[clarry]

> You can pick your housing and location based on not owning a car

If all I ever wanted from life was to go to work and back to my apartment, via a grocery store.

As a matter of fact, I can't choose where my friends and relatives live, and I'd probably have to drop some of my hobbies too if I were to live without a car.

[adrianN]

You will probably have to drop some of your hobbies too if we don't manage to limit Global Warming to below 2 degrees.

[clarry]

Yeah, well, I did things the other way around and picked my job around not having a commute. That means remote, I work from my apartment.

I still have a car, but I drive much less than those who commute by car every day. It might be sitting unused in the lot for weeks (I have my feet & bicycle for grocery store trips). But when I need it, I need it, the public infra and ridesharing simply isn't there. (But I occasionally give rides and haul stuff for people who don't own a car, hey, isn't that exactly what we need?)

As far as global warming is concerned.. well, one glance at the statistics shows that my car ownership couldn't matter less. For example, if you take the top polluters (China & USA) and compare to my country (Finland), and break it down by sector, you'll find that our transportation's contribution to CO2 emissions in the world is a fraction of nothing.

As far as domestic energy consumption goes, we've cold winters, and heating is the biggest drain. There's a lot that could be done to improve the energy efficiency of older homes without spending too much money but the will isn't there. The only way we get heat efficient buildings reliably is via regulation that applies to new buildings.

[fulafel]

It doesn't make sense to quantize emissions by country to decide whether your choices matter. (Or by by other attributes)

[clarry]

Huh, why not?

Things people do generally become a problem only at scale. If the scale isn't there, there's no problem. There is no global law, everything we regulate is regional. The consequences of regulating a speck of noise in the statistics does not matter; regulating a major contributor does.

I can go on a camping trip and light an open fire in the woods, no problem. My neighbor can do so too, no problem. If all the 1.3 billion people in India started doing it, we'd probably have to do something about it.

This applies to pretty much everything you can do. In Californian drought, it may be occasionally necessary to restrict the use of water for watering lawns or washing cars, but here we don't give a shit because we aren't running out of clean water. In areas with expensive desalination, all water use is rather consequential.

There are low density regions where it's ok to heat your home by burning wood, it will never cause an air quality issue and the planet won't die as long as the world's population is not concentrated in these areas doing the same thing (then it would not be a low density region).

There are high density cities where they're starting to reroute traffic around it and collect tolls from those who insist on driving through, and there are low density areas where it doesn't matter.

There are areas where little to no energy is spent on heating homes, and then there are areas like Finland with cold winters and a lot of home heating.

The attributes are absolutely relevant, we need to put things into perspective and attack problems where the scale is an issue. Planet earth doesn't care that you're pure of heart, or that you breathe less CO2 than your neighbor, it cares about the absolute quantity of greenhouse gases that are shot into the atmosphere. That is not solved by fighting the fight where the quantity is relatively zero. And yes, that means the world is unfair, and you may be subject to more restrictions depending on where you happened to be born, or where you chose to move. Holding everyone on the planet to the same standard was never a thing (unfortunately the globalists don't seem to understand this and we're occasionally suffering the consequences of regulation made by & for people a thousand miles south of us, in a different climate, thanks EU).

[fulafel]

The change is going to have to affect your friends and relatives too.

You can always adjust your hobbies, or work. Global warming is more important.

[clarry]

Doesn't mean they'll be living next door all of a sudden!