Indeed. File under "bitter pills to swallow."

It's so easy to sit in an air-conditioned house, with our 2-day delivered Amazon stuff, and just make pronouncements like degrowth, etc.

Meanwhile about 99% of the humans who live in places that haven't fully industrialized are either working feverishly to industrialize like us, or are trying to find a way to move to an industrialized country because of how incredibly hard it is to live where they are.

I also suspect that our most committed enviro-leftists genuinely believe that their lifestyle is already fully aligned to their values -- they don't even own a car, take transit everywhere! They pay an extra $25 for carbon offsets when they fly, and they "recycle everything"! They live in a blue state that mandates high levels of "clean energy" in the power grid.

They do not ask themselves where the factories are built that make the wind turbines or solar panels, what powers their buses and trains and makes the cement that the streets are paved with. What powers the diesel trucks that bring their organic produce and manufactured soy products to Whole Foods for them.

All this isn't to even comment on where climate change actually is on the 2 axes of "Non-issue ----> existential threat" and "Completely avoidable if we start now ----> Entirely outside human control." I'm just saying that I suspect nearly every Western climate change activist would be filled with regret if we started making every societal decision to truly optimize for climate concerns to the exclusion of all other priorities.

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bcrosby95 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> if we started making every societal decision to truly optimize for climate concerns to the exclusion of all other priorities.

Effectively no one is arguing for this. You're ranting about a ghost.

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esarbe 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's a straw man argument.

Voluntarily opting out of a high-CO2 lifestyle will do exactly nothing. Demanding that anyone recognizing the threat of climate change and demanding a different approach "first change their lifestyles" or using their lifestyles as an indicator of commitment is ludicrous. This is a global systemic issue that cannot be fixed by individual action. Game theory tells you why.

Besides that; all the nice and shiny things you mention - the busses and trains and the cement - can be produced and operated at fraction of their current CO2 cost. Wind mills and PV panels offset their CO2 cost by magnitudes if they are replacing fossil fuel industries.

There's a middle ground between "lets burn it all to the ground" and "let's go back to the savanna".

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drnick1 9 hours ago | parent [-]

> This is a global systemic issue that cannot be fixed by individual action. Game theory tells you why.

Nothing will change (and nothing has fundamentally changed since the climate scaremongering started), because people in the West do not want to change their lifestyles, and people elsewhere aspire to a Western lifestyle. There is nothing you can do about this. I am not not going to eat less meat or drive my car less than I find convenient to please some leftist eco-warrior.

	▲	esarbe 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There have been many systemic changes since we started to understand the physical mechanism behind climate change and the dire consequences of unmitigated climate change. Within 20 years Europe has shifted to almost 50% renewables in their electricity production, the US is at 25% and China at 30% (and rapidly growing). Demand has been cut massively through energy efficiency laws. CO2 emissions have been reduced enough that the IPC now sees the RCP8.5 scenario as unrealistic. We've already changed quite a lot. And this despite you not cutting back on meat or on driving. Think about it. > There is nothing you can do about this. I am not not going to eat less meat or drive my car less than I find convenient to please some leftist eco-warrior. You don't do "it" to please some leftist eco-warrior, but because "it" is a unsustainable lifestyle. Whatever shape "it" actually takes.

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wredcoll 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I also suspect that our most committed enviro-leftists genuinely believe that their lifestyle is already fully aligned to their values -- they don't even own a car, take transit everywhere! They pay an extra $25 for carbon offsets when they fly, and they "recycle everything"! They live in a blue state that mandates high levels of "clean energy" in the power grid.

You did it, you torched the strawman.