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The tragic thing is that there's this idea you have to live life as an austere pioneer hippie to address this. You really don't. A world of mostly-vegetarian p

The tragic thing is that there's this idea you have to live life as an austere pioneer hippie to address this. You really don't. A world of mostly-vegetarian people living in modern, timber (for carbon sequestration) flats in mixed-use environments, using renewable electricity to power their heat pumps and AC, traveling primarily via bike, walking, and public transport, and owning less disposable crap would go a long, long way. You could hire an EV for a weekend excursion or take a slow, internet-connected ship to travel for an overseas holiday. I don't think living that way sounds especially terrible, to be honest. Also, make 3 months' vacation the minimum. Turn off Slack at 5 PM. We have so much material crap it's hard to fathom, but many people are horribly starved of time. If I had more time I know I'd cook more and work in the garden more instead of ordering takeaway. A huge amount of human endeavour is spent helping a relatively few rich people suck a bit more of the Earth before it implodes.

jamesb93 7y ago
Not even that far. Primarily vegetarian diets and less driving would make mountains of difference for the world. As someone who is fairly new to adulthood I dont really see why we work so much - there just doesn't seem like there is much to "get". There should ve a greater focus on tending our environments around us, spending money on experiences and creating art (or even just having a hobby).
- ChuckNorris89 7y ago
  Yes, but like parent said, we're starved of time. I would love to bike or take public transport to work but that's over an hour of commute vs 20-25 minutes by car and I don't live in the middle of nowhere but in a medium sized European city. The problem is the employers who move to the sticks, far away from the cties, where office space is cheapest and assume their workers can afford cars and should commute. Not only that but they actively fight against remote work saying it destroys team effort. One huge step in the right direction would be governments incentivizing employers to accept remote work for office workers who's jobs are 100% digital. This way we won't all be clogging the streets at rush hour making commutes easier on those who have to drive. Heck, one friend of mine broke his leg skiing and his company, instead of allowing him to work remote, prefered to pay his taxi fares to and from work for 2 months saying WE DON'T DO REMOTE!. And the company is a top EV supplier that loves to boast how green they're making the world. You can't make this stuff up.
  - teddyuk 7y ago
    In london commuter trains are over crowded and they spend millions (billions?) every year on upgrading and it costs me about £900 a month to use these trains. If governments incentivised companies to encourage remote work, this money would be unnecessary as many people wouldn't commute any more - saving money for everyone, saving the environment and allowing people to have a home life and see their kids/partner etc. Remote working is a massive win-win for everyone, I wish the government realised this.
    - dharma1 7y ago
      What would the right incentives be? I agree, btw
      - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
        Lower taxes maybe since their employees aren't using fuel or infrastructure to commute.
      - jcadam 7y ago
        Probably in the form of a tax break like everything else. $X tax credit per remote worker, or some such. Whether or not that would be enough, who knows...
    - CalRobert 7y ago
      They could also make it easier for people to live near their jobs. It's surprising how quickly you hit low density areas, even near the train.
      - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
        That would have worked in the days of a job for life but now, once you have a family, you can't keep moving every 2-3 years where your next job will be.
        7y ago
- lostjohnny 7y ago
  > Primarily vegetarian diets and less driving would make mountains of difference for the world. No, it wouldn't. Look at pandas, they are bears (omnivores, like us), living on a primarily vegetarian diet. They sleep 16 hours a day and when they are awake they eat, because a vegetarian diet is not really energy efficient. If we are talking about a true vegetarian diet, environmental friendly. if we are talking about "I can be mostly vegetarian because I buy integrators from the drugstore" that's the same of eating fried chicken intensively farmed 4 times a day, in large quantities, for the environment. What most western cultures should aim for is eating raw food, completely avoid processed food and, most of all, EAT LESS.
  - kchamplewski 7y ago
    Assuming you genuinely are trying to make a good faith argument (which I strongly feel you're not): Pandas eat bamboo. Bamboo has practically no nutritional value so, no, Pandas are not very energetic. None of the vegetarians I know need 16 hours of sleep per day, and I suspect that's because - They are not bears, and so do not have the metabolism of bears. - They don't subsist entirely off bamboo, or one foodstuff in general. Besides, the a primarily vegetarian diet doesn't necessarily mean no meat, it just means realising that meat production is so absurdly energy, land, and water intensive that eating it on a daily basis is simply unsustainable. The amount of energy that goes into cooking hour meat is negligible compared to the amount of energy needed to produce it in the first place.
    - lostjohnny 7y ago
      > Besides, the a primarily vegetarian diet doesn't necessarily mean no meat Just eat less. If you eat less, you automatically balance your diet. You could live of three pieces of beef junkie a day for a long time, that's not so bad for environment as well. They made you believe that "meat production is so absurdly energy, land, and water intensive" but that's because our information system is mainly based on the US lifestyle, the land of freedom (to destroy other people lives). I grew up in places like this, where meat production is almost a natural process. https://reportagedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/pascolo-brado-sul-sirente-dopo-la-demonticazione-foto-maria-trozzi-report-age-com-12-11-1.jpg?w=1200 https://reportagedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/pascolo-... The more you eat, the more the spectrum moves towards junk food. Beyond true hunger, it's only addiction. Addictions are never a good thing.
- missosoup 7y ago
  > Primarily vegetarian diets and less driving would make mountains of difference for the world. Changing diets yes. Changing driving habits, not really. Personal use of passenger vehicles accounts for a tiny fraction of transportation related CO2 emissions. The overwhelming majority comes from cargo ships and associated logistics. A typical cargo ship will burn about 30 liters of bunker fuel (far more polluting than diesel) to travel 1 meter. 15 typical cargo ships emit as much CO2 as all cars on the planet combined. There are about 15,000 such ships operating today, with a further 30,000 slightly smaller ones. A single cruise ship company like Carnival Cruise emits more CO2 than all of Europe's car's combined. Even if the entire world converted to zero-emission EVs overnight, it wouldn't make a meaningful dent in these numbers. The inconvenient truth is that in order to make a serious dent on transportation related CO2 emissions, the entire developed world would have to give up its lavish lifestyle of internationally shipped products and foods. Sadly a harder sell then 'drive an EV to save the planet lol', so our governments continue to focus on inconsequential but easily attainable measures. And that is nothing to say of the fact that cutting down international shipping is at odds with free market capitalism that's driving our civilisation. Fun fact: bulk carrier shipping is so cheap that in Australia, locally caught fish are shipped to China for processing and freezing and then shipped back here for retail. The pollution associated with this alone is more than the sum pollution of all Australian cars.
  - exergy 7y ago
    Do you have a source for your claim? Here[1] is a link I found breaking down the fuel consumption by sector. Seems Motor Oil vastly outscores Residue Fuel Oil, which I believe is what tankers use. I may be wrong, though, and would be interested in being corrected. [1] https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec3_23.pdf https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec3_23.pdf
    - missosoup 7y ago
      https://medium.com/@victoria27/heres-how-much-pollution-shipping-containers-and-freight-trucks-cause-b358cb034c70 https://medium.com/@victoria27/heres-how-much-pollution-ship... https://www.ft.com/content/8bceef94-86cd-11e9-a028-86cea8523dc2 https://www.ft.com/content/8bceef94-86cd-11e9-a028-86cea8523... https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/cargo-container-shipping-carbon-pollution/ https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/cargo-container-shipping... https://newatlas.com/shipping-pollution/11526/ https://newatlas.com/shipping-pollution/11526/ https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/why-australia-is-not-making-the-most-of-its-china-seafood-opportunity-20180626-h11wh8 https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/why-australia-is-not-maki... My actual job is in the shipping route optimisation space. Sub-percentile improvements in fuel consumption for a single route result in hundreds of millions of dollars of fuel savings. Of a fuel that's both cheaper and far more polluting than diesel. It's pretty obvious that shipping fuel consumption and associated emissions eclipse personal transportation.
- sdoering 7y ago
  Next to everyone doing things - we could also add some regulation for extremely polluting industries/companies. Like I remember that one European Cruise company's ships produced the same amount of CO2-equivalent than all European Cars combined last year (or was it the year before that?). All friggin EU cars? This is what I would call a lever. And for what? For the sake of one company making money by providing a kind of recreation that could at least be discussed as it provides recreation - but recreation could be provided in a more environmental friendly way as well. Just regulating this one industry would go a long way. And there are probably some other low hanging fruits still undiscussed. Sadly the whole discussion seems to revolve around what the individual should/could do. Often it seems to me especially to mask the fact that regulating some industries would be a faster and imho more efficient way.
  - zajio1am 7y ago
    > Like I remember that one European Cruise company's ships produced the same amount of CO2-equivalent than all European Cars combined last year Seems like BS. Such propositions are sometimes claimed, but they are for SO2/NOx/particulates emissions, not for CO2. Then they got misinterpreted as CO2 emissions.
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    Regulation is crucial. I worry my original comment was "you should do this". Really it's "we need to build society such that doing this is the easiest option" When polled, people in Copenhagen don't say they ride a bike to save the planet, it's just the easiest way to get around. The city is also absolutely heavenly to walk in.
Bantros 7y ago
No
WalterBright 7y ago
> A huge amount of human endeavour is spent helping a relatively few rich people suck a bit more of the Earth before it implodes. Big industrial companies are not making products for rich people, but for the vast bulk of people.
- coldtea 7y ago
  And a huge 24/7 mechanism is used to make this vast bulk of people want, work for, and buy, those products...
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    I doubt more than a handful of people would trade their lives for subsistence farming, and those would likely trade back after a year or two.
    - morsch 7y ago
      No doubt. But who claimed otherwise? The closest I could find is that CalRoberts said thay theyd'd spend more time gardening and cooking if they had the time, which is hard to refute unless you know them personally, is not an overgeneralisation -- and even if it was, growing a few tomatoes is a far fetch from subsistence farming. You're making a classic straw man argument.
      - WalterBright 7y ago
        > You're making a classic straw man argument. Am I? Because that's what one winds up with if one dispenses with buying all that stuff people were induced to want by industry. Besides, it's a mite presumptuous to claim that people are wasting their lives acquiring things they are induced to want, rather than actually wanting.
        CalRobert 7y ago
        My original intent was to suggest that wealthy people consume more (after all, they have the wealth to do so) and ultimately a lot of our current economic system is designed to serve those needs. There's the classic example of "rich nerds in SF trying to solve problems for other rich nerds" but ultimately it's a matter of who controls most of the income that can be spent on non-necessities.
coldtea 7y ago
>The tragic thing is that there's this idea you have to live life as an austere pioneer hippie to address this. You really don't. A world of mostly-vegetarian people living in modern, timber (for carbon sequestration) flats in mixed-use environments, using renewable electricity to power their heat pumps and AC, traveling primarily via bike, walking, and public transport, and owning less disposable crap would go a long, long way. That means a reduction of production and consumer spending by 50% or more, and the end of the "no limits progress" which is beyond the pale for modern business interests, and the 10% well off part of the population that does their biding (executives, intellectuals, politicians, media people, and so on). It's better in today's prevalent culture that the world end in flames (perhaps while waiting for some magic technology to fix it all) than go back on consumption...
- bbddg 7y ago
  "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Capitalism."
  - sneak 7y ago
    I think it is a dire logical error to equate capitalism, which arises naturally out of fair and mutually consensual dealing between humans, and the neverending consumer consumption drive epitomized by the global west. They are not the same thing, and the former does not necessitate the latter. Same goes for all the other ills of our society that people misguidedly invoke under the “capitalism” umbrella, like intellectual property, patents, and regulatory capture. Military-industrial complex-flavored capitalism is the problem. It sounds like that is part of the problem described in the article, too.
    - lucian1900 7y ago
      They are exactly the same thing. Capitalism requires endless growth, which requires endless production and consumption. Those in turn require imperialism, to have a supply of desperate workers and consumers. Imperialism is not always overtly military, but it is always a threat of violence in order to assert power. Read Lenin's "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism", he makes it very easy to understand.
surge 7y ago
The problem with your reasoning is this is being done by corrupt governments and cattle and lumber industries in a country making consumer goods for themselves. I can do all those things here and it won't do anything to fix the problem there, the problems are local and will continue to be local as long as the people of Brazil tolerate it. How many people have donated to funds to preserve the Amazon, and what exactly has that gotten us? We sit here in a our affluent country and tell those in another country that they shouldn't exploit their natural resources to have what we have? This is backwards and naive thinking. Until the people locally value what they have more than they do economic prosperity, even if only temporary, it will continue no matter what life style Americans or Europeans choose to adopt.
andrepd 7y ago
>A huge amount of human endeavour is spent helping a relatively few rich people suck a bit more of the Earth before it implodes. A summary of production under capitalism.
fit2rule 7y ago
My family and I have changed our ways. I used to live a typically American lifestyle - spending 4 hours every day in the car, mostly parked on a freeway, to get to work. Ordering takeout 5 times a week because I was too exhausted to cook for myself. Buying useless crap that filled my house, only to get a bigger house for more useless crap. But, after the 9/11 attacks, I took a good hard look at myself. You could say, the blowback factor was real. Now I live in a modest house just outside the city where I work, and I can cycle into the city in 40 minutes through a green landscape when the weather is good. My family and I are avid gardeners and grow our own veggies for 4/5th's of the year - sourcing it from local farmers for the rest of the time when our garden is sleeping for winter. We cook for ourselves like demons, and have massively improved health as a result. My children are taller and stronger than their peers, because they've been raised on home cooking and fresh vegetables where their peers were not. I also ride electric, always and only - a small, weak, underpowered electric moped gets me through the city comfortably, and I recharge it every few days from house power, derived from renewables (solar and wind). Its pretty much ideal in terms of carbon footprint. It took a big change however. I had to leave the USA and now live in middle Europe (Vienna, Austria) - a country that has long since decided to upgrade the standard of living of its people through smart economic policies designed to reduce dependence on petroleum. Its not perfect - there is still a lot of work to do in my community - but its certainly better than the, frankly disturbing, lifestyle I led in the USA. The point is, the resources are there. People can actually massively reduce their carbon footprint if needed. You may have to move - far and wide - to escape the city trap. If you are spending more than an hour every day in your car, just to support your lifestyle, this is a clue that you MUST change. Every hour spent in traffic is a crime against the planet.
- 22dingdongdung 7y ago
  (I'll be labelled a bigot but go look at the increased crimes...) I want to move to Europe someplace without the immigrant problem- is Austria good?
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    "move to Europe" "the immigrant problem" Well, you see, the act you're referring to is "immigration" so, by definition, no.
rayiner 7y ago
> A world of mostly-vegetarian people living in modern, timber (for carbon sequestration) flats in mixed-use environments, using renewable electricity to power their heat pumps and AC, traveling primarily via bike, walking, and public transport, and owning less disposable crap would go a long, long way Can you quantify that into something more precise than a fuzzy feeling?
- reallydontask 7y ago
  What kind of units are you after? It is clear that the proposal would lead to a lot less energy usage and less pollution and thus to a cleaner environment, places where most energy generates little pollution would see the fewer benefits, which would help to ameliorate the effects of climate change.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Like degrees of avoided warming. Because the proposal above is not sufficient to avoid climate change in any significant respect, especially a counting for increased living standards in India and China.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
sound_vapours 7y ago
>You could hire an EV for a weekend excursion or take a slow, internet-connected ship to travel for an overseas holiday. I think part of the reason air travel is so popular is that people are trying to make the best of what little vacation time they have. Slow travel would be so much nicer if one could afford an extra week dedicated to the journey.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I feel this is a factor, but contributes very little. Having a choice between 1 week travel + 2 weeks at the destination, vs. 1 day travel + 2 weeks and 6 days at the destination, I'd chose the latter. Unless travel is a special experience in itself, people will consider it just means to an end, and pick the most convenient one affordable.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    For things like a transcontinental flight, etc. this is very true. But for things like, say, my recent trip from Portland OR to Sacramento, having vacation measured in weeks and not days makes it feasible to do things like take a train (highly recommended - a sleeper car is a MUCH nicer experience with an infant than an airplane)
- forgottenpass 7y ago
  Yeah, spending even more time in cramped quarters, exactly what I want to do with my hypothetical extra vacation time.
esotericn 7y ago
I agree. I'm at less than a third of the typical US footprint. I offset the rest. That involves, in its totality, not jetting around, not driving an ICE, and not eating meat. My country uses primarily renewables. A whole bunch of the rest of that is related to industrial processes and transport of food/materials that can be addressed. It would not impact me severely if my fruits came from different places or I had to eat different fruits. I don't think my life is "worse" at all than the typical American lifestyle. People talk about quality of life, but what they actually mean is that they've chosen some arbitrary metric to maximise (e.g. overseas holidays particularly to very far flung places or whatever) and if they don't have that then QoL would be lower. To me that sounds like a boring life, not a quality life. Before someone trots out the 'but EVs are expensive'; 'but solar will take time' stuff; sure, it's not trivial for people to do this stuff in isolation, the point is that reducing carbon doesn't mean living in a cave. It means some small mindful adjustments, that's it. When I look at what I'm using honestly it could be way lower making more substitutions; it'd just be the companies that provide services to me substituting instead of me, e.g. regulation.
Gatsky 7y ago
This is a lovely idea, but totally ignorant of global demography[1]. By 2100 there will be >3 billion people living in India and central Africa. Centra Africa in particular will show some of the greatest population growth. There will be another 300 million people living in the Congo, which is one fifth the size of the USA and a nightmarish war zone most of the time. There will be a stunning 600 million more people in Nigeria, which is even smaller. The irony is that these people will be mostly-vegetarian, use renewable energy and travel by bike, just not by their own choosing. Sheer numbers however will ensure global consumption continues to increase rapidly. I don't know what the solution is, but the lifestyle choices of the Western world will become increasingly irrelevant. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth
- kzzy 7y ago
  I am amazed that you're blaming future humans in the third world for current issues created by first world consumerism. Sorry but it is an absurd strawman argument and reeks of your privilege.
  - Gatsky 7y ago
    You have totally misconstrued what I am saying. I am NOT blaming anyone. My point is that it is a fantasy to think that wealthy westerners can significantly reduce global consumption by choosing to live a certain way. As a thought experiment, how much of a difference would it have made to the world today if the British empire decreed in 1700 that all its subjects adopt more eco friendly lifestyles?
    - irrlichthn 7y ago
      "I'm not going to fix this crash, because next year, there might be a similar bug, and I'm not sure how to fix that yet." I hope you don't code that way.
    - kzzy 7y ago
      No, you have indeed constructed a strawman argument based on prejudiced fears of third world 'population explosion' and poor data. Let me put aside the fact that third world peoples are not sitting around waiting for such explosions to occur and are proactive about and invested in our own resources and prospects. Let me put aside the comparison of the poorest, say, Indians (the strata where such an 'explosion' is likeliest to occur due to a host of social reasons) vs the richest, say, Americans. Even putting all that aside: the per capita consumption of an American is 10 times that of an Indian based on latest data [1]. [1]: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=eg_use_pcap_kg_oe&idim=country:USA:RUS:IRN&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=eg_use_pcap_kg_oe&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:USA:IND&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&... And this does not at all take into account that so, so much of American consumer goods are manufactured abroad and does not factor into this calculation. Really, please interrogate the kind of prejudice that leads to projections of the kind you have accepted, and the kind of prejudice that then uses it as a rationalization for not course-correcting own behavior.
notyourday 7y ago
> You could hire an EV for a weekend excursion or take a slow, internet-connected ship to travel for an overseas holiday. > Also, make 3 months' vacation the minimum. Turn off Slack at 5 PM. We have so much material crap it's hard to fathom, but many people are horribly starved of time. If I had more time I know I'd cook more and work in the garden more instead of ordering takeaway. In the words of the Maria Antoinette "Let them eat cake"!

jamesb93 7y ago

Not even that far. Primarily vegetarian diets and less driving would make mountains of difference for the world. As someone who is fairly new to adulthood I dont really see why we work so much - there just doesn't seem like there is much to "get". There should ve a greater focus on tending our environments around us, spending money on experiences and creating art (or even just having a hobby).

ChuckNorris89 7y ago
Yes, but like parent said, we're starved of time. I would love to bike or take public transport to work but that's over an hour of commute vs 20-25 minutes by car and I don't live in the middle of nowhere but in a medium sized European city. The problem is the employers who move to the sticks, far away from the cties, where office space is cheapest and assume their workers can afford cars and should commute. Not only that but they actively fight against remote work saying it destroys team effort. One huge step in the right direction would be governments incentivizing employers to accept remote work for office workers who's jobs are 100% digital. This way we won't all be clogging the streets at rush hour making commutes easier on those who have to drive. Heck, one friend of mine broke his leg skiing and his company, instead of allowing him to work remote, prefered to pay his taxi fares to and from work for 2 months saying WE DON'T DO REMOTE!. And the company is a top EV supplier that loves to boast how green they're making the world. You can't make this stuff up.
- teddyuk 7y ago
  In london commuter trains are over crowded and they spend millions (billions?) every year on upgrading and it costs me about £900 a month to use these trains. If governments incentivised companies to encourage remote work, this money would be unnecessary as many people wouldn't commute any more - saving money for everyone, saving the environment and allowing people to have a home life and see their kids/partner etc. Remote working is a massive win-win for everyone, I wish the government realised this.
  - dharma1 7y ago
    What would the right incentives be? I agree, btw
    - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
      Lower taxes maybe since their employees aren't using fuel or infrastructure to commute.
    - jcadam 7y ago
      Probably in the form of a tax break like everything else. $X tax credit per remote worker, or some such. Whether or not that would be enough, who knows...
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    They could also make it easier for people to live near their jobs. It's surprising how quickly you hit low density areas, even near the train.
    - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
      That would have worked in the days of a job for life but now, once you have a family, you can't keep moving every 2-3 years where your next job will be.
      - 7y ago
lostjohnny 7y ago
> Primarily vegetarian diets and less driving would make mountains of difference for the world. No, it wouldn't. Look at pandas, they are bears (omnivores, like us), living on a primarily vegetarian diet. They sleep 16 hours a day and when they are awake they eat, because a vegetarian diet is not really energy efficient. If we are talking about a true vegetarian diet, environmental friendly. if we are talking about "I can be mostly vegetarian because I buy integrators from the drugstore" that's the same of eating fried chicken intensively farmed 4 times a day, in large quantities, for the environment. What most western cultures should aim for is eating raw food, completely avoid processed food and, most of all, EAT LESS.
- kchamplewski 7y ago
  Assuming you genuinely are trying to make a good faith argument (which I strongly feel you're not): Pandas eat bamboo. Bamboo has practically no nutritional value so, no, Pandas are not very energetic. None of the vegetarians I know need 16 hours of sleep per day, and I suspect that's because - They are not bears, and so do not have the metabolism of bears. - They don't subsist entirely off bamboo, or one foodstuff in general. Besides, the a primarily vegetarian diet doesn't necessarily mean no meat, it just means realising that meat production is so absurdly energy, land, and water intensive that eating it on a daily basis is simply unsustainable. The amount of energy that goes into cooking hour meat is negligible compared to the amount of energy needed to produce it in the first place.
  - lostjohnny 7y ago
    > Besides, the a primarily vegetarian diet doesn't necessarily mean no meat Just eat less. If you eat less, you automatically balance your diet. You could live of three pieces of beef junkie a day for a long time, that's not so bad for environment as well. They made you believe that "meat production is so absurdly energy, land, and water intensive" but that's because our information system is mainly based on the US lifestyle, the land of freedom (to destroy other people lives). I grew up in places like this, where meat production is almost a natural process. https://reportagedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/pascolo-brado-sul-sirente-dopo-la-demonticazione-foto-maria-trozzi-report-age-com-12-11-1.jpg?w=1200 https://reportagedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/pascolo-... The more you eat, the more the spectrum moves towards junk food. Beyond true hunger, it's only addiction. Addictions are never a good thing.
missosoup 7y ago
> Primarily vegetarian diets and less driving would make mountains of difference for the world. Changing diets yes. Changing driving habits, not really. Personal use of passenger vehicles accounts for a tiny fraction of transportation related CO2 emissions. The overwhelming majority comes from cargo ships and associated logistics. A typical cargo ship will burn about 30 liters of bunker fuel (far more polluting than diesel) to travel 1 meter. 15 typical cargo ships emit as much CO2 as all cars on the planet combined. There are about 15,000 such ships operating today, with a further 30,000 slightly smaller ones. A single cruise ship company like Carnival Cruise emits more CO2 than all of Europe's car's combined. Even if the entire world converted to zero-emission EVs overnight, it wouldn't make a meaningful dent in these numbers. The inconvenient truth is that in order to make a serious dent on transportation related CO2 emissions, the entire developed world would have to give up its lavish lifestyle of internationally shipped products and foods. Sadly a harder sell then 'drive an EV to save the planet lol', so our governments continue to focus on inconsequential but easily attainable measures. And that is nothing to say of the fact that cutting down international shipping is at odds with free market capitalism that's driving our civilisation. Fun fact: bulk carrier shipping is so cheap that in Australia, locally caught fish are shipped to China for processing and freezing and then shipped back here for retail. The pollution associated with this alone is more than the sum pollution of all Australian cars.
- exergy 7y ago
  Do you have a source for your claim? Here[1] is a link I found breaking down the fuel consumption by sector. Seems Motor Oil vastly outscores Residue Fuel Oil, which I believe is what tankers use. I may be wrong, though, and would be interested in being corrected. [1] https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec3_23.pdf https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec3_23.pdf
  - missosoup 7y ago
    https://medium.com/@victoria27/heres-how-much-pollution-shipping-containers-and-freight-trucks-cause-b358cb034c70 https://medium.com/@victoria27/heres-how-much-pollution-ship... https://www.ft.com/content/8bceef94-86cd-11e9-a028-86cea8523dc2 https://www.ft.com/content/8bceef94-86cd-11e9-a028-86cea8523... https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/cargo-container-shipping-carbon-pollution/ https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/cargo-container-shipping... https://newatlas.com/shipping-pollution/11526/ https://newatlas.com/shipping-pollution/11526/ https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/why-australia-is-not-making-the-most-of-its-china-seafood-opportunity-20180626-h11wh8 https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/why-australia-is-not-maki... My actual job is in the shipping route optimisation space. Sub-percentile improvements in fuel consumption for a single route result in hundreds of millions of dollars of fuel savings. Of a fuel that's both cheaper and far more polluting than diesel. It's pretty obvious that shipping fuel consumption and associated emissions eclipse personal transportation.
sdoering 7y ago
Next to everyone doing things - we could also add some regulation for extremely polluting industries/companies. Like I remember that one European Cruise company's ships produced the same amount of CO2-equivalent than all European Cars combined last year (or was it the year before that?). All friggin EU cars? This is what I would call a lever. And for what? For the sake of one company making money by providing a kind of recreation that could at least be discussed as it provides recreation - but recreation could be provided in a more environmental friendly way as well. Just regulating this one industry would go a long way. And there are probably some other low hanging fruits still undiscussed. Sadly the whole discussion seems to revolve around what the individual should/could do. Often it seems to me especially to mask the fact that regulating some industries would be a faster and imho more efficient way.
- zajio1am 7y ago
  > Like I remember that one European Cruise company's ships produced the same amount of CO2-equivalent than all European Cars combined last year Seems like BS. Such propositions are sometimes claimed, but they are for SO2/NOx/particulates emissions, not for CO2. Then they got misinterpreted as CO2 emissions.
- CalRobert 7y ago
  Regulation is crucial. I worry my original comment was "you should do this". Really it's "we need to build society such that doing this is the easiest option" When polled, people in Copenhagen don't say they ride a bike to save the planet, it's just the easiest way to get around. The city is also absolutely heavenly to walk in.

Bantros 7y ago

WalterBright 7y ago

> A huge amount of human endeavour is spent helping a relatively few rich people suck a bit more of the Earth before it implodes. Big industrial companies are not making products for rich people, but for the vast bulk of people.

coldtea 7y ago
And a huge 24/7 mechanism is used to make this vast bulk of people want, work for, and buy, those products...
- WalterBright 7y ago
  I doubt more than a handful of people would trade their lives for subsistence farming, and those would likely trade back after a year or two.
  - morsch 7y ago
    No doubt. But who claimed otherwise? The closest I could find is that CalRoberts said thay theyd'd spend more time gardening and cooking if they had the time, which is hard to refute unless you know them personally, is not an overgeneralisation -- and even if it was, growing a few tomatoes is a far fetch from subsistence farming. You're making a classic straw man argument.
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      > You're making a classic straw man argument. Am I? Because that's what one winds up with if one dispenses with buying all that stuff people were induced to want by industry. Besides, it's a mite presumptuous to claim that people are wasting their lives acquiring things they are induced to want, rather than actually wanting.
      - CalRobert 7y ago
        My original intent was to suggest that wealthy people consume more (after all, they have the wealth to do so) and ultimately a lot of our current economic system is designed to serve those needs. There's the classic example of "rich nerds in SF trying to solve problems for other rich nerds" but ultimately it's a matter of who controls most of the income that can be spent on non-necessities.

coldtea 7y ago

>The tragic thing is that there's this idea you have to live life as an austere pioneer hippie to address this. You really don't. A world of mostly-vegetarian people living in modern, timber (for carbon sequestration) flats in mixed-use environments, using renewable electricity to power their heat pumps and AC, traveling primarily via bike, walking, and public transport, and owning less disposable crap would go a long, long way. That means a reduction of production and consumer spending by 50% or more, and the end of the "no limits progress" which is beyond the pale for modern business interests, and the 10% well off part of the population that does their biding (executives, intellectuals, politicians, media people, and so on). It's better in today's prevalent culture that the world end in flames (perhaps while waiting for some magic technology to fix it all) than go back on consumption...

bbddg 7y ago
"It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Capitalism."
- sneak 7y ago
  I think it is a dire logical error to equate capitalism, which arises naturally out of fair and mutually consensual dealing between humans, and the neverending consumer consumption drive epitomized by the global west. They are not the same thing, and the former does not necessitate the latter. Same goes for all the other ills of our society that people misguidedly invoke under the “capitalism” umbrella, like intellectual property, patents, and regulatory capture. Military-industrial complex-flavored capitalism is the problem. It sounds like that is part of the problem described in the article, too.
  - lucian1900 7y ago
    They are exactly the same thing. Capitalism requires endless growth, which requires endless production and consumption. Those in turn require imperialism, to have a supply of desperate workers and consumers. Imperialism is not always overtly military, but it is always a threat of violence in order to assert power. Read Lenin's "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism", he makes it very easy to understand.

surge 7y ago

The problem with your reasoning is this is being done by corrupt governments and cattle and lumber industries in a country making consumer goods for themselves. I can do all those things here and it won't do anything to fix the problem there, the problems are local and will continue to be local as long as the people of Brazil tolerate it. How many people have donated to funds to preserve the Amazon, and what exactly has that gotten us? We sit here in a our affluent country and tell those in another country that they shouldn't exploit their natural resources to have what we have? This is backwards and naive thinking. Until the people locally value what they have more than they do economic prosperity, even if only temporary, it will continue no matter what life style Americans or Europeans choose to adopt.

andrepd 7y ago

>A huge amount of human endeavour is spent helping a relatively few rich people suck a bit more of the Earth before it implodes. A summary of production under capitalism.

fit2rule 7y ago

My family and I have changed our ways. I used to live a typically American lifestyle - spending 4 hours every day in the car, mostly parked on a freeway, to get to work. Ordering takeout 5 times a week because I was too exhausted to cook for myself. Buying useless crap that filled my house, only to get a bigger house for more useless crap. But, after the 9/11 attacks, I took a good hard look at myself. You could say, the blowback factor was real. Now I live in a modest house just outside the city where I work, and I can cycle into the city in 40 minutes through a green landscape when the weather is good. My family and I are avid gardeners and grow our own veggies for 4/5th's of the year - sourcing it from local farmers for the rest of the time when our garden is sleeping for winter. We cook for ourselves like demons, and have massively improved health as a result. My children are taller and stronger than their peers, because they've been raised on home cooking and fresh vegetables where their peers were not. I also ride electric, always and only - a small, weak, underpowered electric moped gets me through the city comfortably, and I recharge it every few days from house power, derived from renewables (solar and wind). Its pretty much ideal in terms of carbon footprint. It took a big change however. I had to leave the USA and now live in middle Europe (Vienna, Austria) - a country that has long since decided to upgrade the standard of living of its people through smart economic policies designed to reduce dependence on petroleum. Its not perfect - there is still a lot of work to do in my community - but its certainly better than the, frankly disturbing, lifestyle I led in the USA. The point is, the resources are there. People can actually massively reduce their carbon footprint if needed. You may have to move - far and wide - to escape the city trap. If you are spending more than an hour every day in your car, just to support your lifestyle, this is a clue that you MUST change. Every hour spent in traffic is a crime against the planet.

22dingdongdung 7y ago
(I'll be labelled a bigot but go look at the increased crimes...) I want to move to Europe someplace without the immigrant problem- is Austria good?
- CalRobert 7y ago
  "move to Europe" "the immigrant problem" Well, you see, the act you're referring to is "immigration" so, by definition, no.

rayiner 7y ago

> A world of mostly-vegetarian people living in modern, timber (for carbon sequestration) flats in mixed-use environments, using renewable electricity to power their heat pumps and AC, traveling primarily via bike, walking, and public transport, and owning less disposable crap would go a long, long way Can you quantify that into something more precise than a fuzzy feeling?

reallydontask 7y ago
What kind of units are you after? It is clear that the proposal would lead to a lot less energy usage and less pollution and thus to a cleaner environment, places where most energy generates little pollution would see the fewer benefits, which would help to ameliorate the effects of climate change.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Like degrees of avoided warming. Because the proposal above is not sufficient to avoid climate change in any significant respect, especially a counting for increased living standards in India and China.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

sound_vapours 7y ago

>You could hire an EV for a weekend excursion or take a slow, internet-connected ship to travel for an overseas holiday. I think part of the reason air travel is so popular is that people are trying to make the best of what little vacation time they have. Slow travel would be so much nicer if one could afford an extra week dedicated to the journey.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
I feel this is a factor, but contributes very little. Having a choice between 1 week travel + 2 weeks at the destination, vs. 1 day travel + 2 weeks and 6 days at the destination, I'd chose the latter. Unless travel is a special experience in itself, people will consider it just means to an end, and pick the most convenient one affordable.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- CalRobert 7y ago
  For things like a transcontinental flight, etc. this is very true. But for things like, say, my recent trip from Portland OR to Sacramento, having vacation measured in weeks and not days makes it feasible to do things like take a train (highly recommended - a sleeper car is a MUCH nicer experience with an infant than an airplane)
forgottenpass 7y ago
Yeah, spending even more time in cramped quarters, exactly what I want to do with my hypothetical extra vacation time.

esotericn 7y ago

I agree. I'm at less than a third of the typical US footprint. I offset the rest. That involves, in its totality, not jetting around, not driving an ICE, and not eating meat. My country uses primarily renewables. A whole bunch of the rest of that is related to industrial processes and transport of food/materials that can be addressed. It would not impact me severely if my fruits came from different places or I had to eat different fruits. I don't think my life is "worse" at all than the typical American lifestyle. People talk about quality of life, but what they actually mean is that they've chosen some arbitrary metric to maximise (e.g. overseas holidays particularly to very far flung places or whatever) and if they don't have that then QoL would be lower. To me that sounds like a boring life, not a quality life. Before someone trots out the 'but EVs are expensive'; 'but solar will take time' stuff; sure, it's not trivial for people to do this stuff in isolation, the point is that reducing carbon doesn't mean living in a cave. It means some small mindful adjustments, that's it. When I look at what I'm using honestly it could be way lower making more substitutions; it'd just be the companies that provide services to me substituting instead of me, e.g. regulation.

Gatsky 7y ago

This is a lovely idea, but totally ignorant of global demography[1]. By 2100 there will be >3 billion people living in India and central Africa. Centra Africa in particular will show some of the greatest population growth. There will be another 300 million people living in the Congo, which is one fifth the size of the USA and a nightmarish war zone most of the time. There will be a stunning 600 million more people in Nigeria, which is even smaller. The irony is that these people will be mostly-vegetarian, use renewable energy and travel by bike, just not by their own choosing. Sheer numbers however will ensure global consumption continues to increase rapidly. I don't know what the solution is, but the lifestyle choices of the Western world will become increasingly irrelevant. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth

kzzy 7y ago
I am amazed that you're blaming future humans in the third world for current issues created by first world consumerism. Sorry but it is an absurd strawman argument and reeks of your privilege.
- Gatsky 7y ago
  You have totally misconstrued what I am saying. I am NOT blaming anyone. My point is that it is a fantasy to think that wealthy westerners can significantly reduce global consumption by choosing to live a certain way. As a thought experiment, how much of a difference would it have made to the world today if the British empire decreed in 1700 that all its subjects adopt more eco friendly lifestyles?
  - irrlichthn 7y ago
    "I'm not going to fix this crash, because next year, there might be a similar bug, and I'm not sure how to fix that yet." I hope you don't code that way.
  - kzzy 7y ago
    No, you have indeed constructed a strawman argument based on prejudiced fears of third world 'population explosion' and poor data. Let me put aside the fact that third world peoples are not sitting around waiting for such explosions to occur and are proactive about and invested in our own resources and prospects. Let me put aside the comparison of the poorest, say, Indians (the strata where such an 'explosion' is likeliest to occur due to a host of social reasons) vs the richest, say, Americans. Even putting all that aside: the per capita consumption of an American is 10 times that of an Indian based on latest data [1]. [1]: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=eg_use_pcap_kg_oe&idim=country:USA:RUS:IRN&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=eg_use_pcap_kg_oe&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:USA:IND&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&... And this does not at all take into account that so, so much of American consumer goods are manufactured abroad and does not factor into this calculation. Really, please interrogate the kind of prejudice that leads to projections of the kind you have accepted, and the kind of prejudice that then uses it as a rationalization for not course-correcting own behavior.

notyourday 7y ago

> You could hire an EV for a weekend excursion or take a slow, internet-connected ship to travel for an overseas holiday. > Also, make 3 months' vacation the minimum. Turn off Slack at 5 PM. We have so much material crap it's hard to fathom, but many people are horribly starved of time. If I had more time I know I'd cook more and work in the garden more instead of ordering takeaway. In the words of the Maria Antoinette "Let them eat cake"!