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Talking about indidivual contributions is pointless without context. The richest 1% of humanity emits more than double the amount of CO2 as the poorest half. A

by drekk 5y ago

Talking about indidivual contributions is pointless without context. The richest 1% of humanity emits more than double the amount of CO2 as the poorest half. Air travel could use alternative fuel sources (or even solar) and I'm sure other large carbon emitters like concrete will become more efficient. What I'm not sure is that the richest 1% of the globe are willing to live like everyone else to avoid cooking the planet and passing that cost onto everyone else. I travel by plane once or twice a year, haven't had meat in years, own a car with good fuel efficiency, heat my home with gas, and it still doesn't register on the scale. If you want me to live like an ascetic to convince you that I am serious about the runaway consequences of increased average surface temperatures I don't know what to tell you. We are already seeing those effects, and it is doubtful that Miami, Dhubai, etc exist at the end of this century. There is no way to adjust individual consumption fast enough to fully decarbonize industrial economies so as to avoid 2C+ increases. Hence the systems problem. Why is Australia and the US subsidizing fossil fuels? Who is served by firing up retired coalfire power plants to mine Bitcoin? That's only looking at CO2, forget about our other biosphere limits (nitrogen, phosphorus to name a few) that we're rapidly approaching the ceiling of. Optimizing for profit means you have an incentive to gain today with tomorrow as collateral. Until companies and governments feel the full financial and human cost of their carbon economies we'll continue to get Chevron advertising about how it's all of our responsibility to turn off the lights when not in use, and that will somehow "turn off" climate change.

luckylion 5y ago
> There is no way to adjust individual consumption fast enough to fully decarbonize industrial economies so as to avoid 2C+ increases. Hence the systems problem. I think there is, and it's trivial: don't use products from industries that are large contributors. The problem is that everybody wants to keep using them (understandable) and somehow also make them produce less (also understandable, but wishful thinking). Feels like they're asking other people to stop in order to achieve that goal. Sure, each person can drive half as much, or we can ask half of the population to stop driving (or travel half as much, or buy half as much x, or use half as much y). Maybe not the top 0.1% (they don't seem to care at all), but these demands reliably come from the top 1-5%, who are also reliably unwilling to make substantial changes personally, with their much larger contributions to the problem. And yet, "the system" is a lot of individuals making decisions. If you won't make them, how do you expect everyone else to? It's like someone promoting veganism but continuing to eat meat themselves. I wouldn't believe that person is actually worried about meat consumption. Again, you don't need to sell me on the whole idea, I already have a much lighter footprint than you (barely any traveling, no air-travel, no car, very well-insulated flat and all that jazz). Yet if you want to convince me that you're serious and I should do more, you'll have to do more. If you're racking up 40k miles in a plane every other year, I have trouble believing you. And from looking at the average person, they're not reaching those numbers either, so I find it very understandable if they have doubts as well.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > I think there is, and it's trivial: don't use products from industries that are large contributors. You have a weird definition of trivial.
  - luckylion 5y ago
    It's a trivial solution, though it might not be easy to do for each person to give up their habits and luxuries. We don't need to outlaw air-travel or design complicated tax-schemes to disincentivize it, we just need to stop traveling by plane. The complexity comes from "okay, but I don't want to do that, what other ways are there", and I don't think there are many.

by drekk 5y ago

luckylion 5y ago

> There is no way to adjust individual consumption fast enough to fully decarbonize industrial economies so as to avoid 2C+ increases. Hence the systems problem. I think there is, and it's trivial: don't use products from industries that are large contributors. The problem is that everybody wants to keep using them (understandable) and somehow also make them produce less (also understandable, but wishful thinking). Feels like they're asking other people to stop in order to achieve that goal. Sure, each person can drive half as much, or we can ask half of the population to stop driving (or travel half as much, or buy half as much x, or use half as much y). Maybe not the top 0.1% (they don't seem to care at all), but these demands reliably come from the top 1-5%, who are also reliably unwilling to make substantial changes personally, with their much larger contributions to the problem. And yet, "the system" is a lot of individuals making decisions. If you won't make them, how do you expect everyone else to? It's like someone promoting veganism but continuing to eat meat themselves. I wouldn't believe that person is actually worried about meat consumption. Again, you don't need to sell me on the whole idea, I already have a much lighter footprint than you (barely any traveling, no air-travel, no car, very well-insulated flat and all that jazz). Yet if you want to convince me that you're serious and I should do more, you'll have to do more. If you're racking up 40k miles in a plane every other year, I have trouble believing you. And from looking at the average person, they're not reaching those numbers either, so I find it very understandable if they have doubts as well.

Dylan16807 5y ago
> I think there is, and it's trivial: don't use products from industries that are large contributors. You have a weird definition of trivial.
- luckylion 5y ago
  It's a trivial solution, though it might not be easy to do for each person to give up their habits and luxuries. We don't need to outlaw air-travel or design complicated tax-schemes to disincentivize it, we just need to stop traveling by plane. The complexity comes from "okay, but I don't want to do that, what other ways are there", and I don't think there are many.