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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

Individually you can't do anything. You can drive an EV, set your AC to 78, or whatever makes you feel good but only national governments can make the regulatory changes that will really have an impact.

I even roll my eyes at my city council spending even one second on climate change policy (and they have spent whole meetings on it). Our city of 80,000 people could disappear from the face of the planet and it would not make a bit of difference.

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Working at the level of 80,000 people is a lot more effective than working at the level of an individual.

Working on your own carbon footprint is a $100M marketing trick played on you by oil companies like BP.

Leah Stokes' new book offers instead a "carbon wave" -- how to evaluate and maximize your impact at a local, state, national, and global level. Here's a LinkedIn post. She's got a new book coming out about this: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7496265286...

You can vote

Entirely depends on your district. There are many districts where it doesn't matter, especially with gerrymandering.

Better to volunteer for a swing district. You can write letters or fundraise from home, anywhere in the country.

It's absolutely worth voting even in a "safe" district because political mandates are won separately from political power itself.

You should also volunteer for a swing district though! Very good idea.

Yes you can but you'll have to vote against your immediate self interest and comfort. The sort of changes that will have an impact on the climate will mean giving up a lot of what makes modern life convenient and comfortable.

I think there are gradients to this

It would be hard for me to vote against indoor plumbing if that was needed to save the planet

I would vote against "Same Day Delivery" in a heartbeat though, if it helped

Not to mention there are plenty of environmental improvements that are vast and near-term quality of life improvements. The only penalty on many of these things is financial, but even that is only in the near-term, and in the medium to long term become financial wins.

Best the corresponding parties can do is banning plastic straws (no impact but feels great) and massive bureaucratic hurdles for air conditioning in private homes (because it's an "unnecessary luxury" and if your apartment is unbearably hot during a heat wave where the temperature doesn't drop below 25 even at night, you're just not correctly using shades and windows).

Not really. We've made significant enough progress on this issue to prove that policy-driven progress is in fact possible.

This type of cynicism is both unwarranted and unhelpful.

These changes were often not driven by the "green" parties though.

This is far too complex a conversation to have at the level of abstraction you're trying to have it.

Just say what you're trying to say. I don't know what "green parties" refers to across the entire globe of climate efforts, but quite obviously yes, most of the positive climate policies have been pushed by people who care about the climate.

Just as obvious, most of those policies were not successfully enacted by the fringiest and most extreme versions of pro-climate people.

Thermodynamics; your convenience and comfort (CnC) are merely externalized on others not eliminated; someone else makes your stuff, deals with the environmental toll in the future.

Happy to sacrifice some of your CnC to ease obligations on those you give no assurances to.

Changes can be phased in. For example that's why places phasing out ICE cars are generally doing it by phasing out new ICE sales over many years and letting any cars already on the road when new sales stop stay on the road, and are concurrently building public charging infrastructure.

Not that much of a difference for the average or lower classes of people that outnumber the rich by quite a lot. It would have a great and positive impact for them.

No, the rich will be able to pay the carbon taxes easily, the average folks will suffer under them.

Carbon taxes can be implemented such that average folks benefit from them, e.g. by paying everyone back the average tax amount. Wealth generally correlates with carbon emissions, so wealthy people would pay more than they get back. This would greatly incentivize less emissions-intensive products and services.

Unfortunately there's no way the rich would ever let this go through.

> Wealth generally correlates with carbon emissions

That may be true but there aren't enough wealthy people to just attack their consumption. In aggregate, regular people use a lot more energy. There's no way out of this that is going to be popular.

> That may be true but there aren't enough wealthy people to just attack their consumption.

Not sure I understand, the goal isn't to attack anyone's consumption? The whole idea is to stop costs from being externalized. The concept doesn't require wealthy people to make sense, but existing wealth disparity makes it even more attractive for regular people.

> In aggregate, regular people use a lot more energy.

Why would the aggregate matter? Individually, regular people use waaaay less energy than the upper class. That means these regular people would, on average, come out slightly positive. And the "cleaner" someone's lifestyle is, the better this scheme would leave them (which poor people necessarily tend towards, since they cannot afford spending much on consumption).

Both parties in the United States are pretty much turning a blind eye to climate change. What we need to do is start boycotting parties, telling them we won’t vote for them unless they have really strong climate platforms. We need to make them want our vote.

This is some “both sides” absolute bullshit. The Biden administration passed the IRA, huge incentives for personal and commercial renewable energy production, EVs, all kinds of things.

Trump is paying people to burn more coal, blocking solar, canceling wind.

Could the dems have done more, sure. Are those programs perfect, absolutely not. But one party is moving in the right direction and the other is actively trying to accelerate climate change. Gtfo with that both sides crap.

100%. Would have gone even harder if some moderates didn’t gunk up the works too.

The both sides bit is jaw droppingly ignorant if you pay attention to regional and national politics.

They are both not doing enough. Yes, the Republicans and Trump are much worse, I was not saying they were same at all. But what needs to happen is far from anything the Biden administration has done or proposed. IF you think what Biden has done was good enough then you do not understand what is happening with the climate right now. Yes I will vote for a Democrat over a Republican, but I am not expecting change to come from them, it needs to come from us. The Democrats get money from the same corporations.

Imagine thinking that politicians give literally even one single fuck about non-voters' opinions lmao

Did you see what happened to Harris in Michigan when people protested and did not support her?

https://www.wcmu.org/local-regional-news/2025-01-16/michigan...

Well, this is what she said after the race was over:

Harris labels Biden Gaza response ‘inadequate’: ‘I … pleaded with Joe’ https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5517261-kamala-h...

You have to make them want your vote.

Not sure what argument you're trying to make here.

A small town's policy can influence larger city policy, which can influence national policy.

> I even roll my eyes at my city council spending even one second on climate change policy

Every meeting minute spent on discussing climate change is another minute not spent on authorizing things like Flock or permitting data centers. That's nothing to roll your eyes about

well obviously YOU couldn't. you seem to lack the willpower to sacrifice a single convenience in favor of the rest of us, per your confession below.

that's the difference between you and the public servants that you roll your eyes at.

“Everyone wants the village, nobody wants to be the villager.” Maybe look into changing what you want.

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