It’s at the point where I wish it were solvable, but I don’t believe it is, so I can’t afford to think about it. Maybe people better than me can, and good luck to them.
The big, meaningful wins come from things like stopping the use of coal, not signing-off on new oil and gas exploration, tax-incentives and disincentives, grid work, fining polluters.
We instinctively frame this as an individual problem, the cynic might say we've been encouraged to, but the reality is that whether or not you fly this summer has precisely dick-all impact globally. It's the actions of our governments that count.
And those boats make a lot less of an impact than all those trucks driving everything across land.
Wise choices are needed.
Our buying habits empowered the type of company that wants to put AI into everything. Whether they continue to do so or not will also depend on our buying habits going forward.
It is all about individual action. And then the emergence from that to what amounts to the multi-pronged solutions that are needed to address a wicked problem. Like create the "big meaningful wins" you mention. There is no mailbox where you drop off "stop the use of coal", and it happens, neither is there a magic button. A complicating factor is that we are not able to see how our small individual actions contribute to solving the wicked problems, and we are not able to coordinate them at scale.
You and all your friends could install solar and batteries and drive EVs and all the energy consumption for your house, cooking, and travel could be totally green and renewable. That's great! But in the US in 2025, 63% of energy consumption is commercial+industrial [1].
National policies need to be set to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation through clean alternatives, subsidies, regulation, and probably treaties. If you can make green cheaper and/or a better product functionally, you don't have to convince people.
[1] <https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-electricity.php>
[2] <https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions>
[3] <https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/deforestation-rates-by-country>You can keep telling people to avoid flying and live a life of low carbon footprint, but if the issue is much more systematic, economical and technological, it will just become a distraction and make people dislike you (and the cause).
Most people dont know covid hasnt disappeared. It keeps evolving and there are strains out there still causing issues. But thanks to the attention economy dynamics, all sorts of random people were acting like they were virologists, epidemiologists, microbiologists at its peak. They have all disappeared ie shifted focus to whatever else. Meanwhile the ecosystem and infra dedicated to keep track of this stuff chuggs along keeping the lights on. All am saying is there is no reason to keep everyone in a freaked out state.
Owning an unnecessary carnivorous animal is rather bad news from a CO2 perspective. A dog can be responsible for higher CO2 emissions than a car.
https://impact.ed.ac.uk/research/climate-environmental-crisi...
https://www.zerosmart.co.uk/post/the-average-carbon-footprin...
(Que outrage from pet owners and people suggesting I'm a crazy vegan.... I'm most certainly not vegan or veggie!)
- Most kibble's ingredients are not naturals
- Most of the kibble's flesh comes from a non-natural production
- Your pet health (and your own health) require some "nutrients" instead of "food types"
PS: price-wise they tends to be in the premium range. If your cat already has allergies and special kibbles for that, vegan kibbles are in the same price range and are particularly good for that condition.
> If you have data that supports this assertion, show it.
Aside personal anecdotic evidences of cats thriving after +10 years of vegetal feed, here's some:
> Considering these results overall, cats fed vegan diets tended to be healthier than cats fed meat-based diets. This trend was clear and consistent. These results largely concur with previous, similar studies
> In most cases differences between dietary groups were not statistically significant
[2023, 127 cats in the vegetal group] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourn...
I admit that's not much, but If you think about it there's no reason a carnivore may not live healthy if provided the right nutrients, whatever the sources. Those nutrients are already well studied -especially for one of the two most common pet- and generously added in kibble because the base is often poorly balanced.
No, just stop having pets.
I don't think you're a crazy vegan, and I'm not outraged. But your proposal is ridicules.
1 - https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...
2 - https://influencemap.org/briefing/Carbon-Majors-2024-Data- Update-35466
3 - https://www.theenergymix.com/17-of-worlds-20-biggest-carbon-...
4 - https://www.rinnovabili.net/environment/pollution/world-co2-...
Political change is needed to achieve any of this. Changing your individual behavior or even the individual behavior of everyone you know – while certainly not wrong! – won’t solve this.
This is like trying to abolish slavery in 19th century US by not owning slaves and trying your very best to not buy anything that involves slave labor … laudable, but not a way to abolish slavery.
The interaction between individual behavior changes and political changes is interesting and to my mind where lots of interesting stuff happens. I’m not 100% convinced that politics is always downstream from culture and culture is downstream from individual behavior changes but I do agree that there is an interesting interaction happening that’s worth looking at and addressing.
The abolitionist in isolation certainly will not be able to abolish slavery, however their individual behavior might contribute to an atmosphere where slavery is ostracized and seen as more obviously evil by more people, thus making it easier for politicians to make political decisions that ultimately lead to the abolition of slavery.
I think that is why it is always so important for me to point out that it is certainly never wrong to individually behave in a way the limits your own individual contribution to climate change. I mostly have a problem when that‘s the end or even the main focus of it. Climate protection to my mind is most effective when it is tightly coupled to clear political demands. Too often individual behavior changes are used as action terminators. My impression is that individual action is often presented (as here) as a complete solution to climate change when it is anything but.