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Comment by minikites | Hacker News Reader

Incidents like this is why we're not going to save the planet with individual actions. I could spend my entire life eating vegan, recycling, and bicycling everywhere and that entire gain is dwarfed by one incident like this.

The only thing that will save us is decisive and collective action. Think about that when you think about your vote in the next election in your area.

I particularly like the suggestion in one of the comments on the original article:

>I wonder if it would have taken 20 days to stop if they were being fined by the pound.

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I save you the whole quote but :

> Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

it's easier to have this kind of thing voted in a "climate-change-aware" nation, which is easier to have if all your local government are climate-change-ware, which is easier to have if all your neighborhood are climate-change-aware, which is easier if all the familly in it are climate-change-aware which is easier if you are climate change aware.

and once your country, regardless of how small it is, is climate change aware, it's easier to make bigger, more polluting country, to change, as they can't hide anymore behind a "your first"

but yes I agree with you that you can't stop at your individual level, but it has to start there

there are certain, specific individuals who could stop and it would make a huge difference. someone decided to punch this hole in the ground. someone directed the engineering. I’m glad this new Sentinel-5P sat is up. it’s hard to manage what’s not being measured.

Yes, but without you doing all that it would be even worse.

No, it wouldn't. The commenter's actions make no difference at all on a global scale. Zero.

That's the point: understanding that individual virtue does absolutely, totally, precisely nothing. Only collective actions count. At all.

Understanding orders of magnitude is not something that comes easily to humans but it must be understood to work on large problems.

The commenters actions make a difference to them and in turn may influence people around them.

Collective actions start out as individual actions and like that they set the stage for change that is real and measurable.

By your reading Rosa Parks should have just shut up and sat in the back of the bus because 'individual virtue does absolutely, totally, precisely nothing'.

Understanding orders of magnitude is indeed not something that comes easily to humans but it must be understood to work on large problems, right alongside understanding how social change is engendered.

There is a difference between individual action leading to social change (such as political activism or civil disobedience) and individual action that makes the individual feel better and satisfies the need to "do something" while having no measurable effect.

If you take one less flight this year, you've considerably lowered your carbon footprint. Congrats. If every single person that flies reduced their carbon footprint by one flight this year like you did... it would make absolutely no meaningful difference with respect to climate change. You might as well whistle in the wind. On the other hand, if all of those people had actually taken political action, meaningful change would be practically inevitable.

The narrative that encourages recycling, buying green brands, and generally expressing how much you care about the earth by how you choose to shop (making your environmentalism part of your identity as a consumer rather than as a citizen) serves only the status quo, and dissipates energy that might otherwise be channelled into making an actual difference.

> understanding that individual virtue does absolutely, totally, precisely nothing

One is forced to wonder why people who think this way bother to get out of bed in the morning. On a global scale you are insignificant approaching nonexistent, so by your own reasoning nothing you do matters and therefor you shouldn't bother doing anything.

> One is forced to wonder why people who think this way bother to get out of bed in the morning.

Because they get hungry. You are animal, you don't need a noble cause to do things.

The thing that (supposedly) separates man from beast is our ability to reason and supersede our animal nature.

Supposedly. Still, you can't overcome hunger with reason (at least not for very long) and hunger is sufficient to give you a reason to get out of bed.

Actually lots of people have voluntarily starved to death. There's a whole religious practice [0] about it and it's frequently used as a means of self-termination for quality-of-life reasons [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallekhana

[1] https://compassionandchoices.org/end-of-life-planning/learn/...

> Actually lots of people have voluntarily starved to death.

As I said: Not for very long. Besides, I wouldn't call that reason (except for people who do that to die, it's pretty efficient for that purpose).

On a global scale the difference would be marginal. Nothing but a mere rounding error.

Speaking of rounding errors, you shouldn't vote, either.

In fact, even literally throwing up your hands is a waste of energy.

> Speaking of rounding errors, you shouldn't vote, either.

Quite a few philosophers of politics and radicals would agree with that statement; from SEP[0]:

>There is some debate among economists and political scientists over the precise way to calculate the probability that a vote will be decisive. Nevertheless, they generally agree that the probability that the modal individual voter in a typical election will break a tie is small, so small that the expected benefit (i.e., p[V(D)−V(R)]) of the modal vote for a good candidate is worth far less than a millionth of a penny (G. Brennan and Lomasky 1993: 56–7, 119). The most optimistic estimate in the literature claims that in a presidential election, an American voter could have as high as a 1 in 10 million chance of breaking a tie, but only if that voter lives in one of three or four “swing states,” and only if she votes for a major-party candidate (Edlin, Gelman, and Kaplan 2007).

Chances are, you can use the time to do other things, things that gain you more benefit than "a millionth of a penny" (if we must use the economism of time = money).

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/voting/#1

I disagree with it too, but it follows from this silly theory of not taking any action unless it's the biggest possible action.

That's not at all the same comparison. An equal comparison would be where the president's vote counts at 1 trillion votes. In that case I wouldn't bother voting because even if everybody in the country votes for candidate A it'll mean nothing if the president votes for president B. The president's vote will always overpower everyone else's vote.

Absolutely, I don't want my comment to be taken as an endorsement of "Well, there's nothing I can do so I might as well roll coal and dump my motor oil on the lawn."

It's important to do both, but saving the planet will only be accomplished through collective action.

> only be accomplished through collective action

I'd agree if you said enforced collective action. We cannot rely on companies to self-regulate. There needs to be severe consequences for companies that damage the environment like this. As long as profits far exceed penalties, companies will continue to take the easy path.

I think it's pretty clear from the context he's not talking about corporate action, but citizens' action.

Corporations also have civic responsibility.

Any collective, corrective action must include corporate action, or it is futile.

I believe the point was collective action of citizens leading to governmental action to enforce corporate action.

Perhaps stop buying the offending company's products?

You're making the perfectly informed consumer argument? They don't exactly put warning labels on the packaging. "The company which produces this product does disproportional damage to the environment."

While this accident is terrible, it pales in comparison to the US output of GHG's per year. The collective action that is needed will also call for individual action. You're right though that individual action alone is not enough.

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