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I pay several hundred euro more a year for renewably sourced electricity to heat my cottage. My neighbours all cut turf from a local bog and burn it - one of t

I pay several hundred euro more a year for renewably sourced electricity to heat my cottage. My neighbours all cut turf from a local bog and burn it - one of the only fuel sources WORSE than coal! They handily destroy biodiversity and emit enormous amounts of carbon at once. We are reforesting land and grow our own veggies. We compost as much of our own waste as possible. We drive a 49 MPG 11 year old vehicle about 6000 miles a year between the four of us. And my neighbours enjoy their free turf, subsidized roads, big-ass Land Rovers, ecological desert lawns, and as an added benefit climate and the connection to their actions _doesn't even cross their minds_ while I'm sitting here agonizing over accidentally introducing plastics to the compost and its impact on earthworms. I'm tired of being a chump. We need governments to make it more expensive to kill the planet than to not kill it. Unti then every liter of fuel I save is just more for my neighbour's second Land Rover.

armada651 6y ago
And that is exactly why blaming individual behavior is so harmful. Everyone is solving the prisoner's dilemma by playing tit-for-tat. If your neighbors cheat by emitting more carbon then you will eventually start cheating as well. The only way to solve the dillema is by ensuring that people can't reap the benefits of cheating.
- lazysheepherd 6y ago
  Yes, it's called "horizontal aggression" or "lateral aggression". It is making people fight with each other instead of with the actual perpetrator. We should not fall for it.
ppf 6y ago
I understand your frustration, but (just to pose some devil's advocate questions), your neighbours' behaviours that you describe probably already are inline with government-mandated changes. Peat is in it's own category, so is neither renewable nor non-renewable according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, so that's a useful loophole. If your neighbours' cars are at all recent, there's an excellent chance they are hybrids, which meet all of the stringent emissions regulations. And as for your energy source - is there anything renewable about powering your house with energy generators manufactured far overseas, using brown coal to fuel that energy-intensive process?
- CalRobert 6y ago
  I don't have a source off the top of my head but I would be very surprised if wind and solar with a good COP heat pump had higher emissions than cutting the most carbon-rich wetland in the world to dry and burn it. Also the Land Rover I see most is a 2008 (in Ireland, model year is on the number plate)

armada651 6y ago

And that is exactly why blaming individual behavior is so harmful. Everyone is solving the prisoner's dilemma by playing tit-for-tat. If your neighbors cheat by emitting more carbon then you will eventually start cheating as well. The only way to solve the dillema is by ensuring that people can't reap the benefits of cheating.

lazysheepherd 6y ago
Yes, it's called "horizontal aggression" or "lateral aggression". It is making people fight with each other instead of with the actual perpetrator. We should not fall for it.

ppf 6y ago

I understand your frustration, but (just to pose some devil's advocate questions), your neighbours' behaviours that you describe probably already are inline with government-mandated changes. Peat is in it's own category, so is neither renewable nor non-renewable according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, so that's a useful loophole. If your neighbours' cars are at all recent, there's an excellent chance they are hybrids, which meet all of the stringent emissions regulations. And as for your energy source - is there anything renewable about powering your house with energy generators manufactured far overseas, using brown coal to fuel that energy-intensive process?

CalRobert 6y ago
I don't have a source off the top of my head but I would be very surprised if wind and solar with a good COP heat pump had higher emissions than cutting the most carbon-rich wetland in the world to dry and burn it. Also the Land Rover I see most is a 2008 (in Ireland, model year is on the number plate)