Reply to Small families with big houses

Forum Index » Real Estate

Reply to "Small families with big houses"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]In my experience, most people who care about the environmental effects of consumption don't maintain consistent views. For example, I rarely eat out and generate very little trash; but a friend who cares about "consumption" orders takeout a lot, and the waste from takeout is enormous. Also, I admittedly have an old vehicle that is not fuel efficient, but I drive about 3000 miles per year. Meanwhile, I know people who care about "consumption" who drive 12K-15K miles per year in their more fuel efficient vehicles. 
[/quote]

You are right a lot of people who claim to care about the environment consistently make personal choices that are counter to this, all while shaming others for not recycling hard enough or something. I know lots of UMC "progressives" who make a show out of stuff like carrying around their own metal straws and driving an electric vehicle, but travel extensively, live in huge homes, doing endless takeout, etc.

BUT there actually are some of us who are not just environmentalists for show. We just tend not to be as showy about it because it's not about proving we're the right kind of people, it's about actually trying to decrease our environmental impact.[/quote]

If you are an environmentalist, though, you already know that individual action can never be more than a drop in the bucket.  Slowing climate change, pollution, the water crisis, etc. can only happen through widescale government action directed primarily at businesses.  I say this not to justify wasteful behavior by individuals, but because harping on individual behavior is a distraction from real solutions.  [/quote]

If you study environmental policy you'll see that the whole idea of individual action was created by polluting industries as a way of deflecting responsibility onto the choices of consumers rather than producers. [/quote]

+2.  Harping on the relatively small number of people that live in big houses is an unhelpful distraction.[/quote]

No, it’s not. Most people will believe climate change is a crises when the people who are telling them it’s a crises make choices in their own lives that reflect that. As long as people like John Kerry and Al Gore and various Hollywood “activists” maintain multiple huge homes and yachts and fly around the world in private jets, no normal middle class person is buying the need to change their relatively tiny carbon footprint. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics