alt Hacker News> But you, individually, can make the choice to keep your eye on the ball. You can commit to working on this problem until it’s done, no matter what. You can choose to find the others to organize and prepare, so that the ideas closest at hand when the next crisis comes are yours.
Why should the average person reduce his/her life quality in order to save the climate, when the average billionaire emits as much CO2 as one million people from the bottom 90% of the population combined? I do care about the climate, but it's clearly irrational to make sacrifices, when other people are unwilling to do that. Having a higher quality of life is more valuable to me than the tap on the shoulder I can give myself for playing my part in living responsibly.
Replies
> Having a higher quality of life is more valuable to me than the tap on the shoulder I can give myself
It'll only be higher until things reach a tipping point. That point is only getting closer and very possibly within your lifetime.
> Why should the average person reduce his/her life quality in order to save the climate
Read what you quoted again. That's not what it says.
That's an easy option.
But if more an more people changed their attitude, stopped envying jet-setters and instead shamed them for their environmentally reckless attitude, maybe you would see a lot less plane travel, a lot less gas guzzlers, a lot less conspicuous consumption.
Shame works on the vast majority of people. We may lack inherent ethics, but we seldom like to swim against the stream.
> but it's clearly irrational to make sacrifices, when other people are unwilling to do that.
You realize that if everyone has that attitude then nothing will ever change, right? "You take the first step!" "No, you take the first step!"
> Why should the average person reduce his/her life quality in order to save the climate, when the average billionaire
I understand (and share) the sentiment, but there are not that many billionaires. Even if they all suddenly became vegans who never travel and live in a small house, that would not solve the problem. What the masses do is what has to change. How they travel, what they eat and buy and consume, their housing.
> I do care about the climate, but it's clearly irrational to make sacrifices, when other people are unwilling to do that
We do irrational things daily in order to live harmoniously in groups. Heck, the entire field of behavioural economics was stood on its ear when they figured out that humans don’t behave rationally in all circumstances. Moral choices are individual. I limit my QOL in many “irrational” ways because it helps me live with myself. Is it enough? Of course not. But we are too outnumbered by the greedy and the defeatists.