Climate Change - The Languish 'Community' Responses?

[Sheilbh]

golf course create nice large space for the creation of transportation hubs and housing, plus if done right you get all those electric carts to help people move around.

CC, we don't really have the room here for those sorts of developments.

True, everything is full with ill-kept so called green belts and abandoned factories. Can't touch those.

Technically a lot of gold courses are green belt.

[Zoupa]

[Maladict]

golf course create nice large space for the creation of transportation hubs and housing, plus if done right you get all those electric carts to help people move around.

CC, we don't really have the room here for those sorts of developments.

True, everything is full with ill-kept so called green belts and abandoned factories. Can't touch those.

Technically a lot of gold courses are green belt.

They are lifeless toxic wastelands that just happen to be green.

[Berkut]

Exactly. The solution has almost nothing to do with consumers being better people (and to the extent it does, they won't be convinced by moralistic platitudes or guilt - just by changing their incentives) and everything to do with forcing businesses to start paying the external costs of producing climate damaging products.

[mongers]

Exactly. The solution has almost nothing to do with consumers being better people (and to the extent it does, they won't be convinced by moralistic platitudes or guilt - just by changing their incentives) and everything to do with forcing businesses to start paying the external costs of producing climate damaging products.

So you're just waiting for the right incentives before you change your behaviour with regard to the climate and environment?

[crazy canuck]

Exactly. The solution has almost nothing to do with consumers being better people (and to the extent it does, they won't be convinced by moralistic platitudes or guilt - just by changing their incentives) and everything to do with forcing businesses to start paying the external costs of producing climate damaging products.

So you're just waiting for the right incentives before you change your behaviour with regard to the climate and environment?

That is not what he is saying.  He is talking about the economic incentives for the corporations that produce the vast majority of emissions. And he is right.  Without taxes and regulations that factor in the cost, we are going to cook.

[Jacob]

I agree that the first order impact of people change their individual consumption habits are trivial compared against the impact of large scale corporate and governmental decisions.

However, I think the second order impact is potentially much larger. Because if enough people are cutting their meat to 30%, foregoing their car rides, and otherwise engaging in dreary "virtue signalling" then that is going to contribute to increasing the weight of expectations - and the potential political impact. And that in turn is pretty much the only way that the needle is going to move on corporate and governmental decisions.

[crazy canuck]

If we had a few decades to change I would agree with you Jacob.  But we missed that chance decades ago.  We need rapid change now.  Not through the choices of individual consumers but through direct political action.

edit: while I might be able to feel good about the changes I have made as an individual consumer, it has not changed things on a macro scale one bit.

[Jacob]

If we had a few decades to change I would agree with you Jacob.  But we missed that chance decades ago.  We need rapid change now.  Not through the choices of individual consumers but through direct political action.

I don't think we're disagreeing though?

[crazy canuck]

If we had a few decades to change I would agree with you Jacob.  But we missed that chance decades ago.  We need rapid change now.  Not through the choices of individual consumers but through direct political action.

I don't think we're disagreeing though?

We are to this extent - I think there is a danger that people will wrongly think they are doing their part by cutting meat consumption etc.  But what we really need them to do is get involved politically.  Electric cars in this context becomes the opiate of the people, some small changes that government can point to without making the structural changes we really need.

[The Brain]

Be careful what you wish for. In Sweden people got involved politically decades ago. The results are still hurting our climate efforts.

[crazy canuck]

Be careful what you wish for. In Sweden people got involved politically decades ago. The results are still hurting our climate efforts.

The risks associated with the status quo are far worse.

[The Brain]

Be careful what you wish for. In Sweden people got involved politically decades ago. The results are still hurting our climate efforts.

The risks associated with the status quo are far worse.

Fair enough.

[Berkut]

Exactly. The solution has almost nothing to do with consumers being better people (and to the extent it does, they won't be convinced by moralistic platitudes or guilt - just by changing their incentives) and everything to do with forcing businesses to start paying the external costs of producing climate damaging products.

So you're just waiting for the right incentives before you change your behaviour with regard to the climate and environment?

I have no illusions that what works to convince me of anything has much relevance to how to go about convincing a couple billion other people how to act.

[Berkut]

I agree that the first order impact of people change their individual consumption habits are trivial compared against the impact of large scale corporate and governmental decisions.

However, I think the second order impact is potentially much larger. Because if enough people are cutting their meat to 30%, foregoing their car rides, and otherwise engaging in dreary "virtue signalling" then that is going to contribute to increasing the weight of expectations - and the potential political impact. And that in turn is pretty much the only way that the needle is going to move on corporate and governmental decisions.

It's an interesting balancing act.

I agree that the second order impacts are real.

But there is a danger in also making people think their first order, marginal efforts are "enough", and they are "doing their part".

The entire straws in the ocean thing is a great example.

I am doing my part by pressuring local businesses to switch away from plastic straws! I saw that poor turtle with the straw in its nose! I am making a difference!

And if you remove 100% of all plastic straw waste from the planet, that makes no fucking difference whatsoever, and companies are still creating 270 million tons of plastic waste every year, and that number continues to grow every single year.

But don't worry, why, its the very companies that produce plastic that sponsor and promote the *consumer* centric plastic recycling programs....