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Stop buying out of season fruit/veg for your area. That stuff gets shipped 1/2 way around the world to get to your table. Some dietitians also claim the season

Stop buying out of season fruit/veg for your area. That stuff gets shipped 1/2 way around the world to get to your table. Some dietitians also claim the seasonality of edible plants helps our gut biome (but I can't find that source again) Also, local-in-season is, IME, lower cost. One small, kinda easy, step

wingworks 5y ago
It would have a bigger effect of the Govt set these things up, to increase incentives for local produce etc. Doing it on the individual level is a losing battle. Most people don't care (or don't understand the implications), so long as they get there xyz to eat.
ehnto 5y ago
It won't help. The majority of emissions are industrial and commercial. If you want to look at actions like that I would see them through the lens of local sustainability which is a fantastic goal. Unfortunately a single cargo ship idling in the dock would probably erase the carbon savings of every good willed vegetable purchase. What you as an individual can actually do is contact your delegates, your ministers, your officials, your industry partners, whoever you have access to, and tell them exactly why it's their problem to solve. You not buying bananas is a good gesture, but a carbon tax that makes out of season bananas unprofitable is where we need to implement the change.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  Downvote first paragraph, upvote second :) Those things are still worth doing because en masse it has an effect, and if the single cargo ship is idling in the dock, then that doubles the negative effect, so offsetting counts for... something, at least.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    That's fair, I am a little bashful in this regard sorry. We are decades beyond the pail at this point is why. There is of course reason to change your own behavior, but we need rock solid actionables from industry to change emissions at the scale we need.
- titzer 5y ago
  > It won't help. If I've learned one thing from plugging holes in my insulation, is that leaks are cumulative. A crack here, a hole there, a bad seal there, a gap in the insulation there; it all adds up. CO2 emissions, the primary driver of climate change, is a "leaky" situation. We've got a huge distributed system here. We need to plug holes at every level. We're not one CPU or one core. We can do multiple things at once. If anything, people doing local things are viral, cathartic, and set the tone for change. Despite my doomerish top comment (I still think we are screwed), but I compost, I recycle, I reduce waste as much as possible, and these effects "won't help". Whatever.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    It's true, "it won't help" is not true I suppose. It will certainly help. But we need much greater scale, and I am cynical toward the motivations of the global community. We can't even get one of the wealthiest nations in the world, Australia, to stop digging up coal in 2022, when it's citizens are busy installing enough solar to power whole cities. We the people need to wield our power to get the people up top to do the right thing, else it's for nothing.
- acdha 5y ago
  Your first sentence is flat-out wrong for two reasons: the most obvious is that while not sufficient to solve the problem, it clearly does help but the second is the psychological benefits. Telling people things they can do right now don't matter is depressing; getting them in the habit of thinking about ways to reduce their personal impact is part of helping build the social inertia which is needed to get the various people you mentioned in your second paragraph to listen. Someone who feels good and – far more importantly – gets positive feedback towards making a change rather than a cynical “it won't help” is probably going to keep doing things like that (drop beef next!), and probably explore ways to make their commute less expensive too. One way to think about it which might be helpful is to triage your targets: have a short-term goal which you could do today with no real barriers (e.g. pick a protein other than beef), a mid-term goal which you can do on your own but might take some planning (bike / transit to work or shop, use a clothesline instead of a drier, replace old non-electric appliances in your house with electric ones, buy your electricity from a renewables supplier, etc.), and a long-term goal with more dependencies which you can't do quickly or on your own (get involved in local politics to reduce car usage, hound your elected representatives, etc.).
  - landemva 5y ago
    ' replace old non-electric appliances in your house with electric ones ' I have a functional can opener in my kitchen which I crank by hand. The suggestion to replace it with an electric version is stupid virtue signalling. My toilet runs on water pressure, gravity, and me pressing the lever. Should I get a model with wifi actuated electric flush handle? I have not had a TV in a couple decades. What TV with wifi and always-on do you recommend to virtue signal? My car has a cassette tape deck. Should I replace the car for a new model with a built-in 20" dashboard TV to signal that I save the planet?
    - acdha 5y ago
      > I have a functional can opener in my kitchen which I crank by hand. The suggestion to replace it with an electric version is stupid virtue signalling. Ah, “virtue signaling”, ever the reliable indicator that someone is attempting to converse in good faith. Take this as an opportunity to learn what a major appliance is and that some of them burn natural gas or use electricity very inefficiently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_appliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_appliance
ekianjo 5y ago
> Stop buying out of season fruit/veg for your area. Nope, its just piggy-backing on existing trade routes. Wont change anything.

wingworks 5y ago

It would have a bigger effect of the Govt set these things up, to increase incentives for local produce etc. Doing it on the individual level is a losing battle. Most people don't care (or don't understand the implications), so long as they get there xyz to eat.

ehnto 5y ago

It won't help. The majority of emissions are industrial and commercial. If you want to look at actions like that I would see them through the lens of local sustainability which is a fantastic goal. Unfortunately a single cargo ship idling in the dock would probably erase the carbon savings of every good willed vegetable purchase. What you as an individual can actually do is contact your delegates, your ministers, your officials, your industry partners, whoever you have access to, and tell them exactly why it's their problem to solve. You not buying bananas is a good gesture, but a carbon tax that makes out of season bananas unprofitable is where we need to implement the change.

BLKNSLVR 5y ago
Downvote first paragraph, upvote second :) Those things are still worth doing because en masse it has an effect, and if the single cargo ship is idling in the dock, then that doubles the negative effect, so offsetting counts for... something, at least.
- ehnto 5y ago
  That's fair, I am a little bashful in this regard sorry. We are decades beyond the pail at this point is why. There is of course reason to change your own behavior, but we need rock solid actionables from industry to change emissions at the scale we need.
titzer 5y ago
> It won't help. If I've learned one thing from plugging holes in my insulation, is that leaks are cumulative. A crack here, a hole there, a bad seal there, a gap in the insulation there; it all adds up. CO2 emissions, the primary driver of climate change, is a "leaky" situation. We've got a huge distributed system here. We need to plug holes at every level. We're not one CPU or one core. We can do multiple things at once. If anything, people doing local things are viral, cathartic, and set the tone for change. Despite my doomerish top comment (I still think we are screwed), but I compost, I recycle, I reduce waste as much as possible, and these effects "won't help". Whatever.
- ehnto 5y ago
  It's true, "it won't help" is not true I suppose. It will certainly help. But we need much greater scale, and I am cynical toward the motivations of the global community. We can't even get one of the wealthiest nations in the world, Australia, to stop digging up coal in 2022, when it's citizens are busy installing enough solar to power whole cities. We the people need to wield our power to get the people up top to do the right thing, else it's for nothing.
acdha 5y ago
Your first sentence is flat-out wrong for two reasons: the most obvious is that while not sufficient to solve the problem, it clearly does help but the second is the psychological benefits. Telling people things they can do right now don't matter is depressing; getting them in the habit of thinking about ways to reduce their personal impact is part of helping build the social inertia which is needed to get the various people you mentioned in your second paragraph to listen. Someone who feels good and – far more importantly – gets positive feedback towards making a change rather than a cynical “it won't help” is probably going to keep doing things like that (drop beef next!), and probably explore ways to make their commute less expensive too. One way to think about it which might be helpful is to triage your targets: have a short-term goal which you could do today with no real barriers (e.g. pick a protein other than beef), a mid-term goal which you can do on your own but might take some planning (bike / transit to work or shop, use a clothesline instead of a drier, replace old non-electric appliances in your house with electric ones, buy your electricity from a renewables supplier, etc.), and a long-term goal with more dependencies which you can't do quickly or on your own (get involved in local politics to reduce car usage, hound your elected representatives, etc.).
- landemva 5y ago
  ' replace old non-electric appliances in your house with electric ones ' I have a functional can opener in my kitchen which I crank by hand. The suggestion to replace it with an electric version is stupid virtue signalling. My toilet runs on water pressure, gravity, and me pressing the lever. Should I get a model with wifi actuated electric flush handle? I have not had a TV in a couple decades. What TV with wifi and always-on do you recommend to virtue signal? My car has a cassette tape deck. Should I replace the car for a new model with a built-in 20" dashboard TV to signal that I save the planet?
  - acdha 5y ago
    > I have a functional can opener in my kitchen which I crank by hand. The suggestion to replace it with an electric version is stupid virtue signalling. Ah, “virtue signaling”, ever the reliable indicator that someone is attempting to converse in good faith. Take this as an opportunity to learn what a major appliance is and that some of them burn natural gas or use electricity very inefficiently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_appliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_appliance

ekianjo 5y ago

> Stop buying out of season fruit/veg for your area. Nope, its just piggy-backing on existing trade routes. Wont change anything.