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Thanks for the great reply, with some new thoughts, but also reminding me of some thoughts I kept before but apparently forgot recently, argh. In particular, th

by akavel 5y ago

Thanks for the great reply, with some new thoughts, but also reminding me of some thoughts I kept before but apparently forgot recently, argh. In particular, that individual people are just a tiny percentage polluter, and the main offenders are various industries (where the oil ones in particular purposefully shifted the blame in people's minds to individuals via strong PR). In fact, I long didn't see point in changing my lifestyle, as my "carbon footprint" (with even this being creative PR to shift blame to individuals) and other individual pollution is not really relevant quantitively speaking. Only recently I switched my thinking, in that although individuals' waste is technically irrelevant, displaying caring-about-nature actions and attitude can hopefully influence other people and thus create a "political climate" where politicians, to try and please people, start caring more about nature and as a result hopefully start pushing industries to switch away from polluting energy sources etc. Argh, I wish it was all simpler to explain and rally people behind.

epistasis 5y ago
Yeah, the economy is a hugely complex interplay of forces. Nobody is completely guilty, nobody is completely innocent. (I make an exception for agents that participate in intentional deception like fossil fuel companies. If the economy and democracy are information processing systems, employing deceptive PR to lie to the system is 100% bad). I've come to view my own personal choices exactly as you. It's not as much about changing my personal footprint, as it is using my dollars towards investment in changing infrastructure. I had to replace my 50 year old gas furnace last year, and it was suuuuper hard to get anybody to even propose a heat pump rather than natural gas. So I made sure to call tons of local HVAC places, and make sure that everyone that wouldn't bid on a heat pump knew that the reason I wasn't going with them was because of that. For deeply conservative, low-information and low-innovation parts of the economy like residential HVAC, it will probably take regulation for them to offer the better choices. But I can at least try to let them know that they would have a customer base if they ever decide to try something new.

by akavel 5y ago

epistasis 5y ago

Yeah, the economy is a hugely complex interplay of forces. Nobody is completely guilty, nobody is completely innocent. (I make an exception for agents that participate in intentional deception like fossil fuel companies. If the economy and democracy are information processing systems, employing deceptive PR to lie to the system is 100% bad). I've come to view my own personal choices exactly as you. It's not as much about changing my personal footprint, as it is using my dollars towards investment in changing infrastructure. I had to replace my 50 year old gas furnace last year, and it was suuuuper hard to get anybody to even propose a heat pump rather than natural gas. So I made sure to call tons of local HVAC places, and make sure that everyone that wouldn't bid on a heat pump knew that the reason I wasn't going with them was because of that. For deeply conservative, low-information and low-innovation parts of the economy like residential HVAC, it will probably take regulation for them to offer the better choices. But I can at least try to let them know that they would have a customer base if they ever decide to try something new.