People aren't going to stop doing stuff. That's just fairly obviously not really on the table, despite the minority of people who are into ideas of going back to some pre-modern agrarian societal model.
So, how do we let people continue to do stuff without totally messing up the planet? That's the crucial question humanity is interested in solving (or, maybe more accurately, needs to solve).
Think about this as it relates to other common problems humans face like debt or the need to lose weight.
I can put all of my energy and focus into making more money so I can get my debt under control, but that won't matter if I have really bad spending habits.
I can put all of my energy into exercising more and burning the calories I take in, but that won't matter if I'm eating more calories than I can reasonably burn in a day.
I'd argue that doing less is still doing something. It's just looking for a solution in a different place. It's focusing on the cause, instead of trying to put a band-aid on the effect.
This falls into the category of "low hanging fruit", and one of the easiest potential sources of meaningful change. Inventing new things, increasing energy efficiency, etc. are all possible optimizations, but are not guaranteed. Eating less, spending less, and burning less energy are all but guaranteed to have a positive result.
The real question of interest is now: how much are people willing to not do?
Privileged folks like those on HN will not cut back much. Folks who are already being forced to cut back will continue to do so, and with massive amounts of suffering.
Really a simple solution!
Doing less doesn’t have to mean it’s only an individual’s responsibility. Applying this more broadly, doing less is a category of potential solutions to much bigger problems.
Relying on individuals will never move the needle very far.
In either case, it’s clear that the “doing less” approaches are bound to start with the people who are already doing the least.
> In either case, it’s clear that the “doing less” approaches are bound to start with the people who are already doing the least.
This is not clear, and does not logically follow anything that preceded it.
If you constrain "doing less" to a very specific and restrictive definition of who/what this means, then perhaps. But as a general approach to solving certain kinds of problems, this can take many forms:
- Policy decisions
- Social movements
- Creation of new product categories that remove prior requirements for more
And it's also not necessarily always just a "thing", but a mindset, or another lens through which to consider options for solving burning problems.
Trying to simply cut back for CO2 needs something like a 90% reduction to actually solve things. It could theoretically work but it very quickly hits diminishing returns and becomes a bad allocation of effort. Projects like actively replacing all our power plants, and making sure all cars have a minimum electric range, are much more "low hanging fruit" than trying to directly cut consumption that far.
We consume enormously more than we need, and far more than the Planet can handle. I feel like the one of the few sane people when I'm saying it's imperative that we lower our consumption right now.
If there was for instance a carbon tax on the raw materials and transport then I’m fairly sure the price difference between high quality and low quality items would become minimal so people would start buying more sensibly for the planet because our systems would make it more sensible for them individually.
You just answered your own point there. It makes people happy. Maybe that feeling is fleeting, but it is still a good feeling that people will not give up voluntarily unless there are no other options.
>If there was for instance a carbon tax on the raw materials and transport then I’m fairly sure the price difference between high quality and low quality items would become minimal so people would start buying more sensibly for the planet because our systems would make it more sensible for them individually.
I don't disagree, but a carbon tax is in the expensive and painful bucket above not the cheap and easy one. It makes the low quality goods more expensive so people consume less of them. That is not people voluntarily giving up those good for the benefit of the planet.
That's kind of the whole problem, the people who would lose are the sellers and advertisers who cultivate the insecurities in discontent people for their own benefit, not the consumers.
Also the human desire for endless consumption predates advertising as evidence by the lifestyles of much of history's royalty, aristocracy, and wealthy. People consume because it feels good.
I talked about carbon taxes to make people pay the true price of their consumption so the market forces can find the right equilibrium, which they can’t when the price doesn’t include all the information.
The cheap and easy one is we just all decide to voluntarily reduce consumption. That isn't feasible for the reasons listed in previous comments.
The expensive and painful one is a combination of disincentivizing consumption, offsetting carbon emission, creating carbon capture technology, etc. As I said before, a carbon tax is part of the expensive option because it obviously makes consumption more expensive.
That isn't to say a carbon tax is a bad solution. I generally support one. It is simply a recognition that a carbon tax is not the cheap and easy solution of us all simply reducing consumption. If you want a cheap solution either people need to voluntarily give up consumption or they need to be forced to give up consumption.
What's your plan for folks who refuse to pay the carbon tax?
Remember, Eric Garner was killed as part of enforcing NYC's cigarette tax. (He was selling "loosies".)
It's not legal to sell single cigarettes in NY regardless of source.
That said, the "only registered sellers are allowed" system is intended to combat cigarette smuggling/tax evasion.
For clothes, for the purchaser, have you done the math to show it isn't worthwhile? I find it's cheaper[1] to buy low quality clothes than to buy high quality ones in the long run. I'd buy shoes that would last only 6-9 months, but paying double wouldn't make them last twice as long, etc.
[1] Cheaper for the purchaser, not society.
It’s hard to find really high quality clothes today because there just isn’t the incentive to provide them when all the crap can be sold and segmented into fashion seasons so you “have” to buy a new jacket now.
This is not just clothes of course, I’m for example very susceptible to feeling a need to buy the latest gadget because it has more RAM. I might need it someday. Maybe.
This doesn't match my experience. I had dress shirts made-to-measure for about $50-60/each....that was 9 years ago and they are still going strong. For footwear, I mostly wear $150+ combat boots or dress boots, they all last for years and years of hard use.
Really? I'm of the opinion that doing less, working less, and doing things like having your own garden would lead to much greater health and happiness for the average person. The only way I can see "no advantage" is when viewed through the lens of modern capitalism, then my suggestions are certainly blasphemous.
My MIL is a great example of this, she goes shopping just to go shopping and get a deal. She buys more than she could ever want or use. Christmas is especially bad, buying so many presents she has a hard time wrapping them all in time.
Consumerism embedded into the American psyche is no joke and I don't know how we change it given relentless marketing campaigns, habit, etc.
I wish we could pull back but I don't know how we do it at a large scale that people will agree to.
COVID showed that (a lot of us ) really don't need to be commuting and flying all that much. It's tragic that 'society' wasted a perfectly good pandemic by not learning any of the things it showed us.
I'm flying a lot more post Covid. It showed me how precious travel and meeting people face to face and experiencing new cultures is. Based on current air travel statistics, I'm not alone.