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While I largely agree with you, decades on it seems that if the message factors down to "quick, everybody stop doing stuff", it's hard to get political traction

While I largely agree with you, decades on it seems that if the message factors down to "quick, everybody stop doing stuff", it's hard to get political traction. Every step in the right direction is a good one. Perfect is the enemy of good.

mumblemumble 7y ago
Unstated major premise: Buying electric vans is a step in the right direction in the first place. I'm thinking here of the lessons we've been learning recently about recycling: It would appear that we now need to come to terms with the possibility that recycling has done far more harm than good, by making it easier to justify excessive packaging waste while at the same time mostly only giving consumers the impression that what they put in the recycle bin wasn't going to waste. I could see something similar happening with electric delivery vans: Perhaps, by ostensibly greening the most consumer-visible part of the process, they can make them feel better about buying into a way of getting their consumer products that relies on a much less efficient supply chain than the one used by the system it's supplanting. Perhaps, if we dig into it, we'll discover that Amazon is being pennywise here, because properly dealing with the pounds would require rolling back the "free 2 day shipping of pretty much anything to pretty much anywhere" guarantee that underlies so much of Amazon's current business model.
- noonespecial 7y ago
  It's possible. But even if that part is true, the large investment might spur faster growth in electrification which might then be good enough to outweigh that initial downside. Unintended consequences are hard. I'm just getting a little fatigued with the fearful "don't do anything, it might make it worse" coupled with the "stop all the everything" approach to environmentalism that seems to becoming ever more dominant. I just don't think that's going to work. Doing nothing won't help, and convincing people to do without doesn't work, so ?
  - mumblemumble 7y ago
    I wasn't really going for "don't do anything, it might make it worse" so much as calling attention to what I suspect is an act of greenwashing. As far as convincing people to do without goes, IMO the root cause of the problem is consumerism, and anything that fails to contend directly with that is bikeshedding.
- derekp7 7y ago
  How would increasing the delivery time reduce the amount of gas it takes to get an item to my doorstep? Considering that the items ship from a warehouse about 15 miles from my house. I suppose that if an occasional item ships from across the country, then it would be less impactful to go by truck for 5 days, so if that is the case then any item that falls under that category could have a selection item on the checkout screen that says "Delay shipment by 3 days, to save 3 lbs of greenhouse gasses". That may influence consumer behavior. BTW, what is the greenhouse gas emissions difference between one delivery vehicle making the rounds, vs several hundred people each driving to a store to buy something?
  - Symmetry 7y ago
    Yes, this is all about speed/efficiency tradeoffs in long haul shipping between rail, highway, and flight. It's hard to say what fraction of Amazon orders aren't stored in delivery distance of your house but it's probably most of them.
  - organsnyder 7y ago
    Batching deliveries could result in massive energy savings. Right now, Amazon's vans tend to hop around neighborhoods (at least that's what their delivery tracker shows me). If deliveries were batched, the delivery density would be much higher, reducing the distance a single vehicle would have to travel to empty a full load of packages.
    - djaychela 7y ago
      Absolutely - imagine if there was a system where you had one delivery a week which consisted of all the items from all the shopping you'd done, instead of piecemeal deliveries throughout the week. The savings could be immense, but I can't imagine such a system being popular.
      - rrix2 7y ago
        Amazon provides this already: https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=17928921011 https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=17928921011
TeMPOraL 7y ago
I'd put a stronger argument: if everyone suddenly stopped doing stuff, the global economy would collapse, most people would starve to death, all our technology would rot and disappear in couple decades, and the few survivors would live with medieval-level technology on a thoroughly broken planet with no chance of regaining any advanced tools for thousands, or tens of thousands of years (as all dense energy sources accessible without XXI-century tech have been used up). There is an often unmentioned extra constraint on dealing with climate change: we have to do it in a way that doesn't break technological civilization.
- m0zg 7y ago
  It's a typical strawman. An average US consumer could easily forego half of what they buy (aside from groceries) and they'd still be fine. One would argue that this needs to happen for us to really make progress on reducing emissions. People blame "corporations" and "the rich", but it's like blaming a Mexican cartel for making drugs. They wouldn't make them if there weren't any buyers, and unlike with drugs, pointing out that people just buy too much shit is not "victim shaming".
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I'm not talking about any kind of "victim shaming" here. Just pointing out the fundamental fact that thoroughly breaking economy is game over. Think for a moment why we want to fight climate change? It's not because of some deep love to the pile of space rock we happen to inhabit. I was addressing the problem with ideas that people should "just stop doing things", or that we should be drastically reducing consumption, or halting economic growth. These things, "consumption" and "growth", aren't just luxury goods and high valuations of bullshit companies. It's peace and prosperity and a hot meal on the table. It's scientific progress and all the technologies needed to fix the mess we've made. Since bring up blaming: sure, "an average US consumer could easily forego half of what they buy (aside from groceries) and they'd still be fine". But good luck making them do that. When dealing with climate change, we need to talk about what's possible, not about what would be possible if we were living in a fairy land where every human is a perfectly rational actor prioritizing good of the many over the good of the few, and coordination problems didn't exist.

mumblemumble 7y ago

Unstated major premise: Buying electric vans is a step in the right direction in the first place. I'm thinking here of the lessons we've been learning recently about recycling: It would appear that we now need to come to terms with the possibility that recycling has done far more harm than good, by making it easier to justify excessive packaging waste while at the same time mostly only giving consumers the impression that what they put in the recycle bin wasn't going to waste. I could see something similar happening with electric delivery vans: Perhaps, by ostensibly greening the most consumer-visible part of the process, they can make them feel better about buying into a way of getting their consumer products that relies on a much less efficient supply chain than the one used by the system it's supplanting. Perhaps, if we dig into it, we'll discover that Amazon is being pennywise here, because properly dealing with the pounds would require rolling back the "free 2 day shipping of pretty much anything to pretty much anywhere" guarantee that underlies so much of Amazon's current business model.

noonespecial 7y ago
It's possible. But even if that part is true, the large investment might spur faster growth in electrification which might then be good enough to outweigh that initial downside. Unintended consequences are hard. I'm just getting a little fatigued with the fearful "don't do anything, it might make it worse" coupled with the "stop all the everything" approach to environmentalism that seems to becoming ever more dominant. I just don't think that's going to work. Doing nothing won't help, and convincing people to do without doesn't work, so ?
- mumblemumble 7y ago
  I wasn't really going for "don't do anything, it might make it worse" so much as calling attention to what I suspect is an act of greenwashing. As far as convincing people to do without goes, IMO the root cause of the problem is consumerism, and anything that fails to contend directly with that is bikeshedding.
derekp7 7y ago
How would increasing the delivery time reduce the amount of gas it takes to get an item to my doorstep? Considering that the items ship from a warehouse about 15 miles from my house. I suppose that if an occasional item ships from across the country, then it would be less impactful to go by truck for 5 days, so if that is the case then any item that falls under that category could have a selection item on the checkout screen that says "Delay shipment by 3 days, to save 3 lbs of greenhouse gasses". That may influence consumer behavior. BTW, what is the greenhouse gas emissions difference between one delivery vehicle making the rounds, vs several hundred people each driving to a store to buy something?
- Symmetry 7y ago
  Yes, this is all about speed/efficiency tradeoffs in long haul shipping between rail, highway, and flight. It's hard to say what fraction of Amazon orders aren't stored in delivery distance of your house but it's probably most of them.
- organsnyder 7y ago
  Batching deliveries could result in massive energy savings. Right now, Amazon's vans tend to hop around neighborhoods (at least that's what their delivery tracker shows me). If deliveries were batched, the delivery density would be much higher, reducing the distance a single vehicle would have to travel to empty a full load of packages.
  - djaychela 7y ago
    Absolutely - imagine if there was a system where you had one delivery a week which consisted of all the items from all the shopping you'd done, instead of piecemeal deliveries throughout the week. The savings could be immense, but I can't imagine such a system being popular.
    - rrix2 7y ago
      Amazon provides this already: https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=17928921011 https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=17928921011

TeMPOraL 7y ago

I'd put a stronger argument: if everyone suddenly stopped doing stuff, the global economy would collapse, most people would starve to death, all our technology would rot and disappear in couple decades, and the few survivors would live with medieval-level technology on a thoroughly broken planet with no chance of regaining any advanced tools for thousands, or tens of thousands of years (as all dense energy sources accessible without XXI-century tech have been used up). There is an often unmentioned extra constraint on dealing with climate change: we have to do it in a way that doesn't break technological civilization.

m0zg 7y ago
It's a typical strawman. An average US consumer could easily forego half of what they buy (aside from groceries) and they'd still be fine. One would argue that this needs to happen for us to really make progress on reducing emissions. People blame "corporations" and "the rich", but it's like blaming a Mexican cartel for making drugs. They wouldn't make them if there weren't any buyers, and unlike with drugs, pointing out that people just buy too much shit is not "victim shaming".
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I'm not talking about any kind of "victim shaming" here. Just pointing out the fundamental fact that thoroughly breaking economy is game over. Think for a moment why we want to fight climate change? It's not because of some deep love to the pile of space rock we happen to inhabit. I was addressing the problem with ideas that people should "just stop doing things", or that we should be drastically reducing consumption, or halting economic growth. These things, "consumption" and "growth", aren't just luxury goods and high valuations of bullshit companies. It's peace and prosperity and a hot meal on the table. It's scientific progress and all the technologies needed to fix the mess we've made. Since bring up blaming: sure, "an average US consumer could easily forego half of what they buy (aside from groceries) and they'd still be fine". But good luck making them do that. When dealing with climate change, we need to talk about what's possible, not about what would be possible if we were living in a fairy land where every human is a perfectly rational actor prioritizing good of the many over the good of the few, and coordination problems didn't exist.