Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by seanmcdirmid 1521 days ago
If someone focus’s on 1% of the problem and never touch the 99%, the former is going to get frustrated and give up.
2 comments

Agriculture is responsible for far more than 1% of the problem - USDA says about 10.5% [0]. And those of us who do advocate for making more sustainable decisions are not ignoring the other 89%, we're actively trying to reduce that too.

[0] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/natural-resources-environmen...

If everybody doesn’t treat climate change as a problem that they’re both the cause of and solution to, we’re never going to touch the 99%.

You think these corporations are growing almonds in the desert and raising cows because nobody buys them?

You're asking a lot if you think consumers should know what the effect of buying almonds has on the water supply. Simply charge the almond farmers more for their water, almond prices go up, consumers buy less of them.
We’ve had fifty years of behavior change messaging. It’s time to take a different approach.
Societal change (down to the individual level) is the only thing that's going to work. People will have to change how they live and make different decisions. Full stop. There's no magic solution waiting to be discovered.

Whether the change comes voluntarily or through war, famine, and misery for future generations the likes of which we can't imagine is up to those of us alive today.

Behavior change is completely necessary if you want societal change. If you reduce the supply of meat/oil with policy without reducing demand, it would increase prices and people would protest, so we'd be back at square one.