Comment by southerntofu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by southerntofu | Hacker News Reader

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> the only way to save forests is by dramatically reducing population

You seem awfully sure of that, yet i would argue there's many other strategies to deploy:

- criminalize planned obsolescence so something that is built once will last (if Ikea execs/engineers risked jails, they may produce more reliable products)

- ban products tied to deforestation (eg. avocados, palm oil) unless they're locally sourced from organic farms

- run public policies to reduce animal exploitation, as cattle is a top 3 factor for deforestation and 30-60% of global cultivated land is only cultivated to feed cattle: start by removing subsidies for animal exploitation and stopping public money going in this industry (eg. via school/office lunch), maybe even tax meat/dairy to subsidize more ecological production?

- ban or tax wood pallets for heating: they are currently presented as the "green" alternative to gas, but it's definitely not green and the forests involved are huge monocultures of certain tree species, where no proper ecosystem can develop

I'm sure there's many other points i'm missing.

Overall, the "overpopulation" point is not entirely wrong. It's just vastly overplayed by Global North elites who don't like us asking inconvenient questions about why they're the ones polluting everything, and profiting financially from destroying our environment. We have an abundance of resources to feed and house everyone, if we stop this bourgeois non-sense lifestyle some people like to entertain.

> If if Ikea execs/engineers risked jails, they may produce more reliable products

Ikea furniture is reasonably durable. Electronics and home electric appliances is what don’t last long and difficult or impossible to repair.

> Ikea furniture is reasonably durable.

Pre-Ikea furniture lasted centuries, not years. By that standard, Ikea is really not durable. Also it's well-known that Ikea kits are full of forever chemicals that we could (and should) do without.

> Electronics and home electric appliances is what don’t last long and difficult or impossible to repair.

And yet there's nothing preventing it in theory. Just pure capitalist greed. If some governments and corporations really wanted to do something about climate change, they have the power to do so. We as citizens are left only with the duty to sabotage their profiting of the entire situation because they are not going to do shit about it.

Agree with your points, to an extent. But how the hell do we get China etc. to agree?

Don't mean to be rude, but who cares? Just because someone else is doing something wrong doesn't mean you shouldn't make it right?

Also, it's worth pointing out that 3rd world countries are tired of global north hypocrits like us tech people pointing the finger at them for pollution while our european/north-american societies are the ones who fucked up everything for everyone: "we" colonized all territories, stole all resources, employed slave labor from mines to factories to sell shitty products to billions of people worldwide. And our countries are very much expected to be the least impacted by climate change, which is precisely why our governments are doing nothing about it beyond buying themselves a clean conscience by funneling public money into private pockets in "green new deal" setups. If you expect others to follow, leading by example is a pretty reasonable course of action, don't you think?

To be clear i'm not advocating to ban chinese imports overnight. But you could very well for example use the repairability index setup by the EU last year, so that only items with 10/10 scores can legally be imported and sold. And if you really wanna make a green new deal, then subsidize people buying solid materials: just because cheap/dirty stuff has been outlawed doesn't mean locally-produced alternatives are much cheaper. I'm not saying i have the best answers: there's so much we could do and the powers that be are not doing because they couldn't care less. These people are fucking psychopaths and until we start putting heads on spikes will never listen.

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