Funkstain wrote:

Within this very page of this very thread there are criticisms of "people" (I assumed from it was members of the public?) who will remain sceptical and hand wave things away until they are underwater and even then just say things like "it's natural, gotta get some gills", and yet still, the position that we can all contribute to changing things (no, not just via virtue signalling yoghurt pot cleaning or dropping a steak from a diet), which would contribute to the education and mass movement towards pressure and changing mindsets and behaviours, which would lead to fewer people resisting the science and fewer people denying reality and more pressure on those leading us and representing us, is totally misunderstood and misrepresented.

It's not about making you feel guilty for your steak, Paul, or suggesting that people giving up steaks would equal the breakthrough we need to save us. It's about finding a way to get people (both 'everyone', especially those normies who deny climate science or hope for magic, and our leaders and representatives who come up with laws) to do something about this before it really is too late (unless you do believe magic of course?) - laws are the only way you will stop businesses in China, the US, India etc from fucking us up for real.

This conversation is a dead end I know I'm gonna get loads of "ha you've fallen for the large company trap, putting all the guilt onto us the little people as if me not eating steak makes any difference" and I'm going to wonder again at the logical capabilities of human beings and then eat a steak and post it on tiktok to show them big businesses

Vela wrote:

I'm worried that en masse our civilisation is increasingly comfortable with ignoring or becoming desensitised to high mortality events. I'm scared about what it would take to make a critical mass commit to personal change.

Vela wrote:

For many it can be a luxury. Can't afford a fuel efficient car. The cheapest food isn't the most environmentally friendly.

Countries that weren't urbanised until the last few hundred years don't necessarily have great infrastructure that helps to ameliorate basic logistical challenges such as wasting four hours per day commuting to work.

Edit: this was in reply to yossarian

Yossarian wrote:

Vela wrote:

For many it can be a luxury. Can't afford a fuel efficient car. The cheapest food isn't the most environmentally friendly.

Countries that weren't urbanised until the last few hundred years don't necessarily have great infrastructure that helps to ameliorate basic logistical challenges such as wasting four hours per day commuting to work.

Edit: this was in reply to yossarian

Poor people don’t tend to produce much carbon regardless of the car they drive or the food they buy, most of the CO2 is produced by the rich. Those in the middle tend to be trying to reduce carbon footprints.

Funkstain wrote:

Monkey That's asinine and you know it: 1) first of all well done for value judgement on 'revolting'. a 'win the argument' point rather than an engage with the argument point if ever I saw one. Why bother? you may as well resort to ad hominem 2) second more importantly, the whole point is take responsibility to some extent (and accepting how difficult that is). If you're dumb enough to swap steak for extremely dodgily sourced tofu then that isn't achieving the goal I"m talking about, is it? your "capitalistic change" is broadly none, or maybe even worse. That's not taking responsibility it's being dumb and taken for a ride. It doesn't figure into my argument at all - I already accept that this is difficult AND unlikely! and I've addressed the more serious point countless times already. The government is 'stuck' in appeasement mode BECAUSE we are unwilling to make the sacrifices and lifestyle choices necessary to push them into war footing. The reason the WW2 comparison is so silly which you acknowledge is because with WW2 we were under direct and imminent threat of being invaded and killed and subjugated by an understood, clear enemy. Climate change isn't a bunch of nazis is it? So changing the gov stance, changing gov policies, to be electable, won't happen until that 'to be electable' becomes the reality - ie: when the majority of the country by a sizeable margin really is willing to suffer  through changes, and will only vote for a gov that will achieve them Liv again it's not about haranguing, it's about recognising (at least in my opinion) what's needed to achieve proper change. The reason the gov does stupid virtue signalling shit, and enacts broadly harmful policies in opposition to their stated positions on climate change, is because they can: they represent us. You want that to change, you need people to recognise the danger and act / change accordingly. If you don't see that happening (I don't), then I can't see the gov changing, and therefore I Don't see the corps changing and they will be mining coal with the last of the wall-e robots to keep the cockroaches warm

Funkstain wrote:

Minnesänger wrote:

My personal experience of Chinese people, including those CO2 emitting middle classes, is that they’re very environmentally aware. They save water, they don’t turn heating or air con on unnecessarily, they wear sweaters and coats indoors in winter even during times of financial plenty. They’re number 2 in the world for per capita adoption of electric cars, no 1 for in the world per capita for bikes, 99% busses and public transport electric, near 100% taxis not on fossil fuels, way up in the world for personal solar adoption, no.1 hydro, way up there for wind as well. Even meat consumption is way below most countries. Their per capita CO2 output despite all that fucking building and construction going on and all that manufacturing they do (for us as well) is only a bit above the UK and less than half of the USA. Yes, they’re no 1 for pollution, but they’re the most populous nation on Earth and a developing economy - per person they already make more efforts in their day to day lives than anyone I know in the UK or America. You wanna get China onboard? They’re onboard, they’re leading most countries in the world. They genuinely care a lot about the environment and there’s zero debate about the effect of man made emissions on the environment. But there’s a limit to how much you can ask of them without addressing the Middle Eastern and American elephants in the room.

It has to be collaborative and in total, yes - you can't have one country saying "well now that China has turned off coal we're alright to keep private planes" or whatever. That's what trades collaboratives (WTO, world bank, UN, IMF, etc) and treaties are for. Maybe even force, given the existential threat.

But the kind of sacrifices Chinese middle classes will need to make - to name just one thing, wean their economy's dependency off coal and concrete - are far more than you mention. They are life changing. And they won't accept it, I think. And nor will we, or the Americans. BUT what you are mentioning is yet the only way we can go, and hope for: if it continues as a trend, and if it spreads beyond China's borders in a serious way. 

Because the reality is being no2 for electric cars is a drop in ocean, and meat consumption is on the way up and up as prosperity grows, and solar / wind and hydro mean not much compared to one coal company = 14% CO2, so it needs to accelerate, and spread, and grow and grow and not reverse in any way, and put pressure on the leadership to enact change. Right now, it's the kind of virtue signalling Liv and others decry. It's not about how much better China middle classes are than, say, US or Euro (although that is a good, separate point) it's about how likely it is that the movement will reach a mass critical enough to impact China Coal (my shorthand for everything)