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Comment by mtrn | Hacker News Reader

I do not own a car, I do not fly, I buy clothes used or new just once a year. My newest smartphone I bought five years ago (and I just bought a new battery for $10, so I can use it for five more years). My utility company stats says my energy consumption is overall very low. I eat meat once a month. I try to own as few things as possible. I try to write and deploy code in energy efficient languages (Go, Rust, C, ...) [1]. I self host some services on my arm board that consumes 0.79W when idle.

I do not feel, that it makes a large dent, but I feel that I'm way ahead what the average person does in order to reduce their environmental footprint.

Also, I do not feel I'm cutting myself short and I still depend on many of the niceties of modern civilization - but, I'd also be happier, if my footprint would be even lower.

[1] https://greenlab.di.uminho.pt/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/sle...

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I am not saying anything negative about your lifestyle and I make similar choices. But, the perception is you need to be that extreme when the reality is different. People really don’t need to suffer to make a difference, which is critical as most people aren’t willing to suffer if they can avoid it.

For example rather than turning the heat down, buying a solar hot water heater let’s you save money, take long hot showers, and be toasty in the winter while also being more environmentally friendly. Carbon credits are poor policy vs carbon taxes for a host of reasons. However, if you really want to feel better about your personal choices effective leverage is available. At the same time a huge number of what amounts to scams are also out there.

PS: Of course lowering consumption has other environmental benefits

FWIW That is not extreme, it is also not suffering. What would an effective leverage be?

Making positive ROI investments in solar, wind, etc manufactures or projects. The transition is economically viable but capital constrained.

PS: I try to write and deploy code in energy efficient languages (Go, Rust, C, ...) [1].. That comes off as extreme to me, it’s going to take a lot before that’s saving more energy than a single lightbulb uses.

> "People really don’t need to suffer to make a difference"…

You are 110% correct about that, and yet the most common arguments I hear from folks who argue against every proposed solution to climate change that they hear all make it sound like they actually think they're gonna have to live like cavemen if we try to do anything to fix the problem. :(

You're perpetuating the idea though that we need to live like Ascetics in order to solve climate change.

It'd be thousands of times better to get one coal fired plant turned off in place of renewables.

Yes and no. I feel that not doing certain things is a very simple thing to "do" things - and I appreciate simplicity.

For example, I would probably prefer getting rid of half of the cars and trying to find ways so that people do not need to move that much, if they do not want to (for example making all possibly remote remote work actually remote) - as opposed to making all cars electric.

You can have frugal lifestyle in regards to the climate, but still be fullfilling. In some way it becomes part of you life to create less waste and find better ways to handle the climate. It's fun!

But you can only succeed if you also treat it like a religion were everyone else are heathens. Because if you do not convert all of society to your believes that is always going to be your biggest climte debt. My own carbon foot print is minimal compared to what I use as a part of my society. That is no fun. That's not what I want to spend my time doing..

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