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Comment by fsloth | Hacker News Reader

Dude, none of the things what you suggest would make any impact. For me, personally - but those were kind of personal suggestions.

I haven't flown anywhere in three years, and certainly don't visit conferences.

"- Start working part time, and part of that part time remotely. Reduce your commute. "

Uh, what? I commute by bike and with the bus in the winter. I don't really see how stopping that would contribute.

"- If you have any investments shift them from fossil to green."

Uh, most of my investments are in index funds. I'm not going to change that, but I do hope my fund managers will.

"- Don't upgrade your phone. Seriously."

I don't upgrade. I buy replacements when the previous unit dies. I haven't seen any concrete benefits from upgrading from a top model in the past six years.

See, it gets pretty weird if you try to engage on a some sort of grass roots movement beyond a very, very specific goal. People have wildly different lives.

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Nope, you just have reached the point that others haven't yet.

Your carbon footprint is much lower than theirs for sure and trying to convince someone with a higher footprint to change will be vastly more efficient than trying to squeeze the last kilogram of carbon emission reduction out of your own life.

Thanks for the effort by the way!

"Thanks for the effort by the way!"

Uh, you are welcome, but these are not choices I've made due to any environmental reason. They are the most comfortable option for me personally at the moment.

What's with all the condescending "uh"s? Are you roleplaying as Daria?

> Nope, you just have reached the point that others haven't yet.

That might be true. But I'm under the impression that:

- Flying is often said to be the biggest individual climate-harming action by individuals.

- Most people, even in the West, are kind of poor and haven't flown anywhere in the last decade.

- Most people, even in the West, don't have "investments" unless you count a measly pension they don't have much control over anyway.

- The mobile phone market is struggling because people aren't upgrading as consistently as they used to, older handsets are good enough, and newer ones aren't special enough. People have enough spares now that they pass old ones on to their poorer friends.

If that impression is accurate, perhaps others are generally closer to the emissions levels reached by the GP commenter.

Some other areas for improvement may be car use, home energy and food, as these are all things which can be significantly improved. I imagine most people (in the West) still drive a lot, have woefully inefficient homes, and buy food based on price and appeal rather than climate impact.

> I imagine most people (in the West) [...] buy food based on price and appeal rather than climate impact.

I'm not into smartphones since my 12-13 year old phone still kind of works (lost battery cover so battery often disconnects, often bad contact with sim card...), but I know from behavior of some friends that there are apps which track foods and products by barcode for calorie intake etc..., in theory an app could by barcode pop up a warning or something pointing out the environmental impact of a product which relies on environmentally harmful soy, palm oil, ... it should list both impact of full consumption, and impact by "dose" or rate if it's say shampoo.

After using it for a while it could say calculate the impact of your choice of shampoo by looking at the first and last dates of buying a bottle and the total number of bottles minus one divided by the time between first and last... then the user could see a breakdown with sometimes perhaps counterintuitive results.

Users should be able to collaborate in verifying and correcting calculations, so only a minority need spend time and effort such that a majority can rely on the app more blindly...

Edit: adding that it's also not helping when geopolitical rifts induce my country to ... burn produced apples and pears, instead of letting their price fall for a year...

All good points. I'd like to see a study on estimated emissions by income quintile, as I would suspect strong correlation.

edit: I mean in the US. Global income vs carbon footprint is easy to find: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/10/CO2-emissions-by-...

"Doesn't apply to me, thus it doesn't apply to anyone"

No, I'm quite sure it applies to some, but since it does not apply to all (as per my counterexample) it's hard to predict what percentage of the audience is primed to react in any beneficial way.

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