7 ms·

it's a big reduction in oil and wood consumption for home heat I'm happy to pay the extra cost As an aside, we've got the externalities of climate change all

by dfxm12 4y ago

it's a big reduction in oil and wood consumption for home heat I'm happy to pay the extra cost As an aside, we've got the externalities of climate change all wrong. Oil is a non renewable resource. We can't just give the planet a bunch of money and have it produce more oil for us to burn when we're uncomfortable. This cost is not really borne by you; it'll be borne by future generations.

melenaboija 4y ago
I would assume the poster already knows it. Is a matter of wanting something and do it because I can. It goes against common sense but is human nature.
- notyourwork 4y ago
  Which is precisely why government intervention is required to address this problem. Individuals will make decisions that are short sighted, self-centered and potentially not in the best interest of the planet. I don't fault them for it, I'm guilty of it in some situations.
  - bumby 4y ago
    It's a hard balancing effort. On one hand, humans can't be counted on to be rational actors, especially in terms of long-term benefit. On the other hand, the system is so complex it may not be able to be managed well at the large government level.
- 988747 4y ago
  No, it actually makes sense: burn all the oil now, to keep yourself warm in winter, and the future generations will be kept warm by the fact that climate change raises temperatures, so there are no winters anymore :-D
mrshadowgoose 4y ago
A large part of the population is like this. Whining at and shaming them is not going to get the result you want. If you care about climate change, you should be advocating for completely green electricity generation, and carbon-neutral synthetic fuels. That would completely solve the fundamental problem. Our society is fundamentally based on energy, and people like to use energy towards things that give them comfort. Taking away comfort is going to be a "nope" for most people.
- titzer 4y ago
  > A large part of the population is like this. Whining at and shaming them is not going to get the result you want. It's unfortunate, but it does appear to have the opposite effect on some section of the populace. They just get pissed off and consume more out of spite. One thing to temper that is to massively tax (over-) consumption. Use taxes tend to be regressive, so to avoid targeting the poor, there needs to be some thought put into the tax structure.
  - dfxm12 4y ago
    If one reads my comment and construes it as whining and shaming, I don't think we're dealing with reasonable people. The problem is that conservative politicians like MTG make this ID pol issue, vis a vis her comments about Pete Buttigieg and EVs being emasculating. Because of these influences, they see any attempt to curb fossil fuel use as a personal attack, even if it isn't.
    - lucb1e 4y ago
      > The problem is that [politics] If politics is the issue, let's not start about politics and partisanship? I don't know much about USA politics but it seems to me that this automatically turns your comment into something to ignore and dismiss for precisely half your population, as they're part of the party you're blaming as a whole (which might or might not be a fair thing to do).
      - dfxm12 4y ago
        It's not just politics, and I did specifically mention the attempt to make this about ID politics. In politics, there's discussion, there's give and take, OK. But when one uses their power from the top down to convince their constituency: using fossil fuels is a part of who you are, and they are trying to take a piece of your identity away from you, then it becomes something different.
    - mrshadowgoose 4y ago
      When one decides to pass over clearly defined technical solutions that actually solve the problem, and instead decide to shame those who live differently than them, perhaps that individual isn't a bastion of reasonableness themselves. Clean energy production is an everyone problem. I'd encourage not letting politicians pit you against other parts of the population, which is just an emotionally satisfying substitute to actually addressing fundamental problems.
Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
> We can't just give the planet a bunch of money and have it produce more oil for us to burn when we're uncomfortable Yes, but we can try to do something about those "Green" activists who prevent the proliferation of the cleanest power on Earth: nuclear energy. Look at what did they do to Germany!
- pandemicsoul 4y ago
  Green activists are the only reason we have any green energy at all.
  - Firmwarrior 4y ago
    Well, if it weren't for green activists, we'd probably be exclusively using nuclear power at this point, so we'd be in a much better spot for green energy
    - LargeWu 4y ago
      The coal and oil industries have been quietly bankrolling anti-nuclear efforts for decades under the guise of safety. It's a prime example of astroturfing.
  - SamPatt 4y ago
    This I highly doubt. Especially when it comes to solar, for which there are many reasons to adopt apart from environmental concerns.
- Teknoman117 4y ago
  True or not, I would totally believe that the people who are so anti-nuclear they don't want any further research done into the subject are probably being funded by the fossil fuel industry.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
    Just a few links I gathered some time ago when discussing the related topic: "Has Russia Been Financing Western Environmentalism?" (2022) [0] "Putin Is Funding Green Groups to Discredit Natural Gas Fracking" (2017) [1] "German green group branded a Russian ‘puppet’ over Nord Stream II gas pipeline" (2021) [2] [0]: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18330/russia-funding-environmental-groups https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18330/russia-funding-envi... [1]: https://www.newsweek.com/putin-funding-green-groups-discredit-natural-gas-fracking-635052 https://www.newsweek.com/putin-funding-green-groups-discredi... [2]: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/german-green-group-branded-a-russian-puppet-over-nord-stream-ii-gas-pipeline-nzd9p056q https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/german-green-group-brande...
scotty79 4y ago
I don't think it's consumer's duty to factor in that future cost into their behavior. This should be factored into the current price of the resource by businesses or governments. It's not customer's duty to pay more than they are asked, either in money or in inconvenience.
- tremon 4y ago
  But I tend to think of my fellow beings as citizens rather than consumers. And I do think it is a citizen's duty to be considerate of their fellow and citizens, current and future.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    It's a bit like you'd say: I prefer to think about my fellow beings as mammals not consumers. They sure are but that's beside the point. Citizen has no meaning in context of economy (except for taxation). So using it in context of economic activity mixes up two unrelated things. Bad actors in the economy tend to exploit such mix ups to shift the burden away from them. Read up on introduction and promotion of the concept of individual carbon footprint. Or the reality of recycling which was promoted as alternative to producers of plastic being directly responsible for introducing plastic into the environment.
gruez 4y ago
>As an aside, we've got the externalities of climate change all wrong. Oil is a non renewable resource. We can't just give the planet a bunch of money and have it produce more oil for us to burn when we're uncomfortable. This cost is not really borne by you; it'll be borne by future generations. What's the point of resources if they're not consumed? If we follow your advice to its logical conclusion, then we'd have oils that are consumed by nobody, because every generation doesn't want to consume it for fear of "cost [...] borne by future generations".
- bumby 4y ago
  >What's the point of resources if they're not consumed? Just to add some nuance, this seems to imply everyone has the same environmental psychology. There are lots of (often competing) perspectives. If you have a utilitarian environmental psychology, you may think resources are there to be consumed for human benefit. If you instead have a stewardship environmental psychology, you may feel its your duty to protect those resources from being pilfered. Stephen Kellert has a good description of these different perspectives in "The Biological Basis for Human Values of Nature". Some of his categories include: utilitarian, naturalistic, ecologistic-scientific, aesthetic, symbolic, humanistic, moralistic, dominionistic, and negativistic. Other researchers define the human-environment interactions differently. For example, [1] defines them in terms of master, apathy, steward, partner, participant, and user. So it's not hard to see why people's thoughts differ on this issue. Like with most human value systems, it's not likely that there is a singular "right" perspective. [1] https://www.academia.edu/download/53480185/Yoshida_et_al._2017_Farming_between_love_and_money.pdf https://www.academia.edu/download/53480185/Yoshida_et_al._20...
- dfxm12 4y ago
  If we follow your advice to its logical conclusion, then we'd have oils that are consumed by nobody That's not really the logical conclusion of my advice. In actuality, there's a lot of possibilities between "I'm the one buying it, so I'm the only one dealing with the consequences" and "Not use any oil at all". But I get it, it's easier to argue against strawmen.
  - 4y ago
atemerev 4y ago
We have enough uranium to last for millions of years at current consumption levels, and nuclear energy is nearly completely CO2-free. Electric heating is a thing. I don't think we need to worry about this. (Using oil for heating is outrageous, of course; as Mendeleev have said, it is exactly the same as heating your fireplace with money bills).
- hooverd 4y ago
  Which currency is the best heat source? I think some of the newer ones might give you cancer.
- bumby 4y ago
  Fossil fuel heat generation is an order of magnitude cheaper per unit than electric in many geographic areas.
- chordalkeyboard 4y ago
  > We have enough uranium to last for millions of years at current consumption levels this is because we don't use very much nuclear power. There is currently enough known uranium reserves to provide 2 years of global energy production at current rates.
  - atemerev 4y ago
    See "closed nuclear cycle" and breeder reactors.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  That's one to two hundred years depening on if you include inferred resource, and for supplying under 3% of the energy. Meeting net zero targets with PWRs would run out in well under a decade, perhaps not even a single fuel load.
  - atemerev 4y ago
    Well, PWRs are dead end, we need breeders.
Georgelemental 4y ago
While our oil supply is not part infinite, it should still last many decades/centuries more, by which time we will hopefully have alternatives. Climate change is a larger risk than running out
- pwinnski 4y ago
  Among our alternatives: wear warmer clothes.
hooverd 4y ago
Or through the magic of south facing windows and proper insulation you can be nice and warm in the winter and with electric heating not even burn oil.
carlosjobim 4y ago
Do you need the oil more than OP and for what purposes?
AlwaysRock 4y ago
Boo. A single day of any large company impacts the environment far more negatively than the most wasteful single human or large group of humans do in their lifetimes. Moving the blame from corporations to the individual is how companies have avoided doing anything to combat climate change and only serves to make the individuals who do the blaming self righteous and the ones being blamed bad.
- dfxm12 4y ago
  I didn't move anything.
- tomtheelder 4y ago
  No blame is being moved. Corporations behaving irresponsibly has no bearing on whether or not individuals should behave responsibly. In fact, the person trying to shift blame here is you: by downplaying the smaller yet still significant role of individuals in a sustainable future.
  - AlwaysRock 4y ago
    False. Nothing I do has an impact on the planet at any scale. A company can make a change in an instant and have an immediate impact on the planet.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
kortilla 4y ago
My home isn’t heated with oil. Take your shitty generalizations elsewhere.
tomp 4y ago
No, we got the technology all wrong. We could easily have abundant nuclear energy so that “home heating” would be a non-issue and trivial cost.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  For about 10 years and 100 trillion dollars.
renewiltord 4y ago
Yeah but I don't like future generations, my dude. I like me. And so does everyone else. So I'd rather pillage the commons because if I do otherwise the commons won't be unpillaged. It'll just be pillaged by others. Everyone's all "we must care about the environment" but then you ask them why Germany isn't reforesting (after razing the cities they built on old forests) and why Europe is deforesting at an accelerated rate and it's all this and that.
- hgomersall 4y ago
  The commons is an interesting point. It was stable for a long time through very strong social and cultural norms. It was broken essentially by wealthy landowners taking slices of it and then using their oversized influence to change the law to support them. It suggests the root of the solution to any of this stuff is very much cultural and social.

by dfxm12 4y ago

melenaboija 4y ago

I would assume the poster already knows it. Is a matter of wanting something and do it because I can. It goes against common sense but is human nature.

notyourwork 4y ago
Which is precisely why government intervention is required to address this problem. Individuals will make decisions that are short sighted, self-centered and potentially not in the best interest of the planet. I don't fault them for it, I'm guilty of it in some situations.
- bumby 4y ago
  It's a hard balancing effort. On one hand, humans can't be counted on to be rational actors, especially in terms of long-term benefit. On the other hand, the system is so complex it may not be able to be managed well at the large government level.
988747 4y ago
No, it actually makes sense: burn all the oil now, to keep yourself warm in winter, and the future generations will be kept warm by the fact that climate change raises temperatures, so there are no winters anymore :-D

mrshadowgoose 4y ago

A large part of the population is like this. Whining at and shaming them is not going to get the result you want. If you care about climate change, you should be advocating for completely green electricity generation, and carbon-neutral synthetic fuels. That would completely solve the fundamental problem. Our society is fundamentally based on energy, and people like to use energy towards things that give them comfort. Taking away comfort is going to be a "nope" for most people.

titzer 4y ago
> A large part of the population is like this. Whining at and shaming them is not going to get the result you want. It's unfortunate, but it does appear to have the opposite effect on some section of the populace. They just get pissed off and consume more out of spite. One thing to temper that is to massively tax (over-) consumption. Use taxes tend to be regressive, so to avoid targeting the poor, there needs to be some thought put into the tax structure.
- dfxm12 4y ago
  If one reads my comment and construes it as whining and shaming, I don't think we're dealing with reasonable people. The problem is that conservative politicians like MTG make this ID pol issue, vis a vis her comments about Pete Buttigieg and EVs being emasculating. Because of these influences, they see any attempt to curb fossil fuel use as a personal attack, even if it isn't.
  - lucb1e 4y ago
    > The problem is that [politics] If politics is the issue, let's not start about politics and partisanship? I don't know much about USA politics but it seems to me that this automatically turns your comment into something to ignore and dismiss for precisely half your population, as they're part of the party you're blaming as a whole (which might or might not be a fair thing to do).
    - dfxm12 4y ago
      It's not just politics, and I did specifically mention the attempt to make this about ID politics. In politics, there's discussion, there's give and take, OK. But when one uses their power from the top down to convince their constituency: using fossil fuels is a part of who you are, and they are trying to take a piece of your identity away from you, then it becomes something different.
  - mrshadowgoose 4y ago
    When one decides to pass over clearly defined technical solutions that actually solve the problem, and instead decide to shame those who live differently than them, perhaps that individual isn't a bastion of reasonableness themselves. Clean energy production is an everyone problem. I'd encourage not letting politicians pit you against other parts of the population, which is just an emotionally satisfying substitute to actually addressing fundamental problems.

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago

> We can't just give the planet a bunch of money and have it produce more oil for us to burn when we're uncomfortable Yes, but we can try to do something about those "Green" activists who prevent the proliferation of the cleanest power on Earth: nuclear energy. Look at what did they do to Germany!

pandemicsoul 4y ago
Green activists are the only reason we have any green energy at all.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  Well, if it weren't for green activists, we'd probably be exclusively using nuclear power at this point, so we'd be in a much better spot for green energy
  - LargeWu 4y ago
    The coal and oil industries have been quietly bankrolling anti-nuclear efforts for decades under the guise of safety. It's a prime example of astroturfing.
- SamPatt 4y ago
  This I highly doubt. Especially when it comes to solar, for which there are many reasons to adopt apart from environmental concerns.
Teknoman117 4y ago
True or not, I would totally believe that the people who are so anti-nuclear they don't want any further research done into the subject are probably being funded by the fossil fuel industry.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  Just a few links I gathered some time ago when discussing the related topic: "Has Russia Been Financing Western Environmentalism?" (2022) [0] "Putin Is Funding Green Groups to Discredit Natural Gas Fracking" (2017) [1] "German green group branded a Russian ‘puppet’ over Nord Stream II gas pipeline" (2021) [2] [0]: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18330/russia-funding-environmental-groups https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18330/russia-funding-envi... [1]: https://www.newsweek.com/putin-funding-green-groups-discredit-natural-gas-fracking-635052 https://www.newsweek.com/putin-funding-green-groups-discredi... [2]: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/german-green-group-branded-a-russian-puppet-over-nord-stream-ii-gas-pipeline-nzd9p056q https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/german-green-group-brande...

scotty79 4y ago

I don't think it's consumer's duty to factor in that future cost into their behavior. This should be factored into the current price of the resource by businesses or governments. It's not customer's duty to pay more than they are asked, either in money or in inconvenience.

tremon 4y ago
But I tend to think of my fellow beings as citizens rather than consumers. And I do think it is a citizen's duty to be considerate of their fellow and citizens, current and future.
- scotty79 4y ago
  It's a bit like you'd say: I prefer to think about my fellow beings as mammals not consumers. They sure are but that's beside the point. Citizen has no meaning in context of economy (except for taxation). So using it in context of economic activity mixes up two unrelated things. Bad actors in the economy tend to exploit such mix ups to shift the burden away from them. Read up on introduction and promotion of the concept of individual carbon footprint. Or the reality of recycling which was promoted as alternative to producers of plastic being directly responsible for introducing plastic into the environment.

gruez 4y ago

>As an aside, we've got the externalities of climate change all wrong. Oil is a non renewable resource. We can't just give the planet a bunch of money and have it produce more oil for us to burn when we're uncomfortable. This cost is not really borne by you; it'll be borne by future generations. What's the point of resources if they're not consumed? If we follow your advice to its logical conclusion, then we'd have oils that are consumed by nobody, because every generation doesn't want to consume it for fear of "cost [...] borne by future generations".

bumby 4y ago
>What's the point of resources if they're not consumed? Just to add some nuance, this seems to imply everyone has the same environmental psychology. There are lots of (often competing) perspectives. If you have a utilitarian environmental psychology, you may think resources are there to be consumed for human benefit. If you instead have a stewardship environmental psychology, you may feel its your duty to protect those resources from being pilfered. Stephen Kellert has a good description of these different perspectives in "The Biological Basis for Human Values of Nature". Some of his categories include: utilitarian, naturalistic, ecologistic-scientific, aesthetic, symbolic, humanistic, moralistic, dominionistic, and negativistic. Other researchers define the human-environment interactions differently. For example, [1] defines them in terms of master, apathy, steward, partner, participant, and user. So it's not hard to see why people's thoughts differ on this issue. Like with most human value systems, it's not likely that there is a singular "right" perspective. [1] https://www.academia.edu/download/53480185/Yoshida_et_al._2017_Farming_between_love_and_money.pdf https://www.academia.edu/download/53480185/Yoshida_et_al._20...
dfxm12 4y ago
If we follow your advice to its logical conclusion, then we'd have oils that are consumed by nobody That's not really the logical conclusion of my advice. In actuality, there's a lot of possibilities between "I'm the one buying it, so I'm the only one dealing with the consequences" and "Not use any oil at all". But I get it, it's easier to argue against strawmen.
- 4y ago

atemerev 4y ago

We have enough uranium to last for millions of years at current consumption levels, and nuclear energy is nearly completely CO2-free. Electric heating is a thing. I don't think we need to worry about this. (Using oil for heating is outrageous, of course; as Mendeleev have said, it is exactly the same as heating your fireplace with money bills).

hooverd 4y ago
Which currency is the best heat source? I think some of the newer ones might give you cancer.
bumby 4y ago
Fossil fuel heat generation is an order of magnitude cheaper per unit than electric in many geographic areas.
chordalkeyboard 4y ago
> We have enough uranium to last for millions of years at current consumption levels this is because we don't use very much nuclear power. There is currently enough known uranium reserves to provide 2 years of global energy production at current rates.
- atemerev 4y ago
  See "closed nuclear cycle" and breeder reactors.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
That's one to two hundred years depening on if you include inferred resource, and for supplying under 3% of the energy. Meeting net zero targets with PWRs would run out in well under a decade, perhaps not even a single fuel load.
- atemerev 4y ago
  Well, PWRs are dead end, we need breeders.

Georgelemental 4y ago

While our oil supply is not part infinite, it should still last many decades/centuries more, by which time we will hopefully have alternatives. Climate change is a larger risk than running out

pwinnski 4y ago
Among our alternatives: wear warmer clothes.

hooverd 4y ago

Or through the magic of south facing windows and proper insulation you can be nice and warm in the winter and with electric heating not even burn oil.

carlosjobim 4y ago

Do you need the oil more than OP and for what purposes?

AlwaysRock 4y ago

Boo. A single day of any large company impacts the environment far more negatively than the most wasteful single human or large group of humans do in their lifetimes. Moving the blame from corporations to the individual is how companies have avoided doing anything to combat climate change and only serves to make the individuals who do the blaming self righteous and the ones being blamed bad.

dfxm12 4y ago
I didn't move anything.
tomtheelder 4y ago
No blame is being moved. Corporations behaving irresponsibly has no bearing on whether or not individuals should behave responsibly. In fact, the person trying to shift blame here is you: by downplaying the smaller yet still significant role of individuals in a sustainable future.
- AlwaysRock 4y ago
  False. Nothing I do has an impact on the planet at any scale. A company can make a change in an instant and have an immediate impact on the planet.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

kortilla 4y ago

My home isn’t heated with oil. Take your shitty generalizations elsewhere.

tomp 4y ago

No, we got the technology all wrong. We could easily have abundant nuclear energy so that “home heating” would be a non-issue and trivial cost.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
For about 10 years and 100 trillion dollars.

renewiltord 4y ago

Yeah but I don't like future generations, my dude. I like me. And so does everyone else. So I'd rather pillage the commons because if I do otherwise the commons won't be unpillaged. It'll just be pillaged by others. Everyone's all "we must care about the environment" but then you ask them why Germany isn't reforesting (after razing the cities they built on old forests) and why Europe is deforesting at an accelerated rate and it's all this and that.

hgomersall 4y ago
The commons is an interesting point. It was stable for a long time through very strong social and cultural norms. It was broken essentially by wealthy landowners taking slices of it and then using their oversized influence to change the law to support them. It suggests the root of the solution to any of this stuff is very much cultural and social.