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No, not really. > It is going to require a collective effort by the human population to reverse the already apparent effects of climate warming. All we can rea

by fwip 3y ago

No, not really. > It is going to require a collective effort by the human population to reverse the already apparent effects of climate warming. All we can really do is each do our best on an individual level to reduce our carbon footprint. When we start saying that a collective problem can only be accomplished via individualism, we've basically already lost. Even the phrase "carbon footprint" is the product of British Petroleum, because they recognized that encouraging individual action would be less harmful to their business of selling oil than government action. That is, they saw clearly that individual action was so much less effective than government regulation, that they spent millions of dollars encouraging it. But Western culture (United States especially) is hyper-individualist, and we resist collective actions that would inconvenience the individual. Our government is hence limited to pushing levers to try to "encourage" or "discourage" individuals to take the "right" actions. So, our discussion of alternatives (Overton window) positions a "carbon tax" as the unreasonable leftist position, where the incidental increase in price of polluting products will hopefully nudge enough price-sensitive consumers/entities into reducing consumption enough to solve global warming. So no, climate change won't be solved by individual people deciding to eat less meat. There may come a day when our agriculture and food system is so devastated that it's no longer possible for most people to eat meat.

whynotmaybe 3y ago
But aren't all polluting businesses producing stuff that in the end will be used by individuals?
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  No. There is a lot of shit what would be manufactured, transported to the other side of the planet, sit in the warehouse, [luckily] sit in the store and would be thrown out. Eg: all this shit made for iPhone/iPod pre-Lighting, all these thin-thick Nokia chargers made in early 2000, all USB 1.1, 2.0 gadgets. Add to this a phone/tablet cases.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    That isn't a lot, all things considered, right? Could you not fit every phone accessory ever made on a single cargo ship? That ship's carbon footprint is only so big.
    - justsomehnguy 3y ago
      > Could you not fit every phone accessory ever made on a single cargo ship Why do you focus attention only on the phone accessories? But even if we do focus on it: there were not a one big single cargo ship what moved them, there was a lot of trucks, trains, ships what were involved in bringing the raw materials, bringing the processed materials to the factories, from the factories to the warehouses, from the warehouses to the docks and depots, from the docks and depots to the warehouses again, to the shops, from the shops to the garbage piles. Everything in the process generated some pollution which ended up futile. And while some of it can be somewhat negated, ie it was only 1 ISO container from the hundreds on the supercargo ship - but again, that container could be with something more useful than a phone cases what nobody would buy. And yes, this is not only about phone, smartphone and computer accessories. There is a lot of shit what is made and ends up in the garbage pile. Clothes, kitchen and other consumer appliances, plastic shit for everything, Christmas decorations, automobile parts... the list is long.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        > Why do you focus attention only on the phone accessories? If you recall, they were the majority of your examples. I'm not saying what you're saying isn't true. Maybe all phones are futile, by some definition. Maybe pollution generated by your comment was futile. It's just an unfalsifiable claim.
- fwip 3y ago
  Broadly speaking, sure. But I can't name any crisis that was solved by people individually deciding to purchase less of a bad thing. US slavery wasn't ended by people boycotting goods produced with slave labor. We didn't go to the moon by holding a fundraiser. The ozone hole was repaired by banning the harmful chemicals, not by consumers deciding to pay more for refrigerators that didn't use CFCs. Asking consumers to research every product they buy for its "carbon footprint" (including the whole supply chain and transportation) and modify their purchasing decisions accordingly is doomed to be ineffective. Some people will be very passionate about it and make a big change. More people will avoid some terrible offenders. And most people will make only small changes that don't inconvenience them much, because they already have 90 other things to worry about in their life. (And now that it's been politicized, you get people "rolling coal" and purposefully creating extra emissions to... stick it to the libs, I guess.)

by fwip 3y ago

whynotmaybe 3y ago

But aren't all polluting businesses producing stuff that in the end will be used by individuals?

justsomehnguy 3y ago
No. There is a lot of shit what would be manufactured, transported to the other side of the planet, sit in the warehouse, [luckily] sit in the store and would be thrown out. Eg: all this shit made for iPhone/iPod pre-Lighting, all these thin-thick Nokia chargers made in early 2000, all USB 1.1, 2.0 gadgets. Add to this a phone/tablet cases.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  That isn't a lot, all things considered, right? Could you not fit every phone accessory ever made on a single cargo ship? That ship's carbon footprint is only so big.
  - justsomehnguy 3y ago
    > Could you not fit every phone accessory ever made on a single cargo ship Why do you focus attention only on the phone accessories? But even if we do focus on it: there were not a one big single cargo ship what moved them, there was a lot of trucks, trains, ships what were involved in bringing the raw materials, bringing the processed materials to the factories, from the factories to the warehouses, from the warehouses to the docks and depots, from the docks and depots to the warehouses again, to the shops, from the shops to the garbage piles. Everything in the process generated some pollution which ended up futile. And while some of it can be somewhat negated, ie it was only 1 ISO container from the hundreds on the supercargo ship - but again, that container could be with something more useful than a phone cases what nobody would buy. And yes, this is not only about phone, smartphone and computer accessories. There is a lot of shit what is made and ends up in the garbage pile. Clothes, kitchen and other consumer appliances, plastic shit for everything, Christmas decorations, automobile parts... the list is long.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > Why do you focus attention only on the phone accessories? If you recall, they were the majority of your examples. I'm not saying what you're saying isn't true. Maybe all phones are futile, by some definition. Maybe pollution generated by your comment was futile. It's just an unfalsifiable claim.
fwip 3y ago
Broadly speaking, sure. But I can't name any crisis that was solved by people individually deciding to purchase less of a bad thing. US slavery wasn't ended by people boycotting goods produced with slave labor. We didn't go to the moon by holding a fundraiser. The ozone hole was repaired by banning the harmful chemicals, not by consumers deciding to pay more for refrigerators that didn't use CFCs. Asking consumers to research every product they buy for its "carbon footprint" (including the whole supply chain and transportation) and modify their purchasing decisions accordingly is doomed to be ineffective. Some people will be very passionate about it and make a big change. More people will avoid some terrible offenders. And most people will make only small changes that don't inconvenience them much, because they already have 90 other things to worry about in their life. (And now that it's been politicized, you get people "rolling coal" and purposefully creating extra emissions to... stick it to the libs, I guess.)