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Comment by darkwraithcov | Hacker News Reader

There’s a mass extinction happening and no one seems to care. We may see a complete collapse of the ecosystem in the next 30 years.

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I think lots of people care but nobody knows what to do.

I think that if everyone gave up air travel, individual automobile transport, and meat and dairy and lived in a max 110m2 apartment you could say that. But it seems that there are a lot of people who simply don't care.

Peter Singer's Famine Affluence & Morality (1972) argued similarly, that we allow human suffering & don't do anything, even though we could. And he said that makes us provably evil.

Recent submission, a video on Singer's paper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35718342 https://youtu.be/KVl5kMXz1vA

"a lot of people who simply don't care" is not the same as "no one seems to care".

Furthermore, the challenge isn't in figuring out the individual changes you list it's figuring out how to convince everyone to adopt them.

I already live in a tiny apartment and take the bus to work, so clearly my individual contribution didn’t fix the problem.

I don’t know how to make everyone do that, so, I still don’t know what to do.

I am actually in the same boat. I have limited myself to the things I list, yet the problem is still there. And The human population doubles every 50 or so years even after I had a vasectomy [1], and yet my emissions aren't going to cut in two in that time.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth

Yeah - individual changes will never change anything - I think the discussion has been poisonned, and we are blind to the actual solutions, which all seem unthinkable even though they are self evident

> Yeah - individual changes will never change anything - I think the discussion has been poisonned

The idea that individuals have no responsibility or power is part of how it has been poisoned. I've known people who genuinely would say something like "did you know a half dozen companies put out the majority of emissions? so we don't need to consume less or differently, everything is those companies' fault".

Eh - people's power isn't in lower their impact on the environnement, it's in stopping the corporations that are doing in by all means.

We act like all the options are is a)Being mindful of your emissions (Which will change nothing for the planet) b)Do nothing (Also changes nothing)

While the actual option is to stop the corporations by any and all means. Native americans have a history of doing this with little support form the rest of americans.

If global warming is a real issue, is ''buying an EV'' or ''taking the bus'' an acceptable solution to you? Sincelrely, is it at the height of the problem? Shouldn't you have more - say - radical, views?

Doing something is objectively better than actively making the problem worse while pretending you have no responsibility.

Calling for other people to do things you yourself won't do (how many acts of ecoterrorism have you done lately?) isn't really helping, it's the same self-serving logic I was complaining about.

My actions are my own - and ad hominems aren't all that fruitful in conversation I believe.

Funny you went to ecoterrorism - I wouldn't have called what Native Americans were doing eco terrorism - they were defending their way of life.

There are many things you can do that are more impactful than taking the bus and that aren't blowing up pipelines - chatting with representatives, working with journalists to help undercover situations, working with activists you support the actions and reasoning of....see what I mean?

I think your logic is self serving - if everyone thinks like you, are things going to change? Because they sure don't seem like they will. But you feel comfortable in your daily life.

(And to add - objectively better can be right even if the ''positive value'' is imperceptible. Are you doing actual efforts to solve the issue or just enough to not feel like it's your responsibility?)

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

- somebody

Gandhi I think

I looked it up. Actually it was by someone I’ve never heard of, but Ghandi said something similar (just way more long-winded).

Ghandi also started a massive political movement so I think he did a lot of doing in between his being.

Just so we're clear, realistically "everyone gave up air travel" means the government shutting down airlines, not people voluntarily not buying plane tickets. I would vote in favor of massively limiting airline travel across the board, but until that happens I'm not going to make my life worse for absolutely no benefit.

I wonder why people down vote this

Edit: it looks like the ratio has shifted now

Because preventing climate change is a collective action problem, and the comment suggests a solution that would require every individual to spontaneously make the right decision.

Maybe they're in Nebraska.

I would rather humanity have a bloody war that wipes out 90% of us than live the miserable life you have described.

My life does not fit within walking distance of a 110m2 box.

That's weird. I grew up in a big house and my parents had plenty of cars, meat and travel, but I wasn't particularly happy. I'm happier now in my small apartment. I don't really understand how a big house will make you happy. Really, doing electronics is more fun in a hacker space than at home, and you can always go to a park.

That's nice that a very spartan lifestyle is good for you.

The house doesn't make me happy.

Not hearing my neighbors music blasting through the floor at 2am makes me happy.

Not hearing my neighbors screaming at each other every day makes me happy

Being able to paint my walls any color I want makes me happy.

Having a plot of land I can dig up and plant stuff on or build a workshop on makes me happy.

Having a place that is my own that I can do basically anything I want with makes me happy.

Renting apartments is shit. Even condos, which you own on paper but cannot just do whatever you like with, sucks.

Hacker spaces don't exist everywhere by the way, and the ones I have been to sucked.

Aha, sorry for my mistake. I didn't mean "apartment" to mean that you have to rent.

Funny enough, owning the apartment doesn't actually fix all of the other problems of living in an apartment.

I don't want every facet of my life outside of my home to be public and shared. I want a private yard, not a communal park and garden. I want a private shop, not a public maker space. I want peace and quiet and a bit of distance from my neighbors, not shared walls.

Because I've lived the apartment life and it honestly did make me want to kill myself. I don't know how people just live like that.

Stop and think about that for just a second...

(As an aside, it seems a lot of people unwittingly are making this choice which I find both curious and very depressing)

You would rather accept a 90% chance of death for yourself and everyone you love, than live in a small apartment?

Not even a small apartment, I share a ~110 sq m apartment now (with a sizable chunk wasted for stairs) and it's more than enough.

Do you, like most I've encountered who hold similar views, see this position as a testament to your courage and resilience?

No, I am fully aware I'd most likely be in the 90% that died and if I did live I probably wouldn't enjoy life much after because it would be incredibly hard.

I am expressing that I would rather die than live in the miserable, joyless sounding purgatory that was described.

Doesn't that suggest that India should go to war with the world? I'm pretty sure that 110m2 is pretty luxurious for most people on earth.

A lot of people care but can't make a huge impact. A few people could make a huge impact but don't care (or worse, want to worsen things for short-term profits).

There are essentially three not entirely disjoint options. 1) Sacrifice yourself for the good of the whole. 2) Take advantage of those who sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole. 3) Nobody sacrifices and it's thunderdome time and the losers starve.

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate...

The 1970s are long gone.

30 years? Somebody is optimistic. I give it 20 years tops, given the state of the oceans.

I was trying to be conservative, but given the rate of coral bleaching and mass die offs happening on the world's coral reefs, I'm afraid you might be right.

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