[sremani]

Outrage is not the answer, if you live in OECD countries you have a massive footprint that rivals villages of developing countries. So do something about it. No, your pre-order of Model 3 that is going to come 3 years down the pike, does not put a dent in your carbon footprint. It is one small step, the roads your Tesla drives on needs petro-chemicals, so do those perfectly manicured french fries. Oil industry is greedy and entrenched, and do not expect some sort of Egalitarian enlightenment not from them, Nor from SV companies that colluded to screw their employees by forming a Cartel. Understand human nature, and it will help you trying to see the problems through caricatures and hopefully to work towards solution.

Here is the hard truth, We are a fossil fuel civilization. The problems are complex, we can green wash and eat some organic pop corn, but that does not help.

edit: there are some serious people trying to bring real solutions, I find Vaclav Smil, taking it to the next level of thinking instead of the constant greenwashing marketing campaigns.

[noir_lord]

I live in a flat that is suitable for living alone, I don't drive, I cycle everywhere except when I need to go really long distances in which case I use public transport.

I buy nearly all my food from the local market most of which comes from farms within a hundred miles, I minimise energy consumption, most of the furniture I buy is good second hand stuff, I rarely buy clothes and everything I do own would fit on a single 3ft rack in a closet (and does).

I recycle as much waste as I can, I don't have a garden so that restricts some options in terms of growing food/composting.

I take showers not baths.

My desktop is 5 years old with upgrades, my laptop is 3 years old, I've no current plans to replace either.

I don't do any of this for purely ecological reasons (though that's a nice benefit) but because I have everything I need to live comfortably and I don't put much premium on expensive possessions, I want to own stuff not be owned by stuff.

Not really sure how much more I can do given that I rent so major energy upgrades aren't really a possibility.

[beatpanda]

Help organize collective action to make it easier for many more people to make the choices you're able to make.

[sliverstorm]

Yup; not to knock personal lifestyle changes, but your own personal impact is a drop in the ocean- you only start to make a true difference when you can spread them to many other people.

Of course, practicing what you preach can be a key step in spreading those changes.

[outworlder]

Of all the harmful effects of oil, asphalt does not make the top of the list. Sure, it covers up soil, nothing grows on it, it causes flooding by not allowing water to infiltrate the soil, and so on.

But the stuff was put there on purpose and it mostly... sits there. As designed.

What about water bottles? Many of those are made of plastic from oil. Not all are recycled. Or most things made of plastic for that matter.

What about fertilizer? We are using dead dinosaurs to fertilize our crops.

The list goes on.

I'll say this, though: should we reduce our dependence on oil as fuel, we will buy ourselves a lot of time to fix the other issues.

[joe_the_user]

Outrage is a tool that could do one useful thing - exclude a group of disingenuous people entirely from the discussion.

You have a powerful, organized group that have worked to obstruct discussion on the crucial topic of how to solve this problem for a while. Punishing them harshly would serve the important purpose of preventing their obstruction.

Figuring out how to deal with the climate change problem would be hard if everyone was negotiating in good faith. If we can exclude those who have polluted discussion entirely, so much the better.

And of course the power of individual choice to solve is minimal, rhetoric like "you can do something to stop global warming" is exactly ridiculous greenwashing. Broad state policy is needed. And said policy has to be formulated from enlightened self-interest - sure the solar industry is as self-serving as the oil industry but if we can use their self-interest, so much the better.

Edit: Suppose you had a company with ten divisions. The head of one division pursued a project that made the company a bunch of money but which that head knew would result in the company ultimately loosing even more. When that came to light, would not the sensible thing be to demote the head down to dog catcher and consult with everyone else how to change course? Does this kind of reasoning require that the other divisions head be saints or something? No.

[intended]

I agree more with the original parent comment than I do with your position.

I rememebr the 1980s clearly, and how incensed people were then. I also rememebr that environmental damage was covered up, and that industry was suppressing or spreading FUD against science.

In the time since, it hasn't improved - and Kyoto, a band-aid over a gangrenous wound, has failed instead of getting stronger.

Studying human nature and working in larger more coordinated goods is pretty much the last Hail Mary option. Enlightened self interest is very clear - "let's see who survives till the end. I'm going to be its me."

The issues are pretty vast, and short of someone convincing the first world to give up fossil fuels, while simultaneously convincing the third world to give up their ambitions, - enlightened self interest only leads to more fuel being burned.

I bet that we will be resorting to terraforming before we tell people that they can't live a first world standard of living.

[deelowe]

Do you have any practical suggestions or did you just want to poke fun at EV drivers?

BTW, Asphalt is 99% recycled (yes, even the binder). http://www.asphaltpavement.org/index.php?option=com_content&...

[sremani]

I am guilty of being that EV driver myself, but I meant Asphalt is a petro product.

edit: its more about pervasiveness of petro-chemicals we hardly acknowledge, all the while still building cities and subsections for Cars instead of humans.

[maxxxxx]

Outrage is certainly not the answer. The problem is that this constant propaganda stops any kind of rational look at the situation in its tracks. The same was done with smoking for a long time, with drugs for a long time (things seem to improve though), health care in the US and other things. In my view that's the worst (and most evil) these people are doing: they kill rational dialog.

[rm_-rf_slash]

It's not that outrage is not the answer, it is that there is no "the answer." Becoming a renewable and sustainable civilization is not something that will happen in 30 years, and we would be lucky to be at 100% by 2100.

We need electric cars and grid level storage to be able to fully replace fossil fuels. To even get there we have to be realistic about energy needs. I don't like fracking but I accept it as a lesser evil to King coal. I wouldn't want to live next to a nuclear plant but I understand how impossible it will be to continue energy consumption growth - renewables aside - without significant investment in nuclear energy or a staggering growth in fossil fuel use. We cannot pretend that in one or even two generations we will be magically powered by the sun and the wind any more than we can make believe that the world has unlimited fossil fuel resources and that we can burn them without consequence for ever and ever.

Climate change and sustainability is the rare beast that can only be felled by a death of a thousand cuts.