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Comment by throwaway9475 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the mentality expressed in the article, where environmentalism is only observed for tiny pieces of waste that don't matter. These same people (like you mentioned) fly dozens of people on airplanes, which is so much worse. Or they have kids or don't update their home's insulation or drive a gas-guzzler. At the end of the day, there's only so much you as an individual can do (and certainly the CEO of ExxonMobil is way more complicit in climate change than Jane Doe walking down the street), but as far as carbon footprint is concerned, paper invites (which are biodegradable) are barely a blip on the radar.

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The same kinds of people who admonish you for taking an elevator because it's bad for the environment, even when your legs are sore from cycling to work.

I guess it's a kind of armchair environmentalism: it's easy to "go green" by switching to canvas bags (which _does_ help, a little), but then not make large, more sacrificial changes that would _actually_ benefit the environment. I don't know. It's tough, though, because to a large extent we're forced into lifestyles that are bad for the environment. You can't just decide to stop using the electricity produced by the coal power plant in your city, for example.

This -- a lot of the environmentalist movement is more about signaling that you care about the environment (turn the lights off, use one sheet of toilet paper) than actually investing the time or energy into figuring out the most cost-effective changes to make (stop flying as much).

This is true about almost all human groups/movements though, and I'm not sure that environmentalists are more guilty than average.

I have a smaller carbon footprint than most, I guess, though usually for selfish reasons. I ride a bicycle because I don't want to spend money on a car - either purchasing or maintaining one. For me it's a luxury item that can wait. Plus it's a time saver to do some cardio and get to work at the same time. Similarly I'm interested in these hippy "sustainable" house building techniques mainly because they're cheap and I want to avoid a mortgage.

But people who drive to work everyday still try and lecture me over nothings like putting a laptop on standby overnight.

Similarly, I drive an old SUV to work that gets terrible gas mileage because the environmental impact of prematurely switching to a new car is so much worse when I take my commute length into account.

I live within 8 miles of the office and subsequently put about 4,000 miles on my vehicle annually. I consume less fuel than 90% of the people in the office with new 'environmentally friendly' cars who live 40 miles away, yet it is I who receives the rash of shit. /rant

Penny wise and pound foolish...

Micro-optimizations are often easier to wrap our heads around, so we tend to want to focus on them. They're also often situations where you can get a clear win rather than a much more imperfect improvement. In development, it's sometimes called bikeshedding. You see it often in financial planning where people would rather cut out their morning latte than focus on investing better.

This behavior makes little sense, but it does appear to be a fundamental human tendency and those who are better able to maintain perspective definitely have a huge advantage in life.

I'm going to take the more pessimistic view. It has little to do with what you can wrap your mind around and is much more correlated with the inconvenience of fixing it.

Dropping paper invitations has very little real inconvenience factor, so people do it and tout their environmentalism to receive their karma from their friends that care about that type of signaling.

When it comes to making a real sacrifice (e.g. not inviting people who would fly to the wedding), you will find very few people willing to do that.

It's the reason the prius is so incredibly popular compared to fully electric cars. It comes with the environmentalism bragging rights while still burning plenty of fuel so there is no change in lifestyle. Toyota was even nice enough to build it in a weird shape so people can easily see how forward thinking and smart you are.

Ah, the Prius is popular because it has a 15 year head start on electric cars.

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