13 ms·

So now we can get rid of fast fashion, mandate reusability for products, reintroduce basic woodworking, metalcrafting and sewing/repair work in school and with

So now we can get rid of fast fashion, mandate reusability for products, reintroduce basic woodworking, metalcrafting and sewing/repair work in school and with that get rid of a huge chunk of the needless shipping? Or are we still going to go after individuals eating traditional food while thought leaders fly across the globe in private jets (no kidding) telling us we need to change our diet? PS: I'm already a enthusiastic carbon cutter even if it historically has been because it correlated very well with cost cutting and self sufficiency.

qeternity 5y ago
> cost cutting Do you mind elaborating more on this? Is it just a matter of consuming less == fewer costs?
- skinkestek 5y ago
  Also buy higher quality products, ideally used instead of cheaper products new. Repairing instead of throwing away. Avoiding unnecessary consumption, choosing what I prioritize. Edit, another: Thinking smart wrt transport, haven't used car to get to work since maybe 10 years ago.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > Edit, another: Thinking smart wrt transport, haven't used car to get to work since maybe 10 years ago. The problem is, outside of urban areas there simply is no alternative to owning a car because public transport has never been built or torn down.
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      Speak for yourself and your country. I live in the countryside in Norway - a famously long and sparsely populated country - and I either work close enough to home to go by bike or I work far enough away that I can manage to pick up my laptop and get some work done while in public transit. And yes: I get to the train station by bike, bus or by feet, if necessary it is just 30 minutes brisk walk. Edit: not every Norwegian can do this, but far more than today. I guess this is true for a number of other countries as well.
    - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      there simply is no alternative That's what my neighbours tell me when they see me shopping on my bike.
      - garden_hermit 5y ago
        I'm curious what kind of town you live in. I grew up in a rural area, in which google claims its a 50 minute bike ride to the nearest grocery store, along curvy & hilly country roads with absolutely no sidewalks, let alone bike lanes, and where monstrous pickup trucks are liable to sideswipe you out of spite as much as accident. My sister lives in a suburb in Florida: better, but the weather is unbearable for half the year. She also has three children, making carrying sufficient groceries in a bike pretty much impossible. If people can bike, they should. But a lot of people live in these sorts of conditions that are not conducive to biking, enough that "just bike to the grocery store" is not a realistic or achievable goal.
        tonyedgecombe 5y ago
        All I hear is excuses. Excuses why someone "needs" to drive a 2 ton truck, excuses why someone "needs" to fly across the Atlantic, excuses why someone "needs" a house with more bathrooms than people, excuses why it's too cold/hot to cycle. To be honest I'm a bit fed up with hearing it.
        garden_hermit 5y ago
        I'm not talking about buying a 2 ton truck or flying across the Atlantic, or owning a big house. I'm talking about people needing to get groceries. I would prefer that infrastructure in the U.S. were more dense, that less people were not required to drive everywhere. But the reality is that, as life in many parts of the U.S. is currently set up, people cannot rely on bicycling as a safe, efficient, and effective means of transportation in their daily lives. Biking, if you live in a place that supports it, is good, but telling people to "just bike" remains a useless and naive plan for addressing climate change. Your energy will be better spent elsewhere.
        5y ago
    - qeternity 5y ago
      As an American expat, I know what you mean, but the problem is this simply isn’t true. Americans think this way because they have never seen an alternative. What it does mean is that the cost of consumption goes way up, which is exactly what’s needed.
      - mschuster91 5y ago
        The problem is, you simply cannot tell people to drop their cars when there is no public transport. No matter the country. If you want to change the behavior of people, you have to build out public transport and bike lanes first or you'll (and it ashames me to say it as a leftie, rightfully) get laughed out of the door.
    - jiri 5y ago
      Yes. Also, in my country, there are alternatives, but it is so much faster and time efficient to use car. I would gladly used any alternative that would not cost me additional time than car.
wiz21c 5y ago
The problem is that for many people climate change adaptation boils down to that dichotomy. It'd be nice if there would be people teaching us there are other ways. Of course, we won't escape the fact we use a lot of energy and that, for the time being, most of it produces CO2.
konschubert 5y ago
I think we should do neither. Impose a co2 emissions tax and let the market figure it out.
- adrianN 5y ago
  A carbon tax that would be high enough to force changes quickly enough would also be devastating for the poorer segment of the population and hence very hard to pass in a democracy. I mixture of a carbon price and other measures can be easier to sell to the voters.
  - gspr 5y ago
    Not if offset by other taxes (such as income tax, consumption taxes on renewables, etc).
  - hootbootscoot 5y ago
    needs to be coupled with subsidies for alternatives, transport (public, electric vehicles, etc) and with the knowledge that a poor person will drive that old diesel car into the ground, so give them an incentive to switch.
  - xorfish 5y ago
    Only if the tax isn't redistributed. Most poorer people would get money in such a system.
    - adrianN 5y ago
      If we want to be carbon neutral in twenty years, poorer people need pretty strong incentives too. I don't see that working out if the carbon tax is mostly cost neutral for them.
      - xorfish 5y ago
        They still have the incentive, they would gain more money if they have a smaller carbon footprint.
Joeri 5y ago
Individual action won’t solve this problem. We need to leave the fossil fuels in the ground, which means switching energy sources, which is not something individuals have much influence on. Reducing energy use at the individual level is good, but insufficient if the energy used comes from fossil fuels. I’m not sure we need to switch lifestyles that much, but we will need to radically change energy production. There has to come a global moratorium on fossil fuel production and the wells that exist need to be capped. If it comes out of the ground it will be used somewhere and the carbon will end up in the atmosphere. The more low carbon our lifestyle the cheaper fossil fuels will get and someone somewhere will always buy and use them. Regrettably politicians dare not talk about this elephant in the room.
- ChrisRR 5y ago
  We need both. We can't just ignore all individual action just because there's worse offenders. Everyone collectively doing their part will have more of an effect than sitting on their arses and blaming fossil fuels.
  - FeepingCreature 5y ago
    I suspect the demand for everyone to do their part is harming the environmental cause by politicizing it. Instead, we should try for environmental regulation to be as unnoticeable to the individual as possible. The unwarranted fetishization of restricted living is a central part of the green movement's image problem.
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      Yep. There is plenty of room for environmentalism on the conservative side (I am a conservative): - self sufficiency / independence both at the individual level and as nations - economically smart - less wasteful with resources, better for the economy Certain people - especially on my side - making this a partisan issue is something I should really want to stop.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
pcthrowaway 5y ago
> Or are we still going to go after individuals eating traditional food I mean, yes, we should continue doing that. Our relationship with food is unhealthy and also a massive contributor to environmental decline. I'm not sure why you contrast this with other improvements we can make, many of which, individually, would be less impactful than a transition to a more sustainable diet.
- hootbootscoot 5y ago
  The point I got from the OP was that traditional culture was low-carbon from day 0, and that at least Britain's climate change minister was jetting about an AWFUL lot, and there are plenty of jet-setters pushing a vegan diet upon the world when home-kept chickens are obviously a net plus, both in terms of food waste (accounts for a significant carbon and other pollution footprint, as we pay to produce it) and in terms of proteins that don't require killing your chickens over (eggs). Contrast that with having a cat or dog (look at amount of animals slaughtered for pet foods) I agree that our systems need revamping in a large-scale way, particularly agriculture, as you imply.
  - dwighttk 5y ago
    You gotta kill some chickens if you want eggs.
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      The only way you comment makes sense to me is if you talk about male chickens and even then it is not necessary: When keeping chickens at home like GP suggest you can keep the around and it would still be a net plus in the carbon calculations since you are just using food that would have been thrown away otherwise. That sides, unless we are going to bring veganism into this there is no reason to do that.
    - umanwizard 5y ago
      Why?
cblconfederate 5y ago
What about tourism ?
- skinkestek 5y ago
  Already cut massively thanks to COVID-19. I say we should try to keep it at a level close to where it is now. But we need to set the expectations here and I guess today's influencers and thought leaders won't be of much help :-/
  - throwaway128327 5y ago
    > Already cut massively thanks to COVID-19. i dont think this is true, at least booking.com has very small decrease in numbers
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      OK? I live not that far from an airport and I can say I have noticed a significant decrease in traffic, so much that I pointed at a passenger plane the other day to show one of my younger kids. Until COVID-19 that would have been just funny, now it was informative.
      - throwaway128327 5y ago
        traffic moved to domestic, but that doesnt mean there is no travel
mytailorisrich 5y ago
These are all marginal issues. Even at the current level of population demand on resources is too great and will be massively too great if poverty is eradicated (as it should). The long term solution for both the environment and people's quality of life (I don't think that not being able to travel, not being able to eat what one wants, having to live in a small flat in a dense city with mass transit only is a good life) is not only to have an objective to cut emission but to also have an objective to cut population. Now, that is a very sensitive topic and so everyone prefers to ignore it.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  >The long term solution for both the environment and people's quality of life is not only to have an objective to cut emission but to have an objective to cut population. > >Now, that is a very sensitive topic and so everyone prefers to ignore it. No. You are ignoring that countries whose population is increasing are, per capita, not emitting much. Please compare the eqCO2 per capita in Africa vs Europe or USA. If we ask a minority to curb their pollution, we can easily fix the climate problem. But those who emit the most ask everyone to not have children... because they refuse to change their behavior. This is a sensitive topic only to the minority that is responsible for the catastrophe. Again, I beg your to research who are polluting more that what our ecosystems can endure and tell me why we should block human beings from procreating vs asking the culprits to curb their crazy consumption/pollution and leave the rest of the world alone.
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    > You are ignoring that countries whose population is increasing are, per capita, not emitting much No I'm not and this is what makes the situation worse. When people get richer they consume more. This is not only about CO2 per se but all resources. Global population growth has been a driver for both CO2 emissions and demand on all resources, but this is also compounded by reduction in poverty. Imagine a world where all humans consumed as much as a Western European, or even worse an American, today: This would be much, much worse than our current situation. So unless we want to live in 1984 meets The Matrix in order to drastically limit consumption of resources then we need to get the population down so that every human can enjoy a good life in a thriving environment. I must say I don't understand why there seems to be a taboo on this. > asking the culprits to curb their crazy consumption/pollution and leave the rest of the world alone. It's not "us vs them". We are all on the same boat. The poorest do not want to remain poor, and rightly so. Everyone should have the right to reach highest living standard possible.
coffeefirst 5y ago
Correct. There's a desire to turn this into some kind of mass moral failing. We're all sinners with our cheeseburgers, or something like that. This doesn't change the outcome. Mostly it's just an annoying distraction from the massive industrial endeavors that might actually make a dent. Making more stuff locally would also be a fine idea.

qeternity 5y ago

> cost cutting Do you mind elaborating more on this? Is it just a matter of consuming less == fewer costs?

skinkestek 5y ago
Also buy higher quality products, ideally used instead of cheaper products new. Repairing instead of throwing away. Avoiding unnecessary consumption, choosing what I prioritize. Edit, another: Thinking smart wrt transport, haven't used car to get to work since maybe 10 years ago.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > Edit, another: Thinking smart wrt transport, haven't used car to get to work since maybe 10 years ago. The problem is, outside of urban areas there simply is no alternative to owning a car because public transport has never been built or torn down.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    Speak for yourself and your country. I live in the countryside in Norway - a famously long and sparsely populated country - and I either work close enough to home to go by bike or I work far enough away that I can manage to pick up my laptop and get some work done while in public transit. And yes: I get to the train station by bike, bus or by feet, if necessary it is just 30 minutes brisk walk. Edit: not every Norwegian can do this, but far more than today. I guess this is true for a number of other countries as well.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    there simply is no alternative That's what my neighbours tell me when they see me shopping on my bike.
    - garden_hermit 5y ago
      I'm curious what kind of town you live in. I grew up in a rural area, in which google claims its a 50 minute bike ride to the nearest grocery store, along curvy & hilly country roads with absolutely no sidewalks, let alone bike lanes, and where monstrous pickup trucks are liable to sideswipe you out of spite as much as accident. My sister lives in a suburb in Florida: better, but the weather is unbearable for half the year. She also has three children, making carrying sufficient groceries in a bike pretty much impossible. If people can bike, they should. But a lot of people live in these sorts of conditions that are not conducive to biking, enough that "just bike to the grocery store" is not a realistic or achievable goal.
      - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
        All I hear is excuses. Excuses why someone "needs" to drive a 2 ton truck, excuses why someone "needs" to fly across the Atlantic, excuses why someone "needs" a house with more bathrooms than people, excuses why it's too cold/hot to cycle. To be honest I'm a bit fed up with hearing it.
        garden_hermit 5y ago
        I'm not talking about buying a 2 ton truck or flying across the Atlantic, or owning a big house. I'm talking about people needing to get groceries. I would prefer that infrastructure in the U.S. were more dense, that less people were not required to drive everywhere. But the reality is that, as life in many parts of the U.S. is currently set up, people cannot rely on bicycling as a safe, efficient, and effective means of transportation in their daily lives. Biking, if you live in a place that supports it, is good, but telling people to "just bike" remains a useless and naive plan for addressing climate change. Your energy will be better spent elsewhere.
      - 5y ago
  - qeternity 5y ago
    As an American expat, I know what you mean, but the problem is this simply isn’t true. Americans think this way because they have never seen an alternative. What it does mean is that the cost of consumption goes way up, which is exactly what’s needed.
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      The problem is, you simply cannot tell people to drop their cars when there is no public transport. No matter the country. If you want to change the behavior of people, you have to build out public transport and bike lanes first or you'll (and it ashames me to say it as a leftie, rightfully) get laughed out of the door.
  - jiri 5y ago
    Yes. Also, in my country, there are alternatives, but it is so much faster and time efficient to use car. I would gladly used any alternative that would not cost me additional time than car.

wiz21c 5y ago

The problem is that for many people climate change adaptation boils down to that dichotomy. It'd be nice if there would be people teaching us there are other ways. Of course, we won't escape the fact we use a lot of energy and that, for the time being, most of it produces CO2.

konschubert 5y ago

I think we should do neither. Impose a co2 emissions tax and let the market figure it out.

adrianN 5y ago
A carbon tax that would be high enough to force changes quickly enough would also be devastating for the poorer segment of the population and hence very hard to pass in a democracy. I mixture of a carbon price and other measures can be easier to sell to the voters.
- gspr 5y ago
  Not if offset by other taxes (such as income tax, consumption taxes on renewables, etc).
- hootbootscoot 5y ago
  needs to be coupled with subsidies for alternatives, transport (public, electric vehicles, etc) and with the knowledge that a poor person will drive that old diesel car into the ground, so give them an incentive to switch.
- xorfish 5y ago
  Only if the tax isn't redistributed. Most poorer people would get money in such a system.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    If we want to be carbon neutral in twenty years, poorer people need pretty strong incentives too. I don't see that working out if the carbon tax is mostly cost neutral for them.
    - xorfish 5y ago
      They still have the incentive, they would gain more money if they have a smaller carbon footprint.

Joeri 5y ago

Individual action won’t solve this problem. We need to leave the fossil fuels in the ground, which means switching energy sources, which is not something individuals have much influence on. Reducing energy use at the individual level is good, but insufficient if the energy used comes from fossil fuels. I’m not sure we need to switch lifestyles that much, but we will need to radically change energy production. There has to come a global moratorium on fossil fuel production and the wells that exist need to be capped. If it comes out of the ground it will be used somewhere and the carbon will end up in the atmosphere. The more low carbon our lifestyle the cheaper fossil fuels will get and someone somewhere will always buy and use them. Regrettably politicians dare not talk about this elephant in the room.

ChrisRR 5y ago
We need both. We can't just ignore all individual action just because there's worse offenders. Everyone collectively doing their part will have more of an effect than sitting on their arses and blaming fossil fuels.
- FeepingCreature 5y ago
  I suspect the demand for everyone to do their part is harming the environmental cause by politicizing it. Instead, we should try for environmental regulation to be as unnoticeable to the individual as possible. The unwarranted fetishization of restricted living is a central part of the green movement's image problem.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    Yep. There is plenty of room for environmentalism on the conservative side (I am a conservative): - self sufficiency / independence both at the individual level and as nations - economically smart - less wasteful with resources, better for the economy Certain people - especially on my side - making this a partisan issue is something I should really want to stop.
  - pessimizer 5y ago

pcthrowaway 5y ago

> Or are we still going to go after individuals eating traditional food I mean, yes, we should continue doing that. Our relationship with food is unhealthy and also a massive contributor to environmental decline. I'm not sure why you contrast this with other improvements we can make, many of which, individually, would be less impactful than a transition to a more sustainable diet.

hootbootscoot 5y ago
The point I got from the OP was that traditional culture was low-carbon from day 0, and that at least Britain's climate change minister was jetting about an AWFUL lot, and there are plenty of jet-setters pushing a vegan diet upon the world when home-kept chickens are obviously a net plus, both in terms of food waste (accounts for a significant carbon and other pollution footprint, as we pay to produce it) and in terms of proteins that don't require killing your chickens over (eggs). Contrast that with having a cat or dog (look at amount of animals slaughtered for pet foods) I agree that our systems need revamping in a large-scale way, particularly agriculture, as you imply.
- dwighttk 5y ago
  You gotta kill some chickens if you want eggs.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    The only way you comment makes sense to me is if you talk about male chickens and even then it is not necessary: When keeping chickens at home like GP suggest you can keep the around and it would still be a net plus in the carbon calculations since you are just using food that would have been thrown away otherwise. That sides, unless we are going to bring veganism into this there is no reason to do that.
  - umanwizard 5y ago
    Why?

cblconfederate 5y ago

What about tourism ?

skinkestek 5y ago
Already cut massively thanks to COVID-19. I say we should try to keep it at a level close to where it is now. But we need to set the expectations here and I guess today's influencers and thought leaders won't be of much help :-/
- throwaway128327 5y ago
  > Already cut massively thanks to COVID-19. i dont think this is true, at least booking.com has very small decrease in numbers
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    OK? I live not that far from an airport and I can say I have noticed a significant decrease in traffic, so much that I pointed at a passenger plane the other day to show one of my younger kids. Until COVID-19 that would have been just funny, now it was informative.
    - throwaway128327 5y ago
      traffic moved to domestic, but that doesnt mean there is no travel

mytailorisrich 5y ago

These are all marginal issues. Even at the current level of population demand on resources is too great and will be massively too great if poverty is eradicated (as it should). The long term solution for both the environment and people's quality of life (I don't think that not being able to travel, not being able to eat what one wants, having to live in a small flat in a dense city with mass transit only is a good life) is not only to have an objective to cut emission but to also have an objective to cut population. Now, that is a very sensitive topic and so everyone prefers to ignore it.

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
>The long term solution for both the environment and people's quality of life is not only to have an objective to cut emission but to have an objective to cut population. > >Now, that is a very sensitive topic and so everyone prefers to ignore it. No. You are ignoring that countries whose population is increasing are, per capita, not emitting much. Please compare the eqCO2 per capita in Africa vs Europe or USA. If we ask a minority to curb their pollution, we can easily fix the climate problem. But those who emit the most ask everyone to not have children... because they refuse to change their behavior. This is a sensitive topic only to the minority that is responsible for the catastrophe. Again, I beg your to research who are polluting more that what our ecosystems can endure and tell me why we should block human beings from procreating vs asking the culprits to curb their crazy consumption/pollution and leave the rest of the world alone.
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  > You are ignoring that countries whose population is increasing are, per capita, not emitting much No I'm not and this is what makes the situation worse. When people get richer they consume more. This is not only about CO2 per se but all resources. Global population growth has been a driver for both CO2 emissions and demand on all resources, but this is also compounded by reduction in poverty. Imagine a world where all humans consumed as much as a Western European, or even worse an American, today: This would be much, much worse than our current situation. So unless we want to live in 1984 meets The Matrix in order to drastically limit consumption of resources then we need to get the population down so that every human can enjoy a good life in a thriving environment. I must say I don't understand why there seems to be a taboo on this. > asking the culprits to curb their crazy consumption/pollution and leave the rest of the world alone. It's not "us vs them". We are all on the same boat. The poorest do not want to remain poor, and rightly so. Everyone should have the right to reach highest living standard possible.

coffeefirst 5y ago

Correct. There's a desire to turn this into some kind of mass moral failing. We're all sinners with our cheeseburgers, or something like that. This doesn't change the outcome. Mostly it's just an annoying distraction from the massive industrial endeavors that might actually make a dent. Making more stuff locally would also be a fine idea.