
What can I do about climate change? - joelthelion
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181102-what-can-i-do-about-climate-change
======
pdimitar
This article's quality is higher than many others on the same topic and that's
a pleasant surprise.

That being said, I can't help being reminded about German language lessons I
had ~10 years ago where the teacher was preaching that we must all ditch
electric kettles for the sake of the planet. I asked her how is this going to
help -- even if 100_00 people do it today -- if corporations are happy to let
toxic waste seep into the ocean and lobby to never close coal plants. And
we're talking _thousands of tons a day_. She wasn't pleased that I attacked
her agenda.

So alright, I know we all can do better, individuals included. That's
unequivocally true.

But let's not ignore the fact that the biggest fault lies in organizations
that are happy to pay people to whisper stuff in the ears of the people with
power.

Climate change is real and the more we delay the solution, the more urgent and
extreme the measures to swing it around will become. And that means to start
breaking the warm and cozy positions that many corporations are in -- and
enjoy the lack of supervision of.

~~~
joelthelion
As the article mentions, individuals can do something about corporate
pollution:

\- Buy less stuff. Corporations produce waste because we _buy their stuff_.
Get the stuff you still buy from more environmentally-friendly companies, if
possible.

\- Political action. Corporations need to be regulated and that can only
happen through political action. Lobbies may have a lot of power, but in the
end, it's the citizens who vote.

~~~
pdimitar
> Buy less stuff.

This is becoming harder and harder with time. Believe me, I would _love_ to
buy my kitchen stove, washing machine, refrigerator, aspirator, air
conditioner and vacuum cleaner from a local manufacturer. But there are none.
How many household brands do really exist and how many are actually known and
bought by almost everyone?

Additionally, even if you are an idealist who wants to be the change they want
to see, you will still need a bunch of tech gadgets to connect with the world
and try to change it -- like a good smartphone and laptop that don't suck. Not
every $100 piece of trash will do the job. And the cheaper tech might have
actually had much more negative impact on the planet's CO2 footprint.

It's very complex and thus no black-and-white solutions exist.

Some corps like Apple and Samsung seem hellbent on testing the customers'
patience with higher prices every year and it will definitely bite them back
at one point. That much is true.

> Political action.

Never in my life, not once, have I seen citizens voting actually change
anything _of significance_ in a country. Have you? And we're talking less than
10 years here. "These things take time" seems pretty shallow and empty as a
justification for things not happening.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
Political action is much more than just voting and it's been the major source
of social changes in the last 200 years.

~~~
pdimitar
Not where I live, but I am aware that's not representative for the entire
world.

I am happy for the places where it works. Not sarcastic.

~~~
yread
Uh, you live in a place without weekends, women's voting rights or laws
against child labour?

~~~
pdimitar
I live in Eastern Europe, where drastic social changes only happen if the
politicians see a crowd with pitchworks and torches at the town hall.
Literally.

People around here are just realists because no significant changes ever comes
before people get _that_ fed up. Civil discourse and constructive discussion
has so far netted us nothing but dossiers and people landing on dissident
lists. This happens to this day.

No need to be snarky.

~~~
yread
> pitchforks at the town hall

Hey, do you live in Prague
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague)
? Don't let the czech mentality get to you, people there complain just for
fun.

~~~
pdimitar
Bulgaria. :)

It's easy to write us off Eastern Europeans as "complaining just for fun"
though. Many do but when you get to the bottom of it, real change happens
extremely rare. And that's a valid argument and a historical background to
have.

But regular-complainers and realistic-no-BS-folk often get conflated by
external observers -- to my despair.

------
Vinnl
> 9\. But if I eat less meat or take fewer flights, that’s just me – how much
> of a difference can that really make? > > Actually, it’s not just you.
> Social scientists have found that when one person makes a sustainability-
> oriented decision, other people do too.

This is the thing that still gives me hope. Try to do good, and people will
notice - and, without so much as telling others to something, they will
emulate you to some extent. At least, that's what I've anecdotally observed.

The other side of this is important as well: you don't necessarily need to be
a leader in everything that can be improved. However, if you see someone
taking the lead, being the first follower can get a movement going, and is
less effort than leading the change to boot.

~~~
KitDuncan
Anecdotal, but I went vegan 3 years ago and in those 3 years, quite a few of
my very close friends went vegan or vegetarian as well. It really does give me
a lot of hope.

Even my parents started eating meat a lot less, basically only for big events
and startet using oat milk for their coffee!

~~~
belorn
> startet using oat milk for their coffee

Are you and they using honey or white sugar from farmed sugarcanes? For the
environment sake I wish that vegan diet would include honey as it has a big
net-positive effect on the environment compared to farmed sugarcanes by not
causing eutrophication or water pollution, and helps with pollination both for
wild forests and agriculture.

~~~
mikro2nd
While I'm with you on the issue of honey vs. sugar, it's not quite so
simple... Where's that honey coming from?

Locally harvested? Great! But likely not the bulk of supply.

Supermarket honey? Transported from Goodness Knows Where -- very likely China
or Chile, where the bees are intensively fed... (you guessed it!) sugar!
That's why the honey is so flavourless, not to mention the Carbon footprint of
all those honey-kilometres.

Bees are almost as intensively farmed as anything else, and, while the effects
and outcomes are nowhere near as severe as other forms of intensive husbandry,
the honey is not necessarily the pure and innocent product you might think it
is.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> Bees are almost as intensively farmed as anything else, and, while the
> effects and outcomes are nowhere near as severe as other forms of intensive
> husbandry, the honey is not necessarily the pure and innocent product you
> might think it is.

Thankyou for pointing this out. I say the same about almond milk and other
products hyped by vegans that are pollinated by bees. The commercial
beekeeping industry is horrific. Part of the reason wild bee colonies are
collapsing is because of the diseases cultivated by commercial colonies.

I'm a backyard beekeeper myself and can say with at least some authority that
there's nothing at all "vegan" or "moral" or "natural" about the way these
commercial operations treat the bees and the environment.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Really? We have to be sympathetic to mindless insects now? For instance, folks
raise millions of crickets in my state for flour and protein - we eat them -
but the bees deserve special empathy because they're not free-range or
something?

I understand folks like bees, see them in a kindly light. But they're little
automatons with maybe a neuron or two total. If we raised them, crushed them
and ate them, it'd be no different from how we treat other insects.

~~~
Vinnl
I think the GP was not referring to the harm to bees as horrific, but to the
harm done to our living environment by harming bees.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I wondered, but couldn't make sense of that. How is providing commercial bees
in bulk a detriment to the environment? When is another bee a problem?

~~~
Vinnl
I have no personal anecdotes to bring in here, but they said:

> Part of the reason wild bee colonies are collapsing is because of the
> diseases cultivated by commercial colonies.

So if another bee comes at the cost of multiple existing bees, that's a
problem.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
And why is one bee more important than the other? Not sure diseases are
'cultivated' by anyone - they are unfortunate wherever they occur. Again, not
sure what the idea is.

~~~
Vinnl
Well, the point as I understand it is that it will eventually lead to the
extinction of all/most bees - and plenty of other species, perhaps including
humans.

The scale is my assumption, but the point appears clear to me.

------
lumberjack
If people were not so stuck up on individual action, that would be some
progress towards solving climate change. One of the big obstacles is admitting
that we need collective action to solve this worldwide problem.

Would ee propose individual action when less dangerous situations occur in
society? Say, a bank run is imminent. Does individual action work? Does the
government broadcast it on the 8 o'clock news and do the people stay at home
or do they run down the bank nonetheless? We do not propose individual action
on other matters but we expect individual action to work on climate change.

~~~
Vinnl
Do you think there's anyone promoting individual action who'd be against
collective action? Or could a small individual action be a gateway to
participating in collective action?

~~~
oppzixi00
> Do you think there's anyone promoting individual action who'd be against
> collective action?

Yes. A lobbyist who wants to avoid new legislation to control climate change,
but still claim they care about it.

~~~
Vinnl
Ah sorry, it should indeed have said: is there anyone who is in favour of
individual action, but against collective action.

------
roenxi
> Nicholas’s study concluded that having fewer children is the best way to
> reduce your contribution to climate change

Environmentalism as a philosophy isn't all that coherent, and this suggestion
in point 8 really encapsulates the heart of my problems with it. If we are
saving the planet "for" someone else, who are they? If we are saving the
planet for ourselves, do minor actions of deprivation make sense? The extreme
logical extension of the philosophy in point 8 that isn't "if I care about the
future, and if all life is equal, I should remove myself from the gene pool
and build a society that doesn't value the environment".

Taking a practical view that we want to preserve the world for, say, 3
generations into the future, answers like nuclear starting 30 years ago make a
lot of sense.

~~~
js8
The resolve to this apparent paradox is easy. You can like the civilization on
this planet yet not care one iota about the gene pool (of course you have to
care about it to the extent needed to reproduce humans, on which the
civilization relies for the foreseeable future, but no more than that).

Let me give you an analogy. Is teaching meaningless? I mean, why do it, when
you're not going to be around when people you teach will run things. You're
trying to give advice to someone else, without being sure that they will
follow it when you're not around.

So, I posit, not having kids and working on resolving climate change is
useful, just like it is useful to teach or do your job properly to be an
example for further generations doing that job.

~~~
roenxi
> Is teaching meaningless? I mean, why do it, when you're not going to be
> around when people you teach will run things.

You might be underestimating how much personal benefit a selfish materialist
can wring out of teaching people things.

I, for example, love teaching people basically anything I know. To the point
where I'm probably unhelpful. There have been numerous instances where there
is a skill gap between me and someone else that I have closed and benefited
greatly from closing. Usually this is in academic and workplace settings, but
I suspect most parents would also see this dynamic. It also works socially
when they return the favour and find some interesting idea for me in return at
a later time.

If they don't follow my advice, that is often even better for me in the
medium-long term because it suggests my advice is bad and I get an opportunity
to correct my mistakes and misconceptions.

One of the most fortunate outcomes of the modern era is the more you want to
maximise your own material success, the more advantage you can get from
maximising the ability and resources available to those around you. I've been
led to believe that a sample of most serious leadership groups will pick up an
unusually high concentration of clever sociopaths - I suspect at least some of
them will be excellent leaders because they figured this little factoid out.

The scenario is extremely different from someone asking me to give up driving
because someone else will hypothetically benefit. As an interesting anecdata,
I gave up driving because of economic and safety concerns, which are far more
convincing to me personally.

------
KnightOfWords
This graphic give a pretty good summary of the relative impact:
[https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hire...](https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/gfx/news/hires/2017/themosteffec.jpg)

~~~
thunderbong
This is really a very good infographic - The biggest way we can impact climate
change as individuals is to have fewer children. Yet, in most discussions I've
seen, we talk about hybrid cars and vegetarian diet!

~~~
Vinnl
Your children's contribution to climate change is _their_ contribution, not
yours.

The goal of combating climate change is to make the planet more liveable. You
don't achieve that by not living.

~~~
ForHackernews
> Your children's contribution to climate change is their contribution, not
> yours.

It's not some moral game of attribution of blame, it's just maths. Fewer
people produce less CO2.

~~~
doombolt
Yes, your children don't get to live to benefit some other people's children.

That, or we end as species. Guess what? Worst case of global warming, mankind
extermination. "Best" case, also mankind extermination.

~~~
ForHackernews
What a bunch of tosh. You're worried about "extinction" from people having
fewer kids? Meanwhile, we're on track to 10 billion people before 2050.

Talk about premature optimisation!

~~~
doombolt
Then, truly, you live to benefit some other people's children. Basically you
are a monk. Monks also known for not making the difference in all that
removing sin business.

~~~
ForHackernews
Heaven forbid you do something with your life except reproduce, or
accidentally help anyone beyond your own progeny...

~~~
doombolt
This is what you say, not me.

------
joelthelion
I'm posting this because it's a good comprehensive overview of the question.
Most similar articles give a superficial overview with two or three ideas.
However, climate change is not a simple issue where you can just change a
thing or two to fix it; it requires deep changes in most aspects of life. And
this change has to happen right now.

~~~
TheSmiddy
I don't think individuals require deep change in order to solve climate
change. Most sources of emissions when broken down by industry ultimately just
point back to the energy generation.

The only deep change that an individual can do that will make an actual impact
is going vegan. Adding solar panels to your roof is not a drastic change, in
fact in Australia it makes good economic sense. Driving an electric car is not
a radically different experience to driving an ICE car. Telecommuting and
working more days from home is, for many people, a desirable change to the way
we work.

Once coal and then gas has been eliminated, 99% of new model cars are electric
and lab grown beef matches the taste and texture a real cow the problem will
be 80% solved. All of this can be achieved without a single person needing to
change their lifestyle.

~~~
philjohn
Got any scientific studies to back up that going Vegan is better for the
environment?

~~~
KnightOfWords
[http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-06-01-new-estimates-
environmen...](http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-06-01-new-estimates-
environmental-cost-food)

"High-impact beef producers create 105kg of CO2 equivalents and use 370m2 of
land per 100 grams of protein, a huge 12 and 50 times greater than low-impact
beef producers. Low-impact beans, peas, and other plant-based proteins can
create just 0.3kg of CO2 equivalents (including all processing, packaging, and
transport), and use just 1m2 of land per 100 grams of protein."

~~~
philjohn
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5522483/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5522483/)

Shows Vegan and Ovo-Lacto Vegetarian neck and neck.

As another poster pointed out, in many areas living a pure vegan diet is far
WORSE for the environment as you have to expend considerable CO2 getting the
correct foodstuffs there.

There's also the open question about many countries where the land is only
suitable for pasture as it's not arable.

------
tokyodude
I don't have a single friend or even. aquaintence who would do any of the top
3 things long the list of 148 most impactful things an individual can do

they were

1\. have one less kid.

I can maybe imagine a friend choosing not to have 3 but I can't imagine
someone wanting 2 to go to 1 or someone wanting 1 to go to 0 for this reason

2\. go carless

Sone friends live in a city that supports a carless lifestyle and already live
carless but I can't imagine a single person I know giving up their car or
moving somewhere they don't need it for for purpose of helping the environment

3\. don't travel

zero friends would give this up. even the most eco "aware"

~~~
xapata
3 can be to travel by bus instead of airplane for domestic trips. And to take
fewer flights.

I used to travel for work, flying nearly every week. I quit, party because of
the environmental concern.

~~~
refurb
But my understanding is airtravel is more fuel efficient than car.

A fully loaded 747 gets about 100 miles per gallon per passanger and takes a
more direct route.

If you had a fuel inefficient van and four people for the same trip you’d like
burn more fuel.

~~~
xapata
Bus, not car. Take a bicycle with you and you'll have decent transportation at
your destination. Or rent when you arrive.

------
throw1118
> 8\. Should I think about how many children I have (or don’t have)? ...

> Nicholas’s study concluded that having fewer children is the best way to
> reduce your contribution to climate change, with almost 60 tonnes of CO2
> avoided per year. But this result has been contentious – and it leads to
> other questions. ...

> And we could ask if having children is necessarily a bad thing for solving
> climate change: our challenges may mean we will need more problem-solvers in
> future generations, not fewer.

Way to make the quantitative answer on this question ambiguous when it is
clear that unless your kids will work or donate much more than average to
climate change, they will add to the problem.

Just be honest and admit that this possible solution (fewer kids!) conflicts
with your ideology.

~~~
ForHackernews
It's also way too late to be banking on "future generations". Every credible
report signals that either the adult generation in power _today_ takes
immediate action to curb climate change, or the effects will be catastrophic
and, in most cases, irreversible. The recent UN report says we need to cut
emissions worldwide by 50% by 2030. Your 11 year old child will not fix the
climate.

All this warm-fuzzy nonsense about leaving the solution to "future problem
solvers" is how we got here.

~~~
shoo
Quoting Donella Meadows:

> The world can respond in three ways to signals that resource use and
> pollution emissions have gone beyond their sustainable limits. One way is to
> disguise, deny, or confuse the signals. Generally this takes the form of
> efforts to shift costs to those who are far away in space and time.

> A second way is to alleviate the pressures from limits by employ- ing
> technical or economic fixes. [...] These approaches, however, will not
> eliminate the causes of these pressures.

> The third way is to work on the underlying causes, to recognize that the
> socioeconomic system has overshot its limits, is headed toward collapse, and
> therefore seek to change the structure of the system.

Leaving the hard decisions to "future problem solvers" is exactly response #1,
"shift costs to those who are far away in space and time", i.e. future
generations.

[http://donellameadows.org/archives/a-synopsis-limits-to-
grow...](http://donellameadows.org/archives/a-synopsis-limits-to-growth-
the-30-year-update/)

------
jmcgough
Related to this, Bill Gates recently wrote about some of the major sources of
co2 pollution and the challenges of addressing them:
[https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-
clima...](https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/My-plan-for-fighting-climate-
change)

------
shoo
i selfishly don't want to take the necessary individual action where my
personal cost-benefit analysis comes out negative.

for example, i could become a vegan. if i did so, the net benefit to humanity
would be positive. but i don't want to, as i'd have to privately pay the cost
(no more delicious chicken) while the benefits (in terms of reduced global
cumulative greenhouse gas emissions) are spread across the billions of the
rest of you.

however, i really want you all to take individual action to limit your
greenhouse emissions so i can benefit. go vegan, have fewer children, get your
economies to install carbon taxes. yes please, i'd love the lot of you to do
that.

i'm very willing to trade you something of value in return for you making
lifestyle changes that don't locally benefit you.

how do we make this kind of trade happen? how do we make this kind of
collective agreement to change behaviour happen faster?

~~~
js8
There is a simple answer, really, but you won't like it.

"i'm very willing to trade you something of value in return for you making
lifestyle changes that don't locally benefit you"

If it's true, then you can make the next small step. For example, for every
vegan you have as a friend you can decide to eat less meat. Or for every
friend without a car, you can take a bus once in a while. And so on.

That would be a valuable gift to these people, who decided to selflessly take
the first step.

------
gman83
Expecting some kind of mass-shift in lifestyle in the population at large
isn't going to work, because not enough people are going to do it. I think the
best thing to do is to advocate for solar, wind, nuclear and hydro power.

Personally I think we should be building more nuclear power plants as well as
deploying giant battery storage facilities to store energy from wind and
solar.

We should also start taxing carbon emissions. So advocating political change
to achieve collective action seems like the only feasible way to do anything
effective to me.

~~~
ealhad
> We should also start taxing carbon emissions.

Yes, but not without developping the alternatives. For example, in France, the
government decided to raise the taxes on gas and especially diesel — but at
the same time, the small train lines are being shut down, so people living in
the country aren't to happy.

~~~
WA
People in the country usually pay a lot less rent/housing. Paying more for
transportation is to be expected if you don't live in a city.

If they don't like it, they could try to move to a city and swap their high
transportation cost for higher rent.

------
WA
On the one hand, I think individual action is quite useless to stop climate
change. Too many people still do too many things that have a more negative
impact. For example, SUVs is still a fast-growing car segment (the fastest?).
The number of SUVs in Germany (where I live) have significantly increased over
the years. People want their fat cars.

On the other hand, if more and more people demand certain things, for example
organic food, then it causes companies and politics to change their behavior.
If nobody wants microplastic-free soap and shampoo, nothing will change. If 50
people per day ask in a supermarket for microplastic-free soap and shampoo,
management might notice.

But then: One big supermarket chain in Germany (REWE) ditched plastic bags
altogether for paper bags and reusable cotton bags. I don't know what caused
this – customers asking for it, politics, or some marketing guy with a "go
green" mission. But obviously, this has a much larger impact on the
environment than educating the masses about "reusing their shopping bags".

In a way, "saving the enviroment" is something that starts on an individual
level, but the real useful stuff is actually implemented through politics,
laws, and ultimately corporations chaning their behavior (or forcing a certain
behavior on the masses, like REWE did).

Edit: The question now is: What can I do to make political changes happen on
an individual level? Is it really my behavior that changes anything? Or can I
have more leverage in any other way?

~~~
danielbln
Whatever REWE did is certainly working to keep me as a customer. The amount of
plastic I buy with my groceries is ludicrous, every measure to reduce this
amount is highly welcome.

------
perfunctory
One option that doesn't get mentioned often enough, also not in this article,
is simply working less. For most of the HN crowd it shouldn't be that hard.

[https://thecorrespondent.com/4373/the-solution-to-just-
about...](https://thecorrespondent.com/4373/the-solution-to-just-about-
everything-working-less/168119985-db3d3c10)

~~~
kiliantics
For most workers this is much harder though. Low wage workers want more work,
if anything. I think the only way around this is more unionised workers that
can successfully fight for changes that would allow this. It would be nice if
the article addressed this and proposed more union support.

------
louismerlin
A concrete step we have taken with my girlfriend over the past few months is
buying second-hand items. It's crazy how much you save, and to know you have
not contributed to creating more stuff. There is an awesome campaign in France
right now, encouraging this kind of behaviour :
[https://riendeneuf.org](https://riendeneuf.org)

~~~
KozmoNau7
That's a really big thing, in the scope of individual action. If you buy less
new stuff, less stuff needs to be produced and less environmental impact
happens.

Nobody _needs_ a brand new coffee table, when there are plenty of perfectly
decent ones for sale second-hand.

------
jatsign
I think 350.org has the right approach to getting companies to divest from
fossil fuel holdings.

[https://350.org/350-campaign-update-
divestment/](https://350.org/350-campaign-update-divestment/)

------
air7
> Other than that, what’s the best daily action I can take?

While obviously well-intended, I fear this question might do more harm than
good. The question stems (imho) from the fear of being helpless or the desire
to be active, to do _something_ in the face of a problem. The issue is that
the desire to do good is trumped by the desire to feel good about yourself
doing good. This might skew people to look for actions that are easy (therefor
low-cost to feeling good) rather than helpful. For example I might decide to
not use plastic straws, deliberately take shorted showers, and recycle and
therefor feel good about doing my part for the environment. The risk is that
doing negligible things might allow me to avoid doing the important ones. (I
call these actions negligible because personal changes are hard to sustain,
they don't scale, and the overall impact is relatively minute)

The important things were stated simply before the "Other than that", namely:
"... system-wide basis – like revamping our subsidy system for the energy and
food industries" and what people should be doing is "... putting pressure on
their governments and on companies to make the system-wide changes that are
needed."

That's it. Make it a political agenda. Everything else is (relatively) fluff.

------
sashimy
> 8\. Should I think about how many children I have (or don’t have)?

Maybe the worst point of the whole article, here is my point of view :
educated and people aware of environment change have fewer kids, people with
the opposite way of thinking have more kids and have the same education. We
create a world where the people who don't care outnumber those who care, since
the most praised government system is Democracy the power goes to the number.

Path to idiocracy (great message for a comedy movie).

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I certainly don't share my parents' political views. Do you?

Are you arguing that climate change denial is a genetic trait?

------
ThomPete
Science is never settled, already there they start the misinformation which is
being used so often these days.

These kind of articles are so misguided yet people are so hysterical they
actually think the individual can do things.

There is nothing individuals can do that would actually help besides creating
solutions to the ever changing consequences of the world we live in. Even if
we by some magical event could stop all co2 emissions the climate would still
change we would still need to move or fortify against changing sealevels for
example.

But right now everyone is coming up with all sorts of irrational solutions to
a problem that havent been properly defined and even if it was going to be as
catastrophic as some have built themselves up to believe, flying less is going
to have no useful effect.

Only way out of this is through the very technology that have created the
cars, products etc. to begin with. The genie is out of the bottle and cant be
let back in again unfortunately.

~~~
jhanschoo
> Science is never settled, already there they start the misinformation

Science is never settled, but arrives at increasingly accurate approximations
of reality. If climate science's best approximation is doom, the rational
collective response is not ignorance, but simultaneously to explore and
exploit (address) the problem. Exploration by better modeling of the climate,
and exploitation by pursuing known best solutions to the problem. To use a
personal example of a complex system, if a person should show signs of cancer,
or a virulent disease, even if medicinal knowledge is not sufficiently
advanced to flawlessly diagnose the symptom, drastic action even under
imperfect information is very reasonable.

In the case that drastic corrections were not necessary with respect to the
climate, this nevertheless furthers the global society's resilience and
response for when such drastic correction is needed.

> These kind of articles are so misguided yet people are so hysterical they
> actually think the individual can do things.

Without contending whether or not 'the individual can do things', the article
does not give me that impression. Whereas indeed the article advocates
individuals to change their individual behavior, the article is written for an
audience of many. When advocacy articles like these acquire a sufficiently
large megaphone, like the BBC, they cause significant collective action.

> But right now everyone is coming up with all sorts of irrational solutions
> to a problem that havent been properly defined and even if it was going to
> be as catastrophic as some have built themselves up to believe, flying less
> is going to have no useful effect.

The problem is the recent increase in global temperature corresponding to the
recent increase in greenhouse gas production. To use the personal analogy, the
elimination of mutated cells causing the tumors.

> Only way out of this is through the very technology that have created the
> cars, products etc. to begin with.

I think that this is a very irrational or ignorant notion. Collective action
plays a very important part in very many big problems. For example, the
abolition of slavery and women' suffrage are made possible (in the former
case) by technology, but collective action was needed to enable these events.

Some people echo the irrational notion you seem to express that that just
because individual action is useless then so is collective action, and so
therefore the individual action should not be pursued. But this is clearly not
the case, since collective action happens. If it seems that most big changes
are performed by organizations and institutions and not individuals, this
nevertheless does not negate the thesis that collective action effects
changes, since sufficiently developed and mature collective action tends to
organize when able, so that they are more self-sustaining.

~~~
ThomPete
"Science is never settled, but arrives at increasingly accurate approximations
of reality."

Not necessarily and that's certainly not settled. Kuhns paradigms is another
way to think about it than Poppers idea of building knowledge as bricks that
create a house. I am not convinced knowledge works the way we normally think
about it.

Furthermore "climate science" is not actually following the scientific
principles as it's not falsifiable for obvious reasons.

"Climate science" is metascience in the sense that it builds on and interprets
data which has its own set of issues besides the issues with data modeling.

There are plenty of examples of mistakes, false predictions, cheating with the
data etc. that anyone who wants to have an opinion on this should be really
really really careful how much we actually can demonstrate vs. how much is
speculated. Just taking it on faith that the scientific community is in
agreement about a lot of the details is simply misguided.

There are plenty of theories around natural fluctuations even big ones like
this (and bigger) so the trick IMO is not discussion whether humans are
affecting it as we can't change that and will not change that, in fact, if we
did it probably would lead to more death than the consequences of flooding and
it certainly will lead to more poor people without any means to deal with the
ever-changing climate.

You and others seem to be of the impression that nature is fundamentally
friendly and safe towards us and we are destroying it, my position is that
nature is fundamentally hostile and dangerous and that we are using technology
to be safer from it. Yes, that has consequences but I take those any day
compared to becoming paralyzed by trying to solve a problem that is many times
more complex than any other things we have ever solved before. CopX is a great
example of just how little our global initiatives help.

Flying less, eating less meat isn't the solution to the problem, more actual
science, engineering and entrepreneurship and making people richer so they
start caring about their close environment is.

~~~
jhanschoo
> Furthermore "climate science" is not actually following the scientific
> principles as it's not falsifiable for obvious reasons.

>"Climate science" is metascience in the sense that it builds on and
interprets data which has its own set of issues besides the issues with data
modeling.

Yes, findings about climate are not reproducible in the straight and narrow
sense of the scientific method, but there are methods to reason about these
findings. Consider the utility of epidemiology, and how it informs medicine
and health policies.

> There are plenty of examples of mistakes, false predictions, cheating with
> the data etc. that anyone who wants to have an opinion on this should be
> really really really careful how much we actually can demonstrate vs. how
> much is speculated. Just taking it on faith that the scientific community is
> in agreement about a lot of the details is simply misguided.

I take it that there is a broad consensus that climate change is man-made and
that carbon emissions are very likely a huge driver of it. Many scientific
professional organizations have issued statements about it. Many governments
see the need to at least pay lip service to it.

> Kuhns paradigms

No, paradigm shifts help develop new and more accurate theory, but old
theories still hold. Newtonian mechanics doesn't become obsolete even if a
more accurate quantum picture has been developed. Even the primitive, less
precise, yet intuitive Aristotelian notion of motion can be useful in many
contexts, e.g. game physics that need to enable an unreal amount of control
yet feel psychologically natural.

> in fact, if we did it probably would lead to more death than the
> consequences of flooding and it certainly will lead to more poor people
> without any means to deal with the ever-changing climate.

I don't see how the thrust of this statement is consistent with the immediate
statement before

> IMO is not discussion whether humans are affecting it as we can't change
> that and will not change that,

> nature is fundamentally friendly and safe towards us and we are destroying
> it, my position is that nature is fundamentally hostile and dangerous and
> that we are using technology to be safer from it

I don't see how any general disposition of nature towards human society has
any relevance toward my claim that solutions toward climate change must
include an aspect that is not just technological products and services.

> Flying less, eating less meat isn't the solution to the problem, more actual
> science, engineering and entrepreneurship and making people richer so they
> start caring about their close environment is.

> Flying less, eating less meat isn't the solution to the problem.

I contend that they can be an important part of the solution to the problem.
If it becomes sufficiently socially unacceptable, these activities will see a
significant decrease. Many citizens already considers many activities taboo
and immoral due to the influence of their society; online fraud, adultery,
taking more than their fair share of an obvious common good when they don't
need it; it is possible to frame excessive air travel or meat consumption as
immoral.

> more actual science, engineering and entrepreneurship and making people
> richer so they start caring about their close environment is.

Similarly, I contend that collective agitation is important to enable the
means that you cite. "more actual science, engineering and entrepreneurship"
is enabled by voting for governments interested in funding research. The
availability of science is enabled by the collective action of researchers and
sponsors advocating for open access. The success and feasibility of
entrepreneurship is enabled by voting for governments interested in limiting
monopolies and anti-competitive behavior. The collective signaling of
consumers that they are ready for alternatives encourage the establishment of
businesses to cater to these alternatives, and to cater to them more
efficiently. Without this signaling, one is less certain if there is a market
for it, and hence such lines of business becomes riskier.

My second last point on societal attitudes argues against your position that
an abstract notion of technology is necessary to tackle environmental
problems. My last point argues against your position that it is sufficient.

~~~
ThomPete
"Yes, findings about climate are not reproducible in the straight and narrow
sense of the scientific method"

Full stop.

And this is the most important misconception which most people don't
understand. They actually think the science is settled and that it's provable
through the scientific process.

It's not not by any stretch.

The problem is that this discussion, even the one we are having right now is
mostly a politically based discussion not a scientific based one and yet non-
scientists, people who have never even looked at the claims they support, will
shame you for being a climate-denier for even suggesting it's not as simple as
claimed.

The claims are much more extreme than what the science support.

"I take it that there is a broad consensus that climate change is man-made and
that carbon emissions are very likely a huge driver of it. Many scientific
professional organizations have issued statements about it. Many governments
see the need to at least pay lip service to it."

But that's not what you actually find. The 97% concensus actually include the
socalled climate deniers, think about that for a while.

You can't expect people to just buy something on faith when you can't actually
prove your theory. Even if they are wrong, even if the claim about the
consensus was right you can't actually expect them to just take it on faith,
the very opposition of what science is based on.

Science does not actually build on consensus it builds on falsification if you
don't have falsification you have something else and much less precise than
science, yet it's sold as if it's not and as long as this is not acknowledged
you will not be able to have a rational discussion let alone solution. You
don't even have agreement about what the problem will be, only a set of
potential outcomes which is what you do in scenario planning. It's not
science. Geologists are scientists and can measure but the people interpreting
the date ads a layer of abstraction, interpretation and errors that's so large
that it's actually antiscientific to use the "science says" argument.

There IS disagreement, not even about whether the climate is changing but what
it means and how much.

If you don't think many climate scientists play lip-service to their donors
(the politicians) then you haven't looked close enough.

So there are all sorts of reasons not to just take anything by these
organisations even if you agree that there is a problem and that the climate
is changing. In other words you don't have to become a climate catastrophist
just because you agree that climate is always going to be challenge to humans.

"No, paradigm shifts help develop new and more accurate theory, but old
theories still hold. Newtonian mechanics doesn't become obsolete even if a
more accurate quantum picture has been developed. Even the primitive, less
precise, yet intuitive Aristotelian notion of motion can be useful in many
contexts, e.g. game physics that need to enable an unreal amount of control
yet feel psychologically natural."

No old theories don't still hold. They are still useful in limated scope but
they don't hold as complete theories which means that things that might look
like one thing isn't actually what it looks like.

In Newtons world speed of gravity is infinite, in einsteins it's not, in
quantum physics non-locality “disproves” the speed of light as the most
fundamental force.

Three different paradigms the two latter btw both proven to the extent we can
prove things but fundamentally contradictory.

In other words, Newton + Einstein + Bohr accumulates but there are fundmaental
shifts that completely changes the reality they are trying to explain.

"I don't see how the thrust of this statement is consistent with the immediate
statement before"

What is it that you don't see? Are you going for a gotcha momement or are you
actually trying to understand what I am saying. Can you be more concrete about
what it is that you don't understand?

"I don't see how any general disposition of nature towards human society has
any relevance toward my claim that solutions toward climate change must
include an aspect that is not just technological products and services."

Because to understand why you won't find the solution by some human
"cometogetherness/political" movement you have to understand why that won't
happen.

"I contend that they can be an important part of the solution to the problem.
If it becomes sufficiently socially unacceptable, these activities will see a
significant decrease. Many citizens already considers many activities taboo
and immoral due to the influence of their society; online fraud, adultery,
taking more than their fair share of an obvious common good when they don't
need it; it is possible to frame excessive air travel or meat consumption as
immoral."

You can frame anything anyway you want right untill you have to live by that
framing then it all falls apart. You have hundreds of millions of people if
not billions who would do anything to become just a fraction as rich as you
and me and do not care one ounce about their climate footprint and what you
consider immoral. It's a position you can have when you have the choice and
even then you are not actually able to keep it yourself as you are using some
sort of computer right now and thus adding to the very problem you talk about.

"Similarly, I contend that collective agitation is important to enable the
means that you cite. "more actual science, engineering and entrepreneurship"
is enabled by voting for governments interested in funding research. The
availability of science is enabled by the collective action of researchers and
sponsors advocating for open access. The success and feasibility of
entrepreneurship is enabled by voting for governments interested in limiting
monopolies and anti-competitive behavior. The collective signaling of
consumers that they are ready for alternatives encourage the establishment of
businesses to cater to these alternatives, and to cater to them more
efficiently. Without this signaling, one does not know if there is a market
for it."

That's actually not even close to true which China is a pretty clear example
of.

~~~
jhanschoo
> So there are all sorts of reasons not to just take anything by these
> organisations even if you agree that there is a problem and that the climate
> is changing. In other words you don't have to become a climate catastrophist
> just because you agree that climate is always going to be challenge to
> humans.

Nevertheless, these climate claims are consistent with what I know to be true:
that ecologies collapse when there is a great change in temperature (even when
geology is similar), that carbon is a greenhouse gas, that we are emitting it
at an unprecedented scale, and that carbon in the biosphere is conserved. I
haven't seen a compelling model that assumes otherwise that does not predict
the existence of a system that we haven't yet observed. One has to make a
risk-cost decision either way on imperfect information, and I think the more
consistent and conservative theory and its associated greater costs is the
more optimal decision.

> Old theories don't still hold

> They are still useful in limated scope

On the other hand, it is usually more likely that phenomena predicted after a
paradigm shift have more limited application, due to the principle that more
inaccessible phenomena are more difficult to exploit. Even with the paradigm
shift, it only gives us more accurate predictions about phenomena that we
already have, agreeing with it to a large degree in most human-experience
aspects. Consider that quantum mechanics see less application than newtonian
mechanics. The old theory still holds in most situations indeed, whereas
quantum theory requires an intractable amount of computation to obtain
predictions. Quantum chemistry see less application than traditional models of
chemistry. Similarly, any new findings on climate change solutions are very
likely to be tougher to exploit than current solutions. So I do not think it
is rational to wait for a technological hail mary.

> you have to live by that framing then it all falls apart. You have hundreds
> of millions of people if not billions who would do anything to become just a
> fraction as rich as you and me and do not care one ounce about their climate
> footprint and what you consider immoral

I think I have given sufficient examples that disagree with what you are
saying. With respect to less prosperous communities, it is often the case that
they have a more collectivistic mindset and community and in fact live under
more taboos. Consider superstitions, rituals, and religious dietary
restrictions. Also consider the case of British society a couple centuries
ago, where the aspirational class lived more prudishly than the upper class or
the lower class, based on a certain idealistic gentility.

> That's actually not even close to true which China is a pretty clear example
> of.

I don't know which aspect of the Chinese economy you are referring to. The
electronics part, where there is no lack of signal from the countries it
exports to, or its investment in green tech, in which case we may consider the
Govt. one disproportionately strong actor in collective signalling.

~~~
ThomPete
What you know to be true yes, just don't call it science.

"I think I have given sufficient examples that disagree with what you are
saying."

You haven't given a single one. You are talking about people who are already
rich and can afford to moralize over what food they put in their mouth. That's
a very different kind of people than I talk about.

"I don't know which aspect of the Chinese economy you are referring to. The
electronics part, where there is no lack of signal from the countries it
exports to, or its investment in green tech, in which case we may consider the
Govt. one disproportionately strong actor in collective signalling."

I am talking about the fact that the chinese market isn't free and open yet
does very well.

~~~
jhanschoo
> What you know to be true yes, just don't call it science.

It is science; basic chemistry tells you that carbon is conserved give or take
a few nuclear reactions.

> You are talking about people who are already rich and can afford to moralize
> over what food they put in their mouth. That's a very different kind of
> people than I talk about.

I address that in the same paragraph

>> With respect to less prosperous communities, it is often the case that they
have a more collectivistic mindset and community and in fact live under more
taboos. Consider superstitions, rituals, and religious dietary restrictions.

> I am talking about the fact that the chinese market isn't free and open yet
> does very well.

Thanks for clarifying, in part, but I still don't see how this is an argument
against to my notion of collective action being an essential component of
technological development.

------
chunkyslink
I found this useful too.
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/climate-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/climate-
change-what-you-can-do-campaigning-installing-insulation-solar-panels)

------
robotsquidward
Vote. At the ballot box and with your dollar. Tell your friends.

~~~
qnsi
This is the most important action you can take, especially if you live in
America. USA should lead, together with Europe, but you chose climate
denialist as a president.

[https://youtu.be/O34JM4Xdf3g](https://youtu.be/O34JM4Xdf3g)

~~~
lolsal
We don't actually need our president's permission before we take action to
address climate change, believe it or not. The president is not actually a
dictator. We have power in other ways.

\-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Climate_Alliance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Climate_Alliance)

------
benj111
So can anyone add some hard figures to this? How much meat is acceptable? I
could be flexitarian, eating 200g meat 5 days a week, or a meatitarian eating
100g meat every day.

I might have a petrol car, but only use it once a month, or an electric car
that I commute in 3 hrs a day.

Everything seems to be presented it terms of doing something 'less' or 'more'.
I'm doing those things but I don't really have a good idea if I'm doing my
bit, more than my bit or just making myself feel better.

And I'm not asking for one of those carbon footprint calculators that ask you
how many times a week you eat meat, then confidently predicting that adds up
to X tonnes of carbon.

------
corradio
We wrote a more in-depth guide to climate change (what it is and what we can
do) here, as part of our startup called Tomorrow:

[http://tmrow.com/climatechange.html](http://tmrow.com/climatechange.html)

Feedback is welcome!

------
ed_balls
Author wants people to make huge sacrifices and it's written in a similar
style like articles about startups or losing weight. The Fetishization of
Redemptive suffering.

I do not believe this to be effective. It's much better to show them value
e.g. electric cars tend to be safer, because of the battery pack, instant
torque make the car zippy and they're quiet. I was thinking about getting an
aircon, but I'll get a celling fan instead. It's cheaper and doesn't require
much maintenance.

Showing people value proposition is more effective.

------
rogergr3
That’s a LOT of good information and we do agree that we all need to take
action. We are not even close to be on target for the deadlines so every small
individual effort counts. We do our bit as well. We believe we should be
cleaning after ourselves, especially in cities, that’s why we are working on
placing our units which do just that. Cleaning up our mess is also a very
important requirement which has been quite left as a secondary actor when is
indeed a very important one.

------
Torakfirenze
Whilst this article has some points of merit, its premise infuriates me.

Shifting the blame to the consumer and shielding corporates is toxic. The
Carbon Majors report last year illustrated pretty clearly that 100 companies
have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions
since 1988.

Me going vegan and not using straws isn't going to save the planet.

------
emmelaich
Campaign for nuclear power plus wind and solar.

That's it.

~~~
wilgertvelinga
A thorough explanation why:
[https://youtu.be/YjFWiMJdotM](https://youtu.be/YjFWiMJdotM) (don't forget to
turn on captions if your Dutch is lacking)

~~~
oppzixi00
There's no way to scale up nuclear power at the rate needed. Too expensive,
needs too much capital, too slow to build.

~~~
wilgertvelinga
Do you have the source for that? (it's not that I don't believe you, just
curious)

------
belorn
When ranking different actions one can take to limit pollution I also like to
include actions which has a net-positive effects. There are so many small
things which might not be the cheapest or cultural popular but they do
directly help the environment.

------
RickJWagner
It seems like climate change is almost inevitable with a constantly rising
population base. More people means more pollutants.

Encouraging people to marry later, have fewer kids, etc. seems like the real
way to stop climate change.

------
ForHackernews
Another good site attacking this problem is
[https://www.drawdown.org/](https://www.drawdown.org/)

------
shambolicfroli
Vote for people that belong to a party that accepts the science about severity
of the problem and want to fix it.

------
Markoff
in long time i haven't read such stupid article, to sum it up following logic
of the article the best thing you can do it's kill yourself, since article
basically recommend that you should stop eating what you like, you should stop
traveling, stop having children and other retarded ideas

the truth it's if you live in Europe or northern America you don't need to do
anything, developing world it's polluting planet on such scale that our
individual actions are pointless, so for starters China and India should stop
their destruction of environment and then we can talk about doing something in
western world

the article doesn't also mention scale at which are freight megaships
polluting environment, compared to what it's flying nothing

------
dkarl
We're so consistent and principled when it comes to socially stigmatizing the
behavior of people we never meet, living vastly different lives from ours, but
when it comes to our social class, or own people, we're very careful about
which environmental ethics we enforce on each other, because any pressure we
apply might boomerang back on us. So we're extremely selective.

Anything associated with a more exclusive and more expensive lifestyle is a
no-brainer, of course. Organic, locally-sourced food is de rigeur. Sustainable
fashion. How could you NOT? These ethics make life more fun. Also, when your
lunch/shirt is sustainable, you can pass it off as virtuous discipline, but if
it isn't, it's not really a big deal.

Solar panels are controversial. They're expensive, but they're also
unattractive, and they're pretty nerdy, and even worse, they're technology.
It's very hard for them not to be declasse. You _can_ thread the needle with
these if they're unobtrusive and you make it very clear that you never
personally touch or operate them yourself. But there are so many other
braggable efficiencies you can add to your house (brise-soleil made from
sustainable wood!) that it probably isn't worth the effort.

Vegetarianism and veganism are out, because duh, buzzkill (how do you even
brunch?) but saying you eat less meat is in, as long as you're eating some
kind of artisanal, locally-sourced charcuterie when you say it.

Driving is in, of course. The alternatives are too much work, and it's very
hard to make them look cool. So driving is an important thing to defend.

Cycling is the most visible threat to the virtuousness of driving. It's
eminently feasible, unless you're elderly or differently-abled, and it's
sweaty and very very hard to look cool (congrats if you look cool, and please
fuck off) so it needs to be stigmatized. Luckily, you can lean on the
stereotype of cyclists being (ominous voice) affluent white males who are
privileged to have disposable income to throw away on expensive toys. Whew.
Thanks to that, there's zero stigma for an adult, able-bodied person to spend
twenty minutes idling their car a mile and a half home during rush hour. The
alternative is supporting a sexist, ableist, and otherwise elitist solution,
presumably at the expense of more equitable ones.

Same thing with scooters, except they're worse because they're tech. Techbros
did this! Your car will always be in the street where it never blocks the path
of the differently abled, and by contributing to traffic you're ratcheting up
the pressure on that darned city government to provide equitable, egalitarian
mass transit which when it arrives will make your 1.5 mile drive to work so
much easier. An effective response to climate change has to be collective, and
individualistic solutions just distract and dissipate energy from collective
ones. (Don't worry. Nobody will use this argument to undermine your artisinal,
locally-sourced charcuterie.)

You might think riding the bus would be even worse than cycling, but in
reality, it's not really a threat, because it's so ostentatiously hair-shirt.
(Rule #1: we're supposed to be enjoying ourselves.) Also, when someone else
talks about riding the bus, it gives you a great excuse to show off your
knowledge of transit issues when you explain how you can't ride the bus
because service coverage is so awful and we really need to do something about
this! They might be trying to shame you, but they're really doing you a favor.
Because come on, the bus? Ha.

Taking your batteries and fluorescent bulbs to the hazardous household waste
facility instead of putting them in the garbage? Nobody is going to bring that
up unless they actually do it. Don't hold your breath.

Xeriscaping... this one sucks. It's impossible to criticize it, and worst of
all, every time someone looks at your grass and asks if you've thought about
it, you have to admit that you're renting and you're afraid that if you remind
your landlord that you exist they'll raise your rent and price you out of the
neighborhood.

------
adwhit
I agree this article isn't as terrible as average. Going vegetarian and
cycling to work once a week might make you feel good but it ain't gonna make a
difference. It's a political problem. It needs a political solution.

Agitate and vote for the most left-wing party you can (that has a realistic
chance of winning/influencing an election). Campaign for them to institute a
ban on fossil fuels. Protest. Climb smokestacks. Make headlines. Break the
law. If you work in the media, subvert their agenda as much as possible.
Capitalism is crisis.

Of course, the BBC would never state these things. But given how little has
been achieved in the last 40 years by playing by the rules, at this point they
are obviously necessary, if not sufficient.

~~~
dev_north_east
> Agitate and vote for the most left-wing party you can

What's that got to do with the price of fish? The main left parties in my area
still harp on about the coalmines. Then you have the Greens who are anti-
nuclear, anti-Gm, anti-everything who seem to spend most of their time now
involved in infighting over trans nonsense.

------
bskinny129
> What if I just can’t avoid that flight, or cut down on driving? If you
> simply can’t make every change that’s needed, consider offsetting your
> emissions with a trusted green project

> we are still decades away from commercial flights running on solar energy

Offsets need to be a bigger part of the conversation. This article buried it
at #10, behind a bunch of changes no one is likely to do. It is so incredibly
cheap, they should have brought it up earlier in the article and give exact
numbers in order to result in more personal actions.

I'll quote you some numbers to show just how accessible offsets are for people
who fly. A rough estimate is about 1% of the ticket: \- SF to San Diego: 68
cents \- SF to New York: $3.87 \- SF to Paris: $8.43

Driving is similar, to offset a gallon of gas it is about 9 cents, tack on
2-3% more than what you pay at the pump.

I understand that it isn't ideal to pollute then clean it up [0], but this is
a much more practical solution than asking people to stop traveling. The cost
is so low that just about everyone who is doing the flying and driving can
afford it.

The concern is that by putting a price to clear your conscience for a bad
behavior you will induce more of that behavior [1]. I would argue that
personal travel isn't very correlated in this manner. How many people cut back
their travel now because of their emissions? Very few. Would the average
person who hasn't cut back suddenly start traveling more? Doubtful. It's not
like they will suddenly drive for fun or it was factoring in on their vacation
decisions [2]. So while I would be hesitant to put a price on all bad
environmental behaviors, I think travel is safe.

> Social scientists have found that when one person makes a sustainability-
> oriented decision, other people do too.

That's good news! First make it easier to take an action, then make it easier
for it to be public. That's why I'm working on an app that is a personal
pledge to balance the negative impact of your travel.

While carbon offsets exist, they are an infrequent action that cost a lot at
once, and are opaque. We will make it more frequent for smaller amount of
money, give a scoreboard of your continued impact, and help make it visible
for inspiring others to join.

If anyone is interested in keeping in the loop on progress:
[https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-
balance](https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance)

[0]: YC recently asked for carbon removal technology startups. It will
continue to get more impactful than simply planting trees, and those projects
that prove successful will need money to scale.
[http://carbon.ycombinator.com/](http://carbon.ycombinator.com/)

[1]: Freakonomics looked at a daycare that added a small fee for late pick up.
The rate of late pickups quickly shot up.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/freakonomi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/freakonomics.html)

[2]: If anything, this vast majority who aren't changing their actions now
would become more aware and cut back.

------
Bantros
Nothing

------
JiIIj
I'm so happy that the factor reducing meat consumption is mentioned... By
going vegan, vegetarian or just (really) reducing one owns meat consumption is
a major factor where you can start like today. Also fewer cows, pigs and
chicken slaughtered in your name ^^^ It is hard for many, and I might expect
to get some comments of disaprovel. Before that, pleasae watch Melanie Joy
Authentic food choices on youtube for an clearer understanding where I might
be comming form. Thank you so much :)

