Any time you spend thinking or breath you spend talking about someone else’s carbon footprint is a total fool’s errand.
Nobody will ever change their carbon footprint because of what someone else tells them. There will always be someone worse than them who they can point to and say, “Well I’m not as bad as them so they should change.
If people cared at all about this, they’d change their own behavior. And it’s fine to not care about this at all. And it’s also clear that people don’t care about this at all or they would change rather than hope that someone else will change.
Politicians are incentivized to get elected so don’t expect them to do anything that would risk that — like making laws that inconvenience the people who vote for them or give them money.
Whether I eat meat (I don’t) or Taylor Swift flies in a private jet (she does) doesn’t matter at all when it comes to the environment. That ship has sailed and the effects of climate change are pretty much baked in at this point. The hope is that I’m wealthy enough (in a global context) to avoid any real inconvenience to myself before I die.
Woah, I expected you to get to the point that concerted effort, legislation and better technology is the only thing which will lower carbon dioxide outputs. Instead I got fatalism. :-P
You can check CO2 level meter in the atmosphere over past half a century, to see that "concerted effort, legislation and better technology" not only did jack shit to the actual CO2 levels, but the rate of increase is also increasing last years (accelerating).
Until governments start collectively implementing policies which actually contain or reduce climate change, instead of greenwashing and shifting blame overseas, fatalism is probably the only valid approach, despite how dumb it is. And don't get this old song about personal improvements etc. In no universe individual humans can invent and scale DAC, or deploy giant sunshields, or spread sulphur in the troposphere over thousands of flights. And anything else is pointless really.
I think people only started to really believe in global warming the last 10 years. So I don't think there has been much effort so far. (Except as you point out, effort in greenwashing.)
If you think there’s going to be some great concerted effort and legislation and magic new technology coming, get real.
If you want to “fix” climate change then a lot of people are going to need to decide to make massive shifts in how they live. And that just isn’t going to happen by choice.
But do keep dreaming about that technology that lets us keep living as wastefully as we do.
No of course not, but with enough people choosing the fatalistic approach, they will be right by fiat.
(Almost the same can be said for all more positive approaches, except we can't know for sure they will work, we can only hope. This goes for everything in life. Only Death and allegedly Taxes are certain.)
We have slowed down the acceleration of Co2, so that's proof we can do something. Maybe also dirt cheap solar will at some point make a dent. A huge problem is fertilizer made from fossil fuels.
You’ll notice that countries trying to reduce emissions are successfully doing so on a per capita basis. Countries which are not trying, aren’t. There you go, GP’s point empirically disproven.
The US and UK have reduced their annual CO2 emissions in absolute terms as well.
Denmark's emissions move the needle exactly in proportion to Denmark's emissions. They alone won't save the world if India and China aren't reducing emissions, which is why we should be convincing them to reduce emissions, not throwing our hands in the air with totally non-factual claims like:
> Any time you spend thinking or breath you spend talking about someone else’s carbon footprint is a total fool’s errand.
This is demonstrably, unequivocally untrue. Thinking and breath spent talking about someone else's carbon footprint is reducing people's carbon footprints.
I know cynicism and fatalism sounds cool to certain types of people, but it's generally intellectually lazy and in this case it makes you simply wrong.
It's interesting how you're taking this position about how "people" always excuse their own behavior by pointing to larger polluters and therefore we're doomed, but what I see in the data is that plenty of people aren't engaging in that behavior. However, you are, and you're projecting that onto everyone else (despite clear evidence otherwise). You can simply choose not to :)
People are allowed to be outraged that Taylor Swift generates a larger carbon footprint than the average person... This is a pretty solipsistic point of view that acknowledges that we do indeed live in a society. Doesn't mean we can't try to do better in the face of impending doom.
> People are allowed to be outraged that Taylor Swift generates a larger carbon footprint than the average person
I mean, sure?
Same as it’s OK for Taylor Swift to be outraged that Jeff Bezos generates a larger carbon footprint than her. Or same as it’s OK for me to be outraged that you generate a larger carbon footprint than me.
What good does the outrage do besides help each person ignore the fact that theyre the problem?
> The hope is that I’m wealthy enough (in a global context) to avoid any real inconvenience to myself before I die.
You might get away with that if you're old enough to die before it gets bad. But if/when we get to serious effects from climate change then wealth isn't going help much because people will very quickly stop respecting the laws that enforce it.
Nobody will ever change their carbon footprint because of what someone else tells them. There will always be someone worse than them who they can point to and say, “Well I’m not as bad as them so they should change.
If people cared at all about this, they’d change their own behavior. And it’s fine to not care about this at all. And it’s also clear that people don’t care about this at all or they would change rather than hope that someone else will change.
Politicians are incentivized to get elected so don’t expect them to do anything that would risk that — like making laws that inconvenience the people who vote for them or give them money.
Whether I eat meat (I don’t) or Taylor Swift flies in a private jet (she does) doesn’t matter at all when it comes to the environment. That ship has sailed and the effects of climate change are pretty much baked in at this point. The hope is that I’m wealthy enough (in a global context) to avoid any real inconvenience to myself before I die.