- I live in a small apartment block that is very insulted and has a lot of natural light

- don't own a car and use bike / public transport

- work 100% remote

- I compensate CO2 when flying, even when for business

- I try to have a minimal set of possessions, and buy second-hand if possible (and am really aggressive about ad blocking, don't watch commercial TV)

- I got a vasectomy to not have children

- I try to write and engage in social media about it, read the primary literature

- Donate to reforestation / tree planting initiatives

But it's all bullshit isn't it? I doesn't change a damn thing. The fixation on the idea that individual consumer behavior will make a noticeable impact is laughable. The only way to make a difference is by changing the companies and business that pollute in the first place, not the people who buy the stuff. And that means taxing, de-investing, subsidizing alternatives, and for the love-of stop subsidizing fossil fuels. But that's never going to happen.

I mean even putting a stupid sail on cargo ships would cut down pollution more than the CO2 anything you and I could ever do. Or if we hike up the prices of transport considerably (so fruits from bloody Africa don't cost 20 cents in Northern Europe) we can change our entire logistics pipeline.

Not quite sure what to make of your comment other than some non-constructive jab at my personality, though. But if you have any thoughts, I would of course like to hear them! We're all just making this up as we go along.

I no longer own a car, I bike everywhere.

I work remote 100%.

I do not eat beef if I can help it anymore.

I use the train for long distance personal travel. I still fly when it is for my company, though.

I take transit when biking would be too slow.

I signed up for my city's green energy program. I pay more to receive 30% of my energy use from wind farms.

I cancelled Amazon Prime.

I buy items locally as much as possible.

I avoid online shopping if possible.

All of my food comes from local, small producers.

Cutting consumption behavior down has, unsurprisingly, saved me a lot of money and these behaviors are reducing the amount of carbon I emit.

The only thing you might need to look out for are the claims for local, small producers.

http://freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of-local...

http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/09/04/how-green-is-local-f...

+ There are economies of scale.

+ There are also people against genetic engineering even if it would reduce pesticides or other pressure on the environment tremendously.

+ Food safety might be more efficiently regulated in a centralized manner.

+ Old-fashioned greenhouses might have large yields and might be properly scaled to reduce costs per produced crop as well as support recycling systems for CO2 and other "waste" products.

In other words, the situation around food seems more complicated than just "buy local".

I drive a car to work, because the summers are already too hot and humid for me to bike with a respiratory condition.

I work in the office 99% of the time because my bosses have a 19th century mentality

I fly at least twice a year to escape my miserable existence somewhere far away

I never take transit because I'm stuck in an endless suburban hell and the nearest bus stop/grocery store is over a mile away

I only shop online because traditional retail has a horrible selection and partly sells the same Chinese shit that Amazon does, just at a higher markup

I eat beef because food is one of the few pleasures I have in life

All of my food comes from supermarkets because it's cheaper.

No idea how this compares to the scale of taking a bus or a solo car, but there is an increased cost. Growing food (often with fertilizers, harvest machinery, etc) in order to bring it to the market for you to consume and convert into motion doesn't seem like it's particularly energy efficient.

I bike a lot, it's better for me physically and mentally, but I do wonder how the carbon impact is affected. (Of course, this ignores the fact that petroleum is a limited supply.)

fermatslibrary.com gets the credit for introducing me to this paper.

Satisfaction? I'm sad. I wish someone would write something like that they turned off their air conditioner, decided to take public transit instead of driving today, decided to avoid meat for a day, or something like that.

Instead, edgy comments and no personal change, at least not so far.

If you think you didn't condemn, you have a different view of the meaning of that word than I do.

"Most people will blame someone else, ... and then go back to what they would have done otherwise, without meaningful change. ... Which is how we got here."

Assuming the word 'here' refers to our current bad situation, that looks like condemnation to me.

In some ways, I think that condemnation is warranted - in the first world, we do tend lead lives that are not sustainable. The trouble is that that lifestyle is less something we deliberately design and choose and more of an inherited set of expectations. It's how we've been trained to live by our upbringing. It's the rulebook we follow to participate in the society of our friends and peers.

This isn't as much intended to be an excuse as it is an attempt to outline what has to be overcome for people to make a change to live more sustainably. It's not an easy thing, by any means. How many people will 1) see the need and 2) choose to make the personal sacrifices necessary to realize a greater good that may not actually happen? (Tragedy of the commons.)

So.... what seems likely is that people will be compelled into those sacrifices and more by external forces. (Market prices, carbon taxes, rising water, armed conflicts, etc.)

Going around condemning people and complaining is far less inspiring and doesn't lead to change. It just makes you seem judgemental and hollow to the "sins" you commit.

Honey not vinegar.

I find it very odd you post on leadership according to your bio but approach issues like you have here.

Since globalization billions of people have gotten out of poverty. As this trend continues the strain on the environment similarly increases. Want to genuinely help,the environment? Have fewer kids.

Think of this, the average environmentally conscious consumer still contributes massive amounts of trash and still relies on resources extracted from countries with mild environmental standards.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14743137

Isn’t it really a matter of developing cleaner transportation and electricity to make us individually generate less CO2? Assuming of course, these companies become more efficient.

Let's just look at medicines. Almost every fish in the ocean contains modern pharmaceuticals in its system. Think about that. To me that is staggering. Excess pharmaceuticals have been thrown down the drain in sufficient quantities to have entered the bodies of the world's fish.

We are going to need a better solution.

It's ultimately a problem of our domination of viruses and bacteria. In the past, large families were created to combat child mortality rates. Once we found another way through vaccines, antibiotics and antivirals, the culture of large families took a while to subside. China and India are of course the larges population centers in the the world and both are doing something about it in a fairly humane way.

The majority of our systemic problems are a result of a population misalignment, but the US isn't a contributor to that (and many Western countries) because families in these areas have fewer than 2.0 kids.

For the most part, humanity has done an amazing job of supporting our population. Simply feeding that many people is quite an engineering feat.

Great, we have enough food. There is more to life than just food. In addition to having enough food we have plenty of pollution too. We are toxifying our environment. This is not abating.

>We are toxifying our environment. This is not abating.

I think everyone is well aware of that. Don't you get tired of giving the speech? The US doesn't seem to be doing a damn thing about it, perhaps it's time to try another tactic.

Our current mechanisms for combating climate change aren't working well; effective change will probably come from a new solution either technical and social. And solutions come from people who care.

As poverty declines hundreds of millions of more people join the ranks of super consumers. The environment can't sustain the damage done to satiate the current level of consumption. Fewer people is what is needed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My family turns down the thermostat in the winter, and uses no air conditioning during the summer.

I don't eat beef, and eat relatively little meat in general.

I play alcohol powered musical instruments.

I vote. ;-)

But I think that trying to achieve widespread collective outcomes by encouraging individuals to voluntarily modify their behavior has never worked -- it is how I define "utopian." Society can accomplish things collectively when we have a mechanism for engaging in collective effort such as governments. While I have no illusions that governments will lead us to a perfect society either, I think that if we ever manage to address global warming, it will be through the actions of governments.

An interesting way of saying "I'm in a rock band with my buddies..."

/jk

Even if 90% of people on earth decided to recycle and go vegan and drive an electric car, it wouldn't make any difference as long as that 10% is using un-clean infrastructure (container ships are said to produce the pollution of millions of cars, we still burn coal for most of our energy needs, etc).

2. We can do other things than what you suggested. We can reduce consumption over mere recycling. We can have fewer children. We can drive less and reduce car ownership beyond just using electric cars. We can shift taxes to carbon from other things.

3. If other things make bigger differences, we can work on them too. Eating less meat is not exclusive with reducing consumption to reduce the number of container ships.

4. If you don't want to do anything, you don't have to. You can give up on making a difference. That's what billions of people are already doing. If you have more important things to do, you should probably do them.

Right now climate change emitting energy is unfairly subsidized because the climate change costs are not accounted for.

If we internalize the costs, it works as a lever to change consumption, but in my view more importantly it makes the markets more able to allocate resources correctly.

What alternatives would you propose?

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

And regarding coal, it's possible to choose a green electricity supplier here in Ireland at least

    > Maybe if we tried to buy things locally

http://www.whiteboardmag.com/propelwind-wingsail-technology-...

I'm probably more in the "use technology to help, while I do what I can" rather than "technology will save us, so carry on" camp.

The container shipping is responsible for 3.5% to 4% of all climate change emissions (source https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping... ). All kinds of transportation together produce approximately 14% of all greenhouse gases emissions (source: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... ).