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Re:Ditch high definition and new tech to fight climate change by st1x7 on Thursday December 03, 2020 @05:44AM (#25287630)
Expecting people to make changes in their behaviour does absolutely nothing apart from making a tiny minority of people feel superior for their choices. It simply doesn't scale well to the entire population. You need systemic changes and big developments in technology to actually make a difference in climate change.
Re:Ditch high definition and new tech to fight climate change by imtringued on Thursday December 03, 2020 @06:19AM (#25287813)
Reducing usage of technology can increase emissions through secondary factors. It's a major inconvenience with a minor or even sometimes negative gain (real life activities like driving are more co2 intensive).

Reducing meat consumption doesn't increase emissions because animals already have to eat plants and they already fart on our behalf. If you cut out the middleman (the animal) you need less plants and also fart less. It's a major inconvenience with a major gain.

Re:Ditch high definition and new tech to fight climate change by hannob on Thursday December 03, 2020 @06:07AM (#25287735)
You can make systemic changes to reduce the amount of animal products that people consume.

For a start, you could stop subsidizing them. For the long term you could fund a massive meat replacement research project.

(Though I disagree with the OP that this is the biggest issue, it is a large enough issue that it's worth tackling it, and certainly larger than streaming video.)

Re:Ditch high definition and new tech to fight climate change by spectralflux on Thursday December 03, 2020 @05:49AM (#25287652)
Agreed. Especially since the actual biggest individual contributor (for people living in the developed world) is having children, and we really don't want this kind of individual focus to land there.
Re:Ditch high definition and new tech to fight climate change by lewurm on Thursday December 03, 2020 @06:11AM (#25287762)
My pessimism tends to agree with you.

OTOH social distancing and wearing masks has shown recently that (most) people are fine with changing their behavior, if necessary.

Re:Ditch high definition and new tech to fight climate change by st1x7 on Thursday December 03, 2020 @06:51AM (#25287995)
The parameters matter a lot though. With social distancing/mask wearing there is a very measurable risk that's immediate to you and the people around you. With climate change your actions make a tiny tiny impact that's spread disproportionately over the entire planet and takes effect over decades - this makes it much easier to ignore.

If people could get infected with climate-change disease and x% of them die, there would be a lot more action to prevent it.