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Comment by pdimitar | Hacker News Reader

This article's quality is higher than many others on the same topic and that's a pleasant surprise.

That being said, I can't help being reminded about German language lessons I had ~10 years ago where the teacher was preaching that we must all ditch electric kettles for the sake of the planet. I asked her how is this going to help -- even if 100_00 people do it today -- if corporations are happy to let toxic waste seep into the ocean and lobby to never close coal plants. And we're talking thousands of tons a day. She wasn't pleased that I attacked her agenda.

So alright, I know we all can do better, individuals included. That's unequivocally true.

But let's not ignore the fact that the biggest fault lies in organizations that are happy to pay people to whisper stuff in the ears of the people with power.

Climate change is real and the more we delay the solution, the more urgent and extreme the measures to swing it around will become. And that means to start breaking the warm and cozy positions that many corporations are in -- and enjoy the lack of supervision of.

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As the article mentions, individuals can do something about corporate pollution:

- Buy less stuff. Corporations produce waste because we buy their stuff. Get the stuff you still buy from more environmentally-friendly companies, if possible.

- Political action. Corporations need to be regulated and that can only happen through political action. Lobbies may have a lot of power, but in the end, it's the citizens who vote.

> Buy less stuff.

This is becoming harder and harder with time. Believe me, I would love to buy my kitchen stove, washing machine, refrigerator, aspirator, air conditioner and vacuum cleaner from a local manufacturer. But there are none. How many household brands do really exist and how many are actually known and bought by almost everyone?

Additionally, even if you are an idealist who wants to be the change they want to see, you will still need a bunch of tech gadgets to connect with the world and try to change it -- like a good smartphone and laptop that don't suck. Not every $100 piece of trash will do the job. And the cheaper tech might have actually had much more negative impact on the planet's CO2 footprint.

It's very complex and thus no black-and-white solutions exist.

Some corps like Apple and Samsung seem hellbent on testing the customers' patience with higher prices every year and it will definitely bite them back at one point. That much is true.

> Political action.

Never in my life, not once, have I seen citizens voting actually change anything of significance in a country. Have you? And we're talking less than 10 years here. "These things take time" seems pretty shallow and empty as a justification for things not happening.

Political action is much more than just voting and it's been the major source of social changes in the last 200 years.

Not where I live, but I am aware that's not representative for the entire world.

I am happy for the places where it works. Not sarcastic.

Uh, you live in a place without weekends, women's voting rights or laws against child labour?

I live in Eastern Europe, where drastic social changes only happen if the politicians see a crowd with pitchworks and torches at the town hall. Literally.

People around here are just realists because no significant changes ever comes before people get that fed up. Civil discourse and constructive discussion has so far netted us nothing but dossiers and people landing on dissident lists. This happens to this day.

No need to be snarky.

> pitchforks at the town hall

Hey, do you live in Prague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague ? Don't let the czech mentality get to you, people there complain just for fun.

Bulgaria. :)

It's easy to write us off Eastern Europeans as "complaining just for fun" though. Many do but when you get to the bottom of it, real change happens extremely rare. And that's a valid argument and a historical background to have.

But regular-complainers and realistic-no-BS-folk often get conflated by external observers -- to my despair.

Yes, everyone seems to forget how those social changes were brought about: large unionised workforces that threatened strikes that would topple the economy, or mass protests and civil disobedience on similarly threatening scales. Of course, it's much nicer for those in power to have us believe that voting is all you need.

If you are really dedicated you can buy used equipment that will substantially lower the impact of production of new goods. Older appliances might break more and require more maintenance but are repairable for the most part. Additionally you can get pretty good deals on last years tech that is still pretty cool.

Oh I agree but the last year's tech is also from the big brands, no? While the CO2-reductions / reduce-corporations-influence argument usually tells you to buy locally sourced stuff.

I'd very much like to but there really are no such local vendors. :(

>Never in my life, not once, have I seen citizens voting actually change anything of significance in a country

Do you mean in the US?

Examples that spring to mind in other countries are: gay marriage equality (Australia), independence (East Timor, plus probably others... Scotland and New Caledonia rejected independence by plebiscite), conscription (Austria), abortion (Ireland), migrant intake (Hungary) etc... and of course Brexit.

I am from Eastern Europe. Here nothing ever changes politically-wise. The politicians expend a lot of PR effort to make things look like they are changing but they don't and it's pretty visible even for the not very well educated population.

Believe me, I would love to buy my kitchen stove, washing machine, refrigerator, aspirator, air conditioner and vacuum cleaner from a local manufacturer.

I gave up my car more than a decade ago. I haven't owned a vacuum cleaner in years. I live in a cheap rental with a wood floor. We strictly enforce taking shoes off just inside the front door to prevent dirt from being tracked in so we don't have to clean as much.

I currently live in a hundred year old building that doesn't have air conditioning. I'm interested in buying a home. Once I get a home, I will likely do what I can to use passive solar approaches to keeping the place comfortable with a minimum of electricity year round.

Passive solar design relies heavily on things like insulation and thermal mass. It tends to produce higher comfort levels than forced air heat while being cheaper in the long run.

Unfortunately, passive solar works best when it is incorporated at the design stage of a building. There are limits to how much you can retrofit a building with it.

I don't assume that the culture we have currently is the one we will have in the future. I have spent some years working to design the kind of life I want rather than just accepting that the way my life was is all that will ever be.

I own a lot less than I used to. I have a higher quality of life. For one thing, my life is no longer being consumed by cleaning and maintaining a giant pile of possessions, so I have more time for having a life.

Intended as food for thought.

Best.

More power to you.

I do part of these things already but (1) it's a gradual process, (2) I have a ton of other issues to deal with first so I cannot religiously purse lesser CO2 footprint (like personal health; it takes precedence over other venues), and (3) I am asked to trust other organizations -- f.ex. that throwing away stuff in certain trash cans helps the planet (which I don't mind at all; surely it makes some difference).

I agree that owning less things equals more peace of mind. But I am not quite there yet, I am still in a very active and hectic phase of my life where I am gradually correcting a ton of past mistakes. I do aim to have less in time. I came to feel the increased stress from more possessions.

What I am saying is -- thanks for the insight. I am on the same road but not quite so far ahead as yourself.

Oh, no problem. It's a favorite topic.

I'm on this path because of health issues, not specifically looking to shrink my footprint. That's more like a dude effect.

Most rentals in the US have wall to wall carpeting, which I loathe. I'm so thrilled to be in a rental with a wood floor. That's tough to find in America, especially on a tight budget.

When I gave up having a vacuum cleaner, we were in an apartment with wall to wall carpeting. It's horrifying stuff and we felt better with giving up the vacuum cleaner and finding other methods to try to keep the place tolerably clean. I've since seen articles that indicate studies show that vacuuming actually spreads germs. It may pick up visible dirt, but it makes germ control worse. That's a bigger issue for us than visible dirt. We concluded vacuuming was a health hazard years before I saw articles about such studies.

So, what I'm saying is my current situation is basically a dream come true after years and years of wanting something like this. It took a long time and a lot of little choices along the way and a lot of awkward stages where we decided "We are simply not doing X anymore. Period. Because X just doesn't work." before we had any idea what we would do instead. And then we would scramble and come up with imperfect and frustrating alternatives and muddle through.

But it did get gradually better.

Tossing that out there in hopes that it helps you with the path forward. The road ahead may not look like a road at all. You may not see it until you look back on it.

Best.

The first point speaks to the "reduce" in the phrase "reduce, reuse, recycle". It's not so important where your washing machine was made, more important how you make use of it - e.g., do you run it at 40 degrees or 30? Etc. Other examples are using dryers when you could just hang things out to dry.

> This is becoming harder and harder with time. Believe me, I would love to buy my kitchen stove, washing machine, refrigerator, aspirator, air conditioner and vacuum cleaner from a local manufacturer. But there are none. How many household brands do really exist and how many are actually known and bought by almost everyone?

Buy used, it's totally worth it!

> Never in my life, not once, have I seen citizens voting actually change anything of significance in a country. Have you? And we're talking less than 10 years here. "These things take time" seems pretty shallow and empty as a justification for things not happening.

Start local. National politics is a distraction anyway; it's your city and state politics that matter. Our town, through a popular measure, banned fracking in the city limits. We got sued and the ban was struck down by the supreme court, but now we pay oil companies to stay out of the city limits. It's money the town spends because its citizens want to stay healthy.

Now there's a statewide proposal on the ballot today that does a similar thing (https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_Proposition_112,_Minimum_Di...). Our town contributed to this proposition. Political action at a local level works.

"Start local" is... actually a very solid and sensible advice. I've heard no small amount of people saying that they did make a difference in their city -- which indeed gives me hope.

Thank you.

Individuals have huge power over pollution in general and corporate pollution in particular.

Individuals are in the end the drivers of corporate actions because they are the consumers.

It's not necessarily about buying less stuff but about changing your daily actions and about buying only products you consider environmentally friendly.

Corporations will produce what sells. We decide what sells through our individual choices and actions.

Edit:

We can also make it quite plain to corporations: For example, why not ask coffee shops/takeaways how they plan to pack our order before we actually order then walk away if we don't like the answer? If many people start to do that I'm sure things will change fast.

Stop travelling to work.

I work remotely for almost 8 years now. ;)

> Have no illusions. To achieve our goal of getting off fossil fuels, these reductions in demand and increases in supply must be big. Don’t be distracted by the myth that “every little helps.” If everyone does a little, we’ll achieve only a little. We must do a lot. What’s required are big changes in demand and in supply.

David MacKay

https://www.withouthotair.com/c19/page_114.shtml

Awesome read, thank you.

There's a fallacy with this type of thinking. It's something to the effect that "the big bad wolf is causing the trouble, therefore, I'm powerless to do anything" The reason corporations do what they do is because they are providing a service to millions of customers at the lowest cost and the highest profits for them. We, consumers, like to shift all the blame to someone else, it lets us continue as we have without guilt. We need to feel we are powerless so we don't feel bad about not doing anything about the problem. The fix can come from the producers or the consumers or both. Saying that consumers are powerless just continues the inaction until the fix is forced onto all of us by nature.

Reducing power consumption and reducing the number of items we buy and eventually throw away is a start. Pushing politicians to make the hard choices is also part of the fix. But saying someone else has all the power, therefore, I can't do anything or I saying I can only do a little therefore I won't bother is not.

I, and many others, can definitely do a lot -- but other people have done the math and concluded that we don't amount for anything but a blip in statistics. There is a link in this thread giving the same perspective as well.

I'd like the world to start attacking the source of issues top-to-bottom and not bottom-to-top.

Can the citizens help? Absolutely. Will they amount for much unless corporations start taking action? No.

A very effective way to make corporations take action is citizens making them to.

Are you willing to?

Very broad and vague question.

I'm not throwing away my PC, or MacBook, or iPhone, or iPad, or 35" 144Hz display that consumes 200W. I actually need them and they actually help me live a better life.

But sure, I do use less napkins compared to 5 years ago. And I don't have a car (which is insane to have when you live in the center of a city anyway).

You'll have to clarify what do you have in mind with your question though.

Corporations cannot change anything on their own if they operate in capitalistic economy. They are doing exactly what's expected of them to maximize the profit.

If you change your lifestyle significantly, you are not just a blip in statistics. Your actions rub off on other people, your vote supports the right people, and with enough time you help the right mindset to prevail.

Besides, presuming you are not climate change skeptic, what other rational choice do you have?

The only truly effective thing I do is to hold on to tech for as long as it's viable -- to send the message that I'm not okay with planned obsolescence.

But no, I'm not gonna go out of my way to religiously pursue smaller CO2 footprint at all costs. I try to make small differences but anything that severely inconveniences me is a no-no and always will be.

At least I'm not pretending for the sake of feeling good about myself.

> We, consumers, like to shift all the blame to someone else,

An analogue: committing a crime is punishable, inciting it in some cases may be. It is the companies who dig up fossil fuels and use them --- "consumers told me to do it" is not an excuse that absolves from responsibility. Those trading in fossil fuels do what they do on their own accord, for financial gain, and hence carry the responsibility.

As long as all the world requires increasingly more energy, there will be political support and policies which allow the extraction of fossil fuels. This is the situation we have now. The companies digging up fossil fuel would go out of business if there was no demand for fossil fuels.

The problem is that the change in behaviour that this demands is great: ever thought about selling your car? or paying twice as much for a new electric car?

Go further: ever thought about turning off your computers and not carrying a smartphone that requires charging every day? The internet and related hardware consume an ever-increasing percentage of total electrical output. We could just turn it all off if we were serious about climate change. Nothing really bad would happen. Seriously.

In the UK, to fully charge an iPhone twice a day for a year takes £0.70 of electricity annually; the average 3- or 4-bedroom home uses £500+ of electricity a year.

Anyone who has told you smartphones are a significant consumer of power doesn't know what they're talking about.

Sure, but how many servers are running to ensure that Big Tech can maintain 24/7 surveillance through those phones?

I share your frustration with people who claim it's out own responsibility to change our habits and come up with things like limiting your showers and turning off the lights when you leave the room, but flying less or not owning a car (if realistic in the country you live in) is a completely different ball game and can actually make an huge impact of enough people do it. Of course it's also up to governments to make these couches financially attractive by for example cutting tax breaks for aviation fuel (https://www.aef.org.uk/issues/economics/taxation/).

Off-topic but what's wrong with electrical kettles? was her position to not boil water or to use a different kind of kettle? My Kitchen has electric range so I doubt using a non-electric kettle on it would be any more efficient.

The main argument against them was along the veins of that it draws big amounts of wattage in an initial burst and that we must use "slower" and thus allegedly more sustainable tech.

Which is ridiculuous because every electrician will tell you that your home-grade fuses and the switchboard of your house/block handle such loads quite well without much additional strain on... anything, really.

I quickly wrote her off as a virtue signaller back then.

yeah it sounds like "I sorta once half-heard some thing or another so it must mean electric kettles are forever bad".

For better or worse this is standard practice for how most people get their beliefs about pretty much everything. Some people are more discerning in who they believe and others more skeptical but a lot of people will just add random fact to their knowledge base because they heard it from someone they know.

Well, you could make a point that if everyone has powerful appliances at home then the network has to be robust enough to handle quick changes in power needed. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

So, in a sense, boiling water with gas has less externalities.

EDIT: You can of course also argue, if we can't have powerful appliances why bother with electricity at all. I'm just saying it's not an issue that can be so easily dismissed

The problem with the "TV pickup" is the synchronicity of the use, not the power of the device. Kettles used throughout the day won't have that problem.

The TV pickup problem, while valid, unjustly shifts the blame.

The regular citizens have put the work to buy the TV device, and continue to put the work daily so they can pay the power and cable bills.

What else would you have them do? They work hard and maybe the TV is their way to unwind. Why, again, is the citizens' fault for putting the work needed to buy their entertainment device and then making them feel guilty for using it?

I pay electrical bills. In my eyes I do my part of the bargain, the rest is their problem -- that's what we pay for, to get a stable service while they sort out the details. A fair business transaction.

> I pay electrical bills... they sort out the details

Then why are you even commenting in a thread about what can you do about climate change? Let someone else figure it all out and send you a bill!

We all already do that, don't you think?

I am talking about most eco tech articles that I've seen -- they are a blatant PR propaganda and rarely informative.

Well, electric kettles are sort of a problem for british energy system which had someone watching BBC 1 and 2 for a decade (IIRC) in the evenings so they could handle peaks in a national grid at the very first minute of pauses between shows.

As I mentioned in another sibling comment here -- that's not my problem. I pay my bills and the rest is for them to figure out. I work, I buy my tech fairly, I don't see what else I could do.

I am not a law regulator, I am not a technician, I am not an environmentalist. I buy tech because it helps me save time and effort in my busy day. It's the corps and the governments responsibility to make sure the tech is eco-friendly, not mine.

I wasn't saying that electric kettles are making any noticeble impact on environment (imo), just that they could be a problem in certain circumstances.

> It's the corps and the governments responsibility to make sure

* that my car doesn't do 70mph in 20mph school zones * that my gun doesn't go off when I'm pointing it at someone innocent etc.

> I buy my tech fairly, I don't see what else I could do.

Have some personal responsibility and seek out eco-friendly tech to buy.

> that my car doesn't do 70mph in 20mph school zones * that my gun doesn't go off when I'm pointing it at someone innocent etc.*

Why such a huge strawman?

> Have some personal responsibility and seek out eco-friendly tech to buy.

I do have personal responsibility. I work, I don't dodge taxes, I buy stuff with my own money. I try and research but most of what we hit on the internet are PR pieces. But I won't research for 1 month something that I might need tomorrow.

It is strain on the grid they are worried about I think.

I know what are they worried about. But us the citizens keep our end of the bargain: we pay the bills. I am not limiting my usage of a very convenient tech like an electric kettle because they want us to pay AND to think about not straining the tech they have with the money we paid.

I mean seriously, how far will the guilt-tripping of citizens go? When will it stop?

There's nothing wrong with electric kettles, in fact they're probably the most energy-efficient way of boiling water.

I've taken to boiling the required amount of water in the kettle when I boil rice or anything similar. It's much faster, too.

It's also a good idea to boil a full kettle once in a while, and pour the remaining boiling water you don't need down the drain. It helps break up fat deposits and kills bacteria that cause bad-smelling drains, and the environmental impact is much less than using drain cleaner. And for the love of your drains, don't pour grease in there!

I'd argue the idea of doing something is a strong one. If people become engaged, if they start thinking about the environment on a daily basis then that is already progress in itself. If that means starting with a kettle sure that's probably not an improvement in itself but I'd say the thought counts.

People who take/propose such small steps might later start thinking about other means to improve their footprint on the planet that have a bigger impact. They might start to identify themselves as people who care about the environment. They might start spreading the idea to other people. And one day maybe they will say hey I ditched an electric kettle and made a compromise and what did you do, what are the big corps doing?

So I hope you engaged the teacher in a positive tone and proposed how we can all have an even bigger impact.

Or to many people, they may feel that their everyday 'sacrifices' are enough.

"i switch off all the bulbs and recycle all my bags. i should be able to buy that nice SUV i want"

Which effect, identifying with environmentalism or i-do-enough-ism, is stronger takes research to find out.

Ugh, I once read a booklet that had the same premise of the article. One of the suggested solutions: use less soap when doing the dishes, to preserve packaging.

As I mention in a different comment, individual action is important. However, there is a large difference in effectiveness, and promoting obviously ineffective ones isn't going to convince people to do the ones that are likely to be effective.

The cynic in me thinks such articles are commissioned by the lobby groups so as to shift the blame. But I can't prove it so I will not claim it.

But you have to wonder.

There's been countless examples of research papers on various topics being sponsored and cherry-picked by companies to manipulate public opinion.

Your theory seems extremely likely.

This particular instance was too amateurish and small-scale for that to be the case. But of course, the author might have been influenced by those lobby groups indirectly.

> individual action is important.

This is critically important, but the mindset of the population need to change for it to be effective. If everyone have the same mindset, things will start to change.

Imagine doing a simple thing like reducing your shower time by 25% or reduce your TV watching time by 25%. With enough people doing it, its impact will be significant.

I think that's the primary reason why individual action is important: because it achieves the mindset change. Or at least, is a prime motivator in changing other people's mindsets.

Individual action can have an effect, but those are bad suggestions that will have negligible effect unless adopted almost universally.

Things like driving less, flying less, eating less meat and buying/throwing away less stuff are things where individual actions can actually make a difference.

Watching less TV doesn't accomplish anything other making you feel like you are taking action. If you want to make a small change that will actually accomplish something, try taking public transportation or biking to work one day a week or eating vegetarian one day a week.

It's always a good idea to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Do you need to use that much soap? Do you need to keep the lights on everywhere? Do you need to use a tumble-dryer or could you let your clothes air dry instead? Do you need that shiny new phone or is your current one good for another couple of years?

Yes, all of these are absolutely small things individually, but put together and done by many people, it does make a difference.

A big thing you can do individually is to Buy Less Stuff. Be happy with the TV you have, don't change your wardrobe just because of fickle changing fashion nonsense, don't replace stuff that works just fine. Break the cycle of consumerism. Don't support the polluting corporations.

The very biggest thing you can do is to be politically active. Vote for pro-environment politicians and parties, be part of political initiatives.

As a broader principle: sure, Do The Little Things, if only to create an environment that shows people that climate change is considered important by many people.

That's not what this advice was, though; the advice was specifically to use less soap when doing the dishes.

Individual actions are definitely a start, but yeah it sounds like almost nothing compared to corporations (or even governments, responsible for so many unnecessary plane travels).

Is there some data on the actual scale of individual vs corporate pollution / climate-changing faults? Hard to measure, I guess.

these little actions count; changing consumption patterns creates a signal to the market and to politics. a community of practice concerned about the environment, once set in motion, makes it easier to estimate the political gains of passing new laws, like stricter waste disposal standards.

A dedicated minority that genuinely cares about an issues can shift the agenda, even when the majority is largely undecided. When I invite 3 vegans and 7 omnivores to a party, food will be vegan (similar point by N N Taleb). I hope this works out just as well with political parties..

I always find the below statement interesting because it is 2,000 years old. But it shows that even 2,000 years ago, the tendency of the human species to destroy the planet was already clear:

"But the nations became wrathful, and your own wrath came, and the appointed time came...to bring to ruin those ruining the earth." -- Revelation 11:18

It's interesting that the human tendency to "ruin the earth" is still a problem 2,000 years later.

Given that scientists are now saying we're close to the point of no return on climate change, I don't have much confidence humans are going to turn this around...

If this problem was listed in a 2,000 year old book, and we're still "ruining the earth" in 2018, I'm not convinced humans as a species are going to have a sudden change of heart in the next 10 years...

Just saying..

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