What You Can Do About Climate Change

Re:What You Can Do About Climate Change by mnm1 on Sunday March 26, 2017 @04:40PM (#13963141)

I don't know anyone that wants to live 25 miles from work. But almost everyone I know cannot afford to live closer and wants to. I'd love to live in the city. Too bad it's completely unaffordable, even at 3x the median income. This particular solution you have provided is also a solution only the upper class can employ, just like the one in the article. Wind turbines and nuclear reactors: now we're finally getting somewhere. And to build those, you need politicians that are willing to propose and fund them. I'm all for wearing sweaters indoors and only buying phones when the planned obsolescence of modern software makes them unusable (3-5 yrs), but that's an insignificant drop in the bucket. You will never get enough people to adopt such actions without legislation.

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Re:What You Can Do About Climate Change by exergy on Sunday March 26, 2017 @04:54PM (#13963231)

I disagree that this is an avenue open only to the upper class [1]. Not everyone can do everything, sure (if you're working two jobs, for example, the climate can rightly go fuck itself) but a lot of people can do a lot more.

I also disagree that they are insignificant drops in the bucket. The point I'm trying to make is that "culture" is infuriatingly hand-wavy and difficult to quantify, but it matters. As an example, I live in Geneva. Here, all shops close at 7 PM. This means that there less commercial activity past those hours, fewer people mindlessly roaming around in malls etc. Now, surely there are regulations guiding this too, but any government official wanting to undo this because "muh freedom", will be laughed out of the room because there is a culture here that treats this as deeply important.

[1]: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/04/06/frugal_living_in_m...

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Re:What You Can Do About Climate Change by mnm1 on Sunday March 26, 2017 @05:08PM (#13963307)

Great. Give me a 2bdm/2ba apt in Manhattan for less than $1700 and I'll give up my car completely too. You're just proving my point for me.

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Re:What You Can Do About Climate Change by Decade on Monday March 27, 2017 @01:13AM (#13965338)

That over $1700 price is a negative externality of home-as-investment culture and racist downzoning. There is no natural law that says the 2 bed/2 bath apartment has to be so expensive.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/realestate/sure-build-it-...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/upshot/popping-the-housin...

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Re:What You Can Do About Climate Change by ThomPete on Monday March 27, 2017 @07:00AM (#13966626)

Supply and demand does if the jobs are also mostly in the big cities

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Re:What You Can Do About Climate Change by lancewiggs on Monday March 27, 2017 @12:22AM (#13965158)

What about Brooklyn or somewhere else commutable by PT or cycle? Do you really need two bedrooms - and two bathrooms? What space can you really live in?

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Re:What You Can Do About Climate Change by ThomPete on Sunday March 26, 2017 @04:55PM (#13963239)

none of that have any effect on climate change what so ever. you need to effect the industry to have any impact and thats not going to happen enough to have any effect.

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Re:What You Can Do About Climate Change by macawfish on Sunday March 26, 2017 @07:14PM (#13963911)

I downvoted this comment. Why? Not because I think you're a bad person or something. Contrary, I think it's fucking awesome that we are on here having this conversation, and I think it's very important. Props on that. That wasn't why I downvoted it. The downvote was a way for me to say "I don't have energy right now to go back and forth like this, maybe if I press this button this person will take a step back and think about their attitude as a whole."

Okay, now I've eaten dinner and had some coffee. So what was my gripe with your comment?

1) It makes a strong, absolute claim with no evidence. Have you studied nonlinear systems? Even informally? We're dealing with hugely non-linear systems. Little things can compound into tumultuous waves. Look at the way viral memes spread. Culture changes in tumultuous waves. One generation might be hopelessly lost, while the next one comes in with unbelievable clarity, saying "that's just obvious."

2) It's implicitly discouraging of other peoples' perspectives and wisdoms. Imagine some great singer had let their irritable aunt or uncle's mean comments get to them when they were little and couldn't quite keep a pitch. We are learning, and there are without a doubt many, many ways to approach and tackle this. If anything, tackling something so ominously looming is going to take some serious imagination, vision and hope. You might not be hateful, but one doesn't need to be hateful or malicious to be discouraging or to play the part of hater.

3) Culture has, can, does, and will affect industry. Maybe not overnight, but they are inevitably interdependent. We have the power to engage with norms and at the very least set examples. We have the power to abstain, to moderate, to make demands, to dream, to actualize, on short and long term scales. In another comment, you pointed out that people are not systems, they are human beings. To me, that's actually a strength. It makes this struggle messier, but to me it's also an asset. It means that we have the ability to undergo rebirth in imagination and culture, which in the long haul makes us resilient and adaptable.

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Re:What You Can Do About Climate Change by ThomPete on Sunday March 26, 2017 @10:24PM (#13964671)

So basically even though you cant back your own claims up with any substantial evidence you decided to downvote me because you dont like what i said. The irony.

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