I'm still feeling this argument out a bit, but... what can an individual actually do about it? Even if you look beyond how little any individual family contributes to pollution, in comparison to even some of the simplest industrial ventures.

I can't do without electricity 24x7, because I live in the north. I'd freeze to death. Think the recent crap Texas had to go through, for around 8 months of the year.

I can't do without a car because my commute is around 20 miles one way. I - quite literally - can't afford to live closer to work; the prices are on par with the bay area ($600,000 1,000 sqft condos), despite living in a very sparsely populated state with "competitive" wages in the $80k range for experienced software developers.

I could (and have) done without airplanes, but the alternative (if I want to keep my job) is to drive for around 18 hours. Not terribly friendly. The bus is closer to 48 hours, with prices on par with the airlines.

It is, for all intents and purposes, impossible for me (for a vast majority of people, I'd posit) to live without a job, without electricity, and without a car. And, realistically, I have very little control over my house, my car, my food, etc; these are instead largely based on my salary.

I get what's been made available by the market to me at a price that I can afford. It's not as if the market will change to less profitable products just because they're a bit better for the world. And it's not as if I can suddenly afford more expensive products just because they're better for the world.

House planning could require far less electricity, but it's not required by building codes, and the market doesn't acknowledge its value.

Urban planning puts workplaces far away from residential areas because they used to be heavy polluters, but never stopped doing it when workplaces improved.

My workplace office is 1km away from my residence. Someone had the smarts to put a small amount of office buildings in an otherwise residential neighborhood (as well as a few shops). I moved here for the job - it was the obvious choice.

Mixed use zoning has made it so I don't just not need a car, I don't even use public transit often.

People just are not going to use less stuff. In fact, they're going to use more. There are billions of people in the developing world who use a lot less energy and stuff than people in the developed world - but they are developing and will come to use and consume more and more. We won't impoverish ourselves, we can't ask the developing world to stay poor, and the population is growing all the time.

Plans or hopes that involve consuming less are unrealistic. The only way to save the environment is better technology and geo-engineering.

However I feel there are also choices that align with all the goals. Such as spending less on cheap disposable shit (which is so hard to do in our current environmenr) and using the materials in higher quality durable things that also offer a better experience. Not to mention shifting some consumption to services like amazing food and culture.

ever-growing consumption on a finite planet is unrealistic.

While infinite growth is obviously not possible I think we are a long way from the population that we could reasonably support on a still healthy planet if we had the technology to do so. I also think that in a hundred years or maybe a little less we'll start to get big opportunities for growth in space, both in the form of doing manufacturing off world and creating new population centers.

There’s no physical law that says we must put CO2 in the air to unlock these resources. With the right incentives people will figure it out.

Never buy another car. Fix what you have when you need to.

Eat less meat. Live principled- not that you don't but doing these things is almost contagious. I notice friends and family following my lead. Consuming less, buying less.

In my country most cars are bought used, imported from another country (usually Germany, sometimes the US) after they've deemed them not worth fixing (i.e. salvage). Whatever is broken is fixed up, tested for safety and emissions (we are an EU country), and sold to someone here. Labour costs are quite low (compared to Western EU & US), there's a great availability and parts, and people are quite skilled here, so pretty much anything can be done.

It used to be common to import cars from the UK (for some reason, much cheaper 2nd hand than the rest of Europe), and convert them from right to left hand drive - but a few years ago the government said they wouldn't allow those cars to be re-registered, which put an end to that.

Recently a friend had to fix the Webasto unit (diesel pre-heater) on his car and found someone who admitted his 'hobby' was fixing them. €100 later and what he thought he needed to replace was as good as new.

When the cars come here they often already have multiple hundreds of thousands of kilometers on the clock, but they are usually 'fixed' so who knows how much they've really done. Said friend's odometer says it has done 350k, but we assume it's closer to 500k.

Once cars are deemed salvage here (usually at the point where the floor is rusting out, or the frame has been damaged in an accident), parts are stripped and resold on the 2nd+ hand market, or the cars are shipped to Central Asian countries where the same all happens again.

Anyway, I'm not really sure what my point is, but it seems relevant to this. If you really want to you can keep an old car running, whether it's economical is a different story (I imagine in the US with higher labour costs and lower availability of spare parts, maybe not). But you also need to consider how things are used after your life, cars for sure do not just get melted down when you declare them worthless (one man's trash, is another man's treasure definitely applies here). I'd imagine consumer electronics and appliances are much worse for the environment in this regard than cars.

Not possible to do myself, and it's not feasible to pay someone to do it. I don't have the tools, the electronics, nor the replacement parts (not to mention knowledge or time) to keep a modern car going for the remaining 30-50 years of my lifetime. Attempting to fix it at the point where everything is falling apart becomes impractical (as I keep trying to tell my dad when he's spending even more money to make a '79 truck run).

Not to mention that getting those parts custom made or shipped to you from across the country incurs its own environmental penalty.

> Eat less meat.

I've found that, to keep a balanced diet without meat, it's quite a bit more expensive, and exceptionally more time consuming. Then there's the health issues (like those outlined in the scar study featured on HN a week or so ago).

I absolutely could compromise my health and lifespan for the sake of the world, but I'm not going to.

> Consuming less, buying less.

There's a lower limit to how much less you can do and still remain as a healthy, productive adult, but I agree that it's a good thing to do for many reasons; it's something I try and do.

Even if I took every step outlined, it would have, effectively, no impact on the environment.

And, if you have ample means, have as many kids as you can support in your chosen lifestyle, so they will grow up to invent more and better policies and technologies to make the future a place we actually want to live in again.

How ironic considering that the very source of earths problems are because of humans. Somehow, the solution is more. Never a better response from, a human.

Be honest: the entire species isn’t going to be persuaded to stop reproducing to save kelp forests. You know this is true as well as I do. Nor is everyone going to get rid of all their possessions and return to preindustrial life. Only a few people want to do this, and since it doesn’t scale, it doesn’t work.

Fifty years of this moral pleading to reduce consumption and reproduction has done jack shit to help the environment. Eight billion people want a developed-world affluent lifestyle and each and every one of them will personally guillotine you if you try to deny it to them. Preventing this desire is a lost cause.

Given that humanity stubbornly will not listen to you, and given that your odds of establishing a totalitarian state to force them to do so are long, it is time to look for other solutions. If humans are going to be here and are going to demand affluence, we desperately need to find ways to deliver that without destroying the biosphere. And having fewer kids will not help with that—in fact it’ll hurt. The more minds we can focus on the problem, the better.

It will not be easy and there is no promise of success, but it is better than a cause that is already lost.

When you say the source of earth’s problems are because of humans, I believe you’re right but not for the reason you think. Earth doesn’t have problems. Earth simply abides. Humans on earth, they have belief systems that consider certain changes to the planet problems. In that sense humans are the cause of the problems. Without humans to care about it, it’s just a change, not a problem.

That's a pretty big thing to ask, though, as children are pretty central to most people's lives.

It's an interesting point, though: is it better long term for environmentally-conscious people to have fewer or more children? If they have fewer, then most of the children born will be to parents who are not environmentally-conscious, and will likely grow up without an ethos of reducing their consumption, which will negatively affect public policy. But if environmentally-conscious people have more children, they will add to the drain on the planet, but raise kids who hopefully will grow up to influence public policy in the direction of less consumption. Not sure which choice will be a net benefit, but I suspect the kind of person who would make their child-bearing choices primarily on the basis of environmental impact is uncommon enough that it wouldn't make much of a difference either way.

Earth has produced a grand total of one species that even has the potential to be effective stewards. That's us. Earth is already on the far backside of how much longer it will be habitable due to the Sun. And I see no reason to think that any other intelligence that did evolve here wouldn't be beset by the same problems we have now.

So (IMO) intelligent, conscientious people having fewer children helps nothing. We (humans) are the best thing our biosphere has got, by a long shot, in terms of long-term preservation of life, which is something that I personally think is of great importance.

I’d be interested in what you consider “balanced”. I’ve found that when my diet is almost exclusively plants my grocery bill was nearly halved. I’ve even found it’s cheaper to by from higher end organic grocery stores than Walmart supercenters when I exclude meat. The scales tip the other way when I buy processed or boxed vegetarian/vegan food.

I couldn't have a balanced and nutritionally complete diet without mean, if I stuck to what I can obtain from local sources or what's available at the same or lower price than meat. Also, most of the stuff that is available seems to be based on Soy produced abroad, and then shipped here.

With that taken into account, I'll stick to having some meat in my diet and keeping both costs and the CO2 footprint down. After all, simply reducing the meat consumption would probably have a large effect on it's own.

This makes me think you may have been falling into the mindset that you either need to eat equivalent protein as a meat diet or were biasing towards processed foods which tend to rely heavily on soy. Personally, I don’t like the taste of those and I found they tend to be more expensive. Trying to make a facsimile of one diet with another is difficult.

I can’t speak more to the OPs geography without specifics but for the vast amount of the “north” in the US, it’s not much of a problem. Of course, it’s all relative to personal goals.

Regardless, I think you’re right in just reducing meat consumption is a more pragmatic approach for most. I think both issues speak to the need to adjust what the “norm” is, both for health and environmental reasons.

I was a little facetious when suggesting to keep your car forever. Just don't ditch it merely for being "old". That really goes for anything.

You can also accept the fact that you are but one human among billions. Tend your garden.

Mass produced meat is cheap because you don't pay it in $ but in pollution and animal suffering.

I was a "ah whatever they're just animals" guy for a long time, but once you do your research it's basically impossible to eat cheap meat again. It's jot even a question of polluting less, it repulses me now

Nsfl, this is a video from one of the supposedly "best" slaughterhouse in France: https://youtu.be/KWbgZQxd6J4

Do you just gnaw on raw steak from the dumpster? I have been a vegetarian since 2009 mostly because it is so quick and convenient. Other than fruit and shelled nuts, I cannot think of anything faster and simpler than opening a can of beans. Frozen vegetables come pre-chopped, you just put them in a frying pan. If you are concerned about your health and lifespan, you should become vegan, like I did in 2017. It is the fastest, easiest way to lower your cholesterol and improve your cardiovascular function. I did not expect my exercise performance or subjective feeling to improve as much as it did. Anyway, here is a good source for ideas: https://nutritionfacts.org/

Also, compare the birth rate per woman in the US (1.73) to somewhere like Niger (7). Getting Western populations to decline faster will not have any meaningful effect on total human population.

Either way, only what developed countries (and China, India, Brazil, maybe Nigeria and Indonesia) do today matters in the fight against climate change. There's no one else to point fingers at, unless you're looking for an excuse to do nothing.

As a percentage of total population, the number of people who emigrate from a poor country like Niger to a developed country is quite small. And they'd likely be poor there too, and consume fewer resources on average.

I think "doing nothing" is what people who advocate reduction of consumption and having fewer kids are doing. Those plans won't be implemented and they won't work. What I'm advocating is technological development to solve the problems related to global warming.

You may think so but that's not the case. I don't know of too many vegan-organic-bike-riding-hippy types who think we shouldn't invest in grid-scale storage, renewable power, carbon capture, or more efficient heating & cooling, manufacturing, or transportation systems. Arguably the only tech many of them oppose is nuclear power.

(Voluntary) reduction of consumption has the side-effect that the electorate becomes more agreeable to measures such as carbon taxes. An SUV and burger-loving electorate will never vote for them, because they would make SUVs and burgers more expensive. Without carbon taxes, there's no market mechanism to control emissions. And there's less funding for technological development or subsidies to green tech.

It’s silly to attribute it all Americans.

I keep being told that America doing anything to reduce emissions is pointless "because China builds a new coal plant ever hour" or something factoid like that. But China does a substantial portion of the world's manufacturing. So if you're giving America's emissions a pass, you should give China a pass as well, right?

Doing online advertising produces much less CO2 than say running a steel mill.

Why kid ourselves? 8+ billion humans are going to consume, and keep consuming, endlessly. The ONLY actual solution that involves humans is expansion. We either expand to another planet / galaxy, or we ride this one out to its (and our) death.

That's why we should prioritize science more as a collective. We need more Elon Musks with giant aspirations to really move the needle.

Does the earth differentiate between malaria and kelp forests? No. Humans differentiate between them, actively trying to eliminate one and wringing our hands and trying to prevent the destruction of the other.

To call it “a problem” is to implicitly assert dominion over the land, sky and sea while pretending that you are not.

And no, human beings do not naturally "consume and consume endlessly". In fact, the vast majority of those 8 billion people (say, 7.9 billion of them, or maybe 7.5 billion if you want) are consuming a fraction of the total resources. The vast majority of climate change is due to the richest ~10-20% in the richest countries on Earth. One way or another, this state of affairs will end in the next 50 years at most. Hopefully it will end in a more egalitarian society that respects the environment.

The completely illogical application of the slippery slow fallacy*

The actual logical next step would be to address the large corporations that are polluting.

Does nature and beauty matter if there are no sentient beings to observe it?

When many (most?) people talk about mitigating or reversing climate change, their main goal is the benefit to humanity. Sure, there is some level of empathy and caring for the species going extinct every year, but even part of that is only as far as how a healthy, diverse biosphere better supports human life.

Get politically engaged with organisations that are demanding systemic change

EDIT: I don't see what is negative or controversial about this suggestion. The commenter says they cannot do the right thing because of how the system works and what options it makes available to them and at what price. So in that case we must all do work to change the system. The market is currently dictated by many different policies and legislation, causing most things you buy to be artificially cheap or expensive in one way or another. We can change this through policy or other means to make carbon products more expensive -- driving more expensive while clean transit is cheap, inner city housing cheaper than suburban sprawl, etc.

  Rise like Lions after slumber
  In unvanquishable number--
  Shake your chains to earth like dew
  Which in sleep had fallen on you--
  Ye are many -- they are few.

What's the forcing function? It's already been proven that a global climate crisis is not enough to move society. It's not profitable enough to convince corporations to do it. The 0.1% have no cause to do it; even the humanitarians among that group have much better investments they can make.

EDIT: Also, in the past, living in the north without electricity was managed by burning wood and coal. Given the significant increase in population the impact to the environment of burning all that would be irrecoverable on its own.

Can policy not make it profitable? It seems like regulation can be a means of creating market incentives. It worked well for leaded gas, I tend to think a carbon tax/market may work

At worst, there is no way that anything approaching that sort of regulation will ever fly in today's political system. Period.

[0] https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/02/24/p...

Unless you live near a hot springs, electricity is actually the best we've got for staying warm in the north with the least carbon emissions. Nuclear, wind, hydro, or geothermal are all valid options for producing this electricity in the North. Probably in combination and probably with some storage (batteries plus occasional hydrogen?) and heatpumps to increase the efficiency. So in fact, USE electricity.

In the Global South, solar reigns supreme as far as the least expensive energy source.

I sympathize with you because the environmentally minded are telling you to do the impossible and claiming that electric cars are a cop out or whatever. They aren't. It's actually easy.

The good news is that this is already happening in most places. The bad news is that population growth is still out of control in Africa and parts of Asia, and may lead to a environmental crisis before population growth gets under control.

Raw population numbers are not the biggest concern. Consumption and excessive luxury, wasteful production practices and burying all of these under the rug are the root of all these problems

Have children. Not too many. Raise them well.

> I am uncertain about this whole "2030" neutrality thing, why not 2025? Why not next year?

"next year" for a politician is "right now". "in 2030" is "never" since they'll be long retired.

There is a funny thing happening right now in France, most politicians from the 70s, 80s,&c. are coming out saying we should focus on climate change, the very same people who actively participated in worsening the situation back in the days. They only wake up now because their life is basically over and they want to rip some last minute karma points. Short term individual goals will always defeat long term global ones

It is worth noting that the collapse had nothing to do with over harvest of sea life.

It would be very surprising, to me at least, to find ultimately humans did not contribute to this chain of events. Whether it's something like microplastics causing the lesions on the star fish or water temperature/chemical concentration leading to some fungal spore growing, I suspect ancient kelp forests aren't vanishing without our help.

It is entirely possible it is in some way related to human activity. It is also possible that it is completely unrelated. Booms, busts, and radical ecosystem changes do happen all the time in nature.

Nature isn't gradual, it's catastropic. The Younger Drayas caused a 7° to 10° C drop worldwide in a matter of decades.

Volcanic eruptions, sudden drought, earthquakes, asteroid impacts, abrupt population crashes: sudden change is normal.

Yes, a lot of the change we see now is human impact. But this could easily be a virus that hit the sea stars out of the blue. We just don't know.

If you've been watching the changes in the aquatic habitat and the sea life populations they becoming simple / basic and more homogeneous as a function of changing water temperatures (and harvesting of sea life without the ability to replenish).

I won't disagree that it is possible virus or range of other possibility - I am not providing an answer. However it's a very high probability that the natural ability for that ecosystem to defend against the virus (if it was) was likely impeded by human impacts which change the water temperature and the species of life that live in that area.

We could posit many different theories, the fact is that nature is changing rapidly under our watch and to insinuate that it is a natural occurrence is disengeinuine and irresponsible at best and seems to be the push of a false narrative to undermine the consensus in the scientific community.

That being said, it's almost definitely due to humans, I just wanted to be pedantic.

We have to understand the connection between a seemingly "innocent" event such as throwing trash in a random place and something else happening thousands of miles away - the events can be interconnected and the various documentaries have been trying to make us think about that.

If our activity causes warming that causes more storms that causes species to migrate earlier to different parts of the globe than usual that causes unpredictable food for other animals which they were relying on and have done for years, which in turn means they can't reproduce or sustain their cubs meaning other animals might suffer as a result and suddenly the entire chain is broken, disjointed and collapses.

Humans have no idea how fragile the ecosystem is or how resilient it may be (since we've never had this many humans living at once, consuming at the rates we are and causing the warming we've been witnessing).

The sea star wasting may be tied to global warming or not and there are some plausible hypothesis. That said, there is no credible theory which ties it to overfishing.

Here's another, if you're curious

https://www.nwnewsnetwork.org/post/hey-seals-and-sea-lions-q...

I also pretty regularly collect urchins in that kelp forest, purple and red in that area, and the ones the otter were taking were smaller than the ones I would have chosen. So, at the least, there's at least one sea otter that particularly cares to each some sea urchins, and one human that cares to each the others.

But we use x% more containers every year. This is exactly like plane engines getting x% more efficient, it doesn't matter if you double the number of flights over the same period.

You can always make micro adjustments here and there but it won't do much in the long run, they just give us excuses to stay collectively lazy. If your house is on fire, throwing water at it with a table spoon instead of a tea spoon won't do much of a difference.

It's much easier to pat ourselves on the back than look at the harsh truth... there is no more room for being optimistically stupid

-------

"In recent years we’ve seen a different pattern emerge: the pattern of more from less. In America—a large, rich country that accounts for about 25 percent of the global economy—we’re now generally using less of most resources year after year, even as our economy and population continue to grow. What’s more, we’re also polluting the air and water less, emitting fewer greenhouse gases, and seeing population increases in many animals that had almost vanished. America, in short, is post-peak in its exploitation of the earth. The situation is similar in many other rich countries, and even developing countries such as China are now taking better care of the planet in important ways."

It's easy to save a few grams of metal here and there and ban plastic straw when we already live like kings while the rest of the world is barely starting to access the lifestyles we had in the 60s.

It's not bad per say but it's a drop in the bucket, they import and export more than every before, which means insane amount of pollution due to the shipping industry, this alone would defeat everything else they attempt: https://container-xchange.com/blog/shipping-emissions/

Out of sight out of mind I guess...

Zoom out, look at the big picture, we shouldn't stop at borders but look at the global scale. France banning plastic bags when China builds so many coal power plants is no more than virtue signalling. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-coal-idUSKBN2A308U

I forget exactly what I found, but if I where to guess it would be something like our imports of certain resources might have peaked, but that doesn't account to things that are manufactured in part/whole outside the US. If I buy an inflatable Kayak made in China, then how is that oil/rubber accounted for? US oil/rubber imports maybe have gone down, but have our inflatable Kayak imports gone down and is it tracked?

It's not even that hard. We spent like $2 trillion on a coronavirus stimulus bill. $2 trillion on clean electricity infrastructure would be enough to clean up the electric grid to like 90-95% fossil free.

Another $2 trillion of incentives and mandates would allow most transportation in the US to be fossil free (pure electric cars and trucks, with plug-in hybrid cars and trucks as an interim measure) and charged by our 90-95% fossil free grid. (Electricity and transport are the two biggest things, followed by heating and industry... which ALSO have fairly straightforward solutions to becoming almost entirely carbonfree.)

I'm convinced that a HUGE reason we don't just pull the trigger and do this now is because a huge swath of the environmental activist community is deadset on demanding a reduction in consumption and "modern day luxuries" even when not strictly necessary. That means that it's a political dead end and literally every other goal becomes a higher priority. Any climate action that doesn't "reduce consumption" is seen as not being "real."

We should just see it like solving the Ozone Hole (which is now healing, BTW). Instead of giving up refrigeration and air conditioning, we developed non-ozone-depleting refrigerants.

I'm sorry that Attenborough probably won't be satisfied with that answer, but we really can have 8 billion humans with modern day luxuries provided we're responsible about it. And it's not even hard. I have two (used) electric cars that I bought for $10k apiece, and they mostly charge using nuclear electricity. With a heat pump (air source with ground-source backup), and I'll be set for heating my house as well.

But I agree with everything else. Personally I recently used some calculators to see what my carbon footprint is and found a plausible offset for it (certified program through my utility company that goes to buying/building more green energy). And it was pretty darn cheap, less than 15/mo for myself in a 1 bedroom apt, a SUV, and multiple flights a year. Now a larger family increases that number, but nothing the middle-class can't handle. (I Also donate a ton to Wildlife Conservation Network)

I'm trying to do my part, but it seems meaningless without appropriate political decisions that would have real impact by costing our externalities.

It’s not possible.

Before the pandemic I didn't work from home at all. Now after working from home 100% for a year I'm looking forward to being able to see my coworkers in person again when things open up, but I'll probably work from home a few days a week. Not a huge change, but every little bit helps, especially when hundreds of millions or billions of other people start working from home a few days a week who wouldn't before.

Why not. You can live like a millionaire and not have kids. Having a kid is many factors worse than living a millionaire.

It seems logical to direct efforts to control damage toward the places where they are occurring.

The global economy doesn't allow for simple answers to the sources of trash and waste. China (and India) are massive exporters of goods, only a fraction of their manufacturing is consumed internally. And of course, the biggest importers are the US and Europe.

Your population can be stable, but the economy is not.

I get what you are saying but I would need to see this sustained before I believe that we have finally broken the back of GDP to Ecological Footprint linkage. I'm not optimistic about mankind's ability to keep its footprint under control.

"Sure, we can run the world down for a bit -- all we have to do is sacrifice the opportunity of future generations to experience the world"

Yes, the disease may have been caused or spread by human activity, and yes, the warm marine weather may have been caused by human-created global warming, but you're jumping the gun to say that this is because we have 8 billion people who want a certain standard of living.

It is, and we keep hearing this argument for situations across the entire plant. There is a clear trend.

[Citation needed]

I think I need to be forced into changes, such as having to buy an electric car, or being made to walk due to driving being made illegal. If I can enhance my life whilst I get the chance to do so during my time on earth I will, unless I am prevented from doing so. I always opt for what is beneficial to me (and, judging by the sheer number of cars on the road, I am not alone in this).

Otherwise, I freely admit I have little desire to put effort into pretending I can somehow help the planet - that's the job of governments to set the policies society needs to accept, we either do it together or not at all.

I want to be as anti-carbon-neutrality as possible until it's illegal for me to cause pollution in any way (due to a shift in opinion and generating harmful emissions being 100% illegal and punishable by jail).

Electric cars are better for families (even in Japan), but having car-shaped cars is still pretty polluting due to road and tire dust, so encouraging micromobility + mass transit would be a better move for the individual.

The above is but a short list of things to attack if you in favor of trains. Note that the above cuts at a lot of things that Democrats - who claim to be in favor of trains hold dear. You will discover that fighting to make trains a better option than cars is harder as a democrat where everyone agrees but wants to put their finger in the pie, than as a republican where everyone isn't interested in trains but might let you get by with a small amount just to keep you quiet (this won't be enough to build a useful system, but it might be enough to prove it can be cost effective)

> You will discover that fighting to make trains a better option than cars is harder as a democrat where everyone agrees but wants to put their finger in the pie, than as a republican where everyone isn't interested in trains but might let you get by with a small amount just to keep you quiet (this won't be enough to build a useful system, but it might be enough to prove it can be cost effective)

And where is train hush money being handed out in the last four years? Pretty sure that's out of the frying pan into the fire.

This is perfectly exemplified by UTA Trax, which had a humble start in slightly blue SLC, but has expanded outward at an incredibly rapid pace, with approval votes coming from some of the reddest counties in the nation. Building efficiently and cost effectively is quite possibly the best vote-switcher on transit that we could make.

This sort of transit just allows for further sub-urbanization and car culture when the highways fill up. It doesn't promote cross-sector density (just larger central business districts), and it doesn't reduce the externalities of the American way of living.

To be fair, this is by no means a mistake exclusive to red states. The WMATA in DC, and LIRR and Metro North in NYC all commit the same sin.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Salt_Lak... Guess the mountains hem it in one some sides; that gives me some hope. Maybe someday it will look more like https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/659/32455034626_dc15a3023b_o.j...

It should also be noted that Calgary faced similar challenges to SLC, and they optimized for it in similar ways: optimizing for total system length and highest frequencies per dollar spent, and often developing suburban park and ride stations. And over the last 40 years, Calgary has become more dense as a result. It has become one of the highest ridership per mile systems in north america, better than any in the US, besting even a 125 year old line with significant subterranean sections right through the dense core of Boston.

I will hand it to Calgary though. Reading around, it does look like the job density is in the central business district is exceptionally good for such a late-developed North American city. The park and rides don't dent housing sprawl at all, but at least they allow people to commute to the same place. Hopefully that does create demand for dense housing around the central business district eventually.

I think at this point we also need to massively raise the gas tax, pay it back as a universal dividend to avoid right-wing revolution. And simultaneously, we need to build a bunch of transit so people trying to win the gas-tax-dividend arbitrage have a valid strategy. Make the demand, make the supply.

Our political situation doesn't allow for that, but I don't really see the choice? Trying to electrify all the cars is perhaps easier on the American psyche, but much less efficient, and will not help with all the non-global-warming major externalities we need to fix nearly as urgently.

Let’s say you go buy a Tesla or Volt. The cost to charge it at a station or even your house isn’t carbon neutral. It depends on how your local power is generated. In my gas that’s primarily natural gas.

Is the $0.11/kWh truly, not to mention the cost of the battery and all the lithium/magnesium/nickel mining it requires, more “carbon neutral” than a 35 mpg petrol vehicle with all the catalytic converters and whatnot.

In reality the combustion engine pollutants contributors seem to be more shipping related. Diesel boats, diesel trains, diesel 18 wheelers etc.

Yes. My power company gives me a green energy certificate, which means that all the money I pay for energy goes to green producers.

> the catalytic converters and whatnot.

You're conflating pollution with carbon emissions. The only thing that matters to carbon emissions is mass of fuel burnt.

> In reality the combustion engine pollutants contributors seem to be more shipping related. Diesel boats, diesel trains, diesel 18 wheelers etc.

Same here.

Of course we seem to be going for using batteries instead, but this will likely be needed for energy-dense uses like heating and aircraft.

That's not really how it works. The only way humanity is at 7 billion and counting is due to advances in engineering, farming, etc.

Look for example at two extremes, starting with the CHAZ farm. You remember, the cardboard boxes with potting soil thrown on top by kids who had no idea what they were doing? Imagine if the entire planet was full of these sort of primitive smooth brains. You'd be back to hunter gatherers and a global population of ~20,000 or so rather quickly. Now look at the opposite end of the spectrum, Hokkaido rice farmers.

https://www.hokkaido-kome.gr.jp/english/about/

Despite having a less favorable climate for rice growing, Hokkaido farmers of the frozen north produce some of the highest yields and highest quality rice in Japan. When you look outside of Japan, it's even more impressive as Hokkaido consistently has higher yields than SE Asian countries with warmer humid climates more suited for rice growing.

This is a small number of people in Hokkaido, with power to change their entire world around them. They do so through science and engineering. Access to irrigation, farm equipment, and fertilizer is far more important than climate.

People who want laws to restrict CO2 would choose to destroy Hokkaido farmers. Farm equipment after all releases CO2. So does fertilizer production and transportation. So does tillage. These people seek to make us all hunter gatherers again.

Solving problems is not about squeezing yourself into the limits of your current system, it is about changing the limits of the system with science and engineering. Said more eloquently,

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw

That's ... bizarre.

Upshot is I'm doing way more to improve the environment than you are, because I'm an adult who doesn't need be compelled to be perfect before doing anything positive.

Offsetting ones carbon footprint is cheap and easy. The fact that few people want to take any action individually undermines collective action.

The obvious path forward is for the most passionate people to lead by example.

The idea that somehow government will serve to overrule the self interest of the majority isn’t realistic.

If the majority doesn’t want change, the government can’t help.