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Comment by forgotmypw17 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand what you're saying here...

Your individual reductions in consumption are pointless here. If you just ceased to exist it would not meaningfully move the needle.

At this point we need hard societal pressure via laws to make any kind of statistical difference. I’d prefer someone be a hypocrite pushing for legislation to reduce emissions (e.g. Al Gore on a private jet) than someone who reduces locally and calls it good.

There are just too many people that don’t care for “local action” to stop the impending doom.

Put more constructively, you need to have strongly negative carbon emissions at this point. Pick a carbon intensive company or industry, and work to reduce its emissions. Your individual CO2 emissions are rounding error.

Or just implement a carbon tax...

Better to sing on a sinking ship than to die frustrated, angry and victimized.

There is grace in fighting against impending doom.

Life can be measured by how we approach things. Never lose hope. :)

Or better to steer the ship using the levers of power that are available to those in power. Fighting a losing battle results in a loss regardless of how valiant the fight. Do what you can to have the greatest impact, which means working with those in power to make societal change.

Yes. I agree with you. Much better to steer the ship and never hit the iceberg.

Some situations are like a jiu-jitsu match where an opponent can pin you down. In a subset of these situations and unlike in a jiu-jitsu match—you can’t tap out.

Say you’re in one of these situation.

Don’t avoid the feeling provoked by this impending doom. You can’t tap out. You cant restart the match.

In such an encounter, grace might mean to keep fighting. Keep thinking. Keep struggling. Recognize your prison.

Fortune favors the prepared mind. :)

Small nitpick: the Titanic tried to steer away from the iceberg too late, and thus the iceberg cut along the side, exposing many more airtight compartments than if they hit head-on.

This in no way detracts from your point - unlike the Titanic, steering away from ecological disaster too late will never make things worse, it just won't be enough - but the metaphor isn't quite apt.

I feel encouraged to see this comment. Thank you for posting it. I've been reading Thomas Merton's _Raids on the Unspeakable_ recently and I sense some of that same heart in what you write.

Individual actions are the raw material of a collective shift in mindset that adds up to hard societal pressure to create laws that do make a difference.

Nope. It doesn’t work that way. Climate change has been mainstream knowledge for 15 years and nothing has meaningfully changed despite plenty of people buying Priuses.

The collective shift in mindset of half of the US didn’t do shit and we’re already past the point of irrevocable damage. Hard decisions need to be made (pressure all countries in the world extremely) and you using the iPhone for a few extra years is just placation to avoid real change.

How do you figure that? If I buy one less Widget, that's one less Widget that needs to be restocked, one less Widget ordered from the factory, one less Widget added to the production requirements estimate, one less Widget's carbon footprint. Seems like simple math to me.

If I tell ten people about my strategy and they buy ten fewer Widgets, that's ten fewer Widgets' worth of carbon footprint.

If you factor in material mining, transportation, production, transportation, storage, transportation, and packaging trash, that's a lot of reduction.

Not only that, my life is simpler, I spend more time making meaning rather than consuming, and am overall happier.

Or... I can waste my time trying to affect the political system, which I will never move a nanometer with all my effort, or affecting the corporations, whom I will also not move a nanometer with all my life's effort, etc.

> How do you figure that? If I buy one less Widget, that's one less Widget that needs to be restocked

But that’s fucking useless. It is simple math and the math is that you’ve moved the needle on carbon output from one company by 0.0000001%.

An advertising campaign that associates that widget with Devil worshippers probably moves the needle two orders of magnitude more than that.

Solving climate change is a global numbers game. If you’re not changing more than your own behavior, you are effectively complicit and not doing anything to stop it.

> If I tell ten people about my strategy and they buy ten fewer Widgets, that's ten fewer Widgets' worth of carbon footprint.

See, but this is the only bit that has any meaningful effect. This is you being political and affecting change.

You’ll quickly realize that your individual reduction is completely irrelevant in total harm you’ve reduced.

Absolutely false.

The earth has 200 million square-miles of area, so your portion of the 7.6 billion people equates to 0.0263 square miles. Do your part to keep that virtual area as clean as possible!

I think they are saying that your actions might make you feel better, but have no practical value.

By not buying a Widget, I'm reducing the number of Widgets ordered by one, the number of Widgets produced by one, and the number of Widgets planned for production by one.

Not only that, but I'm eliminating all the materials mining, shipping, re-shipping, packaging, re-packaging, and so on, which adds up to quite a bit per Widget.

I think you are grossly underestimating the impact of one un-ordered Widget.

This is very unscientific, not the least because the cause of the problem is acknowledged as unknown (this is how the scientific method works).

But we will be shamed for this change in creative ways, nevertheless. A good crisis must not be wasted, unlike starfish.

I am not trying to help kelp specifically. I wasn't even aware of this particular thing happening. But I know for sure that every time I spend a dollar on something new, there is a direct chain of multiple events set in motion which does harm to my own habitat as well as those closely related to me.

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