Reply to do you know anyone in this affluent area that has altered their lifestyle to reduce CO2 emissions?

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Reply to "do you know anyone in this affluent area that has altered their lifestyle to reduce CO2 emissions?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I also believe in history - the ice has been receding for thousands of years.  Most of the U.S. was buried in ice.  One OCD individual cannot stop it.  That my dear is delusional IMO.  [/quote]

By your logic, the action of any individual is pointless if it runs contrary to the actions of most other members of society.

If one believes in this bleak logic, then any social change is impossible. Society is simply frozen in place.

I don't share your bleak view. [/quote]

We don't talk about stopping hurricanes.  We simply prepare for them.  I think what's bleak is the lack of any acceptance of what preparations are needed.  [/quote]

NP--We actually DO talk about mitigating the impact of hurricanes through reducing our impact on the warming of the planet. Sure, we need to prepare, and tens of millions of individuals choosing to reduce their impact would be an enormous contribution to that preparation.

The 'one person can't make a difference argument' is deeply flawed in ways that should be obvious to intelligent people. One person can't run a large corporation. One athlete can't win a sports competition. One soldier can't win a battle. That doesn't stop many groups of people from choosing to act together to make things happen.[/quote]

This is true, but still -- and I say this as someone who has made a lot of of changes to my own life for climate reasons (installed solar panels, heat pumps and a rain barrel, bought an electric vehicle, commuting by bike or Metro almost exclusively) -- it is also true that none of those changes will actually make any real difference on their own. [/quote]

I'm curious if you have calculated your carbon footprint before and after the various lifestyle changes that you implemented. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you reduced your carbon by 50%. This demonstrates that an individual can indeed have a big impact on their own footprint. And since the aggregate footprint is simply the sum of our individual footprints, this suggests that a widespread CO2-reduction effort by most individuals and households could indeed have a non-trivial impact on aggregate emissions.[/quote]

I haven’t calculated any of that, though I’m sure our household emissions are lower than they’d be otherwise. But all or most individuals aren’t going to do all that — and even if we did, the effect would still be insignificant compared to industrial and corporate-related emissions. I’m all for doing whatever we can to help. I just am also realistic enough to know that it won’t be anywhere near enough. [/quote]

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