Comment by philips | Hacker News Reader

Comment by philips | Hacker News Reader

How are people on Hacker News changing their behavior around food and energy consumption?

And besides individual action what community action have you taken?

Personally I have found myself on a similar path to Peter Kalmus[1]. Before having kids I did what I could: didn’t own a car, commuted by bike, composted, minimized fashion/tech consumption, etc. On the other hand my career required significant plane travel for a time. Now with kids I feel extremely motivated to take further action to reduce energy consumption and interact directly with nature: through gardening, removing all plane travel, installing rooftop solar, etc.

On the collective action front I become increasingly frustrated that something as obvious and “market based” as the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (HR 7173)[2] isn’t already law. Something like that feels like the bare minimum solution to putting the US on the right track.

[1]: https://peterkalmus.net/books/read-by-chapter-being-the-chan...

[2]: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and-carbo...

I stopped trying to fix the climate disaster on my own a long time ago. There is nothing you can do to save us from the climate disaster. The illusion of green lifestyle only serves to push the responsibility from the actual polluters over to the consumer.

While polluters (including those that marked high polluting consumer products on mass scale) are not made to pay for their pollution (e.g. by carbon tax) they will keep polluting.

I’ve shifted towards trying to push politicians into enforcing stricter international agreements and building more green infrastructure. So far it has only made me feel even more powerless then before.

You said it yourself. You can’t fix climate change on your own. Neither by personal conservation or political stumping. It will take a majority of us to solve climate change.

Like any movement for societal change, you have to accept you can’t do it alone. But you must still do your part. Do it by leading by example, voting, and campaigning for change. Don’t give up! Focus on what you can control.

>And besides individual action what community action have you taken?

I didn't have any kids.

Its a message that unfortunately most people still refuse to hear (much less accept) - the earth is massively overpopulated. It doesn't matter how think try to dice the onion, there are far too many people for the earth's finite, renewable resources to sustainably support. Certainly our wasteful and overly consumptive habits are accelerating this destruction but no matter how we tailor our habits, the fact is that there are simply billions too many.

Some people ignore this obvious issue because its a difficult problem to solve that carries with it a host of economic and ethical issues. Others ignore it due to religious beliefs, and others because they worship at the altar of technology (which they believe can solve every problem). As long as this remains the case, we cannot even begin to acknowledge the issue and seek solutions.

Some argue that the population levels of "developed" countries have plateaued or begun to shrink slightly but that isn't happening remotely fast enough given the rate of degradation of our ecosystem. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, objective reality doesn't care about our economic or ethical concerns and the sustainable resources we all depend on to survive (the birds, the bees, the wildlife, the oceans, clean air, clean water, contiguous forests, ect) will continue to be degraded and will force a solution to this problem whether through famine, war, disease or otherwise.

If people want to advocate that overpopulation isn't a problem, they should live in dhaka or other densely packed poor areas. Anyone living in developed countries have no idea how it is to live there.

US population density = under 100 per mile^2

SF population density = 18k per mile^2

Major cities in Bangladesh, India, Phillipines have well over 50k/ml^2

Those countries also have nation wide population density of over 500/ml^2 at least.

Most people there can't buy an electric vehicle any time soon. They don't have tall buildings or functional transportation. They don't have enough jobs. The pollution levels are worse. Their countries have more corruption and less rights for everyone. They don't have enough drinking water or land for agriculture geographically.

Overpopulation makes solving all the problems harder.

I adopted a mostly plant-based diet. It’s very effective in terms of impact reduction, and most people can do it easily with minimal lifestyle sacrifice (compared to things like giving up flying and driving and aircon).

Most people in the world (and probably even in the us) eat a lot of meat but never fly.

It’s a matter of degree. Eating “a lot” of meat is worse than a little flying. But I personally think giving up meat is much less of a personal sacrifice than giving up international travel.

Me too. My point was just that most people have no international travel to give up and so the comparison for them would is irrelevant.

Same here, I'm on a bike for everything, I eat organic (literally, I forage a lot of fruit when going for a ride, currently there are many figs). So my consumption and my environmental impact is certainly super low.

I pick up plastic trash every now and then, it's hard to counter all that continuous litter volume

Next step is to spread this philosophy, but it's not easy or even possible to change other people lifestyles. It's sad because, it's definitely healthy to live that way

Just talked with someone today, near a fig tree, he said they should cut that tree next to the road because it was dangerous, I replied to him, the fig tree is more important than the road and car traffic with a smile, and a bit of sadness inside because I know what will happen

This brings back memories of living in Portland. It would be amazing if cities were designed with this type of foraging as a priority :D

I’m not trying to shame you for your efforts—plastic trash is indeed ugly and annoying; thank you for picking it up—but plastic straws are not the reason the west coast is on fire.

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