In an Oil Boom Town, Even a Barber Can Make $180k

Re:In an Oil Boom Town, Even a Barber Can Make $180k by CompelTechnic on Monday April 01, 2019 @03:36PM (#19547268)

In all likelihood, you're currently living in a way that environmentalists would describe as unsustainable, but still shaking your fist at society. This is hypocritical. There are two paths to avoid this hypocrisy:

1. Buy an electric car. Live in a smaller home. Consume fewer material goods. Set your heat cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Do what you can and actually put your money and lifestyle where your mouth is.

The electric car will cost more than your gasoline powered car. You will be uncomfortable. Depending on your viewpoints about stoicism and hedonic adaptation, this won't actually be so bad. However, you will be actionably pulling society in the direction of living in a sustainable way.

2. Decide that you do not care about global warming. Either deny its existence, come to the conclusion that the net effects on planet earth will not be severe enough to be worth the cost to prevent it, or come to the conclusion that it is an unsolvable collective action problem.

Shaking your fist is virtue signalling. Do something.

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Re:In an Oil Boom Town, Even a Barber Can Make $180k by rcMgD2BwE72F on Monday April 01, 2019 @03:44PM (#19547364)

>1. Buy an electric car. Live in a smaller home.

Better: move to a city, sell your car and buy bikes for your family. Live in a flat.

Edit: as a comment to tw04's reply, do you really believe that the owners and banks of fracking companies choose to ignore changes in demand when investing in decades' long projects? If so, you should just fight capitalism because it would be the most stupid system of capital allocation one can think of.

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Re:In an Oil Boom Town, Even a Barber Can Make $180k by bluGill on Monday April 01, 2019 @04:49PM (#19548069)

Many of us work in a suburban office park with ZERO places to live in walking distance, and no bus service. Even if you count bike distance, the office park really needs more workers than zoning codes all to live in a comfortable distance (don't forget the getting over/around hiways often adds significant distance to a commute)

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Re:In an Oil Boom Town, Even a Barber Can Make $180k by tw04 on Monday April 01, 2019 @03:45PM (#19547382)

>1. Buy an electric car. Live in a smaller home. Consume fewer material goods. Set your heat cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Do what you can and actually put your money and lifestyle where your mouth is.

Literally none of that will stop the immediate threat of fracking injecting chemicals into our drinking water. Which is the discussion.

In fact, fracking will have done all of its damage long before ANY of those things will cause a change in behavior by the companies doing it.

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Re:In an Oil Boom Town, Even a Barber Can Make $180k by CompelTechnic on Monday April 01, 2019 @03:58PM (#19547531)

Your comment that I replied to had a broad enough scope (i.e. asking the majority of the population to pick up and move close to their work) that it is still in context.

Buying an electric car will contribute on the margin to stopping fracking due to less gasoline consumption. It is action rather than yelling and virtue signalling.

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