>Cutting back on CO2 emissions would clearly work, but it’s expensive and painful.
This is so painfully backwards. "Saving the Planet" doesn't mean spending tons of money and doing tons of work, quite the opposite. The absolute best thing for the Planet would be for every human being to do nothing at all. Stop driving, stop working, stop eating entirely, and then things will quickly recover. Obviously that's a bit extreme, but it's to illustrate that less activity, not more, is what's best for the Planet.
It's so odd that all our frantic doing is what's thrown the Planet out of balance, and for some reason we think we're going to fix things by doing even more. The less active and industrious human beings are, the less they obsess over money and work, the less taxing we are on the Planet.
IMO this is technically true in a totally uninteresting way.
People aren't going to stop doing stuff. That's just fairly obviously not really on the table, despite the minority of people who are into ideas of going back to some pre-modern agrarian societal model.
So, how do we let people continue to do stuff without totally messing up the planet? That's the crucial question humanity is interested in solving (or, maybe more accurately, needs to solve).
Think about this as it relates to other common problems humans face like debt or the need to lose weight.
I can put all of my energy and focus into making more money so I can get my debt under control, but that won't matter if I have really bad spending habits.
I can put all of my energy into exercising more and burning the calories I take in, but that won't matter if I'm eating more calories than I can reasonably burn in a day.
I'd argue that doing less is still doing something. It's just looking for a solution in a different place. It's focusing on the cause, instead of trying to put a band-aid on the effect.
This falls into the category of "low hanging fruit", and one of the easiest potential sources of meaningful change. Inventing new things, increasing energy efficiency, etc. are all possible optimizations, but are not guaranteed. Eating less, spending less, and burning less energy are all but guaranteed to have a positive result.
The real question of interest is now: how much are people willing to not do?
For something like spending or calories, you probably have to cut back under 20% or under 10%, and even that is hard enough on its own.
Trying to simply cut back for CO2 needs something like a 90% reduction to actually solve things. It could theoretically work but it very quickly hits diminishing returns and becomes a bad allocation of effort. Projects like actively replacing all our power plants, and making sure all cars have a minimum electric range, are much more "low hanging fruit" than trying to directly cut consumption that far.
Privileged folks like those on HN will not cut back much. Folks who are already being forced to cut back will continue to do so, and with massive amounts of suffering.
This is rather pessimistic, trivializes the argument and assumes that it’s directed only at individuals.
Doing less doesn’t have to mean it’s only an individual’s responsibility. Applying this more broadly, doing less is a category of potential solutions to much bigger problems.
Relying on individuals will never move the needle very far.
This is the opposite of assuming it’s directed only at individuals. I’m saying we are already doing this, systematically, at massive scale. What it looks like is people fleeing particular regions, turned from farmer or industrial worker to… “doing less.” It looks like mass migration and failed states. This happens either because the economics cease to make sense (the sort of levers any systematic solution would have available), or ecological facts require it (the sort of solution that will be forced upon us in lieu of action).
In either case, it’s clear that the “doing less” approaches are bound to start with the people who are already doing the least.
> In either case, it’s clear that the “doing less” approaches are bound to start with the people who are already doing the least.
This is not clear, and does not logically follow anything that preceded it.
If you constrain "doing less" to a very specific and restrictive definition of who/what this means, then perhaps. But as a general approach to solving certain kinds of problems, this can take many forms:
- Policy decisions
- Social movements
- Creation of new product categories that remove prior requirements for more
And it's also not necessarily always just a "thing", but a mindset, or another lens through which to consider options for solving burning problems.
This seems to be the standard response, I've certainly heard it before, but all I'm suggesting is doing less. I'm not a luddite, I'm not arguing for a "pre-modern agrarian societal model", I'm arguing for a post-modern agrarian society that balances technology, industry and the ecosystem.
We consume enormously more than we need, and far more than the Planet can handle. I feel like the one of the few sane people when I'm saying it's imperative that we lower our consumption right now.
Funny enough you are falling into a similar situation as item 5 from that list. You are "pushing a view that has absolutely no advantage to anyone". You feel like one of the few sane people because you are of course technically right. However no one will listen to you because "even if that’s true, there’s no profit in thinking about it" as it is currently impossible from a societal standpoint. There is no way to get a critical mass of people to return to an agrarian society until they have no other real choice because collectively modern consumption makes our individual lives more enjoyable. That is why reducing emissions is expensive and painful because the cheap and easy answer of just not consuming isn't feasible.
Some part of modern consumption however is not really making lives any more enjoyable at all, for instance all the low quality clothes and items sold in large quantities to fill some internal void for people for a short while.
If there was for instance a carbon tax on the raw materials and transport then I’m fairly sure the price difference between high quality and low quality items would become minimal so people would start buying more sensibly for the planet because our systems would make it more sensible for them individually.
>to fill some internal void for people for a short while.
You just answered your own point there. It makes people happy. Maybe that feeling is fleeting, but it is still a good feeling that people will not give up voluntarily unless there are no other options.
>If there was for instance a carbon tax on the raw materials and transport then I’m fairly sure the price difference between high quality and low quality items would become minimal so people would start buying more sensibly for the planet because our systems would make it more sensible for them individually.
I don't disagree, but a carbon tax is in the expensive and painful bucket above not the cheap and easy one. It makes the low quality goods more expensive so people consume less of them. That is not people voluntarily giving up those good for the benefit of the planet.
Nah, I don't buy that.
People wouldn't be "giving up" anything for the benefit of the planet by not buying a new pair of shoes every month or something.
It would actually be for their own benefit to be more content.
That's kind of the whole problem, the people who would lose are the sellers and advertisers who cultivate the insecurities in discontent people for their own benefit, not the consumers.
Just to be clear, you are saying that you know what makes people happy better than people know themselves. And even if you are right, people's current behavior shows that they disagree with you on what is best. Therefore they won't voluntarily give up buying new shoes. You will have to force people to agree with you and this type of paternalistic "I know what is best for you better than you do" leadership is rather dystopian.
Also the human desire for endless consumption predates advertising as evidence by the lifestyles of much of history's royalty, aristocracy, and wealthy. People consume because it feels good.
I’m not talking about forcing anyone to do anything.
I talked about carbon taxes to make people pay the true price of their consumption so the market forces can find the right equilibrium, which they can’t when the price doesn’t include all the information.
It seems like we are talking in circles. The original debate was that there were two options for dealing with climate change. One was expensive and painful and the other was cheap and easy.
The cheap and easy one is we just all decide to voluntarily reduce consumption. That isn't feasible for the reasons listed in previous comments.
The expensive and painful one is a combination of disincentivizing consumption, offsetting carbon emission, creating carbon capture technology, etc. As I said before, a carbon tax is part of the expensive option because it obviously makes consumption more expensive.
That isn't to say a carbon tax is a bad solution. I generally support one. It is simply a recognition that a carbon tax is not the cheap and easy solution of us all simply reducing consumption. If you want a cheap solution either people need to voluntarily give up consumption or they need to be forced to give up consumption.
I agree with that.
The only thing I have an objection to is that it would be so painful to give up a portion of the consumption, because some of it is truly excessive and encouraged mostly by advertising and 'influencers'. To which I don't have a solution except trying to reduce the relentless consumerism and trying to convince people they'll be much happier with stuff they can buy outright and truly own (see Right To Repair) than with stuff they have to buy on credit and don't really own anyway (see iPhones and Audible collections).
>for instance all the low quality clothes and items sold in large quantities to fill some internal void for people for a short while.
For clothes, for the purchaser, have you done the math to show it isn't worthwhile? I find it's cheaper[1] to buy low quality clothes than to buy high quality ones in the long run. I'd buy shoes that would last only 6-9 months, but paying double wouldn't make them last twice as long, etc.
>>> I find it's cheaper[1] to buy low quality clothes than to buy high quality ones in the long run. I'd buy shoes that would last only 6-9 months, but paying double wouldn't make them last twice as long, etc.
This doesn't match my experience. I had dress shirts made-to-measure for about $50-60/each....that was 9 years ago and they are still going strong. For footwear, I mostly wear $150+ combat boots or dress boots, they all last for years and years of hard use.
True and I should have worded it differently. Not necessarily cheap but low quality.
You can get designer stuff at high price points that are not really much better quality, just better marketed.
It’s hard to find really high quality clothes today because there just isn’t the incentive to provide them when all the crap can be sold and segmented into fashion seasons so you “have” to buy a new jacket now.
This is not just clothes of course, I’m for example very susceptible to feeling a need to buy the latest gadget because it has more RAM. I might need it someday. Maybe.
>You are "pushing a view that has absolutely no advantage to anyone".
Really? I'm of the opinion that doing less, working less, and doing things like having your own garden would lead to much greater health and happiness for the average person. The only way I can see "no advantage" is when viewed through the lens of modern capitalism, then my suggestions are certainly blasphemous.
It's not they're blasphemous, it's that there's no clear way to incentivize a critical mass to change their behavior. Put another way: the destination is clear enough, but how to get there isn't. Reminds me a bit of nuclear disarmament.
Exactly, it is more the transition that is impossible rather than the end state. You can't tell people to give up international travel, visiting family members, eating non-local foods, air conditioning, and the overwhelming majority of society's leisure activities and replace it all with gardening. Maybe that is a desirable end result that would be healthier for both humanity and the planet, but there is no way to get there voluntarily. That is just asking people to give up too much.
You're ignoring his more important point that you will not be able to get the critical mass necessary to make it useful and true on a collective/societal level. Believing that you can ask people to work less, and that the lost income (and subsequently access to critical resources like food) can somehow be supplemented with a garden that many people wouldn't even have access to the space necessary to implement, betrays a lack of understanding of the economic situation of most people. How many proles rent rather than own, and how may have access to fertile ground?
I don't know how we solve for the people that get a dopamine hit from a sales transaction.
My MIL is a great example of this, she goes shopping just to go shopping and get a deal. She buys more than she could ever want or use. Christmas is especially bad, buying so many presents she has a hard time wrapping them all in time.
Consumerism embedded into the American psyche is no joke and I don't know how we change it given relentless marketing campaigns, habit, etc.
I wish we could pull back but I don't know how we do it at a large scale that people will agree to.
COVID showed that (a lot of us ) really don't need to be commuting and flying all that much. It's tragic that 'society' wasted a perfectly good pandemic by not learning any of the things it showed us.
> COVID showed that (a lot of us ) really don't need to be commuting and flying all that much. It's tragic that 'society' wasted a perfectly good pandemic by not learning any of the things it showed us.
I'm flying a lot more post Covid. It showed me how precious travel and meeting people face to face and experiencing new cultures is. Based on current air travel statistics, I'm not alone.
FYI, when people are talking about helping "the Planet" they're not talking about lifeless rocks, they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet.
And by balance I mean not precipitating another extinction event. Sure, they're going to happen anyway eventually, but we probably shouldn't cause an extra one if we don't have to...
> FYI, when people are talking about helping "the Planet" they're not talking about lifeless rocks, they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet.
I disagree, I think this is the virtue signaling projection but most people only care about global warming because they think there's a non negligible chance they'll see real impacts _on their own quality of life_ either during their life or during the life of their direct offspring. I think there's likely plenty of individuals who truly value biodiversity but with all the evidence around us I'm pretty sure the majority doesn't actually care about saving even a non-cute mammal, much less actual diversity like thousands of species of insects or bees or whatever.
> Sure, they're going to happen anyway eventually, but we probably shouldn't cause an extra one if we don't have to...
Honestly why not?
(To be clear, I don't think we should, but I know my reasons. They're not science based, because the question "Should we care if humanity causes an extiction event?" can't have a scientific answer.)
It can have a scientific answer if you set a scientific goal for the planet. We get to decide what the purpose of this planet is, insofar as we quite clearly control the planet and its condition in most respects.
The planet may have the potential to produce more variations of intelligent life yet, given its seeming rich potential for such in its current more docile condition.
I think it may be a worthy cause to preserve the planet in such a condition that it can continue to act as an incubator for more intelligent life for a long time to come yet (many millions of years perhaps, or as long as it can until something catastrophic happens that humans aren't primarily responsible for).
Why that specific aspect? High level intelligent life (I'm obviously not talking about elephants or dolphins here) may be extraordinarily rare in the universe, and this type of incubating planet may be extraordinarily rare (that is, far more rare than is already suspected). So the scientific goal I've chosen to set for the planet is that I'd like to see other intelligent life spring up from this planet; you can disagree with that goal, that doesn't matter, I've set the goal and may choose to pursue it at will (bio-engineering, artificial intelligence, and so on) and so may a billion other people. The scientific reason to preserve the planet in a rich condition for safely incubating intelligent life, is that I would like to see what other types of intelligent life can be created. The question is: what other / how many other types of intelligent life are possible?
All scientific answers result from a person having a subjective reason for wanting to pursue an answer (I want to because of x y z). They obviously don't just magically spring out of nowhere, the goal is set by the self-interest of the person acting on it.
You can only get a scientific answer to an "ought" or "should" if you believe that morality is objective in the universe. Otherwise, you have a hidden principle "We should do what we like best", which itself cannot be justified and must be taken as given.
> "they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet."
Something utterly worthless to humans unless humans are part of said diversity. There is no advantage to a planet full of marmosets patiently waiting for the Sun to die. We are all there is in the way of serious tool users, and quite possibly now we've drained the surface coal and oil and tin and iron, all there ever will be. There isn't time left in the world to go through another fossil fuel era, another Dinosaur era, another mammal evolution.
Edgelords and their "Humans are a cancer, everything would be better if we die out" are advocating not just human genocide but committing all known life in the Universe to end. We are currently the only known chance of anything getting off-world, ever. Any people, any machines, any bacteria, any fungus, any tardigrades, anything. We should be flinging life at Europa, Venus, Martian polar regions, asteroids, as much as we can. If life could be screaming at us to save it from being single-planetary, it would be.
Humans might indeed cause one or more large extinction events, but there are also several known causes (and perhaps many more unknown ones we could discover) of large extinction events which seem to be unpreventable except through the actions of humans (or another intelligent and technological species). If you were to permanently halt all technological progress now, or perhaps revert to before nuclear weapons or even before the industrial revolution, you could prevent extinction events from, say, human-caused climate change, nuclear war, or Skynet. But you'd also effectively guarantee some other eventual extinction event, perhaps from an asteroid impact, a supernova, or any number of phenomena we haven't even discovered yet.
After the dinosaurs were wiped out, millions of new species evolved. So causing a climate disaster that wipes out humans scores higher on the "diversity of life" scale than keeping humans alive. Live evolves. The Planet, "Planet" here as Gaia, will survive our extinction.
Humans making it to other habitats beyond Earth will likely set off new explosions of diversity (in geological time) than another reset on Earth.
In contrast, if Earth life doesn't achieve the ability to colonize other bodies, it is doomed to have diversity of zero once the Sun expands, if a global natural disaster doesn't kill all life before then.
> they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet.
Do we know for sure that climate change will decrease diversity? I’d imagine making colder areas of the planet warmer would allow more life to thrive. I mean compare now to the last ice age. Surely there’s more life now.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally on board with team climate so I hope this doesn’t come across as blasphemy.
Any fast change to the global environments is going to cause more extinctions than speciations. That is loss of diversity.
Their is no minimal time for extinctions, whereas the time to speciate significantly requires hundreds of thousands or millions of years.
Having the climate change in conjunction with pouring plastic into the environment, the CO2 effects on ocean life, overfishing, destruction of wild land and life, chemicals leaking into the environment, etc - and the problem multiplies.
I'd suggest you dig out and read a copy of James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis. It's obviously all new age whackery, but the more you read about it the more sense you'll see in it. Definitely worth tracking down.
In what way is it new age whackery? In his book Novacene he describes it non-mystically; a planet with two kinds of daisy. As the planet cools, the dark petalled daisy thrives and absorbs light and radiates heat into the atmosphere. The atmosphere warms. The dark daisy doesn't do so well in warmth, the pale daisy thrives. It reflects sunlight before it can be turned to heat. The planet cools. The dark daisy blooms. The daisys adjust the planetary environment and temperature through feedback loops, not through new-age whackery or Mother Nature/deity intelligent planning.
He comments that such a thing happens on Earth and that if we were looking at Earth from outside, we would think it uninhabited because it is too close to the Sun to be in the Goldilocks Zone and appears too hot, radiating too much heat - but it's the radiating of all that heat which is what keeps Earth cool enough for life.
(And that it's the feedback systems which are old, inflexible and stretching past their limits which is going to cause life problems with overheating).
I was assuming the poster I was responding to would be sceptical of the idea, so I was saying 'you'll not agree with this, but as you read more and think it through it'll make more and more sense'.
It didn't come across very well, and i'm certainly not suggesting the idea has no merit, which is why I raised it in the first place!
> The absolute best thing for the Planet would be for every human being to do nothing at all.
Actually the planet doesn’t give a shit either way. People have been busy changing it, and it has simply reacted. Now they are selfishly unhappy with it because it’s less congenial than it used to be for vertebrates, or specifically humans. They just want an earth that will support them in continuing to do the things they want.*
Perhaps in 30 megayears the cockroach archeologists will marvel at all the weird endoskeletal animals in the fossil record and wonder if any of them were intelligent.
* this is why I don’t like population-based arguments about the climate. If you believe the earth should be optimized for humans, how can you simultaneously say “but only for these ones?” Making people is an activity some people choose to do.
This is a bit like saying that the planet would be better off without humans. And maybe that's what you believe, I don't know. It might even be true!
But I don't care: I'm a human and I love other humans and I want humans to prosper as much as possible. Which requires activity which contributes to our shared prosperity. Ideally that prosperity would also include a nice planet to live on though. Earth is a reasonable choice.
"Save the planet" is misleading entirely: the planet isn't going anywhere. It will survive extinction events.
"Preserve nonhuman species and the current state of the environment" is where your "get rid of all the humans and their activity" proposal would fit.
But is that actually what anyone wants? The real goal for most people would be, I wager, much more like: "Preserve both human and non-human life, with 21st-century-wealthy-country-standards-of-living, and also preserve the current state of the environment."
In short: you're making "save the planet" into a very particular strawman that misrepresents what people who say it mean.
So when people say "save the planet" they also mean preserving a completely unsustainable standard of living? I disagree, but if I wanted a strawman to shoot down that's a good one.
To be clear, I meant protecting the current ecosystems and I don't believe we need to regress or eliminate the human race to do that either.
How about transforming an unsustainable standard of living into a sustainable one?
"Kill all humans" is so defeatist. So is "kill most humans and go back to being hunter/gatherers". That's not even trying. That is flipping the board because you think you're losing.
To repeat what I said already, "Obviously that's a bit extreme, but it's to illustrate that less [human] activity, not more, is what's best for the Planet."
That was why I brought it up, I wasn't suggesting that we actually kill everyone, that's unrealistic and absurd, nor did I say that we should go back to being hunter/gatherers. I suggested we do less, which means consuming less and is part of a sustainable standard of living, so I'm a little confused by your comment...
I think I ruffled some feathers by pointing out that every human being dropping dead right now would be the best possible thing to happen for the health of the biosphere. It's an ugly truth, I was hoping it would motivate people to change.
I don't think the OP is being pedantic to make a strawman, rather I think they are pointing out that the bulk of policy proposals are for the most part internalized assumptions about what is to be desired.
"Why is climate change undesirable?" is the fundamental question which is not often talked about. Is it bad because it will affect humans adversely? Is it bad because it affects non-humans adversely? Is it bad because there is some particular state the Earth should be in?
The practical issue for me is: how to do less and still feel like I’m a member of a functional group of people? Doing less is easy. Being part of a group of people that do little is doable. But I’ve yet to find such a group that isn’t made of crazies or depressive people.
Doing stuff and consuming resources and spending is a religion. We don’t have temples to make offerings. Our entire cultural environment is dedicated to the symbolic activity of producing and sacrificing. Taking part in it is a requirement to be recognized as a legitimate member of society. Problems that are seen as legit are all related to this religious endeavour.
> Stop driving, stop working, stop eating entirely, and then things will quickly recover. Obviously that's a bit extreme, but it's to illustrate that less activity, not more, is what's best for the Planet.
How do I get the food without a currency I earn at work?
Will I be given perpetually free stuff from some benevolent government? I believe I've heard that pitch before and it hasn't ever worked and never will.
This is a nonstarter and completely disregards just how the world actually works.
We can divide possible strategies into four groups: those that help the ecosystem and hurt humans in the short term (like your extreme example), those that hurt the ecosystem and hurt humans in the short term (like nuclear war or Agent Orange), those that help the ecosystem and help humans in the short term (like moving from fossil fuels to solar), and those that hurt the ecosystem and help humans in the short term (like expanding the use of fossil fuels). (And of course there are many things that are on the borderline.)
You are setting up an opposition between strategy groups 1 and 4, but ignoring the existence of the other two groups. But group 3, the Bright Green group, is where all the action is!
>Stop driving, stop working, stop eating entirely, and then things will quickly recover.
... after "stop eating", stop breathing will soon follow. Why don't you go first? Why haven't you gone first already? Is it because humans just don't work like that? At all?
I mean, thanks. Your argument demonstrates precisely why "make less CO2" will never work: You believe it, and yet even you are still breathing.
(please don't stop breathing. i don't think your suggestion is serious, so neither is mine).
> do nothing at all. Stop driving, stop working, stop eating entirely, and then things will quickly recover.
you mean: let humans go extinct. Then yes, that would work. It has the elegance of Multivac’s answer to Asimov’s “The last question”
“And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy.
But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer -- by demonstration -- would take care of that, too.”
There is a perverse, stable equilibrium. When traffic becomes better, its much more convenient to drive. When flights are cheaper because demand is lower, more people can and will travel. When the price of beef declines because some people stop consuming, others will buy more. I don't believe there is any way to fix our problems by doing less.
This is so painfully backwards. "Saving the Planet" doesn't mean spending tons of money and doing tons of work, quite the opposite. The absolute best thing for the Planet would be for every human being to do nothing at all. Stop driving, stop working, stop eating entirely, and then things will quickly recover. Obviously that's a bit extreme, but it's to illustrate that less activity, not more, is what's best for the Planet.
It's so odd that all our frantic doing is what's thrown the Planet out of balance, and for some reason we think we're going to fix things by doing even more. The less active and industrious human beings are, the less they obsess over money and work, the less taxing we are on the Planet.