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Comment by theqabalist | Hacker News Reader

Congrats, you are actually just an inconsequential stooge. Environmental corruption and depletion is not a consumer problem, at least not directly. It is a product of industrial production processes. Eat meat, eat dairy, preserve your health and your brain in doing so, and find ways to create industry that is clean, that would make you an environmentalist... maybe... if you successfully altered the system.

Stop pretending like climate change is created by consumers and can be controlled by "turning your lights off."

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I think you have a valid point, but I'm not sure it's made effectively, which I think is why you got downvotes.

An example might help: Elon Musk is not, AFAIK, vegan. But he's done a lot to popularize electric cars, having far more impact than he could by changing his diet. Likewise, the Beyond meat people have probably done a lot more to reduce meat consumption than they could ever outweigh by eating steak every meal for the rest of their lives. (I am actually not clear on the net environmental benefit of using gas vs. making more batteries, but let's say for the sake of argument that electric cars are an environmental benefit, since it's just an example.)

You are probably right. I didn't sleep well and I'm tired and the smarmy "one-weird-trick" vibe of the post I replied to just annoyed me . I will own the "not made effectively" indictment.

> Stop pretending like climate change is created by consumers

But it is actually created by consumers. By human beings consuming resources and emitting greenhouse gases in return. Simply because there's nothing else even close in scale as a source of global warming. What else could there be, wild herbivores?

It follows almost tautologically that it is human beings that is causing the warming.

You blame "industrial production processes". But those are completely funded by human consumption in a mostly on-demand action.

So what else is there to blame? The transportation industry? Again, completely funded by, and a direct response of consumers buying stuff. Consumption is at the beginning of the chain. It's the cause.

So your argument sounds wrong to me. It sounds like you want to shift blame to wealthy industrialists. Guess what, a fat bank balance or stock ownership like that of Elon Musk or Bezos does not emit greenhouse gases by simply existing.

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