Hacker News Reader

Comment by dansmith1919 | Hacker News Reader

dansmith1919

That was my main takeaway as well. How do you do this without any shame? My man is emitting an amount of CO2 on par with an small African country

View on HN

Most people don't spend a lot of time wistfully considering their CO2 usage, myself included. The religious zeal by which people feel the need to tell me about the ever-warming planet is honestly more off-putting than most actual religions.

Of the very few "f*cks" I can give in my life, I prefer to spend mine as I choose rather than being scolded for not giving mine to the pressing issues that others deem important.

The thing is that everyone alive today and in the future is footing the bill for that indifference. It's nice that you don't care, but it's not something I'd brag about.

I too don't want to be a martyr hermit who don't travel and consume just to cur my CO2 emissions in half, while someone else generates 10x of that living a full life. That's just dumb, and I consider this whole movement rich people telling poor people that they should be considerate and sacrifice themselves.

If you truly care about the planet, don't have children.

It's an "all hands on deck" situation, yet everyone seems to think that someone else has to do something. You don't need to be a martyr, just to make an effort.

At the very least don't brag about not giving a crap.

I don't give a crap, in the most boastful way possible. Sorry if my zealotry isn't your zealotry.

Thank you for destroying the Earth!

Thank God I'm a single human and don't have nearly that much influence over the Earth.

"No individual rain drop ever considers itself responsible for the flood."

> If you truly care about the planet, don't have children.

That's a fallacy; people care about the planet precisely because of children. I don't care about the planet for its own sake; I care because of the humans who inhabit it and their future lives.

Also, humanity spent 100,000 years without flying around the globe, and I doubt they were all living hermit martyr lives.

Is the OP flying a private jet or something? Unless he is, it's a useless metric. The people flying private are responsible for a 1000x a regular persons emissions. It's offensive to suggest regular salaried people are supposed to be "doing something" in this CO2 effort.

It's true that a single private jet is causing tons of CO2 emissions. But in the end, all consumers control the market. You can jump one link further in the chain to regions with much lower emissions. Somalia/Congo emit over 200x less CO2 per capita in comparison to the US. Do you think that's fair for them if the "regular salaried people" don't care? If responsibility always gets dismissed by pointing to someone emitting more, nothing changes.

I don't feel it's properly engaging in good faith to say that I don't care. I don't specifically care, in the "feeling shame" sense that the GP had mentioned. As I pointed out, we all have a limited number of things we can realistically care about.

The fact that I happen to care about other things more than this specific flavor of global catastrophe is morally OK.

The way I see it, "from each according to their ability" is the right approach here. If you can afford 30% less flying, red meat etc, then it's your duty to do it. You don't need to make your cat go vegan; just... do what you can, even if imperfectly.

Shame is not necessary, but callous indifference is not acceptable. There is a middle ground where you treat it like a habit to improve, like a step count.

And this is it. This is why we are where we are today. That it is seen as taking a religious zeal to realize how flying very frequently is disastrous for the climate. That's our bar and what we have to work with. Yes, we are properly fucked.

I refuse to worsen my life for an absolutely minuscule abstract benefit to someone, eventually, maybe. I am going to continue eating meat and flying when I want to, and I don't feel the least bit bad about it. It's unfortunate that climate change is happening, but my personal actions are not meaningfully contributing. My choices do not have cascading effects on others; whatever I do, the climate will change in the same manner as it otherwise would have. In that light, I am not going to reduce my QOL just to feel self righteous for no actual benefit to anyone.

You may wonder how this is consistent with my propensity to recycle and follow traffic laws and not do crimes and other socially beneficial minor things to which a comparison could be made to CO2 output: because those all have a greater benefit:cost ratio than flying and eating meat, by far. I am including the benefits of living in a high-trust society in that analysis.

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."

Instead we're razing the forests and bragging about our indifference.

Me planting a tree results in a tree existing for progeny. Me skipping a flight results in absolutely no difference for progeny. I pick my battles. I also plant a lot of trees, literally.

I would totally do this without any shame if I had the need/desire. CO2 isn't going to be solved by well intentioned individuals making absolutely no impact. It will be a generic solution that solves it for everyone, or it won't be solved at all.

I'm also not going to take shorter showers when people are farming in a desert and shipping the crops to China.

You might think this makes me a terrible person. That's probably good. Because it will help people understand what we're up against and what needs to happen to actually solve the problem.

"Take less flights" isn't the solution.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com