13 ms·

> Much like paper straws or canvas totes, though, well-meaning small changes miss the forest of structural change for the trees of lifestyle tweaking This is m

• xtian 7y ago
  > At its base level things like urban design, our reliance on cars, subsidies on crop mono-cultures and the lack of proper introspection as a people hurt us far more than any of these specific problems. With the current ordering of our society, most people do not have the power or economic freedom to effectively advocate for change in our urban design, reliance on cars, or subsidies on crop monocultures. Do you really think the people making small changes in the ways that they have access to would reject more significant structural changes? This seems like a complete caricature to me.
  • nitrogen 7y ago
    This has been called the partial control fallacy, and we all fall for it at least occasionally: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8ecz5iMQ7wNmhEaCh/the-partial-control-fallacy https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8ecz5iMQ7wNmhEaCh/the-partia... If you might be very near some threshold where the outcome can go from bad to good, then this kind of microoptimization in the face of macrowaste can make sense. Otherwise, it's actually more wasteful to do small things when the big things don't change. The urge to "do my part" is a strong and important one, but in some contexts it leads to a more wasteful outcome.
    • xtian 7y ago
      What's the best way to change the big things?
      • LB232323 7y ago
        Collective action through widespread unity and organization. In other words, revolution. This method has successfully evolved society time and time again.
        • xtian 7y ago
          I completely agree. And I would argue that small changes aren't "wasteful" in this context since they start conversations and demonstrate commitment and credibility.
        • chrisdhoover 7y ago
          Hopefully you are on the winning side, otherwise you may be re-eduacated, disappeared, thrown in a camp, hung, shot, beheaded or otherwise exterminated. at the very least will suffer the tyranny of the majority.
          • entropicdrifter 7y ago
            Isn't the whole point of Democracy that it allows for peaceful revolution? It seems to me that you've made the assumption that all revolution involves violence and purges of dissenters.
            • dws1999 7y ago
              peaceful revolution != peaceful transition of power historically speaking, revolutions are a crapshoot. forward looking, revolutions are a crapshoot (often sold by people not acquainted with history).
            • Kaze404 7y ago
              I don't necessarily disagree, but you're making the assumption that democracy is a given and immutable. "Peaceful" revolution through democracy can very easily become exactly what you're describing because it also relies on the defeated side to comply with the decision (to a certain degree, there's obviously more nuance).
  • fulafel 7y ago
    Most people live in smaller cities/towns where it's actually pretty effective to spend time on changing urban planning.
• theseadroid 7y ago
  > At the end of the day, people would rather feel nice about themselves than make actual change. This. In many many places you see people like that. Many NGOs and charities don't help solving the problems at all if not aggravating them. It makes me doubt if the people running them are actual well intentioned people or just selfish in a different way.
  • alexashka 7y ago
    Being selfish and well intentioned are not incompatible, as long as being selfish includes the well being of those you care about and those you care about includes many people. The many people bit is problematic due to our brain's make-up.
    • xtian 7y ago
      Which aspect of the make-up of our brains limits caring about many people?
      • c22 7y ago
        GP is probably thinking of Dunbar's number[0] and making a distinction between caring concretely about specific individuals and caring more abstractly about the plight of many strangers. It's possible to "care" about the health and well being of arbitrary groups of people, but it really takes knowing and understanding their specific problems to make actual care effective. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
        • xtian 7y ago
          Dunbar's number has to do with the ability to maintain "stable social relationships", not "care". And I reject the notion that a recognition of shared humanity takes place in the abstract.
          • c22 7y ago
• rsync 7y ago
  "It is crazy how much well intentioned people do in the interests of sustainability, and how astoundingly futile or even counter productive it is. At the end of the day, people would rather feel nice about themselves than make actual change." We are currently in the "bargaining stage" of our grief[1] about how we've built our lifestyles on a failure to pay for environmental externalities. People living modern, first-world lifestyles are (myself included) horrified by the idea that we can probably only afford to live like the global middle class - which is tremendously deficient in services, infrastructure, material possessions and their built environment. And so, otherwise intelligent people propose very silly things like the idea that if you just sorted your garbage just right your role in this crisis (the crisis of modernity, in my opinion) has been absolved. For what it's worth, the final stage of grief is paraphrased as: "It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it; I may as well prepare for it." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model
  • martythemaniak 7y ago
    To be honest, I find views like yours not only fatalist, but dangerous. Fatalist because you don't seem to believe that developed-world standards of living are globally possible and so all genuine efforts will just be written off as band-aids. Dangerous because if people start believing this en masse, that prosperity is a zero-sum-game, then war is the only reasonable alternative.
    • lotsofpulp 7y ago
      > Dangerous because if people start believing this en masse, that prosperity is a zero-sum-game, then war is the only reasonable alternative. It’s always been when resources are constrained. For all forms of life. Single family detached homes with garages on quarter acre lots and annual beach/ski vacations are not going to happen for all 8B+ people. The ones that don’t have this are unlucky to have ancestors who lost wars. Although, I might agree that it’s best (at least for me) if people don’t realize this or think about it in these terms en masse.
      • 7y ago
• LB232323 7y ago
  As someone who has experienced hunger and malnutrition, it is entirely a product of capitalism and not a specific detail in the food production chain. Our economic system is highly inefficient, and waste is a necessary part of maintaining profitable prices. This includes starvation, homelessness, and unemployment. Scarcity must be maintained. Malnutrition, or simply hunger in more plain terms, is prevalent across every type of community in the US and the world. The ghettos of cities, trailer parks and economically depressed rural areas, dilapidated suburbs, and the often overlooked Native land reservations. Just to get an idea of the inordinate balance of resources, consider that there are 552,830 homeless people in the US as of 2018 and 17,019,726 vacant homes. Billionaires hoard absolutely massive amounts of value generated by workers and do nothing with it or just let it sit in their portfolios. This mode of production is obscenely inefficient and long due for an overhaul.
  • samatman 7y ago
    > As someone who has experienced hunger and malnutrition, it is entirely a product of capitalism and not a specific detail in the food production chain. This would be relatively simple to demonstrate: simply show that capitalist societies all experience significant hunger and malnutrition, and that non-capitalist societies do not. You may find the latter somewhat challenging.
    • TOGoS 7y ago
      Capitalism currently dominates the entire planet (yes, the United States exerts its power everywhere, even to places that don't welcome it [1]). Of course it's going to be challenging to make such a comparison. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/19/bolivia-is-falling-into-grips-brutal-right-wing-regime/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/19/bolivia-i...
    • LB232323 7y ago
      As TOGoS mentioned, capitalism currently dominates the world. Although it seems like his comment has been hidden, even though he is telling the truth. I expected my own comment to be voted down as it criticizes capitalism. The majority of human history takes place in the mode of production of the hunter-gatherer society. This is before the agricultural revolution and the advent of agricultural civilization. Economists describe this as early communism. The definition of this model is based in large part on the study of the Iroquois Confederacy. This, along with evolutionary models of food sharing, highlight a meat sharing system that is enforced communally. There is personal property, but private ownership of land and essential resources is nonexistent. The community owns the means of production as well as essential resources, and they dictate their distribution by need and not by profit. In modern society, this would manifest as collective ownership of the means of production by the working class. The means of production are capital that is used to produce goods. Land, water, corporations, factories, etc. As workers exist worldwide, collective ownership would take the form of a global socialist state owned by the workers. This is the purpose of the world revolution. As communities become organized around sustainability using vast amounts of capital created by workers under capitalism, the global state becomes redundant. At this stage, the economic structure returns to its original state, which is communism. It's not a ideological debate, calling someone Marxist is as redundant as calling a physicist a Newtonian or a mathematician a Pythagorean. Capitalism itself as we know it was defined by that era of economic science. Of course we should remain skeptical and critical, as many ideas from that era turned out to be wrong. What's difficult is constantly working against decades of Cold War era propaganda and disinformation. The primary American defense against the words socialism or communism is the idea that society is somehow built around personal character flaws and not laws of economic and political science. The capitalist is not inherently greedy, he simply follows the forces of economics. Communism is not some "ideal society" that works on paper but is undermined by human greed. It describes the majority of human history, and it requires a world revolution to exist again. Any nation that describes itself as "socialist" yet participates in the global economy is simply capitalist and masquerading as something else.
• InvisibleCities 7y ago
  >At the end of the day, people would rather feel nice about themselves than make actual change. Almost, but not quite. At the end of the day, there are people making extraordinary amounts of money from the status quo, and those people would rather have the general population squabbling over minutiae than demanding systemic change that would actually resolve the problem (and subsequently cause those people to lose an awful lot of money).
• papreclip 7y ago
  > people would rather feel nice about themselves Is that really it, or do people get a power trip out of getting plastic straws banned?
  • nhoughto 7y ago
    Isn’t that basically the same thing? Power trip getting something banned for everyone ~= changing your own behavior and telling people about it
  • maigret 7y ago
    Do you get a “power trip” when criminals go in prison? I know it’s a whole different level, but have you considered some people genuinely think that this is a bad thing (albeit a minor one IMO as the post explains) in our society?
• zeveb 7y ago
  > Across social, policy and organizational issues in the world, activists routinely assume a vague sense of what is "good" and then champion it, without actually looking into why something is good or what the word means in that context to begin with. Now imagine what happens if you give those well-intentioned but under-informed activists real power. One saw a lot of problems like that in the post-Stalin Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: folks who (mostly) genuinely wanted to do good, or at least (generally) didn't wish to do harm, but who instead wrought a great deal of economic (and more) harm to their countrymen. One sees the same phenomenon in large companies, most of whose executives really do want to do good or at least don't actively wish to hurt anyone, but whose decisions often result in unintended ill consequences both to themselves and others.
• Swizec 7y ago
  > Is food-waste even a bad thing to begin with. At the end of the day I just personally hate spending money on food that sits in the fridge unused then gets thrown out. Or gets cooked and thrown out because we cooked too much. Only thing worse would be setting money on fire directly. So yes, food waste is bad. Avoid.
  • irrational 7y ago
    Don't you eat your leftovers? I don't think we've ever thrown out food, but sometimes we have to eat the same exact thing for quite a few days.
    • Swizec 7y ago
      There usually isn’t enough left for a full meal
      • distances 7y ago
        I find it pretty easy to either eat all the food, or leave enough for a work day lunch. Leaving half a portion uneaten just doesn't happen.
      • maigret 7y ago
        In my family, I’m often surprised by what cool idea they have to reuse most food left over by combining multiple left overs or a left over with something else fresh. It opened my eyes that this is not a fixed state but what you do with it.
      • irrational 7y ago
        Sounds like lunch for the next day. Or a late night snack.
    • duderific 7y ago
      You've never thrown out food? I'd be curious to find out what percentage of people can honestly make that claim. Sometimes you make something that doesn't turn out very well...with the best of intentions, you put it in the refrigerator intending to finish it off, but after a week or so it's just not edible anymore.
• jl6 7y ago
  While I wholeheartedly agree with the thesis that people too readily engage in “sustainability theatre” as an excuse to avoid meaningful lifestyle change, I would also not want to lose sight of the many valuable things that individuals can do to make the world a better place. It’s too easy to sink into apathy if you think change can only be done by others or large groups. 9 words to save the world: Treat others kindly Two kids max Plant based diet
  • lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Spread out suburban and exurban living probably negates most of those savings via the extra use of energy in extra concrete, asphalt, energy to move water, sewage, utilities, and people that much further. I would think without dense living, not much else can really matter.
• BurningFrog 7y ago
  My pet theory is that anything people personally touch or see feels 1000x more important to them than the unseen. So things like straws, shopping bags, and your personal home trash becomes the focus, while vastly bigger problems that are out of sight/touch. are out of mind.
• forgotmypw16 7y ago
  It's bad because producing the food requires enormous expenditures in resources, energy, and ecology. Every morsel you eat was transported on diesel, created by the labor of humans, and cost many animals their lives through habitat loss and environmental poisoning.
• 101404 7y ago
  > It is crazy how much well intentioned people do in the interests of sustainability Maybe I am just too pessimistic. But I see most those people not as "well intentioned" but as "wanting to be part of the group". And to be part of the group, you have to play that game. Like it or not. After all, as humans we are very social animals and most of us need that group recognition.
• mkolodny 7y ago
  The author points to low wages as a real reason why people go hungry: > By focusing on food waste, corporate actors wash their hands of their responsibility to ensure their workers are paid — and therefore fed — just as fast as they punt responsibility for environmental action to consumers. Food waste’s anti-hunger bent doesn’t only divert food from landfills — it diverts our attention from food justice. And earlier in the article: > anti-hunger networks like Feeding America are largely bankrolled by shiny corporate interests like Walmart and Kroger. On its own, this seems uncontroversial. But in light of the fact that these same companies notoriously undermine worker protections and pay workers measly wages — while consistently lobbying Washington to keep wages suppressed — claims to fighting hunger are straight-up deceitful.
  • Shivetya 7y ago
    pretty much ignoring the fact WalMart started a trend when they pushed their wages up in 2015 to nine dollars a hour and have reached eleven or more depending where you are. This in turn led to Target trying to out do WalMart by going a bit higher each time. The unwritten effect is that many smaller businesses who cannot handle the wage pressure were put into a bit of bind and some people employable at minimum wage won't make the cut at higher wages when people who would not have considered the job before enter the market. * I only commented because people tend to herd mentality jump on anything negative about Walmart when in fact they do far better than much of the retail environment out there.
• notduncansmith 7y ago
  Food waste directly causes artificial inflation of food demand, which is reflected in excess agriculture, agriculture being one of the greatest source environmental damage currently. Emissions (throughout the entire supply chain from the farm to the table), soil compaction, runoff and other pollution are all externalized by Big Ag (meaning we as the people of the world pay the cost) and we amplify this when we waste food. That’s not even getting into the excess waste management involved or the direct hit to our GDP from food waste. It’s a big deal.
• lowkeyokay 7y ago
  We should not ignore the value of signalling. There is little impact you can have as an individual. Reducing food waste or recycling have almost no direct impact but, it shows that you care and people respond. Politicians, and companies respond. It’s almost like voting.
  • lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Every single person I know that shows they “care” would be outraged if tax on fuel was sufficiently increased to curb their travel habits (e.g. instagramming from Bali with a paper straw). Hence no politician gets voted in who can actually accomplish the goal of reducing energy and resources usage, because that’s not really what the populace wants. They want to continue consuming and continue feeling good about themselves.
• darawk 7y ago
  The worst part is that all of these problems are more or less easy to solve economically. Just tax the externalities. A gas tax that pay for carbon offsets for each gallon of gas would not actually add all that much at the pump. Barely anything, in fact, about $.10/gallon according to [this source](https://greengasmovement.org/faq/ https://greengasmovement.org/faq/). It's kind of incredible to me that we've banned plastic straws, but we aren't willing to add 10 cents / gallon to the cost of gas.
  • lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Yes, if the goal was to actually reduce emissions, that would mean we need to reduce energy usage, and that would mean less moving around for less amount of mass. And that means incentivizing people to stay put, I.e. taxing fuel. But that isn’t the goal; the goal is to look and feel like something is being done, but to not let it affect one’s quality of life.
    • darawk 7y ago
      Well, the goal isn't necessarily to reduce doing stuff. The goal is to price the costs of doing stuff appropriately. That incentivizes two things: 1. Doing less stuff 2. Doing the same amount of stuff with fewer negative side effects. In the long run we'll get 2, and in the short run we'll get 1. And simply applying the tax will allow that transition to be seamless and efficient.
  • onion2k 7y ago
    $.10 a gallon adds up if you're a trucking business that buys 100,000 gallons a day. That's the point where business starts to lobby against the tax. And exempting businesses from the tax makes it pointless.
    • darawk 7y ago
      Ya I get that that's why it isn't happening. It's just ridiculous.
• kilroy_jones 7y ago
  I find this idea of putting everything in economic terms worrying. What does excessive food waste say about the quality of the culture?
  • maigret 7y ago
    Totally agree. It’s also about respecting the food you have and not being wasteful as a principle. Plus it can bring new recipes to light.
• ticmasta 7y ago
  >> It is crazy how much well intentioned people do in the interests of sustainability I just don't see this. Paying a few dollars more or (gasp!) going without a straw is low-effort virtue signaling. In aggregate I don't see people voluntarily avoiding car or airplane travel, living in tiny, centrally-located shared apartments or skipping fruits and vegetables that are not grown locally (i.e. just potatoes and carrots 8 months per year). We are not going to shift the needle without fundamental change at the point of consumption. Regardless of where you stand this is where we should be deciding collective next steps.
• h0l0cube 7y ago
  >Maybe we should start at the most basic question. Is food-waste even a bad thing to begin with. Yes. Having more than enough food is better than not enough, but to have obscenely more than necessary, and to have the excess go to landfill is 'bad'. To have that excess go to somewhere productive is 'better'. It might not defeat poverty, as the article points out, that is a systemic issue. But it can have positive environmental outcomes. e.g., if food is consumed more efficiently, we need less land for crops; we have waste decomposing as compost which releases less greenhouse gasses than as landfill. The article does a good job of straw-manning attempts at making the situation better, including the grass roots collective effort of consumers to be more mindful (how is this a bad thing?), but there are coincident economic incentives and environmental outcomes to less waste, and that is a 'good' thing.
• ajross 7y ago
  > people would rather feel nice about themselves than make actual change. Alternatively: people desperately want actual change, but are prevented from seeing it by structural details of their government that they can't fix alone. At least... eliminating microplastics and wasted food, or buying renewable electricity and using it to power a personal vehicle, or eating less meat, or taking transit... these are things we can do, if not to fix the problem at least to demonstrate our commitment to its solution in a way that other people can see and hopefully emulate. I mean, look: addressing climate change requires extensive government action, period. Everyone knows this. But all I can do is vote. After that, what? Is your position that the rest of us should just shut up, eat steaks and buy pickups until the rest of "you" get around to agreeing with us?
• wrinklytidbits 7y ago
  Why would you claim using totes bags and paper straws would help with malnutrition and water table depletion? Plastic bags and plastic straws are frowned upon because of how permanent they are and one of the most single use items we use that we live reasonably without. I feel like you want people to make even bigger changes than what they're being led too. I'm happy with consistent, small victories.