European researchers said Thursday that the the start of June saw global surface air temperatures rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the first time. That is the limit governments said they would try to limit global warming to at a 2015 summit in Paris.
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So I like to think about it needing to be bottom up and top down change. So while the main contributors will likely continue as usual, we as consumers can change demand and markets with enough impetus. And also vote for officials that forefront these issues. In a crisis you just have to do what you can.
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It can be bad to fly around in a private jet and to eat beef at the same time. Just because someone else isn’t walking the walk, that doesn’t make it meaningless for you to do so. Not so much the private jet example, but when a lot of people try to absolve themselves of responsibility for market factors driving climate change, they point out a handful of enormous corporate entities doing harm. The problem with that is that those emissions are making things that we buy. That’s where eating less meat, especially beef, comes from. (Also it’s just unsustainable for people to eat as much meat as the average American, for reasons beyond climate change.)
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It’s either all or nothing or else you start to become hypocritical.
We could summarize your entire comment as you not wanting to do anything yourself because you can’t easily do everything yourself.
To rapid fire respond to the rest of it: investors are putting money into hydrogen and electric planes, they are putting money into lab grown meat, lab grown meat would not literally solve the problem (vegetables and grains would), and you can still enjoy life without eating a beef burger.
If billionaires controlled either of us, do you think I’m more under their control by eating vegetables and chicken patties than you are eating the beef they sold you instead? Do you think billionaires wouldn’t profit off of you flying in an airplane more? Do you think climate friendly transportation options like public transit and cycling stand to make billionaires more money than the likes of cars and commercial flights? I feel like we’re more under corporate control ignoring climate advice than we are following it.
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Except not eating dead animals doesn’t lessen a person’s quality of life.
This idea that you are suffering because you ate a piece of tofu is absolute nonsense and I suspect somebody who figured out how to use the fediverse isn’t this daft.
Ahhh yes, we should be barred from eating any and all meat, soy and bugs only, but the billionaires should still be able to enjoy steaks and burgers right?
I really, really don’t understand why you’ve latched on to bugs. Nor am I barring people from eating meat. I don’t have that power. What I do have the power to do is to buy less meat myself, especially beef, to reduce the quantity of it that we produce by that much more, and I’m encouraging you to do the same, because I genuinely believe your quality of life is determined by more than how much beef you eat, and I hope you do too. Also there are a lot of good veggie dishes to eat that don’t involve soy at all.
It’s not about making them money, lol lmao, it’s about further enrichment of themselves at your detriment.
Further enrichment of themselves would mean making more money. Billionaires really, really don’t care about what you eat unless they sold it to you themselves. Gates is not in the food business, and if he cares about what you ate, it’s also because of the climate. He will, however, care if you’re not using Windows or Bing or Xbox.
I work with computers all day, and even I don’t see the world as binary as you do. I eat beef too. Sometimes. I try to do so far less these days. It’s not a detriment to my quality of life in the least bit. If I’m at a barbecue and all they have is beef burgers, I’m not going to refuse them, but if I’m at a Burger King, I’ll get the chicken sandwich or the Impossible burger. Every serving of beef I don’t eat is better than choosing to do so instead. I don’t excuse billionaires for flying in private jets, nor do I have the ability to stop them in any way; they’re certainly not in this thread for us to talk to. So in lieu of that, I know that I can at least reduce some amount of climate impact by my choices in the market. That doesn’t mean it’s reduced to zero. It means it’s reduced.
I agree with this sentiment, while I cannot control what others do I can make changes in the capacity that I am able. I also think that change drives markets, dairy alternative milks are a great example of this. So while our efforts may be small in comparison to the ones that others with more could make, it doesn’t make them meaningless and better yet acts as an example to those who are unsure or sitting on the fence.
I also think we may have reached a point where it’s just too late to debate what the best action is and it would be better to try and do something with the view to this being an emergency.
Where I live and how I grew up, farming is a way of life. I’m not sure what the numbers are but it seems to me pork is a very hot meat, from beginning to end. I probably should research that, and the only corporate farms near are fruit and vegetable. Corn is also very hot, and the industries and family farms rely on it. Economically, the most eaten meat in my area (very underserved) is chicken and fish, whether bought or raised/caught. And wild game, I guess.
The way I understood it last I saw it broken down was that fish and poultry are better than pork, and pork is way better than beef. Corn is corn because the government subsidizes it due to some very old economic conditions and no one ever got it off the books, and I understood that to have far more negative effects on our diets (high-fructose corn syrup) than on the climate.
Thanks, I’ll definitely look into it after chores and errands. I’m wondering if corn-sweat is considered…
I appreciate your consideration, hopefully we’ll see change at all levels!
Nuclear power doesn’t pay for itself apparently. Also it takes a very long time to even build a reactor. Wind and hydro are much cheaper to build and can be done rapidly.
Wind farms have been very successful in the UK but we are also quite a windy country. A lot of people are now on green tariffs so I feel as though it’s moving in a good direction.
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Wind farms are a disaster in Germany because of bureaucracy. Not because they are not economic. Siemens Gamesa is doing quite well, despite not building many wind farms in Germany.
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Nuclear power only takes a long time due to government red tape pushed by idiot environmentalists (who, ironically, got major financial backing from oil corps).
It’s this kind of nonsense conspiracy theories that really damage your side of the argument. Nuclear power plants are complex pieces of technologies that are very hard to get right, secure, and make safe. The idea that there is a cabal of massive corporations funding environmentalists to fight nuclear power is laughable.
Also, you should see what shutting down nuclear in favor of wind has done to Germany.
Germany isn’t the whole world. The fact that your entire stance is based only on what happened in Germany is undermining your advocacy.
Oh, and the time to build nuclear can be further reduced (pending removal of red tape) by converting coal plants to nuclear. I think people forget a nuclear power plant is just a steam turbine powered by a hot rock, and a coal power plant is a steam generator powered by burning a rock.
no it’s not just that. No wonder you think it’s possible to build them cheap and fast.
/me writes long winded response, looks at it for a minute, deletes it.
Wow, this place is really starting to feel like home
I don’t want anyone to feel like they can’t comment, I know this post has got a bit unproductive in the conversation but it’s an important topic and you should make the points you want.
Typically it happens when I’m not actually making a point and it’s better to move on than spend the time required to sort out my thoughts.
I get what you mean, I do the same. I just don’t want this place to end up like reddit where people don’t want to comment or post.
More likely we are going to keep burning coal and oil while arguing about which green energy to utilize until we just can’t because its no longer abundanza. Destroying habitats and whatnot along the way. Some of us will try to enjoy the what we can of what is left of nature while trying to live as simply as possible on as low a resources as we can manage. Others will feel entitled to all sorts of crap because of whatever and a small amount will waste resources beyond what most people can imagine because of their incredible wealth.
We do need action on all levels of society, and we need to be treating this as a crisis.
On a local level (in the UK) there are a lot more community and Council groups being setup to try and find solutions I would absolutely recommend attending those.
On a larger scale - vote at all levels, council and governmental, vote for people who are putting climate change at the front of their agenda.
Other than that, ensure your pension is invested in green and eco investments and try to fly less (maybe even drive less).
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Absolutely, it’s a difficult one as I/we have little to no access to the main carbon contributors so I try to do the little I can instead! And vote!
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Driving less doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve reduced your quality of life.
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I don’t understand the “need” for extensive travel with vacations. Do people travel to where you live to take a vacation. They do where I live. Why should I go out of my way to travel to some other place when there is beauty all around me right here.
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I’ve taken to more national holidays over flying in recent years. I quite enjoy it but I do recognise what you are saying with the reduction in flying having an impact on holidaying in general. I would strongly encourage finding places to see within your country as there are often brilliant places to see and stay and it helps the local economy.
In those cases, if it’s an option, there are also trains to consider. Depending on the length of the trip, that can even be a major improvement to quality of life.
I know that trains aren’t always an option, especially in America. But if you can some train journeys can be really beautiful, especially across Europe and it’s a much slower way of seeing places.
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Yeah its like just because corpos fly private jets I still walk first, then bike, then take public transit, and only drive if I have to. I try not to travel but if I do its train first, plane second.
Brilliant, you can only do what you can!
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So if your travel is a 1 and the jet is a 10, you have 11 damage to nature: If you don‘t travel and have 0 and the jet still has 10 then it‘s 10. That is less. Fair? No, far from it, nothing in this fucked up world is, but saying that it doesn‘t matter at all and everything is fine as long as the billionaires are doing worse is a cope.
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There is people advocating for that, they’re just not the ones in power for obvious reasons.
https://simpleflying.com/climate-activists-spray-paint-private-jet-at-sylt-airport/
So powerless people trying to do what they can which as you rightly pointed out is failing because that is how our system is set up, to favour the wealthy at all times. The only things I see as working are all illegal, but obviously things will get a lot worse before people martyr themselves attacking private jets or pipelines.
Gives me major depression this and yeah maybe I am “doing exactly as they want” when I refrain from travel, but I literally do not know what else to do? Coping by doing a “whatabout the billionaires tho” might work for you, but it doesn‘t work for me cause I can see it as a cumulative effect and I can also see no way to stop billionaires from doing whatever the hell they want.
