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Why Climate Change Won't Be Stopped (2018)

64 points by jeffreyrogers 6y ago

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
I believe very strongly that most well-off Americans should pay higher taxes, including me. I vote accordingly. If my preferred candidate wins, I expect to have less money. I still have an accountant do my taxes, in order to pay as little as possible. I do not think this is hypocritical. It doesn't make sense for me to completely upend my life unless society is collectively doing the same. The way to make that happen is sweeping government action, and nothing less.
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- antishatter 6y ago
  I mean there is a hypocrisy to this, you are effectively voting that folks who cannot afford or are uneducated about taxes should pay more.
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  - elcomet 6y ago
    He said explicitely "most well-off Americans". That excludes people who cannot afford taxes.
  - tobylane 6y ago
    I don’t see the problem there, and the hypothecated problem is consistent with many others in America. It would help if taxation was simpler and more transparent, but currently it sounds like states aren’t allowed to help their citizens file because of lobbying from the software companies providing this service. Another solution is to take some of the extra money gathered and spend it on better educating children and adults about tax.
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- iratewizard 6y ago
  You're a grifter's dream mark. It doesn't matter how ineffective government has proven itself to be when it comes to social welfare programs. You're only willing to support social welfare if you know the government is using force to coerce others into supporting it.
  - harimau777 6y ago
    I'm not sure that's an accurate assessment. Their argument seems to be that: - This problem can only be solved through action by society as a whole. - They attempt to promote society as a whole taking action. - However, until there is evidence that society as a whole will take action, they do not see the need to hurt themselves by unilaterally taking action that will not accomplish anything. It doesn't follow that they will only act if the government is using coercive force. They would presumably act in any scenario where society as a whole was acting. It also does not follow that this reasoning would be applied to problems where individual action can make a difference; such as helping the poor.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't cross into personal attack and please don't use HN for ideological battle. This comment is quite a major step into breaking the HN guidelines. That's not cool. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
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- Proven 6y ago
  Maybe you don't care if you had less money, but it'd sure make you happy if others did. > The way to make that happen is sweeping government action, and nothing less. But the US CO2 emissions no longer matter. You actually want a sweeping global government action, right? Should we still have free elections? Nothing will change if this crazy situation continues!
- tomp 6y ago
  Which candidate is that? Well, I know that the answer is going to be "the Democrats", but the reality is, that isn't helping... I mean, sure, the upper middle class (high-skill workers) might be taxed a bit more, but the big money - upper class (non-workers) and multi-national corporations - have continued to avoid taxes. Arguably the Democrats have also caused a lot of lost wealth for the public by encouraging the expansion of financial services - Clinton's administration by repealing the Glass–Steagall Act, and Obama's by not properly acting against Wall Street after the GFC. And for obvious reasons - poor politicians are getting kickbacks if they continue ignoring this issue.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good", as the saying goes. I was planning to vote for Elizabeth Warren in the primary, although as a New Yorker I never had the chance.
- rapnie 6y ago
  A formula for collective inaction. This argument 'pay higher taxes, vote accordingly' is probably also what many CEO's are believing in, while saying "I still have my army of accountants and lobbyists to design my tax evasion schemes, in order to pay as little as possible. I do not think this is hypocritical, but a natural part of the game.". These accountants and lobbyists - all doing legal work - ensure sweeping government action will never occur. It is not about one-sidedly upending your life, and also not about waiting until society collectively does the right thing. We need to start acting, and every tiny little bit by every person counts. By doing that tiny bit - and maybe gradually a little more here and there - together with 1,000's of others doing so too, a pressure is created, culture changes and movement in the right direction ensues.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    Lobbying is different. Billionaire CEOs might not see it that way, but they're wrong. A lobbyist directly influences legislation by advocating for specific policies. Lobbying against climate legislation (or paying people to lobby against climate legislation) while privately voting in favor of it would be like me coming on HN and saying "climate change is a hoax" while privately voting for a carbon tax.
    - Balgair 6y ago
      > Billionaire CEOs might not see it that way, but they're wrong. Where is that line crossed though? It's a murky one, that is for sure. There is not exact dollar amount. I'd say there is no line at all, everyone is responsible. Similarly with CC, there is no line. Any effort is a good effort, even if it 'doesn't matter compared to ... '. We're all hypocrites in the end, not a single one of us is perfect (depends on your religion, though, I guess). With CC, that means that any effort you can put in is 'worth it'. This is not a 0% or 100% thing. Even 1% is good.
      - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
        It's not about how much money they have, it's the lobbying. I think it's selfish and immoral to lobby for something which you know full well is against the public interest. You're directly influencing legislation in a direction that's bad for society. The key here is that collective action is the only way to fix climate change. So, on a personal level, I'd rather donate to environmental activism groups than buy more expensive "green" groceries or some such. And I'd encourage everyone else to do the same!
thepangolino 6y ago
You can't stop change, period.
Tade0 6y ago
It's not that simple. If it were, we would have many more vegans/vegetarians, who obviously practice what they preach.
- newacct583 6y ago
  We have an awful lot, though. And people like me, who are eating far less meat (and in particular beef) than they did years ago specifically because of energy concerns. In fact the whole premise of the article is just wrong on its face. In fact people who care about climate issues do tend to have lower energy footprints than climate change deniers! We drive smaller cars. We commute shorter distances. We live in denser communities. We eat less meat. We eat local food. We use less water. This can all be measured. Is it enough? Of course not. But in fact to the extent individual action can be used in service to this goal, we're doing it. Get on board.
anm89 6y ago
As someone who cares deeply about these issues and is not a climate change denier, I think this is absolute nonsense. For example a person could sit around and light barrels of oil on fire and create legislation that changed the incentives regarding energy production (which we already do a lot of and is one of the only effective things we do at scale to affect climate outcomes) or that bans or changes costs for plastic production and still come out leagues ahead in terms of having changed things for the better. Sure if you are publicly announcing that you are lighting the oil on fire, no one is going to take your legislation seriously but the reality is there is no good source of record keeping on people's day to day behavior unless the consciously expose it so you could simultaneously live a horrificly environmentally unfriendly lifestyle and improve things. My point is not that you should do this, but that the idea this change is going to swell from the ground up is nonsense. It needs to come from well organized legislation. That piece of legislation is probably not going to be much affected by the individual track record in the hundreds of people who end up being involved in its production.
- cuillevel3 6y ago
  I'd go further and say it's actual harmful advise. If you don't drive a car, you just made space for another car and you just started paying for someone elses parking. Appealing to virtuousness and living by example, is not going to replace regulation and realigned incentives.
  - raspyberr 6y ago
    How would any party get voted in unless most people agreed with the regulation? If a party wanted to double tax cars or get rid of them they wouldn't be voted in unless that's what people wanted first. Change comes from the bottom up.
juanbyrge 6y ago
What the author misses is that government can play a huge role in combating climate change. There are simple policies the government can enact that would greatly improve the situation. Things like stopping fossil fuel subsidies, enacting carbon taxes, and incentivizing clean energy. There was a recent Ezra Klein podcast with Saul Griffith about this very topic. For instance , it is literally impossible in some places to put up rooftop solar due to archaic building codes. In a lot of cases the government is getting in the way. This is why protests can be effective, even if individuals may not always reduce their lifestyles.
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- StreamBright 6y ago
  >> Things like stopping fossil fuel subsidies This would suffice. Let capitalism take care of the rest. It is simple insane that we are rolling with 1.3M year old technologies (burning shit) when new technologies already available because government intervention. Renewables, nuclear energy and few more alternatives already exist yet we are paying big money to oil companies to mine oil, do fracking (good bye clean water later) and burn coal. Absolutely insane, cave man level, literally.
  - devonkim 6y ago
    It's weird for myself because so long ago the left was all about this alongside carbon taxes and now I'm hearing "carbon taxes don't work" and "the poorest will be hurt most by removing subsidies" from the same crowd - all of which were said by Republicans for years against climate change proposals - and to just directly target a handful of fossil fuel companies responsible for a majority. That's essentially using bonafide autocratic or fascist methods to approach climate change which opens the door IMO for the disintegration of the US completely literally into a cyberpunk dystopia. And furthermore, it misses the reality that climate change is a global problem that requires a concerted international response and that the US is less than half the world's emissions at the moment. Who cares if US-centric emissions go to 0 if the rest of the world goes up 3x+ because developing economies go for the cheapest energy sources?
dundarious 6y ago
I really dislike activists using graphic analogies like rape and slavery. Not because I’m a snowflake, but because it’s alienating and distracting. “Oh so I’m a climate rapist?” I think PETA is often the worst for these tactics — hurting their own cause, one I share, as a vegan. I think doctor’s advice to give up smoking is a better analogy. If doctors still smoke, themselves, it gives patients an emotional crutch to continue smoking. So a better patient advocate would not smoke. At the same time, it shouldn’t be a requirement, just like a doctor can still drink and smoke if they really want to.
antishatter 6y ago
Nothing is written.
- natch 6y ago
  Physics is fundamental.
seanwilson 6y ago
I'm skeptical climate change will be stopped because of what we're seeing with the pandemic: many countries and individuals won't take preemptive action against a threat we scientifically know is going to happen until the impact can literally be seen on their own doorsteps. With the pandemic: 1) deaths/impact directly from the pandemic can be relatively easily identified 2) deaths/impact happen in the space of weeks 3) the positive results of mitigations can be seen in weeks 4) countries can largely isolate the impact other countries have on them regarding the pandemic. None of these 4 points are true with climate change so it's going to be even worse in terms of getting people to take it seriously and act in time. We can't even get countries to agree that masks are a good idea.
- adrianN 6y ago
  Most countries managed to get the pandemic mostly under control. If we managed to do the same for climate change, we'd be pretty far along.
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    It would be more accurate to say that it won’t be stopped because the US has demonstrated itself committed to the internal logic of its tribalisms over objective reality and scientific truth.
  - seanwilson 6y ago
    > Most countries managed to get the pandemic mostly under control. How much of this is because of the points I mentioned though? The US and the UK took their time going into lockdown for example. In contrast and largely because of the time scales of climate change, it would be even easier to deny the negative impact of climate change and deny the positive influence of preemptive action.
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- dragontamer 6y ago
  I'd disagree with #1. A large amount of discussion has been around "what is a COVID19 death?" If someone dies with COVID19 in their system, does that count as a COVID19 death? There are the clear cut cases where someone dies on a ventilator while testing COVID19 positive. A straightforward COVID19 death. But there are clear negative cases: Consider someone who has COVID19, but gets into a car crash and dies. This ideally wouldn't be a COVID19 death, because it was clear that the car crash killed the person. But from here on out... cases get more complicated. But what about someone who tested COVID19 positive, but dies of a heart attack? COVID19 clearly stresses the body, going on oxygen or other treatment, has been proven to cause long term chronic issues. But do we know for sure that the heart attack was causally related to the COVID19 virus? There's also the case of long-term chronic issues. COVID19 causes kidney damage and lung damage. If (formerly COVID19 patients) people start dying of Kidney failure next year, it is probably COVID19 related, but with a year delay. This muddles the death count, and ultimately it comes down to individual medical opinions of thousands of doctors. In the case of the heart attack, we classify it as a COVID19 death if it is the opinion of the doctor. I'm not sure if there's a better solution, but that's how the US works.
quercus 6y ago
All the worry about saving the environment is really a worry about preserving the viability of urban/suburban lifestyles.
- dv_dt 6y ago
  Rural lifestyles are significantly impacted by increased fires, drought, heat, flooding - in particular farming is directly impacted by reduced yields and increased disasters.
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  - quercus 6y ago
    Thanks for stating the obvious, Sherlock. My point is: the WORRY about climate change is mostly focused on urbanism. The loudest voices come from the city. These people have a weak connection to nature aside from the occasional hike and holiday. The mostly worry about their cities going underwater. Country folks are used to dealing with the unpredictability of nature and are more likely to find a way to adapt.
Super_Jambo 6y ago
The problem with this analogy is that personally reducing demand is ineffective at stopping production. If I stop eating beef (which I have) there isn't an equivalent reduction in beef production. Instead the price goes down fractionally and someone else eats it. If a whole bunch of people stop eating beef (which I hope I'm part of) then we'll start to see some reduction in production. The answer to global warming like any externality is market regulation. Exactly _how_ you regulate that is less important: Maybe revenue neutral tax on producers? Maybe a ration book for consumers? Personal change is certainly helpful to demonstrate you're serious, but structural change will be necessary to actually tackle the problem.
- rabidrat 6y ago
  > If a whole bunch of people stop eating beef (which I hope I'm part of) then we'll start to see some reduction in production. It doesn't seem to work this way either. First there will be a long period of beef sources trying to create demand, through marketing, lobbying, etc tactics. Only after they have spent through substantial subsidies, loans, bailouts, etc will they be forced to downsize. As an example: we recently saw a huge decrease in air travel demand. Response from the airlines? Keep flying the same number of routes in order to maintain status at airports. Run promotions to increase sales.
rayiner 6y ago
People are missing the point of the article. It's not about hipocrisy, or the ability of ground-up change to solve climate change, but instead about the credibility of people demanding sweeping government intervention to address climate change. When someone who advocates for banning abortion turns out to have paid to have his girlfriend have an abortion, it obviously doesn't have any bearing on the moral question of abortion. Nor does it have any significant aggregate effect on the number of abortions. But it eliminates that person's credibility, for the simple reason that it highlights the negative implications of the person's proposed policy. It underscores that having an unplanned child can drastically change the course of a person's life in ways they may be desperate to avoid. And it suggests that the person may not even believe their moral premise, and wants to ban abortion as a pretext for something else. By contrast, people who lead by example signal that they're willing to live with the consequences of the policies they wish to impose on everyone--and in the process demonstrate to people that those consequences can be lived with. The same thing is true for climate change. When people who demand a war-time mobilization of the economy to combat climate change still emit gigatons going on foreign vacations, that signals to people one of two things. One, the reduction in standard of living required to address climate change must be enormous, because even those who believe catastrophe is at our doorstep won't suffer that reduction unless the government forces them to. Or two, those people don't really believe climate change will be that bad, and their demand for government intervention is a pretext for something else.
- WhompingWindows 6y ago
  Individual choice has a very small role in climate change. The author has done nothing, zero, to contextualize the issue in numbers and data, which clearly demonstrate that individual choice is maybe 5-10% of what we need to decarbonize. Foreign vacations (which aren't even occurring in 2020) are a pittance here...we're talking about billions of fossil-fuel powered engines, hundreds of millions of livestock, heating and cooling homes for upwards of 10 billion humans, the production of steel, fertilizer, plastics, concrete, electronics, mining operations, shipping, trucking...it's just so much more vast than the hypocrisy of rich leftist environmentalists going on vacations.
  - 6y ago
bambax 6y ago
All true. The comments so far are quite entertaining in explaining how it's not in fact the case; one even says that people should be able to avoid taxes while hoping to pay more taxes in a distant future. But climate change advocates are not the only ones to blame. Absolutely nobody wants to change their behavior: no individual, no company, no country. And so climate change is simply unavoidable. Trying to mitigate it is a waste of time IMHO; finding ways to live with it may be more fruitful.
- jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  The comments are revealing. People are having an emotional reaction that's preventing them from realizing any real way of addressing climate change will substantially change/reduce their living standards. I've had this conversation with people in real life and almost no one gets it at first.
  - ls65536 6y ago
    There really does seem to be this pervasive idea that there's a non-stop linear march of progress from the beginning of time, that despite some bumps here and there "things always improve over time", and that for any of the big problems humanity is facing that "they'll think of something", without much thought as to who "they" are or what that "something" is, or even about the additional side-effects of what that "something" might entail, which could go on to cause ever greater problems later on (where the same argument is again applied ad infinitum). This seems like a common argument made to avoid the emotionally difficult thoughts about what an individual could do right now to help prevent or even just to mitigate existing problems from becoming worse.
bsenftner 6y ago
Of course it won't be stopped as long as people continue to think this is a personal responsibility issue, and ignore that the military is the #1 greenhouse gas producer on the planet. After that we have extremely high producers of carbon operating at global scale in transportation, manufacturing and agriculture. This is not a personal responsibility issue, it is a cause for legal regulation to force the military and corporate operations to go green.
omosubi 6y ago
Didn't coronavirus prove that individual action wouldn't do much to curb climate change and that corporations and governments needed to do a lot more in order to truly have an effect? With maybe the exception of meat consumption basically all the individual actions that could have been taken were. I agree there is a lot of hypocrisy in the modern environmental movement but status quo bias and corruption play a larger role in our situation than a lack of credibility from environmentalists
neilk 6y ago
There are good reasons to not be a hypocrite. This isn't one of them. So, the theory here is that if we only purify ourselves enough, we'll finally get climate skeptics to listen? If we only take on all the systemic problems with personal sacrifices? Like, don't show up to important policy meetings on principle because we'd have to fly there? It should be the other way around. Full-time climate activists should get to fly where-ever they want, whenever they want, and the rest of us should avoid flying. I don't think the article's theory of change is how any other kind of policy change happens. The strength of belief demonstrated by a minority doesn't, by itself, convince anyone or move policymakers. If you base your credibility on being a perfect example of how you want others to act, it's exactly what the climate skeptics want. You'll fail and they'll laugh at you. Because in this society we're all complicit until there are systemic solutions. I think there's more evidence for a small minority moving public opinion and public policy when they act in a coordinated, continuous campaign. Self-perfection doesn't come into it. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/why-nonviolent-resistance-beats-violent-force-in-effecting-social-political-change/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/why-nonviolen...
julianeon 6y ago
This article doesn’t quite live up to its title - swerving at the end to say unless we change, instead of concluding we won’t change. This article was pilloried at the time for its negativity, but I think Franzen’s article, “What If We Stopped Pretending the Climate Apocalypse Can Be Stopped,” ultimately has it right. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/culture/cultu...
hedora 6y ago
His rape analogy is terrible on many levels, but I’ll go with it for a second. It’s more like the electric company uses its proceeds to fund rape squads. He argues we shouldn’t take any anti-rape activists seriously unless they first disconnect their houses from the power grid. Me reducing my personal carbon footprint is a drop in the bucket compared to cutting CPU time at work, and that’s a drop in the bucket compared to voting in a Green New Deal politician. Reducing my personal carbon foot print is harder than reducing work’s carbon footprint. So, I’ll start there, and vote and donate to political campaigns accordingly (because that’s easier and has higher impact) Ordering actions by cost benefit doesn’t make me a hypocrite, it makes me an effective pragmatist.
GVIrish 6y ago
This article gets the problem right, but misses some other reasons for making personal changes to combat climate change. For one, the more people that buy products that are more environmentally-friendly, the more the market will shift towards offering environmentally-friendly options. If consumers were beating down car dealership doors to buy every EV they could, car manufacturers would shift heavily towards EVs. If everyone buying a house were looping in a solar panel installation into their loan, we'd probably see more competition and faster price drops in solar panels. The more people that buy meat alternatives, the more money gets invested in developing meat alternatives. Secondly, each individual action has the potential to influence someone else. If you see your neighborhood switching to EV's, you may be more likely to buy one. Or if a friend had a great experience with reducing their energy costs by upgrading their windows, you might be more likely to get it done yourself. Put the first two factors together, and then it is much, much easier to build political support for the legislation needed to enact big climate change initiatives. If more people take personal ownership of climate change, that helps those people drive political will towards addressing climate change. Politicians absolutely will respond to public pressure, but if the public is largely indifferent on the issue, it makes it less likely politicians will spend political capital on climate change initiatives.
- readhn 6y ago
  "If consumers were beating down car dealership doors to buy every EV they could, car manufacturers would shift heavily towards EVs. If everyone buying a house were looping in a solar panel installation into their loan, we'd probably see more competition and faster price drops in solar panels." this logic is part of the problem. you live in a privileged bubble where people buy electric cars and install solar panels on their houses. Median American household has only $10K saved up, many below that and live paycheck to paycheck. What EV/What homes/ solar panels? First we have to solve socio-economic wealth gap issue THEN address climate change.
  - GVIrish 6y ago
    Why can't we do both? For people who don't own homes, we need to invest in clean energy sources for the power grid. For people that can't afford EV's now, if there were actually better demand for EV's auto manufacturers could make the investments to reach the economies of scale so that more people could afford an EV, PHEV, FCEV, whatever it may be. And if there is a big shift towards clean energy that will create new jobs as well as reduce pollution that causes health problems, particularly in low income neighborhoods. On an individual level, if someone has the means to reduce their carbon footprint, why shouldn't they? On a national level, developed nations have more capital they can spend on shifting to clean energy. Poorer countries won't be able to afford to make some of those shifts. If the nations with the means make the shifts first, they can help bring down the costs of some of those green technologies to where it's more feasible for poorer nations in the world. We're already at the point that wind and solar power is starting to be cheaper than coal power. Continuing along that path means the developing world can continue developing and expanding their economies with clean energy instead of fossil fuels.
martythemaniak 6y ago
A huge part of the problem is people like the author that demand _cuts_ in living standards. I enjoy my high standard of living and as someone with friends and family in less developed places, I understand very well they would really like the same high standard of living. Not only that, but I think they deserve that high standard of living. The way to achieve that is by developing a set of substitutions, and having rich people migrate to these substitutions and having poor people work towards them. Many claim that this is impossible, but the fact is that we have barely even begun trying to do this. For example, all ground transportation can be electrified - cars, trucks, semis, trains, etc. There is now a very clear path towards this that did not exist 10 years ago. All electricity generation can be decarbonized in tandem. Homes can be heated with carbon-free electric heat pumps by automating geothermal installations. Short-haul flights be be electrified within a few years. None of this is a missed opportunity, nothing is too late. We are just starting to realize this path and there is a lot of work to do.
- jordanbeiber 6y ago
  Don’t know where you’re from but as a an average Swede I consume about three to four earths worth of resources per year. It’s unsustainable on a fundamental level, driven by a consumerism that triggers primal behavior. You might not have to cut down, but someone eventually have to. There’s no way around that. https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/country-overshoot-days/ https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/country-overshoot-days...
agakshat 6y ago
Impose a carbon tax and watch how fast renewables, nuclear etc. become financially viable and self-sufficient. The role people have to play here is to get on to the same page so loudly that politicians can’t ignore our voices anymore. Switching off my air conditioner isn’t really going to accomplish anything.
ls65536 6y ago
It's great to see something from John Michael Greer come up on HN. I've read a number of his books, many critical of modern society and its ills, and while one might not always agree with everything in full including his predictions about the future, it is difficult to argue that he hasn't done a fantastic job backing up his claims and ideas, including providing many references to past societies, drawing though-provoking parallels between what's happened many times in history and what we're observing and living through today. As a bonus, his writing style is often lively and fun to read, while still maintaining the intellectual seriousness that such topics deserve.
readhn 6y ago
"Climate change activism these days is almost entirely a concern of middle- and upper middle-class people in the industrial world: people, that is, whose lifestyles are disproportionately responsible for the dumping of greenhouse gases; people who use much more fossil fuel energy, and many more of the products of fossil fuel energy, than the average human being." 100% Agreed.
kanox 6y ago
Is there any data as to how much climate change can be affected by personal lifestyle choices? The biggest CO2 emitters are electricity generation and transport and these can be affected by government policy that encourages renewable sources.
gswdh 6y ago
It’s obvious, climate change will not be stopped through individuals actions. People die because they can’t be bothered to eat a little less and this is a short term problem that has a direct impact on their life - no one else’s. Selfishness and greed is the reason for climate change and that’s not going to change. Just like all the other world problems, climate change will be a problem solved with science and engineering - if it is solved at all. And I believe it will be because there’s too many people with a lot of money who’d lose out otherwise and we already know how they behave...
bjoli 6y ago
The most depressing statistic is the Corona one: the pandemic is projected to lower the 2020 co2E emission by about 7.5 percent (based on 2019 numbers). To have any chance of reaching ipcc's 1.5 degree goal we need to continue this development for the rest of the decade. I never believed 1.5 degrees would ever be reached, but the message from so many politicians was that "we need to try our best to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees". Everybody must have known that it was bullshit all along. And that is why climate change won't be stopped.
throwawaysea 6y ago
During COVID, we've seen drastic changes to the economy and individual behavior. I recall reading articles saying it all amounted to only a 5% change in emissions or something like that. I can't help but thing the real problem is simply that we have too many humans. Or at least, too many humans at a quality of life standard that is too high. We can institute population control standards (cap and trade permits?) or we can decide that it doesn't make sense to base our lives around consumerism and shipping things from long distances. But the latter notion - which might look like forming localized circular economies - feels as impractical an idea as those pushing for extreme restructuring of societal structures. And everything else, like technological innovation, seems either like a gamble or like noise.
agentultra 6y ago
Well... the difficult part with this argument is that on an individual level we don't contribute nearly as much carbon as say, the transportation industry as a whole which represents some 18% of emissions? I do as much as I can as an individual because I believe, morally, that it's true: I'd feel like a fraud if I was seriously concerned about climate and didn't become a vegetarian, refused to own a car, and stopped international travel. I try to buy only what I need, second hand if I can, to avoid putting more technology in the waste system. I avoid buying plastic. I do everything I can on an individual level. But you know what? Global politics don't seem to be moving nearly as fast or with any urgency to the matter. In the US the EPA has been practically gutted. In my own country the local government is using the pandemic as a cover to move on gutting our own environmental protections. We still need collective policy action on a global scale like we've seen with the pandemic. Unfortunately we're already decades too late to stop it. Even if we could turn off the carbon switch right now, we'll still have to suffer through some of the worst IPCC predictions.
mturmon 6y ago
I have no idea why people would upvote a junk article like this. It has two cheap rhetorical ploys. First, a crude and disgusting analogy with rape, of all things. (There's a much better analogy to the governmental action that stopped CFCs, and actually worked.) Second, an accusation of hypocrisy that is completely without actual facts. And more important: so what if some elites who profess to care about climate change fly too much? It's deeply un-serious to demand pure motives on the part of everyone who professes a certain policy, before taking action. Counterpoint, organized by a climate researcher: https://noflyclimatesci.org https://noflyclimatesci.org
DubiousPusher 6y ago
Climate change will not be stopped because asking people anywhere to take a significant decrease in their standard of living will be a political diaster and there is no silver bullet solution that allows people to maintain their lifestyles and curb climate change.
munificent 6y ago
I think there should be some eponymous law somewhere that says if you use rape as an analogy, then your argument is almost inevitably flawed. Rape is such a deeply emotional topic that invoked drives out logical reasoning. If you can't find a less loaded analogy that still works, then it likely implies that your argument is in fact false. A rape analogy is a flashbang grenade thrown to obscure the lack of truth in your argument. A better analogy might be forest fires. What the author is saying is that you can't be against forest fires unless you also never light a candle in your home. Or perhaps that you can't be against pollution if you ever throw something in the trash. I disagree with his implicit presumption that "solving" climate change necessarily involves willfully lowering one's quality of life. Austerity is not a goal, it is possibly a necessary step to fixing the problem. But just martyring yourself will not magically fix climate change. In fact, ideal solutions to climate change do not involve lowering quality of life because that makes them much easier to adopt. When asbestos was discovered to cause cancer, we didn't fix that problem by having every individual tear the insulation out of their homes and make a personal commitment to freeze their ass off every winter. We outlawed it and used our existing large-scale systems like the law to solve what was a large-scale systemic problem. That in turn drove innovation to find better alternatives and here we are all now mostly safe from that problem.
dnautics 6y ago
Really though the biggest problem is that our economic and political systems require growth as a policy. This means individuals incur invisible climate costs regardless of their personal habits, simply by participating in a currency scheme that is driven by deficit spending. This is true whether that deficit is used to fund bombing people halfway around the world, or social programmes at home alike. The idea that the government can borrow money to fund a green revolution (that will mostly soak the already rich/politically connected) is laughable, because it misses the very hidden flaw in its premise (that the act of sovereign borrowing is the cause of the problem in the first place). In principle capitalism itself is not the primary ecological problem; capitalism could extract profits in a closed non exponential system by exploiting gradients in efficiency incumbent with technological improvements. That could even incentivise climate improvement. It's when there is a secular incentive to mindlessly grow that capitalism becomes a menace.
amflare 6y ago
Climate change won't be stopped because the population of the world who care, and the population who might care, is massively dwarfed by the number of people who will never care. And the incentives are aligned such that benefit for humans means detriment for the planet. Thus, it is in no nation's individual interest to actually push for climate change legislation. Because first they would fall behind industrially, then economically, then finally get squeezed into irrelevance. And even if they did hypothetically care enough to make this sacrifice "for the betterment of the earth, humanity, and future generations", it would all be for naught once they fell into irrelevance. Like a child going on a hunger strike, nobody cares and they don't have a say anyway.
bioinformatics 6y ago
Because climate always change either mankind does it or not?
mnm1 6y ago
The US was incapable of responding to the imminent danger of the pandemic threat that was one month out. It's impossible that they will respond to a much more abstract threat decades into the future. It's beyond absurd to even propose this as a realistic idea. I don't think most other countries are much different in this regard. Climate change won't be stopped because most people don't want to stop it and almost all people in charge most certainly do not want to stop it. And like the article says, changing on a personal level is completely useless. On a personal level, why even try?
JusticeAlways 6y ago
As a climate activist, I'm calling bullshit. This is a straw man argument... climate activists aren't calling for individual change. We're calling for mass action to stop the LARGEST polluters so that everyone can be free to live their lives as they wish. Regarding how this blog uses Ghandi's quote "Be the change" climate activists ARE doing that: they are banding people together, working in communities to rise up against the LARGEST polluters. Again, this author misses the point ENTIRELY about what climate activists are calling for... it's like saying "to stop police brutality you have to stop being a bad cop"... BUT WE AREN'T COPS. SIMILARLY, WE AREN'T THE PROBLEM. THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY AND THE BIG BANKS THAT BACK FOSSIL FUEL INFRASTRUCTURE ARE THE PROBLEM. That's what we're fighting to stop get. it. right., and that's why this movement needs everyone, regardless of what level of personal eco-conscious "virtue" you embody.
shawndrost 6y ago
If the hypothesis is: "Normal people aren't convinced by climate intellectuals because the latter are visible hypocrites." Then it is wrong for two reasons: 1a. Normal Americans on the left, and many on the right, are convinced by climate intellectuals. https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-views-on-climate-and-energy/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-vi... 1b. Normal Europeans of all stripes are likewise convinced. 2. (This is anecdata, but I'm pretty confident it'd appear in experimentation if anyone cared to debunk this dumb hypothesis.) Climate intellectuals that make significant efforts to avoid hypocrisy (like Greta, or her less-famous counterparts, or me to a lesser degree) do not experience a different reception from skeptics. Indeed, personal action is rarely a point of interest for anyone in the discussion. Probably because the focus of the climate intellectuals -- renewable electricity, decarbonizing heavy industry, land use practices -- is so obviously outside the scope of direct personal action.
LatteLazy 6y ago
This is the same virtue signaling bullshit that’s gotten us no where on this issue for 40 years. You’re neighbours don’t care that you compost. This is a global crisis, not a chance for you to tell us all how great you are.
RickJWagner 6y ago
Works for me. Every time I hear some Hollywood talking head going on about the urgency of climage change, I just ask myself: Why should I lower my family's standard of living, when this actor is basking in adulation while burning 25 times the carbon we do? Incredibly selfish, I know. On both our parts. Honestly, I do make an effort to limit my impact on the planet. But I do what my conscience tells me to do. Celebrity endorsements don't move the needle at all for me, at least not in the right direction.

64 points by jeffreyrogers 6y ago

I believe very strongly that most well-off Americans should pay higher taxes, including me. I vote accordingly. If my preferred candidate wins, I expect to have less money. I still have an accountant do my taxes, in order to pay as little as possible. I do not think this is hypocritical. It doesn't make sense for me to completely upend my life unless society is collectively doing the same. The way to make that happen is sweeping government action, and nothing less.

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antishatter 6y ago
I mean there is a hypocrisy to this, you are effectively voting that folks who cannot afford or are uneducated about taxes should pay more.
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- elcomet 6y ago
  He said explicitely "most well-off Americans". That excludes people who cannot afford taxes.
- tobylane 6y ago
  I don’t see the problem there, and the hypothecated problem is consistent with many others in America. It would help if taxation was simpler and more transparent, but currently it sounds like states aren’t allowed to help their citizens file because of lobbying from the software companies providing this service. Another solution is to take some of the extra money gathered and spend it on better educating children and adults about tax.
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iratewizard 6y ago
You're a grifter's dream mark. It doesn't matter how ineffective government has proven itself to be when it comes to social welfare programs. You're only willing to support social welfare if you know the government is using force to coerce others into supporting it.
- harimau777 6y ago
  I'm not sure that's an accurate assessment. Their argument seems to be that: - This problem can only be solved through action by society as a whole. - They attempt to promote society as a whole taking action. - However, until there is evidence that society as a whole will take action, they do not see the need to hurt themselves by unilaterally taking action that will not accomplish anything. It doesn't follow that they will only act if the government is using coercive force. They would presumably act in any scenario where society as a whole was acting. It also does not follow that this reasoning would be applied to problems where individual action can make a difference; such as helping the poor.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't cross into personal attack and please don't use HN for ideological battle. This comment is quite a major step into breaking the HN guidelines. That's not cool. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
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Proven 6y ago
Maybe you don't care if you had less money, but it'd sure make you happy if others did. > The way to make that happen is sweeping government action, and nothing less. But the US CO2 emissions no longer matter. You actually want a sweeping global government action, right? Should we still have free elections? Nothing will change if this crazy situation continues!
tomp 6y ago
Which candidate is that? Well, I know that the answer is going to be "the Democrats", but the reality is, that isn't helping... I mean, sure, the upper middle class (high-skill workers) might be taxed a bit more, but the big money - upper class (non-workers) and multi-national corporations - have continued to avoid taxes. Arguably the Democrats have also caused a lot of lost wealth for the public by encouraging the expansion of financial services - Clinton's administration by repealing the Glass–Steagall Act, and Obama's by not properly acting against Wall Street after the GFC. And for obvious reasons - poor politicians are getting kickbacks if they continue ignoring this issue.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good", as the saying goes. I was planning to vote for Elizabeth Warren in the primary, although as a New Yorker I never had the chance.
rapnie 6y ago
A formula for collective inaction. This argument 'pay higher taxes, vote accordingly' is probably also what many CEO's are believing in, while saying "I still have my army of accountants and lobbyists to design my tax evasion schemes, in order to pay as little as possible. I do not think this is hypocritical, but a natural part of the game.". These accountants and lobbyists - all doing legal work - ensure sweeping government action will never occur. It is not about one-sidedly upending your life, and also not about waiting until society collectively does the right thing. We need to start acting, and every tiny little bit by every person counts. By doing that tiny bit - and maybe gradually a little more here and there - together with 1,000's of others doing so too, a pressure is created, culture changes and movement in the right direction ensues.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Lobbying is different. Billionaire CEOs might not see it that way, but they're wrong. A lobbyist directly influences legislation by advocating for specific policies. Lobbying against climate legislation (or paying people to lobby against climate legislation) while privately voting in favor of it would be like me coming on HN and saying "climate change is a hoax" while privately voting for a carbon tax.
  - Balgair 6y ago
    > Billionaire CEOs might not see it that way, but they're wrong. Where is that line crossed though? It's a murky one, that is for sure. There is not exact dollar amount. I'd say there is no line at all, everyone is responsible. Similarly with CC, there is no line. Any effort is a good effort, even if it 'doesn't matter compared to ... '. We're all hypocrites in the end, not a single one of us is perfect (depends on your religion, though, I guess). With CC, that means that any effort you can put in is 'worth it'. This is not a 0% or 100% thing. Even 1% is good.
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      It's not about how much money they have, it's the lobbying. I think it's selfish and immoral to lobby for something which you know full well is against the public interest. You're directly influencing legislation in a direction that's bad for society. The key here is that collective action is the only way to fix climate change. So, on a personal level, I'd rather donate to environmental activism groups than buy more expensive "green" groceries or some such. And I'd encourage everyone else to do the same!

thepangolino 6y ago

You can't stop change, period.

Tade0 6y ago

It's not that simple. If it were, we would have many more vegans/vegetarians, who obviously practice what they preach.

newacct583 6y ago
We have an awful lot, though. And people like me, who are eating far less meat (and in particular beef) than they did years ago specifically because of energy concerns. In fact the whole premise of the article is just wrong on its face. In fact people who care about climate issues do tend to have lower energy footprints than climate change deniers! We drive smaller cars. We commute shorter distances. We live in denser communities. We eat less meat. We eat local food. We use less water. This can all be measured. Is it enough? Of course not. But in fact to the extent individual action can be used in service to this goal, we're doing it. Get on board.

anm89 6y ago

As someone who cares deeply about these issues and is not a climate change denier, I think this is absolute nonsense. For example a person could sit around and light barrels of oil on fire and create legislation that changed the incentives regarding energy production (which we already do a lot of and is one of the only effective things we do at scale to affect climate outcomes) or that bans or changes costs for plastic production and still come out leagues ahead in terms of having changed things for the better. Sure if you are publicly announcing that you are lighting the oil on fire, no one is going to take your legislation seriously but the reality is there is no good source of record keeping on people's day to day behavior unless the consciously expose it so you could simultaneously live a horrificly environmentally unfriendly lifestyle and improve things. My point is not that you should do this, but that the idea this change is going to swell from the ground up is nonsense. It needs to come from well organized legislation. That piece of legislation is probably not going to be much affected by the individual track record in the hundreds of people who end up being involved in its production.

cuillevel3 6y ago
I'd go further and say it's actual harmful advise. If you don't drive a car, you just made space for another car and you just started paying for someone elses parking. Appealing to virtuousness and living by example, is not going to replace regulation and realigned incentives.
- raspyberr 6y ago
  How would any party get voted in unless most people agreed with the regulation? If a party wanted to double tax cars or get rid of them they wouldn't be voted in unless that's what people wanted first. Change comes from the bottom up.

juanbyrge 6y ago

What the author misses is that government can play a huge role in combating climate change. There are simple policies the government can enact that would greatly improve the situation. Things like stopping fossil fuel subsidies, enacting carbon taxes, and incentivizing clean energy. There was a recent Ezra Klein podcast with Saul Griffith about this very topic. For instance , it is literally impossible in some places to put up rooftop solar due to archaic building codes. In a lot of cases the government is getting in the way. This is why protests can be effective, even if individuals may not always reduce their lifestyles.

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StreamBright 6y ago
>> Things like stopping fossil fuel subsidies This would suffice. Let capitalism take care of the rest. It is simple insane that we are rolling with 1.3M year old technologies (burning shit) when new technologies already available because government intervention. Renewables, nuclear energy and few more alternatives already exist yet we are paying big money to oil companies to mine oil, do fracking (good bye clean water later) and burn coal. Absolutely insane, cave man level, literally.
- devonkim 6y ago
  It's weird for myself because so long ago the left was all about this alongside carbon taxes and now I'm hearing "carbon taxes don't work" and "the poorest will be hurt most by removing subsidies" from the same crowd - all of which were said by Republicans for years against climate change proposals - and to just directly target a handful of fossil fuel companies responsible for a majority. That's essentially using bonafide autocratic or fascist methods to approach climate change which opens the door IMO for the disintegration of the US completely literally into a cyberpunk dystopia. And furthermore, it misses the reality that climate change is a global problem that requires a concerted international response and that the US is less than half the world's emissions at the moment. Who cares if US-centric emissions go to 0 if the rest of the world goes up 3x+ because developing economies go for the cheapest energy sources?

dundarious 6y ago

I really dislike activists using graphic analogies like rape and slavery. Not because I’m a snowflake, but because it’s alienating and distracting. “Oh so I’m a climate rapist?” I think PETA is often the worst for these tactics — hurting their own cause, one I share, as a vegan. I think doctor’s advice to give up smoking is a better analogy. If doctors still smoke, themselves, it gives patients an emotional crutch to continue smoking. So a better patient advocate would not smoke. At the same time, it shouldn’t be a requirement, just like a doctor can still drink and smoke if they really want to.

antishatter 6y ago

Nothing is written.

natch 6y ago
Physics is fundamental.

seanwilson 6y ago

I'm skeptical climate change will be stopped because of what we're seeing with the pandemic: many countries and individuals won't take preemptive action against a threat we scientifically know is going to happen until the impact can literally be seen on their own doorsteps. With the pandemic: 1) deaths/impact directly from the pandemic can be relatively easily identified 2) deaths/impact happen in the space of weeks 3) the positive results of mitigations can be seen in weeks 4) countries can largely isolate the impact other countries have on them regarding the pandemic. None of these 4 points are true with climate change so it's going to be even worse in terms of getting people to take it seriously and act in time. We can't even get countries to agree that masks are a good idea.

adrianN 6y ago
Most countries managed to get the pandemic mostly under control. If we managed to do the same for climate change, we'd be pretty far along.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  It would be more accurate to say that it won’t be stopped because the US has demonstrated itself committed to the internal logic of its tribalisms over objective reality and scientific truth.
- seanwilson 6y ago
  > Most countries managed to get the pandemic mostly under control. How much of this is because of the points I mentioned though? The US and the UK took their time going into lockdown for example. In contrast and largely because of the time scales of climate change, it would be even easier to deny the negative impact of climate change and deny the positive influence of preemptive action.
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dragontamer 6y ago
I'd disagree with #1. A large amount of discussion has been around "what is a COVID19 death?" If someone dies with COVID19 in their system, does that count as a COVID19 death? There are the clear cut cases where someone dies on a ventilator while testing COVID19 positive. A straightforward COVID19 death. But there are clear negative cases: Consider someone who has COVID19, but gets into a car crash and dies. This ideally wouldn't be a COVID19 death, because it was clear that the car crash killed the person. But from here on out... cases get more complicated. But what about someone who tested COVID19 positive, but dies of a heart attack? COVID19 clearly stresses the body, going on oxygen or other treatment, has been proven to cause long term chronic issues. But do we know for sure that the heart attack was causally related to the COVID19 virus? There's also the case of long-term chronic issues. COVID19 causes kidney damage and lung damage. If (formerly COVID19 patients) people start dying of Kidney failure next year, it is probably COVID19 related, but with a year delay. This muddles the death count, and ultimately it comes down to individual medical opinions of thousands of doctors. In the case of the heart attack, we classify it as a COVID19 death if it is the opinion of the doctor. I'm not sure if there's a better solution, but that's how the US works.

quercus 6y ago

All the worry about saving the environment is really a worry about preserving the viability of urban/suburban lifestyles.

dv_dt 6y ago
Rural lifestyles are significantly impacted by increased fires, drought, heat, flooding - in particular farming is directly impacted by reduced yields and increased disasters.
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- quercus 6y ago
  Thanks for stating the obvious, Sherlock. My point is: the WORRY about climate change is mostly focused on urbanism. The loudest voices come from the city. These people have a weak connection to nature aside from the occasional hike and holiday. The mostly worry about their cities going underwater. Country folks are used to dealing with the unpredictability of nature and are more likely to find a way to adapt.

Super_Jambo 6y ago

The problem with this analogy is that personally reducing demand is ineffective at stopping production. If I stop eating beef (which I have) there isn't an equivalent reduction in beef production. Instead the price goes down fractionally and someone else eats it. If a whole bunch of people stop eating beef (which I hope I'm part of) then we'll start to see some reduction in production. The answer to global warming like any externality is market regulation. Exactly _how_ you regulate that is less important: Maybe revenue neutral tax on producers? Maybe a ration book for consumers? Personal change is certainly helpful to demonstrate you're serious, but structural change will be necessary to actually tackle the problem.

rabidrat 6y ago
> If a whole bunch of people stop eating beef (which I hope I'm part of) then we'll start to see some reduction in production. It doesn't seem to work this way either. First there will be a long period of beef sources trying to create demand, through marketing, lobbying, etc tactics. Only after they have spent through substantial subsidies, loans, bailouts, etc will they be forced to downsize. As an example: we recently saw a huge decrease in air travel demand. Response from the airlines? Keep flying the same number of routes in order to maintain status at airports. Run promotions to increase sales.

rayiner 6y ago

People are missing the point of the article. It's not about hipocrisy, or the ability of ground-up change to solve climate change, but instead about the credibility of people demanding sweeping government intervention to address climate change. When someone who advocates for banning abortion turns out to have paid to have his girlfriend have an abortion, it obviously doesn't have any bearing on the moral question of abortion. Nor does it have any significant aggregate effect on the number of abortions. But it eliminates that person's credibility, for the simple reason that it highlights the negative implications of the person's proposed policy. It underscores that having an unplanned child can drastically change the course of a person's life in ways they may be desperate to avoid. And it suggests that the person may not even believe their moral premise, and wants to ban abortion as a pretext for something else. By contrast, people who lead by example signal that they're willing to live with the consequences of the policies they wish to impose on everyone--and in the process demonstrate to people that those consequences can be lived with. The same thing is true for climate change. When people who demand a war-time mobilization of the economy to combat climate change still emit gigatons going on foreign vacations, that signals to people one of two things. One, the reduction in standard of living required to address climate change must be enormous, because even those who believe catastrophe is at our doorstep won't suffer that reduction unless the government forces them to. Or two, those people don't really believe climate change will be that bad, and their demand for government intervention is a pretext for something else.

WhompingWindows 6y ago
Individual choice has a very small role in climate change. The author has done nothing, zero, to contextualize the issue in numbers and data, which clearly demonstrate that individual choice is maybe 5-10% of what we need to decarbonize. Foreign vacations (which aren't even occurring in 2020) are a pittance here...we're talking about billions of fossil-fuel powered engines, hundreds of millions of livestock, heating and cooling homes for upwards of 10 billion humans, the production of steel, fertilizer, plastics, concrete, electronics, mining operations, shipping, trucking...it's just so much more vast than the hypocrisy of rich leftist environmentalists going on vacations.
- 6y ago

bambax 6y ago

All true. The comments so far are quite entertaining in explaining how it's not in fact the case; one even says that people should be able to avoid taxes while hoping to pay more taxes in a distant future. But climate change advocates are not the only ones to blame. Absolutely nobody wants to change their behavior: no individual, no company, no country. And so climate change is simply unavoidable. Trying to mitigate it is a waste of time IMHO; finding ways to live with it may be more fruitful.

jeffreyrogers 6y ago
The comments are revealing. People are having an emotional reaction that's preventing them from realizing any real way of addressing climate change will substantially change/reduce their living standards. I've had this conversation with people in real life and almost no one gets it at first.
- ls65536 6y ago
  There really does seem to be this pervasive idea that there's a non-stop linear march of progress from the beginning of time, that despite some bumps here and there "things always improve over time", and that for any of the big problems humanity is facing that "they'll think of something", without much thought as to who "they" are or what that "something" is, or even about the additional side-effects of what that "something" might entail, which could go on to cause ever greater problems later on (where the same argument is again applied ad infinitum). This seems like a common argument made to avoid the emotionally difficult thoughts about what an individual could do right now to help prevent or even just to mitigate existing problems from becoming worse.

bsenftner 6y ago

Of course it won't be stopped as long as people continue to think this is a personal responsibility issue, and ignore that the military is the #1 greenhouse gas producer on the planet. After that we have extremely high producers of carbon operating at global scale in transportation, manufacturing and agriculture. This is not a personal responsibility issue, it is a cause for legal regulation to force the military and corporate operations to go green.

omosubi 6y ago

Didn't coronavirus prove that individual action wouldn't do much to curb climate change and that corporations and governments needed to do a lot more in order to truly have an effect? With maybe the exception of meat consumption basically all the individual actions that could have been taken were. I agree there is a lot of hypocrisy in the modern environmental movement but status quo bias and corruption play a larger role in our situation than a lack of credibility from environmentalists

neilk 6y ago

There are good reasons to not be a hypocrite. This isn't one of them. So, the theory here is that if we only purify ourselves enough, we'll finally get climate skeptics to listen? If we only take on all the systemic problems with personal sacrifices? Like, don't show up to important policy meetings on principle because we'd have to fly there? It should be the other way around. Full-time climate activists should get to fly where-ever they want, whenever they want, and the rest of us should avoid flying. I don't think the article's theory of change is how any other kind of policy change happens. The strength of belief demonstrated by a minority doesn't, by itself, convince anyone or move policymakers. If you base your credibility on being a perfect example of how you want others to act, it's exactly what the climate skeptics want. You'll fail and they'll laugh at you. Because in this society we're all complicit until there are systemic solutions. I think there's more evidence for a small minority moving public opinion and public policy when they act in a coordinated, continuous campaign. Self-perfection doesn't come into it. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/why-nonviolent-resistance-beats-violent-force-in-effecting-social-political-change/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/why-nonviolen...

julianeon 6y ago

This article doesn’t quite live up to its title - swerving at the end to say unless we change, instead of concluding we won’t change. This article was pilloried at the time for its negativity, but I think Franzen’s article, “What If We Stopped Pretending the Climate Apocalypse Can Be Stopped,” ultimately has it right. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending/amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/culture/cultu...

hedora 6y ago

His rape analogy is terrible on many levels, but I’ll go with it for a second. It’s more like the electric company uses its proceeds to fund rape squads. He argues we shouldn’t take any anti-rape activists seriously unless they first disconnect their houses from the power grid. Me reducing my personal carbon footprint is a drop in the bucket compared to cutting CPU time at work, and that’s a drop in the bucket compared to voting in a Green New Deal politician. Reducing my personal carbon foot print is harder than reducing work’s carbon footprint. So, I’ll start there, and vote and donate to political campaigns accordingly (because that’s easier and has higher impact) Ordering actions by cost benefit doesn’t make me a hypocrite, it makes me an effective pragmatist.

GVIrish 6y ago

This article gets the problem right, but misses some other reasons for making personal changes to combat climate change. For one, the more people that buy products that are more environmentally-friendly, the more the market will shift towards offering environmentally-friendly options. If consumers were beating down car dealership doors to buy every EV they could, car manufacturers would shift heavily towards EVs. If everyone buying a house were looping in a solar panel installation into their loan, we'd probably see more competition and faster price drops in solar panels. The more people that buy meat alternatives, the more money gets invested in developing meat alternatives. Secondly, each individual action has the potential to influence someone else. If you see your neighborhood switching to EV's, you may be more likely to buy one. Or if a friend had a great experience with reducing their energy costs by upgrading their windows, you might be more likely to get it done yourself. Put the first two factors together, and then it is much, much easier to build political support for the legislation needed to enact big climate change initiatives. If more people take personal ownership of climate change, that helps those people drive political will towards addressing climate change. Politicians absolutely will respond to public pressure, but if the public is largely indifferent on the issue, it makes it less likely politicians will spend political capital on climate change initiatives.

readhn 6y ago
"If consumers were beating down car dealership doors to buy every EV they could, car manufacturers would shift heavily towards EVs. If everyone buying a house were looping in a solar panel installation into their loan, we'd probably see more competition and faster price drops in solar panels." this logic is part of the problem. you live in a privileged bubble where people buy electric cars and install solar panels on their houses. Median American household has only $10K saved up, many below that and live paycheck to paycheck. What EV/What homes/ solar panels? First we have to solve socio-economic wealth gap issue THEN address climate change.
- GVIrish 6y ago
  Why can't we do both? For people who don't own homes, we need to invest in clean energy sources for the power grid. For people that can't afford EV's now, if there were actually better demand for EV's auto manufacturers could make the investments to reach the economies of scale so that more people could afford an EV, PHEV, FCEV, whatever it may be. And if there is a big shift towards clean energy that will create new jobs as well as reduce pollution that causes health problems, particularly in low income neighborhoods. On an individual level, if someone has the means to reduce their carbon footprint, why shouldn't they? On a national level, developed nations have more capital they can spend on shifting to clean energy. Poorer countries won't be able to afford to make some of those shifts. If the nations with the means make the shifts first, they can help bring down the costs of some of those green technologies to where it's more feasible for poorer nations in the world. We're already at the point that wind and solar power is starting to be cheaper than coal power. Continuing along that path means the developing world can continue developing and expanding their economies with clean energy instead of fossil fuels.

martythemaniak 6y ago

A huge part of the problem is people like the author that demand _cuts_ in living standards. I enjoy my high standard of living and as someone with friends and family in less developed places, I understand very well they would really like the same high standard of living. Not only that, but I think they deserve that high standard of living. The way to achieve that is by developing a set of substitutions, and having rich people migrate to these substitutions and having poor people work towards them. Many claim that this is impossible, but the fact is that we have barely even begun trying to do this. For example, all ground transportation can be electrified - cars, trucks, semis, trains, etc. There is now a very clear path towards this that did not exist 10 years ago. All electricity generation can be decarbonized in tandem. Homes can be heated with carbon-free electric heat pumps by automating geothermal installations. Short-haul flights be be electrified within a few years. None of this is a missed opportunity, nothing is too late. We are just starting to realize this path and there is a lot of work to do.

jordanbeiber 6y ago
Don’t know where you’re from but as a an average Swede I consume about three to four earths worth of resources per year. It’s unsustainable on a fundamental level, driven by a consumerism that triggers primal behavior. You might not have to cut down, but someone eventually have to. There’s no way around that. https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/country-overshoot-days/ https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/country-overshoot-days...

agakshat 6y ago

Impose a carbon tax and watch how fast renewables, nuclear etc. become financially viable and self-sufficient. The role people have to play here is to get on to the same page so loudly that politicians can’t ignore our voices anymore. Switching off my air conditioner isn’t really going to accomplish anything.

ls65536 6y ago

It's great to see something from John Michael Greer come up on HN. I've read a number of his books, many critical of modern society and its ills, and while one might not always agree with everything in full including his predictions about the future, it is difficult to argue that he hasn't done a fantastic job backing up his claims and ideas, including providing many references to past societies, drawing though-provoking parallels between what's happened many times in history and what we're observing and living through today. As a bonus, his writing style is often lively and fun to read, while still maintaining the intellectual seriousness that such topics deserve.

readhn 6y ago

"Climate change activism these days is almost entirely a concern of middle- and upper middle-class people in the industrial world: people, that is, whose lifestyles are disproportionately responsible for the dumping of greenhouse gases; people who use much more fossil fuel energy, and many more of the products of fossil fuel energy, than the average human being." 100% Agreed.

kanox 6y ago

Is there any data as to how much climate change can be affected by personal lifestyle choices? The biggest CO2 emitters are electricity generation and transport and these can be affected by government policy that encourages renewable sources.

gswdh 6y ago

It’s obvious, climate change will not be stopped through individuals actions. People die because they can’t be bothered to eat a little less and this is a short term problem that has a direct impact on their life - no one else’s. Selfishness and greed is the reason for climate change and that’s not going to change. Just like all the other world problems, climate change will be a problem solved with science and engineering - if it is solved at all. And I believe it will be because there’s too many people with a lot of money who’d lose out otherwise and we already know how they behave...

bjoli 6y ago

The most depressing statistic is the Corona one: the pandemic is projected to lower the 2020 co2E emission by about 7.5 percent (based on 2019 numbers). To have any chance of reaching ipcc's 1.5 degree goal we need to continue this development for the rest of the decade. I never believed 1.5 degrees would ever be reached, but the message from so many politicians was that "we need to try our best to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees". Everybody must have known that it was bullshit all along. And that is why climate change won't be stopped.

throwawaysea 6y ago

During COVID, we've seen drastic changes to the economy and individual behavior. I recall reading articles saying it all amounted to only a 5% change in emissions or something like that. I can't help but thing the real problem is simply that we have too many humans. Or at least, too many humans at a quality of life standard that is too high. We can institute population control standards (cap and trade permits?) or we can decide that it doesn't make sense to base our lives around consumerism and shipping things from long distances. But the latter notion - which might look like forming localized circular economies - feels as impractical an idea as those pushing for extreme restructuring of societal structures. And everything else, like technological innovation, seems either like a gamble or like noise.

agentultra 6y ago

Well... the difficult part with this argument is that on an individual level we don't contribute nearly as much carbon as say, the transportation industry as a whole which represents some 18% of emissions? I do as much as I can as an individual because I believe, morally, that it's true: I'd feel like a fraud if I was seriously concerned about climate and didn't become a vegetarian, refused to own a car, and stopped international travel. I try to buy only what I need, second hand if I can, to avoid putting more technology in the waste system. I avoid buying plastic. I do everything I can on an individual level. But you know what? Global politics don't seem to be moving nearly as fast or with any urgency to the matter. In the US the EPA has been practically gutted. In my own country the local government is using the pandemic as a cover to move on gutting our own environmental protections. We still need collective policy action on a global scale like we've seen with the pandemic. Unfortunately we're already decades too late to stop it. Even if we could turn off the carbon switch right now, we'll still have to suffer through some of the worst IPCC predictions.

mturmon 6y ago

I have no idea why people would upvote a junk article like this. It has two cheap rhetorical ploys. First, a crude and disgusting analogy with rape, of all things. (There's a much better analogy to the governmental action that stopped CFCs, and actually worked.) Second, an accusation of hypocrisy that is completely without actual facts. And more important: so what if some elites who profess to care about climate change fly too much? It's deeply un-serious to demand pure motives on the part of everyone who professes a certain policy, before taking action. Counterpoint, organized by a climate researcher: https://noflyclimatesci.org https://noflyclimatesci.org

DubiousPusher 6y ago

Climate change will not be stopped because asking people anywhere to take a significant decrease in their standard of living will be a political diaster and there is no silver bullet solution that allows people to maintain their lifestyles and curb climate change.

munificent 6y ago

I think there should be some eponymous law somewhere that says if you use rape as an analogy, then your argument is almost inevitably flawed. Rape is such a deeply emotional topic that invoked drives out logical reasoning. If you can't find a less loaded analogy that still works, then it likely implies that your argument is in fact false. A rape analogy is a flashbang grenade thrown to obscure the lack of truth in your argument. A better analogy might be forest fires. What the author is saying is that you can't be against forest fires unless you also never light a candle in your home. Or perhaps that you can't be against pollution if you ever throw something in the trash. I disagree with his implicit presumption that "solving" climate change necessarily involves willfully lowering one's quality of life. Austerity is not a goal, it is possibly a necessary step to fixing the problem. But just martyring yourself will not magically fix climate change. In fact, ideal solutions to climate change do not involve lowering quality of life because that makes them much easier to adopt. When asbestos was discovered to cause cancer, we didn't fix that problem by having every individual tear the insulation out of their homes and make a personal commitment to freeze their ass off every winter. We outlawed it and used our existing large-scale systems like the law to solve what was a large-scale systemic problem. That in turn drove innovation to find better alternatives and here we are all now mostly safe from that problem.

dnautics 6y ago

Really though the biggest problem is that our economic and political systems require growth as a policy. This means individuals incur invisible climate costs regardless of their personal habits, simply by participating in a currency scheme that is driven by deficit spending. This is true whether that deficit is used to fund bombing people halfway around the world, or social programmes at home alike. The idea that the government can borrow money to fund a green revolution (that will mostly soak the already rich/politically connected) is laughable, because it misses the very hidden flaw in its premise (that the act of sovereign borrowing is the cause of the problem in the first place). In principle capitalism itself is not the primary ecological problem; capitalism could extract profits in a closed non exponential system by exploiting gradients in efficiency incumbent with technological improvements. That could even incentivise climate improvement. It's when there is a secular incentive to mindlessly grow that capitalism becomes a menace.

amflare 6y ago

Climate change won't be stopped because the population of the world who care, and the population who might care, is massively dwarfed by the number of people who will never care. And the incentives are aligned such that benefit for humans means detriment for the planet. Thus, it is in no nation's individual interest to actually push for climate change legislation. Because first they would fall behind industrially, then economically, then finally get squeezed into irrelevance. And even if they did hypothetically care enough to make this sacrifice "for the betterment of the earth, humanity, and future generations", it would all be for naught once they fell into irrelevance. Like a child going on a hunger strike, nobody cares and they don't have a say anyway.

bioinformatics 6y ago

Because climate always change either mankind does it or not?

mnm1 6y ago

The US was incapable of responding to the imminent danger of the pandemic threat that was one month out. It's impossible that they will respond to a much more abstract threat decades into the future. It's beyond absurd to even propose this as a realistic idea. I don't think most other countries are much different in this regard. Climate change won't be stopped because most people don't want to stop it and almost all people in charge most certainly do not want to stop it. And like the article says, changing on a personal level is completely useless. On a personal level, why even try?

JusticeAlways 6y ago

As a climate activist, I'm calling bullshit. This is a straw man argument... climate activists aren't calling for individual change. We're calling for mass action to stop the LARGEST polluters so that everyone can be free to live their lives as they wish. Regarding how this blog uses Ghandi's quote "Be the change" climate activists ARE doing that: they are banding people together, working in communities to rise up against the LARGEST polluters. Again, this author misses the point ENTIRELY about what climate activists are calling for... it's like saying "to stop police brutality you have to stop being a bad cop"... BUT WE AREN'T COPS. SIMILARLY, WE AREN'T THE PROBLEM. THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY AND THE BIG BANKS THAT BACK FOSSIL FUEL INFRASTRUCTURE ARE THE PROBLEM. That's what we're fighting to stop get. it. right., and that's why this movement needs everyone, regardless of what level of personal eco-conscious "virtue" you embody.

shawndrost 6y ago

If the hypothesis is: "Normal people aren't convinced by climate intellectuals because the latter are visible hypocrites." Then it is wrong for two reasons: 1a. Normal Americans on the left, and many on the right, are convinced by climate intellectuals. https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-views-on-climate-and-energy/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-vi... 1b. Normal Europeans of all stripes are likewise convinced. 2. (This is anecdata, but I'm pretty confident it'd appear in experimentation if anyone cared to debunk this dumb hypothesis.) Climate intellectuals that make significant efforts to avoid hypocrisy (like Greta, or her less-famous counterparts, or me to a lesser degree) do not experience a different reception from skeptics. Indeed, personal action is rarely a point of interest for anyone in the discussion. Probably because the focus of the climate intellectuals -- renewable electricity, decarbonizing heavy industry, land use practices -- is so obviously outside the scope of direct personal action.

LatteLazy 6y ago

This is the same virtue signaling bullshit that’s gotten us no where on this issue for 40 years. You’re neighbours don’t care that you compost. This is a global crisis, not a chance for you to tell us all how great you are.

RickJWagner 6y ago

Works for me. Every time I hear some Hollywood talking head going on about the urgency of climage change, I just ask myself: Why should I lower my family's standard of living, when this actor is basking in adulation while burning 25 times the carbon we do? Incredibly selfish, I know. On both our parts. Honestly, I do make an effort to limit my impact on the planet. But I do what my conscience tells me to do. Celebrity endorsements don't move the needle at all for me, at least not in the right direction.