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Welcome to the reality. People don't want to freeze in their houses. People will gladly listen to the talks how renewable energy sources are good for our planet

Welcome to the reality. People don't want to freeze in their houses. People will gladly listen to the talks how renewable energy sources are good for our planet, they will even go on "climate strike" marches... until temperature drops at home below 21 degrees.

Lutger 5y ago
A lot of people are also willing to invest in better isolation and sustainable ways of heating their homes. Meaningful action does not require us freezing in our houses, not yet. But you have a point, which is exactly why survival of our societies should not be a choice on the consumerist menu. The government, the justice system, the corporate world and finally the citizen should lead in the struggle to decarbonize the world, not the consumer.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  > The government, the justice system, the corporate world and finally the citizen should lead in the struggle to decarbonize the world, not the consumer. That always sounds like an excuse for doing nothing to me.
  - Lutger 5y ago
    What one must do as a citizen is put pressure on the government. And, as a consumer, one should also make climate friendly choices, but it's not the most important thing and it should not distract us from where the real difference is made.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    It's better than that, it's an excuse for doing nothing and blaming the other for nothing getting done.
    - Lutger 5y ago
      No. It's the other way around: shifting responsibility from government and corporation to the individual is an excuse for doing nothing and blaming you for nothing getting done. This is how recycling and the carbon footprint is invented - by the softdrink and fossil fuel industry. You have just fallen perfectly into their traps. Just listen to the rhetoric that Shell uses: this is literally what they say.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    It's the reverse: it's pushing this responsibility to individual consumers that's the scam here. This shifts the blame to actors that cannot really do anything meaningful about the problem, and as a result diffuses it so that people who can do something don't have to.
    - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      You need pioneers, people who show it is possible to live a good life without destroying the planet. You won't ever convince the majority to change their ways without it. Blaming the big bad corporations whilst we continue to consume their crap is a cop out. We've been doing that for decades now and nothing much has changed.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        > You need pioneers, people who show it is possible to live a good life without destroying the planet. The thing is, it isn't. People aren't islands. Our societies, our economies, are structured in a way that make it really hard to keep your impact on the environment low. It's hard to give up on a car in a car-oriented town or country. It's hard to give up on plastic where every single thing you buy has some in it. It's hard to give up on meat when it's the most cost-effective form of nutrition you have available. And then, when you add up all those sacrifices - the result is not living a good life. It's mortification on principle. It's not something you can reasonably expect everyone to follow. (At a risk of bringing religion into the topic - Jesus has said, "If you want to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."[0], and yet almost no Christian in history ever actually did that. No, these words are used as comfort for those already poor - an explanation, not a plan for life. Environmental self-sacrifice, which doesn't have a mainstream belief system backing it, can hardly be expected to fare better.) Add to that, most people have no fucking clue what is or isn't destroying the planet. Hell, I consider myself somewhat broadly educated, striving for evidence-based, rational thinking, and I still admit I only have vague idea. There are some obvious things one can do, like "don't fly if you can avoid it", "don't use a car[1] if you can avoid it". Then there are plenty of wrong ideas, like "always unplug your chargers" (negligible gain for significant "I've made an effort" cost) or "use reusable bags instead of single-use plastic ones" (actually plastic bags come way ahead environmentally). Most other changes popular articles list tend to be hard to evaluate - they may or may not help, depending on various second-order effects and proper accounting of impact across product/behavior lifetime, which is often nearly impossible to do. And all of that - all of that - relies on almost everyone making those same sacrifices simultaneously[2], so the effect is noticeable, all while people not making the sacrifice are visibly better off[3]. Meanwhile, corporations and governments are the ones making the most impact[4], and importantly, they hold the biggest levers. A single law, or a single contract change, can make much more impact than thousands or millions of people abandoning everything and moving to live in the woods as hunter-gatherers. The way I see it, trying to convince everyone to make personal sacrifices is a fool's errand, and insisting on this as a solution is sabotaging our future. This is a systemic problem, we need systemic solutions. -- [0] - Matthew 19:21 [1] - I say "use", not "own", because if you're just using taxis to do the same trips that you would with a car, you're hardly achieving anything. [2] - And continuously, as the market will keep adapting to people's preferences, offering new goods and services ruining the planet. [3] - I'll just defer to "Meditations on Moloch" on that point. It's an obligatory intro reading for any discussion about any of the world problems - because underneath, they're all just aspect of the same issues with human coordination. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/. [4] - As a random example, try stacking up household water or energy use, or greenhouse emissions, against business and industrial ones.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  I never understand this point of view. We decide what happens, collectively. We vote in governments, and we choose what products to buy. It needs to start with citizens because we're democratic. The problem is that people's public speech doesn't match their behaviour. Carbon offsets for flights have been available for years. Despite ~75% of people saying "Climate Change is the biggest threat we face" [0] only 1-3% of passengers actually choose the carbon offset [1]. In startups, we know that people lie in surveys, and we need to measure their actual behaviour in order to correctly assess their actual feelings/intentions. From this, we can conclude that most people profess a public belief in climate change, but privately don't care and aren't willing to do anything about it. Companies are taking their cue from this: virtue-signal about changing the world, but don't actually do anything. Governments are likewise taking their cue from it: lots of conferences, lots of talk, no action. We need citizens to stop driving in petrol-driven cars to marches where they protest about carbon emissions. To stop heating their homes with coal. To stop eating fish completely. To buy the carbon offsets, even if they're crap and not very effective. The mismatch between our public speech and our private behaviour is what's causing everyone else to do the same. It has to start with us, because if it doesn't it'll be ignored. This attitude of "someone else has to take the first step" is what's causing our inaction. Stop blaming others for your footprint, and do something about it yourself. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/09/14/climate-change-threat/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/09/1... [1] https://aviationbenefits.org/media/167226/fact-sheet_11_voluntary-carbon-offsetting_3.pdf https://aviationbenefits.org/media/167226/fact-sheet_11_volu...
  - Lutger 5y ago
    Excellent reasoning, but I strongly disagree with the conclusion. The gap between action and belief is exactly why we need collective action, not individual action. There's a difference between us as a citizen, and as a consumer. The pandemic has shown perfectly that leaving everything up to 'individual freedom' will result in a mess. > Stop blaming others for your footprint Did you know the very idea of a footprint is invented by BP as a mechanism to shift responsibility and place blame on the consumer? Personally I spend a large part of my income on reducing my footprint by the way, but I have no illusions that this is where the required change will come from. In the country where I live, merely being registered as a citizen, paying taxes and everything that is legally required, will have am unsustainable footprint - before I even begin to take a breath I have consumed my share. What we need to do is hold the actors who are responsible accountable and make a mass collective change that is non-optional.
adrianN 5y ago
In the reality I live in, there are alternatives to coal that are just as capable at heating your house but produce much less CO2.
- jikbd 5y ago
  They aren’t as cost effective, powerful, or as widely deployed.
  - vkou 5y ago
    Coal isn't cost effective if you price in the full costs of using it. As long as someone else will pay them for you, yes, it's very cost effective.
  - pjerem 5y ago
    That's exactly the point of creating a CO2e tax : making cleaner energies more cost effective by subsidizing them. Renewable energies are cheap (they are basically "free"). Deploying them is expensive. But you only have to subsidize the cost of deployment and after that it's cheaper for everyone. It's the same thing with insulation : it's expensive, but once it's done correctly, you can basically heat your entire house with only the sun (if it's there) or really low energy consumption. We're just missing the political will. The transition is possible and would create jobs for the decades to come.
    - roenxi 5y ago
      > Renewable energies are cheap (they are basically "free"). Deploying them is expensive. That just sounds like a half-truth, otherwise people wouldn't always be so impassioned about subsidising renewable. They'd jest buy land and build honking great renewable plants. Now the situation may have changed in the last decade or so, because the growth in renewables is very real. But it takes no political will to deploy cheap energy. There would be queues of bankers trying to invest if they thought they could undercut market producers and make good returns. Every greedy person on the planet (so somewhere in the region of 8 billion of them) would be happy to get in on the deal.

Lutger 5y ago

A lot of people are also willing to invest in better isolation and sustainable ways of heating their homes. Meaningful action does not require us freezing in our houses, not yet. But you have a point, which is exactly why survival of our societies should not be a choice on the consumerist menu. The government, the justice system, the corporate world and finally the citizen should lead in the struggle to decarbonize the world, not the consumer.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
> The government, the justice system, the corporate world and finally the citizen should lead in the struggle to decarbonize the world, not the consumer. That always sounds like an excuse for doing nothing to me.
- Lutger 5y ago
  What one must do as a citizen is put pressure on the government. And, as a consumer, one should also make climate friendly choices, but it's not the most important thing and it should not distract us from where the real difference is made.
- bombcar 5y ago
  It's better than that, it's an excuse for doing nothing and blaming the other for nothing getting done.
  - Lutger 5y ago
    No. It's the other way around: shifting responsibility from government and corporation to the individual is an excuse for doing nothing and blaming you for nothing getting done. This is how recycling and the carbon footprint is invented - by the softdrink and fossil fuel industry. You have just fallen perfectly into their traps. Just listen to the rhetoric that Shell uses: this is literally what they say.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  It's the reverse: it's pushing this responsibility to individual consumers that's the scam here. This shifts the blame to actors that cannot really do anything meaningful about the problem, and as a result diffuses it so that people who can do something don't have to.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    You need pioneers, people who show it is possible to live a good life without destroying the planet. You won't ever convince the majority to change their ways without it. Blaming the big bad corporations whilst we continue to consume their crap is a cop out. We've been doing that for decades now and nothing much has changed.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      > You need pioneers, people who show it is possible to live a good life without destroying the planet. The thing is, it isn't. People aren't islands. Our societies, our economies, are structured in a way that make it really hard to keep your impact on the environment low. It's hard to give up on a car in a car-oriented town or country. It's hard to give up on plastic where every single thing you buy has some in it. It's hard to give up on meat when it's the most cost-effective form of nutrition you have available. And then, when you add up all those sacrifices - the result is not living a good life. It's mortification on principle. It's not something you can reasonably expect everyone to follow. (At a risk of bringing religion into the topic - Jesus has said, "If you want to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."[0], and yet almost no Christian in history ever actually did that. No, these words are used as comfort for those already poor - an explanation, not a plan for life. Environmental self-sacrifice, which doesn't have a mainstream belief system backing it, can hardly be expected to fare better.) Add to that, most people have no fucking clue what is or isn't destroying the planet. Hell, I consider myself somewhat broadly educated, striving for evidence-based, rational thinking, and I still admit I only have vague idea. There are some obvious things one can do, like "don't fly if you can avoid it", "don't use a car[1] if you can avoid it". Then there are plenty of wrong ideas, like "always unplug your chargers" (negligible gain for significant "I've made an effort" cost) or "use reusable bags instead of single-use plastic ones" (actually plastic bags come way ahead environmentally). Most other changes popular articles list tend to be hard to evaluate - they may or may not help, depending on various second-order effects and proper accounting of impact across product/behavior lifetime, which is often nearly impossible to do. And all of that - all of that - relies on almost everyone making those same sacrifices simultaneously[2], so the effect is noticeable, all while people not making the sacrifice are visibly better off[3]. Meanwhile, corporations and governments are the ones making the most impact[4], and importantly, they hold the biggest levers. A single law, or a single contract change, can make much more impact than thousands or millions of people abandoning everything and moving to live in the woods as hunter-gatherers. The way I see it, trying to convince everyone to make personal sacrifices is a fool's errand, and insisting on this as a solution is sabotaging our future. This is a systemic problem, we need systemic solutions. -- [0] - Matthew 19:21 [1] - I say "use", not "own", because if you're just using taxis to do the same trips that you would with a car, you're hardly achieving anything. [2] - And continuously, as the market will keep adapting to people's preferences, offering new goods and services ruining the planet. [3] - I'll just defer to "Meditations on Moloch" on that point. It's an obligatory intro reading for any discussion about any of the world problems - because underneath, they're all just aspect of the same issues with human coordination. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/. [4] - As a random example, try stacking up household water or energy use, or greenhouse emissions, against business and industrial ones.
marcus_holmes 5y ago
I never understand this point of view. We decide what happens, collectively. We vote in governments, and we choose what products to buy. It needs to start with citizens because we're democratic. The problem is that people's public speech doesn't match their behaviour. Carbon offsets for flights have been available for years. Despite ~75% of people saying "Climate Change is the biggest threat we face" [0] only 1-3% of passengers actually choose the carbon offset [1]. In startups, we know that people lie in surveys, and we need to measure their actual behaviour in order to correctly assess their actual feelings/intentions. From this, we can conclude that most people profess a public belief in climate change, but privately don't care and aren't willing to do anything about it. Companies are taking their cue from this: virtue-signal about changing the world, but don't actually do anything. Governments are likewise taking their cue from it: lots of conferences, lots of talk, no action. We need citizens to stop driving in petrol-driven cars to marches where they protest about carbon emissions. To stop heating their homes with coal. To stop eating fish completely. To buy the carbon offsets, even if they're crap and not very effective. The mismatch between our public speech and our private behaviour is what's causing everyone else to do the same. It has to start with us, because if it doesn't it'll be ignored. This attitude of "someone else has to take the first step" is what's causing our inaction. Stop blaming others for your footprint, and do something about it yourself. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/09/14/climate-change-threat/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/09/1... [1] https://aviationbenefits.org/media/167226/fact-sheet_11_voluntary-carbon-offsetting_3.pdf https://aviationbenefits.org/media/167226/fact-sheet_11_volu...
- Lutger 5y ago
  Excellent reasoning, but I strongly disagree with the conclusion. The gap between action and belief is exactly why we need collective action, not individual action. There's a difference between us as a citizen, and as a consumer. The pandemic has shown perfectly that leaving everything up to 'individual freedom' will result in a mess. > Stop blaming others for your footprint Did you know the very idea of a footprint is invented by BP as a mechanism to shift responsibility and place blame on the consumer? Personally I spend a large part of my income on reducing my footprint by the way, but I have no illusions that this is where the required change will come from. In the country where I live, merely being registered as a citizen, paying taxes and everything that is legally required, will have am unsustainable footprint - before I even begin to take a breath I have consumed my share. What we need to do is hold the actors who are responsible accountable and make a mass collective change that is non-optional.

adrianN 5y ago

In the reality I live in, there are alternatives to coal that are just as capable at heating your house but produce much less CO2.

jikbd 5y ago
They aren’t as cost effective, powerful, or as widely deployed.
- vkou 5y ago
  Coal isn't cost effective if you price in the full costs of using it. As long as someone else will pay them for you, yes, it's very cost effective.
- pjerem 5y ago
  That's exactly the point of creating a CO2e tax : making cleaner energies more cost effective by subsidizing them. Renewable energies are cheap (they are basically "free"). Deploying them is expensive. But you only have to subsidize the cost of deployment and after that it's cheaper for everyone. It's the same thing with insulation : it's expensive, but once it's done correctly, you can basically heat your entire house with only the sun (if it's there) or really low energy consumption. We're just missing the political will. The transition is possible and would create jobs for the decades to come.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    > Renewable energies are cheap (they are basically "free"). Deploying them is expensive. That just sounds like a half-truth, otherwise people wouldn't always be so impassioned about subsidising renewable. They'd jest buy land and build honking great renewable plants. Now the situation may have changed in the last decade or so, because the growth in renewables is very real. But it takes no political will to deploy cheap energy. There would be queues of bankers trying to invest if they thought they could undercut market producers and make good returns. Every greedy person on the planet (so somewhere in the region of 8 billion of them) would be happy to get in on the deal.