5 ms·

Strange that it proposes buying "climate-friendly" stuff at the end - the best approach is to not buy new things at all, and focus on reducing electronics waste

Strange that it proposes buying "climate-friendly" stuff at the end - the best approach is to not buy new things at all, and focus on reducing electronics waste, planned obsolescence, etc. - where FOSS can have a critical role. The real "solution" will come from increasing sales tax to 25% like Sweden, increasing gasoline tax to $5 per gallon like the UK, energy tax, carbon emissions tax, fuel duty, etc. - people can't consume when they can't afford it. And necessity is the mother of all inventions afterall. And then we can all struggle in poverty with high taxes and interest rates, whilst a few rich Americans live in luxury with their private jets and multiple SUVs, etc.

mavhc 4y ago
Tax everything the amount it costs to clean up the pollution it causes, and if a country isn't signed up to this, tax all their imports the same amount, overestimate. Then use that tax money to clean up the pollution. Side effects: people will invent cheaper ways to clean up pollution
- goodpoint 4y ago
  Also side effects: people will invent less polluting ways to produce goods and services. It's shocking how environmental impact and taxation are completely disconnected at the moment.
  - protontypes 4y ago
    The question is how to measure the environmental impact of companies and their supply chains in a global and traceable way. Here there are first exciting approaches like Geospatial ESG Geospatical Finance. Here are more links on the topic: https://www.cgfi.ac.uk/ https://www.cgfi.ac.uk/ https://www.wwf.org.uk/what-we-do/projects/nature-and-spatial-finance https://www.wwf.org.uk/what-we-do/projects/nature-and-spatia...
- endisneigh 4y ago
  real side effect: countries stop importing, instead they start producing their own stuff inefficiently leading up to more pollution.
  - wiz21c 4y ago
    don't think so. - producing concrete, steel, (including mining) etc is no more polluting in other countries - producing vegetables, bananas and other stuff is interesting because you want to have them in countries that don't have them => eat local stuff - water is the same in every country - clothes are not less difficult to produce efficiently etc. so yes, we could stop importing and building stuff right here. Now this would have two very educational effects: - mining stuff makes your nice countryside, well, not nice. Lesson learned: yeah, you do have some footprint and you must accept it. - building stuff paying workers at your country's rate may make things more expensive to you. Lesson learned: you must value work. We're talking about future generations here. If it means changing our core values, then, we'll have to change them.
  - hnbad 4y ago
    Do you have a source for that claim? Outsourcing doesn't seem to have to led to less pollution. Most heavy industry that has been outsourced has been outsourced to companies with looser environmental regulations and labor protections and most reporting conveniently ignores a lot of the offshore pollution (which is often hidden behind several layers of indirection to avoid accountability) when measuring the pollution caused by domestic companies. I also wouldn't call the shredding and landfilling of consumer goods efficient and those practices seem to have largely arisen from the ability to mass produce goods cheaply making discounting them further less profitable than simply destroying them. This also ignores the inefficiencies promoted by global manufacturing that involves shipping half-finished products around the world many times over because shipping is effectively free compared to paying for all the manufacturing to happen in one place (and handling the finishing touches domestically allows marketing the product as domestically made). There doesn't seem to be a one-to-one correlation between efficiency (which literally just measures cost reduction, as externalities don't factor into it unless they have a price tag) and less pollution (unless you handwave carbon capture and offsetting as magic and ignore the real world effects to only focus on numbers on paper).
- newsclues 4y ago
  The elites will carve out exemptions to avoid degrading their lifestyles.
- cute_boi 4y ago
  No please. Taxing doesn't work when government is corrupt. And, many countries in this world are very corrupt.
  - hnbad 4y ago
    As opposed to most large corporations of the world? Corporations are literally self-serving by definition, so even moderately corrupt governments would seem altruistic by contrast.
- Geezus-42 4y ago
  Real side effect: poor people get poorer and rich people don't care.
  - baisq 4y ago
    That's how most taxes work.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    Isn't this the effect of ignoring the externalities anyway? Except delayed until some potentially irreversible, acute threshold like the wet bubble or flooding low lying areas?
- SanderSantema 4y ago
  This doesn't seem viable in practice, determining how much polution a product causes for every product you tax is impractical and although not guaranteed I would think it likely that you'll simply export less when you start imposing the same taxes on the exported products. I'd bet it would increase inequality as well, given that people with low incomes proportionally pay more taxes on bought goods and services than people with higher incomes (I'm quite certain that's the case but economics really isn't my strong suit).
kkfx 4y ago
You haven't weighed the consequences enough: I can afford a modern home, I built one, well insulated, with a proper VMC+heat-pump, p.v. since here is a good enough option, all-electric for cooking and heating etc so yes, I can consume without produce extra pollution and potentially publish that like that very text here. Is exactly USELESS for the humanity because those who can afford are a small percentage of all humans, and such cohort below a certain age is mostly interesting in doing so or have already done that in the recent past while an older fraction is simply not interested due to their life expectancy. MOST other humans can't, wanting or not. That means you suggest to push more and more people to poverty, generating unrest, repressions, dictatorships "to keep the society up", witch end up like in the first part of the '900 in nazi-fascist regimes the same polluter and criminals against humanity who fund them in the past fund the same move now. A very simple example: WFH means I can work on a desktop. A desktop means a computer that can last 10+ years in relative comfort for 99% of jobs and be destined to such jobs when not enough anymore for more demanding activities like a new desktop for a child out of the parent now-dismissed "workstation-desktop". If I have a less wealthy life probably I can't use a desktop, I might get just a craptop able to last two years maximum from some company. An EV for me might be nice: not using it every days I can mostly recharge from solar so it might be cheap enough and protect against fuel shortage around my homes if/when they'll happen. Someone who use a car daily because he/she need can't. Those who cook with gas mostly do that because that's are the tools they have and can't afford buying new ones. FLOSS is a must not for the Earth but for us humans, to preserve Democracy, to avoid a day being locked out of our home, having lost our third-private-party provided IDs, locked out from our car etc. FLOSS principles of development, witch means public research and public money, public code, are a must to evolve in a socially sustainable manner instead of funding very few humans interests against all others BUT no, increasing prices of polluting things people's depend on is NOT at ALL a solution, it's just a way to lend in a dictatorship with a polite justification. If we want made a genocide of so many people to save the human species we need to be loud and clear, because we need to preserve "background noise" that made natural selection and evolution possible. The idea of classical eugenics is not less harmful nor a-scientific than the classic cross marriages between nobles not only for short-term political reasons but also to preserve the lineage "purity". We can't substitute nature effectively so we need to preserve diversity and natural selection, trying to generate and artificial one with various basis is a recipe to end up in a disaster large enough to have enough potential to crash our spaces.

mavhc 4y ago

Tax everything the amount it costs to clean up the pollution it causes, and if a country isn't signed up to this, tax all their imports the same amount, overestimate. Then use that tax money to clean up the pollution. Side effects: people will invent cheaper ways to clean up pollution

goodpoint 4y ago
Also side effects: people will invent less polluting ways to produce goods and services. It's shocking how environmental impact and taxation are completely disconnected at the moment.
- protontypes 4y ago
  The question is how to measure the environmental impact of companies and their supply chains in a global and traceable way. Here there are first exciting approaches like Geospatial ESG Geospatical Finance. Here are more links on the topic: https://www.cgfi.ac.uk/ https://www.cgfi.ac.uk/ https://www.wwf.org.uk/what-we-do/projects/nature-and-spatial-finance https://www.wwf.org.uk/what-we-do/projects/nature-and-spatia...
endisneigh 4y ago
real side effect: countries stop importing, instead they start producing their own stuff inefficiently leading up to more pollution.
- wiz21c 4y ago
  don't think so. - producing concrete, steel, (including mining) etc is no more polluting in other countries - producing vegetables, bananas and other stuff is interesting because you want to have them in countries that don't have them => eat local stuff - water is the same in every country - clothes are not less difficult to produce efficiently etc. so yes, we could stop importing and building stuff right here. Now this would have two very educational effects: - mining stuff makes your nice countryside, well, not nice. Lesson learned: yeah, you do have some footprint and you must accept it. - building stuff paying workers at your country's rate may make things more expensive to you. Lesson learned: you must value work. We're talking about future generations here. If it means changing our core values, then, we'll have to change them.
- hnbad 4y ago
  Do you have a source for that claim? Outsourcing doesn't seem to have to led to less pollution. Most heavy industry that has been outsourced has been outsourced to companies with looser environmental regulations and labor protections and most reporting conveniently ignores a lot of the offshore pollution (which is often hidden behind several layers of indirection to avoid accountability) when measuring the pollution caused by domestic companies. I also wouldn't call the shredding and landfilling of consumer goods efficient and those practices seem to have largely arisen from the ability to mass produce goods cheaply making discounting them further less profitable than simply destroying them. This also ignores the inefficiencies promoted by global manufacturing that involves shipping half-finished products around the world many times over because shipping is effectively free compared to paying for all the manufacturing to happen in one place (and handling the finishing touches domestically allows marketing the product as domestically made). There doesn't seem to be a one-to-one correlation between efficiency (which literally just measures cost reduction, as externalities don't factor into it unless they have a price tag) and less pollution (unless you handwave carbon capture and offsetting as magic and ignore the real world effects to only focus on numbers on paper).
newsclues 4y ago
The elites will carve out exemptions to avoid degrading their lifestyles.
cute_boi 4y ago
No please. Taxing doesn't work when government is corrupt. And, many countries in this world are very corrupt.
- hnbad 4y ago
  As opposed to most large corporations of the world? Corporations are literally self-serving by definition, so even moderately corrupt governments would seem altruistic by contrast.
Geezus-42 4y ago
Real side effect: poor people get poorer and rich people don't care.
- baisq 4y ago
  That's how most taxes work.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Isn't this the effect of ignoring the externalities anyway? Except delayed until some potentially irreversible, acute threshold like the wet bubble or flooding low lying areas?
SanderSantema 4y ago
This doesn't seem viable in practice, determining how much polution a product causes for every product you tax is impractical and although not guaranteed I would think it likely that you'll simply export less when you start imposing the same taxes on the exported products. I'd bet it would increase inequality as well, given that people with low incomes proportionally pay more taxes on bought goods and services than people with higher incomes (I'm quite certain that's the case but economics really isn't my strong suit).

kkfx 4y ago

You haven't weighed the consequences enough: I can afford a modern home, I built one, well insulated, with a proper VMC+heat-pump, p.v. since here is a good enough option, all-electric for cooking and heating etc so yes, I can consume without produce extra pollution and potentially publish that like that very text here. Is exactly USELESS for the humanity because those who can afford are a small percentage of all humans, and such cohort below a certain age is mostly interesting in doing so or have already done that in the recent past while an older fraction is simply not interested due to their life expectancy. MOST other humans can't, wanting or not. That means you suggest to push more and more people to poverty, generating unrest, repressions, dictatorships "to keep the society up", witch end up like in the first part of the '900 in nazi-fascist regimes the same polluter and criminals against humanity who fund them in the past fund the same move now. A very simple example: WFH means I can work on a desktop. A desktop means a computer that can last 10+ years in relative comfort for 99% of jobs and be destined to such jobs when not enough anymore for more demanding activities like a new desktop for a child out of the parent now-dismissed "workstation-desktop". If I have a less wealthy life probably I can't use a desktop, I might get just a craptop able to last two years maximum from some company. An EV for me might be nice: not using it every days I can mostly recharge from solar so it might be cheap enough and protect against fuel shortage around my homes if/when they'll happen. Someone who use a car daily because he/she need can't. Those who cook with gas mostly do that because that's are the tools they have and can't afford buying new ones. FLOSS is a must not for the Earth but for us humans, to preserve Democracy, to avoid a day being locked out of our home, having lost our third-private-party provided IDs, locked out from our car etc. FLOSS principles of development, witch means public research and public money, public code, are a must to evolve in a socially sustainable manner instead of funding very few humans interests against all others BUT no, increasing prices of polluting things people's depend on is NOT at ALL a solution, it's just a way to lend in a dictatorship with a polite justification. If we want made a genocide of so many people to save the human species we need to be loud and clear, because we need to preserve "background noise" that made natural selection and evolution possible. The idea of classical eugenics is not less harmful nor a-scientific than the classic cross marriages between nobles not only for short-term political reasons but also to preserve the lineage "purity". We can't substitute nature effectively so we need to preserve diversity and natural selection, trying to generate and artificial one with various basis is a recipe to end up in a disaster large enough to have enough potential to crash our spaces.