Plastic bags, climate change, renewable energy,

gillyske said:
The problem is that as individuals, people don't actually do anything, they just sit in a state of angry inaction.
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I work in the field (sustainability), active in a lot of side sustainability social and community groups and do meat free about 5 days a week. The problem with this sort of approach is it doesn't work. Personally counting my own emissions, even if everyone did what i did, we'd fall terribly short. I drive 15,000kms a year, net zero electricity and use only a little gas for cooking and solar boosted hot water. Aside from that I calculate that my scope 3 far outweights my scope 1 and 2. Walk into the office and there is a few tonnes, shopping centre, buy some stuff, bike parts shipped. It all adds up.

My view is pragmatic. If you want to make a difference, history has shown that behavior change has been successful very few times. They all suffer from the same problems including being unable to quantify benefits, comparative benefits, perverse effects, misinformation and rebound effects to name a few. Behaviour change, and specifically individual action fails to reach the masses. If it was successful we wouldn't need to legislate for a lot of things. Specifically for environmental issues behaviour has proven ineffective where regulation was for things like; CFCs, soft plastics, personal emissions accountability, littering illegal dumping.

Your view however is a good one, better than mine. It shows you have more optimism in the human race than I do. I'm firmly of the opinion we have to regulate all this crap to make it work.
 
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hifiandmtb said:
Vegans still fly to Bali &

Yep x one (1) billion.
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Vegans aren't flying to Bali every day.
People are eating meat 3 times a day. Those same people are driving every day, buying convinience items wrapped in single use platic every day, using energy companies that don't pledge for green alternatives or makes carbon neutral contributions, vote for the liberal party. Then they fly to Bali.

I'm not trying to argue purity, I'm just trying to argue concious thought about the activities you do in a day and to see if there are alternatives which could be less impactful however, if you aren't capable of doing that going vegan is a easy way to not think about it all the time.
Don't eat meat, bam, ez reduction in water, land, green house emisions.

I know I must be speaking from a position of immense privledge here, as I know that many people don't have the time or energy to think about their purchasing habits. However I think we don't have a choice anymore.

BTW This is on top of the government regulations that need to be put in place. We need to do both, but only individual action can happen right now and is within peoples immediate control.
 
gillyske said:
Vegans aren't flying to Bali every day.
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Flights are a much bigger problem though in terms of emissions. One flights can offset an entire year of meat eating or more. Add to this that flights actually use fossil fuel while it can be argued that meat is partially short term carbon cycle.


On a separate note:

Doconomy - Everyday Climate Action

Your tool for Everyday Climate Action.
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Credit card with a carbon limit. Interesting concept and I'd love to see just the calculation part on my credit card expenditure (parts from ze germans!). This sort of stuff would be useful data for the cunsumer to inform their decisions. but I can't see the carbon cap being practical - imagine flying on holidays and then boom - you're done your carbon cap for the year just in flights so no more money lol.
 
@gillyske Don't get me wrong - veganism is a noble cause but selective action won't get us there.

Again, read this study. Yes it's long, but it doesn't suggest cherry-picking solutions based on ease of implementation:

Victory Plan - The Climate Mobilisation

There's still time to lick this problem - won't be any time left in a decade. We can be all woe-is-me in 2030, don't be like that now.
 
Calvin27 said:
Flights are a much bigger problem though in terms of emissions. One flights can offset an entire year of meat eating or more.

Credit card with a carbon limit. Interesting concept and I'd love to see just the calculation part on my credit card expenditure (parts from ze germans!). This sort of stuff would be useful data for the cunsumer to inform their decisions. but I can't see the carbon cap being practical - imagine flying on holidays and then boom - you're done your carbon cap for the year just in flights so no more money lol.
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Suck shit. This is the way it has to be. If you are that fucking stupid, crawl into a ditch & starve to death.
 
hifiandmtb said:
Suck shit. This is the way it has to be. If you are that fucking stupid, crawl into a ditch & starve to death.
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They will just exchange credits with the poor. Or you will have organised crime groups who will capture people and hold them like cattle/kill them and give out their credits whilst the rich hapily purchase credits from them through leverage they have through their companies etc.

Something like that.

Also I am not saying that the way to fix climate change is through individual action alone. I'm saying that people currently do nothing and the government can see that. The government is merely representing us. More people need to take individual action and turn it into a cultural norm.

It's like people are saying, hold up, don't do shit, just do nothing and yell at the wall, the government will hear you eventually.
It's asif it was the government who ended racial discrimination by making it illegal and not the progressives and minorities who stood against it and caused others to follow which then forced the goverment to enact the laws.
 
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What irks me more than people resfusing to do stuff on an individual level. Is people shifting the blame on to the mere existence of the poor (many people would argue that asking people to act on an individual level is blaming the poor, but thats not what I'm asking, I'm asking for both, but whilst we wait for the gears to turn on the sleeping behemoth which is government action we can still do our part).

You get people saying we should stop having kids or that there are too many people in the world and we need a "new plague" (i doubt they are arguing this from a post-plague renaissance style revolution type thing) or simplying a "culling".

Who the fuck are they referring to?
 
gillyske said:
They will just exchange credits with the poor. Or you will have organised crime groups who will capture people and hold them like cattle/kill them and give out their credits whilst the rich hapily purchase credits from them through leverage they have through their companies etc.

Something like that.

Also I am not saying that the way to fix climate change is through individual action alone. I'm saying that people currently do nothing and the government can see that. The government is merely representing us. More people need to take individual action and turn it into a cultural norm.

It's like people are saying, hold up, don't do shit, just do nothing and yell at the wall, the government will hear you eventually.
It's asif it was the government who ended racial discrimination by making it illegal and not the progressives and minorities who stood against it and caused others to follow which then forced the goverment to enact the laws.
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Legislation & regulation is the only way that CC can be tackled.

The government is responsible for that.

That’s how it must work.

And if a rich person wants to buy credits from someone else good on them. Don’t care. As long at the CO2 emissions levels are met.
 
hifiandmtb said:
Legislation & regulation is the only way that CC can be tackled.

The government is responsible for that.

That’s how it must work.
And if a rich person wants to buy credits from someone else good on them. Don’t care. As long at the CO2 emissions levels are met.
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Hmmm i didn't express myself properly there. The "exchange" wont be fair, most likely the rich will just take the credit from the poor, or even more likely, just hide their emissions like they currently do/move them off-shore.
Like Volkswagen or the industrial sectors of China and India.
People do not care that Volkswagen faked its emmissions, they still buy Volkswagens, that apathy needs to change. People do not care that China basically has 0 environmental policies in place, they still buy Chinese products.

It needs to start with people like us not letting others off so easily and blaiming a seemingly faceless government.
 
I don’t blame the govt, they are just doing what they are told to do by various parties. Voters are one party, big business another.

But the govt is the only one who can enact policy needed to resolve CC. Asking consumers to resolve it is completely foolish.

 
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