8 ms·

> You can't have all the modern day luxuries (cars, airplanes, electricity 24/7) I'm still feeling this argument out a bit, but... what can an individual actua

> You can't have all the modern day luxuries (cars, airplanes, electricity 24/7) I'm still feeling this argument out a bit, but... what can an individual actually do about it? Even if you look beyond how little any individual family contributes to pollution, in comparison to even some of the simplest industrial ventures. I can't do without electricity 24x7, because I live in the north. I'd freeze to death. Think the recent crap Texas had to go through, for around 8 months of the year. I can't do without a car because my commute is around 20 miles one way. I - quite literally - can't afford to live closer to work; the prices are on par with the bay area ($600,000 1,000 sqft condos), despite living in a very sparsely populated state with "competitive" wages in the $80k range for experienced software developers. I could (and have) done without airplanes, but the alternative (if I want to keep my job) is to drive for around 18 hours. Not terribly friendly. The bus is closer to 48 hours, with prices on par with the airlines. It is, for all intents and purposes, impossible for me (for a vast majority of people, I'd posit) to live without a job, without electricity, and without a car. And, realistically, I have very little control over my house, my car, my food, etc; these are instead largely based on my salary. I get what's been made available by the market to me at a price that I can afford. It's not as if the market will change to less profitable products just because they're a bit better for the world. And it's not as if I can suddenly afford more expensive products just because they're better for the world.

kiliantics 6y ago
> what can an individual actually do about it? Get politically engaged with organisations that are demanding systemic change EDIT: I don't see what is negative or controversial about this suggestion. The commenter says they cannot do the right thing because of how the system works and what options it makes available to them and at what price. So in that case we must all do work to change the system. The market is currently dictated by many different policies and legislation, causing most things you buy to be artificially cheap or expensive in one way or another. We can change this through policy or other means to make carbon products more expensive -- driving more expensive while clean transit is cheap, inner city housing cheaper than suburban sprawl, etc.
- falcolas 6y ago
  I will never have enough money in my entire lifetime to out-politic Google for one year, let alone the oil industry for the remainder of my life.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - blacksqr 6y ago
    Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number-- Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you-- Ye are many -- they are few.
  - zorpner 6y ago
    There are ways to demand systemic change outside of the lobbying umbrella.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    Getting involved can take other forms than just giving money. And even whatever little money you can give, if multiplied by others who care, can help.
  - vnorilo 6y ago
    Luckily you shouldn't need to do those things all by yourself.
nostromo 6y ago
The only thing that can be done is have fewer children. Everything else is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The good news is that this is already happening in most places. The bad news is that population growth is still out of control in Africa and parts of Asia, and may lead to a environmental crisis before population growth gets under control.
- falcolas 6y ago
  Done. I have no children, nor plans for children. Sadly, a childhood friend of mine has made up for myself and my partner 5 times over.
  - fogihujy 6y ago
    And as it turns out, it's your childhood friend that get to raise those children and not you, so if you wanted to help posterity then we'll have to hope your friend isn't a climate change denier or something. Have children. Not too many. Raise them well.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    How do you know that this was in response to you? Isn't it more likely that it was in response to another person?
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  And yet, those places in Asia and Africa are much less of a problem for the environment than we are in Europe and the USA. Raw population numbers are not the biggest concern. Consumption and excessive luxury, wasteful production practices and burying all of these under the rug are the root of all these problems
heurist 6y ago
People lived in the north prior to the invention of electricity, so it's possible. Maybe more difficult now due to the quantity of firewood that would be needed with a larger population? Architecture (and dense urban development) plays an important role in electricity-free livability across various climate conditions. Some buildings work well in the cold, some work well in the heat. That's not to say you as an individual can address these problems, but society as a whole can design urban systems which support low-energy living in even difficult conditions.
- falcolas 6y ago
  > but society as a whole can design urban systems which support low-energy living in even difficult conditions. What's the forcing function? It's already been proven that a global climate crisis is not enough to move society. It's not profitable enough to convince corporations to do it. The 0.1% have no cause to do it; even the humanitarians among that group have much better investments they can make. EDIT: Also, in the past, living in the north without electricity was managed by burning wood and coal. Given the significant increase in population the impact to the environment of burning all that would be irrecoverable on its own.
  - bumby 6y ago
    >It's not profitable enough to convince corporations to do it. Can policy not make it profitable? It seems like regulation can be a means of creating market incentives. It worked well for leaded gas, I tend to think a carbon tax/market may work
    - bilegeek 6y ago
      At best, like leaded gas, it will take about 30 years, which in this case is far, FAR too late. At worst, there is no way that anything approaching that sort of regulation will ever fly in today's political system. Period.
      - lovecg 6y ago
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
>I can't do without a car Never buy another car. Fix what you have when you need to. Eat less meat. Live principled- not that you don't but doing these things is almost contagious. I notice friends and family following my lead. Consuming less, buying less.
- falcolas 6y ago
  > Fix what you have when you need to. Not possible to do myself, and it's not feasible to pay someone to do it. I don't have the tools, the electronics, nor the replacement parts (not to mention knowledge or time) to keep a modern car going for the remaining 30-50 years of my lifetime. Attempting to fix it at the point where everything is falling apart becomes impractical (as I keep trying to tell my dad when he's spending even more money to make a '79 truck run). Not to mention that getting those parts custom made or shipped to you from across the country incurs its own environmental penalty. > Eat less meat. I've found that, to keep a balanced diet without meat, it's quite a bit more expensive, and exceptionally more time consuming. Then there's the health issues (like those outlined in the scar study featured on HN a week or so ago). I absolutely could compromise my health and lifespan for the sake of the world, but I'm not going to. > Consuming less, buying less. There's a lower limit to how much less you can do and still remain as a healthy, productive adult, but I agree that it's a good thing to do for many reasons; it's something I try and do. Even if I took every step outlined, it would have, effectively, no impact on the environment.
  - titzer 6y ago
    Wanna do something for the environment? Don't have kids. One kid absolutely dwarfs all things suggested so far, combined. By far.
    - ALittleLight 6y ago
      In exchange for sacrificing what many people feel is a vital component of life you could have a completely insignificant impact on the environment! Also, compare the birth rate per woman in the US (1.73) to somewhere like Niger (7). Getting Western populations to decline faster will not have any meaningful effect on total human population.
titzer 6y ago
Don't have kids.
- jdkee 6y ago
  This is self-selection against those willing to acknowledge and work towards solving the problem.
  - titzer 6y ago
    Then have 12 kids.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      Let's meet in the middle and have exactly two kids and no replacements if one of them dies.
ALittleLight 6y ago
I think "The only way out is through" meaning, we will not solve the problem by consuming less or becoming primitive. We will solve the problem by developing through the environmental constraints and replacing our harmful behaviors with better ones. For example, solar, wind, nuclear, and one day fusion providing power instead of coal, oil, and natural gas. Electric cars instead of internal combustion and so on. People just are not going to use less stuff. In fact, they're going to use more. There are billions of people in the developing world who use a lot less energy and stuff than people in the developed world - but they are developing and will come to use and consume more and more. We won't impoverish ourselves, we can't ask the developing world to stay poor, and the population is growing all the time. Plans or hopes that involve consuming less are unrealistic. The only way to save the environment is better technology and geo-engineering.
- danybittel 6y ago
  I think it's going to need both. We are in a phase where we can basically do the low hanging fruits. I assume we'll be able to save a lot of CO2 that way. But the goal is ZERO. I just can't imagine a world with net zero CO2 and everybody is driving a Tesla. The mining, fabrication, transport, materials is all very resource hungry. I think current studies suggest an electric car uses about half as much CO2 in it's lifetime. I'm sure it can be improved.. but ZERO ?
  - lovecg 6y ago
    Cap and trade, and then gradually lower the cap (driving the price of emitting carbon up). When a lot of money is on the line people tend to get creative. There’s no physical law that says we must put CO2 in the air to unlock these resources. With the right incentives people will figure it out.
- justatdotin 6y ago
  'consuming less' does not mean 'becoming primitive'. ever-growing consumption on a finite planet is unrealistic.
  - 6y ago
rvp-x 6y ago
Almost everything you describe is a product of bad urban/house planning. House planning could require far less electricity, but it's not required by building codes, and the market doesn't acknowledge its value. Urban planning puts workplaces far away from residential areas because they used to be heavy polluters, but never stopped doing it when workplaces improved. My workplace office is 1km away from my residence. Someone had the smarts to put a small amount of office buildings in an otherwise residential neighborhood (as well as a few shops). I moved here for the job - it was the obvious choice. Mixed use zoning has made it so I don't just not need a car, I don't even use public transit often.
pharmakom 6y ago
your situation is pretty common. it has a small effect, but vote for candidates who will reduce car dependency and support public transport measures. the developed world got this right in the early 20th century, we can do it again.
danieldk 6y ago
20 miles is doable with an eBike or speed pedelec. Probably not as environment-friendly as a normal bike, but probably beats a car. And it’s healthier.
CryptoPunk 6y ago
The best solution, AFAICS, is to push for space exploration. In the meantime, if you're single, you could try to live in a more dense downtown location where living car-free is practical. I'm not sure that would be a good idea if you had kids though.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  Or get an electric car. Even with embodied emissions, it's half (or less) of the emissions of a conventional car. And improving over time. (In the US, emissions per kWh of electricity have dropped about 30% over the last 10 years alone.)
  - CryptoPunk 6y ago
    Living in a dense neighbourhood where you don't need to commute by car is more efficient still. But yes, if that isn't an option, an electric car, preferrably a Tesla so you can indirectly support Musk's space exploration goals, seems like the next best option.
Robotbeat 6y ago
Get an electric car. Even a plug-in hybrid is good enough to cover your commute. There are a bunch of used Volts and Bolts out there that are quite affordable, and even entry-level new Teslas are no more expensive than the average new vehicle. I sympathize with you because the environmentally minded are telling you to do the impossible and claiming that electric cars are a cop out or whatever. They aren't. It's actually easy.

kiliantics 6y ago

> what can an individual actually do about it? Get politically engaged with organisations that are demanding systemic change EDIT: I don't see what is negative or controversial about this suggestion. The commenter says they cannot do the right thing because of how the system works and what options it makes available to them and at what price. So in that case we must all do work to change the system. The market is currently dictated by many different policies and legislation, causing most things you buy to be artificially cheap or expensive in one way or another. We can change this through policy or other means to make carbon products more expensive -- driving more expensive while clean transit is cheap, inner city housing cheaper than suburban sprawl, etc.

falcolas 6y ago
I will never have enough money in my entire lifetime to out-politic Google for one year, let alone the oil industry for the remainder of my life.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- blacksqr 6y ago
  Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number-- Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you-- Ye are many -- they are few.
- zorpner 6y ago
  There are ways to demand systemic change outside of the lobbying umbrella.
- kelnos 6y ago
  Getting involved can take other forms than just giving money. And even whatever little money you can give, if multiplied by others who care, can help.
- vnorilo 6y ago
  Luckily you shouldn't need to do those things all by yourself.

nostromo 6y ago

The only thing that can be done is have fewer children. Everything else is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The good news is that this is already happening in most places. The bad news is that population growth is still out of control in Africa and parts of Asia, and may lead to a environmental crisis before population growth gets under control.

falcolas 6y ago
Done. I have no children, nor plans for children. Sadly, a childhood friend of mine has made up for myself and my partner 5 times over.
- fogihujy 6y ago
  And as it turns out, it's your childhood friend that get to raise those children and not you, so if you wanted to help posterity then we'll have to hope your friend isn't a climate change denier or something. Have children. Not too many. Raise them well.
- imtringued 6y ago
  How do you know that this was in response to you? Isn't it more likely that it was in response to another person?
tsimionescu 6y ago
And yet, those places in Asia and Africa are much less of a problem for the environment than we are in Europe and the USA. Raw population numbers are not the biggest concern. Consumption and excessive luxury, wasteful production practices and burying all of these under the rug are the root of all these problems

heurist 6y ago

People lived in the north prior to the invention of electricity, so it's possible. Maybe more difficult now due to the quantity of firewood that would be needed with a larger population? Architecture (and dense urban development) plays an important role in electricity-free livability across various climate conditions. Some buildings work well in the cold, some work well in the heat. That's not to say you as an individual can address these problems, but society as a whole can design urban systems which support low-energy living in even difficult conditions.

falcolas 6y ago
> but society as a whole can design urban systems which support low-energy living in even difficult conditions. What's the forcing function? It's already been proven that a global climate crisis is not enough to move society. It's not profitable enough to convince corporations to do it. The 0.1% have no cause to do it; even the humanitarians among that group have much better investments they can make. EDIT: Also, in the past, living in the north without electricity was managed by burning wood and coal. Given the significant increase in population the impact to the environment of burning all that would be irrecoverable on its own.
- bumby 6y ago
  >It's not profitable enough to convince corporations to do it. Can policy not make it profitable? It seems like regulation can be a means of creating market incentives. It worked well for leaded gas, I tend to think a carbon tax/market may work
  - bilegeek 6y ago
    At best, like leaded gas, it will take about 30 years, which in this case is far, FAR too late. At worst, there is no way that anything approaching that sort of regulation will ever fly in today's political system. Period.
    - lovecg 6y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

>I can't do without a car Never buy another car. Fix what you have when you need to. Eat less meat. Live principled- not that you don't but doing these things is almost contagious. I notice friends and family following my lead. Consuming less, buying less.

falcolas 6y ago
> Fix what you have when you need to. Not possible to do myself, and it's not feasible to pay someone to do it. I don't have the tools, the electronics, nor the replacement parts (not to mention knowledge or time) to keep a modern car going for the remaining 30-50 years of my lifetime. Attempting to fix it at the point where everything is falling apart becomes impractical (as I keep trying to tell my dad when he's spending even more money to make a '79 truck run). Not to mention that getting those parts custom made or shipped to you from across the country incurs its own environmental penalty. > Eat less meat. I've found that, to keep a balanced diet without meat, it's quite a bit more expensive, and exceptionally more time consuming. Then there's the health issues (like those outlined in the scar study featured on HN a week or so ago). I absolutely could compromise my health and lifespan for the sake of the world, but I'm not going to. > Consuming less, buying less. There's a lower limit to how much less you can do and still remain as a healthy, productive adult, but I agree that it's a good thing to do for many reasons; it's something I try and do. Even if I took every step outlined, it would have, effectively, no impact on the environment.
- titzer 6y ago
  Wanna do something for the environment? Don't have kids. One kid absolutely dwarfs all things suggested so far, combined. By far.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    In exchange for sacrificing what many people feel is a vital component of life you could have a completely insignificant impact on the environment! Also, compare the birth rate per woman in the US (1.73) to somewhere like Niger (7). Getting Western populations to decline faster will not have any meaningful effect on total human population.

titzer 6y ago

Don't have kids.

jdkee 6y ago
This is self-selection against those willing to acknowledge and work towards solving the problem.
- titzer 6y ago
  Then have 12 kids.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Let's meet in the middle and have exactly two kids and no replacements if one of them dies.

ALittleLight 6y ago

I think "The only way out is through" meaning, we will not solve the problem by consuming less or becoming primitive. We will solve the problem by developing through the environmental constraints and replacing our harmful behaviors with better ones. For example, solar, wind, nuclear, and one day fusion providing power instead of coal, oil, and natural gas. Electric cars instead of internal combustion and so on. People just are not going to use less stuff. In fact, they're going to use more. There are billions of people in the developing world who use a lot less energy and stuff than people in the developed world - but they are developing and will come to use and consume more and more. We won't impoverish ourselves, we can't ask the developing world to stay poor, and the population is growing all the time. Plans or hopes that involve consuming less are unrealistic. The only way to save the environment is better technology and geo-engineering.

danybittel 6y ago
I think it's going to need both. We are in a phase where we can basically do the low hanging fruits. I assume we'll be able to save a lot of CO2 that way. But the goal is ZERO. I just can't imagine a world with net zero CO2 and everybody is driving a Tesla. The mining, fabrication, transport, materials is all very resource hungry. I think current studies suggest an electric car uses about half as much CO2 in it's lifetime. I'm sure it can be improved.. but ZERO ?
- lovecg 6y ago
  Cap and trade, and then gradually lower the cap (driving the price of emitting carbon up). When a lot of money is on the line people tend to get creative. There’s no physical law that says we must put CO2 in the air to unlock these resources. With the right incentives people will figure it out.
justatdotin 6y ago
'consuming less' does not mean 'becoming primitive'. ever-growing consumption on a finite planet is unrealistic.
- 6y ago

rvp-x 6y ago

Almost everything you describe is a product of bad urban/house planning. House planning could require far less electricity, but it's not required by building codes, and the market doesn't acknowledge its value. Urban planning puts workplaces far away from residential areas because they used to be heavy polluters, but never stopped doing it when workplaces improved. My workplace office is 1km away from my residence. Someone had the smarts to put a small amount of office buildings in an otherwise residential neighborhood (as well as a few shops). I moved here for the job - it was the obvious choice. Mixed use zoning has made it so I don't just not need a car, I don't even use public transit often.

pharmakom 6y ago

your situation is pretty common. it has a small effect, but vote for candidates who will reduce car dependency and support public transport measures. the developed world got this right in the early 20th century, we can do it again.

danieldk 6y ago

20 miles is doable with an eBike or speed pedelec. Probably not as environment-friendly as a normal bike, but probably beats a car. And it’s healthier.

CryptoPunk 6y ago

The best solution, AFAICS, is to push for space exploration. In the meantime, if you're single, you could try to live in a more dense downtown location where living car-free is practical. I'm not sure that would be a good idea if you had kids though.

Robotbeat 6y ago
Or get an electric car. Even with embodied emissions, it's half (or less) of the emissions of a conventional car. And improving over time. (In the US, emissions per kWh of electricity have dropped about 30% over the last 10 years alone.)
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  Living in a dense neighbourhood where you don't need to commute by car is more efficient still. But yes, if that isn't an option, an electric car, preferrably a Tesla so you can indirectly support Musk's space exploration goals, seems like the next best option.

Robotbeat 6y ago

Get an electric car. Even a plug-in hybrid is good enough to cover your commute. There are a bunch of used Volts and Bolts out there that are quite affordable, and even entry-level new Teslas are no more expensive than the average new vehicle. I sympathize with you because the environmentally minded are telling you to do the impossible and claiming that electric cars are a cop out or whatever. They aren't. It's actually easy.