
The big lie we’re told about climate change is that it’s our own fault - howard941
https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/10/11/17963772/climate-change-global-warming-natural-disasters
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dflock
The corporations that cause all these emissions are doing so in order to make
stuff that we buy?

~~~
throw_away
The linked IPCC report is even more specific. The 100 companies cited are all
involved in fossil fuel production. So as long as you don't use fossil fuels
or consume anything made or transported with fossil fuels, it isn't your fault
at all.

~~~
kayamon
But every single thing is made or transported via fossil fuels. You'd have to
be living in a cave to avoid them.

~~~
tonteldoos
I think that's the point your parent was trying to make, in a 'between the
lines' kind of way...

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rolph
the article talks about 100 entities producing ~70% of greenhouse emissions
and provides a link to a secondary.

Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf mentions these 100 entities.

[https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1...](https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-
Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1499691240\[PDF\])

~~~
Isamu
Thanks for the interesting report link. That report says 100 entities are
responsible for 52% of greenhouse emissions. I wonder why the discrepancy.

~~~
jonathanrtuck
100 entities: 71% of _industrial_ greenhouse gases.

25 entities: 52% of _industrial_ greenhouse gases _since the start of the
industrial revolution_.

~~~
rolph
OK i get the class structure now, Thanx

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baron_harkonnen
>If the light switch was connected to clean energy, who the hell cares if you
left it on? The problem is not so much the consumption, it’s the supply. And
your scrap paper did not hasten the end of the world.

The major issue this misunderstands is that transportation is the lynch pin of
a global economy and transportation has and for the foreseeable future will
continue to require high energy density fuels to continue running. Quality of
life in modern society is heavily dependent on the import and export of
resources. Look around your living space and ask yourself where did all of
these things come from? It doesn't matter if it's a "local" farm 40 miles
outside your city, it still took considerable fossil fuels to bring them to
you.

The issue isn't that global warming is happening because we're too lazy to
turn off the lights, but rather because we refuse to accept a drastically
lower standard of living. To prevent global warming we would have had to
radically alter modern life decades ago, and who would have voted for the
politician that had the platform of "lower standard of living for longer
living" in the early 90s or 80s or ideally the immediate post-war period?

~~~
btrettel
> rather because we refuse to accept a drastically lower standard of living

I don't think it's as drastic as most people imagine, or necessarily worse.

I'm a transportation cyclist. People seem to assume this some sort of massive
"sacrifice", yet I actually prefer to do this mostly because it costs less and
helps me stay in shape. If I need a car, I can rent one. (And despite having a
zipcar membership for over 5 years, I just recently cancelled it because I
never used it once.)

I am hopeful that what superficially seems like a massive downgrade in other
areas is just an illusion. It might be different, even "worse" in some senses,
but ultimately I hope people will find climate friendly solutions acceptable
or even better in the long run. We can't know until we try, and I don't see
many people in the US willing to try.

~~~
baron_harkonnen
How do you come to the conclusion that biking to work does anything
significant to offset the 20 tons of co2 emission you produce? Let alone bring
it anywhere near 0?

If you want to get a sense of what 0 per capita emissions looks like you need
to look at countries that have 0 co2 emissions per capita. Here's a list of
countries with less that 0.1 tons of co2 per capita:

Burundi, Somalia, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo Dem. Rep., Ethiopia,
Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Rwanda,South Sudan, Uganda

Biking to work is hardly the sacrifice that would be required to seriously
offset global co2 emissions. It's not just about driving in your car, it's
about the transportation energy required to sustain your entire lifestyle. The
food you eat, the goods you consume, the income you make, the concrete that
grows the city around you. All of this requires moving things around the globe
which in requires substantial amounts of high energy density fuels.

It turns out that, independent of how environmentally conscious you are,
emissions foot print is closely tied to personal income [1]. But nobody wants
to hear that to live sustainably we must live a dramatically reduced quality
of life. The fact that my comment is being downvoted is evidence of how
strongly people don't want to hear this.

And again, I don't blame anyone for not wanting to reduce the quality of their
life. But it's ridiculous to be dishonest about how much our civilization has
overshot what a truly sustainable civilization looks like.

[1]. [https://www.vox.com/energy-and-
environment/2017/12/1/1671884...](https://www.vox.com/energy-and-
environment/2017/12/1/16718844/green-consumers-climate-change)

~~~
btrettel
> How do you come to the conclusion that biking to work does anything
> significant to offset the 20 tons of co2 emission you produce? Let alone
> bring it anywhere near 0?

I never claimed that it did. I think it helps, but I don't know how much. It
was only an example of one thing that people _think_ is a sacrifice that I
don't.

As for the Vox article you linked to, a correlation between income and energy
usage is just that, a correlation. I don't see any particular reason why that
_needs_ to hold in the future.

Anyway, as a graduate student I don't make a lot of money, so perhaps by your
own estimates I'm relatively green, even ignoring the cycling.

~~~
Arnt
You live and work in buildings whose construction needed a lot of energy, for
example, and the construction business uses a lot of fossil fuel.

But I agree. Belgium is richer than Burundi, but not because construction in
Belgium uses cement mixers driven by petrol engines while those in Burundi use
electric power. It's richer because it has structures such as your university
(buildings and institutions) that educates people to a level quite different
from Burundi. The dirty or clean power used to build is a detail.

Like, in a way, your cycling. Compared to a car, your cycling cuts the
relevant emissions drastically with ~zero impact on your actual quality of
life.

Belgium didn't turn poor like Burundi when it stopped burning coal, it kept
the good parts (like that university) and just used less dirty power sources.
It didn't even grow poorer.

