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Comment by ux-app | Hacker News Reader

>But I assure you it’s entirely possible to live and have all of those goods, today, fossil-fuel free

Well I'd be curious to hear how. Even the apple in your pantry requires significant fossil fuel input.

Fertilizer: Fossil fuel based - the Haber-Bosch process is now directly responsible for sustaining 40% of the Earth’s population and is reliant on natural gas.

That's to say nothing of the transport involved in, for example, buying Avocado year round from your grocer.

That's just food though. Plastics are in literally everything. The amount of plastics, glues etc just in the pair of shoes you wear every day is unreal.

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Sorry to play the man and not the ball, and please don't take this as as personal ad-hominem, but what you are doing is rationalised catastrophising [1]

Your fallacy is: Because all things are X and some X are bad, all X are equally bad.

Your game is: Whatever you think of as a humane activity, I can find a reason why it's destroying the planet so you may as well not bother - just continue destroying the planet as you are.

Fact is, everything you do will kill you. Every step you take wears out your body. Every bite of food and breath of oxygen takes you further down the road to death.

What will you do, stay in bed frozen in fear?

There are a billion things to do in life that have less environmental impact than flying around the world to go a jet-ski racing and tyre burning party. Reading a good book [2] :) on a beach would hurt less.

respects

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/catastrophizing

[2] https://digitalvegan.net

>Whatever you think of as a humane activity, I can find a reason why it's destroying the planet so you may as well not bother - just continue destroying the planet as you are

yes that's correct, there is nothing you can personally do that will make a measurable difference to making the planet a better place. You're wasting your time. Even collective action is probably doomed. There are just too many humans on the planet.

In 1500, the world population was 460million. That is probably a level that the planet can indefinitely sustain. We're at 8billion now and we're fatally addicted to fossil fuels. Buying local and taking a bus to work are not going to save the planet.

> Well I'd be curious to hear how.

A lot of hard work, non vehicular labor, local sourcing, and luck, providence, perseverance, and serendipity.

How do you suppose humans did it prior to the invention of the coal mine and oil drill?

Once again - not trying to be facetious or patronizing; just legitimately answering the request.

>A lot of hard work, non vehicular labor, local sourcing, and luck, providence, perseverance, and serendipity.

none of this will make any difference.

>How do you suppose humans did it prior to the invention of the coal mine and oil drill?

well, we didn't use fossil fuels, and there were far fewer of us on the planet. With 8billion fossil fuel addicted people, half of whom are yet to be raised from poverty, riding your bike will make you feel better but wont make any difference.

You have a strange definition of “any.” Going from 8 billion to 7.999999999 is one unit of difference. You aren’t interested in doing that?

>You aren’t interested in doing that?

Only insofar as it doesn't inconvenience me. I'm not trying to convince you of my pov, it's just my personal opinion.

I think that individual action is no more than privileged westerners play acting, and its all for nothing.

Humans are, on average, vicious parasites. Half the world wants big macs and SUVs, the other half aspires to that.

Riding a bike to your local vegan grocer is a hilarious solution to a catastrophically depressing problem.

We're doomed, enjoy it while you can ;)

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