This is just a repeat of the recycling scam [1]. It's almost abusive - making people feel responsible for a problem almost entirely out of their control.
If we want to go forward we absolutely need to shut these fools down, the only solution proposed to the problem is, you need to be poor. I don't understand how people get on-board with it. From the outside it really looks like a cult to be honest.
Weirdest thing in my opinions is how much of educated people also fall in the scam as well
Being poor is not enough. Your government, our government contracts debt to spend on your behalf, about 3x what you earn, and they build airports, wars, industries, city towers, running KPMG audits (probably the most CO2-intensive among all that) with your money.
You can be farming carrots and live like a hermit and still be funding the CO2 industry.
Some stuff is truly limited. The other day I learned that China is a net importer of agricultural products and this has been the case for almost 20 years now.
It appears that their one child policy - something that would not fly in the west - prevented a major crisis here.
After corona was pushed through, and given that the child-per-woman count is already approaching 1 in many western countries, I believe you are wrong. A one child policy could easily be pushed only with the right narrative and public opinion. Just declare big families as a climate disaster (they are) and let everyone know how irresponsible women with more then one child are. Bingo. People have been trained to look down on each other just recently, so use the drive and... outlaw children!
I realize covid-mandates were perceived differently from country to country.
Where I live, we first had a push for a general vaccination mandate, which was later more or less silently abolished because it turned out the promised efficientcy of the vaccines turned out to be not that high, and politicians silent, without explaining why, let the mandate plans slip back into their hiding place. As a result, we have pretty much destroyed any remaining trust in politics and so-called "experts" in the general population.
That alone sounds like an enormous self-defeating ecological disaster, since anybody immigrating from India to USA or from Morocco to France quickly adopts the new, much higher, level of consumption and carbon emission. Nontheless, it is done on a grand scale with very few reservations.
The Swiss ~voted~ proposed a vote on limiting the population number citing carbon emissions. Truth be told the largest groups of immigrants there are Portuguese, Germans and Italians, so if anything it's the other way around considering what kind of energy mix Switzerland has.
That being said I think countries should deal with their population issues on their own instead of relying this heavily on imported workforce.
France was largely successful at keeping their fertility rate only slightly under replacement, so it is possible.
Edit: Can't confirm if the referendum was ultimately scheduled.
I would argue this is different in the sense you’ll hardly find alternative for most of the plastic you use, while some can surely drastically reduce their footprint by eating beans instead of steaks, using smaller cars (when car is absolutely required), buying smaller house to heat…
Does europeans drivers are more sad than the American ones ?
Does vegan enjoy less their meal ?
Does Japanese feels poor to live in a 30m2 appartement ?
Hiding behind culture, habits and society is not enough to dumb their responsibility, especially for rich and smart people.
Don’t forget 30 days is often what it gets to form a new habit like dropping beef off your meal.
I own no car, never have. In exchange for becoming a vegetarian, am I allowed to continue to eat meat in your world? Or do I have to change my lifestyle because a group of bigots is pointing fingers?
I'm European, have been to the US, and yeah, it's more fun to drive there.
I've been vegan for years and yeah, it was less enjoyable and empirically less healthy for me than the more normal diet I have now.
I have lived in a small flat, and now I own a house, and yeah, the house is better. I can't imagine ever moving back into a flat unless I become impoverished.
The entire movement you propose is simply "be poorer".
You share your experience as an (probably rich minority) individual. What about the society you lived in ? How about the society your kids will live in 40 years ?
The movement I describe is “sobriety”. It’s similar to being poor of something (big car) but you’re not lacking it, instead you choose to do without. This difference is a big deal in a psychology point of view and that’s probably why you feel “less fun”.
Totally agree with your point of healthiness of vegan diet, the case was more on quantity than beef/no beef.
If you call being Western "rich minority", which is technically true, sure.
I grew up poor in the UK. Poor people in the UK generally have houses and cars unless they're in big cities.
The majority of the people in the society I live in drive cars, live in houses and eat meat.
I could choose to do without these things. I don't because like, I don't need to.
Climate change will not be solved by me moving into a tiny flat. It will be solved by the UK figuring out how not to use natural gas to heat my house.
In 40 years my kids will likely own houses and drive cars too. Unless they choose not to. I'd love them regardless, but would be a bit upset if they were to turn out to be far-left extremists.
I sincerely wish the best for your kids, and that includes nice cars and houses.
Figuring out how to heat a country without gaz will be easier when there’s less volume to heat, and energy crisis in EU drive more non-far-left-extremist to see sobriety as an asset within the solution.
From my own country president (and he his quite right/liberal):
> We are living the end of abundance. […] Our system based on freedom in which we have become used to living, sometimes when we need to defend it, it can entail making sacrifices. [0]
Well said. Saying "everyone will be carbon literate in 30 years" is as accurate as it would have been predicting back in the the 60s that people now would be "asbestos literate". And just like the asbestos problem was fixed by making it illegal the same thing happens with carbon, of course not 100% of it (unlike asbestos) because that's impossible but close enough, for example it's ridiculous single use plastics are still legal in so many places, it's ridiculous high speed trains are not ubiquious by now, is ridiculous there are so many places where going by car is faster than public transportion, as well as many other laws and infrastructure that are long overdue, nothing to do with making everybodys job to bean-count "their" emissions.
I think we need to start acting against it as much as we can especially us in tech we bear a big responsibility for borowing our craftsmanship to anti human ideals and cult like herd mentality, this is a very grave issue in my opinion
Weirdest thing in my opinions is how much of educated people also fall in the scam as well