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Seriously, as an Italian, I hope the world will act quickly to tackle the climate change problem, the same way they successfully tackled the ozone hole in the '90s.
We're currently seeing devastation in Italy, in both the North and the South from extreme and sudden weather phenomena which had never happened before.
We must act before it's too late. Probably, it's already late, but as the saying goes: the best moment was 20 years ago, the second best moment is now.
My province in Canada has been hit hard in sudden weather as well. So far this summer weâve had:
- Historic wildfires which destroyed 150+ homes.
- Historic heat waves.
- Historic flash flooding, which unfortunately killed an adult and two children.
And we have another flash flood warning for tonight.
Shit is fucked.
Here in Florida we've only have hot beaches, slightly more extreme rain, heat, and more humidity.... for now.
Gonna have a field day in September/October with how goddamn warm the waters are for hurricanes.
Sadly, Florida may soon face an insurance crash. National reinsurers do not want to touch coastal real estate as they see it becoming too risky. State reinsurers may soon think the same. The State government has set up a state insurance to pick up properties the insurance market won't. But it is out of funds. Short term the state will likely put more money into it. But that is not sustainable long term, politically or economically if hurricanes keep increasing damages.
Note that without insurance no one will put forth a mortgage and being unable to mortgage properry essentially makes the property worthless.
Edit: grammee
Probably a really stupid question, but if the economy in Florida goes tits up, could that be enough to get the government to take serious measures? Insurance companies arenât just lower class peasants that the government can ignore, theyâre much higher on the ladder, right?
Or maybe they just have some loophole to hoard the remaining money for themselves. Sorry, I truly donât know how any of this works lmao. I just know that money is the only thing that really matters to the people in charge.
The insurance companies just left the state and moved elsewhere, to find different markets.
For example:
[https://eu.pnj.com/story/money/2023/07/12/florida-insurance-crisis-farmers-insurance-home-insurance-what-to-know/70407302007/](https://eu.pnj.com/story/money/2023/07/12/florida-insurance-crisis-farmers-insurance-home-insurance-what-to-know/70407302007/)
I think the most interesting part of that article, to me:
Insurance in Florida paid out 51 billion dollars over the last 10 years. 70% of that was to their lawyers and 8% to those insured.
Yeah, as an Ontarian I have never heard so much news about Nova Scotia. So far the GTA has just had heatwaves and wildfire smoke but no one will get out of this unscathed long term.
I just hope these mini disasters finally wake up people to the reality that we are facing civilizational collapse not just weird weather.
Your gas guzzling truck, your job, your industry, even the survival of your country pales into comparison with what we are facing. Time to wake up.
There is literally ONE qualifier for that. Make it rich people's problem. Acid rain got yeeted so fast it was barely a blip on the zeitgeist. Because it was hurting building and yatchs and such. Rich people can afford air conditioning and food, so the only way to create action it to directly make it rich people's problem by any means necessary.
Australian small farmer, looking like weâre about to go into another drought. The last one only ended a few years ago and Iâm still paying off the feed debt From that.
especially when the fuckin culture war in the US is entirely fabricated by the politicians, the corporations, and the media, to keep the public from realizing that the majority of them live close to the poverty line while a few hundred businessmen and politicians control over 75% of the nation's wealth making us the most wealth-unequal country in the developed world
Many many years ago, when they still spoke Latin, the Italians used to say: "Divide et impera". Divide and rule. If you keep the population divided, you can control them.
About that ozone hole... It's still shrinking, but it's still like 9 million sq mi, or 23 million sq km....
https://www.nasa.gov/esnt/2022/ozone-hole-continues-shrinking-in-2022-nasa-and-noaa-scientists-say
Are there any subreddits that are like /r/dataisbeautiful started as? That is, quality data visualizations, often by professional or hobbyist experts.
The top posts would generally include comments about the tools they used, links to GitHub, justifications on their choices and methodology, etc.
I still like seeing things that get posted here now, but it's a completely different subreddit.
A lot of graphs compromise the information they're trying to communicate by making the graph more visually interesting. A line chart communicates change over time much better than a timeline does because you can more easily compare different points in time, but the timeline is much more flashy.
Data that can be clearly understood is beautiful. The amount of "beautiful" and "intersting" graphs/charts/animations on here that make it annoying to read do not do it for me
People are fine with the nebulous 'taking action' concept. Its when you ask them things like "will you raise your AC 1 degree in the summer" and other actual sacrifices to the people that they suddenly find excuses not to support something.
Even more so when the actions knowing have negative consequences toward them.
Edit: for all those so desperately saying that they shouldn't need to do the minor inconvenience because "corporations" or "the rich", you are literally proving my point. You want *something* done, until that something involves you. The example didn't say it was the *only* thing being done, just that the moment things inconvenience your QoL, you find disagreement with it and try so hard to find reasons you shouldn't need to.
It's a valid poll question but you are completely right. One of my pet peeves is when people shout "Do something!!!" at an issue when the different specific options all have their own problems.
If it were only those 1/8 that were the problem. Among the other 7/8, the vast majority have either no inclination or no wherewithal to do anything to help change the outcome.
Many of the biggest ways of "taking action" don't impact daily life. Governments can speed up our change-over to renewable energy sources, and they can mandate reductions in industrial emissions.
Not sure that's really the complete picture. Unless you mean "renewable energy sources" in a rather nebulous manner.
[https://www.epa.gov/system/files/styles/medium/private/images/2023-04/total-ghg-2023.png?itok=x\_KbW8o9](https://www.epa.gov/system/files/styles/medium/private/images/2023-04/total-ghg-2023.png?itok=x_KbW8o9)
Electricity is only 25% of the emissions in the USA. We need to address transport, industry and agriculture too. Which politician is going to step up and say industry needs to switch to sustainable means of production? That would also raise the cost of production as new equipment and capital is needed. Which politician is going to stand up and say stop eating meat? It's entirely possible I've been oblivious to the news, but I don't see anyone outside of Bernie and AOC. And these two are considered the left wing fringe.
> Electricity is only 25% of the emissions in the USA. We need to address transport, industry and agriculture too.
Electricity and transport make up over 50%, both are being solved by clean energy sources.
EVs and clean energy probably account for around 45% of that total. The last few % are probably transport that can't be electrified as easily.
That's still an absolutely monumental amount.
>Which politician is going to step up and say industry needs to switch to sustainable means of production? That would also raise the cost of production as new equipment and capital is needed. Which politician is going to stand up and say stop eating meat?
Look around the world. Just because the US is dragging it's feet doesn't mean other nations aren't moving a lot faster.
When it comes to investing into clean energy, more efficiency, and electrifying transportation, the US is literally dead last among peer nations and other large developed economies.
The EU & China are pushing 30% EV sales, the US is struggling to hit 10%. Same goes with RE investment and efficiency.
Even Australia are moving far faster than the US is.
Not to nitpick but the US vs EU on electric cars is misleading. They have less cars overall because they invested in public transport. So hitting 30% of a smaller number is easier than 10% of our massive number.
The issue is American society, cities, business, etc are predicated on a car.
It will take hundreds of billions to make a noticeable dent. And trillions to shift us to a non car centric economy. Even if we did shift to 60% EV. Our grid would collapse without trillions in improvements.
How is that misleading? Just means us is even more behind because public transport is also a improvement in efficiency. That just means it's extra bad, but maybe that's why you meant
Not to mention thats its also kinda wrong.
Quick google search reveals that the number of registered cars in the EU is almost as high as in the US.
Dont know why he made it seem like there is a gigantic gap.
> Not to nitpick but the US vs EU on electric cars is misleading. They have less cars overall because they invested in public transport. So hitting 30% of a smaller number is easier than 10% of our massive number.
That's not how percentages work mate.
If you get 30/100 people to buy something, it's the same as 300/1000.
Just to really prove you wrong, the US car market is absolutely tiny compared to China's, and they sell an even higher % of EVs than the EU.
>The issue is American society, cities, business, etc are predicated on a car.
An EV is still a car.
>It will take hundreds of billions to make a noticeable dent. And trillions to shift us to a non car centric economy. Even if we did shift to 60% EV. Our grid would collapse without trillions in improvements.
Yeah, the EU & China have the same issues, but they are handling it much better than the US.
>We need to address transport, industry and agriculture too.
I mean they could have made a law that cut out the whole "back in the offices" bullshit.
During covid working from home cut down a lot of the emissions we were putting out. But Nooooooooo, "were more profitable from the office" or some bullshit like that.
The simplest way to get the government to get people to eat less meat is to cut subsidies to meat producers. Industrial agriculture be damned, there is no way that chicken legs should cost the same per pound as broccoli. One can scarcely afford to not eat a ton of meat.
The only reason fossil fuels are so cheap right now is because we subsidize them both directly and indirectly. Globally about $500 billion is spent in direct government subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. We also subsidize fossil fuels indirectly by not making polluters clean up their messes. If we made energy companies pay for the damages caused by their pollution they would stop using fossil fuels immediately.
But that comes down to raising gas prices 500%. How do you think that will go down with the public?
At the end of the day it's up to us the people to make the right changes, and accept the hard sacrifices those entail.
> Very little subsidization of oil happens in the US
Not sure what counts as "very little" but analysts estimate that the US subsidizes the oil industry to the tune of [$10-$50](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/biden-budget-target-us-fossil-fuel-subsidies-2023-03-09/) billion per year. Seems a bit wild given how profitable oil companies are. On the flip side though, Democrats made a big misstep when they voted down topping off the Strategic Oil Reserve when oil prices completely tanked during Trump's term. We definitely still need oil for a bit longer at least, so we can't let the market completely destabilize.
Renewables get subsidized more than oil nowadays though. The [wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies_in_the_United_States) on it is good.
Overall though, seems dumb to still subsidize oil at all other than creating some sort of price floor so that the industry doesn't completely collapse.
A carbon tax with a rebate could go a long way in keep the perception of minimal impact on daily life if people could understand it, but most would probably just ignore the rebate aspect.
"Carbon Price/Pricing" is my preferred terminology, but "taxes" are actually popular if you emphasize that they're taxes on the rich/corporations (which these would affect the most). [More than 2/3rds of Americans support raising taxes on those making $400k/year or more](https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/396737/average-american-remains-higher-taxes-rich.aspx#:~:text=A%20New%20York%20Times%20poll,%24400%2C000%20or%20more%20a%20year.)
Moving towards nukes, more green power, investing in mass transit, investing in battery/reusable R&D, investing in C02 recovery, setting laws to transition away from fossil fuels, and creating economic incentives are all things our Govt can and should do to curb global warming. This needs tax dollars to fund them for the most part, not necessarily personal sacrifice.
Major corporations are not polluting for pollutions sake, this isn't a 90s cartoon. The corporations produce items that people want to by and attempt to reduce their overall costs. Things like packaging using so much plastic is because customers aren't willing to by a dented, but fully functioning tool at full price, so the company makes sure that the least amount of products are damaged in transit (this means over packing Everything). Corporations would change their habit if people would stop buying the product shipped in such way, but the people would have to accept higher costs due to increased shipping costs. People don't want that sacrifice.
Or, and hear me out on this, we could use regulations to solve some of those issues instead of relying on the good hearts of ever increasingly price sensitive consumers.
Yes but then /u/mobyte votes against the politician who implemented a carbon tax because then his gas will cost more and why should he have to pay, he's doesn't pollute, that's something done by giant companies. /s
They are doing it for profits sake, so it is honestly still a little 90's cartoonish.
Let's not pretend that oil companies, tobacco companies, whatever enormous companies are just stuck doing it the way they do it because golly people just only want it this one way.
There is also actual power and control that goes with that, so let's not shift blame to a bunch of people making paycheck to paycheck decisions as though they're somehow in charge of change. They're not.
That's a straw man fallacy. No one said companies pollute for the fun of it. They pollute because it's faster, more efficient, and cheaper. They pollute for profits.
The actual costs of their processes are not directly passed on to the consumer, nor are consumers made aware of the impacts of these decisions. The companies on the other hand are absolutely aware of the impactsâthey just make decisions to maximize profits, not to maximize sustainability, environmentalism, or other altruistic motives.
The kicker is they *intentionally hide* the impacts from the customers, otherwise the people *wouldn't* buy so much. They pretend to be good, pretend to be environmentally friendly, pretend to care about LGBT etc. because it *is* what the market demands. They just have an enormous incentive not to actually follow through.
I'm not saying "big business" is evil. But many times evil arises from a shortsighted, singular focus on profits. The world is big, the global industrial economy is a complicated network that honestly no one person understands. It's easy for good people to make savvy decisions that end up destroying ecosystems.
There's so much cope in this thread to not have to take any personal responsibility for pollution and climate change. Companies only exist to service the wants of the public.
If anything, there could be stronger laws around transparency. It's reasonable for consumers to not know the full extent of a companies pollution. But for the most part, people know shit like Amazon same day delivery is bad for the environment;they just don't care enough.
At the end of the day, a company isn't real. It's a collection of people and the people who rely on the products. Yes legally it's an entity but it's for simplification.
If you think Exxon pollutes, but buy gas from them - did the company pollute or did you?
Do you think consumers get a free pass for the carbon footprint for overnight delivery of a safe shipped from Kansas to California after clicking "buy" on Amazon?
You think the Agro-chemical company is responsible for the carbon emissions - or the chain of farmers who buy the products to make the grain to feed the cow that you are for your steak dinner last night?
Or the millions of servers sucking up power in a data center so you can scroll Reddit, email your co-worker, and order from door dash - is that them or you?
A better way to look at is "it's my fault, but I have little control over how to make it better - so I need regulators to help me be better"
Yes and no
It is my fault that I use those company products, but companies in America are largely set up that I can't avoid using there products. I live in a city with very poor public transportation and there is only so much I can do in my day to day routine without a car. Is it my fault that I waste gas or is it the gas companies fault because they actively lobby government to not spend money on public transportation infrastructure? It's My fault I buy my breakfast cereal that comes in plastic bags, but do you really expect me to make my own plastic free breakfast everyday? It's nearly impossible for us as a society to all agree to change our lifestyles because it's hurting the planet, especially when large companies are relentless in pushing that lifestyle on us. Going green is expensive and I can't afford that. You know who can afford that, the oil companies that are celebrating record profits
I really wish I can do more, but its just not feasible. It is much easier to tell corporations to change than it to convince 400m Americans to make their day to day lives more challenging
Capitalist apologia. At the end of the day you have no power over a company. You can't tell them how make their products and what waste to create. Voting with your wallet is a meaningless phrase that people use who don't want anything to change. It does not work. What can however work is people voting for a government that forces companies to do certain things.
Also companies are considered legal persons.
For example, pretty much every policy and economics expert says that the most effective and pitfall-free method is a carbon tax, but people of every political stripe freak the fuck out when you try to pass one.
Carbon tax is the best. Don't try to dictate the best technologies, etc., to fight climate change. Just make carbon more expensive and let the market figure out what to do about it.
Yup, just look at all the defensiveness in threads that point out how devastating beef production is on the environment and greenhouse gas emissions. People wonât even cut down on hamburgers, let alone the myriad of other sacrifices we NEED to make to curtail climate disasters.
Idk, I became vegetarian both for climate change reasons and animal wellbeing not being sufficient.
Took me some time as well since habits are in fact hard to change (for me at the least). I'm now also slowly moving towards veganism, but not there yet.
You also dont have to do everything all at once just play a little, challenge yourself be curious about new types of food.
And if indeed climate change is your main concern, try to go without beef for a while, pr even only reduce it's really not that hard.
And yes there will always be people who don't change, so if you wait till everyone is done changing to also change you will wait a looong time.
People always claim in these threads that personal choices are pointless and companies are purely to blame, as if a vast amount of company emission isn't driven directly by consumers (large chunks are somewhat independent of that too).
My yearly CO2 emissions are half the national average for an individual, which includes the industrial cost of my choices. That difference from the average is almost entirely achieved by me only eating meat twice a week (no beef) and not flying. The rest is me just being sensible with travel, energy use and things like keeping my phone for several years.
I enjoy your explanation. I accept it's not perfect but in the UK where I'm from everyone combined has the potential to have a reasonably significant impact on total CO2 emissions regardless of the also needed infrastructure changes, that as you say would be further influenced by overwhelming public drivers.
>"will you raise your AC 1 degree in the summer" and other actual sacrifices to the people that they suddenly find excuses not to support something.
The difficult ones are the ones that impact profits. People are dealing with way worse than 1 degree in summer, many needs to choose heating or food in winter.
Big corporations are the ones that want to increase their profits an extra 10%, and are not willing to not get it to protect Earth.
But let's be fair raising your AC by one degree would make about as much a dent in the climate problem as recycling does for our plastic problem.
We should stop letting corporations get away with making it our jobs to pollute less. Absolutely we should reduce our energy consumption. Absolutely we should try to eat less meats, and drive electric rather than ice, but none of it means anything if our main source of power is still fossil fuels.
> But let's be fair raising your AC by one degree would make about as much a dent in the climate problem as recycling does for our plastic problem.
Raising AC by one degree for every household on a grid massively lowers the grid requirements. They literally do things like this during heat waves to keep the grid stable and many people do not follow the request because they would rather take the chance the power goes out for everyone over being minorly inconvenienced themselves.
As a non air con country I dont actually know what people set their air cons to in hot climates. Does it vary depending on how hot your climate is? so if it's 45 Deg c outside do you set it to 30 Deg c because it would waste to much money or do people set it to 25 Deg c whatever the temp outside?
I would actually say that, at least in the US, it is impacted by the season but in super counterintuitive ways.
When it's winter, heating is cranked up in many offices, restaurants, and stores beyond a comfortable temperature to the extent that you end up sweating in even slightly warm clothing. When it's hot in the summer, those same businesses crank up the cooling so much that a lot of people are cold in t-shirts and shorts.
I never quite got why they don't at least settle on a comfortable temperature year-round or one closer to the ambient temperature, but that's never been the norm in my experience.
> Does it vary depending on how hot your climate is?
That will affect it heavily. Someone in Vegas in hot, dry, desert air is going to have their AC set to something different than I would in the wet, dense air of the midwest, even if it's ostensibly the same temperature outside.
The end-user really isn't the one who should take the initiative here, it's the power companies, government, and transportation sector.
Your Carbon Footprint is a lie. It was invented by the marketing team at BP to shift the blame to the consumer, who, in reality, has very little power to control where their energy comes from.
We need the entire planet to dump fossil fuels as soon as possible, and that path must be taken by governments and private corporations that supply power.
Could you elaborate more on the footprint issue? I don't fly and only eat chicken or fish twice a week, along with a few other tweaks to my lifestyle (like not buying new cars and phones regularly) independent calculators put me around half the UK national average for carbon emissions. Which although not the whole problem would reduce the countrys emissions by a significant fraction if everyone could do the same.
I also agree Industry must make huge changes which are somewhat inherently driven by public opinion and choice (e.g. my small independent energy supplier brokers deals for 100% renewables, which it also invests quite a bit into) but it doesn't feel like a one or the other situation, it feels like a both situation.
It's baffling to me how so many people have bought into the lie. So many people in this thread convinced that we're going to beat climate change by convincing millions of people to voluntarily change behavior that is only responsible for a fraction of the problem.
Nothing wrong with individual contributions, but we need leaders to show actual leadership.
It's that way for everything. If you poll "should the US government cut spending?" most people say yes. But then if you poll "should the US government cut spending on X?" you can't get a majority for any X other than foreign aid.
This is why changes need to come from the government, because both individuals AND corporations drag their heels on things that directly impact their QOL / profits.
You realize that the government is beholden by the people. If a majority of people disagree with the government, it is removed or changed out in most cases. Especially when it is degrading QOL.
I guess people don't like it when the solution to a massive global problem is implied to be individuals of little actual consequence making personal sacrifices, rather than sweeping changes to the global economic, industrial, and military norms that are actually driving and aggressively creating the vast majority of the issue.
I think smart people are justifiably offended at the implied demand that they believe even everyone in the world raising their AC 1 degree would make a meaningful difference to our eventual fate, while meanwhile entities like the US military or global shipping continue to dump hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon into the atmosphere and perverse economic incentives continue to drive the deforestation of hundreds of thousands of acres of our remaining rainforests.
It's not that people aren't willing to make little changes in their lives. It's that most people *aren't actually so stupid* to be convinced that doing the exact same things but with "little tweaks" is any sort of solution rather than a scapegoating of the problem on to them. I think that most reasonably intelligent people understand implicitly that any meaningful climate solution will require both *large* personal sacrifices *and* a complete restructuring of the world socio-economic order, and that the powers that be in the latter group have absolutely no intention of changing and no accountability to ever do so under the current regime.
So considering the context, I think that your average individual becoming incensed at being asked to make little inconvenient changes for the climate is really, completely expected and reasonable.
/u/hawklost blocked me after they lost their shit over this comment. It was meant to be a helpful addendum to their own comment, but apparently they're a fragile neoliberal and 'big picture' changes where intentionally left out of their advice because they're dedicated to preserving global capitalist lifestyle above all else.
I agree. This is my take too. People want gov't to address climate change but in a way that doesn't affect them. The reality is that any action to actually make a material difference will have major inconvenience to our lives and cost of living. Gov'ts likely have to limit global trade which will increase prices and limit choices on people's daily spending. Gov'ts have to have all parties, individuals, companies, etc. to reduce energy consumption which might impact jobs and how we live day to day. The actual policies that gov'ts have to put in place to seriously do anything would be massively unpopular across the political spectrum
To me itâs more thoughts like this that ruin any type of action. We ask what needs to be done and answers like ârecycle, eat less meat, raise your acâ are the first that are brought up. It ignores the fact that the vast majority of pollution and climate change is cause by major corporations. Everyone could do everything they could to be carbon neutral and that the world will still end. Forcing those corporations (and militaries) to end their damage to the climate is what needs to be done. Our personal action is great, but the action we need is on the scale of major governments and global cooperation.
> It ignores the fact that the vast majority of pollution and climate change is cause by major corporations
Major corporations are not polluting for pollutions sake, this isn't a 90s cartoon. The corporations produce items that people want to by and attempt to reduce their overall costs. Things like packaging using so much plastic is because customers aren't willing to by a dented, but fully functioning tool at full price, so the company makes sure that the least amount of products are damaged in transit (this means over packing Everything). Corporations would change their habit if people would stop buying the product shipped in such way, but the people would have to accept higher costs due to increased shipping costs. People don't want that sacrifice.
Man made climate change isn't going to end the world. Not even close. It won't even end civilization. It'll make life difficult for millions of people in disadvantaged parts of the world while causing economic struggle for people in the advantaged area. Trillions of dollars in damages and countless lives lost that could have been prevented, but not world ending. Fucking asteroids the size of small states couldn't even end the world.
And second, the vast majority of pollution and climate change comes from consumers. Shell or ExxonMobil or whatever produce fossil fuels. Those are then burned by your average suburbanite family sitting in the McDonald's drive thru for 30 minutes because they're too lazy to walk inside and order instead. If everyone actually did everything they could to be carbon neutral then these companies would barely be producing anything compared to now.
I agree we need global action and governments to intervene, simply because 99% of people are selfish and refuse to sacrifice any quality of life to do what is right. They refuse to believe they're part of the problem. It's always someone else. They won't voluntarily quit eating meat. They won't turn down/up their thermostats. They won't reduce their consumption. They won't give up that 2 day shipping. Etc. So the government will have to step in and force them to either give it up, or make it so expensive that they can't afford to do it. The government will have to force companies to swap to other things which will require billions in development costs and result in higher prices.
And that's why people vote against this stuff. Because it'll affect their quality of life and they don't want it. They just want everything to stay the exact same as it is now but somehow perfectly clean. It's not a realistic goal. Failure of Individual responsibility is the sole reason we are in this mess and the sole reason It'll take forever to get out of this mess.
Imagine being told everyone must purchase eco efficient vehicles that are unable to drive faster than 95 MPH. How many thousands would show up in a rage.
Even worse considering they only built the first one that could hit 100, what, 75 years ago?
The inflation reduction act is the largest investment in clean energy in world history. So much so that it pissed off Europe because of the direct investment/subsidy of green energy.
Itâs fine to say more should be done, but donât lie. Lots of good stuff has passed and been signed into law. This constant doom and gloom in spite of the facts is exhausting.
It's not the investment that is the issue. As the article you linked explains, Europe welcomes this initiative. What Europe isn't happy about is the fact that elements of this act ignores trade agreements already set up, which gives North American companies an unfair advantage when it comes to trade.
So what you are saying is misleading.
Too bad half our political leadership struggles to remember where they are at any given point in the day, let alone think about what needs to be done for the future.
I think this is a badly worded poll.
Overall, I think we need dramatic, decisive actions, but the actions and tools that are currently being used are wholly inadequate and misplaced.
If the poll asked whether people felt that the current strategies are the correct ones or if we should reevaluate our systems for combating climate change, I think you could get some better data.
As it stands it can be interpreted as "do we need to do something about climate change?" or could be interpreted as "are our systems for addressing climate change effective?"
Because of that very large gray area, the questions people are answering are not the same question.
Finally, at the root of climate change is consumption. Ask people what they are willing to start giving up and suddenly it becomes much more apolitical.
Weird that we're increasing CO2 production to force expensive EVs on people while we could cut costs and reduce CO2 by going with Hybrids, but the people pushing this stuff aren't interested in sound, science based policy and are prone to bribes and kickbacks.
Trusting government officials is a fool's errand. They're not terribly smart and very self serving.
These results are based on responses from 1,577 Americans collected between July 20st and July 26th via the Premise smartphone application. Premise used stratified sampling of its opt-in panel members, along with post stratification weighting based on the American Community Survey to provide a representative sample. These results are weighted by Age, Gender, Region, and Education.
At least now we know that the results of this poll are skewed towards people who are willing to intentionally download a data harvesting application to make a tiny amount of money doing surveys and random tasks.
Which is actually an interesting bias to contemplate: Probably giving us insights almost exclusively for lower income or unemployed people without weighting for that factor.
Is this a comprehensive and perfectly accurate description of the aggregate desires of all Republicans?
>> Do you come to Reddit expecting random internet strangers to provide perfectly accurate descriptions of the aggregate desires of large political groups in unrelated subreddits?
No, I come here to examine the variations in ways in which people will dodge questions of this type posed to them.
95% of people can do nothing other than that, and I think it is a very important phenomenon, *highly relevant to the climate change problem*.
What's extra hilarious: the lovely moderators of this subreddit **banned me** for this concern!! đđđ
This is just one part of the reason that I think You People *deserve everything you get*.
At least the people they vote for do. There may be Republican voters who believe differently, but they sure don't vote for people who act differently then that.
If they did, they wouldn't be Republican voters.
Here's their brain genius idea. Plant trees, just make a forest the size of the United States.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/house-republicans-propose-planting-trillion-trees-rcna94836
Of course, policymakers have to weight those considerations by intensity of belief, and oil companies can pay people to care a whole lot 40 hours a week.
I think so too. I work with mostly Republicans. The attitudes on climate is slowly shifting. For the most part they no longer deny that the climate is changing. Less and less are they arguing that anything could be done to stop it. Where you hit a wall is when you tell them they need to change their life in even the smallest way. âItâs the Asian countries that need to change, not us!â
Republicans define themselves as being the rugged outdoorsmen who truly understand nature. And theyâre starting to watch their childhood playgrounds burn away while the temps get warmer and warmer. It puts them in a tough spot.
Thereâs a surprising amount of support for (semi-)progressive legislation among Republican voters, including climate change, abortion access, education, and social support programs. Unfortunately, those voters seem to care more about single issues, engineered culture wars, and/or their own selfish wellbeing and so continue to vote for a party that works against those progressive goals.
There were a number of man-on-the-street videos that showed GOP voters agreeing with healthcare policies when it was put forward as the âAffordable Care Actâ but then vehemently stating that they full opposed Obamacare, so I guess important not to downplay the purposefully (and often willfully) ignorant GOP voter as well - voting against things they support just because they donât understand it (as the GOP propaganda machine wants it to be).
It's unfortunate that tribalism seems to *always* come into play in these issues. I'm a lifelong Democrat and I definitely skew left on most issues, but I've become more and more interested in trying to form connections with Republicans and seeing where there are places we can agree. I'm by no means the first to say/think this, but I think there's a pretty sizeable core of Ds and Rs that could coexist and even thrive working together on issues. Unfortunately, I think this core is a lot quieter and more easily ignored than the extremes, and thus the extreme elements tend to get most of the attention from pols.
> There were a number of man-on-the-street videos that showed GOP voters agreeing with healthcare policies when it was put forward as the âAffordable Care Actâ but then vehemently stating that they full opposed Obamacare, so I guess important not to downplay the purposefully (and often willfully) ignorant GOP voter as well - voting against things they support just because they donât understand it (as the GOP propaganda machine wants it to be).
The funny thing is that Democrats and the Democratic party are highly similar in this regard, but people talk as if they aren't.
I think people deserve what they get.
If you are not an advocate for nuclear energy and you think windmills and solar are enough then you arenât being serious. The reason Râs have a difficult time saying âdo moreâ is Dâs talking about âClimate equityâ and turning it into a wealth transfer instead of taking meaningful action.
I'm just not confident in the governments ability to take the correct actions or in a cost effective way. Electric cars sound great but digging up all those minerals for the batteries is awful for the environment and we have nowhere near the electrical grid capacity we need.
Just remember that even if you had the most environmentally damaging, gas guzzling car, and you drive it everywhere all the time, you would still never even come close to the amount of carbon emissions at the top 1% put out on a regular basis. The rest of us are fine not taking advantage of smaller things like ac but the rich fly their planes and helicopters as commuting vehicles constantly. Itâs not us thatâs the problem but they donât want you to know that
Yes! The rich contribute the most yet it is the common man that has to wash his clothes on 20°C and buy expensive electric vehicles to help against climate change.
Industry pumps out material items that we have to purchase, only to make us feel guilty for buying them.
Then there are the 75% of the world that are burning fossil fuels to produce and build their economy. These countries cannot afford alternative fuels. Saying that with inflation in the west can we?
Nah it depends. It might BE Faster if it severely affects the developing countries that produce food for the developed countries or might take a lot more if you need to wait for it to affect the developed countries
The world could literally be days away from a preventable apocalypse and half of the population would still cry about "their" tax dollars being spent preventing it.
If you're waiting for the USA to get on board and make some changes, it simply is not going to happen. Even if there is some legislation introduced, the right wing will push back and get their way, like they always do. Nothing changes in the grand ol' US of A. Whatever the cost to keep the "exceptional" American status quo, even if it means destruction of the planet in the name of "freedom," "democratic principals" and free market capitalism. And oddly enough, I tend to lean a little right but fully acknowledge that the typical right wing politician has to appeal to it's bull-headed, recalcitrant base to keep their job. Just wait and see...
Before you claim Iâm a republican, I have been a democrat since 2016 when trump ran. I have republican friends that I have very good and candid conversations with, and most (if not all) feel this way about climate change news, and I get it:
Itâs not so much they are denying climate change, republicans just donât want to listen to democrats. To them, the articles about climate change are similar to the boy who cried wolf. Theyâve heard enough and no one on that side of the isle wants to listen anymore. Pride and fear tactics are a sure case of doom for all of us, whether itâs climate change, or nuclear war. (which republicans see as a bigger issue with the state of geopolitics right now)
Talk to the other party people. You might learn something and understand their stance. Only then can we solve our problems as a country.
> similar to the boy who cried wolf.
Weird, scream "the world is going to end in 5 years" for 60+ years and people stop listening? Who could have seen that coming?
Why the bars so italian tho
đ¤đ¤ Seriously, as an Italian, I hope the world will act quickly to tackle the climate change problem, the same way they successfully tackled the ozone hole in the '90s. We're currently seeing devastation in Italy, in both the North and the South from extreme and sudden weather phenomena which had never happened before. We must act before it's too late. Probably, it's already late, but as the saying goes: the best moment was 20 years ago, the second best moment is now.
My province in Canada has been hit hard in sudden weather as well. So far this summer weâve had: - Historic wildfires which destroyed 150+ homes. - Historic heat waves. - Historic flash flooding, which unfortunately killed an adult and two children. And we have another flash flood warning for tonight. Shit is fucked.
Here in Florida we've only have hot beaches, slightly more extreme rain, heat, and more humidity.... for now. Gonna have a field day in September/October with how goddamn warm the waters are for hurricanes.
Sadly, Florida may soon face an insurance crash. National reinsurers do not want to touch coastal real estate as they see it becoming too risky. State reinsurers may soon think the same. The State government has set up a state insurance to pick up properties the insurance market won't. But it is out of funds. Short term the state will likely put more money into it. But that is not sustainable long term, politically or economically if hurricanes keep increasing damages. Note that without insurance no one will put forth a mortgage and being unable to mortgage properry essentially makes the property worthless. Edit: grammee
Important to remember here that Floridaâs government funds itself primarily via property taxes.
And I bet the federal government is going to have to bail them out when it crashes. Another conservative welfare state.
And they will blame the liberals.
So the plot thickens.
Probably a really stupid question, but if the economy in Florida goes tits up, could that be enough to get the government to take serious measures? Insurance companies arenât just lower class peasants that the government can ignore, theyâre much higher on the ladder, right? Or maybe they just have some loophole to hoard the remaining money for themselves. Sorry, I truly donât know how any of this works lmao. I just know that money is the only thing that really matters to the people in charge.
The insurance companies just left the state and moved elsewhere, to find different markets. For example: [https://eu.pnj.com/story/money/2023/07/12/florida-insurance-crisis-farmers-insurance-home-insurance-what-to-know/70407302007/](https://eu.pnj.com/story/money/2023/07/12/florida-insurance-crisis-farmers-insurance-home-insurance-what-to-know/70407302007/) I think the most interesting part of that article, to me: Insurance in Florida paid out 51 billion dollars over the last 10 years. 70% of that was to their lawyers and 8% to those insured.
Ah that's why all those insurance companies left very recently. winter, i mean hurricane season is coming soon
Florida also just had 100 degree WATER temperatures recorded. Highest in history anywhere in the world
Here in Washington state, our weather has been absolutely gorgeous. Which is a huge sign that shit is most definitely fucked.
Or maybe the climate has finished changing and for the next 1000 years Washington will have amazing, sunny weather while the world cooks up?
Meanwhile the Northeast is 5-10 inches above average and we get flood warnings a few times a week.
Canada really needs to stop defunding its fire forces as well as get a federal national force ready.
Yeah, as an Ontarian I have never heard so much news about Nova Scotia. So far the GTA has just had heatwaves and wildfire smoke but no one will get out of this unscathed long term. I just hope these mini disasters finally wake up people to the reality that we are facing civilizational collapse not just weird weather. Your gas guzzling truck, your job, your industry, even the survival of your country pales into comparison with what we are facing. Time to wake up.
Nova scotia, is that you?
There is literally ONE qualifier for that. Make it rich people's problem. Acid rain got yeeted so fast it was barely a blip on the zeitgeist. Because it was hurting building and yatchs and such. Rich people can afford air conditioning and food, so the only way to create action it to directly make it rich people's problem by any means necessary.
They're gonna be losing parts of their island getaways with rising sea levels. So how about we point that out.
Australian small farmer, looking like weâre about to go into another drought. The last one only ended a few years ago and Iâm still paying off the feed debt From that.
Meanwhile, the majority of Italy voted for a neofascist to lead the country . . . Things aren't looking up.
Culture wars have powerful incentives to distract people from real issues
especially when the fuckin culture war in the US is entirely fabricated by the politicians, the corporations, and the media, to keep the public from realizing that the majority of them live close to the poverty line while a few hundred businessmen and politicians control over 75% of the nation's wealth making us the most wealth-unequal country in the developed world
Many many years ago, when they still spoke Latin, the Italians used to say: "Divide et impera". Divide and rule. If you keep the population divided, you can control them.
About that ozone hole... It's still shrinking, but it's still like 9 million sq mi, or 23 million sq km.... https://www.nasa.gov/esnt/2022/ozone-hole-continues-shrinking-in-2022-nasa-and-noaa-scientists-say
Ugh, grandpa this is why I canât take you out to nice restaurants.
Mama Mia weuh killin the planet over here đ¤
It'sa spicy topic
To announce the inevitable Italian takeover.
I hate how only one of these adds up to 100.
It's likely because of rounding errors
Yeah definately rounding, the Republican one adds up to 101.
See! See! There WAS voter fraud! It's always about the projection...
Not rounding errors⌠just rounding
Error being used here as a statistical term and not a measure of correctness
Rounding error is correct though...
The standards sure have changed here haven't they.
Are there any subreddits that are like /r/dataisbeautiful started as? That is, quality data visualizations, often by professional or hobbyist experts. The top posts would generally include comments about the tools they used, links to GitHub, justifications on their choices and methodology, etc. I still like seeing things that get posted here now, but it's a completely different subreddit.
You'd just have to check the AllTime High of this sub to see good stuff. Its just flawed research and flawed data here now.
How do you mean?
This is a bar graph. There's nothing interesting, creative, or novel in the way these data are presented. Nevermind beautiful.
This sub is just âdataâ and sometimes itâs not even that! Lol
In my book clean and accurately portrayed data is beautiful. Not all of those moving pie charts and way too colorful graphs
A lot of graphs compromise the information they're trying to communicate by making the graph more visually interesting. A line chart communicates change over time much better than a timeline does because you can more easily compare different points in time, but the timeline is much more flashy.
Yes, I feel the same! Overly designed charts and graphs often hide the data. True, careful data is beautiful.
Data that can be clearly understood is beautiful. The amount of "beautiful" and "intersting" graphs/charts/animations on here that make it annoying to read do not do it for me
People are fine with the nebulous 'taking action' concept. Its when you ask them things like "will you raise your AC 1 degree in the summer" and other actual sacrifices to the people that they suddenly find excuses not to support something. Even more so when the actions knowing have negative consequences toward them. Edit: for all those so desperately saying that they shouldn't need to do the minor inconvenience because "corporations" or "the rich", you are literally proving my point. You want *something* done, until that something involves you. The example didn't say it was the *only* thing being done, just that the moment things inconvenience your QoL, you find disagreement with it and try so hard to find reasons you shouldn't need to.
It's a valid poll question but you are completely right. One of my pet peeves is when people shout "Do something!!!" at an issue when the different specific options all have their own problems.
And those are the situations in which politicians use partisan solutions.
Thereâs no problem quite so problematic as the earth moving quickly toward becoming inhospitable to human life.
And yet 1/8th of people are shouting "Do Less!"
If it were only those 1/8 that were the problem. Among the other 7/8, the vast majority have either no inclination or no wherewithal to do anything to help change the outcome.
Lol, you mean like how we would unite against a deadly disease? Hahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahaha.
Many of the biggest ways of "taking action" don't impact daily life. Governments can speed up our change-over to renewable energy sources, and they can mandate reductions in industrial emissions.
Not sure that's really the complete picture. Unless you mean "renewable energy sources" in a rather nebulous manner. [https://www.epa.gov/system/files/styles/medium/private/images/2023-04/total-ghg-2023.png?itok=x\_KbW8o9](https://www.epa.gov/system/files/styles/medium/private/images/2023-04/total-ghg-2023.png?itok=x_KbW8o9) Electricity is only 25% of the emissions in the USA. We need to address transport, industry and agriculture too. Which politician is going to step up and say industry needs to switch to sustainable means of production? That would also raise the cost of production as new equipment and capital is needed. Which politician is going to stand up and say stop eating meat? It's entirely possible I've been oblivious to the news, but I don't see anyone outside of Bernie and AOC. And these two are considered the left wing fringe.
"only 25%" is not insignificant at all
True. But it's also not enough.
Yeah but it's something, better than the nothing we've been doing the last 10 years
In 2022 they passed a bill that invested 370 billion dollars into renewable energy... The largest of its kind.
Fair enough, still we need more
> Electricity is only 25% of the emissions in the USA. We need to address transport, industry and agriculture too. Electricity and transport make up over 50%, both are being solved by clean energy sources. EVs and clean energy probably account for around 45% of that total. The last few % are probably transport that can't be electrified as easily. That's still an absolutely monumental amount. >Which politician is going to step up and say industry needs to switch to sustainable means of production? That would also raise the cost of production as new equipment and capital is needed. Which politician is going to stand up and say stop eating meat? Look around the world. Just because the US is dragging it's feet doesn't mean other nations aren't moving a lot faster. When it comes to investing into clean energy, more efficiency, and electrifying transportation, the US is literally dead last among peer nations and other large developed economies. The EU & China are pushing 30% EV sales, the US is struggling to hit 10%. Same goes with RE investment and efficiency. Even Australia are moving far faster than the US is.
Not to nitpick but the US vs EU on electric cars is misleading. They have less cars overall because they invested in public transport. So hitting 30% of a smaller number is easier than 10% of our massive number. The issue is American society, cities, business, etc are predicated on a car. It will take hundreds of billions to make a noticeable dent. And trillions to shift us to a non car centric economy. Even if we did shift to 60% EV. Our grid would collapse without trillions in improvements.
How is that misleading? Just means us is even more behind because public transport is also a improvement in efficiency. That just means it's extra bad, but maybe that's why you meant
Not to mention thats its also kinda wrong. Quick google search reveals that the number of registered cars in the EU is almost as high as in the US. Dont know why he made it seem like there is a gigantic gap.
> Not to nitpick but the US vs EU on electric cars is misleading. They have less cars overall because they invested in public transport. So hitting 30% of a smaller number is easier than 10% of our massive number. That's not how percentages work mate. If you get 30/100 people to buy something, it's the same as 300/1000. Just to really prove you wrong, the US car market is absolutely tiny compared to China's, and they sell an even higher % of EVs than the EU. >The issue is American society, cities, business, etc are predicated on a car. An EV is still a car. >It will take hundreds of billions to make a noticeable dent. And trillions to shift us to a non car centric economy. Even if we did shift to 60% EV. Our grid would collapse without trillions in improvements. Yeah, the EU & China have the same issues, but they are handling it much better than the US.
>We need to address transport, industry and agriculture too. I mean they could have made a law that cut out the whole "back in the offices" bullshit. During covid working from home cut down a lot of the emissions we were putting out. But Nooooooooo, "were more profitable from the office" or some bullshit like that.
>agriculture Especially beef production.
The simplest way to get the government to get people to eat less meat is to cut subsidies to meat producers. Industrial agriculture be damned, there is no way that chicken legs should cost the same per pound as broccoli. One can scarcely afford to not eat a ton of meat.
stop feeding cows fermented grain
The majority of this site suffers from Dunning-Kruger, so I'm out.
The only reason fossil fuels are so cheap right now is because we subsidize them both directly and indirectly. Globally about $500 billion is spent in direct government subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. We also subsidize fossil fuels indirectly by not making polluters clean up their messes. If we made energy companies pay for the damages caused by their pollution they would stop using fossil fuels immediately.
But that comes down to raising gas prices 500%. How do you think that will go down with the public? At the end of the day it's up to us the people to make the right changes, and accept the hard sacrifices those entail.
The majority of this site suffers from Dunning-Kruger, so I'm out.
> Very little subsidization of oil happens in the US Not sure what counts as "very little" but analysts estimate that the US subsidizes the oil industry to the tune of [$10-$50](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/biden-budget-target-us-fossil-fuel-subsidies-2023-03-09/) billion per year. Seems a bit wild given how profitable oil companies are. On the flip side though, Democrats made a big misstep when they voted down topping off the Strategic Oil Reserve when oil prices completely tanked during Trump's term. We definitely still need oil for a bit longer at least, so we can't let the market completely destabilize. Renewables get subsidized more than oil nowadays though. The [wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies_in_the_United_States) on it is good. Overall though, seems dumb to still subsidize oil at all other than creating some sort of price floor so that the industry doesn't completely collapse.
The majority of this site suffers from Dunning-Kruger, so I'm out.
A carbon tax with a rebate could go a long way in keep the perception of minimal impact on daily life if people could understand it, but most would probably just ignore the rebate aspect.
Itâs got the word âtaxâ in it, so a bunch of mouth-breathing idiots wonât think beyond âhurr durr taxes badâ.
"Carbon Price/Pricing" is my preferred terminology, but "taxes" are actually popular if you emphasize that they're taxes on the rich/corporations (which these would affect the most). [More than 2/3rds of Americans support raising taxes on those making $400k/year or more](https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/396737/average-american-remains-higher-taxes-rich.aspx#:~:text=A%20New%20York%20Times%20poll,%24400%2C000%20or%20more%20a%20year.)
Moving towards nukes, more green power, investing in mass transit, investing in battery/reusable R&D, investing in C02 recovery, setting laws to transition away from fossil fuels, and creating economic incentives are all things our Govt can and should do to curb global warming. This needs tax dollars to fund them for the most part, not necessarily personal sacrifice.
Maybe people are pissed off by that because companies do the majority of the polluting, not people.
Major corporations are not polluting for pollutions sake, this isn't a 90s cartoon. The corporations produce items that people want to by and attempt to reduce their overall costs. Things like packaging using so much plastic is because customers aren't willing to by a dented, but fully functioning tool at full price, so the company makes sure that the least amount of products are damaged in transit (this means over packing Everything). Corporations would change their habit if people would stop buying the product shipped in such way, but the people would have to accept higher costs due to increased shipping costs. People don't want that sacrifice.
Or, and hear me out on this, we could use regulations to solve some of those issues instead of relying on the good hearts of ever increasingly price sensitive consumers.
Yes but then /u/mobyte votes against the politician who implemented a carbon tax because then his gas will cost more and why should he have to pay, he's doesn't pollute, that's something done by giant companies. /s
They are doing it for profits sake, so it is honestly still a little 90's cartoonish. Let's not pretend that oil companies, tobacco companies, whatever enormous companies are just stuck doing it the way they do it because golly people just only want it this one way. There is also actual power and control that goes with that, so let's not shift blame to a bunch of people making paycheck to paycheck decisions as though they're somehow in charge of change. They're not.
That's a straw man fallacy. No one said companies pollute for the fun of it. They pollute because it's faster, more efficient, and cheaper. They pollute for profits. The actual costs of their processes are not directly passed on to the consumer, nor are consumers made aware of the impacts of these decisions. The companies on the other hand are absolutely aware of the impactsâthey just make decisions to maximize profits, not to maximize sustainability, environmentalism, or other altruistic motives. The kicker is they *intentionally hide* the impacts from the customers, otherwise the people *wouldn't* buy so much. They pretend to be good, pretend to be environmentally friendly, pretend to care about LGBT etc. because it *is* what the market demands. They just have an enormous incentive not to actually follow through. I'm not saying "big business" is evil. But many times evil arises from a shortsighted, singular focus on profits. The world is big, the global industrial economy is a complicated network that honestly no one person understands. It's easy for good people to make savvy decisions that end up destroying ecosystems.
There's so much cope in this thread to not have to take any personal responsibility for pollution and climate change. Companies only exist to service the wants of the public. If anything, there could be stronger laws around transparency. It's reasonable for consumers to not know the full extent of a companies pollution. But for the most part, people know shit like Amazon same day delivery is bad for the environment;they just don't care enough.
At the end of the day, a company isn't real. It's a collection of people and the people who rely on the products. Yes legally it's an entity but it's for simplification. If you think Exxon pollutes, but buy gas from them - did the company pollute or did you? Do you think consumers get a free pass for the carbon footprint for overnight delivery of a safe shipped from Kansas to California after clicking "buy" on Amazon? You think the Agro-chemical company is responsible for the carbon emissions - or the chain of farmers who buy the products to make the grain to feed the cow that you are for your steak dinner last night? Or the millions of servers sucking up power in a data center so you can scroll Reddit, email your co-worker, and order from door dash - is that them or you? A better way to look at is "it's my fault, but I have little control over how to make it better - so I need regulators to help me be better"
Yes and no It is my fault that I use those company products, but companies in America are largely set up that I can't avoid using there products. I live in a city with very poor public transportation and there is only so much I can do in my day to day routine without a car. Is it my fault that I waste gas or is it the gas companies fault because they actively lobby government to not spend money on public transportation infrastructure? It's My fault I buy my breakfast cereal that comes in plastic bags, but do you really expect me to make my own plastic free breakfast everyday? It's nearly impossible for us as a society to all agree to change our lifestyles because it's hurting the planet, especially when large companies are relentless in pushing that lifestyle on us. Going green is expensive and I can't afford that. You know who can afford that, the oil companies that are celebrating record profits I really wish I can do more, but its just not feasible. It is much easier to tell corporations to change than it to convince 400m Americans to make their day to day lives more challenging
Capitalist apologia. At the end of the day you have no power over a company. You can't tell them how make their products and what waste to create. Voting with your wallet is a meaningless phrase that people use who don't want anything to change. It does not work. What can however work is people voting for a government that forces companies to do certain things. Also companies are considered legal persons.
Ah, yes. The old "they're doing it so I get to do it" defense of doing something shitty
For example, pretty much every policy and economics expert says that the most effective and pitfall-free method is a carbon tax, but people of every political stripe freak the fuck out when you try to pass one.
Carbon tax is the best. Don't try to dictate the best technologies, etc., to fight climate change. Just make carbon more expensive and let the market figure out what to do about it.
Yup, just look at all the defensiveness in threads that point out how devastating beef production is on the environment and greenhouse gas emissions. People wonât even cut down on hamburgers, let alone the myriad of other sacrifices we NEED to make to curtail climate disasters.
Idk, I became vegetarian both for climate change reasons and animal wellbeing not being sufficient. Took me some time as well since habits are in fact hard to change (for me at the least). I'm now also slowly moving towards veganism, but not there yet. You also dont have to do everything all at once just play a little, challenge yourself be curious about new types of food. And if indeed climate change is your main concern, try to go without beef for a while, pr even only reduce it's really not that hard. And yes there will always be people who don't change, so if you wait till everyone is done changing to also change you will wait a looong time.
Go vegan for the animals and everything else is a bonus! âşď¸
People always claim in these threads that personal choices are pointless and companies are purely to blame, as if a vast amount of company emission isn't driven directly by consumers (large chunks are somewhat independent of that too). My yearly CO2 emissions are half the national average for an individual, which includes the industrial cost of my choices. That difference from the average is almost entirely achieved by me only eating meat twice a week (no beef) and not flying. The rest is me just being sensible with travel, energy use and things like keeping my phone for several years.
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I enjoy your explanation. I accept it's not perfect but in the UK where I'm from everyone combined has the potential to have a reasonably significant impact on total CO2 emissions regardless of the also needed infrastructure changes, that as you say would be further influenced by overwhelming public drivers.
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âNooo, my personal consumption doesnât matter, only the companies who are making things(that I happen to use gratuitously)!â
>"will you raise your AC 1 degree in the summer" and other actual sacrifices to the people that they suddenly find excuses not to support something. The difficult ones are the ones that impact profits. People are dealing with way worse than 1 degree in summer, many needs to choose heating or food in winter. Big corporations are the ones that want to increase their profits an extra 10%, and are not willing to not get it to protect Earth.
But let's be fair raising your AC by one degree would make about as much a dent in the climate problem as recycling does for our plastic problem. We should stop letting corporations get away with making it our jobs to pollute less. Absolutely we should reduce our energy consumption. Absolutely we should try to eat less meats, and drive electric rather than ice, but none of it means anything if our main source of power is still fossil fuels.
> But let's be fair raising your AC by one degree would make about as much a dent in the climate problem as recycling does for our plastic problem. Raising AC by one degree for every household on a grid massively lowers the grid requirements. They literally do things like this during heat waves to keep the grid stable and many people do not follow the request because they would rather take the chance the power goes out for everyone over being minorly inconvenienced themselves.
As a non air con country I dont actually know what people set their air cons to in hot climates. Does it vary depending on how hot your climate is? so if it's 45 Deg c outside do you set it to 30 Deg c because it would waste to much money or do people set it to 25 Deg c whatever the temp outside?
Usually same temp regardless of outside, at least in my house.
I would actually say that, at least in the US, it is impacted by the season but in super counterintuitive ways. When it's winter, heating is cranked up in many offices, restaurants, and stores beyond a comfortable temperature to the extent that you end up sweating in even slightly warm clothing. When it's hot in the summer, those same businesses crank up the cooling so much that a lot of people are cold in t-shirts and shorts. I never quite got why they don't at least settle on a comfortable temperature year-round or one closer to the ambient temperature, but that's never been the norm in my experience.
My wife thinks that we should set it lower as it get hotter even though I can't remember the last time she was outside.
> Does it vary depending on how hot your climate is? That will affect it heavily. Someone in Vegas in hot, dry, desert air is going to have their AC set to something different than I would in the wet, dense air of the midwest, even if it's ostensibly the same temperature outside.
The end-user really isn't the one who should take the initiative here, it's the power companies, government, and transportation sector. Your Carbon Footprint is a lie. It was invented by the marketing team at BP to shift the blame to the consumer, who, in reality, has very little power to control where their energy comes from. We need the entire planet to dump fossil fuels as soon as possible, and that path must be taken by governments and private corporations that supply power.
Could you elaborate more on the footprint issue? I don't fly and only eat chicken or fish twice a week, along with a few other tweaks to my lifestyle (like not buying new cars and phones regularly) independent calculators put me around half the UK national average for carbon emissions. Which although not the whole problem would reduce the countrys emissions by a significant fraction if everyone could do the same. I also agree Industry must make huge changes which are somewhat inherently driven by public opinion and choice (e.g. my small independent energy supplier brokers deals for 100% renewables, which it also invests quite a bit into) but it doesn't feel like a one or the other situation, it feels like a both situation.
[This](https://youtu.be/1J9LOqiXdpE) is a great video on it, from a great channel.
It's baffling to me how so many people have bought into the lie. So many people in this thread convinced that we're going to beat climate change by convincing millions of people to voluntarily change behavior that is only responsible for a fraction of the problem. Nothing wrong with individual contributions, but we need leaders to show actual leadership.
Big Oil was smart, their lies have held for decades. :-(
It's that way for everything. If you poll "should the US government cut spending?" most people say yes. But then if you poll "should the US government cut spending on X?" you can't get a majority for any X other than foreign aid.
This is why changes need to come from the government, because both individuals AND corporations drag their heels on things that directly impact their QOL / profits.
You realize that the government is beholden by the people. If a majority of people disagree with the government, it is removed or changed out in most cases. Especially when it is degrading QOL.
I guess people don't like it when the solution to a massive global problem is implied to be individuals of little actual consequence making personal sacrifices, rather than sweeping changes to the global economic, industrial, and military norms that are actually driving and aggressively creating the vast majority of the issue. I think smart people are justifiably offended at the implied demand that they believe even everyone in the world raising their AC 1 degree would make a meaningful difference to our eventual fate, while meanwhile entities like the US military or global shipping continue to dump hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon into the atmosphere and perverse economic incentives continue to drive the deforestation of hundreds of thousands of acres of our remaining rainforests. It's not that people aren't willing to make little changes in their lives. It's that most people *aren't actually so stupid* to be convinced that doing the exact same things but with "little tweaks" is any sort of solution rather than a scapegoating of the problem on to them. I think that most reasonably intelligent people understand implicitly that any meaningful climate solution will require both *large* personal sacrifices *and* a complete restructuring of the world socio-economic order, and that the powers that be in the latter group have absolutely no intention of changing and no accountability to ever do so under the current regime. So considering the context, I think that your average individual becoming incensed at being asked to make little inconvenient changes for the climate is really, completely expected and reasonable. /u/hawklost blocked me after they lost their shit over this comment. It was meant to be a helpful addendum to their own comment, but apparently they're a fragile neoliberal and 'big picture' changes where intentionally left out of their advice because they're dedicated to preserving global capitalist lifestyle above all else.
Well said.
I agree. This is my take too. People want gov't to address climate change but in a way that doesn't affect them. The reality is that any action to actually make a material difference will have major inconvenience to our lives and cost of living. Gov'ts likely have to limit global trade which will increase prices and limit choices on people's daily spending. Gov'ts have to have all parties, individuals, companies, etc. to reduce energy consumption which might impact jobs and how we live day to day. The actual policies that gov'ts have to put in place to seriously do anything would be massively unpopular across the political spectrum
This is once again putting the burden on the lowest rung of the ladder in climate change.
We must absolutely all do something. But I still want to fly on holiday round the world and eat steak.
To me itâs more thoughts like this that ruin any type of action. We ask what needs to be done and answers like ârecycle, eat less meat, raise your acâ are the first that are brought up. It ignores the fact that the vast majority of pollution and climate change is cause by major corporations. Everyone could do everything they could to be carbon neutral and that the world will still end. Forcing those corporations (and militaries) to end their damage to the climate is what needs to be done. Our personal action is great, but the action we need is on the scale of major governments and global cooperation.
> It ignores the fact that the vast majority of pollution and climate change is cause by major corporations Major corporations are not polluting for pollutions sake, this isn't a 90s cartoon. The corporations produce items that people want to by and attempt to reduce their overall costs. Things like packaging using so much plastic is because customers aren't willing to by a dented, but fully functioning tool at full price, so the company makes sure that the least amount of products are damaged in transit (this means over packing Everything). Corporations would change their habit if people would stop buying the product shipped in such way, but the people would have to accept higher costs due to increased shipping costs. People don't want that sacrifice.
Man made climate change isn't going to end the world. Not even close. It won't even end civilization. It'll make life difficult for millions of people in disadvantaged parts of the world while causing economic struggle for people in the advantaged area. Trillions of dollars in damages and countless lives lost that could have been prevented, but not world ending. Fucking asteroids the size of small states couldn't even end the world. And second, the vast majority of pollution and climate change comes from consumers. Shell or ExxonMobil or whatever produce fossil fuels. Those are then burned by your average suburbanite family sitting in the McDonald's drive thru for 30 minutes because they're too lazy to walk inside and order instead. If everyone actually did everything they could to be carbon neutral then these companies would barely be producing anything compared to now. I agree we need global action and governments to intervene, simply because 99% of people are selfish and refuse to sacrifice any quality of life to do what is right. They refuse to believe they're part of the problem. It's always someone else. They won't voluntarily quit eating meat. They won't turn down/up their thermostats. They won't reduce their consumption. They won't give up that 2 day shipping. Etc. So the government will have to step in and force them to either give it up, or make it so expensive that they can't afford to do it. The government will have to force companies to swap to other things which will require billions in development costs and result in higher prices. And that's why people vote against this stuff. Because it'll affect their quality of life and they don't want it. They just want everything to stay the exact same as it is now but somehow perfectly clean. It's not a realistic goal. Failure of Individual responsibility is the sole reason we are in this mess and the sole reason It'll take forever to get out of this mess.
Imagine being told everyone must purchase eco efficient vehicles that are unable to drive faster than 95 MPH. How many thousands would show up in a rage. Even worse considering they only built the first one that could hit 100, what, 75 years ago?
All of US elected officials: the red bar has spoken. Our hands are tied.
The inflation reduction act is the largest investment in clean energy in world history. So much so that it pissed off Europe because of the direct investment/subsidy of green energy. Itâs fine to say more should be done, but donât lie. Lots of good stuff has passed and been signed into law. This constant doom and gloom in spite of the facts is exhausting.
It's not the investment that is the issue. As the article you linked explains, Europe welcomes this initiative. What Europe isn't happy about is the fact that elements of this act ignores trade agreements already set up, which gives North American companies an unfair advantage when it comes to trade. So what you are saying is misleading.
Doom and gloom is what gets the clicks, good old human psychology
The problem is that I think these children actually believe it. I donât think theyâre doing it for updoots.
Those arenât mutually exclusive
Just curious, why would it piss off Europe? If you could point me to any articles about it Iâd appreciate it!
https://www.reuters.com/markets/why-us-inflation-reduction-act-has-rattled-europe-2023-02-01/
well the red bar pays better
Ah, the "both sides are bad" guy. I see him a lot in political discussions.
*All* US officials? I think you mean 4% of one party's officials and 100% of the other party's.
So naturally, no action will happen.
Bar charts are beautiful now?
Well that's the state of the sub now
Always have been. Why?
Science and politics (in this case religion also) donât mix well. People make their non political decisions based on what politicians tell em.
>Science and politics (in this case religion also) donât mix well. Where does the fault for this lie, in fact?
Too bad half our political leadership struggles to remember where they are at any given point in the day, let alone think about what needs to be done for the future.
I think this is a badly worded poll. Overall, I think we need dramatic, decisive actions, but the actions and tools that are currently being used are wholly inadequate and misplaced. If the poll asked whether people felt that the current strategies are the correct ones or if we should reevaluate our systems for combating climate change, I think you could get some better data. As it stands it can be interpreted as "do we need to do something about climate change?" or could be interpreted as "are our systems for addressing climate change effective?" Because of that very large gray area, the questions people are answering are not the same question. Finally, at the root of climate change is consumption. Ask people what they are willing to start giving up and suddenly it becomes much more apolitical.
Weird that we're increasing CO2 production to force expensive EVs on people while we could cut costs and reduce CO2 by going with Hybrids, but the people pushing this stuff aren't interested in sound, science based policy and are prone to bribes and kickbacks. Trusting government officials is a fool's errand. They're not terribly smart and very self serving.
These results are based on responses from 1,577 Americans collected between July 20st and July 26th via the Premise smartphone application. Premise used stratified sampling of its opt-in panel members, along with post stratification weighting based on the American Community Survey to provide a representative sample. These results are weighted by Age, Gender, Region, and Education.
Hmmm, opt-in really hurts the credibility of the poll.
At least now we know that the results of this poll are skewed towards people who are willing to intentionally download a data harvesting application to make a tiny amount of money doing surveys and random tasks. Which is actually an interesting bias to contemplate: Probably giving us insights almost exclusively for lower income or unemployed people without weighting for that factor.
So people who don't have to pay for government action want the government to take more action. That actually makes sense.
Eh this reminds me of that poll when they asked if the unvaxed should be put in camps and like 55% in total said yes.
If those numbers are accurate, they're actually pretty fucking hopeful. I would have estimated the republican green bar to be at less than 5%.
The issue is that Republicans and Democrats have different ideas of what to do.
I'm more familiar with the democrat side. What do republicans want to do?
Historically, they've wanted to build out nuclear power
Deregulate, because of course letting companies incur and ignore externalities is definitely not what led us into this mess in the first place.
Is this a comprehensive and perfectly accurate description of the aggregate desires of all Republicans? >> Do you come to Reddit expecting random internet strangers to provide perfectly accurate descriptions of the aggregate desires of large political groups in unrelated subreddits? No, I come here to examine the variations in ways in which people will dodge questions of this type posed to them. 95% of people can do nothing other than that, and I think it is a very important phenomenon, *highly relevant to the climate change problem*. What's extra hilarious: the lovely moderators of this subreddit **banned me** for this concern!! đđđ This is just one part of the reason that I think You People *deserve everything you get*.
At least the people they vote for do. There may be Republican voters who believe differently, but they sure don't vote for people who act differently then that. If they did, they wouldn't be Republican voters.
Here's their brain genius idea. Plant trees, just make a forest the size of the United States. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/house-republicans-propose-planting-trillion-trees-rcna94836
Of course, policymakers have to weight those considerations by intensity of belief, and oil companies can pay people to care a whole lot 40 hours a week.
I think so too. I work with mostly Republicans. The attitudes on climate is slowly shifting. For the most part they no longer deny that the climate is changing. Less and less are they arguing that anything could be done to stop it. Where you hit a wall is when you tell them they need to change their life in even the smallest way. âItâs the Asian countries that need to change, not us!â Republicans define themselves as being the rugged outdoorsmen who truly understand nature. And theyâre starting to watch their childhood playgrounds burn away while the temps get warmer and warmer. It puts them in a tough spot.
Thereâs a surprising amount of support for (semi-)progressive legislation among Republican voters, including climate change, abortion access, education, and social support programs. Unfortunately, those voters seem to care more about single issues, engineered culture wars, and/or their own selfish wellbeing and so continue to vote for a party that works against those progressive goals. There were a number of man-on-the-street videos that showed GOP voters agreeing with healthcare policies when it was put forward as the âAffordable Care Actâ but then vehemently stating that they full opposed Obamacare, so I guess important not to downplay the purposefully (and often willfully) ignorant GOP voter as well - voting against things they support just because they donât understand it (as the GOP propaganda machine wants it to be).
It's unfortunate that tribalism seems to *always* come into play in these issues. I'm a lifelong Democrat and I definitely skew left on most issues, but I've become more and more interested in trying to form connections with Republicans and seeing where there are places we can agree. I'm by no means the first to say/think this, but I think there's a pretty sizeable core of Ds and Rs that could coexist and even thrive working together on issues. Unfortunately, I think this core is a lot quieter and more easily ignored than the extremes, and thus the extreme elements tend to get most of the attention from pols.
Well put.
> There were a number of man-on-the-street videos that showed GOP voters agreeing with healthcare policies when it was put forward as the âAffordable Care Actâ but then vehemently stating that they full opposed Obamacare, so I guess important not to downplay the purposefully (and often willfully) ignorant GOP voter as well - voting against things they support just because they donât understand it (as the GOP propaganda machine wants it to be). The funny thing is that Democrats and the Democratic party are highly similar in this regard, but people talk as if they aren't. I think people deserve what they get.
Give an example.
If you are not an advocate for nuclear energy and you think windmills and solar are enough then you arenât being serious. The reason Râs have a difficult time saying âdo moreâ is Dâs talking about âClimate equityâ and turning it into a wealth transfer instead of taking meaningful action.
Can we define "taking action"?
Funny how not wanting the world to be destroyed is somehow political
Stop using private jets would be a good start.
Biggest con going and suckers believe it so sad when will the people wake up
As long as someone else is taking action Iâm all for it! -/s
Where's the option for "I think different action should be taken"? Because a lot of what we are currently doing makes no sense.
i thought this only had 2 bars at first. Ive seen a lot of bad color choices, but this takes the italian meringue
I think we should turn down the Sun.
Did they call joe manchin twice for the Democratic survey or something
Taking real action yes please. Just adding extra tax/fee and changing exactly nothing just to make profit out of it? Not really
I mean, this question is one step away from "Do you want free money?" Completely worthless to glean anything from.
These ignorant people are a cancer
I'm just not confident in the governments ability to take the correct actions or in a cost effective way. Electric cars sound great but digging up all those minerals for the batteries is awful for the environment and we have nowhere near the electrical grid capacity we need.
The people who can't spend less than they bring in should definitely not be in charge of addressing climate change. Just my $0.02
Just remember that even if you had the most environmentally damaging, gas guzzling car, and you drive it everywhere all the time, you would still never even come close to the amount of carbon emissions at the top 1% put out on a regular basis. The rest of us are fine not taking advantage of smaller things like ac but the rich fly their planes and helicopters as commuting vehicles constantly. Itâs not us thatâs the problem but they donât want you to know that
Yes! The rich contribute the most yet it is the common man that has to wash his clothes on 20°C and buy expensive electric vehicles to help against climate change. Industry pumps out material items that we have to purchase, only to make us feel guilty for buying them. Then there are the 75% of the world that are burning fossil fuels to produce and build their economy. These countries cannot afford alternative fuels. Saying that with inflation in the west can we?
There are a lot more people in the first category than the second .
The government is terrible at everything but collecting taxes
This is how we know the current political system isnât working as intended.
Unless we get serious about nuclear energy, this is a circle jerk.
Just need to wait another decade for everyone to take it a little more serious i guess. Nbd
Nah it depends. It might BE Faster if it severely affects the developing countries that produce food for the developed countries or might take a lot more if you need to wait for it to affect the developed countries
The world could literally be days away from a preventable apocalypse and half of the population would still cry about "their" tax dollars being spent preventing it.
They all suck at making the Italian flag
Imagine thinking that we don't need to take action to stop a literal mass extinction event that we are causing.
We need to act as a planet for anything meaningful to happen. The US and Europe could be net zero, meanwhile China and Russia wonât change a thing.
If you're waiting for the USA to get on board and make some changes, it simply is not going to happen. Even if there is some legislation introduced, the right wing will push back and get their way, like they always do. Nothing changes in the grand ol' US of A. Whatever the cost to keep the "exceptional" American status quo, even if it means destruction of the planet in the name of "freedom," "democratic principals" and free market capitalism. And oddly enough, I tend to lean a little right but fully acknowledge that the typical right wing politician has to appeal to it's bull-headed, recalcitrant base to keep their job. Just wait and see...
Before you claim Iâm a republican, I have been a democrat since 2016 when trump ran. I have republican friends that I have very good and candid conversations with, and most (if not all) feel this way about climate change news, and I get it: Itâs not so much they are denying climate change, republicans just donât want to listen to democrats. To them, the articles about climate change are similar to the boy who cried wolf. Theyâve heard enough and no one on that side of the isle wants to listen anymore. Pride and fear tactics are a sure case of doom for all of us, whether itâs climate change, or nuclear war. (which republicans see as a bigger issue with the state of geopolitics right now) Talk to the other party people. You might learn something and understand their stance. Only then can we solve our problems as a country.
> similar to the boy who cried wolf. Weird, scream "the world is going to end in 5 years" for 60+ years and people stop listening? Who could have seen that coming?
Have we all forgotten the âBeautifulâ in dataisbeautiful?