[HN Gopher] Few willing to change lifestyle to save the planet, ...
___________________________________________________________________
Few willing to change lifestyle to save the planet, climate survey
finds
Author : perfunctory
Score : 20 points
Date : 2021-11-07 19:30 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| throwaway55421 wrote:
| The current divide on coronavirus measures seems fairly similar
| to me, just with the speed dial turned up.
|
| Current climate chat is about social distancing and lockdowns. We
| need it to be about antivirals, vaccines, immunity etc.
|
| Basically, how do we fix this, not what do we do to hide from it
| for a bit.
|
| It is unsustainable to suggest that everyone just restricts their
| lifestyle forever in an endless loop.
| CM30 wrote:
| I'm not surprised. Trying to rely on people to voluntarily change
| their behaviour while leaving companies to seemingly do whatever
| they want without consequences is a terrible idea. Why should
| people sacrifice their lifestyle while large corporations
| continue to make cheap, disposable goods and waste resources
| anyway? What's the incentive to consume less and change our
| lifestyles if leaders/celebrities/billionaires just fly to
| conferences in private jets at a whim, and waste such resources
| at an immense scale anyway?
|
| Plus... saying things is easy. Actually doing things differently
| are not.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Couldn't agree more.It's like asking individuals not to eat
| meat to stop climate change...
|
| What about stopping companies fracking, mining coal, selling
| combustion engines first ?
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Yeah, it's the wrong question, and thus a distraction from
| getting the problem solved. Instead they should have asked "Do
| you support a tax on the top 1% of polluters, which is paid as
| a dividend to the bottom 99%?"
|
| I suppose that might have the unintended consequence / cobra
| effect of making people want the top 1% to pollute more, so
| they get a bigger dividend payment, but, on the other hand, I
| don't think that the top 1% care about what the rest of us
| want, so their only incentive will be to reduce their tax
| burden.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It's an interesting idea, but the rich and powerful run the
| world and basically don't pay taxes. You don't need
| environmental dress-up, you just need the rich to pay their
| taxes.
|
| Wow, the world is pumping 40 gigatons per year excess CO2,
| which (at 100$/ton, god I hope we find a cheap way to remove
| carbon) is 4 trillion per year.
|
| There are historically about 2 teratons of excess carbon in
| the air. Christ that's 200 trillion dollars.
|
| Wow are we in trouble. Even if we only tried to get half of
| it out and get neutral, that is a massive amount of money.
|
| But the thing is, globally, there does exist probably 10
| trillion dollars we can devote to fixing the problem (4 to
| stop the current bleeding, 6 to start drawing down the
| existing "debt"). Hopefully we find something cheaper.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > 4 trillion per year.
|
| For comparison, the Gross World Product[0] of 2019 was
| estimated to be 88 trillion, so a 5% global tax devoted to
| carbon removal would be sufficient.
|
| Countries could even be given a quota, and they would get a
| rebate for every ton they came in under that quota, such
| that they would pay net zero tax if they were net zero on
| carbon emissions.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product
| PeterisP wrote:
| Pollution doesn't happen because some "top 1%" want it, it
| happens because it is a byproduct of goods and services
| consumed by all of us.
|
| A small tax won't change behavior, but a large tax will
| impact consumer prices of the relevant goods. Who do you
| think the "top 1% of polluters" are with respect to
| greenhouse gases? If USA adds a heavy tax to imports from
| Saudi Aramco and other oil companies, gas prices will jump
| and that will be the "unwilling change to lifestyle" that
| voters will complain about. If Coal India, the world's
| largest manufacturer of coal, gets heavily taxed then
| people's electricity costs will rise significantly and they
| will riot. If you tax producers of carbon-heavy commodities
| like concrete and steel, the tax will directly be passed on
| to those using concrete and steel, that's how commodities
| work. The same applies for all other industries relying on
| carbon emissions - to significantly reduce usage, the taxes
| need to be so high that people actually can't afford these
| "carbon-heavy" services any more and start using them much
| less.
|
| It's not just about the willingness to voluntarily
| unilaterally change your own lifestyle, it's about the
| willingness to tolerate your government implementing measures
| that de facto force you (and others in your country) to
| change your lifestyles. While, as the article states, "Most
| (76%) of those surveyed across the 10 countries said they
| would accept stricter environmental rules and regulations", I
| believe that this is said with an implicit assumption that
| these stricter environmental rules and regulations will
| mostly affect "someone else" i.e. "top 1% polluters" without
| requiring any noticeable change in the goods and services
| they use.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| As a reasonable starting point, the "top 1%" wouldn't be
| the companies that sell products that most people need
| (like cars and electricity), it would be the consumers that
| use vastly more resources than the average consumer.
|
| So, for example, if the average person flies N miles per
| year, then add an extra tax to the people who fly 10xN
| miles. If the average person uses N joules of gas to heat
| their home, then add an extra tax to the people who use
| 10xN joules.
|
| However, there are going to be cases where it makes sense
| to tax cheap-but-polluting products to give a dividend to
| help people buy more-expensive but less-polluting products,
| even if that means that prices go up slightly. That's just
| capturing the externalities of the polluting products,
| though.
| cybert00th wrote:
| There's no way I'm changing my lifestyle so a bunch of PH.Ds and
| tenured Profs can retire on the Costa del Sol.
| gremloni wrote:
| This is good. This particular change has to be top down. The
| ability to put pressure on government and industry should be
| grass roots, not behavioral changes themselves.
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| Bingo. Fuck this gaslighting. The vast majority of pollution in
| general, and CO2 in particular, comes from industry, not
| individuals. Tossing trash everywhere and running gas through
| your bus-like SUV like a maniac is an asshole move, and your
| neighbors don't appreciate it, but it doesn't move the needle
| much on actual environmental issues. Big companies and big
| foreign nations are where the CO2 is coming from. They have a
| stranglehold on congress thanks to their money, so good luck
| forcing change. But in the meantime let's stop wringing our
| hands over "lifestyle changes". They don't matter.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| There's the perennial problem with such polls in that people have
| serious doubts about whether incurring costs for environmental
| reasons will actually accomplish the objective.
|
| An awful lot of environmental rules simply export the problem but
| do nothing to stop it.
| exabrial wrote:
| ... most importantly, all of the "world leaders" at the "climate
| summits".
| sien wrote:
| 68% of Americans say they wouldn't pay $10 a month in higher
| electricity bills to combat Climate Change:
|
| https://www.cato.org/blog/68-americans-wouldnt-pay-10-month-...
|
| What politicians say they want to do about global warming is
| very, very different to what people say they will pay for.
| telesilla wrote:
| That's what's so damn infuriating. Taxpayers are paying that
| now in subsidies for non-renewables because of lobbying and
| corruption. Make it a fair playing field and renewables will
| get the investment instead without any noticeable rise in user
| fees.
| PeterisP wrote:
| IMHO politicians are quite well aware of that, so they say that
| what they want to about global warming is to express concern,
| make plans and perhaps subsidize some local industries which
| they might have subsidized just purely as an economic stimulus
| - because if they would actually require significant transfer
| of wealth for these issues or significant mandates (either
| direct or as hefty tax incentives) to change lifestyles, then
| the voters would simply vote them out.
| sien wrote:
| France has ~1/3 the per capita greenhouse gas emissions of
| the US and is a rich country so it's certainly possible.
|
| France uses nuclear for 70% of their electricity generation
| and petrol is ~$7 / gallon ( $1.9/litre ).
|
| Politicians just need to be honest about the costs and people
| just have to want it.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Well, you don't get to say what people "have to want", they
| have their own free will, and for the majority USA to
| transition to e.g. transportation habits of France would be
| a major lifestyle change, which they quite explicitly do
| not want - so if politicians are honest about the costs,
| that makes it certain that the policies won't be adopted,
| because there is not a willingness to pay them.
|
| I mean, $7/gallon is approximately double the current
| price, and if we made a poll across the USA asking "Would
| you be willing to double the gas prices in order to ...."
| then the vast majority would not even read past the
| beginning, they are certain that nothing that they have
| ever thought about climate change would justify _that_
| amount of change right now.
| pauldenton wrote:
| What you mean the rich and famous won't stop owning a dozen cars
| and a private plane, because of climate change? Not surprising.
| We hear stories all the time about airports being full of private
| planes at climate conferences. People didn't exactly carpool to
| g20
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| What do we need to change this?
|
| Education?
|
| Behavioral Hacking?
|
| More discussion ejection seat buzzwords?
|
| Surplus Resources produced by cornucopia machinery?
|
| Governments that are resistant to bribery and clan-think(aka
| human nature)?
|
| Or a virus that drastically reduces economic dynamics and
| individual exertions? Can in a dysfunctional society and system,
| a virus be considered a valid policy, to prevent far greater
| dangers through suicidal economic policies?
|
| Does the need of the many yet to come outweigh the need of those
| present?
|
| Just doing the devils advocate here. In the longterm im guessing
| it needs cornucopia to kick the can of worms further down the
| road.
|
| To change humanity, fix all the hardcoded brain-bugs and de-
| faulty heuristics, alot more has to happen. Just some dopamine-
| milk machine in the cellphone will not change moohmanity.
| PeterisP wrote:
| The thing that would change this would be clear, certain,
| imminent and obvious impact to local welfare, combined with
| trustworthy assurances that the desired actions will change
| that. If we look at e.g. the IPCC reports, then we see
| statements which effectively say "there will be a much higher
| probability of various bad events in the far future, most of
| them somewhere else, that are likely to have various
| unspecified very bad consequences to people in general, most of
| them in other communities; and by the way the changes are
| already irreversible", which fails all those criteria.
|
| People will not be willing to make sacrifices as long as it's
| not clear (from sources you trust - experts may not suffice, as
| covid shows) what exact very harmful near-term consequences
| _you_ and your community will face; how exactly the proposed
| sacrifice will change that; and how the coordination problem
| will be solved so that other large countries including those on
| the other side of the world also take that sacrifice, which is
| a key part of showing that the sacrifice will have an effect.
| lazyeye wrote:
| We need the technology.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-11-07 23:02 UTC)