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One thing I dislike the most about these problems – and the information/media/activism around them – is the "solutioning". Yes, we should recycle and reduce ca

• trash3 3y ago
  [dead]
• ekianjo 3y ago
  Thats what happens in countries with powerful welfare states. People will default to think that the government should solve all of their problems
  • LastTrain 3y ago
    Sure, but it’s even worse in the non-nanny states
    • ekianjo 3y ago
      How so?
• kelseyfrog 3y ago
  The unfortunate state of things is that we've run out of the problems that we can solve and are left with the problem we can't solve. Our society/species is pretty terrible with problems that involve diffuse responsibility. Part of the problem is that we don't have social technologies equipped to handle diffuse responsibility, and another is that we have social agents who exploit this social bug to make money.
  • 23B1 3y ago
    Well put. I thought about bringing up the many, many solar panel scams. What an absolute shame.
    • quinn3604 3y ago
      are there many solar panel scams? I had no idea
      • 23B1 3y ago
        All over social media, spam, everywhere. What happened was the U.S. and state governments started offering tax incentives, so a bunch of middlemen (scammers) popped up to take a portion of that benefit while marketing it to regular folk. It's a whole cottage industry (barf): https://www.thisoldhouse.com/solar-alternative-energy/reviews/debunking-common-solar-panel-myths-and-scams https://www.thisoldhouse.com/solar-alternative-energy/review... https://www.cnet.com/home/energy-and-utilities/solar-panel-scams-7-red-flags-to-avoid/ https://www.cnet.com/home/energy-and-utilities/solar-panel-s...
  • gerad 3y ago
    I’ve been reading Harari’s “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” recently. The book makes the point that the history of Homo Sapiens coincides with mass extinction - humankind has been disrupting and destroying habitats since it rapidly expanded out of Africa 300k years ago. Even before the agricultural revolution. It happens time and again throughout various geographies and histories, Homo Sapiens arrive somewhere and then a ton of species go extinct. Abstract ideas evolve faster than genes, and the evolution of the ability to process such ideas allowed our species to jump to the top of the food chain too fast for the typical checks and balances in nature to take place. I think the best we can probably do is to continue to invest in education, science and technology. If people (particularly women) are educated and empowered enough, then it seems to drive down birth rates. Science and technology because if we can drive the costs of fixing these issues low enough, then we might be one day be able to “undo” some of the tragedies that we’ll have caused along the way.
• jimmytidey 3y ago
  Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is the largest charity in the UK by membership. People do take a lot of direct personal action on this topic.
• metadaemon 3y ago
  Yeah, really the only top-down solution that would be effective against the worst offenders is their permanent cessation.
• MattGaiser 3y ago
  That gets dismissed as “virtue signalling” as “it won’t make a significant difference.” That is basically the Conservative rank and file line for why Canada shouldn’t reduce emissions. They say “we are only 1.5% of emissions, so it won’t matter.” I am not arguing that your way is bad, but that there will be stiff resistance either way. At least with government, you just need to win once and inertia means that it likely sticks.
  • 23B1 3y ago
    I disagree. If you can see immediate benefits in your neighborhood – for instance, more birds showing up – then 'acting locally, thinking globally' is more effective than the reverse.
  • josho 3y ago
    Oh that argument from cons really gets me enraged. As a comparison to show their inconsistent reasons oh conservatives are proud of Canada’s contribution to the world wars, you never hear conservatives say “we only contributed 1.5% to the war effort, so it won’t matter”
    • dudeinjapan 3y ago
      It’s not clear that Canada’s self-sabotage of it's most profitable industry (oil and gas) will benefit its people or the environment in the long run. On the other hand, when it comes to fighting actual Nazis in WW2, every bullet counts.
  • klyrs 3y ago
    > At least with government, you just need to win once and inertia means that it likely sticks. This isn't remotely true. Regulatory bodies are chronically underfunded and undermined in north America because they're villainized by corporate donors and the politicians they pay for.
    • MattGaiser 3y ago
      That means they take a long time to write a rule. Same with a legislature. But once written, how often do they go away?
• krainboltgreene 3y ago
  > What I'd like to see more of, when presented with these sorts of problems, is viable solutions proposed that can be implemented bottom-up, and in the following hierarchy: You want magic. The thing you are describing is called magic.
• klipklop 3y ago
  The point isn’t to have you save the birds, it’s to get you to give up certain freedoms to a group that claims they can save the birds.
  • MSFT_Edging 3y ago
    It is my freedom to have a big lifeless lawn that takes the place of local plants and displaces insects, which in turn starves bird populations. Why doesn't my yard have any birds?
    • hasbot 3y ago
      Lawns aren't the problem. I used to live within the Willamette National Forest in Oregon and there is no wildlife there. Sure, there's a few deer, bear, and birds, but no where near as much wildlife as I can find in my suburban neighborhood. The original forest was nearly completely clearcut and replanted very densely with just a few species of timber trees. The canopy is so dense, there is no under story. There is nothing for wildlife to eat in these forests.
      • MSFT_Edging 3y ago
        > Lawns aren't the problem > The original forest was nearly completely clearcut...just a few species of timber trees. So clearcutting and planting non-local, dominating plants isn't the problem,but clear cutting and planting non-local, dominating plants is the problem. This is obviously two sides of the same coin, when you remove native plants, native wildlife goes away. Just because certain species of wildlife can make it work in the suburb doesn't mean that large lifeless lawns, especially in areas without intermixed native green space, are not killing off birds, insects, etc.
        • hasbot 3y ago
          The timber trees that were planted were local species. It is the monoculture that is the problem.
• d0mine 3y ago
  If individuals are responsible for just 1% of the issues then even if we eliminate them "bottom-up" completely, we are still left with 99% of issues that should be fixed at another level. For example, consider what would save more water: 10 million people stopping showering completely or one corporation stopping production of water-intensive crops in a desert.
  • lotsofpulp 3y ago
    What if politicians do not have the political support to stop the one corporation because 9.99 million people like to consume the water intensive crops grown in the desert?
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • 2023throwawayy 3y ago
      Typically these water intensive crops are not even consumed by people! Much of it is alfalfa which gets exported to foreign cattle farms. We can very much stop raising these water intensive crops in the desert and affect exactly 0 people’s access to food.
  • 23B1 3y ago
    Actually, I think that localized thinking has benefits that are so much better than the status quo of globalization that that 99% the issues you describe would be vacated. Like let's talk about food, how we get bananas from across the globe. Who the hell needs bananas when you can buy fresh, seasonal fruit from the farmer an hour away? Yeah you might not get to have banana cream pie for Christmas, but you made a new friend (the farmer) had a good time (with your family at the peach orchard) and ate something that didn't need to be coated in poison to survive a f'ing trip through the Panama Canal! (I know I'm pulling this out of my ass – but you get the gist)
    • adrianN 3y ago
      People want fresh fruit and vegetables year round though.
• jeffbee 3y ago
  "Bird-friendly yard" is probably the most counterproductive of these. Habitat loss is far and away the biggest problem that birds face. Anyone having a yard is the problem. People must learn to congregate in compact development forms and leave the land for the animals, if they care about having animals. Probably the only easy life change individuals can do is not eat meat and not buy ethanol. That would return tons of land to natural uses.
  • jraines 3y ago
    This is exactly what GP is talking about. Millions of people have a yard right now, today. Telling them to not do a little something for birds right now, and instead they should feel bad unless they uproot their life this instant to become one micron in what would be at best a generational reurbanization project is the kind of thing that gets people to just tune this stuff out. The rational choice of an individual, if the “real answer” is disruptive to their life and will take massive state incentives and/or coercion, is to wait for the carrot & stick to actually be produced. So why not put some, idk, whatever is bird friendly in the yard in the meantime?
  • inconceivable 3y ago
    [flagged]
  • uptime 3y ago
    Each homeowner just needs to cut back a little and dedicate a percentage to native plants and wilder growth. What we need are the right insects in each region, then the birds will follow. A huge manicured lawn (pesticides make it worse but even without) and none native plantings allow the wrong bugs to win, and in some cases those bugs are not good food for the birds that live in that region or temperate zone. We don’t need complete wilding or any bad feels, just learn to appreciate the beauty of a wilder native section of a property. No, I am not an expert but this seems to be the easiest thing to do.
  • wombatpm 3y ago
    I’m in the Midwest. I noticed a big drop off in birds when westnile virus came through. Dead birds in the middle of the yard was a dead giveaway. Don’t see crows anymore. But when I was a kid I never saw hawks, now I can usually spot 5 or 6 when I’m out during the day. Makes me wonder what the baseline count should be.
• aaronbrethorst 3y ago
  1. Regular individuals: vote for city, county, state, and federal candidates who acknowledge the scope of the problem and want to solve it. Vote against people who deny the crisis’s existence.
  • 23B1 3y ago
    I think people have been doing this since the 60s and it hasn't had much of an effect, which is my point. If the political solution is ineffective, pivot.
    • aaronbrethorst 3y ago
      This is a myopic, self defeating view of recent American history.
      • 23B1 3y ago
        Do you believe that the American people, by focusing on change via government, have been sufficiently effective in preventing a forthcoming (or probably currently underway) environmental collapse?
        • aaronbrethorst 3y ago
          Do you believe a majority has tried what you’re suggesting? I think the answer is no. Nevertheless, over a trillion dollars will be spent over the next ten years on incentives to make our country carbon-neutral because enough people turned out to vote in 2020 to secure a slim majority of federal legislative seats to affect such a change. https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/the-us-is-poised-for-an-energy-revolution.html#:~:text=Goldman%20Sachs%20Research%20estimates%20that,on%20average%20%24290%20billion%20annually https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/the-us-is-po.... Here’s another example for you: it would’ve been unthinkable in 1996 when a Democratic President signed the so-called and repugnant “Defense of Marriage Act” into law that about 26 years later, support for gay marriage among Americans would be over 70%, and that a bipartisan coalition of Senators could get behind a bill to enshrine same-sex marriage into law, but here we are. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_for_Marriage_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect_for_Marriage_Act Nihilism doesn’t do any good for anyone. If you live in a heavily gerrymandered state with climate deniers elected to a majority of seats, start volunteering with a group that seeks to eliminate gerrymandering in your state with independent redistricting commissions.
• vhlhvjcov 3y ago
  I agree with the sentiment but a couple problems with this approach 1. When you put the onus on the individual, powerful organisations will jump at the opportunity to absolve themselves of blame. Look at recycling and how it was pushed by the plastics lobby or the idea of a “personal carbon footprint” that was pushed by oil companies. There is a fact that these are systemic problems, that require systemic solutions. 2. History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes. Which massive threat to human life has been solved through bottom-up grass roots action (I.e. not protest to drive systemic change)? Look at small pox, the ozone and cfcs, covid, lead pipes, asbestos, etc. these all required huge top down programmes to deliver results.
  • prepend 3y ago
    > When you put the onus on the individual, powerful organisations will jump at the opportunity to absolve themselves of blame. Powerful organizations already absolved themselves. Check out the headline. Also, this doesn’t put the onus on individuals. Individuals aren’t responsible for the change, but they are powerful enough to do something. Doing something doesn’t mean doing everything.
    • vhlhvjcov 3y ago
      The question to me is: what is the thing I should do? Where should I invest my energy? Time and energy are finite resources and taking political action to drive systemic change has proven results (see previous examples). I don’t know of any transformative movement against mass threat to human life that hasn’t relied on some form of top-down implementation to achieve its aims. Maybe environmental vegetarianism in the west? But that’s hardly been an unqualified success…
      • zmgsabst 3y ago
        But they didn’t start with top down action: Sustained political movements that drive results build upwards through the layers outlined, because that’s how you change culture — and politics is downstream of culture. We live in a democracy, so if you don’t convince your neighbors first, then politicians will correctly respect the majority’s wishes over yours. COVID is a great counter example: The reason that it destroyed our society and has led to years of bitter fighting that’s doing massive damage to public health is precisely because it was authoritarian policy lacking public consensus — and now is likely to destroy many of the institutions that supported it in the backlash, as the public investigates gain of function, PSYOPs, ineffective policy interventions, etc.
• ericd 3y ago
  Yep, #1 works well in my experience, and for us, it mostly involved doing less - letting most of our yard go back to not being an all-grass yard, leaving dead trees when possible, not trying to kill the insects that live around our house, not putting netting around our berry bushes, so it's not been particularly hard.
• jrwoodruff 3y ago
  The problem is we shouldn’t be working against the government on this. Problems like this are why governments exist, it needs to happen at that scale. Unfortunately, it seems like we’ve forgotten how to solve social problems of any significant scale.
  • lazide 3y ago
    Many folks don’t consider it a problem - let alone one they want to solve. It’s working as intended, when you get out of the bubble.
  • hasbot 3y ago
    "We" haven't forgotten how to solve social problems. Not to get all political, but at least in the United States, there is tremendous pressure not to solve any problems. Our elites are content with the status quo.
• formulathree 3y ago
  The problem is none of your solutions are viable either. Even if they were executed the results are usually negligible. In fact most of your solutions end up making us feel better about ourselves. But this is all illusion. For these huge environmental problems humanity is facing, I'm sorry to say the only way it to do huge drastic unrealistic changes that will never occur because humanity doesn't have the will power to pull it off. The real honest answer is that there no "solutioning" the worst case scenario will likely play out.
  • 23B1 3y ago
    I know you think you're being a pragmatist and a realist, but 'tis you who are suffering the illusion. Localism has incredible antifragile second- and third-order effects in the face of wider catastrophe.
    • formulathree 3y ago
      The tragedy of the commons ends up making local-ism non viable at any level of legitimate scale. Any of it that does get implemented therefore becomes negligible in effect.
• mongol 3y ago
  In Sweden, the Eurasian Skylark has been in decline, due to loss of habitat. It thrives in high grass on the kind of land that is ploughed and used for agriculture. But you can now pay farmers for a "lark square". For 100 SEK for a year, about 10 USD, the farmer will leave a rectangle unplowed, which will benefit the Skylark. This photos illustrates "lark squares" https://64.media.tumblr.com/8fc53eb231b08f8476b5a8f76eb20ef9/tumblr_n9vqrqdD6z1sb29p5o1_1280.jpg https://64.media.tumblr.com/8fc53eb231b08f8476b5a8f76eb20ef9... https://www.lantmannen.se/44bdd3/siteassets/images/06-innovation/undersidor/puffar/innovation_larkruta_lantbrukare_pp.jpg?maxwidth=500 https://www.lantmannen.se/44bdd3/siteassets/images/06-innova... This initiative is supported by Birdlife Sweden and has had a proven effect.
  • 23B1 3y ago
    Brilliant. I read somewhere that they were encouraging the use of hedgerows in the UK for the same basic reasons; that it provides habitat for myriad wildlife amongst farming fields.
• bmitc 3y ago
  Individuals cannot solve this. I leave trees up, dead or alive. I plant native plants. I remove invasive species. I only keep invasive bushes if they house birds. I don't spray for insects except around the base of my house, I don't kill off chipmunks, voles, squirrels, rabbits, etc. How can this compete with the dozens of neighbors in a half-mile radius that have removed in excess of hundreds of trees, big ones like oak, pine, maple, hickory and up to five feet in diameter, and turn their yards into grass wastelands? I never even see my neighbors use most of their yards. How do you compete against that level of narcissisim and lack of empathy? It is exhausting on me both physically and emotionally. There's no one I can call to get help with my own yard because every landscaper knows nothing about ecology and uses loud and polluting gas-powered machinery. I am to the point where I consider my actions as pissing into the wind and spitting into the ocean. Seeing bees where I hadn't seen them before using native plants that I planted is amazingly fullfilling. But I know that it basically has no greater impact, and it is completely against the tide. Unless governments take action and penalize corporations for the harm they've done and take measures to prevent further harm, we won't be able to stop what's coming.
  • doublepg23 3y ago
    > How do you compete against that level of narcissisim and lack of empathy? I would assume the start is stop labelling your neighbours as narcissists and anti-social.
    • thebooktocome 3y ago
      A bon mot, to be sure, but whether or not they are labeled as such makes no difference. The behavior refuses to change in either situation. Plenty of pitiful fools are still trying to keep sod alive in the vicinity of the Mojave.
    • bmitc 3y ago
      I didn't say anti-social. And what do you call displacing hundreds of birds, animals, plants, insects by planting literally wastelands made of grass just so that the grass can be looked at? How is that not narcissism, a lack of empathy, and vanity? It's the very definitions of those words. We must first come to terms with what we as humans do and how we interact with and perceive the world. Look up Benjamin Vogt and Douglas Tallamy. They say the same thing. I can't remember who it was, but someone said that it was a disservice to the diversity of life found in deserts to call lawns green deserts.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• chrsstrm 3y ago
  You missed the biggest point - North America is a capitalist society and there's no money in any of these solutions. There's profit in deforestation. There's profit in using pesticides. There's profit in razing forests to expand suburbs. But there's no profit in maintaining a natural and healthy habitat for the creatures that live in the areas we want to exploit. Do local solutions work? Yes, they absolutely do. I've been working with state and local foresters on a habitat improvement project on land that I own and it is producing real results. Since 2018 I've been converting ag land to forest and meadows. I've planted over 6000 trees with my own hands and constructed and curated scrapes (ponds) and meadow areas with local grasses and flowers. It took a couple years but the turnaround is evident. I have families of ducks living on my land that never used to be there before. The area has become popular with migrating geese and sandhill cranes. I have a healthy array of woodland creatures who took up residence including a family of bobcats. Local wildflowers have attracted and given a home to more bees than I've ever seen out on that property. By all measures my project is a success and I'll continue it for as long as I can, but all monies that fund this come out of my own pocket. I can enroll in the state's managed forest program to receive tax breaks on my property, but that's about it. I could solicit donations and look for grants to help foot the bill, but even then I'd still be in the red. The only ROI I will get from these actions is the belief I'm doing my part for a social cause. And just like governments or social groups or even corporations, when times get tight the feel-good programs and dollars are the first to get cut since they don't show a return that can be expressed on a balance sheet. If I reach a point where I can't pay for more trees or spend time planting them, I just won't plant more trees. I have 42 more acres of trees to plant but I also won't starve myself and my family to make it happen. I've talked to lots of people about the options I have for funding this work but it all comes down to either pay for it yourself or take charity. Everyone wants to save the trees. Everyone wants to save the birds and the bees and all the furry woodland creatures but no one wants to pay for it. You're not fighting against goodwill, you're fighting against capitalism and you'll always lose because there are no objective returns on investment for the preservation of natural habitat.
• corwinstephen 3y ago
  Ask HN: Are there any companies doing good work in this space? I'm looking for a new gig and have been shocked at how few companies seem to understand the types of solutions that stand a chance at making a difference re: these sorts of problems.
• godelski 3y ago
  > viable solutions proposed that can be implemented bottom-up Don't have outdoor cats: https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/ https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/ From the cited source: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 > We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality. Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely __the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals.__ (emphasis my own) Besides this, your cats will live longer and healthier. Like the average cat lives twice as long (or more) when indoor. Do it for the birds, do it for the squirrels and other small mammals, and do it for your own fucking cat.
  • paulcole 3y ago
    There’s a bunch of statistics that just sound like nonsense and get repeated on the internet constantly. On the Mt. Rushmore of this list is the cats killing billions of birds a year. Another one is how efficient dishwashers are compared to hand washing dishes.
    • jemmyw 3y ago
      That depends enormously on what 'efficient' means. They certainly save a lot of time so that's an efficiency. They do use less water for the same amount of washing, so they are more efficient with water. The only problem with that is that, just with most efficiency gains, the result is more consumption. In this case, dirtying more dishes. So I would argue dishwashers are demonstrably more efficient than hand washing dishes. Whether that means better for the environment is an entirely different question that has to take into account manufacture and use.
      • paulcole 3y ago
        > So I would argue dishwashers are demonstrably more efficient than hand washing dishes Yeah my argument is that this is nonsense. Just turn the tap off often when you’re scrubbing the dishes (use the water for rinsing) and it should be obvious that you’re using less water — particularly when you take into account the fact that a dishwasher uses 4 gallons of water no matter how many dishes are in it. Under ideal conditions perhaps a modern dishwasher comes out ahead, but again maybe the ideal Rambo bird-killing-machine cat is also capable of decimating local bird populations.
• 7thaccount 3y ago
  I took my dead yard and added about a dozen apple, fig, and shade trees. This brought some birds for sure. I would still expect to see more though given the seed I put out. I'm guessing massive cities and suburban sprawl are a big part of the problem. Most yards are literally just grass which often requires tons of weed killer and fertilizer in some areas. As a society we're so dumb sometimes. My mother also has a bunch of cats and they've killed dozens of birds over the years. That probably adds up.
• notatoad 3y ago
  bottom-up solutions only have so much effectiveness though, and at some point crosses a line into feel-goodery. does building a bird-friendly yard actually accomplish anything? does building a bird-friendly park actually accomplish anything? is there any science that backs up an argument that people have the power to do anything at all about this, or are these just individual actions that make people feel like they're helping to solve the problem while diverting their attention away from actual practical solutions? individual actions aren't free. making people feel like they're doing something is counterproductive if it's not helping in a meaningful way. we've all been sorting our plastic recycling for the last 30 years, and the only practical outcome of that is that we feel better about creating more plastic waste. if planting "bird-friendly" gardens doesn't do anything beyond make people feel better about killing birds, then let's not do that.
• Pxtl 3y ago
  So, let's think of previous global crises. What would be the bottom-up way to handle, say, the acid rain crisis, which was caused by excessive sulfur dioxide emissions and was resolved by top-down legislation. Or alternately, what would be the bottom-up solution to World War 2?
• pkpjpm 3y ago
  Jane Goodall has a very simple and realistic (but not easy) framework for recovering from the anthropocene extinction: 1. Eliminate poverty worldwide (this is essential because desperately poor people will not let environmental concerns keep them from basic survival) 2. Radically reduce resource consumption by rich nations and individuals 3. Eliminate government corruption 4. Stop human population increase Obviously achieving this will require upending many power structures and confronting many deficiencies of human nature. But when you see it laid out like that, it seems obvious that is task ahead of us.
• mplewis 3y ago
  There is no individual solution to climate catastrophe. The vast majority of individuals have little to no impact on carbon emissions. We need concerted legislation focused on fixing the causes of our ecological collapse to make a dent. The market will not save us and neither will individual action.
  • ChatGTP 3y ago
    When people say "We need concerted..." how do you suppose we get it. I'm 100% agreeing with you but how? Vote for RFK? Honestly and respectfully?
• hayroh 3y ago
  Agreed. What about going vegan?
• jrflowers 3y ago
  > All too often the "solutioning" defaults to the highest concentration of power, e.g. government/regulation – but that obviously isn't working at the speed it has to, and I suspect its because it's very easy to say "they should/we should" instead if "I will/we will". I love this idea. Affecting large change is best done by embracing the status quo of large power structures. Few have the fortitude to ask “What if everybody individually just sort of came up with their own ideas of what solutions to problems are and eschewed organization”
• skinpop 3y ago
  This is exactly how to not solve systemic issues.
• NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  I find it hilarious, that no one mentions the real solution. Of course, once it's spoken it's obvious why it can't even be spoken aloud... 5. Exterminate all stray/unlicensed cats, exterminate all indoor cats if caught outside and fine the registered owners $50,000. If I posted this on reddit, I'd have maniacs stalking me and issuing death threats. Maybe here it'll only be hatemail.
  • 1over137 3y ago
    But cats are so cute! We can enslave and torture chickens, cows, and pigs, but how dare you threaten kitties!
  • akomtu 3y ago
    It's not a solution, it's cheap bluff. Try to voice this idea on an HOA meeting and tell Ms. Smith that you noticed her kitty outside and that next time you'd "exterminate" it. If you can't do that, how are you going to convince people to vote for such a law?
    • NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      Solutions are still solutions even if you're unwilling to implement them. I just said "keep tight control of your songbird-murdering organic robots"... and you replied with "it's a bluff, you can't convince people to do that!" Filing this under no-shit-sherlock.
  • nebula8804 3y ago
    They are actually trying to do this in australia: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/magazine/australia-cat-killing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/magazine/australia-cat-ki...
• zorrotorro 3y ago
  My garden is full of birds. The neighbour forgot to trim his huge tree one year and it was full of bird nests. Birds are left with no place to live near / in cities if there's so little gardens and trees. But put some water, grass and trees and birds show up. Having a water source is also huge. Saw migratory birds too, multiple years. I don't think it's on purpose or not but our small towns and back yards are just not welcoming for nature. If there's a little room, animals do come. But real estate is all about room! People need to keep storing stuff. My neighbors on basically all sides keep building sheds and extending their homes. Pretty soon they will have no grass to speak of. But plenty of room for storage.
• lamontcg 3y ago
  > All too often the "solutioning" defaults to the highest concentration of power, e.g. government/regulation – but that obviously isn't working at the speed it has to, and I suspect its because it's very easy to say "they should/we should" instead if "I will/we will". Other way around really. "The hardest hit were grassland birds, down by more than 50 percent, mostly due to the expansion of farms that turn a varied landscape into acres of neat, plowed rows." You're not going to do anything about that individually. You could opt out of the whole system and grow your own food, but that isn't viable as a solution across the entire population. It would take literally everyone doing that and most people simply will not. And focusing on the individual as the solution lets corporations and governments off of the hook. We've been trying to "reduce, reuse, recycle" our way out the problem at a local level and it isn't remotely sufficient.
• tlow 3y ago
  Bird friendly yards don’t save birds from predation by human domesticated predators which are uncontrolled — cats.
• Red_Tarsius 3y ago
  Individual solutions are mostly a fantasy. It's what we tell ourselves because the real solutions are fundamentally at odds with democracy and freedom. A few exceptions aside, people have never voted for a lower quality of life and personal degrowth. Instead, we prefer to slice and shift the blame around until no one is really responsible anymore. Your vision hangs on some sort of mass enlightenment that's just not going to happen. How many tragedies of the commons have been solved this way irl? Imagine being a fisherman in a Chinese trawler off the coast of West Africa. You could decide to stop overfishing. What then? You'll get fired and replaced by someone more desperate than you. The real world is a lot more complicated that "building a bird-friendly yard". >All too often the "solutioning" defaults to the highest concentration of power, e.g. government/regulation – but that obviously isn't working at the speed it has to, and I suspect its because it's very easy to say "they should/we should" instead if "I will/we will". That's the entire point of having concentration of power though. The decision makers can coordinate and manage things in ways the individual cannot. That alone gives them the responsibility to seek out a solution for worldwide issues. The lone individual is bound to follow basic instincts, rule of law and economic opportunities.
• debaserab2 3y ago
  Recently bought a house with a beautiful backyard on a pond. I put a couple bird feeders up because I noticed a cardinal male and female occasionally hanging out on the lawn. Now my yard looks like a bird sanctuary! I love it. My next step for a new age take on an old man hobby is to get some cameras hooked up to an NVR that can do object detection and point them right at the bird feeders so I can get a stream of recent visitors.
• mustafa_pasi 3y ago
  That is certainly one way of seeing it. I agree that government regulation can be overbearing. OTOH, although I care about environmentalism and climate protection, I am not willing to inflict personal costs upon myself, if everyone else isn't also guaranteed to be playing along. That would just be unfair.
• DuckFeathers 3y ago
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• diffeomorphism 3y ago
  Doing things yourself is good, but these "you personally need to" has a very, very bad aftertaste with things like https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hook https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oi... Is there a version of Poe's law for idealists (which I assume you are) and shills?
• Madmallard 3y ago
  In my mind this is just like entropy in action. We hit the exponential growth curve and we're going to cull ourselves out of our environment, taking other things out with us or before us because humans dominate that much of nature at this point. Just seems like an unstoppable force. As far as I know exponential growth curves lead to something like that in all animals independently of their behavior because Darwinian adaptation in animals is much slower than the decline caused by exponential growth.
• Broken_Hippo 3y ago
  I'm a regular individual. I don't have a yard. I live in a city. Renters all over have restrictions on what they can do with a yard. You simply cannot rent and "build a bird-friendly yard" in most places. Sometimes, you cannot dig to add a garden, let along replace things. And why would you? It would just give the landlord even more money. And the landlords aren't going to do it without some pressure, which isn't going to come. Renters don't really have power in most places and we can't even get some of the folks to keep up a safe place. Do you think a neighborhood can just "build a bird friendly park"? Many neighborhoods don't have parks, at least not in the Midwest. Who is going to donate their house or yard to do this? Are poor neighborhoods just out of luck? Where are folks and small towns going to get the money? Don't architects and urban planners work with these "powerful forces" in general? How are they going to do anything without the government - especially a city planner? What do you expect small groups to be able to do without a larger force? How do you expect any of these organizations to actually do anything? All of your suggestions reek of things like "jaywalking", which came from pro-auto propaganda, and "litterbug campaigns", which were propaganda from companies to shift the blame from them to the consumer.
• gherkinnn 3y ago
  Rubbish. Individual action is a joke. One might believe big actors put that idiotic notion in to our collective heads to escape responsibility. One single supermarket with open fridges and unreasonable AC settings nullifies several families’ worth of energy saving efforts. And that is one trivial example.
• mintaka5 3y ago
  I know your intentions are good here, but honestly the less human interference the better. we didn't design their habitats, and i highly doubt we'd get it better than mother nature did. we humans are an self-excluding and blameless bunch. we constantly lust for providing solutions for ecology, but no matter how much "solutioning" we throw at it, the problem cannot, and will never be fixed by human involvement. the best thing we can do is live our lives simpler, and start to think how we can lessen our impact on the environment. i am willing to bet all my money that not a single person on this planet, is willing to do this 100%. yes, it is hard to go back to our roots, but living as an exclusive being, that considers itself deserving of reaping the benefits of industrialization and high-tech, at the same time not realizing the enormous impact our daily lives have on things, is not acceptable behaviour. we are like bacteria in a petri dish of agar. eventually we will consume all and destroy our own thriving habitat. it's inevitable. go to any developed area of the US! watch the highways in that area everyday! tell me that we don't have an impact after seeing how many cars pass you that day (i bet you couldn't even count them all)! the massive amounts of energy consumed, toxic chemicals that enter the water tables, runoffs, and larger bodies of water, the emissions from each vehicle, and the amount of natural resources consumed to make each car. this is just one example of our gigantic impact we have, yet we treat it as if it was nothing. 1. don't build bird friendly yards! you draw in predators to a centralized location, and can lead to a large localized food-source dependency that is detrimental avian health, and what happens when that location is no longer maintained? stop building!!! 2. see #1 and don't draw natural beings into an artificial environment, but do the reverse. these are beings of nature, not downtown. 3. these things already exist and is not helping (i birdwatch while hiking. good for me, useless to ailing birds). 4. see #1 and #2 this is solutioning. sorry to point that out. my point being, lessen your impact don't increase it
  • kjkjadksj 3y ago
    The main issue with humans and their ancestors and the environment is from agriculture. We went from hunting and gathering for millions of years, skimming excess carrying capacity off the land in low numbers, to agriculture only a few thousands of years ago, where we manipulate the environment to suit our needs where we are. We just aren’t adapted to agriculture let alone modern life. Mutually beneficial symbiotic relationships do not happen overnight, nor in the timespan that we have been farming and amassing population. So long as we insist that there must be some 8 billion people living at once on earth, the biomass to fuel that massive population has to come from somewhere in the system, and considering the complexity just about anything we do is liable to have deleterious nth order effects we will never be able to anticipate until they are plainly obvious.
• oulipo 3y ago
  You forgot: 1. Take arms and do the revolution
• giantg2 3y ago
  I agree that I like grassroots solutions. However, what would that look like here? The main culprit is that grasslands have disappeared on a massive scale, being replaced by farms and houses. Of course there are still some bird in protected areas or larger yards, but I don't think anything will be able to make up for the population loss when the habitat loss is so great. The one thing thats not mentioned in the article that might make a difference at a smaller level is pesticides. Many people love to have a yard without weeds and without bugs. Without some flowering weeds, many bugs have no food. Pesticides kill the rest. Now what will the birds eat? There aren't any flowering or seed producing plants and there aren't any bugs. I hate ticks and mosquitoes, but there are some targeted solutions for those.
• superultra 3y ago
  Most people don’t want to hear the hard truth, which is that political activism - that is, incentizing large institutions to change behavior - is the single most effective individual action we can take for both things like birding and things like climate change (which are of course linked). It’s not fun to hear this. It’s a lot more fun and rewarding to build a bird house or start a local bird park. These aren’t net zero effect things but if we’re ultimately concerned about efficiency and impact, they are nominal. We are clearly at the stage of human civilization where we have to start looking beyond immediate gratification. Is that possible? I don’t know.
• lm28469 3y ago
  That's like putting a band aid on your haemorrhaging jugular. You can plant as many trees as you want, as long as Dupont&co dump their god awful shit in the soil/water/air 24/7 it's game over
• jeffchien 3y ago
  The most impactful solution for individuals is also enormously unpopular in certain societies, especially the US and Canada: eat less beef. Beef takes a horrendous amount of land to produce: https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets