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Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

> And while climate change is accepted to have played a role in the wholesale disintegration of the Larsen A and Larsen B ice shelves, Luckman emphasised that there is no evidence that the calving of the giant iceberg is linked to such processes.

> Twila Moon, a glacier expert at the US National Ice and Snow Data Center agrees but, she said, climate change could have made the situation more likely.

And yet will a single person who reads about yet more evidence that humans are contributing to global warming change his or her behavior significantly to reduce his or her contribution?

Will you, reading these words, actually do something you wouldn't have as a result of learning about this?

Most people will blame someone else, maybe the president or the system, or say solar power is growing or population growth isn't as fast as it used to be or ask what difference does my contribution make...

and then go back to what they would have done otherwise, without meaningful change.

Which is how we got here.

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- I eat mostly vegetarian

- I live in a small apartment block that is very insulted and has a lot of natural light

- don't own a car and use bike / public transport

- work 100% remote

- I compensate CO2 when flying, even when for business

- I try to have a minimal set of possessions, and buy second-hand if possible (and am really aggressive about ad blocking, don't watch commercial TV)

- I got a vasectomy to not have children

- I try to write and engage in social media about it, read the primary literature

- Donate to reforestation / tree planting initiatives

But it's all bullshit isn't it? I doesn't change a damn thing. The fixation on the idea that individual consumer behavior will make a noticeable impact is laughable. The only way to make a difference is by changing the companies and business that pollute in the first place, not the people who buy the stuff. And that means taxing, de-investing, subsidizing alternatives, and for the love-of stop subsidizing fossil fuels. But that's never going to happen.

I mean even putting a stupid sail on cargo ships would cut down pollution more than the CO2 anything you and I could ever do. Or if we hike up the prices of transport considerably (so fruits from bloody Africa don't cost 20 cents in Northern Europe) we can change our entire logistics pipeline.

Never stop working to change the system but reject cynicism and pessimism and honor all those who make even small contributions. Thank you. Thank you for buying a little time. The problem grows exponentially as tundra defrosts and releases methane and it grows in spurts as thresholds are crossed and glaciers calve for example. Keep hoping that the contributions you make and are inspiring others to make will buy enough time for exponentially growing technological advances to arrive. Arrive in time to keep us from crossing some of the really bad thresholds like the Gulf Stream shutting down. Visualize a melting ceiling of an ice cave in Greenland and tell yourself I am stopping this drop.

Unfortunately, you are correct, it's all bullshit. It will take a technology revolution or divine/alien intervention to stop the coming climate apocalypse.

Brings to mind this essay: http://www.derrickjensen.org/2009/07/forget-shorter-showers/

Thank's god that you decided not to reproduce. All the humanity is thankfull.

It's not just that overpopulation is a major problem. It's that I'd rather save them the burden of existence in a world that will be substantially less habitable.

Not quite sure what to make of your comment other than some non-constructive jab at my personality, though. But if you have any thoughts, I would of course like to hear them! We're all just making this up as we go along.

I'm someone who did a few things after reading a research paper attempting to quantify the detrimental effects of climate change.

I no longer own a car, I bike everywhere.

I work remote 100%.

I do not eat beef if I can help it anymore.

I use the train for long distance personal travel. I still fly when it is for my company, though.

I take transit when biking would be too slow.

I signed up for my city's green energy program. I pay more to receive 30% of my energy use from wind farms.

I cancelled Amazon Prime.

I buy items locally as much as possible.

I avoid online shopping if possible.

All of my food comes from local, small producers.

Cutting consumption behavior down has, unsurprisingly, saved me a lot of money and these behaviors are reducing the amount of carbon I emit.

Pretty much the same as me. Although biking is quite natural in the Netherlands and I commute to work by bike like many others here.

The only thing you might need to look out for are the claims for local, small producers.

http://freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of-local...

http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/09/04/how-green-is-local-f...

+ There are economies of scale.

+ There are also people against genetic engineering even if it would reduce pesticides or other pressure on the environment tremendously.

+ Food safety might be more efficiently regulated in a centralized manner.

+ Old-fashioned greenhouses might have large yields and might be properly scaled to reduce costs per produced crop as well as support recycling systems for CO2 and other "waste" products.

In other words, the situation around food seems more complicated than just "buy local".

I have to wonder how much of an effect local producers/sellers has. What is the cross over point for the benefits of economy of scale a large corporation operates at vs the cost/pollution of transporting the goods nationally or internationally?

In contrast,

I drive a car to work, because the summers are already too hot and humid for me to bike with a respiratory condition.

I work in the office 99% of the time because my bosses have a 19th century mentality

I fly at least twice a year to escape my miserable existence somewhere far away

I never take transit because I'm stuck in an endless suburban hell and the nearest bus stop/grocery store is over a mile away

I only shop online because traditional retail has a horrible selection and partly sells the same Chinese shit that Amazon does, just at a higher markup

I eat beef because food is one of the few pleasures I have in life

All of my food comes from supermarkets because it's cheaper.

This explains late summer in european part of Russia this year. Another couple of persons like you will freeze us to death. Can you at least ride a bike more frequently? :)

Apparently bikes are really bad for the environment being slow, low occupancy road vehicles? I think if are taking upon yourself to advise people you should advocate greener forms of transport such as existing public transit links, walking.

A bike consumes much less pavement space then a car, increasing corridor capacity.

No it is the same. They cannot occupy the same space unless there are dedicated lanes. I guess even then it is single occupancy. A bicycle is a single space same as a car with only a driver. I wish I had the link now, sorry.

You don't have the link because it is wrong. More bicycles can pass a given plane in a certain width than cars can over a length of time. As for dedicated lanes we hand over lanes to parking.

It must be my poor English. I've never said that bikes are bad for environment.

No sorry - I didn't mean to imply you had. I read a study on hackernews the other day. Unfortunately I cannot remember teh link as always. Single occupancy vehicles see, much better to have everyone in one clean bus instead - bikes are bad apparently.

I don't know what the numbers are like, but bicycling regularly increasing calorie requirements, which would have an environmental impact.

No idea how this compares to the scale of taking a bus or a solo car, but there is an increased cost. Growing food (often with fertilizers, harvest machinery, etc) in order to bring it to the market for you to consume and convert into motion doesn't seem like it's particularly energy efficient.

I bike a lot, it's better for me physically and mentally, but I do wonder how the carbon impact is affected. (Of course, this ignores the fact that petroleum is a limited supply.)

The main input to agriculture energy consumption is Haber-Bosh process ammonia.

Links to said research paper, if you still have it?

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

fermatslibrary.com gets the credit for introducing me to this paper.

Where I live dudes on bikes do the last mile of a lot of Amazon deliveries.

Blanket generalized condemnations that serve no end but satisfaction of the speaker's own sense of tragic moral certainty are also how we got here

We got here because carbon is mispriced not because of smug dilettantes on internet forums.

And by extension the price system in general, the mode of production we live in prioritising the maximisation of short term profit over care for the environment in future or even presently.

If we had a proper carbon tax you would see a very quick response to improve efficiency.

Your post ironically describes itself better than mine I didn't condemn or bring up morality.

Satisfaction? I'm sad. I wish someone would write something like that they turned off their air conditioner, decided to take public transit instead of driving today, decided to avoid meat for a day, or something like that.

Instead, edgy comments and no personal change, at least not so far.

> I didn't condemn

If you think you didn't condemn, you have a different view of the meaning of that word than I do.

"Most people will blame someone else, ... and then go back to what they would have done otherwise, without meaningful change. ... Which is how we got here."

Assuming the word 'here' refers to our current bad situation, that looks like condemnation to me.

In some ways, I think that condemnation is warranted - in the first world, we do tend lead lives that are not sustainable. The trouble is that that lifestyle is less something we deliberately design and choose and more of an inherited set of expectations. It's how we've been trained to live by our upbringing. It's the rulebook we follow to participate in the society of our friends and peers.

This isn't as much intended to be an excuse as it is an attempt to outline what has to be overcome for people to make a change to live more sustainably. It's not an easy thing, by any means. How many people will 1) see the need and 2) choose to make the personal sacrifices necessary to realize a greater good that may not actually happen? (Tragedy of the commons.)

So.... what seems likely is that people will be compelled into those sacrifices and more by external forces. (Market prices, carbon taxes, rising water, armed conflicts, etc.)

How about instead of writing posts that talk about what others could be doing or presumably aren't you talk about what YOU are doing.

Going around condemning people and complaining is far less inspiring and doesn't lead to change. It just makes you seem judgemental and hollow to the "sins" you commit.

Honey not vinegar.

I find it very odd you post on leadership according to your bio but approach issues like you have here.

The best way a person can do something is to have less than or equal to 1 child. The world can not sustain large numbers of people who live like Americans. It can not sustain large numbers of people who live like rich Europeans. Pollution, garbage, effect of resource extraction are beginning to toxify the planet.

Since globalization billions of people have gotten out of poverty. As this trend continues the strain on the environment similarly increases. Want to genuinely help,the environment? Have fewer kids.

Think of this, the average environmentally conscious consumer still contributes massive amounts of trash and still relies on resources extracted from countries with mild environmental standards.

Is this actually true? A few days ago we found out 100 companies created 71% of the CO2.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14743137

Isn’t it really a matter of developing cleaner transportation and electricity to make us individually generate less CO2? Assuming of course, these companies become more efficient.

Couldn't that just be an consequence of how most people's needs are served by a small number of massive companies?

Think about how much trash you generate. How much plastic ends up in landfills due to your buying habits. This isn't a dig at you. There's really no practical way to avoid it. Now we can say Company A is responsible for making all that plastic wrap so let's get rid of Company A. But the demand still exists and will be filled by some other company or companies.

Let's just look at medicines. Almost every fish in the ocean contains modern pharmaceuticals in its system. Think about that. To me that is staggering. Excess pharmaceuticals have been thrown down the drain in sufficient quantities to have entered the bodies of the world's fish.

Ok, there are going to be 9 billion people by 2050, and I believe the birth rate is already low in the developed world.

We are going to need a better solution.

Child births are way down in the US and have been for quite a while. We have to import (immigrate) to keep population growth in the US.

It's ultimately a problem of our domination of viruses and bacteria. In the past, large families were created to combat child mortality rates. Once we found another way through vaccines, antibiotics and antivirals, the culture of large families took a while to subside. China and India are of course the larges population centers in the the world and both are doing something about it in a fairly humane way.

The majority of our systemic problems are a result of a population misalignment, but the US isn't a contributor to that (and many Western countries) because families in these areas have fewer than 2.0 kids.

For the most part, humanity has done an amazing job of supporting our population. Simply feeding that many people is quite an engineering feat.

Child births are down in rich countries. However, to compensate those rich countries import people and those people end up living like Americans or Europeans. There is also the fact that wealth increasing worldwide and consumption correspondingly is increasing. My statement about having fewer kids was meant to apply to the whole world.

Great, we have enough food. There is more to life than just food. In addition to having enough food we have plenty of pollution too. We are toxifying our environment. This is not abating.

Hah there is no life without food.

>We are toxifying our environment. This is not abating.

I think everyone is well aware of that. Don't you get tired of giving the speech? The US doesn't seem to be doing a damn thing about it, perhaps it's time to try another tactic.

Having a few thousand or a few million fewer kids is not going to make a substantial difference. A far more effective difference would be made by having kids and raising them to care.

Our current mechanisms for combating climate change aren't working well; effective change will probably come from a new solution either technical and social. And solutions come from people who care.

The population of the world needs to decrease substantially. I'm talking by hundreds of millions and even billions. I know lots of first world people who care about the environment. They drive cars, fly in planes, buy iPhones, buy computers, buy large amounts of plastic wrapped food items. But they care!

As poverty declines hundreds of millions of more people join the ranks of super consumers. The environment can't sustain the damage done to satiate the current level of consumption. Fewer people is what is needed.

I ride my bike to work, all weather, year round. I use my bike, or walk, for routine shopping trips. My family has a couple of cars, but they are fairly efficient and we use them sparingly. We combine trips and do other things to limit our car use.

My family turns down the thermostat in the winter, and uses no air conditioning during the summer.

I don't eat beef, and eat relatively little meat in general.

I play alcohol powered musical instruments.

I vote. ;-)

But I think that trying to achieve widespread collective outcomes by encouraging individuals to voluntarily modify their behavior has never worked -- it is how I define "utopian." Society can accomplish things collectively when we have a mechanism for engaging in collective effort such as governments. While I have no illusions that governments will lead us to a perfect society either, I think that if we ever manage to address global warming, it will be through the actions of governments.

> I play alcohol powered musical instruments.

An interesting way of saying "I'm in a rock band with my buddies..."

/jk

Individuals can only slow down climate change, we cannot stop it. To stop climate change's progression we need to completely stop producing green house gases. The sooner the better. No matter how I change my behavior I cannot decrease my impact to zero. The solution needs to happen top down by a massive investment in new energy infrastructure. The best thing we as consumers can do is voting for parties that are in favor of such changes and supporting change for example by paying extra for "green" electricity.

Since almost nobody is voting for Green parties around the world, that's not going to happen. Even most concerned Americans voted for a major party instead last year.

Yes, we're basically fucked when it comes to climate change. I think it's highly unlikely that we'll manage to limit warming to less than four degrees. My only hope is some energy breakthrough that allows us to actively reduce CO2 concentration instead of just stopping its production.

Nuclear fission powered CO2 scrubbers could be built with today's technology. Not to mention getting rid of current CO2 emissions from coal and natural gas electricity production. Unfortunately the Greens have been making that politically impossible for the last 50 years. Tax carbon and reduce acceptable man-made radiation exposure from power generation to something reasonable in the same bill. This would be a compromise position. Even ExxonMobil supports a carbon tax. Let's do it already.

The Sierra Club in California opposes urbanization, transit, and carbon free reliable power. It would be counterproductive to put them in power.

Companies need to change before individuals do. That is harder to do than changing as an individual. Even if executives changed as individuals doesn't guarantee they will be able to change the company by the same way.

From what I understand, it's something like 10% of our infrastructure that contributes 99% of green house gasses.

Even if 90% of people on earth decided to recycle and go vegan and drive an electric car, it wouldn't make any difference as long as that 10% is using un-clean infrastructure (container ships are said to produce the pollution of millions of cars, we still burn coal for most of our energy needs, etc).

1. That's not how supply and demand works. The infrastructure is there to sustain our behavior. If we change our behavior, we'll change the system.

2. We can do other things than what you suggested. We can reduce consumption over mere recycling. We can have fewer children. We can drive less and reduce car ownership beyond just using electric cars. We can shift taxes to carbon from other things.

3. If other things make bigger differences, we can work on them too. Eating less meat is not exclusive with reducing consumption to reduce the number of container ships.

4. If you don't want to do anything, you don't have to. You can give up on making a difference. That's what billions of people are already doing. If you have more important things to do, you should probably do them.

Or we can use regulation and taxes to re-internalize externalities of actions like burning coal for power or shipping items via highly polluting container ships.

Regulation and taxes are a means not an ends. They do not, in and of themselves, fix the problem. They fix the problem by getting people to do the things spodek suggested.

Thats true, but they also do something else which is internalize costs, meaning that people can make better apples to apples comparisons of the true costs of things.

Right now climate change emitting energy is unfairly subsidized because the climate change costs are not accounted for.

Oh totally. I'm just pushing back against the idea that taxes are the solution in and of themselves because sometimes I think people hear that and think "Oh, so I can basically keep doing what I'm doing and just pay a bit more in taxes and things will be fine." when it's really "Massive emissions taxes will make your current lifestyle unaffordable so you will be forced to make significant cuts in your energy consumption."

Right and it will be massive to make a difference. But to me the bigger issue is that the markets are missing a piece of very important information and so are not being very efficient in solving the problem.

If we internalize the costs, it works as a lever to change consumption, but in my view more importantly it makes the markets more able to allocate resources correctly.

Well, when the problem is externalities (carbon emissions are a cost of certain types of energy production, but a cost not paid for by the producer or consumer), the solution is generally to re-internalize the externalities. Taxes are a pretty efficient way to accomplish that.

What alternatives would you propose?

Yes. They just tend to be much more effective than asking billions of individuals to each take actions that without such regulations and taxes would mean additional cost, inconvenience, and mental overhead compared to alternatives.

Your understanding is wrong. For example, 27% of emissions come from transportation and the majority of that comes from personal transportation (cars basically).

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

Well, that 10% exists to serve us consumers. Container ships are big polluters. Maybe if we tried to buy things locally and second hand rather than ordering new stuff from overseas, it might have a minor impact on shipping?

And regarding coal, it's possible to choose a green electricity supplier here in Ireland at least

    > Maybe if we tried to buy things locally

Or just tax items that have shown up by container enough to reflect environmental cost; this is a political issue.

Another thing we can do is to continue to bring attention to projects like this one:

http://www.whiteboardmag.com/propelwind-wingsail-technology-...

I'm probably more in the "use technology to help, while I do what I can" rather than "technology will save us, so carry on" camp.

For global warming, not every "pollution" is the same. Your argument is definitely not for greenhouse gases, but for other kinds of pollutants.

The container shipping is responsible for 3.5% to 4% of all climate change emissions (source https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping... ). All kinds of transportation together produce approximately 14% of all greenhouse gases emissions (source: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... ).

Burning durty fuel produces more than just CO2 which causes acid rain / Smog etc. Those container ships use surprisingly little fuel so their greenhouse gas emissions are fairly low. It's really just nitrogen oxides etc that are an issue.

70% of global carbon emissions are produced by just 100 companies, mostly fossil fuel producers.

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...

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