alt Hacker NewsI don't want to criticize you, but a question: what are you doing in practice to change something? Is your carbon footprint below what is sustainable?
Let's look at me: I don't own a car, live in a smaller town, move around mostly on foot, take public transportation, long distance mostly train. I have two kids and for years my electricity total was 1500kwh a year. Last year it was 1100kwh (heating is gas though, that's what my building has). All this and I do cook a lot with an electric stove. I bought some new appliances before the old ones were completely broken (although they were close) partly because the new ones were all very energy efficient.
But: I live abroad and take my kids to my parents once a year, and fly. Last year I flew four times, including intercontinental (albeit a true outlier of a year). I consume things produced all around the globe, either as items like phones, or food, and the food I do probably daily (I really like fruit, so bananas, mangos, avocados etc).
My point is: my carbon footprint is pretty low, and I try to be mindful about not wasting resources. And it's not that hard, I don't feel like I am missing out on something if I don't drive a car. But I still took my kids to Spain on a vacation, and we still flew there to sit on the beach. Giving that up is hard, and making them sacrifice their childhood fun is hard.
There's a range of what people are ready to give up. I would say I'm on the better side of it, but it's still not enough. Almost no one is ready to sacrifice, and we need almost everyone to sacrifice. Governments do lip service to these goals, but let's see how much countries like Spain sre ready to curb tourism, or countries like Germany and China that live off manufacturing to cut consumption. Who will give up their job to reduce carbon emissions?
The saying train wreck in slow motion has merit.
> Is your carbon footprint below what is sustainable?
What a waste of time this is. Carbon footprint? Zero-emission homes? The climate is global and the balance sheet is spread across all of us. Someone with a disability might have much more use for cars and transporation than someone who is able-bodied. And homes out in the boonies without much sun (for solar power) might need a diesel generator for their three-times-a-year power outages in order to keep up productivity and a comfortable existence. And twenty miles from that house is a village full of grid-connected homes running on hydropower. As long as the “balance sheet” is okay we should not fret about this individual stuff.
“Carbon footprint” was explicitly designed as a distraction away from British Petroleum and onto the consumer. I think the kids call that a “whataboutism”.
> I consume things produced all around the globe, either as items like phones, or food, and the food I do probably daily (I really like fruit, so bananas, mangos, avocados etc).
Yeah things are made in Vietnam and China now. And that is the consumer’s fault? That eco-friendly wooden utensils used in Europe are made in China?
Step one. Create and design a deeply interconnected, global market with specializations. The signal is just money, the most fungible asset. Step two: externalities. Step three: use money (see step one) to market your scapegoating to everybody, in direct contradiction with the sheer simplicity of step one; no, consumers aren’t supposed to just use money/price as the signal, that’s evil and has a high Carbon Footprint.
> My point is: my carbon footprint is pretty low, and I try to be mindful about not wasting resources. And it's not that hard, I don't feel like I am missing out on something if I don't drive a car. But I still took my kids to Spain on a vacation, and we still flew there to sit on the beach. Giving that up is hard, and making them sacrifice their childhood fun is hard.
I dunno, an extra twelve degrees Celsius and beaches is worth those flights? And sacrificing childhood fun? Children are an endless maw of desires. Of course if you give them the idea of something (or the TV does) and then don’t go through with it is the greatest crime in the history of humanity. And yet, our parents went without all of that, etc., despite their identical child programming.