Being an effective environmentalist can often feel like being a bad one

that's only true if every plastic bag user disposes of the bags properly. part of the problem of using plastic bags is that it increases the demand. i specifically ask for less plastic bags in the produce section in order to teach the sales person that it is not necessary to have each item individually wrapped as is the custom here. i want them to apply that to other customers and so reduce the use of bags even more.

Could you elaborate on what proper disposal looks like?

I have 5 reusable bags that I've used for a few years.

That means I've used them maybe 100 times. Now they're starting to fall apart, and soon I'll need new ones.

I wonder, since they're much heavier and clearly use a lot more plastic, whether I would have used less plastic with the disposable ones.

I don't think the author, or anyone who eats meat (and is intellectually honest and invested in environmental impact), is trying to argue that it's not expensive. But if you've already made the ethical choice that you still want to eat meat, it's worthwhile to study what methods for producing it are less impactful and more sustainable.

Factory farming animals is specifically mentioned in the article as causing less environmental damage than organic or cage free methods. Whether true or not doesn’t prevent effective environmentalism from becoming as performative as environmentalism.

It’s still a necessity so it needs to be included

Cheers! Would love to chat!

I honestly have no idea. I don't think I know nearly enough about GPT3 to hazard a guess.

I could imagine using natural language processing as part of looking at generating an automated Q&A algorithm or attempting to automate literature reviews in some way, but in the review process?

Someone I was talking to the other day was suggesting using sentiment analysis during the review process as a kind of tone grammarly aid to help people write constructive reviews, which is interesting. But I think that's different from GPT3.

Judging from your bio, I would guess you have much strong ideas about that answer to that question than I do. What are your thoughts?

> reducing CO2 emissions is an emergency, and any other environmental considerations other than doing that is just arguing about deck chairs on the Titanic

I don't think that latter sentence follows from the first at all - it's very much a slow emergency that will play out over decades and indeed centuries, and furthermore with a global population of 8+ billion, clearly it's not feasible for all of us to drop everything just to focus on any one single environmental issue. There are inevitably going to some actions that need to be taken to ensure long term ecological health that aren't related to mitigating against climate change, but are just as important, esp. wrt release of toxins/agricultural runoff into the environment, or drawing down water tables or monitoring invasive species (a problem already, but often exacerbated by warming temperatures). Thankfully we can walk and chew gum at the same time. (FWIW I agree re the anti- nuclear stance of environment groups - and would do so regardless of the need for low-emission power: nuclear energy production generally has a much lower environmental footprint than fossil fuel generation)

I agree that following environmental intuitions is self-defeating, but so is chasing red herrings. And this is exactly why I'm trying to build something that will allow us all to make these analysis on primary sources, not secondary ones like the OP.

Climate is an emergency, but if we go chasing the wrong "solutions" based on bad data or incomplete data, or take the base of the ecosystem out from under us in the process, then we won't resolve the emergency or we'll end up in a worse place.

There are some things we know - transportation, housing, urban design, energy, many aspects of industrial manufuaction and waste disposal. These are still complex, but have much clearer cost benefit analysis. We know what the answers are there. Some of them involve individual action (like I laid out below) others are going to require collective action.

Agriculture is a mess with a pitched propaganda war taking place around it. I've spent a decade trying to sort out what is true, and I'm still no closer to feeling like I can say with certainty what the most ecological diet is. But I know that anyone who can say it with certainty has not done complete research.

It's really not a single variable problem, though. We're also looking at biodiversity collapse as humans atomize and invade wild spaces, and declines in insect populations which prop up the rest of the biosphere, including human agriculture.

We're making significant progress on cleaning up energy production, as wind and solar are now the most economic ways to produce new energy by a very long shot. The trajectory of the temperature curve is bending in the right direction, and should bend further. At some point we also need to pay attention to the rest of the quality of life on earth.

> The truth is reducing CO2 emissions is an emergency

Almost nobody among claiming that treats it seriously.

Prominent celebrities claiming that travel by plane.

Greenpeace continues to oppose nuclear power.

Solar power gets blocked because some endemic species or pretty views are threatened.

Noone supports killing air travel.

---------------------------

Almost nobody among "CO2 is emergency" is actually willing to sacrifice own benefits or other priorities. At most they demand sacrifice from others.

I am not going to treat plane-travelling celebrities declaring climate emergency that threatens survival of humanity. The same goes for eco-organizations not willing to support deregulation of nuclear power.

“The truth is reducing CO2 emissions is an emergency, and any other environmental considerations other than doing that is just arguing about deck chairs on the Titanic.”

This statement is wrong. Climate and collapsing ecosystems/biodiversity are connected, and one is not more urgent than the other.

We would have been in a much better position if nuclear and fossil fuel interests hadn't been rabidly anti-renewable either because we could have started the transition 20-30 year earlier.

> if the Greens had no been so rabidly anti-nuclear.

honestly I never understood this. Always seemed a more Luddite response than a environmentally principled one.

"Environmentalism" didn't originally have anything to do with preserving human life. If you don't regard the preservation of human life/civilization as the goal, what's the argument for CO2 emissions being an emergency?

The emergency was 50 years ago.

Yep, which EPR covers.

For example, British milk sellers mostly use the same shared milk container, with different labels.

They figured out how to lower the cost, because they were paying for it. They get really in depth in the specific amounts of dye to use in lids etc. to maximise recycling.

https://wrap.org.uk/resources/report/hdpe-milk-bottle-resear...

None of that needed specific regulations, just assigning the costs to the people responsible.

Depends on grandparent's definition of dense and city. You need density but you don't need tokyo, you don't need high rise and you certainly don't need lab grown meat or vertical farms.

You can pack a lot of people into a 3km^2 circle at fairly moderate density when you're not wasting 500m^2 (8 parking spaces @ 40m^2 then roads, misc infrastructure and setbacks) per person forcing them to own cars.

A well connected walkable rural town full of 3 story fourplexes and 2 story cottages all clustered within 1km around a main street and train station is completely fine.

A walkable city which is almost all under 8 stories and where large portions of the population live in row houses or five over ones is fine.

Houston or Phoenix is not fine.

> Is this seriously an issue compared to trash in general?

No it’s not an issue that’s my point. What people sort is rarely recycled anyway. That’s why it’s a shame.

> But every kilowatt that you don't consume is a kilowatt that's not being generated by the electric grid.

Yes but what individual consumes is far less relevant than how this electricity is produced especially when you compare domestic consumption to industrial consumption. It’s far more impactful to lobby for the end of coal power plants than switch off your electronic.

> see above, also electric cars.

Yes, it’s finally coming quite slowly but for decades oil was heavily subsidised.

> Well the goods you buy has to be manufactured somewhere, so presumably you're against the shipping rather than the manufacturing aspect.

I’m not against anything. There are huge gain to be made in both shipping and manufacturing. Investments are far too low because they are not mandated.

That’s my point. The most significant gains are at an institutional or corporate level. Most of the debate surrounding individual behaviour is a distraction.

There isn't anything wrong with urban gardening itself. The problem comes when anti-development groups impose policies to prevent any building from casting a shadow on anything. Greenery and open space are both good and important, and gardening is a fine hobby. But urban gardens don't feed anyone and if there is a choice between housing people in an existing city, or protecting an existing garden from shadows, we should choose the housing every time.

Same thing goes for rooftop solar power: it's fine, but protecting it is not important.

Burning 1 gallon of motor gasoline emits the same carbon as producing 1.3lb of finished beef. Flying once from U.S. to Europe has the same GHG impact as producing 80 pounds of beef. For a typical U.S. household, transportation is a bigger source of greenhouse gas emissions than food.

Dramatically reducing meat consumption is the single best thing the average westerner could do to limit their environmental impact. Why did you remove it?

Using transit, walking, or cycling is promoting 'other policies that have an outsized impact beyond shallow lifestyle choices' because these modes all hage network effects. It becomes vastly easier for city planners to override idiotic traffic engineers with once a comparatively tiny threshold of people are using them. There is also a network effect in knowledge and experience. If you learn all the safe byways and tracks then it becomes immensely easier for anyone nearby who knows you to start walking, if twenty of you in an area start cycling then your local mechanic might be afford to stay in business and run an outreach event.

Also skeptical of the honey thing. Honeybees produce honey which is a valuable product on its own, but honeybees are also distinguished from other bee species by their massive colonies (colonies are the groups of bees, hives are where they live). This is why there is an industry that trucks honeybee colonies/hives around the country to pollinate whichever crops are in season. This is to the detriment of whichever pollinator species live locally. The honeybees pollinate, but they take a disruptive amount of pollen to feed their own colonies at the expense of the native pollinators, and in return they share their diseases like varroa mites.

If a crop needs pollination but you want to reduce dependence on honeybees, it's likely you would need to break up the land the crop is on in order to plant flowering species that attract native pollinators at the edges, and that comes with its own downsides for maintenance and harvest.

Honeybees‘ environmental impact: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-...

There is already an unstoppable climate catastrophe happening. Many of the effects are already baked in for the next 50-100 years and it will disproportionately affect the poor.

What we can still control is how bad it is. (An increase 1.5 degrees C looks a hell of a lot different than 4 degrees C). That's still very much a fight worth fighting.

When people ask if we should do this or that, the answer should be "yes". These rules are fine - we should eat less meat, we should drive and fly less, etc. We should also do more systemic things, like investing heavily in battery tech and solar and wind and even fusion longshots. We should regulate the hell out of emissions, and use the proceeds from taxes and fines to help mitigate the effects on the poor. Getting to net zero carbon is going to be hard but it has to happen.

> as per the Jevons paradox

You don't start eating 50kg a day if you become vegetarian, and you don't spend 30 hours a day travelling if you do it by train. Yes, universally switching from cars to any other form of transport would save people 1-3 hours a day to do other things, but if they spend that time doing anything other than sitting in a car it's a win.

You also don't get to use "what if noone did that" as a counter argument for something helping if everybody did it.

If everyone insulated their home properly, got rid of their cars, stopped eating beef, and cut the remaining animal proteins by half we'd be pretty close to net zero right now.

I think you have a valid point, but I'm not sure it's made effectively, which I think is why you got downvotes.

An example might help: Elon Musk is not, AFAIK, vegan. But he's done a lot to popularize electric cars, having far more impact than he could by changing his diet. Likewise, the Beyond meat people have probably done a lot more to reduce meat consumption than they could ever outweigh by eating steak every meal for the rest of their lives. (I am actually not clear on the net environmental benefit of using gas vs. making more batteries, but let's say for the sake of argument that electric cars are an environmental benefit, since it's just an example.)

> Stop pretending like climate change is created by consumers

But it is actually created by consumers. By human beings consuming resources and emitting greenhouse gases in return. Simply because there's nothing else even close in scale as a source of global warming. What else could there be, wild herbivores?

It follows almost tautologically that it is human beings that is causing the warming.

You blame "industrial production processes". But those are completely funded by human consumption in a mostly on-demand action.

So what else is there to blame? The transportation industry? Again, completely funded by, and a direct response of consumers buying stuff. Consumption is at the beginning of the chain. It's the cause.

So your argument sounds wrong to me. It sounds like you want to shift blame to wealthy industrialists. Guess what, a fat bank balance or stock ownership like that of Elon Musk or Bezos does not emit greenhouse gases by simply existing.

True, but the potential must be possible given existing resources and political systems and not inhuman or utopian. EVs are possible and not utopian for the most part and so you are right. Although the energy crisis will heavily impact manufacture of EVs.

Another point: fertility drops massively in cities and this is an environmental concern as you need labour to transition industries at scale (e.g. nuclear plants, solar, wind, biomanufacture). Low birth rate dense cities are a recipe for disaster in terms of sufficient labour for a green transition.

The list of issues with the authors "I'm a misunderstood future hero" viewpoint goes on and on imo.