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Comment by megablast | Hacker News Reader

Keep driving your car, pretending you’re not destroying the planet.

Yes it's my car that I drive like 2000 miles a year, and not coal plants in third world countries, hexafluorine or whatever magical greenhouse gas we develop and use for 25 years before realizing our children will suffer.

No, it's my relatively new and aggressively emission controlled cars.

The ongoing deforestation of the Amazon Basin is probably just as much of a long term threat.

Interesting impression you have there - third world countries have actually contributed very little greenhouse gas historically and in the present-day age too.

The vast majority of this problem lies on the United States’ shoulders. We’ve contributed an outsize share to global warming. Your standard of life requires having benefited from creating global warming. Blaming developing countries for their current emissions is cowardly.

Transportation accounts for 14% of total greenhouse gas emissions [1] and that includes rail/air/marine travel so it doesn't seem to be as simple as getting people out of their cars.

[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

Probably a better metric for us average people is to ask what produces most of our personal emissions. Yes, won’t correct the problem. But will give people a sense of agency instead of yet another way to feel helpless. It’s going to take an “all of the above, all hands on deck” response.

But you have to focus your efforts to get the biggest results. In this case I suspect only government can solve the problem (because someone’s going to have to change or end entire industries). So the best use of our energy might trying to be get an effective government in place.

I think about this a lot, and it seems to me that the amount effort it would take to get an effective government in place is roughly equal to the amount of effort it would take for people to make individual changes to their habits and consumption (which in turn, presumably, would cause industry and governments to change). In fact, they seem like essentially the same thing in that they both require the same kind of individual effort and engagement.

Right now, all most people do is vote (if they even bother) or maybe make donations, which really doesn't seem to be enough. Voting is important, but it doesn't have much impact if the same kinds of candidates keep getting elected, which is largely due to dysfunction in the electoral system, at least in the U.S. (and probably elsewhere, but I don't know enough about other countries to say).

Similarly, all most people do is recycle, which definitely isn't enough, given a lot (most?) of what gets put in the recycling bin doesn't get recycled, due in part to both lack of financial incentive as well as contamination from non-recyclables (confusing rules and general lack of care apparently).

I would like to think we could vote in a government that's focused on progress rather than partisan power struggles, but I don't think that's likely to happen any time soon, if ever. It would require a level of engagement that I just don't see happening.

I'd also like to think that we could change our habits on a mass scale and demand change through social and market forces, but in a similar way, I don't see that happening either. Their are just too many economic and cultural forces acting against progress.

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