[lotsofpulp]

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted because very few people take the steps that actually reduce environmental damage such as not flying anywhere, living in small residences in dense urban areas, and dramatically reducing driving.

Which to me clearly show the truth of your comment. You can swap out all the plastic bags for cloth bags and buy a Tesla and spend an hour sorting your trash every week, but taking that flight for a honeymoon to Tahiti or living in a suburb and driving everywhere negates all of it and more.

[perl4ever]

I agree with your claim that "everybody is doing it wrong"...except that I think your conclusion just ends up being the same fallacy as everyone else's. Specifically, you can't assume a flight to Tahiti does or doesn't negate plastic bags or whatever.

The only realistic and honest way to assess overall impact is put a number on your total consumption. There are a million ways that can be skewed, but averages don't vary as much as you think - as an overall reality check, if you make and spend your $50K salary every year, that is going to be the order of magnitude of your environmental impact. Mostly, someone who consumes $500K worth of stuff is going to have 10x the impact, and someone who consumes $5K will have 1/10th the impact. How you spend it is second order.

This attitude will never catch on, because people feel, innately and through socialization, that misers are bad, "bean counters" are bad, simple but difficult solutions are bad, and focusing on specific actions, symbols, in-groups and out-groups, is what drives normal social activity and fulfillment.

The psychology of "saving the environment" reminds me a lot of dieting for people who struggle with their weight, or budgeting for people who live paycheck to paycheck. It's the total that matters, not the parts, and yet it's very difficult to approach it any way other than piece by piece.

[lotsofpulp]

> The only realistic and honest way to assess overall impact is put a number on your total consumption. There are a million ways that can be skewed, but averages don't vary as much as you think - as an overall reality check, if you make and spend your $50K salary every year, that is going to be the order of magnitude of your environmental impact. Mostly, someone who consumes $500K worth of stuff is going to have 10x the impact, and someone who consumes $5K will have 1/10th the impact. How you spend it is second order.

I’d like to think it was this easy, but I don’t believe it is. A Manhattan apartment costs a million dollars or more, but that person can use public transport to get around. Someone in Arkansas lives in a suburb of Little Rock and drives 30 miles to work one way every day in a pickup truck they don’t need and uses fuel costing $1 per gallon or less. And their house cost $200k.

I wouldn’t be able to say the person in Manhattan is causing an order more environmental impact, especially when our world doesn’t price in externalities of fuel use at all for most of the population.

[perl4ever]

Well, I wrote "consumption" for a reason. It's arguable that Manhattan real estate is valuable largely due to the land value, and land is an asset that isn't really consumed.

Externalities are a cop-out. There are always externalities, but they're just used as an excuse for special pleading. If you average a large amount of consumption, the amount of oil per dollar, and the externalities of burning it, are going to be fairly consistent. The type of consumption is dwarfed by the amount of consumption; that's the claim I'm making. It's not that the "environmental choice" isn't better all else being equal, but it doesn't make up for hardly any consumption as a percentage. If you're not saving significant money as a percentage with your choices, you're not improving your lifestyle significantly.

[paulcole]

Yep, people really want to feel like they’re doing their part when they’re really as much a part of the problem as the people they look down on.

I’ve never lived in an apartment bigger than 600 square feet, have never driven a car, don’t fly, eat a plant based diet, and will never have kids. We’re about a generation or two from a total disaster and everybody wants to think tiny insignificant changes are enough. Glad I’ll be be long dead by then.

[damnyou]

Look at you, person doing more environmental damage than 80% of the people on the planet, looking down on others at the 85th percentile.

I fly maybe once a year, avoid red meat, and live in a dense neighborhood. I'm doing more environmental damage than most people and I've made my peace with it.