Well this was upsetting. Let me preface this by saying this: If you skim this article, there appears to be a nice message. We need to get serious about climate change, and to do that we need to...
Exemplary
Well this was upsetting.
Let me preface this by saying this: If you skim this article, there appears to be a nice message. We need to get serious about climate change, and to do that we need to implement effective policies and target points to achieve the biggest impact. Sure. I agree. Anyone can agree with that, because it is effectively a completely hollow statement. So let's dig deeper into what Yasha here is actually saying.
My first major point of frustration here is the general tone of the article. It seems quite clear to me that climate change and environmentalism is a nebulous concern for this writer, something we should fix because it's probably the right thing to do. At no point does he mention the existential threat that faces us, the gravity of the situation. It's just framed as kind of a nice thing, like solving world hunger. We should probably implement some policies to solve that one day for those other people who I sometimes see in a documentary and feel vaguely sad about. But perhaps I'm reading too much into that, and this writer does share a similar degree of worry. Perhaps the article is meant to be hopeful and does not want to dwell on the severity of the situation. So let's look at the actual points he's making.
Environmentalists are, by and large, painted as a self-flagellating virtue-signaling subculture in this article. Naomi Klein's book is cited as if she's telling us that we should all change our lifestyles and solve climate change by giving up all our nice luxuries. If after reading "This changes everything" you think Klein advocates consumer-level change without targeting structural and "effective environmental" solutions, then... I don't know what to tell you.
Does this writer realize that the implementation of something like a plastic straw ban isn't the end-goal of many environmentalists? It's framed as if that is precisely what we're fighting about, some kind of virtue-signaling ban on a near meaningless sub-problem so we can all feel good about ourselves. No. Environmentalists want radical change, and are either being thrown crumbs by established powers, or have to fight tooth and nail to drag at least some minor concession out of entrenched systems. Does he seriously think a straw ban and less plastic bags is the big strategy here?
So after casting environmentalists as either delusional or incompetent, and simply waving away any inconvenient argument against capitalism (since such a thing can't be seriously entertained, right?), Yasha goes on to describe the tenets of "effective environmentalism". And it seems to boil down to business as usual.
The first point is that we should consider how big of an impact a potential environmental policy can have. Apparently, environmentalists weren't concerned with that before Yasha brought down this wisdom to us mere mortals. But, there's a catch. When discussing the size of the impact, he doesn't actually mention measuring anything specific. The only real concern seems to be how it compares to the size of political backlash and economic trade-offs. Bans on plastic straws (He's really obsessed with them) are considered to have "not much impact in the real world". So what does? Tax incentives and cap-and-trade schemes of course! Funny that, how all our problems can always be resolved by funneling even more money to the companies that brought us here in the first place. We probably would never have had to deal with climate change if we never taxed Shell and BP in the first place.
The second point of "effective environmentalism" is that we should consider if the climate policy we want to implement would "lead to a deterioration in quality of life". The bigger the impact is on the quality of life of people, the more skeptical we should be. It's interesting though, who these people are, exactly. Because from this article, it would seem that our biggest concern should be the disgruntled plastic straw lovers, or the poor Parisians, huddling in the cold outside without any heaters on the café terraces. It would seem to me to be quite obvious that any environmental policy that prevents the loss of livelihood, the very habitability of population centers and the mass displacement of millions upon millions of people counts as a "deterioration in quality of life". But something tells me that these people are, in Yasha's mind, safely tucked away behind a sad Netflix documentary and don't really factor in to serious economic considerations.
And finally, let's drive it all home with the third point of "effective environmentalism", which is "To what extent will the proposed action lead to backlash?" It's actually just a repetition of points one and two, and the entire argument simply boils down to: Okay sure, we should do something about climate change, but let's just find a way to make it convenient for me, and be nice and futuristic. And I really like my current lifestyle and I don't think it's too much to ask to keep it. It's not like any actual person is being exploited or is suffering to sustain my lifestyle. And if there is, they're far away and not really people anyway and if they are then they're probably doing something wrong and why is that my fault anyway?
Just another neo-liberal point of view that desperately wants to convince us that we just need to keep doing what we're doing, but harder. We just haven't appeased the market enough, that's the issue. Just a few more tax cuts, a bit more austerity in the social programs, and the invisible hand of the market will set things right. Any day now, you'll see. And when those nasty cult-like Greens try and take away your car, you can tell them it's not effective, and that they should focus on better policies. The kind of policies that actually work and have no nasty side effects or downsides.
The mirroring of "effective altruism" is sort of all I need to know. As practiced it's just a "spend money on what I want to spend it on because actually AI will save the world eventually"...
The mirroring of "effective altruism" is sort of all I need to know. As practiced it's just a "spend money on what I want to spend it on because actually AI will save the world eventually" (hyperbolic) scheme. I don't have much respect for it as a practice and it doesn't surprise me that one might argue for the same when it comes to climate change.
"Effective" in these contexts is code for "hyper-capitalist." The implicit assumption is that anything that doesn't align with absolute free market ideals is doomed to failure. It's an article of...
"Effective" in these contexts is code for "hyper-capitalist." The implicit assumption is that anything that doesn't align with absolute free market ideals is doomed to failure. It's an article of religious faith among people who call themselves "an-caps" and those adjacent that only the elimination of market controls can lead to anything good. It's not quite axiomatic, but it's at least a second-level premise.
It's why so many of them rail against "virtue signaling:" that's the only way projects that don't assume that a free market is the only effective scheme for progress make any sense in their framework. Why would a person do ineffectual (read: not free-market absolutist) things for a cause unless the real goal is to be seen supporting the cause, not actually accomplishing the goal of the cause? That sign of virtue is capital, so it can be understood.
Yeah, tbqh I avoided reading the linked article precisely because the title made me suspect that this was gonna be a parallel to "effective altruism" and didn't want to deal with more self-serving...
Yeah, tbqh I avoided reading the linked article precisely because the title made me suspect that this was gonna be a parallel to "effective altruism" and didn't want to deal with more self-serving grift of that nature. Validated to know that those instincts were right.
The thing that bugs me when talking about environmental policies is that people tend to think that the absolutely smallest changes to their lifestyle means a huge impact on their quality of life....
The thing that bugs me when talking about environmental policies is that people tend to think that the absolutely smallest changes to their lifestyle means a huge impact on their quality of life. Like any minor inconvenience is a travesty. The plastic straw ban is a cop-out; it’s a small portion of single-use plastics that need to be eliminated or at least reduced as much as possible. Those bans get implemented because it’s a small thing that can be bypassed by simply picking up the glass and drinking from it - you know, the same thing we teach literal babies how to do. And while there are people who are physically impaired who might need a straw, I can tell you I have still never found anyone complaining about that ban because that affected them. In the meanwhile we are still drinking those drinks out of plastic cups with plastic lids, eating with plastic forks out of plastic containers, and shopping for food in the grocery store that are also packaged increasingly in plastic bags or other plastic containers.
Exactly! And an extreme amount of political capital is being wasted on symbolic measures with trivial environmental impact. That same political capital could be spent on meaningful, significant...
Exactly!
And an extreme amount of political capital is being wasted on symbolic measures with trivial environmental impact.
That same political capital could be spent on meaningful, significant change. The quotes from the article about this in a different comment are spot on.
Environmentalists need to be more savvy and pragmatic. We need to win the hearts and minds while gradually making poor environmental choices less and less acceptable, culturally and socially speaking.
Just, you know, for the record, we’ve been trying that at least since “silent spring” and maybe as far back as “sand county almanac.” And we did make some progress in the early 70s. As originally...
Just, you know, for the record, we’ve been trying that at least since “silent spring” and maybe as far back as “sand county almanac.”
And we did make some progress in the early 70s. As originally conceived, the env prot act, caa and cwa (all signed by Nixon!) would have classified co2 as a pollutant and we’d be better off.
But the neoliberals on trade and the neocons on military industrial
Complex saw to it no such restrictions could occur. And here we are. The next 100 years or so will make for fascinating study in policy classes of the future.
Unfortunately, we don't have time for slow transition to better choices. That completely ignores the urgency of the threat. Not that you are wrong, that would be a good thing to be doing; it just...
Unfortunately, we don't have time for slow transition to better choices. That completely ignores the urgency of the threat. Not that you are wrong, that would be a good thing to be doing; it just isn't nearly enough.
Getting -something- done is better than yelling loudly and not getting -anything- done. I completely agree that we're in a dire situation and don't have time for a slow transition. We didn't have...
Getting -something- done is better than yelling loudly and not getting -anything- done.
I completely agree that we're in a dire situation and don't have time for a slow transition. We didn't have that time 20 years ago either.
In democracies we require majority support for changes, sustained over time, for the changes to happen. That's a reality, irrespective of what objective facts say we need to do on any issue.
However, we cannot let perfect be the enemy of good. We need every substantive environmental policy we can have, each and every one of them is good.
The only bad climate policies/actions are the ones that hinder the overall goal.
For example: Gluing your hands to a runway to hinder flights for some hours is worse for the climate than not doing that. That kind of demonstration does more harm than good in enacting climate change, however right the activist might be that we need to stop emissions, right now.
Yeah, I don't feel like here in Portugal people are that mad about plastic straws going away. Obviously we now have paper straws everywhere and reusable straws also exist. No big deal! I'm pretty...
Yeah, I don't feel like here in Portugal people are that mad about plastic straws going away. Obviously we now have paper straws everywhere and reusable straws also exist. No big deal! I'm pretty sure we've also banned the plastic cups, plastic forks and plastic containers (at least I haven't seen them in ages). It's fine.
In fact, the same applies to every bullet point at the top of the article. Plastic bags are paid for and there are easy recycling programs for them. I use one supermarket that still insists on offering plastic bags but since they also have perfectly good paper bags for some departments I have to wonder why. Just use the damn paper bags by default! The bottle cap thing is kind of dumb but only because I already collected all of my type 2 plastic caps for recycling. I absolutely believe a lot of people got them lost in the environment.
The incandescent bulb phase out is the best of these policies. Incandescent light bulbs use a ridiculously disproportionate amount of power compared to LED bulbs if your objective is only light emission. There are some issues with light quality for crappier LED bulbs but otherwise it's a win for everyone - lighter (hah) bills, less pollution, greater efficiency. The LED bulbs we get around here have pretty decent light quality and they definitely seem to last longer than the incandescent bulbs too.
I'm gonna hard disagree on plastic bag bans. (Edit: I think I read tone wrong in thread, thought it was chastising these bans as virtue signalling) I worked for a landfill 20 years ago, and half...
I'm gonna hard disagree on plastic bag bans. (Edit: I think I read tone wrong in thread, thought it was chastising these bans as virtue signalling)
I worked for a landfill 20 years ago, and half of my shift's responsibility was gathering up the thousands of plastic shopping bags that blew off the mound and onto the perimeter fence every day.
I was doing beach cleanups before and after a plastic bag ban in 2022. We go around and inventory every item we find.
The data from 2022 also shows straws, bags, and foam declined. The law COA calls the Single Use Waste Reduction Act (P.L. 202, c.117) went into full effect in May 2022. Items affected by the law saw an encouraging downward trend including the following highlights:
• Plastic Shopping Bags make history leaving the Dirty Dozen list for the 1st time since 2007 ranking at #14.
• Straws/Stirrers fall to #6 on the Dirty Dozen list for the first time since 2016; decreasing 39% from 2021.
• Foam Takeout Containers decreased by 29% from Spring to Fall 2022; an overall
decrease by 38% from 2021-2022.
Honestly I think it's cause I misread tone and I need to go to bed. Point is even mundane plastic straw ban == big impacts on the environment when you're talking millions of people.
Honestly I think it's cause I misread tone and I need to go to bed.
Point is even mundane plastic straw ban == big impacts on the environment when you're talking millions of people.
For the record I wasn’t against a plastic straw ban either; I was expressing frustration against the resistance to something that has such a small effect on average peoples’ lives.
For the record I wasn’t against a plastic straw ban either; I was expressing frustration against the resistance to something that has such a small effect on average peoples’ lives.
Here’s an article comparing the carbon footprint of paper and plastic bags. Although I guess the choice ends up depending on whether one values the climate over other potential environmental issues.
Here’s an article comparing the carbon footprint of paper and plastic bags. Although I guess the choice ends up depending on whether one values the climate over other potential environmental issues.
The paper bag also doubles as fire starters, compost, and/or weed barrier. Plastic and/or cloth weed barriers almost certainly are worse for the earth. It decomposes naturally inside of a month in...
The paper bag also doubles as fire starters, compost, and/or weed barrier. Plastic and/or cloth weed barriers almost certainly are worse for the earth. It decomposes naturally inside of a month in living soil. A plastic bag will never decompose, merely shredding into smaller and smaller bits poisoning every bit of organic matter on earth. Which that article completely ignored beyond 'initial creation energy.' It's OK for the paper bag to use more energy in part because it's far less harmful long term.
And the carbon footprint of just loading it into a box directly in the back of your car/bike/schlepalong is essentially 0. And a huge portion of people do exactly that over paying a $5 bag fee.
You might not have read our law, but it bans all disposable bags for large retailers, only small shops and food services can use paper bags.
So the happy medium for everybody: Charge a $2 fee for a new reusable bag, pay $1 for every reusable bag handed back in. Give used reusable bags away for free.
The problem with those reusable bags is many people won't reuse bags, so the law just ends up creating significantly worse pollution from carbon-intensive reusable bags which end up in a landfill...
The problem with those reusable bags is many people won't reuse bags, so the law just ends up creating significantly worse pollution from carbon-intensive reusable bags which end up in a landfill anyway. It's textbook unintended consequences.
Hence the pay structure for reusing bags. I'd gather up a 50 of my reusable bags in a heartbeat and hand them in for a $50 bill. I doubt anybody else would do differently. Then people can then use...
Hence the pay structure for reusing bags. I'd gather up a 50 of my reusable bags in a heartbeat and hand them in for a $50 bill. I doubt anybody else would do differently.
Then people can then use the used bags for free (with something like $10 transaction to avoid abuse) but still get paid $1 for handing that bag back in. Sure stores would need to adjust cost of goods a bit to normalize the outward flow if everyone switches to reusing from the used bag pile continuously, but thats pretty easily amortized across all goods and mission accomplished.
The problem with reusable bags isn't the bags, its that we don't provide proper incentive/disincentive structures for using them. Having a 'get paid for used bag dropoff' and a secondary 'use used bag for free/heavily discounted' solves a lot of problems.
I'm not sure whether you understand how cap and trade systems work. They're extremely effective carbon taxes that work at the corporate level which means they're less subject to political backlash...
Tax incentives and cap-and-trade schemes of course! Funny that, how all our problems can always be resolved by funneling even more money to the companies that brought us here in the first place. We probably would never have had to deal with climate change if we never taxed Shell and BP in the first place.
I'm not sure whether you understand how cap and trade systems work. They're extremely effective carbon taxes that work at the corporate level which means they're less subject to political backlash like Canada's carbon tax implementation.
Ultimately, I read the article as a call to focus on the most effective policies and stop wasting political energy on small potatoes like plastic straw bans and switching to paper bags. There's always a limited amount of time and energy to spend on policy making, so advocates should focus on pushing for the most effective policies.
Cap and trade is easy to screw up - set the cap too high, hand out freebie permits to existing polluters, and you end up with something worse than useless. And even if it's successful, it needs to...
Cap and trade is easy to screw up - set the cap too high, hand out freebie permits to existing polluters, and you end up with something worse than useless. And even if it's successful, it needs to be tightened whenever emissions go down in order to remain useful.
Meanwhile, a carbon tax is fairly simple. You set the $/ton to something nontrivial and it's always useful. The marlet getting "ahead of schedule" will never make lowering emissions less financially attractive.
Ultimately I don't care what we do as long as it works, but AFAICT, CnT doesn't work.
Here's a pretty good writeup on cap and trade The short answer is that it's incredibly efficient and achieves its objectives better than most any other method. There are pitfalls to watch out for...
The short answer is that it's incredibly efficient and achieves its objectives better than most any other method. There are pitfalls to watch out for (namely having controls to avoid excessive price volitility), but saying CnT doesn't work ignores that some of the most effective phase-outs of all time were CnT programs.
Washington State and California both have effective cap and trade programs. I agree with vord, they're extremely well studied effective policies. They're just carbon taxes with permits which don't...
Washington State and California both have effective cap and trade programs. I agree with vord, they're extremely well studied effective policies. They're just carbon taxes with permits which don't directly show up at the consumer level.
The cap part in particular. You want emissions in a sector reduced 10%, you lower the cap by 10%. It's why I rabidly support nationalizing all oil, and issuing the ration credits directly to...
The cap part in particular. You want emissions in a sector reduced 10%, you lower the cap by 10%.
It's why I rabidly support nationalizing all oil, and issuing the ration credits directly to citizens. It solves so many problems in one go.
Ration credits are required to purchase any raw/refined oil (proportional to the amount of crude), but not derivative products. They are issued weekly, and expire after say 18 months of issuance to prevent hoarding. The key bit being that industrial and commercial players must purchase rations directly from citizens to procure their oil.
It results in a basic income of sorts, as each person would be issued far more credits than they need for themselves. People would be incentivized to lower their own consumption to sell off their rations. Industry would be incentivized to use less oil because buying rations becomes ever more expensive.
You issue X% fewer rations every year, first until emissions targets are met, then slower until most superfolous plastic usage is elminated.
I dunno, while I agree with a couple specific statements in this piece, the overall tone rubs me the wrong way. I've been trying to gauge if it's a defensive emotional response on my part, but if...
I dunno, while I agree with a couple specific statements in this piece, the overall tone rubs me the wrong way. I've been trying to gauge if it's a defensive emotional response on my part, but if I'm going to critique myself, I'd probably blame it more on jadedness.
For instance, there's no real denying what I'd consider the general thesis that:
Environmentalist policies don’t just need to be well-intentioned or feel virtuous; they need to be effective in accomplishing their stated goals.
But, I do question the overall tone (right in the title) of what feels to me like pointing fingers at environmentalists for taking the easy road of virtue signalling.
It feels like envirnmental advocates have been getting the blame for their messaging for as long as I can remember, and there's just no winning. Push for big changes? Extremist, no one will buy it. Push for little changes? Virtuous, ineffectual. Push for systemic changes? Good luck. Push for individual changes? Too small. Etc. Etc.
Of course it's important for anyone and any movement to be self-aware to course-correct on targets and messaging, to improve outcomes. Maybe I ought to give more grace that that is the intended purpose of this article.
But, to me it reads like yet more infighting. There absolutely ARE people advocating for large-scale systemic changes. Canada's trying a carbon tax! Worldwide, renewable energy sources are increasingly popular! Nuclear seems to be approaching a rennaisance! Much, much more can and should be changed, but would any of what has been accomplished have been possible without people who care pushing for systemic changes?
And who's enacting the laws this article critiques anyway (eg, bag/straw bans, etc)? Is it the environmentalists critiqued here, or is it policymakers who dont realllly care about the environment and have simply voted through the easier, low-hanging fruit?
I could go on a whole separate soapbox rant about the futility of the manufactured fight over indiviudal vs. corporate responsibility, but I'm going to stop myself here.
I think the reason people chafe at activists is not a matter of big changes vs little changes, it is the "push" that is the common factor in all those examples. People dont want some stranger...
I think the reason people chafe at activists is not a matter of big changes vs little changes, it is the "push" that is the common factor in all those examples.
People dont want some stranger butting into their life and telling them what to do or how to feel about things. Especially when it comes to big movements where youre really engaging with a group of people instead of a single person. The bigger a group is, the more inflexible it is to being swayed by a single person.
So if you are not already in sync with that movement, its kind of a take it or leave it. You can maybe argue with some individual people and maybe affect their perspective, but the group dynamic is out of your control.
In which case, what point is there in engaging with a group you dont already naturally align with?
I think the point of the plastic straw example is to shownan instance where a thing nobody seemed to care about somehow managed to manifest in the zeitgeist of a few years ago. Everyone now says that it was a pointless exercise and not even their suggestion or idea, but in the moment there were definitely lots of conversations about it and lots of people advocating for it and talking about how important it was. People beyond the policy makers who are now given sole responsibility for it. The fact that true environmentalists apparently didnt really care about it is very much the point if the anecdote.
I think what people are put off by is the notion that if you associate with one of these big groups that you dont already agree with, you will end up in a situation where the group will collectively decide "We(excluding you) as a group have decided we(including you) are going to do this action" and then youll be sucked into something that causes you minor inconvenience but doesnt give you anything in return.
Hence why forcing top down regulation on industry/commerce is far easier to garner acceptance than forcing citizens to do the right thing. Ban all plastic beverage bottling. Force beverage...
Hence why forcing top down regulation on industry/commerce is far easier to garner acceptance than forcing citizens to do the right thing.
Ban all plastic beverage bottling. Force beverage producers to choose metal or glass, and force them to establish paid recycling and reuse programs again.
Consumers will certainly grumble about how weird it is for milk to come in glass again, and probably a few moral panics about kids getting their fingers and feet cut from all the sharp edges, but I think that's a level of 'toughen up buttercup' I can get behind.
I think it’s important to point out that plastic does have some environmental benefits over glass. Glass is incredibly heavy, and plastic is very light. Therefore glass items will increase the...
I think it’s important to point out that plastic does have some environmental benefits over glass. Glass is incredibly heavy, and plastic is very light. Therefore glass items will increase the carbon footprint of transportation of those items. I have no idea if that increase is worse than the creation and disposal of plastic. I would assume glass is still much better, especially since it can be recycled indefinitely. But it isn’t universally better than plastic.
And aluminum for beverages is way lighter, so I’d still support your change.
While it wasn't highlighted here, I'd say there's plenty of justified anger we can have towards NIMBY environmentalist organizations like The Sierra Club that have actively fought against green...
While it wasn't highlighted here, I'd say there's plenty of justified anger we can have towards NIMBY environmentalist organizations like The Sierra Club that have actively fought against green energy plants because "this just isn't the right location." There's never a perfect location, and they've often let perfect be the enemy of the good. I personally see this as a sign of missing the forest for the trees and failing to imagine simple systematic changes that massively reduce pollution.
Anyone who wants to tackle serious environmental problems like climate change needs to win majority support for impactful policies in a large number of countries and sustain that consensus over a long period of time. To do that, policy makers and environmentalists need to get smart about political capital: how to build it and, most importantly, how to avoid wasting it.
If we want to win the fight against climate change, we need to get serious about achieving the biggest possible environmental impact for the smallest possible price in quality of life and political goodwill. Environmentalist policies don’t just need to be well-intentioned or feel virtuous; they need to be effective in accomplishing their stated goals.
It still baffles me that people think that plastic straw bans are there mainly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That's not what the bans are for, it's mainly because of environmental issues...
It still baffles me that people think that plastic straw bans are there mainly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That's not what the bans are for, it's mainly because of environmental issues (such as pollution of the oceans, microplastics inside fish, animals getting choked, etc). So yes, this article looks more like the author needed to rant, but instead he should've done more research.
Well this was upsetting.
Let me preface this by saying this: If you skim this article, there appears to be a nice message. We need to get serious about climate change, and to do that we need to implement effective policies and target points to achieve the biggest impact. Sure. I agree. Anyone can agree with that, because it is effectively a completely hollow statement. So let's dig deeper into what Yasha here is actually saying.
My first major point of frustration here is the general tone of the article. It seems quite clear to me that climate change and environmentalism is a nebulous concern for this writer, something we should fix because it's probably the right thing to do. At no point does he mention the existential threat that faces us, the gravity of the situation. It's just framed as kind of a nice thing, like solving world hunger. We should probably implement some policies to solve that one day for those other people who I sometimes see in a documentary and feel vaguely sad about. But perhaps I'm reading too much into that, and this writer does share a similar degree of worry. Perhaps the article is meant to be hopeful and does not want to dwell on the severity of the situation. So let's look at the actual points he's making.
Environmentalists are, by and large, painted as a self-flagellating virtue-signaling subculture in this article. Naomi Klein's book is cited as if she's telling us that we should all change our lifestyles and solve climate change by giving up all our nice luxuries. If after reading "This changes everything" you think Klein advocates consumer-level change without targeting structural and "effective environmental" solutions, then... I don't know what to tell you.
Does this writer realize that the implementation of something like a plastic straw ban isn't the end-goal of many environmentalists? It's framed as if that is precisely what we're fighting about, some kind of virtue-signaling ban on a near meaningless sub-problem so we can all feel good about ourselves. No. Environmentalists want radical change, and are either being thrown crumbs by established powers, or have to fight tooth and nail to drag at least some minor concession out of entrenched systems. Does he seriously think a straw ban and less plastic bags is the big strategy here?
So after casting environmentalists as either delusional or incompetent, and simply waving away any inconvenient argument against capitalism (since such a thing can't be seriously entertained, right?), Yasha goes on to describe the tenets of "effective environmentalism". And it seems to boil down to business as usual.
The first point is that we should consider how big of an impact a potential environmental policy can have. Apparently, environmentalists weren't concerned with that before Yasha brought down this wisdom to us mere mortals. But, there's a catch. When discussing the size of the impact, he doesn't actually mention measuring anything specific. The only real concern seems to be how it compares to the size of political backlash and economic trade-offs. Bans on plastic straws (He's really obsessed with them) are considered to have "not much impact in the real world". So what does? Tax incentives and cap-and-trade schemes of course! Funny that, how all our problems can always be resolved by funneling even more money to the companies that brought us here in the first place. We probably would never have had to deal with climate change if we never taxed Shell and BP in the first place.
The second point of "effective environmentalism" is that we should consider if the climate policy we want to implement would "lead to a deterioration in quality of life". The bigger the impact is on the quality of life of people, the more skeptical we should be. It's interesting though, who these people are, exactly. Because from this article, it would seem that our biggest concern should be the disgruntled plastic straw lovers, or the poor Parisians, huddling in the cold outside without any heaters on the café terraces. It would seem to me to be quite obvious that any environmental policy that prevents the loss of livelihood, the very habitability of population centers and the mass displacement of millions upon millions of people counts as a "deterioration in quality of life". But something tells me that these people are, in Yasha's mind, safely tucked away behind a sad Netflix documentary and don't really factor in to serious economic considerations.
And finally, let's drive it all home with the third point of "effective environmentalism", which is "To what extent will the proposed action lead to backlash?" It's actually just a repetition of points one and two, and the entire argument simply boils down to: Okay sure, we should do something about climate change, but let's just find a way to make it convenient for me, and be nice and futuristic. And I really like my current lifestyle and I don't think it's too much to ask to keep it. It's not like any actual person is being exploited or is suffering to sustain my lifestyle. And if there is, they're far away and not really people anyway and if they are then they're probably doing something wrong and why is that my fault anyway?
Just another neo-liberal point of view that desperately wants to convince us that we just need to keep doing what we're doing, but harder. We just haven't appeased the market enough, that's the issue. Just a few more tax cuts, a bit more austerity in the social programs, and the invisible hand of the market will set things right. Any day now, you'll see. And when those nasty cult-like Greens try and take away your car, you can tell them it's not effective, and that they should focus on better policies. The kind of policies that actually work and have no nasty side effects or downsides.
The mirroring of "effective altruism" is sort of all I need to know. As practiced it's just a "spend money on what I want to spend it on because actually AI will save the world eventually" (hyperbolic) scheme. I don't have much respect for it as a practice and it doesn't surprise me that one might argue for the same when it comes to climate change.
"Effective" in these contexts is code for "hyper-capitalist." The implicit assumption is that anything that doesn't align with absolute free market ideals is doomed to failure. It's an article of religious faith among people who call themselves "an-caps" and those adjacent that only the elimination of market controls can lead to anything good. It's not quite axiomatic, but it's at least a second-level premise.
It's why so many of them rail against "virtue signaling:" that's the only way projects that don't assume that a free market is the only effective scheme for progress make any sense in their framework. Why would a person do ineffectual (read: not free-market absolutist) things for a cause unless the real goal is to be seen supporting the cause, not actually accomplishing the goal of the cause? That sign of virtue is capital, so it can be understood.
Yeah, tbqh I avoided reading the linked article precisely because the title made me suspect that this was gonna be a parallel to "effective altruism" and didn't want to deal with more self-serving grift of that nature. Validated to know that those instincts were right.
The thing that bugs me when talking about environmental policies is that people tend to think that the absolutely smallest changes to their lifestyle means a huge impact on their quality of life. Like any minor inconvenience is a travesty. The plastic straw ban is a cop-out; it’s a small portion of single-use plastics that need to be eliminated or at least reduced as much as possible. Those bans get implemented because it’s a small thing that can be bypassed by simply picking up the glass and drinking from it - you know, the same thing we teach literal babies how to do. And while there are people who are physically impaired who might need a straw, I can tell you I have still never found anyone complaining about that ban because that affected them. In the meanwhile we are still drinking those drinks out of plastic cups with plastic lids, eating with plastic forks out of plastic containers, and shopping for food in the grocery store that are also packaged increasingly in plastic bags or other plastic containers.
Exactly!
And an extreme amount of political capital is being wasted on symbolic measures with trivial environmental impact.
That same political capital could be spent on meaningful, significant change. The quotes from the article about this in a different comment are spot on.
Environmentalists need to be more savvy and pragmatic. We need to win the hearts and minds while gradually making poor environmental choices less and less acceptable, culturally and socially speaking.
Just, you know, for the record, we’ve been trying that at least since “silent spring” and maybe as far back as “sand county almanac.”
And we did make some progress in the early 70s. As originally conceived, the env prot act, caa and cwa (all signed by Nixon!) would have classified co2 as a pollutant and we’d be better off.
But the neoliberals on trade and the neocons on military industrial
Complex saw to it no such restrictions could occur. And here we are. The next 100 years or so will make for fascinating study in policy classes of the future.
Unfortunately, we don't have time for slow transition to better choices. That completely ignores the urgency of the threat. Not that you are wrong, that would be a good thing to be doing; it just isn't nearly enough.
Getting -something- done is better than yelling loudly and not getting -anything- done.
I completely agree that we're in a dire situation and don't have time for a slow transition. We didn't have that time 20 years ago either.
In democracies we require majority support for changes, sustained over time, for the changes to happen. That's a reality, irrespective of what objective facts say we need to do on any issue.
However, we cannot let perfect be the enemy of good. We need every substantive environmental policy we can have, each and every one of them is good.
The only bad climate policies/actions are the ones that hinder the overall goal.
For example: Gluing your hands to a runway to hinder flights for some hours is worse for the climate than not doing that. That kind of demonstration does more harm than good in enacting climate change, however right the activist might be that we need to stop emissions, right now.
Yeah, I don't feel like here in Portugal people are that mad about plastic straws going away. Obviously we now have paper straws everywhere and reusable straws also exist. No big deal! I'm pretty sure we've also banned the plastic cups, plastic forks and plastic containers (at least I haven't seen them in ages). It's fine.
In fact, the same applies to every bullet point at the top of the article. Plastic bags are paid for and there are easy recycling programs for them. I use one supermarket that still insists on offering plastic bags but since they also have perfectly good paper bags for some departments I have to wonder why. Just use the damn paper bags by default! The bottle cap thing is kind of dumb but only because I already collected all of my type 2 plastic caps for recycling. I absolutely believe a lot of people got them lost in the environment.
The incandescent bulb phase out is the best of these policies. Incandescent light bulbs use a ridiculously disproportionate amount of power compared to LED bulbs if your objective is only light emission. There are some issues with light quality for crappier LED bulbs but otherwise it's a win for everyone - lighter (hah) bills, less pollution, greater efficiency. The LED bulbs we get around here have pretty decent light quality and they definitely seem to last longer than the incandescent bulbs too.
I'm gonna hard disagree on plastic bag bans. (Edit: I think I read tone wrong in thread, thought it was chastising these bans as virtue signalling)
I worked for a landfill 20 years ago, and half of my shift's responsibility was gathering up the thousands of plastic shopping bags that blew off the mound and onto the perimeter fence every day.
I was doing beach cleanups before and after a plastic bag ban in 2022. We go around and inventory every item we find.
The reduction in plastic bag litter before the ban and 2 years was astonishing. Here's the report from when the ban was less than a year old.
You can check out the other reports here. Plastic litter is still trending downward in 2023.
Edit: Pinging @Akir so they can see tangible results from straw and bag bans.
I don't think you're disagreeing with me in any way but good stuff otherwise!
Honestly I think it's cause I misread tone and I need to go to bed.
Point is even mundane plastic straw ban == big impacts on the environment when you're talking millions of people.
For the record I wasn’t against a plastic straw ban either; I was expressing frustration against the resistance to something that has such a small effect on average peoples’ lives.
Here’s an article comparing the carbon footprint of paper and plastic bags. Although I guess the choice ends up depending on whether one values the climate over other potential environmental issues.
The paper bag also doubles as fire starters, compost, and/or weed barrier. Plastic and/or cloth weed barriers almost certainly are worse for the earth. It decomposes naturally inside of a month in living soil. A plastic bag will never decompose, merely shredding into smaller and smaller bits poisoning every bit of organic matter on earth. Which that article completely ignored beyond 'initial creation energy.' It's OK for the paper bag to use more energy in part because it's far less harmful long term.
And the carbon footprint of just loading it into a box directly in the back of your car/bike/schlepalong is essentially 0. And a huge portion of people do exactly that over paying a $5 bag fee.
You might not have read our law, but it bans all disposable bags for large retailers, only small shops and food services can use paper bags.
So the happy medium for everybody: Charge a $2 fee for a new reusable bag, pay $1 for every reusable bag handed back in. Give used reusable bags away for free.
The problem with those reusable bags is many people won't reuse bags, so the law just ends up creating significantly worse pollution from carbon-intensive reusable bags which end up in a landfill anyway. It's textbook unintended consequences.
Hence the pay structure for reusing bags. I'd gather up a 50 of my reusable bags in a heartbeat and hand them in for a $50 bill. I doubt anybody else would do differently.
Then people can then use the used bags for free (with something like $10 transaction to avoid abuse) but still get paid $1 for handing that bag back in. Sure stores would need to adjust cost of goods a bit to normalize the outward flow if everyone switches to reusing from the used bag pile continuously, but thats pretty easily amortized across all goods and mission accomplished.
The problem with reusable bags isn't the bags, its that we don't provide proper incentive/disincentive structures for using them. Having a 'get paid for used bag dropoff' and a secondary 'use used bag for free/heavily discounted' solves a lot of problems.
I'm not sure whether you understand how cap and trade systems work. They're extremely effective carbon taxes that work at the corporate level which means they're less subject to political backlash like Canada's carbon tax implementation.
Ultimately, I read the article as a call to focus on the most effective policies and stop wasting political energy on small potatoes like plastic straw bans and switching to paper bags. There's always a limited amount of time and energy to spend on policy making, so advocates should focus on pushing for the most effective policies.
Cap and trade is easy to screw up - set the cap too high, hand out freebie permits to existing polluters, and you end up with something worse than useless. And even if it's successful, it needs to be tightened whenever emissions go down in order to remain useful.
Meanwhile, a carbon tax is fairly simple. You set the $/ton to something nontrivial and it's always useful. The marlet getting "ahead of schedule" will never make lowering emissions less financially attractive.
Ultimately I don't care what we do as long as it works, but AFAICT, CnT doesn't work.
Here's a pretty good writeup on cap and trade
The short answer is that it's incredibly efficient and achieves its objectives better than most any other method. There are pitfalls to watch out for (namely having controls to avoid excessive price volitility), but saying CnT doesn't work ignores that some of the most effective phase-outs of all time were CnT programs.
Makes sense - my criticism was mainly based on Australia's 2003 CnT, whereas your writeup says modern CnTs are good.
Washington State and California both have effective cap and trade programs. I agree with vord, they're extremely well studied effective policies. They're just carbon taxes with permits which don't directly show up at the consumer level.
The cap part in particular. You want emissions in a sector reduced 10%, you lower the cap by 10%.
It's why I rabidly support nationalizing all oil, and issuing the ration credits directly to citizens. It solves so many problems in one go.
Ration credits are required to purchase any raw/refined oil (proportional to the amount of crude), but not derivative products. They are issued weekly, and expire after say 18 months of issuance to prevent hoarding. The key bit being that industrial and commercial players must purchase rations directly from citizens to procure their oil.
It results in a basic income of sorts, as each person would be issued far more credits than they need for themselves. People would be incentivized to lower their own consumption to sell off their rations. Industry would be incentivized to use less oil because buying rations becomes ever more expensive.
You issue X% fewer rations every year, first until emissions targets are met, then slower until most superfolous plastic usage is elminated.
I dunno, while I agree with a couple specific statements in this piece, the overall tone rubs me the wrong way. I've been trying to gauge if it's a defensive emotional response on my part, but if I'm going to critique myself, I'd probably blame it more on jadedness.
For instance, there's no real denying what I'd consider the general thesis that:
But, I do question the overall tone (right in the title) of what feels to me like pointing fingers at environmentalists for taking the easy road of virtue signalling.
It feels like envirnmental advocates have been getting the blame for their messaging for as long as I can remember, and there's just no winning. Push for big changes? Extremist, no one will buy it. Push for little changes? Virtuous, ineffectual. Push for systemic changes? Good luck. Push for individual changes? Too small. Etc. Etc.
Of course it's important for anyone and any movement to be self-aware to course-correct on targets and messaging, to improve outcomes. Maybe I ought to give more grace that that is the intended purpose of this article.
But, to me it reads like yet more infighting. There absolutely ARE people advocating for large-scale systemic changes. Canada's trying a carbon tax! Worldwide, renewable energy sources are increasingly popular! Nuclear seems to be approaching a rennaisance! Much, much more can and should be changed, but would any of what has been accomplished have been possible without people who care pushing for systemic changes?
And who's enacting the laws this article critiques anyway (eg, bag/straw bans, etc)? Is it the environmentalists critiqued here, or is it policymakers who dont realllly care about the environment and have simply voted through the easier, low-hanging fruit?
I could go on a whole separate soapbox rant about the futility of the manufactured fight over indiviudal vs. corporate responsibility, but I'm going to stop myself here.
I think the reason people chafe at activists is not a matter of big changes vs little changes, it is the "push" that is the common factor in all those examples.
People dont want some stranger butting into their life and telling them what to do or how to feel about things. Especially when it comes to big movements where youre really engaging with a group of people instead of a single person. The bigger a group is, the more inflexible it is to being swayed by a single person.
So if you are not already in sync with that movement, its kind of a take it or leave it. You can maybe argue with some individual people and maybe affect their perspective, but the group dynamic is out of your control.
In which case, what point is there in engaging with a group you dont already naturally align with?
I think the point of the plastic straw example is to shownan instance where a thing nobody seemed to care about somehow managed to manifest in the zeitgeist of a few years ago. Everyone now says that it was a pointless exercise and not even their suggestion or idea, but in the moment there were definitely lots of conversations about it and lots of people advocating for it and talking about how important it was. People beyond the policy makers who are now given sole responsibility for it. The fact that true environmentalists apparently didnt really care about it is very much the point if the anecdote.
I think what people are put off by is the notion that if you associate with one of these big groups that you dont already agree with, you will end up in a situation where the group will collectively decide "We(excluding you) as a group have decided we(including you) are going to do this action" and then youll be sucked into something that causes you minor inconvenience but doesnt give you anything in return.
Hence why forcing top down regulation on industry/commerce is far easier to garner acceptance than forcing citizens to do the right thing.
Ban all plastic beverage bottling. Force beverage producers to choose metal or glass, and force them to establish paid recycling and reuse programs again.
Consumers will certainly grumble about how weird it is for milk to come in glass again, and probably a few moral panics about kids getting their fingers and feet cut from all the sharp edges, but I think that's a level of 'toughen up buttercup' I can get behind.
I think it’s important to point out that plastic does have some environmental benefits over glass. Glass is incredibly heavy, and plastic is very light. Therefore glass items will increase the carbon footprint of transportation of those items. I have no idea if that increase is worse than the creation and disposal of plastic. I would assume glass is still much better, especially since it can be recycled indefinitely. But it isn’t universally better than plastic.
And aluminum for beverages is way lighter, so I’d still support your change.
While it wasn't highlighted here, I'd say there's plenty of justified anger we can have towards NIMBY environmentalist organizations like The Sierra Club that have actively fought against green energy plants because "this just isn't the right location." There's never a perfect location, and they've often let perfect be the enemy of the good. I personally see this as a sign of missing the forest for the trees and failing to imagine simple systematic changes that massively reduce pollution.
This Mother Jones article does a much better job explaining what I'm talking about: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2023/11/green-groups-housing-crisis-ceqa-environmental-density-nimby/
It still baffles me that people think that plastic straw bans are there mainly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That's not what the bans are for, it's mainly because of environmental issues (such as pollution of the oceans, microplastics inside fish, animals getting choked, etc). So yes, this article looks more like the author needed to rant, but instead he should've done more research.