It seems like the software conference industry is one that could be a leader in creating "virtual tracks" for conferences. This would have the effect of reducing unnecessary airplane trips while also opening conferences up to larger audiences.
There is a group within academia that is promoting this approach: https://academicflyingblog.wordpress.com/
Their FAQ has a lot of really solid information, and some of the answers really resonated with me in terms of "Do I really need to physically be at this conference?" FAQ: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1URRRh4zMSpvtZY08F9-Rkbx0...
I wonder how much longer before the idea of limiting people's reproduction is on the table.
Someone who never has kids can probably drive a Hummer and spend every weekend jetting off somewhere, and their lifetime carbon footprint will still be many times lower than someone who has several children.
I understand that developed country carbon footprints are vastly higher than developing countries, but there are countries that are developing rapidly yet still have fertility rates of 4 or 5 children per woman. We can be pretty sure that those people aspire to having a western-style carbon footprint (and to be fair, why shouldn't they) either through migrating to a developed country or their own country developing.
When do we start saying that we need to limit the number of people who can exist? I don't see how it could ever be practically possible (outside of a regime like China, and even then it backfired horribly) but it if it could somehow be enforced it would probably be the best (and fairest) thing we could do.
Side note: for those of us who worry about this stuff, it can be hard to comprehend how little the average person cares about it. We have these TV shows in the UK which show people going through the process of buying a holiday home (British people are obsessed with houses/real estate to the point where watching other people buy a house is a recreational activity). The other day there was a family with 4 kids buying a holiday home in Florida. So they're planning to spend the rest of their lives jetting their whole (large) family across the Atlantic a few times a year. As someone who feels kinda guilty every time I fly, it just left me thinking that I'm wasting my mental energy on caring about this stuff when other people care so little.
As "native" developed country populations decline, I can see increasing tension as developing country populations continue to grow rapidly.
There's also the small problem that our accepted economic models seem to rely on perpetual growth.
What you're talking about is a global consensus to shrink the world population and economy. That isn't something I can personally take hold of. Despite the fact that I do live rather minimally - I don't kid myself that it's changing anything. I just like it that way.
I am often quite sceptical of the "science will save us" approach, but actually it seems more credible than the "change one person at a time" approach.
The system will change. It's already changing. The question is whether we design and follow the change or nature does it for us. The demise of the world's largest living structure is just the latest in decades of evidence. How much more do we need?
This community is so enthusiastic about going to Mars, universal basic income, and other challenges to current systems. Why so resistant to this change? So enthusiastic about entrepreneurship solving problems except this fundamental belief that economies must grow. Are we so tied to bacon, big houses, and regular trips to Paris? Humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years with cities of millions of people without planes, cars, and so on. We don't need them for happiness. Nor do we need to get rid of them. We can live a modern life with modern medicine, modern toys, the internet and so on, we just have to curb it a bit. Well, more than a bit.
> I am often quite sceptical of the "science will save us" approach, but actually it seems more credible than the "change one person at a time" approach.
Hence my point that changing my behavior improved my life and that I'm not special. Simplifying and reducing consumption from our culture's wastefulness isn't sacrifice. You don't have to keep believing it is.
Simplifying and reducing consumption can materially improve your life. Even if it didn't, why not take responsibility for how your actions affect others like you wish past generations did instead of killing the Great Barrier Reef? Why not decouple your happiness from burning fossil fuels and owning more stuff? You don't have to keep waiting for everyone else.
Frankly, the "challenge" of how to convince people to live as if most of the fruits of the industrial and technological revolutions never arrived is deeply unappealing. It's also nonsense on stilts: We don't get iPhones or specialized cancer cures without the consumer economy big enough to support demand for them.
Perpetual growth and protection of natural resources are inherently at odds with each other. Until the global economy fundamentally changes, things are only going to keep getting worse.
Utter nonsense (other than you not having kids, that's your choice).
Market forces will in fact solve the "problem" (to the extent it is one) of excess CO2 output. If it is finally determined that CO2 based warming is problematic, the solution will be advanced technology, including high-intensity energy sources like nuclear power. In the absolute worst case, orbital sunshades or other mitigations will be used to decrease insolation.
The laughable thing about this article is the idea that any amount of spending by the Australian government to "take decisive action on climate change" would help. If Australia completely stopped producing CO2, it would have no measurable effect on water temperatures around the Great Barrier Reef, especially since the argument is that current CO2 levels are causing the problem. Then there's the fact that Australia is a minor contributor to global CO2 emissions...
What's needed on "climate change" is a lot more rational thought, and a lot less hysteria.
1.) Believe a solution still exists
2.) Believe that Australia of all the small populations on Earth would somehow matter if such a solution existed (no offense Australia, you matter in general)
3.) Believe that "thought" matters at this point. You might as well be telling people marching to the gallows to cheer up, nothing good can come of being all depressed. You might be right, but at least stop pretending that it's going to change the actual outcome.
2) My comments about Australia addressed the generally fuzzy thinking on this topic.
3) Again, there is no reason to think that the outcome is definite at this point. Clearly, in the worst case, technology should provide a solution. If the gloomiest projections turn out to be incorrect, for which there is mounting evidence, no mitigation may be needed at all.
I gave the concrete example of orbital sunshades, which are absolutely feasible given current engineering techniques. Another possible CO2 mitigation are iron-induced ocean algae blooms. Many other approaches have been suggested including nuclear powered CO2 sequestration in the Antarctic. I'm sure that many other innovative, technology based mitigations will be proposed over time.
I hope that clears things up for you.
I did state that market forces are the solution, and the reason for that is cleaner and ultimately cheaper technologies are displacing combustible fuels - primarily solar, nuclear and wind. Coal is already being displaced by cheaper natural gas, and advances in CO2 free technologies will make them the least expensive of all in the end. Proponents of new modular nuclear reactor designs believe they'll generate electricity for 3 to 5 cents per KWH, for instance.
I continue to fly across the country for work because refusing only hurts my career and gives me a slight sense of smug superiority. Someone else on standby would just take my seat anyway and my refusal would have had no impact (other than a negligible reduction in revenue for the airline).
Instead I actually do something that might have an impact and I donate to organizations researching alternative energy or just straight up planting trees.
I would rather just have the price of carbon emissions priced into the airline tickets than stupidly trying to shame anyone who travels.
Don't be so quick to judge the members of your community, maybe consider a less accusing tone, I dunno. But you're pointing your finger at everyone and no one.
A lifetime of living on/underneath the poverty line and having guardians that couldn't keep a job or car or house of their own has helped shape my perspective on what constitutes as a "comfortable" life. I would like to travel more later in life but I will try to be as conservative as reasonably possible in my transportation methods.
I knew that a career in software/tech would allow me to live this way, but it's much more difficult to maintain this lifestyle in non-technical career paths. Couple that with forced societal and parental expectations to "get the car, get the job, get the house, get the girl" and incentivising propaganda, and it can be pretty tough to see any other option.
Poverty in America continues to rise and we may find the next generation to be much more environmentally conservative than us, not only because they weren't riding on a financial investment bubble like their grandparents but because they will expect to see the results of our environmental selfishness in their lifetimes.
But as for what we can do to educate Joe Schmoe, who is knee-deep in his mortgage and car and child support payments, who has a daughter in private school because the local school is terrible, who has no time in their work schedule to prepare their own meals, who takes an ocean liner cruise every two years because it's the only thing keeping them from killing themselves... well, I have no fucking clue. And that isn't good, because this is the average middle-class American. And we need the middle-class involved in environmental change because they have resources others do not and have greater capacity to adjust their consumption habits.
Telling Joe Schmoe about how we live conservative lives, and how he should be more like us is only going to make them more resilient to changing their minds.
It's got nothing, at all, to do with cars or flying. They're tiny pollutors compared to industry, specifically the dairy industry, transportation by truck and manufacturing things in China.
Sure we could fly less and drive less but that would do fuck all, and certainly having fewer kids isn't going to solve any problems. Having fewer kids in the west actually just means white people having fewer kids in the west, we're well below replacement rate and are being rapidly replaced by people coming from high birthrate countries like India.
The only thing that will actually solve the problem is sustained government intervention in trucking, dairy and industry, worldwide.
Most of us westerners have a pretty decent standard of living. Yet we blame industry for the environmental costs of our standard of living while simultaneously paying industry for their services. So I think we are just as much to blame. And by "we" I am completely blaming myself too.
You can't solve these problems by peer pressuring people into not supporting exploitative systems. Your argument is akin to people saying 'so much for being socialist, you own an iphone, capitalism made your iphone!'.
Now I don't use amazon prime to get things that I could just as easily get from local shops, except for things that already come from overseas anyway. I live in NZ, I don't have much choice. What little carbon budget the world does have should be used to ensure that people living in places like NZ can still have access to global commerce.
I don't buy fruits out of season. And I certainly don't buy 'pre-packaged foods'. What does that even mean? Do people actually buy plastic-wrapped boxes of lettuce from the supermarket? Really? Do people really buy bottled water? Why would they do that?
But I shouldn't have to say that. That I do those things is irrelevant. I do them for many reasons, but you are passing the buck when you act like it's my personal responsibility to fix the ills of the world. It isn't. It's society's responsibility as a whole. It should be a global push.
Otherwise we're just taxing conscience.
I have started growing my own tomatoes, so hopefully that helps, but it's only one item out of many.
We are societally unable to do that currently. It's our modern religion. Otherwise incredibly smart people (I include everyone on this website) are unable to see that only government intervention (pushed for by us) can solve this problem.
Sadly that happens a lot in the UK :(
> you are passing the buck when you act like it's my personal responsibility to fix the ills of the world
Where did I say it was your responsibility _alone_ to "fix the ills of the world"? What I said was we are all, collectively, responsible. Myself included. I also said industry exists to serve our consumption. This is me accepting my responsibility not me passing the buck.
That's not a fallacy. There's a direct and causal relationship between that "something as a whole" and you doing it personally. No one is saying that you alone are responsible for this systemic issue, but at least cop to your role in it.
Here's a better analogy still. Candidate X won a recent election, and you voted for them. If we agree that we knew that candidate was bad before the election, then you, individually, did a bad thing! No one person's vote decides an election, but the fact that millions of other people voted for the same candidate doesn't absolve you of your role in electing them.
Wanting to raise taxes and wanting higher tax revenue is the same thing. And that does not mean I should pay more in tax voluntarily. I want tax rates to be higher across the board in a way that is fair to everyone.
Of course it's not reasonable to 'just pay more tax voluntarily'. That's ridiculous. That's just taxing the people that want tax rates on everyone to be higher. By that logic we should all just pay however much we want. That's stupid.
>Here's a better analogy still. Candidate X won a recent election, and you voted for them. If we agree that we knew that candidate was bad before the election, then you, individually, did a bad thing! No one person's vote decides an election, but the fact that millions of other people voted for the same candidate doesn't absolve you of your role in electing them.
No, that's a terrible analogy, that's not at all the same thing. I want fair government policy affecting all carbon producers to fight global warming. I don't want to never eat meat, I want meat to be priced taking into account the negative externalities of meat production. If a steak costs $20 because that's how much all the water costs and repairing the environmental damage costs, then that's fair.
I don't want just the people that care about the environment to volunteer to do tiny, irrelevant amounts to help. I want the people that are actually causing significant environmental damage to be held responsible. I'm sick of hearing about how to fight climate change. Climate change isn't a person, the people we should be fighting are the people CAUSING climate change, and that isn't me or you.
Yes, it is.
This isn't really controversial or even an arguable position; the tragedy of the commons is a well known and accepted economic theory. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Big businesses cause almost all environmental damage, worldwide.
I think the point is that there is an opportunity to take personal responsibility here. Why wait for government? Using a couple of your examples, buying less stuff made in China would go a long way.
While changing the agreement and raising awareness is good, its basically rearranging the deck chairs on the titantic.
Do you know how many "upright citizens" I know who dont shop at wallmart? All my friends, family, and people I work with. And how's wallmart doing economically right now?
Even a decently large group of citizens taking action has minimal impact on the global scale.
Either convince the governments of the world or expect the slide to continue at an ever increasing pace.
Transportation accounts for about 14% of emissions, compared to 24% for agriculture and 21% for industry. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...
That's disgusting.
What do people think the carrying capacity of the planet means? Sustaining more humans means sacrificing other life that competes for our resources. It means pollution rising until it doesn't quite kill us but is well above the levels of a pristine, clean environment.
Nobody wants to live near the carrying capacity because approaching it means sacrificing anything that doesn't keep us alive.
Every round trip flight across the country you take contributes almost one year's allotment from the Paris agreement for one person -- https://co2.myclimate.org/en/portfolios?calculation_id=71970.... Flying first class and you're well over it. Eating meat contributes a lot too. Having more kids in western cultures contributes significantly.
Who among us, reading this, hasn't gone over their annual limit in just a few hours of flying, not to mention their regular life otherwise? How many have blown past their Paris limits already this year?
Some would say the damage was done by past generations. Okay, well what beautiful part of nature will our behavior destroy years from now? People keep posting to HN that since we can't change that a lot will happen, it doesn't matter any more, we should just enjoy ourselves, but there are different degrees of destruction.
Alternatively, we can fly less, drive less, eat much less meat, and have fewer kids. We don't need to wait for legislation. In fact, it's the fastest way to get legislation, since politicians follow voters.
In my experience, acting on all those things improved my life tremendously (including not flying for a year+ http://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/365-days-without-flying.htm...), more than almost anything else. I'm more fit, enjoy my neighborhood and neighbors, and spend less money and there's nothing special about me.