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Thats a really good counter point and I can't think of any way the situations are different other than my morals saying working for pornhub is ok but trashing t

Thats a really good counter point and I can't think of any way the situations are different other than my morals saying working for pornhub is ok but trashing the planet is not. Of course thats totally subjective and someone could be of the opinion that working for pornhub is not ok.

kortilla 7y ago
Mining != trashing the planet. Also, given that there is literally no alternative to mining, how do your morals allow you to support mining companies by using their products?
- baroffoos 7y ago
  The coal mines in Australia are totally unnecessary. Australia is one of the best countries in the world for the ability to be powered on renewable energy. Which is now cheaper than coal. Literally the only purpose for coal in Australia is political reasons now. Yes I know coal is used for the production of other materials but there is more than enough coal currently being mined for steel. We just need to stop senselessly burning it when there is limitless energy raining down on empty desert.
  - brigandish 7y ago
    From what I know (and I don't claim to be an expert), solar panels require mining and also cause a lot of waste (what happens to a panel after its 20 year life cycle?). I've not heard whether solar farms would work in Australia - wouldn't the amount of distance be a problem? - nor whether they'd actually be any more efficient than nuclear. Certainly, I recently watched Michael Schellenberger's talk (it's in article form here[1]) and I was surprised at how destructive renewables seem when more detail is given about their implementation. [1] https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-the-planet/ https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-th...
    - jdnenej 7y ago
      Most of the materials from a panel should be recycleable. The bulk of the panel is an aluminium and glass wrapper over the solar cells. Glass and aluminium are very recycleable.
      - vetinari 7y ago
        They also contain metals like lead, chromium and cadmium. Recycling solar panels is not that simple or clean, it also involves burning plastic.
        spats1990 7y ago
        Sounds like that thing about the perfect being the enemy of the good to me. This chain of comments is interesting to me because it seems to follow a theme I always see around discussion of mining in Australia. To put it extremely bluntly, it usually goes: "Australia is in an advantageous position for a pivot to solar energy" --> "Well yes but we can't just stop mining, and solar panels aren't perfect by the way!" Related is the (to me) laughable notion that someone who uses products derived from Australian mining or benefited indirectly from that industry (almost unavoidable given Australian rare earth mining, for example, and the size of the mining industry in Australia) is somehow a moral hypocrite. I'm sorry, but by that logic, one is a moral hypocrite if one has criticized politicians but has not personally tried to make a difference in the system by becoming one; or one is a moral hypocrite for criticizing Google while continuing to use Gmail. It has no end. "Oh, you want a greener world, but I see you got on a plane once. Checkmate!!" No one reasonable thinks renewables like solar are a perfect solution. They just don't produce on such a drastic scale things like unlined coal ash dumps that leak into the groundwater.
        brigandish 7y ago
        Well, if we’re going down the route of fallacies then the post I replied to was cherry picking to produce a false dilemma, but to claim that would be just as unfair as your straw man. They made the choice between “limitless energy raining down on empty desert“ and coal, without mentioning a) how to move the energy, b) how to get the materials for the panels, c) how to clean up / recycle the panels, or d) why nuclear in the desert isn’t a choice. I’d say nuclear seems the good choice here versus a perfect that’s so perfect it’s utopian. It’s not wrong to question utopian visions. By all means, get rid of coal - is anyone arguing on this page arguing against it?
  - kortilla 7y ago
    Cool, don’t conflate coal mining with mining and you won’t have so many issues going forward.
    - baroffoos 7y ago
      The parent comment mentioned the boycotts in Australia. Maybe I should have added the context for those not in on Australian news but these boycotts are all about coal mining in Australia.
Bartweiss 7y ago
I think there is a distinction as far as the nature of the boycott, though it's not a clear line. Declining to buy from or work for a company is pretty much always justifiable. Refusing to provide customer-specific services/work (a rental crane, management consulting, etc.) is a more impactful move, but it's still basically a refusal to engage with the target, either by providing a limited resource or by being enabling their specific actions Refusing them non-scarce, non-specific transactions (e.g. buying lumber) is more extreme, and can become worrying in markets with little competition. Refusing content-agnostic services is the most extreme and hardest to justify action. These are things that don't connect to the nature of their boycott target, and which many people rely on continuous access to, so even when alternatives exist being forced to switch is actively damaging. We've seen it with DDoS protection, payment processing, and DNS support, but it becomes more vividly alarming if we imagine denying electricity or highway access to an unpopular business. This is why even as Cloudflare decided to shut down Stormfront, they publicly worried that it was a dangerous path to go down. Finally, I think the situation with payment processors is actually much worse than with DDoS protection, partway to providers of vital services like water and electricity. PayPal is not necessary for survival, but access to money essentially is. And the usual rationale of "you can't force us to deal with anyone else, go open a competitor" is compromised by the extremely tight regulation of payment processors. If PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard decide to shut someone down, there aren't many alternatives. And when we get into tightly-regulated businesses taking government-friendly actions that wouldn't be legal to demand directly (like blocking payments to Wikileaks), the situation gets even murkier...
- magduf 7y ago
  >but it becomes more vividly alarming if we imagine denying electricity or highway access to an unpopular business. This is why even as Cloudflare decided to shut down Stormfront, they publicly worried that it was a dangerous path to go down. I can understand their worry, but I think they did the right thing. If I owned a hosting service, I wouldn't provide services to people like that either. I don't want to be known as "the hosting company for neo-Nazis". If a service is so important that no one should be denied it, no matter how repulsive they are, then I think it's government's job to ensure those people receive that service. No one can really deny highway access to unpopular businesses; highways are owned and operated by the government. Electricity is a little different, because it's usually privately-owned but heavily regulated because it's a local monopoly in many places, so I imagine most regulations would forbid them from supplying power to unpopular customers. Internet hosting service, however, is not government-owned, nor a utility or monopoly in any way. There's countless providers all over the planet. Or you can just set up your own; you don't really have to host your website on a hosting service. People used to run their own webservers all the time. Physical internet access (your neighborhood ISP), however, is much more akin to the electric utility.

kortilla 7y ago

Mining != trashing the planet. Also, given that there is literally no alternative to mining, how do your morals allow you to support mining companies by using their products?

baroffoos 7y ago
The coal mines in Australia are totally unnecessary. Australia is one of the best countries in the world for the ability to be powered on renewable energy. Which is now cheaper than coal. Literally the only purpose for coal in Australia is political reasons now. Yes I know coal is used for the production of other materials but there is more than enough coal currently being mined for steel. We just need to stop senselessly burning it when there is limitless energy raining down on empty desert.
- brigandish 7y ago
  From what I know (and I don't claim to be an expert), solar panels require mining and also cause a lot of waste (what happens to a panel after its 20 year life cycle?). I've not heard whether solar farms would work in Australia - wouldn't the amount of distance be a problem? - nor whether they'd actually be any more efficient than nuclear. Certainly, I recently watched Michael Schellenberger's talk (it's in article form here[1]) and I was surprised at how destructive renewables seem when more detail is given about their implementation. [1] https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-the-planet/ https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-th...
  - jdnenej 7y ago
    Most of the materials from a panel should be recycleable. The bulk of the panel is an aluminium and glass wrapper over the solar cells. Glass and aluminium are very recycleable.
    - vetinari 7y ago
      They also contain metals like lead, chromium and cadmium. Recycling solar panels is not that simple or clean, it also involves burning plastic.
      - spats1990 7y ago
        Sounds like that thing about the perfect being the enemy of the good to me. This chain of comments is interesting to me because it seems to follow a theme I always see around discussion of mining in Australia. To put it extremely bluntly, it usually goes: "Australia is in an advantageous position for a pivot to solar energy" --> "Well yes but we can't just stop mining, and solar panels aren't perfect by the way!" Related is the (to me) laughable notion that someone who uses products derived from Australian mining or benefited indirectly from that industry (almost unavoidable given Australian rare earth mining, for example, and the size of the mining industry in Australia) is somehow a moral hypocrite. I'm sorry, but by that logic, one is a moral hypocrite if one has criticized politicians but has not personally tried to make a difference in the system by becoming one; or one is a moral hypocrite for criticizing Google while continuing to use Gmail. It has no end. "Oh, you want a greener world, but I see you got on a plane once. Checkmate!!" No one reasonable thinks renewables like solar are a perfect solution. They just don't produce on such a drastic scale things like unlined coal ash dumps that leak into the groundwater.
        brigandish 7y ago
        Well, if we’re going down the route of fallacies then the post I replied to was cherry picking to produce a false dilemma, but to claim that would be just as unfair as your straw man. They made the choice between “limitless energy raining down on empty desert“ and coal, without mentioning a) how to move the energy, b) how to get the materials for the panels, c) how to clean up / recycle the panels, or d) why nuclear in the desert isn’t a choice. I’d say nuclear seems the good choice here versus a perfect that’s so perfect it’s utopian. It’s not wrong to question utopian visions. By all means, get rid of coal - is anyone arguing on this page arguing against it?
- kortilla 7y ago
  Cool, don’t conflate coal mining with mining and you won’t have so many issues going forward.
  - baroffoos 7y ago
    The parent comment mentioned the boycotts in Australia. Maybe I should have added the context for those not in on Australian news but these boycotts are all about coal mining in Australia.

Bartweiss 7y ago

I think there is a distinction as far as the nature of the boycott, though it's not a clear line. Declining to buy from or work for a company is pretty much always justifiable. Refusing to provide customer-specific services/work (a rental crane, management consulting, etc.) is a more impactful move, but it's still basically a refusal to engage with the target, either by providing a limited resource or by being enabling their specific actions Refusing them non-scarce, non-specific transactions (e.g. buying lumber) is more extreme, and can become worrying in markets with little competition. Refusing content-agnostic services is the most extreme and hardest to justify action. These are things that don't connect to the nature of their boycott target, and which many people rely on continuous access to, so even when alternatives exist being forced to switch is actively damaging. We've seen it with DDoS protection, payment processing, and DNS support, but it becomes more vividly alarming if we imagine denying electricity or highway access to an unpopular business. This is why even as Cloudflare decided to shut down Stormfront, they publicly worried that it was a dangerous path to go down. Finally, I think the situation with payment processors is actually much worse than with DDoS protection, partway to providers of vital services like water and electricity. PayPal is not necessary for survival, but access to money essentially is. And the usual rationale of "you can't force us to deal with anyone else, go open a competitor" is compromised by the extremely tight regulation of payment processors. If PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard decide to shut someone down, there aren't many alternatives. And when we get into tightly-regulated businesses taking government-friendly actions that wouldn't be legal to demand directly (like blocking payments to Wikileaks), the situation gets even murkier...

magduf 7y ago
>but it becomes more vividly alarming if we imagine denying electricity or highway access to an unpopular business. This is why even as Cloudflare decided to shut down Stormfront, they publicly worried that it was a dangerous path to go down. I can understand their worry, but I think they did the right thing. If I owned a hosting service, I wouldn't provide services to people like that either. I don't want to be known as "the hosting company for neo-Nazis". If a service is so important that no one should be denied it, no matter how repulsive they are, then I think it's government's job to ensure those people receive that service. No one can really deny highway access to unpopular businesses; highways are owned and operated by the government. Electricity is a little different, because it's usually privately-owned but heavily regulated because it's a local monopoly in many places, so I imagine most regulations would forbid them from supplying power to unpopular customers. Internet hosting service, however, is not government-owned, nor a utility or monopoly in any way. There's countless providers all over the planet. Or you can just set up your own; you don't really have to host your website on a hosting service. People used to run their own webservers all the time. Physical internet access (your neighborhood ISP), however, is much more akin to the electric utility.