[MisterTea]

It's hard when your job and even hobbies are intertwined with this destruction. I enjoy working with computers and industrial machinery - two giant sources of pollution and social disruption. I sometimes feel this existential crisis where I am part of the problem yet I have no way to escape and become filled with guilt. Yet without this technology our lives would be more difficult.

I sometimes think about a post-industrial fantasy world where technology still exists, though minimally, and carefully applied to solve real problems humanity faces instead of selling FOMO or millions of "shiny things" that wind up in land fills so you can sell the new FOMO/shinything so some numbers on a spread sheet goes up.

[acomjean]

It’s hard. But do what you can, it’s all you can do.

We got a solar array 10 years ago now. It’s small, but between 1000 to 3500 watts depending on the weather. It brings me some joy.

“Ones and zeros” by Jack Johnson is brutal lyrically. “A lot of traffic on the streets, so who's really doing all the drilling?”

It’s an unknown future and I’m glad that there are a lot thoughtful comments in this thread by people who care.

[sandworm101]

Computers are not the problem, even the big data centers. The issue is carbon in the air. Fossil fuels. And it isnt really even about driving combustion cars. It is about industrial energy production. We need to stop burning tankers of oil to create bulk electricity. Replace all the coal/oil power plants with solar/wind/nuclear and the IC cars wont matter.

[HelloMcFly]

I agree. Like many here, my job is now in the service of an AI-first business and people are incentivized to make AI as central and routine a part of our operations as possible. AI usage is not included in corporate commitments to social responsibility or environmental stewardship are not.

All that said: you might enjoy the book Robot & Monk by Becky Chambers, if you're one to read fiction. It kind of depicts what you're describing as your fantasy.

[dd8601fn]

This may upset some people, but I think you have to come up with mental demarcation for responsibility, or you’ll go nuts.

I simply cannot decide to avoid all the technology of my field because whoever designed the electrical infrastructure didn’t do it responsibly. Or because the handling of ewaste hasn’t been dealt with. Or because everyone sourced materials in unethical ways.

My responsibility for most of that kinda ends at my voting behavior or trying to make reasonable personal decisions that are well within my small sphere of influence. A problem domain that I can handle.

Anyone who watched The Good Place knows what I mean. It’s not absolution for my own behavior, it’s just not holding myself accountable for everything that everyone else does… badly.

Otherwise there’s just no sword to fall on that’s big enough to feel at peace with the world. (Think of the snails!)

[throwanem]

You are responsible for the reasonably foreseeable consequences of your own actions.

I'm not going to point to a TV show about alcoholism to substantiate that. You don't need me to. It is also why manslaughter, though a lesser crime than murder, remains a crime.

[dd8601fn]

You seem to have reduced the very thesis of what I was saying to the point where you excised it entirely.

“Don’t get shitty drunk and then drive” fits just fine.

“Be a technology person who doesn’t use technology because our power isn’t green.” potentially falls on the far side of that line of personal responsibility.

[throwanem]

You don't sound too confident.

[dd8601fn]

In what?

[throwanem]

In your self-exculpation.

[Quarrelsome]

what's to guilt? None of us asked to be born into this. Most of us are only on part of a bell curve and often nowhere near the top. I lived for a while with friends and their commendable eco-mindedness included ideas like not flushing the toilet when it was just piss. Meanwhile the neighbour down the street leaves their hose running while washing their car out back, while popping inside to answer their front door.

While Europe cycles, the US builds bigger and bigger cars requiring more and more fuel to push just to prop up its unimaginative auto industry. While an American drives, Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu or Donald Trump level cities of concrete that will need to be repoured one day, combined with all the wasted energy put into making the people who die in those attacks.

One cannot be responsible for this, for all these other people. There's no guilt, just existential angst as we watch ourselves doomspiral. Whenever climate change is discussed internationally the developed world point at current carbon emissions while the developing world points at historic carbon emissions which means no agreement can be made. Those that are made are just torn up at the earliest opportunity by political opponents seeking short term gains. Who could possibly be responsible for all of this?

The only hope is that this investments made through energy use will propel humanity to the point where it can survive the world it has ruined.

[throwanem]

You will live to regret your moral cowardice. Specifically, you'll regret the wrong choices it leads you to make. The guilt you feel now is a warning. Don't stay lazy, or that guilt will eventually be augmented by shame.

[Quarrelsome]

All we can do is aim to be better, to aim to be perfect is putting obstacles in your own path for your own smug sense of satisfaction, while the world still burns the same.

Unless you can change the many, including those most intransigent, you have to respect that just changing yourself, is something you only do for yourself. I don't see how its "moral cowardice" for me to own a car so I can ferry around my 84 year old father, so he doesn't have to drive, or to flush my toilet after every time I piss.

[throwanem]

I really don't have to respect that.

If we're to talk about what you're ashamed of, why bring up the least blameworthy examples you can find? Do you want to be shriven, or enabled?

[Quarrelsome]

I mean I don't use that car for any other purpose. My carbon footprint is probably around or below average for someone in Europe. I eat meat maybe with half of my meals and rarely eat beef or pork. The last time I got on a plane was in 2018 for work. Last holiday via a flight was I think in 2012 and was about 3 hours each way.

I think the average American or even maybe Chinese citizen has a much higher footprint than me these days. I could do better, but to do so would impact my life negatively, win me nothing but smug self-indulgence and change nothing in terms of the long term outcomes of this planet.

So yea, what guilt, what "moral cowardice"? I wouldn't sneer at someone with a higher footprint than me (outside of maybe SUV owners because srsly wtf is that shit) because its collectively where we're culpable, not individually.

Its 2026 and like 30% or more of the citizens of the global super power don't believe in global warming. We're fucked and nothing I do or you do is going to stop that outcome. We probably should start seriously thinking about geo-engineering instead of worrying about moral cowardice.

[throwanem]

Moral odium inheres, if nowhere else, in that you insist upon the seductive counsel of despair. The more convincing you make that, the less our fellows will feel themselves able in any meaningful way to act at all. What should I call such encouragement to cowardice, if not culpable?