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Comment by cautiouscat | Hacker News Reader

I recognize this is deeply cynical and definitely doomerist. What can I as an individual actually do to stop this? Why should I even bother reading articles like this at this point? I can't do anything. I can't action it. I can collect my recycling, pop solar panels on my roof and be the most carbon footprint conscious person and it wouldn't move the needle an atom's width.

Politicians don't care, and the ones that do can't make a difference either. Corporations definitely don't care. I can go protest, and that gets a lot of media attention but it doesn't change a voter's mind when their main concern is who gets to play in school sports.

I know this is vitriolic, but I am genuinely curious about it. What can I do? What can I do outside of putting my ballot in the box and hoping something changes?

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> What can I as an individual actually do to stop this?

Short of becoming the Luigi of the environmental movement, there is nothing an individual can do. You have to take part in some kind of ongoing collective action. This can include joining a campaign against the oil and gas industry, going door to door for candidates who will reverse climate change, or engaging in direct action against environmentally destructive projects -- or even all three at the same time.

Trying to go it alone is pointless. At best, you'll go down a rabbit hole of becoming the most virtuous consumer alive. At worst, you'll be spend all your time mad-posting on social media.

What did Luigi accomplish? If nothing, then why the comparison?

There’s an interesting study to be made on whether there was a reduction in insurance claim rejections in the aftermath, and what the morbidity/mortality impact was.

We know now that it changed nothing other than ruining two families’ lives forever.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/04/health/insurers-prior-authori...

Your both admitting you have no evidence and implying there is evidence woolly it were studied properly given your use of “interesting”

Of course, such a study could be entirely uninteresting if it turn up no effect at all

Because the commenter wanted to call for violence in a clever way that wouldn’t end up being reported and removed.

Nonsense. This is defeatist talk. This is the logic folks use when they make dozens of small actions that add up, like buying more plastic cuz "it doesn't matter". The honest truth is people who use this logic have made the decision and just don't want to say, "I don't care." Small actions make big differences at scale.

8 billion people all making hundreds of decisions a day make a difference.

Once an individual starts to make those decisions they have a sunk cost, which encourages more action. This leads to voting a certain way, making more sacrifice(giving up excess), encouraging others, etc.

This whole "I'm a victim and have no recourse" benefits the bad actors.

Capitalism has filled our society and expectations with extreme excess. Modern folks eat diets that are insanely luxurious. Giving up our excess is the crux here, and capitalism tries damn hard to give us reasons to justify every little excess. Then those things are accepted and the baseline shifts down, capitalism then gives us more excuses and the baseline drops again.

I was watching an old movie from like 1985 the other day. A character in the movie was a horrible person and part of making that character a horrible seeming person was giving her a small dog as a pet, because it added to her aura of extreme excess. It made me and my friends laugh cuz nowadays that's expected of most people, to have a small dog. The character only had one! Nowadays it's normal to have 2 or 4 small dogs. Lol. Did you know cats/dogs in the US consume more meat than the entire nation of france? Good luck getting anyone to forego their emotional support pets nowadays. The baseline drops.

Capitalism enables too much material wealth. Astounding.

It’s not a novel take, in some ways capitalism trades comfort for externalities. Now that we have to pay for centuries of externalities, nobody wants to give back an ounce of comfort.

It's that old dichotomy between capitalism and the alternate system, people being very well behaved.

Luigi accomplished nothing but folk hero status, United Healthcare premiums increased by double-digit percentages this year. Change requires a pattern not a moment.

I didn’t know the Luigi reference. Google has led me to either Luigi Galleani or Luigi Mangione, as strangely similar options from different eras.

Political participation -- voting, organising for the groups you support, actively engaging in meetings and public forums, building social groups of like-minded individuals. It is hugely effective. The worst doomerism is the idea that politics is ineffective. It is incredibly effective, and only the people that participate in it have any effect on it.

There are more types of politics that national and international. Local, state/provincal, city, etc. The close it is to home the more you'll see the effects, and the more power you'll have. But accepting the supine position of "well I can't do anything" only guarantees your powerlessness. Fight for the future you want! Convince 5 people that something is important, and you're already 500% up. It scales like crazy.

Downvote me all you want, naysayers. If politics didn't work, then the people you don't like wouldn't be in power.

I would expect people I don't like in power. They should represent more than just me, and most of the population has quite some different opinions.

I would just hope most people don't like them either and they look for the "next one". Otherwise you transform politicians in a cult...

I totally get you and in theory you are right.

And yet, in the USA you have gerrymandering and apparently _wanted_ Trump.

Twice.

Something has to be very wrong somewhere.

If you didn't use so many negatives in your sentence, then I may not have misunderstood what you didn't not intend to say.

If you don't express your comment in logic notation, I will not understand it. Though you might be right.

Three quarters of the world live in autocracies, and another 19% outside liberal democracies.

That will require adapted tactics. I'm not very qualified to speak on how to convince people in leadership positions there. How do you convince Erdogan, Modi, Putin, Trump, Xi, the North Korean dynasty and others?

On the topic of climate change, off the top of my head, these countries don't have a per capita carbon footprint as large as the US, and the significant ones are I suppose India and China, and China seems open to dialogue on the topic, and is even leading in renewable energy.

Just a thought, which at T+36 min hasn't been mentioned yet.

Many systems are chaotic. At particular points in state space, a very small delta can result in very different subsequent trajectories.

Viral influence being one example. I'm reminded of Tamim Ansary's email[1] to 20 odd friends after 9-11, that went massively viral ("We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. [...]").

Also, some moments of teaching can change lives. And in everyday life, sometimes recognized and sometimes not, things done and not done can have big impacts on people. Ripples.

It is said of serendipity and opportunity, that you can't control them, but you can shut yourself off from them. And thus advice to live in a way that leaves yourself open to them, and to cultivate the awareness and skills to recognize and execute when they go by.

One can't know when one is a potential part of a state space fork. But might one make throwing spaghetti at the wall part of one's life? An occasional hobby? Support spaghetti throwing? Or potluck spaghetti throwing communities? Or pasta R&D or manufacture? Trebuchets?

Perhaps a category of "Things worth doing all the time, which are far from being worth doing every time, but are still worth doing each time." Or Chesterton’s "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."

[1] https://cmsw.mit.edu/reconstructions/expressions/tamim.html

An contrasting addendum: Most causal chains^H roots are deep and hairy, and most roles are supporting roles, rather than a principal with clear story impact. That friend who forwarded Ansary's email onward.

So maybe your question prompts some response here, which the author or someone then improves upon when this topic rolls around again, which someday affects a list Claude generates when someone asks it to aggregate "What can I do?" ideas from the web, which ... who knows? But better the question was asked than not. And better the responses are novel and insightful and compelling, than not. And better our discussion here refines those ideas, than not. No?

"Better", in some hopeful but poorly-instrumented fuzzy-metric sense. Which is a difficulty. Whether it's worth the opportunity cost of however else you might be spending your time this evening... perhaps better this topic/thread, than at least some others?

> I can collect my recycling, pop solar panels on my roof and be the most carbon footprint conscious person and it wouldn't move the needle an atom's width.

The more people who do that, the faster the needle moves. You create economic incentives for businesses to cater to you, and you set an example for others to follow.

That's why I only buy electric cars, put solar on my roof, and heat with a heat pump. A few years later, my parents put in a heat pump, and an extended family member (who is a denier) also put in a heat pump.

> What can I as an individual actually do to stop this?

You've never been responsible for the entire world, that's a defeatist fiction put on your shoulders by people who want you to give up and not take responsibility for your actions.

Take some real time to think about your own actions, your share of the blame. Then begin the process of improving your actions. As a handy benefit, you'll begin saving money, and you can reinvest the savings into more projects that also save money. Eventually your carbon footprint will be a small fraction of what it was and in its place you'll have a pile of money.

Focus on the missing prerequisites that are critical for any viable solution. It doesn't matter what anyone does if we literally lack the technical infrastructure required to make a meaningful difference. The first step is making it at least possible.

For example, halting the increase in atmospheric CO2, never mind reversing it, requires an astronomical amount of new clean energy far beyond what we produce today from all sources, clean or dirty. If we were serious about this we'd be building countless terawatts of new carbon-free electrical production as fast as possible instead of letting NIMBYs and activists bury these for decades in lawsuits and paperwork.

The infrastructure modernization that needs to happen will be economically impossible as long as it primarily exists as a mechanism for corruption, graft, and rent-seeking e.g. California's high-speed rail. Even if we had the political will, we literally couldn't afford it unless it became radically more efficient. Letting political constituencies hijack every building project so they can smuggle in unrelated agendas is something that is fundamentally at odds with addressing climate change in a serious way. That's a choice.

If we don't solve these two problems then anything else we do as individuals won't matter. Being able to address climate change in a meaningful way is downstream of these two challenges.

Even without the possibility of solving the problem, individuals can still choose to stop contributing to it. You might feel better about the whole thing at the very least. As an added bonus, the more people that choose to stop contributing, the easier it becomes for others to do the same (e.g. less driving --> more cyclists and pedestrians --> better cycling and pedestrian environment).

I think "how to stop this" is the wrong objective. It's like "what I can do to achieve world peace tomorrow?". There is no answer to that. Yes, people promise to solve wars "in a day" but that does not work.

Depending on your situations different actions will have a different impact.

I do try to choose what I can to help. I am not obsessed with "the impact". If I buy a train ticket instead of a plane ticket - that can mean trains get more money. If I keep my phone for one more year, less waste is produced.

Would I help with the situation if I would buy a car consuming lots of gas, take international trips every years etc. (I could afford it, that's not the issue) ? I think not.

Can I say that my actions significantly influence the outcome? Definitely not, but we are 8 billions on this planet, so it all depends on averages. But if I don't do it (I am convinced there is an issue), how could I expect others to have my position...

You're right.

"What I can do to achieve world peace today"

As a first step, what do you want? Would you rather live your life in peace, bettering the controllable world around you? Or would you rather live your life in stress and action and possibly fixing the problem?

I chose one of those for myself and can't blame anyone for choosing differently. They're both valid.

No, I feel the same—my mind has gone down the same paths as yours and found no substantive answers.

Instead, I have tried to relax and to enjoy the company I am going down the slide with.

To quote Vonnegut, “There's only one rule that I know of, babies—‘God damn it, you've got to be kind.ʼ”

We can still do that.

I guess you people can post publicly suggesting we improve things. If everyone did that there would be consensus to make changes.

On a personal level I also plan to get aircon which may not help the planet but may help me.

People got together and got us all to stop smoking cigarettes against the same kind of opposition. Probably individuals can get together, help educate others which will eventually drive changes through voting or force businesses to change

There is nothing you can do as an individual, unfortunately. You can reduce your own impact, that’s something that personally makes me feel better and I would highly recommend (vegetarianism is the simplest way to do so). And if you’re motivated you can join advocacy or activist groups. But it’s a collective issue, individual have no actual power here. We need to act as a group to make meaningful changes.

Though, obviously do not vote for the pro fossil fuel parties (which is pretty much all right wing parties in the west)

So you can prepare for what is to come.

Volunteer with a group trying to do something to improve the situation. There are plenty.

You can sit back and cook to death like the rest of us.

There's very little to do in Europe. South Korea, Iran, Thailand, Egypt or South Africa e.g. put out significantly more CO2 than say the UK or France (which are towards the top). India and China are higher than the whole EU and are only continuing to pollute more as their standards of living improve. Essentially the only way to stop it is to keep the 3rd world impoverished (in Africa, people often argue that green energy is a Western conspiracy to keep them down). Western economies have already largely stagnated and most of Europe's pollution's fallen to lower per capita than China, let alone South Korea or Russia or... Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and such.

Pro-nuclear efforts are the best hope we have: generate enough electricity and we can scrape the atmosphere clean

Their emissions are generally higher because they produce the goods other nations buy.

This entire mentality of "but them" is bad.

The mentality of "it's our fault because they emit to sell to us" is bad. Who is in control of what they do?

> There's very little to do in Europe.

Plenty to do. We don’t have oil or natural gas so relying on fossil fuel to power our economy is stupid.

Europe does have oil and gas (Russia, Norway). But your overall point stands

Technically true but kind of irrelevant in practice when we’re in a lukewarm war with Russia.

It's hard to accept, but there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

I know what definitely won't work: Luigi Mangione style action. That will only set people up against one another.

Here's two stories that might inspire:

- I've seen a desperate, fragile grandfather seriously contemplate peaceful Gandhi style sit-ins targeting fossil fuel infrastructure, "so my grandchildren would know I at least tried".

- I've seen a couple radically cut their consumption of about everything. "Taking good care of the earth is a tenet of our religious views. We're realistic enough to realise our efforts won't help anyone directly, but perhaps it might inspire others."

Getting more noses worldwide pointing in the same direction could perhaps make a sliver of difference. The tricky bit will be getting specific groups on board. I can think of a few challenging ones:

- the downtrodden struggling for survival as it is already. They have other priorities, like food on the table.

- those outside liberal democracies (93% of the world!) in a position to bring change. They have to count with sociopaths with little accountability in charge.

- those that won't make a noise because historical experience has taught them to shut up.

- those with too little education/intelligence/eagerness to understand. They will require simple stories and example behaviour/idols/heroes to copy.

Nature's alarm signals itself will induce some fear. That will be the best publicity for change.

Nothing

Stop trying to imagine yourself as the hero saving the day all by yourself. It is a fantasy. And learn about the paradox of voting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_voting

You can totally be the hero and make an outsized impact on climate change.

You'll just end up in supermax for the rest of your life. Pros and cons I suppose.

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