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Comment by logjammin | Hacker News Reader

I'm in my thirties. I don't have kids, but want them. I don't want to admit to them that I did nothing about global warming when it counted. The thing is that I don't know what I should do; it seems so big, so intractable.

Articles like these stir me to action, but what action? Where's the mass movement on this? Where's the group, the party, the leadership?

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Ignore the doom-and-gloom headlines. Climate change is still a solvable problem. We have all the tools we need.

1. Learn about the best ways to get carbon out of the atmosphere [0]

2. Help build the political will for carbon pricing, ideally via Fee & Dividend. The vast majority of economists agree that once GHG pollution costs are internalized, the problem will solve itself quickly. The most effective organization in this regard is Citizens' Climate Lobby [1] – I highly recommend getting in touch with a local chapter. We all tend to be much more cynical about politics than is warranted; I was surprised how rewarding it feels to participate in the political sausage-making.

3. (Optional) Learn about/work on/invest in future carbon removal technologies [2]

[0] Rank list of the Top 100 carbon removal strategies: https://www.drawdown.org

[1] Citizens' Climate Lobby: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/

[2] http://carbon.ycombinator.com/

I also found this one extremely interesting:

What can a technologist do about climate change? By Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/

The mass movement is getting there.

I just came home from a rally for a more climate friendly state budget in my home country of Norway. I'm energized and glad to find that there are many like-minded people in the world. I think I'll be volunteering for an environmental organization soon; turning my thoughts into action today felt good. I've been worried and waiting for change to happen. And now I've finally found somewhere to place my energy.

Extinction Rebellion seems the best chance of a movement that may actually achieve something. If they get critical mass. Early signs are promising (They only started this year).

UK: https://rebellion.earth/

Globally: https://xrebellion.org/

I think many people signal that they are against global warming, but very few are ready to give up any thing. Many people I know just think not using polyethylene is the only required thing(which emits less CO2 than reusable bag, even counting reusing), or at most using bicycles for intracity travel. I think here is few of the (hard)things you can do which actually does effect according to my research:

- Don't travel on planes(And definitely don't be like Leonardo Dicaprio using private planes after giving speech on climate change)

- Don't eat beef/pork

- Don't use AC or use it minimally

- Same with hot water

- Don't have lawn in your house

IIRC something like 70%-80% of CO2 emissions are industrial, not personal. By all means do whatever you can, but the idea that global warming is all about our individual habits is essentially a smokescreen. If we want to fix this, the most important thing is to force corporations and governments to take action.

Source?

Edit: One reason I doubt this is, China emits half of US per capita emissions while manufacturing more(steel, concrete, most high volume products) per capita.

this is a false dichotomy people use as an excuse to do nothing.

individual action and forcing corporations and governments to change are not in opposition, they are a feedback loop.

You can't do anything individually, other than vote for people who represent your point of view. The sorts of things that would make a difference, such as international agreements on CO2, can only be enacted by governments.

You can drive an EV, or stop eating beef, or pay the renewable-energy rate on your electric bill, and feel good about it if you want, but it won't make a bit of difference on a global scale.

Reading thru replies. Thanks for taking the time. I hasten to add that what I meant is more "what can I do with other people, perhaps collectively?"

The focus on our individual behavior is all well and good as far as it goes, but I agree with a commenter below that it can't be the only thing each of us does. I don't own a car, I live in an apartment building, I eat very little red meat, etc. But the hour is getting late, clearly, and it can't just be "let's make sure everyone recycles". Power is real: a small number of people in this world wield vast amounts of it, and they're dead-set on staying the course. My not eating beef will not make a dent in those peoples' behavior, so it's times like these when our/my American focus on "what we can do as individuals" feels maddeningly myopic. I want something more. I guess the good news is a lot of you feel the same way, maybe?

The most powerful thing you could probably do is vote for politicians who have made it a goal to fight climate change.

First of all, since this is a community in which many fancy themselves engineers, ground yourself in the numbers. The main ones being:

- number of gigatons emitted to date

- rate of ongoing emissions

- change in the rate of ongoing emissions

- what total emissions numbers correspond to what PPM in the atmosphere

- what ppm in the atmosphere correspond to what degrees of C warming (in various timeframes)

here is a nice infographic from the latest ipcc report that shows some of them: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2018/10/SPM1... pay particularly close attention to the one in the bottom left.

- what degrees C warming correspond to drought, desertification and crop failures in what areas/river-valleys (note: sea level rise won't actually be a problem until after the famines, focus on the famines)

Once you get a feel for the numbers the "what to do" becomes a fairly obvious "everything/panic/get-super-duper-radical". But I can't elaborate on that more here because it ranges from "borderline communist levels of leftism" to "out and out eco-sabotage".

DO NOT fall for the false framing that a rump dumbass 20-30% of the population doesn't "believe" in global warming. That is smug nonsense that people use to justify a false-framing of some kind of stalemate. No society ever convinced everybody of the way forward. The real problem is the litany of excuses and magical thinking that the so called "believers" will come up with to do nothing. Such as:

- there's nothing we can do, give up, its too late

- magically innovative technology will save us just hold your breath till it comes along

- teh markat will provide! if we can just do this spreadsheet game with tax credits or something

- i can't do that thing i should do because even though I'm one of the richest humans on earth and that ever lived I've cast myself as a victim of the current economic order and cannot afford to do anything.

Now, all that said as context, here are the top 5 things, IN ORDER (assuming you're a middle class american), you can do to curtail your and your families carbon footprint:

1.) have a negative-population-growth number of children. that means somewhere in the <2.1 range (stupid joke about cutting parts of babies goes here).

2.) do not use a car on a daily basis. ideally don't even own one. if you must own one make it electric.

3.) live in a 5+ unit building. this cuts your heating/cooling/lighting footprint roughly in half, and ties into the car thing above (mid rise apts correlate strongly to walkable areas). no amount of solar panels and electric cars will make suburban-sprawl a sustainable land use or energy consumption model in your or your childs lifetime. this is the absolute hardest part for americans to swallow, they will pitch a temper tantrum fit and write off the messenger rather than grasp this one.

4.) fly (round trip) less than once a year

5.) don't eat red meat, or at least cows. even if you're not ready to give it up, you could deliberately replace red meat meals with chicken fish or vegitable alternatives more often.

However, I want to stress that viewing things through the lens of individualized personal consumption levels is a TERRIBLE focus. This is the the most universal problem humanity has ever faced. You want to do the 5 things above not because it will cut your footprint 10 - 20 tons per year (~50 - 80%, which it will), but because you will be contributing to building a society in which everyones footprint is cut. You want to normalize apartment dwelling, walking, public transit, avoiding unecessary flights, and avoiding red meat. That is how you contribute to building a sustainable future society. You need to walk the walk not for a few tons, but to show your children and neighbors the way forward.

I appreciate your clarity and honesty! The level of change required to completely stop CO2 emissions, reverse the process, and return the atmosphere to pre-industrial levels is enormous, and will require many sacrifices. It is not clear how many people are willing to commit to these radical goals and to the path leading there.

Two thoughts related to your "what to do" paragraph:

- I vaguely recall a Fredric Brown (?) story where people turn to (conceptually, self-defense) violence against cars because they've reached the insight that the fumes are literally killing them, like cigarette smoke.

- Some people (hmmm, "some people I know") have chosen direct action and planned+participated in sabotage of pipelines and railroads (used for coal and oil transport). Several were arrested in multiple states, but the overall outcome was symbolic with limited media coverage; not really what I imagined as effective, direct action. Now, some have spent time in jail, and some are scared because they feel responsible to their young children, and what happens to the kids if their parents spend a long time in jail?

what happens to 10 million bangladeshi children when they go from having two or three rice crops a year to one or two?

Harsh but maybe fair. I readily admit that I don't have the heart to say that to my friends who have young kids. Do you say this in person?

I'm starting to wonder if telling people what they can personally change in their lives is actually counterproductive. The gains to be had there are not that great.

Sure it's good to minimize energy use as you outline. But where does it leave you in terms of tonnes of CO2/year?

AFAIK the Paris accord goals (inadequate as they are) imply a target of around 1500 kg of CO2 per capita yearly. Homeless people achieve that in the west. You won't get near those levels, hower much you try to reduce your personal consumption.

We're not going to individual-responsibility our way out of this, and I wonder if getting people to try will just give them a false sense of accomplishment.

you're not wrong but careful not to fall into the internet's favorite form of broken depressive reasoning: splitting

the way you get mass action is by getting a mass of individuals to act. there is technically no other way. thats why I left the 'individual' stuff to the very end and made sure to explain how its not really about your footprint as much as its pulling your oar in the overall solution.

I think recycling is also a misleading and false virtue, at least for most people I've encountered in the US. I've watched the thought-process: I'm recycling pizza boxes and tens of Amazon boxes every week, therefore I'm doing my part, therefore the environment will do well, and I don't need to do anything else or more.

If global warming activists have few or no children, doesn't that mean only global warming apathetics will remain?

Since you mention it, the best thing you can do for future generations is not have kids. The evidence is crystal clear in that regard.

But then how do you tell your kids what you did to combat climate change, since that was the question?

It is possible to live net carbon negative. Or at least close to carbon neutral. https://www.ecowatch.com/this-country-isnt-just-carbon-neutr...

... in Bhutan.

Don't be so cynical, any kid could be the next great innovator of progress, re-mediation, solution. And you don't know what the "average" kid of this generation will achieve.

If you own stocks in companies or funds, you can take action as a shareowner.

I recently built a site to empower you to take action to Ask them to improve.

See here: https://www.yourstake.org/ask/vanguard-vanguard-tell-compani...

That's my main question. There are many many people. But no larger scale influence so far. In Europe there's the shift project, and shifters (associations related to that project) who tries hard to review regulations and educate people on weekends.

Buy emissions credits today, while they're cheap, and simply don't use them.

You could contribute and earn a living at the same time via capitalism, e.g. start a solar product sales / installation business. From an investment perspective it's a steadily growing industry with widespread unmet demand, rapidly decreasing prices and increasing efficiency, but still requires expertise even if the product costs nothing. From an ecological point of view such a business speeds up the displacement of carbon emitting tech. Politically it decentralizes the grid, redirecting political power from the energy industry toward your customers.

And running a business that's a significant part of your income creates an incentive to keep at it religiously and relentlessly. That incentive is weaker without the profit motive, when it's about making an uncertain contribution to other people over decades.

Buy up the cheap land that will become the next water front property.

I'm serious. If businessmen really are taking climate change seriously, we'd see them speak with their pocketbook, as there are numerous ways they can profit by being able to predict future massive global change.

The fact we do not see such a buy up of future water front property means they either don't think the evidence is there, or they are extremely optimistic about our ability to reverse climate change, or extremely pessimistic about the future such that humankind will be wiped out or something.

Don't worry about it too much. I did as much about global warming as I could find to do back when it counted, but I accomplished nothing. The planet is fucked, and there's nothing we can do about it now. The good news is that your kids won't know any better. They'll grow up in the desolate, unhealthy, ruined world we are leaving them, and they are going to love it - it'll be the only world they know, after all, and they'll grow up ready to find the beauty in it, just like kids have always done.

> Where's the group, the party, the leadership?

Humanity's failure to respond to the climate change crisis shows that groups, parties, and leadership are inadequate; we need some new way of organizing ourselves. Perhaps the kids will figure it out.

so you're saying: "why bother trying to fix it. party on and let the next generation fix our problems"???

disgusting.

No that's not what s/he is saying, or anything like it.

When it counted? Each degree the climate changes is worse than the last. The first .5 degree of climate warming was probably actually a good thing but going from 1.0 to 1.5 isn't and 2.0 to 2.5 is much worse than that. We don't know if low lying Pacific islands are doomed and if we'll have to be accepting a bunch of refugees but it's possible we can save them. What we almost certainly still have the power to prevent is tens of millions of people in India from dying in heatwaves where the dew point exceeds survivable temperatures without air conditioning. We don't actually know where runaway positive feedback loops might be.

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