Hacker News Reader

Comment by writimov | Hacker News Reader

What can the average person do to help the oceans that is easy to understand, everyone can do themselves and the government can sponsor with money?

I'm thinking of something like planting trees: order a free tree (government paid) in the mail, pick a spot and plant it. * https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/pakistan-s-billion-tr... * https://news.globallandscapesforum.org/28687/africas-great-g...

Can we do the equivalent and plant a kelp bed or the equivalent for different ocean conditions? https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animal-guide/plants-and-...

View on HN

So, ship using fuel and packaging derived from trees or a form of carbon only to plant a tree to suck up said carbon? Does that sound right to you?

Educate others. It's easy to understand, but it's not easy to do. But that's the best bang for the buck activity you can do. Persuade those who stand in the way of the Paris Agreement, carbon taxes, and so on.

Stop buying stuff. Eat less meat.

And smoke more cigarettes, so you die sooner, faster people die the less they consume in a lifetime.

When people say “stop buying stuff”, I don’t get it? Should we just let the economy collapse and not have anything of value?

If the “stuff” for example comes from recycled, fairly low emissions techniques of manufacturing combined renewable energy, who care? This is just generalising and it’s not realistic.

Ultimately burning coal for power generation and using oil for transport are the main culprits.

Eating less meat seems sensible, but it’s still not easy either, getting enough protein from a vegetarian diet is challenging for many.

Protein? There's 25g of protein in 100g of raw lentils. Cooking increases water content, but protein is not an issue. Especially for vegetarians that gorge on milk and eggs.

Still, eating less meat would not help at all. Biggest polluters and energy users are industries not related to food.

Individuals are not to blame for their consumption, unless we blame them for adjusting their morals to fit their immoral companies.

I'm personally not a vegetarian, more of a "reduced meat omnivore", and I am a big fan of all kinds of hummus, this weekend I made butterbean mash made with garlic/thyme-infused oil, and muhammara on top: http://iamafoodblog.com/ottolenghis-muhammararoasted-red-pep...

It's inexpensive, easy, filling, healthy and tasty as all get-out.

Along with pan-fried mushrooms and onions mixed with bulgur (also an Ottolenghi recipe), it was extremely satisfying.

It's a major problem that we are now eating the equivalent of the sunday roast every single day. We should go back to making big cuts of meat a rare treat, and make most days meat-free.

I also agree that individual action won't change much by itself, but we should still do it, and work to hold corporations responsible for their environmental conduct.

Which part don't you get? stuff means resources that needs to be mined, purified, transported, processed into some form, assembled into final product. All this employs tons of people but also causes tons of pollution.

> Ultimately burning coal for power generation and using oil for transport are the main culprits.

And all the stuff mentioned requires both. Huge transport ships produce more pollution than all cars of the world combined. But many like to buy 0.99$ gadgets from China, shipping included, right?

> Huge transport ships produce more pollution than all cars of the world combined.

That's not really true. They produce more of one type. (SO2) But certainly not more by volume, or by GHG content.

That said, shipping uses bunker oil, which is a nasty piece of work.

And we should transition to electrified rail based shipping, powered by nuclear and renewables. But Hawaii is out of luck, at least Eurasia can be connected to the Americas sort of easily at the Bering strait.

This comment sums up my sentiment well, we do a lot of destructive things by choice. We could just work smarter.

RE protein. We need far less than we're led to believe. Unless you're an elite athlete then you probably don't need to worry.

I'm no elite athlete but I've been vegan 3 years. In those 3 years I've completed 2 Ironmans with no meat/eggs/dairy, no protein supplementation and no issues whatsoever.

Don't have children. That will make a far bigger difference.

I don't think so; many western countries already have declining populations, but the birth rates in poor countries are still high. The world population will therefore keep growing until those countries have, idk, peace, stability, basic wealth, retirement options.

I hear this logic quite often, usually coming from some types of smart people. I don't agree - mankind future requires tons of smart hard working people to solve problems like these. To move mankind to reach other planets and eventually stars. If all smart people will decide to not have any kids, its a net loss for mankind down the line.

No poor illiterate guy in 3rd world country will think like that. They will have 10 kids, and their kids will have 10 kids unless eventually lifted from poverty. They are not going to fix these issues by themselves.

If you are afraid of long term commitment and dedicating big part of your life to raising a good balanced human being(s), that's another story. But if you are smart, well-off, you would do MUCH better for our future to raise next generation of environment-conscious citizens of this world.

Statistically you have a far greater chance of producing offspring who are serial killers than offspring who will solve global warming.

yet we don't live in binary lives and grey area in between has more shades than newest OLEDs can display

Why?

This seems bullshit. There are probably a few thousand serial killers, but there are vastly more eco-firendly people, who all are trying to solve global warming, and a lot of them are actually solving it. Every time they vote for a candidate that is eco-friendly, every time they make decisions that are aligned with the goal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com