions. If the richer people I mention above have to drop one of their annual foreign holidays due to the expense are still going on two more return trips than the ones who have to drop their only holiday. This is a valid criticism for things like industrial development. I don't think it applies as much to leisure activities like jet travel, though I can see an argument for it there too. However, you can structure the tax in a progressive way. Wealthier countries pay more, and subsidize poorer countries. So they each get to use comparable amounts of jet travel, but the richer countries pay much more than the poorer countries. > All of this is a long winded way of saying that certain kinds of taxation solution can allow certain people to maintain their current lifestyle, by pricing others out of it. Yes, that's exactly right though. At the end of the day, you either have to ban jet travel entirely, or treat it as a scarce resource. If you're not going to completely ban it, then you have to decide who gets to use it. The way we do that is with all our scarce resources is money.
lbeltrame 7y ago
> looking for solutions that require lifestyle changes Some of these solutions have small to large social impacts in part of the population (see bans on older diesel cars, for example), especially the one that is not too well off (not necessarily poor, let's say lower middle class). One might want to implement them anyway, but the way I see it, is that some proponents act as if consequences won't exist. They need to be taken into account.
afthonos 7y ago
Personally, I think it's possible to keep and scale our current lifestyle with changes like growing meat in vats instead of on animals, better power management, green energy, etc. But that's more faith than knowledge speaking. The big problem is that even those changes are hard. It is much simpler to have giant wars that cull 5-10% of the world population. In fact, we might end up with both: giant wars, and the survivors deciding they don't want more such wars and trying to fix the root cause of them. Assuming civilization doesn't collapse wholesale, of course…
- monk_e_boy 7y ago
  Lots of people think lile you, gambling todays poor behaviour on solutions that MAY come tomorrow, next week or never. We need to change today. But it’s very hard.
  - afthonos 7y ago
    I'm…not sure how you took "5-10% of the world population will probably need to die for humanity to try to fix this" as an endorsement of current policies. We do need change today. I'm making two statements: (1) I think/hope technology may actually be enough. (2) But that doesn't matter, because we're unwilling to even make the small changes that encourage better technologies.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  >wars that cull 5-10% of the world population Global war today is a good deal more serious prospect than global war in the early 20th century. Not sure you could have a global war without culling a whole lot more than 5 to 10% of people. Any war between Russia, or China, or the EU, or the US, is going to take out a very large number of people. 5% - 10% is extremely optimistic.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    One bomb on London takes out 20% of England.
harimau777 7y ago
I agree that the core of a "good life" is not about consuming specific things (e.g. meat, mcmansions, etc.). Instead, I see a "good life" as one where each individual is able to choose their overall lifestyle by balancing the factors that make it up: career, family, day to day culture (e.g. deep south vs. midwest, big city vs. rural), and passion (e.g. hobbies, art, athletics, writing, etc.) People start to become unhappy when these aspects of their life become mutually exclusive. For example: - A gay person has to live in the deep south in order to see their family. - A worker has to build their sense of purpose/identity around their work because they can't pursue their own passions outside of work. The problem that I see is that, at least in America, things are so spread out geographically that balancing these aspects often requires travel. Your family may live in another city so you travel a couple times a year to see them on holidays. In order to advance your career you travel to attend a conference. In order to pursue your passion you travel to learn from an experienced instructor or to participate in a competition. Etc. The only way that I could see Americans being able to keep the parts of their life in balance while cutting down on flights is if we instead had the infrastructure and vacation days to travel via public transportation. However, I don't see a way for that to realistically happen.
- fredley 7y ago
  A big factor in human happiness is how you perceive yourself amongst your peers. Does your neighbour/friend have a bigger McMansion than you? Do they travel to more exotic places more frequently than you? Do they drive a nicer car? This urge drives a lot of consumption, fuelled by advertising that encourages it.
  - noobermin 7y ago
    You are making a switch here. The person above said the "good life" while you are addressing "happiness." They are not the same and are often opposed, unless you're a hedonist, I suppose. In fact, you can be very happy if you ignore the fact that climate change is happening and block it out of your mind.
pif 7y ago
> Were people not happy before we took flights so often and ate meat for every meal? They were happy, but when they got the opportunity they caught it, and they became happier. The problem with too many environmentalists is that they consider it feasible for a large number of people to voluntarily give up their modern comfort to go back to a lifestyle their grandparents escaped from as soon as they could.
- the_gastropod 7y ago
  Cigarettes, like airplane flights, were once new luxury things our grandparents happily took up, “escaping” life without them. My point is: just because something is popular doesn’t mean it leads to health or happiness—especially in the long term.
  - pif 7y ago
    The two examples are not equivalent: cigarettes harm the smoker more than the others; CO2 pollution, instead, is a classic example of tragedy of the commons.
    - xtian 7y ago
      I think it's short-sighted to view “tragedy of the commons” scenarios as some sort of rhetorical wall. The “tragedy of the commons” is not a fact of nature but rather a product of the prevailing beliefs of our society. We’re not going to be able to meaningfully address climate change without reevaluating the ideologies that got us here in the first place.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
> The core problem I feel is people are straining for ingenious tech and taxation solutions that allow them to keep their exact same current lifestyle instead of looking for solutions that require lifestyle changes. Technology always tends to doing more with less rather than the austere doing less with less. Progress always should be forward, not backward. The naysayers are more often wrong than right. The peak oil and serious over population scares or the early 70s did not pan out at all, California didn’t become a toxic wasteland, etc...
sergiosgc 7y ago
The rise in per-capita energy consumption is such a strong trend that no lifestyle change will ever have a significant effect. Environmentalists regularly beat this dead horse, and I see that as a significant error, because it diverts effort from our only viable chance: technological evolution towards sustainable energy sources. I once saw a chart with estimated per-capita energy use on a 3000 year timeline. That's when I formed this opinion. Per capita energy use never went down in human history. Unfortunately, I can't find the same chart. Here's a 60 year trend, as a poor substitute: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE We are lucky. Solar power is viable, and is economically at a point where it is very competitive. The end is still open, but we _may_ still avoid doom.
- noobermin 7y ago
  The US produces almost double the GHG per capita than Western European countries, which have a longer history than the US. It's not all deterministic, it is based in choices we've made in the US.
  - sergiosgc 7y ago
    True, but besides the point. Globally, that efficiency angle can't produce the CO2 reduction we need. Even if Europe halves its per capita consumption and the US reduces it to 25%, there's the rest of the world. There are too many people increasing their energy consumption, with every right to do so.
    - noobermin 7y ago
      The US, a majorly non-industrial country today, is the second major producer of GHG's behind China, a country who exports a load of their products to be consumed by the US. Even so, before China became the power it is today, the US historically produced the majority of CO2 for decades, so in cumulative, is most responsible. The US consumes more calories in food per capita than many other countries, more electrical energy per capita, and so on, not to mention the way our sprawled country is set up happens to distribute such goods and services in the most inefficient means possible in terms of GHG production. I really don't like cheap anti-Americanism that is fashionable in some circles, but when it comes to climate change, the US is in fact the major player when it comes to GHG's. People seem to like to "both sides" the argument to be fair (which is a laudable impulse) to all sides, but a look at the actual data makes it clear the US is the main responsible party when it comes climate change. It's one of those times where extremist voices from say climate activists happens to be truer than what one thinks. That said, of course it still has to be global. The thing is due to the actual magnitude, even if the rest of the world's consumption went to zero, the US alone would further the climate catastrophe because we produce a large fraction of it.
lagadu 7y ago
> Nobody seems to discuss how we collectively work towards being happy with traveling less and eating more substainably. Because of pragmatism. Ask someone to make a significant sacrifice and they'll tell you to piss off. Hell, I'll use myself as an example: try telling my SO and I that we can no longer fly a few times a year to the alps for winter sports and I'll just be rude and laugh at you. Sure, people were happy before they had good meat available, they were also happy before polio was eradicated but now we're happier and nobody's going to sacrifice that. It's suggestions like these "oh, people should give up a lot of things that they enjoy" that makes me look pretty unfavorably towards modern environmentalism: it's not going to happen, we need pragmatic solutions that will actually work in the real world. This is where environmental engineering comes in but God forbid someone suggest us actually making intended changes to our climate to fix problems to the current breed of environmentalists without them foaming at the mouth. Thankfully I rest easy in knowing that eventually this will be an inevitability, as soon as it becomes obvious that the idealistic path is a dead-end.
- graeme 7y ago
  >This is where environmental engineering comes in but God forbid someone suggest us actually making intended changes to our climate to fix problems to the current breed of environmentalists The only environmental engineering that can bring back the world our civilization is used to is sucking carbon from the air or water and sequestering it. All the rest have rather large tradeoffs. Sunshades/aerosols? Still leaves the oceans to acidify. As well as any other negative effects of CO2 (there are some preliminary studies showing cognitive effects). Not to mention any unforeseen side effects, and also then that our survival depends in continual geoengineering with bo interruption due to war etc. The parent you're replying to is also wrong though. We can't just "use less" for two reasons. 1. We're already past some tipping points. We basically need to use zero 2. Keeping the current population alive depends on carbon use at present We probably will geoengineer if we fail to figure out negative emissions, but I think you're far too blasé about the consequences.
- skriticos2 7y ago
  I concur. Also in feudal times people lived 30 years on average and had horrible quality of life, spending most of the time with back breaking work. Death was common before, during and after birth. We just like to romanticize it. I like fantasy too, but that does hardly reflect history. We as a spices have one advantage that have brought us where we are: the advent of tool usage. And that will be the solution too. On a time frame of 100-200 years we will solve energy scarcity through various means (fusion, focused space solar arrays, rentables, etc.). Then we can build the tools to maintain our current and future lifestyle. We can produce synthetic meat / plant meat. We can start stacked farming with in-door illumination. We can capture methane in in-door stables with advanced air management techniques. We can create terraforming towers mega-structures that remove all the carbon dioxide we blew into the atmosphere and put it back into the ground or into hydrocarbon fuel tanks or something. We are really good at these kind of things, but only once it starts to really hurt. So far it doesn't. There is the specter of hurt to come and a few early warning signs, but in aggregate we don't give a damn about it so far. When we start to burn, our plains become barren and our population is collapsing, then we will start address the actual problems and do something about them. Maybe, the optimistic version. We have the potential to do it. Alternatively we can just bitch about it until the population is decimated and then have the remaining few survivors start a new civilization a few hundred years down the line. Or we just annihilate ourselves because of pent up aggression about the miserable state of affair we brought ourself into. We can be very vengeful if we are cornered. Whatever it will be, it probably will be interesting (for an outside observer).
tvanantwerp 7y ago
My family is an international one. Giving up travel would mean being physically cut off from our loved ones. That would greatly negatively affect our happiness. This isn't a situation many pre-industrial people had to deal with, but I suspect it's increasingly common.
coffeefirst 7y ago
Well, yes and no, the only way this gets done is through improvements and replacements. You can't convince large numbers of people to give up burgers (which are a cultural staple), AC in the summer, cars, and tourism, all the while coal plants still fire away. Plus it all starts to feel like shaming, which tends not to end well. But vertical farming, cows that fart less (yes, this is a thing), housing insulation improvements, solar panels, trains, and really good public transit can all feel like replacing bad things with better things. You can't fight human nature, but you can plant a lot of trees.
air7 7y ago
> Were people not happy before we took flights so often and ate meat for every meal? Not doing something because you can't and not doing something out of choice are two different things. It's much harder (and annoying g) not eating cake when one sits right in front of you vs when it's not in the house and its 1am.
DennisP 7y ago
There's a simple reason for carbon taxes: it's a public goods problem. Changing my own lifestyle will have significant costs, of some sort, and will have no noticeable impact on the climate. There's only a real impact if lots of other people do it too. But if they do, I can get the same benefit by freeloading on them and keeping my life unchanged. Either way, I'm better off not changing. Nevertheless, I prefer a good climate to an unchanged lifestyle. It's just that if it's an individual decision for each of us, we're all better off as freeloaders. A carbon tax removes the freeloader option.
- Discombulator 7y ago
  Fully agree. Climate change cannot be tackled by individual action, just like hunger or poverty cannot. I have by now the suspicion that anyone suggesting so while arguing that no regulation should be put in place is either naive or in bad faith.
  - sn9 7y ago
    And people are forgetting that by making fossil-fuel based travel more expensive, a carbon tax will also spur more innovation and research into carbon neutral alternatives. It's not a permanent reduction in luxuries like travel.
akhilcacharya 7y ago
I think this is silly. Quality of life in America is orders of magnitude better than it was back in the '50s when our per capita carbon emissions were significantly higher [0] - there's no reason why we can't have even better quality of life with lower carbon emissions. Most carbon emissions are "invisible" to end consumers, i.e. through container ships, electricity generation, and manufacturing efficiency. [0] - https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/mer.pdf https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/mer.pdf
mac01021 7y ago
> allow them to keep their exact same current lifestyle instead of looking for solutions that require lifestyle changes This is why I support a carbon fee & dividend, which puts a price on carbon emissions and then sends an equal share of the proceeds to all citizens: - If the fee incentivizes people to change their lifestyles and travel less or consume less, my future (and my child's) is improved. - If the fee incentivizes industry to replace existing technology with carbon-neutral technology that allows everyone to maintain their lifestyles without forcing me to live in a worse world, my future (and my child's) is improved. - If people and industry both decide to continue business as usual and simply pay the additional price on carbon then, yes, global ecosystems are in for a terrible time and food becomes way more expensive and cities will have to relocate or disband etc, but at least we are all properly compensated for our share of the ensuing misery.

dageshi 7y ago

People will concentrate in cities even more than they do now. Perhaps that is the inevitable solution.

noobermin 7y ago
That is probably 60%-70% of the solution, especially when you consider in the US the leading causes of climate change (Transpo and Electricty usage add up to nearly 60%) is driven quite directly by sprawl.

darawk 7y ago

onion2k 7y ago
That is actually what taxation-based solutions do. They make travel cost more, so fewer people do it. People aren't happy about it though, so promising to remove the taxes is a way to win votes at the next election. The incentive becomes a voter bargaining chip rather than an practical long term solution. We need a solution that actually stops a majority of people wanting to fly so much, then removing the taxation isn't a way to win votes, and consequently it remains in place as disincentive to those who do want to fly.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Rather than chasing a goal of changing what luxury everyone wants, I’d favor chasing technical solutions like carbon neutral fuel. Take renewable energy and synthesize (non-fossil) jet fuel from atmospheric CO2, then burn that in conventional jets. We have all the key tech elements now except for scale. Tomorrow’s emissions (of CO2 anyway) are offset by today’s sequestering. If you tax CO2 emission (and credit sequestering), this might be financially competitive. (Obviously, if you tax it enough, it would be.) I see scaling up existing tech as far more possible/plausible than changing everyone’s desires.
  - onion2k 7y ago
    Tomorrow’s emissions (of CO2 anyway) are offset by today’s sequestering. Sequestering is useful but it tends to assume it doesn't matter where the CO2 is released so long as it's captured. There could be a big difference in the impact between CO2 released at ground level and CO2 released at 40,000 feet from a 747. NASA launched a satellite in 2014 to examine this exact issue - https://ocov2.jpl.nasa.gov/ https://ocov2.jpl.nasa.gov/
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      Agreed that they could be different. Whether they are or aren't, I think it's a huge win to re-emit today's carbon tomorrow than 80 million year old carbon tomorrow, regardless of where it's emitted.
- amelius 7y ago
  > We need a solution that actually stops a majority of people wanting to fly so much Perhaps we could remove all comfort from airplanes and airports. Aluminum seats. No windows. No flight attendants. And a poster on the back of every seat saying "flying hurts the planet" (similar to the graphic warning labels on cigarettes in many countries).
  - noobermin 7y ago
    Or we can offer a nicer alternative to flying, for example, actual trains like every other country.
frobozz 7y ago
> That is actually what taxation-based solutions do. They make travel cost more, so fewer people do it. Which is fine, but it punishes us for travelling rather than encouraging us not to. Those with significant disposable income who might go on three or more leisure flights per year (e.g. one ski trip, one beach holiday, one city break) may not notice until it gets really expensive. They can often downgrade their hotel/restaurant/activity choices to compensate. It also has the potential to just move the problem until the overall price balances out: Those who are budgeting for a week in the Balearics may choose cheaper areas like Dalaman or Burgas to offset the extra cost elsewhere. The other thing is that it pushes up the income level at which one is too poor to travel. This is good in that because it means fewer people do it, there are fewer passenger miles undertaken overall. However, it's a similar issue to arguments of an unfair eco burden being placed on developing countries - Those of us who have already benefitted from poisoning the world are now telling others that they have to rein in their emissions. If the richer people I mention above have to drop one of their annual foreign holidays due to the expense are still going on two more return trips than the ones who have to drop their only holiday. All of this is a long winded way of saying that certain kinds of taxation solution can allow certain people to maintain their current lifestyle, by pricing others out of it.
- darawk 7y ago
  > Which is fine, but it punishes us for travelling rather than encouraging us not to. Why do you think this distinction is important, though? They seem like two sides of the same coin to me. > Those with significant disposable income who might go on three or more leisure flights per year (e.g. one ski trip, one beach holiday, one city break) may not notice until it gets really expensive. They can often downgrade their hotel/restaurant/activity choices to compensate. Sure that's true. But as you ratchet up the tax, fewer and fewer people can afford it. And if you set the tax at its efficient point, you can use the revenue it generates to offset the carbon the planes emit. > However, it's a similar issue to arguments of an unfair eco burden being placed on developing countries - Those of us who have already benefitted from poisoning the world are now telling others that they have to rein in their emissions. If the richer people I mention above have to drop one of their annual foreign holidays due to the expense are still going on two more return trips than the ones who have to drop their only holiday. This is a valid criticism for things like industrial development. I don't think it applies as much to leisure activities like jet travel, though I can see an argument for it there too. However, you can structure the tax in a progressive way. Wealthier countries pay more, and subsidize poorer countries. So they each get to use comparable amounts of jet travel, but the richer countries pay much more than the poorer countries. > All of this is a long winded way of saying that certain kinds of taxation solution can allow certain people to maintain their current lifestyle, by pricing others out of it. Yes, that's exactly right though. At the end of the day, you either have to ban jet travel entirely, or treat it as a scarce resource. If you're not going to completely ban it, then you have to decide who gets to use it. The way we do that is with all our scarce resources is money.

lbeltrame 7y ago

> looking for solutions that require lifestyle changes Some of these solutions have small to large social impacts in part of the population (see bans on older diesel cars, for example), especially the one that is not too well off (not necessarily poor, let's say lower middle class). One might want to implement them anyway, but the way I see it, is that some proponents act as if consequences won't exist. They need to be taken into account.

afthonos 7y ago

Personally, I think it's possible to keep and scale our current lifestyle with changes like growing meat in vats instead of on animals, better power management, green energy, etc. But that's more faith than knowledge speaking. The big problem is that even those changes are hard. It is much simpler to have giant wars that cull 5-10% of the world population. In fact, we might end up with both: giant wars, and the survivors deciding they don't want more such wars and trying to fix the root cause of them. Assuming civilization doesn't collapse wholesale, of course…

monk_e_boy 7y ago
Lots of people think lile you, gambling todays poor behaviour on solutions that MAY come tomorrow, next week or never. We need to change today. But it’s very hard.
- afthonos 7y ago
  I'm…not sure how you took "5-10% of the world population will probably need to die for humanity to try to fix this" as an endorsement of current policies. We do need change today. I'm making two statements: (1) I think/hope technology may actually be enough. (2) But that doesn't matter, because we're unwilling to even make the small changes that encourage better technologies.
bilbo0s 7y ago
>wars that cull 5-10% of the world population Global war today is a good deal more serious prospect than global war in the early 20th century. Not sure you could have a global war without culling a whole lot more than 5 to 10% of people. Any war between Russia, or China, or the EU, or the US, is going to take out a very large number of people. 5% - 10% is extremely optimistic.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  One bomb on London takes out 20% of England.

harimau777 7y ago

I agree that the core of a "good life" is not about consuming specific things (e.g. meat, mcmansions, etc.). Instead, I see a "good life" as one where each individual is able to choose their overall lifestyle by balancing the factors that make it up: career, family, day to day culture (e.g. deep south vs. midwest, big city vs. rural), and passion (e.g. hobbies, art, athletics, writing, etc.) People start to become unhappy when these aspects of their life become mutually exclusive. For example: - A gay person has to live in the deep south in order to see their family. - A worker has to build their sense of purpose/identity around their work because they can't pursue their own passions outside of work. The problem that I see is that, at least in America, things are so spread out geographically that balancing these aspects often requires travel. Your family may live in another city so you travel a couple times a year to see them on holidays. In order to advance your career you travel to attend a conference. In order to pursue your passion you travel to learn from an experienced instructor or to participate in a competition. Etc. The only way that I could see Americans being able to keep the parts of their life in balance while cutting down on flights is if we instead had the infrastructure and vacation days to travel via public transportation. However, I don't see a way for that to realistically happen.

fredley 7y ago
A big factor in human happiness is how you perceive yourself amongst your peers. Does your neighbour/friend have a bigger McMansion than you? Do they travel to more exotic places more frequently than you? Do they drive a nicer car? This urge drives a lot of consumption, fuelled by advertising that encourages it.
- noobermin 7y ago
  You are making a switch here. The person above said the "good life" while you are addressing "happiness." They are not the same and are often opposed, unless you're a hedonist, I suppose. In fact, you can be very happy if you ignore the fact that climate change is happening and block it out of your mind.

pif 7y ago

> Were people not happy before we took flights so often and ate meat for every meal? They were happy, but when they got the opportunity they caught it, and they became happier. The problem with too many environmentalists is that they consider it feasible for a large number of people to voluntarily give up their modern comfort to go back to a lifestyle their grandparents escaped from as soon as they could.

the_gastropod 7y ago
Cigarettes, like airplane flights, were once new luxury things our grandparents happily took up, “escaping” life without them. My point is: just because something is popular doesn’t mean it leads to health or happiness—especially in the long term.
- pif 7y ago
  The two examples are not equivalent: cigarettes harm the smoker more than the others; CO2 pollution, instead, is a classic example of tragedy of the commons.
  - xtian 7y ago
    I think it's short-sighted to view “tragedy of the commons” scenarios as some sort of rhetorical wall. The “tragedy of the commons” is not a fact of nature but rather a product of the prevailing beliefs of our society. We’re not going to be able to meaningfully address climate change without reevaluating the ideologies that got us here in the first place.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

> The core problem I feel is people are straining for ingenious tech and taxation solutions that allow them to keep their exact same current lifestyle instead of looking for solutions that require lifestyle changes. Technology always tends to doing more with less rather than the austere doing less with less. Progress always should be forward, not backward. The naysayers are more often wrong than right. The peak oil and serious over population scares or the early 70s did not pan out at all, California didn’t become a toxic wasteland, etc...

sergiosgc 7y ago

The rise in per-capita energy consumption is such a strong trend that no lifestyle change will ever have a significant effect. Environmentalists regularly beat this dead horse, and I see that as a significant error, because it diverts effort from our only viable chance: technological evolution towards sustainable energy sources. I once saw a chart with estimated per-capita energy use on a 3000 year timeline. That's when I formed this opinion. Per capita energy use never went down in human history. Unfortunately, I can't find the same chart. Here's a 60 year trend, as a poor substitute: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE We are lucky. Solar power is viable, and is economically at a point where it is very competitive. The end is still open, but we _may_ still avoid doom.

noobermin 7y ago
The US produces almost double the GHG per capita than Western European countries, which have a longer history than the US. It's not all deterministic, it is based in choices we've made in the US.
- sergiosgc 7y ago
  True, but besides the point. Globally, that efficiency angle can't produce the CO2 reduction we need. Even if Europe halves its per capita consumption and the US reduces it to 25%, there's the rest of the world. There are too many people increasing their energy consumption, with every right to do so.
  - noobermin 7y ago
    The US, a majorly non-industrial country today, is the second major producer of GHG's behind China, a country who exports a load of their products to be consumed by the US. Even so, before China became the power it is today, the US historically produced the majority of CO2 for decades, so in cumulative, is most responsible. The US consumes more calories in food per capita than many other countries, more electrical energy per capita, and so on, not to mention the way our sprawled country is set up happens to distribute such goods and services in the most inefficient means possible in terms of GHG production. I really don't like cheap anti-Americanism that is fashionable in some circles, but when it comes to climate change, the US is in fact the major player when it comes to GHG's. People seem to like to "both sides" the argument to be fair (which is a laudable impulse) to all sides, but a look at the actual data makes it clear the US is the main responsible party when it comes climate change. It's one of those times where extremist voices from say climate activists happens to be truer than what one thinks. That said, of course it still has to be global. The thing is due to the actual magnitude, even if the rest of the world's consumption went to zero, the US alone would further the climate catastrophe because we produce a large fraction of it.

lagadu 7y ago

> Nobody seems to discuss how we collectively work towards being happy with traveling less and eating more substainably. Because of pragmatism. Ask someone to make a significant sacrifice and they'll tell you to piss off. Hell, I'll use myself as an example: try telling my SO and I that we can no longer fly a few times a year to the alps for winter sports and I'll just be rude and laugh at you. Sure, people were happy before they had good meat available, they were also happy before polio was eradicated but now we're happier and nobody's going to sacrifice that. It's suggestions like these "oh, people should give up a lot of things that they enjoy" that makes me look pretty unfavorably towards modern environmentalism: it's not going to happen, we need pragmatic solutions that will actually work in the real world. This is where environmental engineering comes in but God forbid someone suggest us actually making intended changes to our climate to fix problems to the current breed of environmentalists without them foaming at the mouth. Thankfully I rest easy in knowing that eventually this will be an inevitability, as soon as it becomes obvious that the idealistic path is a dead-end.

graeme 7y ago
>This is where environmental engineering comes in but God forbid someone suggest us actually making intended changes to our climate to fix problems to the current breed of environmentalists The only environmental engineering that can bring back the world our civilization is used to is sucking carbon from the air or water and sequestering it. All the rest have rather large tradeoffs. Sunshades/aerosols? Still leaves the oceans to acidify. As well as any other negative effects of CO2 (there are some preliminary studies showing cognitive effects). Not to mention any unforeseen side effects, and also then that our survival depends in continual geoengineering with bo interruption due to war etc. The parent you're replying to is also wrong though. We can't just "use less" for two reasons. 1. We're already past some tipping points. We basically need to use zero 2. Keeping the current population alive depends on carbon use at present We probably will geoengineer if we fail to figure out negative emissions, but I think you're far too blasé about the consequences.
skriticos2 7y ago
I concur. Also in feudal times people lived 30 years on average and had horrible quality of life, spending most of the time with back breaking work. Death was common before, during and after birth. We just like to romanticize it. I like fantasy too, but that does hardly reflect history. We as a spices have one advantage that have brought us where we are: the advent of tool usage. And that will be the solution too. On a time frame of 100-200 years we will solve energy scarcity through various means (fusion, focused space solar arrays, rentables, etc.). Then we can build the tools to maintain our current and future lifestyle. We can produce synthetic meat / plant meat. We can start stacked farming with in-door illumination. We can capture methane in in-door stables with advanced air management techniques. We can create terraforming towers mega-structures that remove all the carbon dioxide we blew into the atmosphere and put it back into the ground or into hydrocarbon fuel tanks or something. We are really good at these kind of things, but only once it starts to really hurt. So far it doesn't. There is the specter of hurt to come and a few early warning signs, but in aggregate we don't give a damn about it so far. When we start to burn, our plains become barren and our population is collapsing, then we will start address the actual problems and do something about them. Maybe, the optimistic version. We have the potential to do it. Alternatively we can just bitch about it until the population is decimated and then have the remaining few survivors start a new civilization a few hundred years down the line. Or we just annihilate ourselves because of pent up aggression about the miserable state of affair we brought ourself into. We can be very vengeful if we are cornered. Whatever it will be, it probably will be interesting (for an outside observer).

tvanantwerp 7y ago

My family is an international one. Giving up travel would mean being physically cut off from our loved ones. That would greatly negatively affect our happiness. This isn't a situation many pre-industrial people had to deal with, but I suspect it's increasingly common.

coffeefirst 7y ago

Well, yes and no, the only way this gets done is through improvements and replacements. You can't convince large numbers of people to give up burgers (which are a cultural staple), AC in the summer, cars, and tourism, all the while coal plants still fire away. Plus it all starts to feel like shaming, which tends not to end well. But vertical farming, cows that fart less (yes, this is a thing), housing insulation improvements, solar panels, trains, and really good public transit can all feel like replacing bad things with better things. You can't fight human nature, but you can plant a lot of trees.

air7 7y ago

> Were people not happy before we took flights so often and ate meat for every meal? Not doing something because you can't and not doing something out of choice are two different things. It's much harder (and annoying g) not eating cake when one sits right in front of you vs when it's not in the house and its 1am.

DennisP 7y ago

There's a simple reason for carbon taxes: it's a public goods problem. Changing my own lifestyle will have significant costs, of some sort, and will have no noticeable impact on the climate. There's only a real impact if lots of other people do it too. But if they do, I can get the same benefit by freeloading on them and keeping my life unchanged. Either way, I'm better off not changing. Nevertheless, I prefer a good climate to an unchanged lifestyle. It's just that if it's an individual decision for each of us, we're all better off as freeloaders. A carbon tax removes the freeloader option.

Discombulator 7y ago
Fully agree. Climate change cannot be tackled by individual action, just like hunger or poverty cannot. I have by now the suspicion that anyone suggesting so while arguing that no regulation should be put in place is either naive or in bad faith.
- sn9 7y ago
  And people are forgetting that by making fossil-fuel based travel more expensive, a carbon tax will also spur more innovation and research into carbon neutral alternatives. It's not a permanent reduction in luxuries like travel.

akhilcacharya 7y ago

I think this is silly. Quality of life in America is orders of magnitude better than it was back in the '50s when our per capita carbon emissions were significantly higher [0] - there's no reason why we can't have even better quality of life with lower carbon emissions. Most carbon emissions are "invisible" to end consumers, i.e. through container ships, electricity generation, and manufacturing efficiency. [0] - https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/mer.pdf https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/mer.pdf

mac01021 7y ago

> allow them to keep their exact same current lifestyle instead of looking for solutions that require lifestyle changes This is why I support a carbon fee & dividend, which puts a price on carbon emissions and then sends an equal share of the proceeds to all citizens: - If the fee incentivizes people to change their lifestyles and travel less or consume less, my future (and my child's) is improved. - If the fee incentivizes industry to replace existing technology with carbon-neutral technology that allows everyone to maintain their lifestyles without forcing me to live in a worse world, my future (and my child's) is improved. - If people and industry both decide to continue business as usual and simply pay the additional price on carbon then, yes, global ecosystems are in for a terrible time and food becomes way more expensive and cities will have to relocate or disband etc, but at least we are all properly compensated for our share of the ensuing misery.