Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by cryptoegorophy 2 days ago
What can you realistically do?
1 comments

Start by not electing a pedophile who calls climate change a hoax
I would assume that the problem with California aquifer is (mostly) a consequence of its Democratic state government decisions and it is highly unlikely that electing Hilary or Kamala would have prevented it.
I don’t remember Democrat Gavin Newsom calling climate change a hoax? Jokes aside, I don’t think politicians have anything to do with that. From what I’ve learned droughts in CA are natural part of the cycle and humans just accelerate it. You can’t reverse it because it is nature” you can slow down the acceleration, but then at what cost and why? If we are “all going to die” how does it change if it will happen in 50 years vs 60 years? 60 years of misery or 50 years of normal life.
Right?! Like there’s so much you can do.

* Vote for fucks sake. Bare minimum and stop making fucking excuses both for yourself not doing it and for politicians you otherwise support burying their heads in the sand.

* Stop buying stupid shit on the internet. Every package you don’t get delivered means less CO2.

* Fix shit instead of replacing it. The greenest EV on earth is more CO2 intense than the car you’ve already got (assuming you keep it in good working order)

Like yeah global policy needs to get better across the board, and the burden has been unfairly and ridiculously shifted to consumers. True. But at the same time consumers could buy less shit overall, still have very comfortable existences, and promote economic degrowth a little bit every day.

Oh yeah and stop using fucking AI for anything besides code because it sucks at everything else, and only use it for code you can’t otherwise complete.

I agree but

>Fix shit instead of replacing it. The greenest EV on earth is more CO2 intense than the car you’ve already got (assuming you keep it in good working order)

This is not correct at all...

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/are-electric-vehicles-defini... one source of many. Also local pollution is reduced, e.g. nox and particles.

Valid pushback! That said going through the MIT study quickly (and I may be wrong, feel free to correct me further) it doesn't seem to include CO2 from overseas shipping of materials and/or finished vehicles, and it also only seems to factor in tailpipe emissions as opposed to emissions from things like tire wear which is notably worse on EVs due to their weight. But again, I'll concede the point anyway.

You could however say exactly what I said about so many other classes of products. Home appliances, electronics, tools, on and on.