People are ragging on this but the fact is that individual responsibility for climate change being forced upon the little people is bullshit - and I say that as someone who works in the sustainability field
The responsibility should fall on the shoulders of those making the biggest contributions to the carbon in the atmosphere
That is, dirty energy generation businesses, global shipping businesses, aviation businesses, huge global computing and datacentre businesses using ungodly amounts of power, and the agriculture and farming industries, big development companies building in unsustainable ways, and of course the state
If there was good government regulation in place (and appropriate support to these industries to transition to greener methods and tech), and we continue our transition to greener energy generation, aaaand the government invests properly in public transportation to make it the most attractive (or at least most cost effective) way to move around, aaaaand the government taxed those companies who produce more than their fair share of carbon and don’t try to minimise it - then it makes very little difference if Bob drives to work and has a ham sandwich at lunch
What Zach is trying to say is that you don’t have to ruin your life to campaign for more sustainable infrastructure and more government regulation on carbon - that’s a reasonable take
There's us turning off the lights when we leave a room, and then there's every shop on Oxford Street which is covered in lights and screens that are on 24 hours a day. Even when the store itself is closed.
If we forced companies/industries to do all of that stuff then the additional costs will eventually fall on the individual. Mainly through higher prices, but also 'enshitification' and even through personal investments/pensions as share prices fall.
Individuals do have the power to change things through their spending power - if people stopped consuming things from polluting companies they would be forced to shift to greener methods. If more people made the sacrifice of taking public transport it would be able to run at a lower-per-person cost. This idea that individual decisions don't matter as long as large companies are polluting is just a cop-out. It's the sort of thing that gives a green light to a hypocritical generation that complains about climate change but takes 20 minute showers and puts towels in the wash after one use. This small stuff does matter - you can't both care about the environment and refuse to challenge your irrational habits.
If the government invested heavily in public transport to the point it wasn’t waiting 30 minutes per bus for it then to not turn up or drive past more people would use it.
They’ve got to run it at a loss in my opinion for the foreseeable future to get the social attitudes towards public transport to change. Slow gradual shifts in attitude win out eventually. Kind of like the small nudge the sugar tax did. I think that was a perfect example of social change.
Yeah I agree. It’s all part of an overall strategy that the government needs to take. It would work if they put the investment behind it. Look at cycling in places like Denmark. There’s more cyclists routes than roads and they really invested heavily in shifting the public attitude.
If we forced companies/industries to do all of that stuff then the additional costs will eventually fall on the individual. Mainly through higher prices, but also 'enshitification' and even through personal investments/pensions as share prices fall.
Reads a bit like there's some natural law behind it.
You are arguing for the status quo and I think you just need to look at how things work now and ask if they are working. We already have every cost passed on to the consumer and we already have enshittification happening just to maximize profit.
People aren't making purchases based on how environmentally friendly they are, that information is not readily available and many people don't have the luxury of including that on their criteria on purchasing things on top of all the other considerations. Does it do what I need, can I afford it and can I get it quickly and easily. We are not blameless a lot of us could do better but there is nothing trying to tip the balance.
The cost of inaction on these decisions is huge, we are already seeing effects from climate change huge potential damage costs from floods/fires/storms etc. Businesses (and consumers by extension) are not paying the costs of the damage they are doing from our environment, meaning they choose the cheapest option, and consumers are the same, often through no choice of their own.
That's what taxes are for, discourage the behavior you don't want. Tax carbon, increase the costs for business and consumer to incentivise them to change their choices. I don't think enough people will just change their behavior because environmentalists convince them it's important to, unless the consequences are already affecting them, by which time it's already too late (though I'd happily be proven wrong on that).
the fact is that individual responsibility for climate change being forced upon the little people is bullshit
I totally agree, governments should regulate.
What Zach is trying to say is that you don’t have to ruin your life to campaign for more sustainable infrastructure and more government regulation on carbon
If that was all he said, I'd probably agree with him. Unfortunately it isn't. He is anti-SMR and those are probably going to be one of our best ways to decarbonise in the short term.
The Greens have also opposed critical grid upgrades. Again, something that can help us decarbonise.
Where the Greens lose for me is their dogmatic demand for absolute perfection, instead of getting behind incremental improvement.
Is he really though, or is he the acceptable voice of their ridiculous policies? They still believe in nuclear disarmament, which no matter how many layers of 'we believe in peaceful debate' nonsense you wrap it up in is an incredibly dangerous and right now stupid policy.
That's why I joined the party to vote against it. If there's no headway by the next GE I'll probably leave but with their massive uptick in membership with young people I'm hoping the more NIMBY views will be rooted out
I believe they will soften on this (I have seen them already proposing updates on their energy policy) and their other more extreme views as they move towards the election. Their policies are democratically voted so it will tend towards the more popular views as the number of members increase which I think anti nuclear energy is not.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good (from both the party and an individual voter perspective).
If that was all he said, I'd probably agree with him. Unfortunately it isn't. He is anti-SMR and those are probably going to be one of our best ways to decarbonise in the short term.
We are one of the windiest countries on the planet. I'm not against SMRs but nuclear is so expensive and takes such a long time to return on investment (SMR even more so as it's new). Compared to onshore wind which is so cheap and quick to produce. It makes me feel so sad that can drive around Europe and see wind turbines everywhere and in the UK they are so few and far between.
And for storage so many people are driving around on massive batteries that it could sort out load balancing.
Renewables are 4x more expensive than nuclear with externalities imputed. Renewables have low input cost (wind is free) but very high capital and operational costs. Big ones include grid restructure and energy storage for when the wind isn’t blowing. We still don’t have cost effective grid scale storage technology, and we won’t for a few decades. Right now the optimal grid structure for the UK is around 80-85% renewable, with the remainder comprised of stable baseload generation. This can be from coal (cheapest), oil and gas, or nuclear. Nuclear is the most expensive of these but by far the best for the environment.
I don't know if some paper about LCOE in Texas or Germany applies well to us in the UK. We do have Sizewell C and Hinkley Point C overrunning massively which feels like it should be a factor.
And on the otherhand in UK LCOE of Renewables is decreasing steadily.
I don't think anyone is suggesting getting rid of nuclear, but if we want more energy quickly, than onshore wind is cheapest and very cost effective. Nuclear can be cheaper in the long run, but for Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C it's a very long run before they return their investment seeing as they still aren't operational.
First, it’s not LCOE. The study was actually created to improve upon the flawed LCOE metric, which does not cover the major cost components like grid restructure, time value of energy production, volatility risk (in both renewables and fossil fuels), grid reliability, and contract terms and futures.
Second, it’s not a case study but a study on the cost factors. They used very different markets to understand the factor variance. They outline these differences.
if we want more energy quickly, than onshore wind is cheapest and very cost effective.
It’s not. It’s much more expensive. You are only imputing the nominal costs of the build and opex. That’s just a fraction of total cost.
For the record I agree that nuclear in the UK has been managed very poorly. It would be much more cost effective to go with coal and oil and gas.
I mean see is the imperative word there because we are in the top 5 countries in the world in both overall wind power production and in % of wind in our mix. You just don't see them here when you're driving because we build offshore more than we do on land. Go figure, island nation makes use of ocean. Same is true for Denmark and Ireland, some of the only countries with a higher proportion of wind power. Lots offshore, only some on land.
Also thinking SMRs are expensive because nuclear has been expensive historically and because it's new... I can get where you're coming from, but I don't think it's the right way to think about it. The whole SMR concept is driven by removing the things that made nuclear so expensive historically - mainly the construction time and costs.
Not saying that this is guaranteed to succeed, I'm just saying that you ought to think of it in those terms. Will they be able to remove the traditional big costs and time sinks and to what degree? Because if the new economics work like companies like Rolls Royce think (or claim) they will then it will no longer be a given that nuclear is so expensive, or that it takes a long time to return on investment.
With SMR claims it's hard to verify how good it will be, the only country that has SMRs is China and that's a complete unknown for how economical it is. Also a lot of the SMR stuff we want to do in the UK is still a bit like traditional nuclear in just bunching lots up in a specific place so will have similar grid issues we have now.
And speaking of grid issues that is the great thing with onshore wind, you can build it closer to where you need it, not hundreds of miles off the coast. Offshore is great, it is probably the most economically efficient way, but it's also incredibly expensive. Onshore wind in comparison is very cheap. If we had more wind farms, even just small scale community ones it would pay for itself back within a year or two. Offshore takes more like 5-10 years to payback and then it generates lots of money after.
Standard nuclear takes like 40 years to payback investment, SMRs are an unknown, Hinkley Point and Sizewell C’s are probably closer to 100 years with all the delays.
For storage we should probably use nuclear batteries (depleted uranium etc). They're great big heavy things, perfect for the foundations of wind turbines.
That also reduces the demand on (much lighter) lithium so that it can stay in cars, ear buds etc.
That, of course, is merely part of a solution and not the whole solution. We will need generation, we will almost certainly always need generation and for everything that's wrong with it; nuclear is probably the least bad option.
It's either that or keep gas online. Heck, we probably would have to keep some gas knocking around for peaks.
There is no one single solution. It's a mix. It's balancing pros Vs cons and the mix for Locale A will differ to Locale B.
But the fantasy of 100% renewables is (with current technology) just that; a fantasy. We should move now with what we have and hang the cost. It will still be cheaper in the long run.
If we'd done that in the 80s with nuclear etc, we wouldn't be in the situation we are now WRT to our energy supply and (quite possibly) climate change.
I'm a Green member and voter for well over a decade and I also agree.
I don't think there are better options given my political leanings but to be taken more seriously, unfortunately they can't have these weird "gaps" that wouldn't be focussed on were they right wing populist.
Agree with this. The thing is, government can force companies to be more responsible but they're not going to do it if it means they won't get votes in the next general election.
It's all good for Party X to pledge in a manifesto they will ban petrol cars / hike tax for green initiatives or whatever, but if someone thinks it's going to make their life more difficult they're going to vote for someone who promises not to do those things.
We can all make small changes that make little impact on ourselves, i.e reducing food waste, having one day a week not eating meat, taking a travel mug with us, car sharing on longer trips, buying second hand clothes.
Insignificant changes that don't make our lives harder and that will get the ball rolling. Then like you said... Once there is less of a demand for this stuff companies wont buy or produce as much and the government will feel more confident in restricting its production through policy.
If governments, companies and households could all make reasonable changes then we wouldn't need to be perfect environmentalists. I've found myself being more eco-conscious by just starting small things. I reduced my meat in take and then realized it wasnt that bad so reduced it even more until I didn't mind just eating vegetarian. Now I'm starting to make more of an effort to buy seasonal local produce that hasn't got air miles because I see the benefit to spending an extra half hour a week nipping to my local farm shop instead of aldi.
If the population were more sympathetic to green causes then governments would feel more confident banning stuff.
Do you think water companies should be allowed to use the same logic when it comes to releasing toxic chemicals in your drinking water reservoirs?
“That’s just what happens in the system, if you want less toxic chemicals released perhaps YOU should drink less water, then demand will go down and our toxic chemicals emissions will naturally decrease”
No - government regulate all sorts of harmful chemicals to prevent them from being released, they don’t tell consumers “farmers need to use pesticides that are collapsing the ecosystem and giving down-stream people cancer - so please try to eat less food because that will reduce the amount of pesticides they need to use” - they regulate the producers of the danger, and those producers find new better ways to provide the same services without the cancer
you think water companies should be allowed to use the same logic when it comes to releasing toxic chemicals in your drinking water reservoirs?
No but thats irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
The things people are buying cannot be produced without producing greenhosue gases and increasing climate change. Water, OTOH, CAN be made availabel without toxic chemicals in.
You've created a false equivelancy between clean water (possible and necessary) and carbon free plane travel (impossible and unnecessary).
Eating less food and flying on planes less are NOT even remotely similar things.
You need to spend some carbon to produce a lot of the things we’re talking about - but there’s scope to MASSIVELY reduce how much carbon is produced/released.
We don’t need to ban it - we absolutely can enforce year on year reductions and tax carbon emissions outside of a reasonable level for the activity.
You've completely ignored or misunderstood my point.
People don't need to go on holiday via plane travel. They do anyway. That is a choice made by normal people.
Same goes for many other high carbon products and services. Consumers choose to consume them. The businesses only make money off of these when consumers pay them.
Air travel with 20% lower emissions is absolutely something which could be achieved by airlines if incentive was in place to ensure the most fuel efficient planes were used, and the least efficient were upgraded or scrapped
No, people are suggesting that the average person reduces or minimises the emmissikns cuases by their choices. You and Zach Polanski reject that suggestion.
Air travel with 20% lower emissions is absolutely something which could be achieved
If people stopped using air travel to go on holiday, how much would that reduce emmissions, do you think?
It may have escaped your notice but airlines and manufacturers already invest massively in new planes that drive down emissions, the industry is already incentivised to do so by price competition.
The thing that stops it going faster is cost (ticket prices would have to rise to pay for it), and the bureaucracy that makes it so expensive, time consuming, and slow to get new models of planes and new clean sheet designs certified for service and pilots qualified on them. A lot of that bureaucracy is because of an abundance of caution when it comes to safety, which in turn helps keep flying as the safest form of travel.
So what exactly would you expect airlines to do that they're not already doing?
You need to spend some carbon to produce a lot of the things we’re talking about - but there’s scope to MASSIVELY reduce how much carbon is produced/released.
You also have to bear in mind that the push for businesses to do so needs to come from both sides: If it comes from Government alone and not consumers, there's real scope for a PR push to get the consumer to push back against it. If we can enthuse consumers to value lower emission versions or just general lower emissions, then there's less scope for such a push and more opportunity in using those metrics as a marketing benefit.
I’ve not seen enthusiasm for green stuff from the general population in my work - there’s a minority who care about it a lot, myself included, but most people are too busy trying to find the cheapest way to feed their family and pay the bills
If we could do a big ad campaign to explain that we’re all going to be fucked if we don’t deal with this, that would be great - but most people don’t have the luxury of being able to think about 50 years time, when they are frantically trying to make sure the next 12 hours goes ok
The more people who reduce meat consumption, and stop flying, and use more public transport etc, the better
However we CANNOT Put full responsibility for saving the planet down to people who are just about holding it together, keeping food on the table and raising healthy kids, keeping a roof over everyone’s heads etc. Most people don’t have the luxury of thinking about anything outside of their immediate needs, family and job.
The big companies that are producing the carbon can provide the same goods and services with a much much lower carbon footprint, as has been proven by every single company that’s ever tried to - they just need incentive to do so. That’s where the responsibility should lie, and that’s where we need government to provide those incentives
The big companies that are producing the carbon can provide the same goods and services with a much much lower carbon footprint, as has been proven by every single company that’s ever tried to - they just need incentive to do so. That’s where the responsibility should lie, and that’s where we need government to provide those incentives
They can do this at cost which will get them immediately undercut by another company that doesn't choose to do so, and the customer inevitably buying the cheapest good.
That’s the problem and that’s why you need universal legislation instead of hoping companies do it out of the goodness of their hearts - same as we do for pesticides, and fertiliser, and toxic waste, and CFCs, and refrigerants etc etc - no one has the choice to buy cheaper products that are dangerous because of those things - same should be true for excess carbon
Corporate emissions are just aggregate individual emissions, the individual is still ultimately responsible. If you burn a lump of coal you’re not absolved of any responsibility for the emissions just because you didn’t personally dig it out of the ground.
CFCs and dumping toxic waste are illegal, greenhouse gas emissions are not. As a consumer you are fully aware of the carbon footprint of what you buy and the choices you make.
My guy, these businesses don't just pump carbon into the atmosphere for shits and giggles. They do it because you the little guy consumer ask them to and then give them money in order to do so. The impact of the aviation industry on the climate minus that of commercial passengers is close to zero. The impact of energy generators without energy consumers would be zero. The impact of farming without demand for meat or exotic produce would be a fraction of what it is now.
What you are arguing for is rules that prevent consumers making the decisions they currently make or significantly increase the costs of making these decisions. That's fine, but ultimately you are saying it is the fault of the little guy and also the little guy doesn't give enough of a shit to change their behaviour without financial incentives.
It can be both. People buy stupid shit and don’t give a toss about the impact. Think fast fashion and toy crazes like Labubu. Demand is manufactured by corporations, influencers, advertising and we suck it up like the good little consumers we are. I wouldn’t consider myself especially green, but I’m heartily sick of rampant greed and consumerism.
we suck it up like the good little consumers we are
I don’t. The idea of shipping some plastic tat across the entire world makes me feel as uncomfortable as stuffing plastic into the normal bin.
If people stopped buying then the ships would stop sailing. I hate this defeatist mindset of “I’m just a poor helpless consumer who is routinely forced to buy things from Alibaba”.
Right, and I don't eat meat or drive a car or heat my house for most of the day. But other people do, and that's what causes a significant environmental impact. Consumer choice.
“My guy - these companies don’t spew toxic waste in to the rivers for no reason, they do it because you, the little guy, pay them money to”
Stupid argument - we pay for a service which could be delivered much more cleanly - I know the building industry best - developers produce huge amounts of carbon for no good reason, there are much more sustainable ways to develop better buildings, in a cleaner way, and even ways that are mostly cost neutral - if the government regulated these industries, EXACTLY the same way as we have done with other polluters for different harmful substances, they can find myriad ways to provide the same services with much much lower carbon output.
I’ve seen carbon audits across different industries where cost-neutral decisions could cut emissions in half, easily. Since I began carbon auditing within my business, it’s dropped to 20% of original output with NO change to service provided
They are polluting, the only difference this time is the pollution is invisible.
Stupid argument - we pay for a service which could be delivered much more cleanly
This is absolutely true in many cases but, if we are to be completely honest, not in others.
As someone who knows a little about it, the one I would point to is flying. There is no realistic way to deliver the same quantity of aviation travel to consumers for significantly less carbon emissions with current technology. The main attempt at reducing carbon emissions is with sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) but these are damaging to the environment in different ways - mostly because ecologically diverse forests must be cleared to make space for homogeneous farms for SAF crops like switchgrass or palm.
You can make SAF from waste products without deforestation but this is vastly more complicated and the technology is still being developed with years to go before significant roll out. So if you want to reduce aviation carbon emissions the only way to do that before ~2035 is with "little man" individual choices and reducing flying.
You can make the argument (perhaps this is what Zack would say) that you can basically ignore this then and focus on areas where corporate interest is driving the carbon load, but he should be honest about what this means on the limits of carbon reduction targets given how high a proportion of emissions the aviation industry contributes.
Edit: sorry while I was writing this you acknowledged all the above to the other user! So my point is just the last one, Zack and greens should just be honest about the limits of decarbonisation targets if you don't advocate for individual behavioural change.
How the fuck do you deliver flights and meat much more cleanly? The environmental impact is a direct result of the product.
I'm no eco-warrior at all, but trying to pretend all those emissions aren't a result of end consumer behaviour smacks of having your cake and eating it too
You don’t eliminate it immediately - but a 5-10% reduction is absolutely achievable
Different feeds produce different amounts of methane from cattle, for example
Different modern planes use fuel more efficiently than older ones
There are hundreds of little ways that all industries COULD minimise and reduce carbon output if they had to, and they would immediately find them if they had incentive to do so - I say this as someone who has witnessed or been part of many carbon audits across different industries - there are loads of cheap easy ways to reduce carbon sitting on the table, and most companies simply aren’t thinking about it because there’s no incentive
You're edging towards a carbon tax, here, which is the economists golden policy for reducing carbon emissions. The trouble with this is that it's very difficult to get a democratic consensus for such a tax because it is just passed on to the consumer, increasing cost of living.
Increases in fuel costs and innovations in wing design have driven fuel efficiency and reduced carbon emissions for flights, also there are still a lot of low hanging fruit in terms of reducing emissions from changes to flight routes, to applying duty and taxes to private flights and private jets which are hugely inefficient and don't pay their way (and the tax can then be directed into subdisiding more efficiency elsewhere)
Most regulations increase costs. You haven't provided any examples of cost neutral measures within your own industry that would make any substantial difference. There literally are not cost neutral measures in most industries. Producing meat is hugely carbon intensive and there isn't a way around that without lab grown meat which is very expensive. Aviation fuel is the vast majority of the carbon impact of aviation and alternative fuels are very expensive and not viable at the moment. No amount of regulation would affect the carbon impact of aviation without increasing costs so consumers fly less. Energy has already been hugely regulated and it has resulted in the UK having some of the highest energy costs in the world. This is forcing consumers to choose more expensive greener energy instead of giving them the choice. I'm fine with that, but it's dishonest to pretend that these policies do anything other than manipulate consumer preferences by artificially changing costs.
There are some industries which are harder to improve than others - and some which will cost more than others
But I’ve worked with businesses across many different sectors - basically every single office in London could reduce to 75% emissions over the course of a year or two for very little investment if any - just from changing lightbulbs and turning off their computers at night, running their AC and heating properly, sorting their waste properly, or installing more efficient tech.
I’ve seen it over and over and over again, with support and incentive, businesses ALWAYS are able to make huge reductions in their outputs
Completely eliminating carbon in aviation or the meat industry is really really hard. Making a 5% reduction in carbon emissions however is NOT - that’s a case of incrementally more efficient methods and tech, different feed for the cattle, phasing out older models of planes etc etc - these are not unsolvable problems - no one is saying “ELIMINATE ALL CARBON NOW” - we’re saying “take reasonable measures to minimise carbon” which 90% of companies simply are not doing
HUGE amounts of energy are wasted for no good reason reason - obviously lightbulbs is only going to save a percentage point or 2 of total energy, but combined small things (like correctly operating AC systems and making sure lights are not left on over night etc) all add up to big savings for individual companies. As I say, I’m in the industry and I’ve seen changes like that make 10-20% differences in total carbon footprint for service industry offices
Yeah I'm not saying those are bad ideas but office efficiencies are a tiny proportion of our ecological footprint. We need to concentrate on aviation, agriculture, transport, domestic heating, and construction.
Agreed - but we can do all of it at the same time - blanket incentives to reduce carbon output for all businesses by 5%, for example, would make an impact and be extremely achievable
I’ve seen audits in manufacturing also, and my focus is in construction - both at design and during construction there are huge savings to be made - I’ve worked on buildings in the top 0.01% in terms of energy efficiency and sustainability (measured through BREEAM score) - they don’t all need to be “best” - but construction could easily reduce overall carbon output by 20% if limits were put in place, and financial penalties for going too far above reasonable levels.
Many many many many developers, architects and contractors just don’t give a single shit about carbon and it shows - though this is improving fairly rapidly.
Planning is currently the only real barrier with SOME councils being pretty good at imposing notional carbon targets - but if this sort of guidance has no teeth, AND if it’s not universal, then it’s more likely to make developers build further down the road with a council that don’t care, than to actually make the changes.
Well personally i usually do - both in business and personally - but this is a stupid argument
We do not allow for sewage waste companies to provide a cheaper service for individuals who don’t care if the sewage just gets dumped by the side of the road
We do not allow companies to provide a cheaper service so that consumers have the choice to use a service which dumps toxic chemicals in to drinking water reservoirs
But you think there should be consumer choice in something which will make large parts of the Earth uninhabitable
That’s a separate argument though. You think individuals can’t be trusted to make the sustainable choice, but they’re still responsible for the choice they make.
Often you don't actually have a choice, either through monopolies and near monopolies at both direct supplier and further upstream in the delivery chain. Also there's no way to make an informed choice when making most purchases as there's no labelling on emissions.
AI is known to be massively resource intensive and every major tech company is investing heavily in it.
I don’t know about everyone else but my usual tech platforms have all pushed AI to me against my will. I don’t read the AI overview on Google, I don’t care about AI tools on anything else. I would still buy these products with or without the AI.
The entire bubble seems to be built around a belief that there will be a use for AI at some point even if it’s a bit of a novelty at the moment. Companies are plowing major resources into something that is damaging for the environment for their own benefit, not for the present consumer.
The consumer demand is for the outcome, not the product.
For example when apple created the iPhone there was no demand for a smartphone because no one knew what it was, that it was possible. However, apple was serving the demands for more convenience, a more interactive product etc.
Do you think water companies should be allowed to pump toxic waste in to rivers, because there is consumer demand for water?
Nope.
Regulations prevent the release of harmful chemicals across all industries in millions of different places - and those laws all gradually come in to effect as the dangers of those chemicals are understood - from fertilisers and pest control in farming, to waste and sewage.
Over and over and over again these industries say “if you regulate us we’ll all die and disappear forever!” And yet here we are
the amount of flights in business that could have been a zoom call is genuinely outrageous.
It's entirely an ego thing of "I'm a big boss boy who needs to be on flights", and to think 100 of those are more important than normal people's 1 flight a year or less for a holiday is crazy
Absolutely agree - for one of the companies I audit the business travel flights are far and away the biggest contributor to their carbon footprint - reducing those flights and reducing how many people they were sending on each flight had a big impact
However business travel only accounts for about 12% of commercial flights, so 88% of flying is for leisure
Who do you think those shipping companies are shipping to? Who do you think is eating that food? Who do you think is using that energy?
Corporations(tm) are the proximate cause of emissions, but those emissions exist in service of consumption. If you fly 20x a year the demand that you create has a substantial effect on the climate.
When farmers were producing wheat for us to eat, but using pesticides that cause cancer - we didn’t stop eating as much bread - we regulated the farmers to stop using the pesticide and find alternative ways to provide their goods/services without giving people cancer
When sewage treatment companies used to pump sewage in to waterways with impunity, we didn’t say “well if the consumers didn’t shit so much it wouldn’t be a problem” - we gave the responsibility to the companies to provide the service without the dangers
We can’t outright ban carbon emissions, but we can absolutely legislate that all companies need a carbon reduction plan, a year-on-year reduction, random carbon auditing (as we have done with other chemical release problems) and big financial penalties where companies are taking the piss.
Except the difference is there's nothing intrinsic about growing crops that necessitated those specific pesticides, or about sewage management that required contaminating waterways.
Growing meat, shipping goods and flying all intrinsically generate emissions. You can't legislate that away, and certainly not to the extent that would be required to meet the climate goals that environmentalists frequently espouse. Unless you think these effect sizes somehow account for 50% of emissions or more, you're never going to get anything like the impact that you could have if the high frequency users cut back their consumption. Hell, you would have better outcomes literally just regulating consumption (i.e. through quotas or financial penalties) but obviously that would be electoral suicide.
Presenting people with the fantasy that individual consumption doesn't matter is nonsense, and directs scrutiny away from the handful of people who massively drive up demand for these emissions (particularly in the case of aviation). It's a bad message driven by a populist effort to blame climate change on a handful of elites that can be harmlessly legislated out rather than by a consumption driven model of economics which will require compromises to uproot. Shocking and unprecedented that the green party would do this for the 38420th time.
They all intrinsically produce SOME emissions - but all are massively overproducing compared to the minimums you could provide the same service with - I know, I audit carbon, I’ve seen the data
You could have huge impacts with the right incentives, maybe not 50% but I’d put money on 25%
Obviously we also need to transition to nuclear and renewables too, and we probably at this point need some form of tech solution like better carbon scrubbing on top.
It would be lovely if consumption would reduce too, but that’s way way harder to control and legislate around (unless we bring back rationing) and we simply cannot count on enough people making “green choices” - it’s a lost cause, most people don’t have the capacity to care about it
This is not at all mind reading - I work in the sustainability industry and EVERYONE knows this - He’s just repeating what everyone in the green world talks about endlessly
The fact you work in the industry isn't relevant, if anything it shows you actually know more the average Green Party member knows about the topic and could probably do a better job in a leadership position than hypno boob man.
The fact is, he's only saying this because vibes, it doesn't go that deep. If you want to swing people to the left, just throw out the odd thing from time to time that doesn't make you sound like a lunatic, though Zack will have to throw out a lot more since most of what he comes out with is pretty unhinged.
This only works when you can successfully make the pitch to people that they can't be trusted, and so we must heavily tax negative externality goods/services, which will make their Spain holidays and temu orders more expensive. Perhaps even decrease quality of life, slightly, but that the tax revenue will at least benefit other areas of life.
Trying to differentiate between individual responsibility and "systemic" or "corporate" pollution is fundamentally impossible because they are one and the same thing - even if those links can sometimes appear opaque. Just look at your examples:
dirty energy generation businesses
That has been demanded by consumers for cheap and abundant firm power and has given us lifestyles unthinkable - even to royalty - just a few hundred years ago.
global shipping businesses
That has been demanded by consumers who want cheap and diverse goods and products
aviation businesses
That has been demanded by consumers who want cheap and diverse travel and holidays
huge global computing and datacentre businesses using ungodly amounts of power
That has been demanded by consumers who want these products and services. The ones that you are using this very minute, not considering the environmental damage done by the vast infrastructure needed to provide a digital service like Reddit. Do you know how much energy is required to make a chip? Or a fibre optic cable?
Literally every single element of where you think the blame lies is integral to what you are doing and using right now. We are creating that demand. It's utterly absurd to absolve yourself of that responsibility.
Also the taxation on businesses which produce unreasonable carbon emissions (including food production) would naturally drive up prices, and wallets would drive sustainable individual choices anyway. People do what's affordable: if meat became a luxury product (beef and lamb already are starting to get there in the UK) then we'd produce and consume less of it.
People are ragging on this but the fact is that individual responsibility for climate change being forced upon the little people is bullshit - and I say that as someone who works in the sustainability field
The responsibility should fall on the shoulders of those making the biggest contributions to the carbon in the atmosphere
The average person most certainly contributes to carbon. Especially when we have billions of average people.
That is, dirty energy generation businesses, global shipping businesses, aviation businesses, huge global computing and datacentre businesses using ungodly amounts of power, and the agriculture and farming industries, big development companies building in unsustainable ways, and of course the state
The average person has agency in deciding whether such businesses operate. The average person is choosing to ship in phone cases from China, choosing which agricultural products to buy, and choosing where to get their energy from.
This whole 'blame the billionaires' angle is just a way of avoiding any responsibility for our own choices. We can aim to tackle wealth disparity and be responsible, too.
What Zach is trying to say is that you don’t have to ruin your life to campaign for more sustainable infrastructure and more government regulation on carbon - that’s a reasonable take
Well if he is 'trying to say that' and failing, that's his fault, isn't it?
The average person was contributing to the hole in the ozone layer caused by CFCs - we didn’t tell the consumer to choose not to use them - we regulated away that choice to save the planet
The average person was contributing to the hole in the ozone layer caused by CFCs - we didn’t tell the consumer to choose not to use them - we regulated away that choice to save the planet
... and? Both regulation and getting people to change their behaviour are viable options. If you want to encourage regulation by which we ban cars, I'm all for it. Let's go!
Sadly, hypnotits is not offering that sort of thing. Instead they're talking about blocking nuclear.
That’s the whole point of what I’m saying - government legislation is needed to put the responsibility for the carbon released firmly on the companies releasing it, instead of pretending that the average consumer has the ability to solve the carbon crisis by “making greener choices”
That’s the whole point of what I’m saying - government legislation is needed to put the responsibility for the carbon released firmly on the companies releasing it, instead of pretending that the average consumer has the ability to solve the carbon crisis by “making greener choices”
We can most certainly do both. Hyponotits is just pulling the usual populist angle of 'Don't worry, you're all fine, let's just blame billionaires and keep on doing whatever we want'.
If billions of people 'make greener choices', it will most certainly benefit the world, and hypnotits pretending to care about the environment by opposing people doing that is frankly evil.
The personal carbon footprint thing was literally created by fossil fuel companies to shift the responsibility - no, we don’t do both, we regulate properly so that average Joe doesn’t have to think about it on top of trying to feed their family and pay the rent - make the polluters stop polluting, and pour the energy time and resources in to that instead of asking average people to take responsibility for another global crisis they can’t do anything about
The personal carbon footprint thing was literally created by fossil fuel companies to shift the responsibility
The framing of it, somewhat, maybe. But pretending that personal carbon footprints do not exist is utter nonsense.
no, we don’t do both
Why on earth not?
we regulate properly so that average Joe doesn’t have to think about it
You may not have the capacity to think about this, but most people do. Kindly stop justifying your own lack of action by pretending that everyone else is doing the same thing. If you don't want to make the effort, at least just be honest about that.
instead of asking average people to take responsibility
Yes this is precisely my point. You don't want responsibility. Mr populist is offering you that choice - forsake responsibility, blame others.
I have faced poverty for significant portions of my life, but I can still make an effort to live better wherever possible. It doesn't mean living in a cave, but it does mean living differently.
If you're sat here on reddit, you plainly have some free time, so kindly stop making excuses to remove your own responsibility for your impact on the world.
I work in sustainability and I monitor my own footprint and make green choices - I am not talking for myself, I’m talking for the 95% of people I speak to in my line of work who do not give a shit about this stuff and cannot be convinced otherwise
I work in sustainability and I monitor my own footprint and make green choices
Well good for you. Seems you're proving your own argument wrong, then.
I am not talking for myself, I’m talking for the 95% of people I speak to in my line of work who do not give a shit about this stuff and cannot be convinced otherwise
'I can't be bothered' is not a good argument for avoiding responsibility. Perhaps you cannot personally convince people otherwise, but it does not mean people are incapable of caring or doing something.
Currently you seem to be actively discouraging people from caring or doing something, so that might explain your lack of success on this front.
I agree with most of that because the decisions made by big movers are so much more significant than regular folks (in particular, I think shipping needs to be nuclearised as I’ve heard the five largest boats contribute more Carbon Dioxide than every car). Aviation is a thing though, it’s driven by demand, and that’s people flying multiple times a year. What is the solution to that from a sustainability perspective? It’s tons more carbon than virtually anything else and I’m unaware if the tech is there
Nuclear reactors on ships and subs require highly enriched uranium which shouldn't ever make it into the hands of civilians. That would be a security disaster.
huge global computing and datacentre businesses using ungodly amounts of power
I still don't understand why this isn't an obvious place for colossal efficiency gains.
Computers turn electricity into heat. The "work" that they do in terms of actual compute isn't beholden to the laws of thermodynamics, and strictly speaking the energy put into the system should be almost entirely recoverable.
Surely the waste heat from datacentres should be pretty easy to recover and reuse? Be it for direct electricity regeneration, or for more direct purposes like district heating?
What Zach is trying to say is that you don’t have to ruin your life to campaign for more sustainable infrastructure and more government regulation on carbon - that’s a reasonable take
Just wanted to say I agree with your post, but with this point I think being green also can come with benefits.
For example getting an electric car, getting solar panels and going vegan have all improved my life for sure rather than ruining it
Oh 100% I agree and the more people who do this, the better
I just think we can’t rely on people making choices and having the time and money to make those choices - we need regulation on the producers first, and anyone who chooses to do the right thing (me and you both pal) is a bonus
People putting and defending individual responsibility onto everyone are absolutely using insane levels of logic. It's in the vein of "if everyone was a good person there would be no bad people", it's an unmanageable, naive worldview that does nothing to improve things all it does is it lets a small minority of petty assholes feel morally superior for their laughably insignificant impact on the end result.
The whole point of government and electing leaders is to represent the will of the people, to police behaviours from the top down, and to lift individual responsibility for large societal problems from individual behaviour. The government is there to make hard decisions, to steer the nation, to know better and to find out how to do better than an individual, the whole fucking point is to use aggregate socioeconomic and scientific knowledge and distribute the solution. Making every individual responsible is unmanageable, unenforceable, and unsustainable.
The best place to cut individual emissions is at the point of manufacturing, because it's the cheapest, most enforceable, and easiest to legislate point of the process to manage and reason about. Saying that people just have to make better decisions is so fucking naive, it's the neoliberal brain rot that claims that the invisible hand of the free market will lead us into a green utopia should we all just collectively stamp our feet and only buy eco products. Ignoring the societal collapse we'd face if everyone became so enlightened tomorrow, or even over just the next year.
Also ignoring that most of those fucking eco companies are only so because they pay resource corporations to not cut down the rainforest, they're not carbon neutral, they just pay a stealth tax.
What we need is for the government to create goals, transition plans, and nationalised solutions to the problem. Yes, costs will go up, but so will new businesses emerge, new jobs, new industries and fields. We've been borrowing from the future, it's time to stop pussyfooting and start investing in the future, and it has to happen from the top down, because societal change happens via legislation and reigning in businesses, not by shaming individuals and excusing the behaviours of their bosses. The corporations are not rational and will not just fall in line to fill the mythical market demand, because they're led by people, usually people that ignore good advice and follow their biased narrow worldview. You can't expect every person to track down and research every fucking object they ever use, the fucking privilege to even claim such a solution as reasonable.
Fundamentally though should the poorest in society be priced out of say driving or eating meat regularly while the rich continue as before using carbon related taxes which leads to a situation where a poor person is priced out of driving a car but a rich person can still fly on their private jet?
Also should there increased taxes put on imports from countries like China who have a huge carbon output? Since the typical mindset from the left seems incredibly odd where they often blame the consumer for wanting to buy cheaper goods even though on a global scale by that logic we might as well just open more coal plants here in the UK but for some reason that’s unacceptable and only non western countries can make money by polluting while the poorer in the west have to pay the costs for a greener earth.
While I agree to a certain extent - individuals have lined power to change a lot of these issues in their day-to-day, I do think your diet is the easiest thing you can change.
Animal agriculture is not ever going to be sustainable and meet the demands of people eating meat today, especially with "ethical" practices being favoured.
Regulating the UK , you can go to net zero and do all the restrictions you like it will only make the UK poorer and offshore it’s pollution to other countries that willfully take it as they will keep developing and become more innovative and richer. Regulating the UK will do nothing. What countries should be pushing its towards countries like India China Even UsA to reduce it, then that creates an even playing field. Make people poorer and more dependent on other nations for their good will be a catastrophe in the long term of the nations prosperity for UK. As there is already evidence of that in pollution statistics per countries and economic developments.
why do you think "dirty energy generation businesses, global shipping businesses, aviation businesses, huge global computing and datacentre businesses" are doing the things they do?
Is it just because they're moustache-twirlingly evil, or is it because individuals choose the cheapest energy/shipping/aviation supplier and are happily using cloud computing services and AI
Because they’re acting rationally by prioritising profit which is how we would expect them to behave - that’s exactly why we need state intervention and regulations to change the game, so they act rationally again to abide by the necessary regulations and clean up
Yes companies need to change but we do need to change our personal consumption habits too not expect companies to do it all for us without making sacrifices ourselves and reducing demand
As someone who doesn't drive, fly or eat meat I don't feel compelled to live that way. It's my choice and I'm much happier for it. Will my lifestyle have much impact, not really but nor does my vote and I continue to do that. I won't be voting Green though.
The big companies will fight tooth and nail to keep polluting, they always have. I try my best to avoid their products, that's all I can do.
But one of the industries that generate the largest amount of co2 is airlines so old school greens used to say you can’t fly. Whilst new school greens want to make it unaffordable for the poors to fly; whether thats deliberate or as a consequence of making flying more expensive it’s the same result.
Nice message, but very little discussion of what it means practically.
Unfortunately, his party is still opposed to nuclear energy, which is unfortunate. He seems to understand that individual carbon footprints are the trappings of the fossil fuel industry, but not that the opposition to nuclear energy is as well.
Can I also advocate for nuclear power, grid upgrades, and GM crops whilst being "green"?
Or do I still have to slaughter improvement on the altar of absolute perfection dogma?
Polanski said his party’s longstanding opposition to nuclear power would see it try to block a fleet of “mini” nuclear power plants being developed by Rolls-Royce.
Ah, dogma it is. Clearly they have learnt nothing from the past decades to nuclear opposition and the impact that had on the continued use of coal fired power stations (with all the pollution and radioactivity that brought).
Can I also advocate for nuclear power, grid upgrades, and GM crops whilst being "green"?
Of course you can. Green Party policy is decided democratically. We currently have a motion pending to reverse the party's stance on nuclear energy which will be voted on at the spring conference.
I keep seeing this point made and I've always wondered - what happens to existing Green members if you succeed? If the Green party after your next conference becomes pro-Nuclear, pro-NATO, YIMBY party what happens to all the Green MPs and councillors who are fundamentally against those things?
There are a number of us on the case, come get stuck in. What attracts me to the Party is the energy and approach to doing politics - if we can refine the tough edges with some analytical injections, we could be on to something special
That same approach and energy are what led to a person like Polanski being in charge in the first place.
Those aren't just rough edges, they are fundamental beliefs of the party membership and leadership. You can't reason someone out of a belief they didnt reason themselves into. If a person had any intetest at all in analytical thinking then they wouldn't hold such beliefs as Polanski's.
Having attended a local greens meeting recently, the number of people who had joined just to vote for Zack or after Zack was elected outnumbered the people who had been long-term members 2:1. Since green membership has increased so much recently it stands to reason that party views might modernise on things like nuclear energy.
If anything I'd predict that party views would come to reflect Polanski's own views more closely, but I don't think thats an improvement. His views on nuclear, economics and immigration are all indefensible.
They have a few ridiculous policies that are commonly defended by the "it's democratically decided and should change soon" line, IMO they shouldn't be that out of touch to begin with. The fact that Polanski has made a lot of comments defending his stance on Nuclear Energy makes me doubt his party entirely.
Frankly, this is the first time I've genuinely not wanted to vote for any party.
Fair enough, but the party membership has tripled since September and the new members are demographically quite different to the old members. So we can probably expect some pretty significant policy changes in the near future due to the influx of new voters with different ideas.
We currently have a motion pending to reverse the party's stance on nuclear energy which will be voted on at the spring conference.
And for GM crops?
In previous years, Green policy has been one of an effective ban i.e. not using the words "ban" but going wholly against the scientific consensus on GM safety that currently exists and calling for a "moratorium" that demands a level of proof that IMO they know is beyond reach so they can go "well the moratorium is in place until you show the evidence", so a ban in all but words.
I'm pretty sceptical of these small reactors which have a whiff of "giving Rolls Royce something to do", despite me being a big supporter of nuclear base load.
What we need to do is change our nuclear regulations to certify designs, rather than having each one being a unique process, and then just build some large-scale off-the-shelf proven designs from elsewhere without modifying them.
Once you have a standard process, the large ones will be much more efficient than the small ones.
These smaller modularised reactors are an attempt at standardisation. Also don't underestimate the importance of making sure that industry ticks over, this sort of expertise is use it or lose it
I mean that’s how innovation works. We could’ve agreed to another foreign manufacturer (in this case a US firm with big financial ties to Trump) coming in, spending 30 years to build a reactor and set an incredible high unit price, with continuing concerns about national security.
Instead we’ve chosen to take a gamble on new technology, one that can be produced in a few years and using a UK firm. Boosts energy production faster, guaranteed UK jobs, sets up a manufacturing chain that can supply nationally, and if we get it right the UK could become a leader in SMRs.
Youay some very good points. I guess I'm thinking that while these may solve a niche problem, they're not a substitute for GW scale based load stations IMO
I've been optimistic about small scale nuclear power since seeing this Google tech talk from 2007 about a fusion reactor concept that would fit in a shipping container. If this tech existed it would mean you could literally just deliver new power capacity to an area on the back of a truck.
the large ones will be much more efficient than the small ones
The design as presented forgoes the turbines, cooling towers, etc and has a higher efficiency than designs that depend on a thermal power station as the energy converter, but sadly relies on things like an X-Ray photovoltaic converter that they didn't invent yet.
Shell and BP in the Seventies and Eighties knew what they were doing to the planet through their actions
Would have been good if we had copied France and used nuclear power to generate 80% of our electricity since the 80s, but unfortunately organisations like the Greens were busy spreading misinformation, so we burned enormous quantities of coal for decades instead. Let's see, have they educated themselves yet?
If a coalition government was formed with the Greens, Polanski said his party’s longstanding opposition to nuclear power would see it try to block a fleet of “mini” nuclear power plants being developed by Rolls-Royce.
However, he would not be drawn on blocking large reactors already under construction at Hinkley Point in Somerset and Sizewell in Suffolk, saying the decision should be deferred to local citizen’s assemblies.
No. Let's check their website...
We want to see the phase-out of nuclear energy, which is unsafe and much more expensive than renewables. The development of nuclear power stations is too slow given the pace of action we need on climate. They also create unmanageable quantities of radioactive waste and are inextricably linked with the production of nuclear weapons.
You can't, but his point would be that we aren't going to solve climate change with individual flygskam.
I don't know how Polanski specifically thinks we can solve the impact of flying, but I'd argue the cat is out of the bag for international travel. The only way we are going to reduce its environmental impact is with sustainable aviation fuels.
On the other hand, nuclear power is critical for scaling up SAF with current technology and they're still opposed to that.
He is right that we need to focus more on the systemic issues, which is not things like personal foot prints etc. and getting all caught up in that is a distraction. Purity tests are also unhelpful when you are trying to build a moment and find collaboration, what we have in common is more important than what divides us.
Living by one's values brings eudaimonia so do what you can do and the wider that moral circle the more you have. However we are caught in the system we are in. For some driving a petrol car could be the only option etc. So mental flexibility is also key (which is also good for wellbeing).
I think what he’s saying is that your actions can be whatever you like them to be. You shouldn’t feel because you do a certain thing, then that excludes you from ‘being green’.
He is the Nigel Farage of green politics! Full on populist.
He knows that the standard of green message of go veggie, cycle everywhere and never go on a foreign holiday. Would be about as popular as asking the electorate to eat a plate of green vomit.
I mean he has thrown the environment under the bus but to be fair, he did that ages ago, with his insane immigration policies.
Reasonable enough message but it doesn't fit the idea of a "green party" to me, I'm also unsure why they are opposed to nuclear energy? I was under the impression this was a clean energy source
The steel-man of being green and anti-nuclear is that leaving radioactive waste lying around for thousands of years is a terrible thing to do for future generations, there's a risk of catastrophic incidents and nuclear weapon proliferation, and batteries are improving to the point where you could use solar/wind/hydro for your base load, even though they are highly variable.
IMO they're wrong about this in a few ways:
* current gen nuclear reactors are very safe, when you think of chernobyl or fukushima you need to remember that you are thinking of a reactor maintained by the soviets in the 80s, or on a literal earthquake fault line. There's no reason they'd be unsafe in the UK.
* Nuclear can scale a lot more. If we switched to only renewables, we might need to cut our energy consumption. Everything that takes energy to produce (i.e. everything) would be more expensive. OTOH, nuclear would allow us to 10x our energy output, while still being cheap, which be a huge boon to our local industries, electric vehicles, heating bills, etc.
The biggest problem with nuclear is project delays and cost overruns, see https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power-construction for a ton of info on this, but construction costs are around 75% of the cost of nuclear energy, and a lot of this comes from changing regulation while the plant is under construction
Construction costs are not 75% of the cost in the UK - clean-up liabilities and pensions are much bigger albatrosses around the UK nuclear industry and we as taxpayers have had to pick up the (very significant) tab for those for more than fifty years now.
Part of the problem is that proponents of nuclear in the UK have a very long track record of saying "yes, we know this went to shit economically last time but this time it will be better" when we are getting near a century of that not happening. At some point it might be time to start distrusting their economic projections.
Dang thank you for writing this out, I appreciate it. My conclusions on nuclear are sadly few and far between, only knowing that France have done well with them according to some videos I've seen and Japan not so much but that seems to mainly be caused by geography that simply isn't a concern for us(?). The point you make about switching purely to renewables also seems true, I wouldn't like scheduled brownouts like they have in South Africa or anything similar ideally.
That cost challenge when building nuclear power plants seems insane, idk how you're supposed to manage that. I guess somehow build faster, or find a way to make exceptions to the changes for plans that are currently being built? Maybe deferring regulation or making exceptions for large scale builds?
One approach to the cost problem is to build smaller reactors (you may have heard the term SMR) - sadly the greens are anti this as well, they plan to phase out nuclear entirely
Ah are these SMRs the ones that were proposed recently with Rolls Royce making them? I think I read there would be a site in Wales or something? Ye that definitely sucks that they would be opposed to small ones, I understand the long term goal but surely going off of the power from soe SMRs instead of imported oil would be good in the medium term.
It costs a lot (and takes a long time) to add new nuclear production capacity, Greens think money should be invested in renewable energy production instead
Ye that's fair enough. I've not had much exposure to the green party really, I've only started hearing bits and pieces since Polanski came about as their leader
The output of the average person vs the super rich is so overwhelming, and also the mega corporations pushing individual responsibility whilst at the same time using big data to discover the perfect, personalised way to reel you in
I saw someone calculate recently that the super yacht Leo was on outputs more co2 in a fortnight than a single western person would in 600 years
Are you kidding? Green membership has more than doubled since he became leader. He's the only credible threat to Farage and Reform and he's only increasing in popularity.
Unless the Greens actually near 30% of the vote (no signs of that currently), then he's no more credible a threat to Reform than Keir Starmer, Ed Davey or even Kemi Badenoch. Probably less of one because they have little overlap in the kind of seats and voters they appeal to.
He's saying this to try and appeal to the centre and centre left, he knows if he wants to be anywhere near power then the Green purity tests aren't gonna get him anywhere.
If it’s seen as a collective responsibility while not thinking it needs to apply to yourself (Or you can just pay a ‘sin tax’ in form of a carbon tax) why can’t I just say instead of a national responsibility (Or rather ‘make it unaffordable for the poor’) it should be a global responsibility and first world countries can continue driving, going on holidays, eat meat regularly and so on but third world countries can be forced to not do any of that ‘for the greater good’? Or at a less extreme level just apply huge carbon related import fees for anything arriving from high polluting countries like China, including for businesses ordering stuff from there?
Also a lot of environmental measures become farcical if you’re also for AI data centers that require huge amounts of electricity and water for things that are inessential in the extreme like generating images and videos.
You can: you just don't fly too often, take public transport when it's an option, don't drive an oversized and/or uneconomical car, eat a couple of veggie meals a week, and try and opt for chicken where possible.
It's really not rocket-science to make a massive reduction as a nation, without losing any quality of life.
For some people not flying is not seeing their family or not taking a holiday because routes might be more expensive by train.
Not driving might mean that you can't work because public transport might be too infrequent. Some people drive an EV.
You can be green and do your best to minimising your footprint but it is costly in a cost of living crisis, these things are expensive because of austerity and artificial societal decline
I think he recognises that the rich and powerful lecturing us about climate change while jetting to lavish banquets undermines any support for green policies.
I mean, if God as described (benevolent) existed, he would want you to prosper. But there's a difference between yoking the labour of others for a life of absurd opulence, and having the good things in life (good food, fulfilment, safety, friends and family).
The desire for more than you could ever need or use is a sickness.
If we’re going by the Gospels, Jesus doesn’t seem to be a big fan of wealth e.g. “you cannot serve God and money”, “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” turning over the money lenders’ tables. He was happy for people to pay taxes though “give to Caesar things that are Caesar’s.”
There are some sections like God rewarding Job with material wealth for passing his trials and some bits in the Epistles but I find saying you follow Jesus but like accumulating wealth a hard circle to square.
Snapshot of Zack Polanski: You can fly, drive, eat meat and still be green submitted by TimesandSundayTimes:
An archived version can be found here or here. or here
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
People are ragging on this but the fact is that individual responsibility for climate change being forced upon the little people is bullshit - and I say that as someone who works in the sustainability field
The responsibility should fall on the shoulders of those making the biggest contributions to the carbon in the atmosphere
That is, dirty energy generation businesses, global shipping businesses, aviation businesses, huge global computing and datacentre businesses using ungodly amounts of power, and the agriculture and farming industries, big development companies building in unsustainable ways, and of course the state
If there was good government regulation in place (and appropriate support to these industries to transition to greener methods and tech), and we continue our transition to greener energy generation, aaaand the government invests properly in public transportation to make it the most attractive (or at least most cost effective) way to move around, aaaaand the government taxed those companies who produce more than their fair share of carbon and don’t try to minimise it - then it makes very little difference if Bob drives to work and has a ham sandwich at lunch
What Zach is trying to say is that you don’t have to ruin your life to campaign for more sustainable infrastructure and more government regulation on carbon - that’s a reasonable take
There's us turning off the lights when we leave a room, and then there's every shop on Oxford Street which is covered in lights and screens that are on 24 hours a day. Even when the store itself is closed.
Doors wide open when it's -3 outside!
Tesco never fixing their fridge doors...
There is a degree of 'cakeism' here though.
If we forced companies/industries to do all of that stuff then the additional costs will eventually fall on the individual. Mainly through higher prices, but also 'enshitification' and even through personal investments/pensions as share prices fall.
Individuals do have the power to change things through their spending power - if people stopped consuming things from polluting companies they would be forced to shift to greener methods. If more people made the sacrifice of taking public transport it would be able to run at a lower-per-person cost. This idea that individual decisions don't matter as long as large companies are polluting is just a cop-out. It's the sort of thing that gives a green light to a hypocritical generation that complains about climate change but takes 20 minute showers and puts towels in the wash after one use. This small stuff does matter - you can't both care about the environment and refuse to challenge your irrational habits.
Build it and they will come mentally.
If the government invested heavily in public transport to the point it wasn’t waiting 30 minutes per bus for it then to not turn up or drive past more people would use it.
They’ve got to run it at a loss in my opinion for the foreseeable future to get the social attitudes towards public transport to change. Slow gradual shifts in attitude win out eventually. Kind of like the small nudge the sugar tax did. I think that was a perfect example of social change.
Also cracking down on antisocial behaviour on public transport would go a long way, but again that takes time and money.
Yeah I agree. It’s all part of an overall strategy that the government needs to take. It would work if they put the investment behind it. Look at cycling in places like Denmark. There’s more cyclists routes than roads and they really invested heavily in shifting the public attitude.
The roads are run at a loss - what's so different about running busses at a loss?
Reads a bit like there's some natural law behind it.
You are arguing for the status quo and I think you just need to look at how things work now and ask if they are working. We already have every cost passed on to the consumer and we already have enshittification happening just to maximize profit.
People aren't making purchases based on how environmentally friendly they are, that information is not readily available and many people don't have the luxury of including that on their criteria on purchasing things on top of all the other considerations. Does it do what I need, can I afford it and can I get it quickly and easily. We are not blameless a lot of us could do better but there is nothing trying to tip the balance.
The cost of inaction on these decisions is huge, we are already seeing effects from climate change huge potential damage costs from floods/fires/storms etc. Businesses (and consumers by extension) are not paying the costs of the damage they are doing from our environment, meaning they choose the cheapest option, and consumers are the same, often through no choice of their own.
That's what taxes are for, discourage the behavior you don't want. Tax carbon, increase the costs for business and consumer to incentivise them to change their choices. I don't think enough people will just change their behavior because environmentalists convince them it's important to, unless the consequences are already affecting them, by which time it's already too late (though I'd happily be proven wrong on that).
I totally agree, governments should regulate.
If that was all he said, I'd probably agree with him. Unfortunately it isn't. He is anti-SMR and those are probably going to be one of our best ways to decarbonise in the short term.
The Greens have also opposed critical grid upgrades. Again, something that can help us decarbonise.
Where the Greens lose for me is their dogmatic demand for absolute perfection, instead of getting behind incremental improvement.
Saying you're able to fly, drive and eat meat and be green doesn't seem like asking for absolute perfection to me. What am I not understanding?
It's the worst of both worlds.
On the one hand they don't push the biggest things that government can do to enable a green transition, because they are unpopular with voter groups.
On the other hand they don't expect any personal changes in order to reach the stated goal.
The end result is that they say they want a transition to a green, carbon neutral economy but aren't doing the ground work to enable it.
That contradicts the person I replied to.. was I who you meant to respond too?
He's less absolutist than many of his party, which is a good thing, but agree that we need SMR energy as well as renewables for rapid decarbonisation.
Is he really though, or is he the acceptable voice of their ridiculous policies? They still believe in nuclear disarmament, which no matter how many layers of 'we believe in peaceful debate' nonsense you wrap it up in is an incredibly dangerous and right now stupid policy.
That's why I joined the party to vote against it. If there's no headway by the next GE I'll probably leave but with their massive uptick in membership with young people I'm hoping the more NIMBY views will be rooted out
I believe they will soften on this (I have seen them already proposing updates on their energy policy) and their other more extreme views as they move towards the election. Their policies are democratically voted so it will tend towards the more popular views as the number of members increase which I think anti nuclear energy is not.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good (from both the party and an individual voter perspective).
We are one of the windiest countries on the planet. I'm not against SMRs but nuclear is so expensive and takes such a long time to return on investment (SMR even more so as it's new). Compared to onshore wind which is so cheap and quick to produce. It makes me feel so sad that can drive around Europe and see wind turbines everywhere and in the UK they are so few and far between.
And for storage so many people are driving around on massive batteries that it could sort out load balancing.
Renewables are 4x more expensive than nuclear with externalities imputed. Renewables have low input cost (wind is free) but very high capital and operational costs. Big ones include grid restructure and energy storage for when the wind isn’t blowing. We still don’t have cost effective grid scale storage technology, and we won’t for a few decades. Right now the optimal grid structure for the UK is around 80-85% renewable, with the remainder comprised of stable baseload generation. This can be from coal (cheapest), oil and gas, or nuclear. Nuclear is the most expensive of these but by far the best for the environment.
I don't know if some paper about LCOE in Texas or Germany applies well to us in the UK. We do have Sizewell C and Hinkley Point C overrunning massively which feels like it should be a factor.
And on the otherhand in UK LCOE of Renewables is decreasing steadily.
I don't think anyone is suggesting getting rid of nuclear, but if we want more energy quickly, than onshore wind is cheapest and very cost effective. Nuclear can be cheaper in the long run, but for Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C it's a very long run before they return their investment seeing as they still aren't operational.
First, it’s not LCOE. The study was actually created to improve upon the flawed LCOE metric, which does not cover the major cost components like grid restructure, time value of energy production, volatility risk (in both renewables and fossil fuels), grid reliability, and contract terms and futures.
Second, it’s not a case study but a study on the cost factors. They used very different markets to understand the factor variance. They outline these differences.
It’s not. It’s much more expensive. You are only imputing the nominal costs of the build and opex. That’s just a fraction of total cost.
For the record I agree that nuclear in the UK has been managed very poorly. It would be much more cost effective to go with coal and oil and gas.
I mean see is the imperative word there because we are in the top 5 countries in the world in both overall wind power production and in % of wind in our mix. You just don't see them here when you're driving because we build offshore more than we do on land. Go figure, island nation makes use of ocean. Same is true for Denmark and Ireland, some of the only countries with a higher proportion of wind power. Lots offshore, only some on land.
Also thinking SMRs are expensive because nuclear has been expensive historically and because it's new... I can get where you're coming from, but I don't think it's the right way to think about it. The whole SMR concept is driven by removing the things that made nuclear so expensive historically - mainly the construction time and costs.
Not saying that this is guaranteed to succeed, I'm just saying that you ought to think of it in those terms. Will they be able to remove the traditional big costs and time sinks and to what degree? Because if the new economics work like companies like Rolls Royce think (or claim) they will then it will no longer be a given that nuclear is so expensive, or that it takes a long time to return on investment.
With SMR claims it's hard to verify how good it will be, the only country that has SMRs is China and that's a complete unknown for how economical it is. Also a lot of the SMR stuff we want to do in the UK is still a bit like traditional nuclear in just bunching lots up in a specific place so will have similar grid issues we have now.
And speaking of grid issues that is the great thing with onshore wind, you can build it closer to where you need it, not hundreds of miles off the coast. Offshore is great, it is probably the most economically efficient way, but it's also incredibly expensive. Onshore wind in comparison is very cheap. If we had more wind farms, even just small scale community ones it would pay for itself back within a year or two. Offshore takes more like 5-10 years to payback and then it generates lots of money after.
Standard nuclear takes like 40 years to payback investment, SMRs are an unknown, Hinkley Point and Sizewell C’s are probably closer to 100 years with all the delays.
For storage we should probably use nuclear batteries (depleted uranium etc). They're great big heavy things, perfect for the foundations of wind turbines.
That also reduces the demand on (much lighter) lithium so that it can stay in cars, ear buds etc.
That, of course, is merely part of a solution and not the whole solution. We will need generation, we will almost certainly always need generation and for everything that's wrong with it; nuclear is probably the least bad option.
It's either that or keep gas online. Heck, we probably would have to keep some gas knocking around for peaks.
There is no one single solution. It's a mix. It's balancing pros Vs cons and the mix for Locale A will differ to Locale B.
But the fantasy of 100% renewables is (with current technology) just that; a fantasy. We should move now with what we have and hang the cost. It will still be cheaper in the long run.
If we'd done that in the 80s with nuclear etc, we wouldn't be in the situation we are now WRT to our energy supply and (quite possibly) climate change.
Agreed on all fronts
I'm a Green member and voter for well over a decade and I also agree.
I don't think there are better options given my political leanings but to be taken more seriously, unfortunately they can't have these weird "gaps" that wouldn't be focussed on were they right wing populist.
Where do you think those businesses get their income from?
Do you think aeroplanes would fly if people didnt buy tickets?
Do you think products would get shipped if people didnt buy them?
Etc etc.
Agree with this. The thing is, government can force companies to be more responsible but they're not going to do it if it means they won't get votes in the next general election.
It's all good for Party X to pledge in a manifesto they will ban petrol cars / hike tax for green initiatives or whatever, but if someone thinks it's going to make their life more difficult they're going to vote for someone who promises not to do those things.
We can all make small changes that make little impact on ourselves, i.e reducing food waste, having one day a week not eating meat, taking a travel mug with us, car sharing on longer trips, buying second hand clothes.
Insignificant changes that don't make our lives harder and that will get the ball rolling. Then like you said... Once there is less of a demand for this stuff companies wont buy or produce as much and the government will feel more confident in restricting its production through policy.
If governments, companies and households could all make reasonable changes then we wouldn't need to be perfect environmentalists. I've found myself being more eco-conscious by just starting small things. I reduced my meat in take and then realized it wasnt that bad so reduced it even more until I didn't mind just eating vegetarian. Now I'm starting to make more of an effort to buy seasonal local produce that hasn't got air miles because I see the benefit to spending an extra half hour a week nipping to my local farm shop instead of aldi.
If the population were more sympathetic to green causes then governments would feel more confident banning stuff.
Do you think water companies should be allowed to use the same logic when it comes to releasing toxic chemicals in your drinking water reservoirs?
“That’s just what happens in the system, if you want less toxic chemicals released perhaps YOU should drink less water, then demand will go down and our toxic chemicals emissions will naturally decrease”
No - government regulate all sorts of harmful chemicals to prevent them from being released, they don’t tell consumers “farmers need to use pesticides that are collapsing the ecosystem and giving down-stream people cancer - so please try to eat less food because that will reduce the amount of pesticides they need to use” - they regulate the producers of the danger, and those producers find new better ways to provide the same services without the cancer
No but thats irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
The things people are buying cannot be produced without producing greenhosue gases and increasing climate change. Water, OTOH, CAN be made availabel without toxic chemicals in.
You've created a false equivelancy between clean water (possible and necessary) and carbon free plane travel (impossible and unnecessary).
Eating less food and flying on planes less are NOT even remotely similar things.
It’s not at all false
You need to spend some carbon to produce a lot of the things we’re talking about - but there’s scope to MASSIVELY reduce how much carbon is produced/released.
We don’t need to ban it - we absolutely can enforce year on year reductions and tax carbon emissions outside of a reasonable level for the activity.
You've completely ignored or misunderstood my point.
People don't need to go on holiday via plane travel. They do anyway. That is a choice made by normal people.
Same goes for many other high carbon products and services. Consumers choose to consume them. The businesses only make money off of these when consumers pay them.
People don’t need to eat bread - that’s a choice.
Pesticides were used to grow the wheat, which caused cancer
We didn’t tell people to change their diet to avoid bread - we told the farmers to stop using the cancer chemical
Another false equivelance.
If posion free wheat didnt exist then we WOULD have told people to avoid bread if they dony want to be poisoned.
Emmission free planes DO NOT EXIST which means we tell people not to fly if they dont want to contribute to emmissions.
No one is suggesting we ban carbon emmissions
Air travel with 20% lower emissions is absolutely something which could be achieved by airlines if incentive was in place to ensure the most fuel efficient planes were used, and the least efficient were upgraded or scrapped
No, people are suggesting that the average person reduces or minimises the emmissikns cuases by their choices. You and Zach Polanski reject that suggestion.
If people stopped using air travel to go on holiday, how much would that reduce emmissions, do you think?
It may have escaped your notice but airlines and manufacturers already invest massively in new planes that drive down emissions, the industry is already incentivised to do so by price competition.
The thing that stops it going faster is cost (ticket prices would have to rise to pay for it), and the bureaucracy that makes it so expensive, time consuming, and slow to get new models of planes and new clean sheet designs certified for service and pilots qualified on them. A lot of that bureaucracy is because of an abundance of caution when it comes to safety, which in turn helps keep flying as the safest form of travel.
So what exactly would you expect airlines to do that they're not already doing?
You also have to bear in mind that the push for businesses to do so needs to come from both sides: If it comes from Government alone and not consumers, there's real scope for a PR push to get the consumer to push back against it. If we can enthuse consumers to value lower emission versions or just general lower emissions, then there's less scope for such a push and more opportunity in using those metrics as a marketing benefit.
I’ve not seen enthusiasm for green stuff from the general population in my work - there’s a minority who care about it a lot, myself included, but most people are too busy trying to find the cheapest way to feed their family and pay the bills
If we could do a big ad campaign to explain that we’re all going to be fucked if we don’t deal with this, that would be great - but most people don’t have the luxury of being able to think about 50 years time, when they are frantically trying to make sure the next 12 hours goes ok
It doesn't ruin your life to not do these things
The more people who reduce meat consumption, and stop flying, and use more public transport etc, the better
However we CANNOT Put full responsibility for saving the planet down to people who are just about holding it together, keeping food on the table and raising healthy kids, keeping a roof over everyone’s heads etc. Most people don’t have the luxury of thinking about anything outside of their immediate needs, family and job.
The big companies that are producing the carbon can provide the same goods and services with a much much lower carbon footprint, as has been proven by every single company that’s ever tried to - they just need incentive to do so. That’s where the responsibility should lie, and that’s where we need government to provide those incentives
They can do this at cost which will get them immediately undercut by another company that doesn't choose to do so, and the customer inevitably buying the cheapest good.
That’s the problem and that’s why you need universal legislation instead of hoping companies do it out of the goodness of their hearts - same as we do for pesticides, and fertiliser, and toxic waste, and CFCs, and refrigerants etc etc - no one has the choice to buy cheaper products that are dangerous because of those things - same should be true for excess carbon
Carbon tax. I've commented elsewhere on this.
Yeah 100%
https://archive.is/tayUR#selection-3511.150-3515.156
Good primer setting out the problem with carbon taxes (voters hate them).
Corporate emissions are just aggregate individual emissions, the individual is still ultimately responsible. If you burn a lump of coal you’re not absolved of any responsibility for the emissions just because you didn’t personally dig it out of the ground.
“Corporate toxic waste in to rivers emissions and CFC emissions are just aggregate individual emissions” - see how dumb that is?
CFCs and dumping toxic waste are illegal, greenhouse gas emissions are not. As a consumer you are fully aware of the carbon footprint of what you buy and the choices you make.
My guy, these businesses don't just pump carbon into the atmosphere for shits and giggles. They do it because you the little guy consumer ask them to and then give them money in order to do so. The impact of the aviation industry on the climate minus that of commercial passengers is close to zero. The impact of energy generators without energy consumers would be zero. The impact of farming without demand for meat or exotic produce would be a fraction of what it is now.
What you are arguing for is rules that prevent consumers making the decisions they currently make or significantly increase the costs of making these decisions. That's fine, but ultimately you are saying it is the fault of the little guy and also the little guy doesn't give enough of a shit to change their behaviour without financial incentives.
It can be both. People buy stupid shit and don’t give a toss about the impact. Think fast fashion and toy crazes like Labubu. Demand is manufactured by corporations, influencers, advertising and we suck it up like the good little consumers we are. I wouldn’t consider myself especially green, but I’m heartily sick of rampant greed and consumerism.
I don’t. The idea of shipping some plastic tat across the entire world makes me feel as uncomfortable as stuffing plastic into the normal bin.
If people stopped buying then the ships would stop sailing. I hate this defeatist mindset of “I’m just a poor helpless consumer who is routinely forced to buy things from Alibaba”.
Right, and I don't eat meat or drive a car or heat my house for most of the day. But other people do, and that's what causes a significant environmental impact. Consumer choice.
“My guy - these companies don’t spew toxic waste in to the rivers for no reason, they do it because you, the little guy, pay them money to”
Stupid argument - we pay for a service which could be delivered much more cleanly - I know the building industry best - developers produce huge amounts of carbon for no good reason, there are much more sustainable ways to develop better buildings, in a cleaner way, and even ways that are mostly cost neutral - if the government regulated these industries, EXACTLY the same way as we have done with other polluters for different harmful substances, they can find myriad ways to provide the same services with much much lower carbon output.
I’ve seen carbon audits across different industries where cost-neutral decisions could cut emissions in half, easily. Since I began carbon auditing within my business, it’s dropped to 20% of original output with NO change to service provided
They are polluting, the only difference this time is the pollution is invisible.
This is absolutely true in many cases but, if we are to be completely honest, not in others.
As someone who knows a little about it, the one I would point to is flying. There is no realistic way to deliver the same quantity of aviation travel to consumers for significantly less carbon emissions with current technology. The main attempt at reducing carbon emissions is with sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) but these are damaging to the environment in different ways - mostly because ecologically diverse forests must be cleared to make space for homogeneous farms for SAF crops like switchgrass or palm.
You can make SAF from waste products without deforestation but this is vastly more complicated and the technology is still being developed with years to go before significant roll out. So if you want to reduce aviation carbon emissions the only way to do that before ~2035 is with "little man" individual choices and reducing flying.
You can make the argument (perhaps this is what Zack would say) that you can basically ignore this then and focus on areas where corporate interest is driving the carbon load, but he should be honest about what this means on the limits of carbon reduction targets given how high a proportion of emissions the aviation industry contributes.
Edit: sorry while I was writing this you acknowledged all the above to the other user! So my point is just the last one, Zack and greens should just be honest about the limits of decarbonisation targets if you don't advocate for individual behavioural change.
How the fuck do you deliver flights and meat much more cleanly? The environmental impact is a direct result of the product.
I'm no eco-warrior at all, but trying to pretend all those emissions aren't a result of end consumer behaviour smacks of having your cake and eating it too
You don’t eliminate it immediately - but a 5-10% reduction is absolutely achievable
Different feeds produce different amounts of methane from cattle, for example
Different modern planes use fuel more efficiently than older ones
There are hundreds of little ways that all industries COULD minimise and reduce carbon output if they had to, and they would immediately find them if they had incentive to do so - I say this as someone who has witnessed or been part of many carbon audits across different industries - there are loads of cheap easy ways to reduce carbon sitting on the table, and most companies simply aren’t thinking about it because there’s no incentive
You're edging towards a carbon tax, here, which is the economists golden policy for reducing carbon emissions. The trouble with this is that it's very difficult to get a democratic consensus for such a tax because it is just passed on to the consumer, increasing cost of living.
Increases in fuel costs and innovations in wing design have driven fuel efficiency and reduced carbon emissions for flights, also there are still a lot of low hanging fruit in terms of reducing emissions from changes to flight routes, to applying duty and taxes to private flights and private jets which are hugely inefficient and don't pay their way (and the tax can then be directed into subdisiding more efficiency elsewhere)
Most regulations increase costs. You haven't provided any examples of cost neutral measures within your own industry that would make any substantial difference. There literally are not cost neutral measures in most industries. Producing meat is hugely carbon intensive and there isn't a way around that without lab grown meat which is very expensive. Aviation fuel is the vast majority of the carbon impact of aviation and alternative fuels are very expensive and not viable at the moment. No amount of regulation would affect the carbon impact of aviation without increasing costs so consumers fly less. Energy has already been hugely regulated and it has resulted in the UK having some of the highest energy costs in the world. This is forcing consumers to choose more expensive greener energy instead of giving them the choice. I'm fine with that, but it's dishonest to pretend that these policies do anything other than manipulate consumer preferences by artificially changing costs.
There are some industries which are harder to improve than others - and some which will cost more than others
But I’ve worked with businesses across many different sectors - basically every single office in London could reduce to 75% emissions over the course of a year or two for very little investment if any - just from changing lightbulbs and turning off their computers at night, running their AC and heating properly, sorting their waste properly, or installing more efficient tech.
I’ve seen it over and over and over again, with support and incentive, businesses ALWAYS are able to make huge reductions in their outputs
Completely eliminating carbon in aviation or the meat industry is really really hard. Making a 5% reduction in carbon emissions however is NOT - that’s a case of incrementally more efficient methods and tech, different feed for the cattle, phasing out older models of planes etc etc - these are not unsolvable problems - no one is saying “ELIMINATE ALL CARBON NOW” - we’re saying “take reasonable measures to minimise carbon” which 90% of companies simply are not doing
You genuinely think offices having the wrong lightbulbs is a meaningful portion of our national emissions?
Absolutely and I’ve seen the data that proves it
HUGE amounts of energy are wasted for no good reason reason - obviously lightbulbs is only going to save a percentage point or 2 of total energy, but combined small things (like correctly operating AC systems and making sure lights are not left on over night etc) all add up to big savings for individual companies. As I say, I’m in the industry and I’ve seen changes like that make 10-20% differences in total carbon footprint for service industry offices
Yeah I'm not saying those are bad ideas but office efficiencies are a tiny proportion of our ecological footprint. We need to concentrate on aviation, agriculture, transport, domestic heating, and construction.
Agreed - but we can do all of it at the same time - blanket incentives to reduce carbon output for all businesses by 5%, for example, would make an impact and be extremely achievable
I’ve seen audits in manufacturing also, and my focus is in construction - both at design and during construction there are huge savings to be made - I’ve worked on buildings in the top 0.01% in terms of energy efficiency and sustainability (measured through BREEAM score) - they don’t all need to be “best” - but construction could easily reduce overall carbon output by 20% if limits were put in place, and financial penalties for going too far above reasonable levels.
Many many many many developers, architects and contractors just don’t give a single shit about carbon and it shows - though this is improving fairly rapidly.
Planning is currently the only real barrier with SOME councils being pretty good at imposing notional carbon targets - but if this sort of guidance has no teeth, AND if it’s not universal, then it’s more likely to make developers build further down the road with a council that don’t care, than to actually make the changes.
But this is a choice. You could pay for a more environmentally friendly option. You probably don’t because it is more expensive.
Well personally i usually do - both in business and personally - but this is a stupid argument
We do not allow for sewage waste companies to provide a cheaper service for individuals who don’t care if the sewage just gets dumped by the side of the road
We do not allow companies to provide a cheaper service so that consumers have the choice to use a service which dumps toxic chemicals in to drinking water reservoirs
But you think there should be consumer choice in something which will make large parts of the Earth uninhabitable
Unbelievably stupid
That’s a separate argument though. You think individuals can’t be trusted to make the sustainable choice, but they’re still responsible for the choice they make.
Often you don't actually have a choice, either through monopolies and near monopolies at both direct supplier and further upstream in the delivery chain. Also there's no way to make an informed choice when making most purchases as there's no labelling on emissions.
You don’t need emissions labelling to understand that flying, driving and meat are bad for the environment.
Is this true?
AI is known to be massively resource intensive and every major tech company is investing heavily in it.
I don’t know about everyone else but my usual tech platforms have all pushed AI to me against my will. I don’t read the AI overview on Google, I don’t care about AI tools on anything else. I would still buy these products with or without the AI.
The entire bubble seems to be built around a belief that there will be a use for AI at some point even if it’s a bit of a novelty at the moment. Companies are plowing major resources into something that is damaging for the environment for their own benefit, not for the present consumer.
The consumer demand is for the outcome, not the product.
For example when apple created the iPhone there was no demand for a smartphone because no one knew what it was, that it was possible. However, apple was serving the demands for more convenience, a more interactive product etc.
There's 0 consumer demand for most AI
Lol.
https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/2023/04/05/suddenly-ai-the-fastest-adopted-business-technology-in-history/
How could it possibly benefit them if there wasn't an end consumer who wanted it?
Do you think those businesses would exist without consumer demand?
Do you think water companies should be allowed to pump toxic waste in to rivers, because there is consumer demand for water?
Nope.
Regulations prevent the release of harmful chemicals across all industries in millions of different places - and those laws all gradually come in to effect as the dangers of those chemicals are understood - from fertilisers and pest control in farming, to waste and sewage.
Over and over and over again these industries say “if you regulate us we’ll all die and disappear forever!” And yet here we are
the amount of flights in business that could have been a zoom call is genuinely outrageous.
It's entirely an ego thing of "I'm a big boss boy who needs to be on flights", and to think 100 of those are more important than normal people's 1 flight a year or less for a holiday is crazy
Absolutely agree - for one of the companies I audit the business travel flights are far and away the biggest contributor to their carbon footprint - reducing those flights and reducing how many people they were sending on each flight had a big impact
However business travel only accounts for about 12% of commercial flights, so 88% of flying is for leisure
Who do you think those shipping companies are shipping to? Who do you think is eating that food? Who do you think is using that energy?
Corporations(tm) are the proximate cause of emissions, but those emissions exist in service of consumption. If you fly 20x a year the demand that you create has a substantial effect on the climate.
When farmers were producing wheat for us to eat, but using pesticides that cause cancer - we didn’t stop eating as much bread - we regulated the farmers to stop using the pesticide and find alternative ways to provide their goods/services without giving people cancer
When sewage treatment companies used to pump sewage in to waterways with impunity, we didn’t say “well if the consumers didn’t shit so much it wouldn’t be a problem” - we gave the responsibility to the companies to provide the service without the dangers
We can’t outright ban carbon emissions, but we can absolutely legislate that all companies need a carbon reduction plan, a year-on-year reduction, random carbon auditing (as we have done with other chemical release problems) and big financial penalties where companies are taking the piss.
Except the difference is there's nothing intrinsic about growing crops that necessitated those specific pesticides, or about sewage management that required contaminating waterways.
Growing meat, shipping goods and flying all intrinsically generate emissions. You can't legislate that away, and certainly not to the extent that would be required to meet the climate goals that environmentalists frequently espouse. Unless you think these effect sizes somehow account for 50% of emissions or more, you're never going to get anything like the impact that you could have if the high frequency users cut back their consumption. Hell, you would have better outcomes literally just regulating consumption (i.e. through quotas or financial penalties) but obviously that would be electoral suicide.
Presenting people with the fantasy that individual consumption doesn't matter is nonsense, and directs scrutiny away from the handful of people who massively drive up demand for these emissions (particularly in the case of aviation). It's a bad message driven by a populist effort to blame climate change on a handful of elites that can be harmlessly legislated out rather than by a consumption driven model of economics which will require compromises to uproot. Shocking and unprecedented that the green party would do this for the 38420th time.
They all intrinsically produce SOME emissions - but all are massively overproducing compared to the minimums you could provide the same service with - I know, I audit carbon, I’ve seen the data
You could have huge impacts with the right incentives, maybe not 50% but I’d put money on 25%
Obviously we also need to transition to nuclear and renewables too, and we probably at this point need some form of tech solution like better carbon scrubbing on top.
It would be lovely if consumption would reduce too, but that’s way way harder to control and legislate around (unless we bring back rationing) and we simply cannot count on enough people making “green choices” - it’s a lost cause, most people don’t have the capacity to care about it
Putting this many words in Zack's mouth is pretty hilarious.
He's just throwing out red meat (literal in this case) to broaden his demographic, more utterly meaningless vibes based politics.
This is not at all mind reading - I work in the sustainability industry and EVERYONE knows this - He’s just repeating what everyone in the green world talks about endlessly
The fact you work in the industry isn't relevant, if anything it shows you actually know more the average Green Party member knows about the topic and could probably do a better job in a leadership position than hypno boob man.
The fact is, he's only saying this because vibes, it doesn't go that deep. If you want to swing people to the left, just throw out the odd thing from time to time that doesn't make you sound like a lunatic, though Zack will have to throw out a lot more since most of what he comes out with is pretty unhinged.
This only works when you can successfully make the pitch to people that they can't be trusted, and so we must heavily tax negative externality goods/services, which will make their Spain holidays and temu orders more expensive. Perhaps even decrease quality of life, slightly, but that the tax revenue will at least benefit other areas of life.
Trying to differentiate between individual responsibility and "systemic" or "corporate" pollution is fundamentally impossible because they are one and the same thing - even if those links can sometimes appear opaque. Just look at your examples:
That has been demanded by consumers for cheap and abundant firm power and has given us lifestyles unthinkable - even to royalty - just a few hundred years ago.
That has been demanded by consumers who want cheap and diverse goods and products
That has been demanded by consumers who want cheap and diverse travel and holidays
That has been demanded by consumers who want these products and services. The ones that you are using this very minute, not considering the environmental damage done by the vast infrastructure needed to provide a digital service like Reddit. Do you know how much energy is required to make a chip? Or a fibre optic cable?
Literally every single element of where you think the blame lies is integral to what you are doing and using right now. We are creating that demand. It's utterly absurd to absolve yourself of that responsibility.
Also the taxation on businesses which produce unreasonable carbon emissions (including food production) would naturally drive up prices, and wallets would drive sustainable individual choices anyway. People do what's affordable: if meat became a luxury product (beef and lamb already are starting to get there in the UK) then we'd produce and consume less of it.
The average person most certainly contributes to carbon. Especially when we have billions of average people.
The average person has agency in deciding whether such businesses operate. The average person is choosing to ship in phone cases from China, choosing which agricultural products to buy, and choosing where to get their energy from.
This whole 'blame the billionaires' angle is just a way of avoiding any responsibility for our own choices. We can aim to tackle wealth disparity and be responsible, too.
Well if he is 'trying to say that' and failing, that's his fault, isn't it?
The average person was contributing to the hole in the ozone layer caused by CFCs - we didn’t tell the consumer to choose not to use them - we regulated away that choice to save the planet
... and? Both regulation and getting people to change their behaviour are viable options. If you want to encourage regulation by which we ban cars, I'm all for it. Let's go!
Sadly, hypnotits is not offering that sort of thing. Instead they're talking about blocking nuclear.
That’s the whole point of what I’m saying - government legislation is needed to put the responsibility for the carbon released firmly on the companies releasing it, instead of pretending that the average consumer has the ability to solve the carbon crisis by “making greener choices”
We can most certainly do both. Hyponotits is just pulling the usual populist angle of 'Don't worry, you're all fine, let's just blame billionaires and keep on doing whatever we want'.
If billions of people 'make greener choices', it will most certainly benefit the world, and hypnotits pretending to care about the environment by opposing people doing that is frankly evil.
The personal carbon footprint thing was literally created by fossil fuel companies to shift the responsibility - no, we don’t do both, we regulate properly so that average Joe doesn’t have to think about it on top of trying to feed their family and pay the rent - make the polluters stop polluting, and pour the energy time and resources in to that instead of asking average people to take responsibility for another global crisis they can’t do anything about
The framing of it, somewhat, maybe. But pretending that personal carbon footprints do not exist is utter nonsense.
Why on earth not?
You may not have the capacity to think about this, but most people do. Kindly stop justifying your own lack of action by pretending that everyone else is doing the same thing. If you don't want to make the effort, at least just be honest about that.
Yes this is precisely my point. You don't want responsibility. Mr populist is offering you that choice - forsake responsibility, blame others.
I have faced poverty for significant portions of my life, but I can still make an effort to live better wherever possible. It doesn't mean living in a cave, but it does mean living differently.
If you're sat here on reddit, you plainly have some free time, so kindly stop making excuses to remove your own responsibility for your impact on the world.
I work in sustainability and I monitor my own footprint and make green choices - I am not talking for myself, I’m talking for the 95% of people I speak to in my line of work who do not give a shit about this stuff and cannot be convinced otherwise
Well good for you. Seems you're proving your own argument wrong, then.
'I can't be bothered' is not a good argument for avoiding responsibility. Perhaps you cannot personally convince people otherwise, but it does not mean people are incapable of caring or doing something.
Currently you seem to be actively discouraging people from caring or doing something, so that might explain your lack of success on this front.
I agree with most of that because the decisions made by big movers are so much more significant than regular folks (in particular, I think shipping needs to be nuclearised as I’ve heard the five largest boats contribute more Carbon Dioxide than every car). Aviation is a thing though, it’s driven by demand, and that’s people flying multiple times a year. What is the solution to that from a sustainability perspective? It’s tons more carbon than virtually anything else and I’m unaware if the tech is there
Nuclear reactors on ships and subs require highly enriched uranium which shouldn't ever make it into the hands of civilians. That would be a security disaster.
I still don't understand why this isn't an obvious place for colossal efficiency gains.
Computers turn electricity into heat. The "work" that they do in terms of actual compute isn't beholden to the laws of thermodynamics, and strictly speaking the energy put into the system should be almost entirely recoverable.
Surely the waste heat from datacentres should be pretty easy to recover and reuse? Be it for direct electricity regeneration, or for more direct purposes like district heating?
Just wanted to say I agree with your post, but with this point I think being green also can come with benefits. For example getting an electric car, getting solar panels and going vegan have all improved my life for sure rather than ruining it
Oh 100% I agree and the more people who do this, the better
I just think we can’t rely on people making choices and having the time and money to make those choices - we need regulation on the producers first, and anyone who chooses to do the right thing (me and you both pal) is a bonus
Yep! Completely agree with that :) Nice one for what you do at work too.
People putting and defending individual responsibility onto everyone are absolutely using insane levels of logic. It's in the vein of "if everyone was a good person there would be no bad people", it's an unmanageable, naive worldview that does nothing to improve things all it does is it lets a small minority of petty assholes feel morally superior for their laughably insignificant impact on the end result.
The whole point of government and electing leaders is to represent the will of the people, to police behaviours from the top down, and to lift individual responsibility for large societal problems from individual behaviour. The government is there to make hard decisions, to steer the nation, to know better and to find out how to do better than an individual, the whole fucking point is to use aggregate socioeconomic and scientific knowledge and distribute the solution. Making every individual responsible is unmanageable, unenforceable, and unsustainable.
The best place to cut individual emissions is at the point of manufacturing, because it's the cheapest, most enforceable, and easiest to legislate point of the process to manage and reason about. Saying that people just have to make better decisions is so fucking naive, it's the neoliberal brain rot that claims that the invisible hand of the free market will lead us into a green utopia should we all just collectively stamp our feet and only buy eco products. Ignoring the societal collapse we'd face if everyone became so enlightened tomorrow, or even over just the next year.
Also ignoring that most of those fucking eco companies are only so because they pay resource corporations to not cut down the rainforest, they're not carbon neutral, they just pay a stealth tax.
What we need is for the government to create goals, transition plans, and nationalised solutions to the problem. Yes, costs will go up, but so will new businesses emerge, new jobs, new industries and fields. We've been borrowing from the future, it's time to stop pussyfooting and start investing in the future, and it has to happen from the top down, because societal change happens via legislation and reigning in businesses, not by shaming individuals and excusing the behaviours of their bosses. The corporations are not rational and will not just fall in line to fill the mythical market demand, because they're led by people, usually people that ignore good advice and follow their biased narrow worldview. You can't expect every person to track down and research every fucking object they ever use, the fucking privilege to even claim such a solution as reasonable.
The biggest contribution you can make is not having any children. You can make every other saving, but having a child outweighs all of them together
In that case, who are you saving the planet for?
And not having a dog too, just in case anyone was considering a fur baby instead.
Fundamentally though should the poorest in society be priced out of say driving or eating meat regularly while the rich continue as before using carbon related taxes which leads to a situation where a poor person is priced out of driving a car but a rich person can still fly on their private jet?
Also should there increased taxes put on imports from countries like China who have a huge carbon output? Since the typical mindset from the left seems incredibly odd where they often blame the consumer for wanting to buy cheaper goods even though on a global scale by that logic we might as well just open more coal plants here in the UK but for some reason that’s unacceptable and only non western countries can make money by polluting while the poorer in the west have to pay the costs for a greener earth.
While I agree to a certain extent - individuals have lined power to change a lot of these issues in their day-to-day, I do think your diet is the easiest thing you can change.
Animal agriculture is not ever going to be sustainable and meet the demands of people eating meat today, especially with "ethical" practices being favoured.
Don't forget the rich consumers. Privat jets and shit.
Regulating the UK , you can go to net zero and do all the restrictions you like it will only make the UK poorer and offshore it’s pollution to other countries that willfully take it as they will keep developing and become more innovative and richer. Regulating the UK will do nothing. What countries should be pushing its towards countries like India China Even UsA to reduce it, then that creates an even playing field. Make people poorer and more dependent on other nations for their good will be a catastrophe in the long term of the nations prosperity for UK. As there is already evidence of that in pollution statistics per countries and economic developments.
why do you think "dirty energy generation businesses, global shipping businesses, aviation businesses, huge global computing and datacentre businesses" are doing the things they do?
Is it just because they're moustache-twirlingly evil, or is it because individuals choose the cheapest energy/shipping/aviation supplier and are happily using cloud computing services and AI
Because they’re acting rationally by prioritising profit which is how we would expect them to behave - that’s exactly why we need state intervention and regulations to change the game, so they act rationally again to abide by the necessary regulations and clean up
Yes companies need to change but we do need to change our personal consumption habits too not expect companies to do it all for us without making sacrifices ourselves and reducing demand
As someone who doesn't drive, fly or eat meat I don't feel compelled to live that way. It's my choice and I'm much happier for it. Will my lifestyle have much impact, not really but nor does my vote and I continue to do that. I won't be voting Green though.
The big companies will fight tooth and nail to keep polluting, they always have. I try my best to avoid their products, that's all I can do.
But one of the industries that generate the largest amount of co2 is airlines so old school greens used to say you can’t fly. Whilst new school greens want to make it unaffordable for the poors to fly; whether thats deliberate or as a consequence of making flying more expensive it’s the same result.
Nice message, but very little discussion of what it means practically.
Unfortunately, his party is still opposed to nuclear energy, which is unfortunate. He seems to understand that individual carbon footprints are the trappings of the fossil fuel industry, but not that the opposition to nuclear energy is as well.
Is he still opposing power lines?
Wait, the greens were opposing power lines too?
Wow, between that and hating nato and being pro-rolling over to the Russians, they have so much in common with Reform
Yes
Icing on the cake
There would be no fossil fuel industry without consumers. Individual decisions do matter
I say this as someone who eats meat and flies on holiday every year. It's not easyJet's fault that I want to travel
Can I also advocate for nuclear power, grid upgrades, and GM crops whilst being "green"?
Or do I still have to slaughter improvement on the altar of absolute perfection dogma?
Ah, dogma it is. Clearly they have learnt nothing from the past decades to nuclear opposition and the impact that had on the continued use of coal fired power stations (with all the pollution and radioactivity that brought).
Guess I can't be "green" then. Hey ho.
Of course you can. Green Party policy is decided democratically. We currently have a motion pending to reverse the party's stance on nuclear energy which will be voted on at the spring conference.
I keep seeing this point made and I've always wondered - what happens to existing Green members if you succeed? If the Green party after your next conference becomes pro-Nuclear, pro-NATO, YIMBY party what happens to all the Green MPs and councillors who are fundamentally against those things?
Godspeed, if you can do Trident next and get Zack some lessons on how the economy works I can consider getting on board.
There are a number of us on the case, come get stuck in. What attracts me to the Party is the energy and approach to doing politics - if we can refine the tough edges with some analytical injections, we could be on to something special
That same approach and energy are what led to a person like Polanski being in charge in the first place.
Those aren't just rough edges, they are fundamental beliefs of the party membership and leadership. You can't reason someone out of a belief they didnt reason themselves into. If a person had any intetest at all in analytical thinking then they wouldn't hold such beliefs as Polanski's.
Having attended a local greens meeting recently, the number of people who had joined just to vote for Zack or after Zack was elected outnumbered the people who had been long-term members 2:1. Since green membership has increased so much recently it stands to reason that party views might modernise on things like nuclear energy.
If anything I'd predict that party views would come to reflect Polanski's own views more closely, but I don't think thats an improvement. His views on nuclear, economics and immigration are all indefensible.
They have a few ridiculous policies that are commonly defended by the "it's democratically decided and should change soon" line, IMO they shouldn't be that out of touch to begin with. The fact that Polanski has made a lot of comments defending his stance on Nuclear Energy makes me doubt his party entirely.
Frankly, this is the first time I've genuinely not wanted to vote for any party.
Fair enough, but the party membership has tripled since September and the new members are demographically quite different to the old members. So we can probably expect some pretty significant policy changes in the near future due to the influx of new voters with different ideas.
And for GM crops?
In previous years, Green policy has been one of an effective ban i.e. not using the words "ban" but going wholly against the scientific consensus on GM safety that currently exists and calling for a "moratorium" that demands a level of proof that IMO they know is beyond reach so they can go "well the moratorium is in place until you show the evidence", so a ban in all but words.
I'm pretty sceptical of these small reactors which have a whiff of "giving Rolls Royce something to do", despite me being a big supporter of nuclear base load.
What we need to do is change our nuclear regulations to certify designs, rather than having each one being a unique process, and then just build some large-scale off-the-shelf proven designs from elsewhere without modifying them.
Once you have a standard process, the large ones will be much more efficient than the small ones.
These smaller modularised reactors are an attempt at standardisation. Also don't underestimate the importance of making sure that industry ticks over, this sort of expertise is use it or lose it
I mean that’s how innovation works. We could’ve agreed to another foreign manufacturer (in this case a US firm with big financial ties to Trump) coming in, spending 30 years to build a reactor and set an incredible high unit price, with continuing concerns about national security.
Instead we’ve chosen to take a gamble on new technology, one that can be produced in a few years and using a UK firm. Boosts energy production faster, guaranteed UK jobs, sets up a manufacturing chain that can supply nationally, and if we get it right the UK could become a leader in SMRs.
Youay some very good points. I guess I'm thinking that while these may solve a niche problem, they're not a substitute for GW scale based load stations IMO
I've been optimistic about small scale nuclear power since seeing this Google tech talk from 2007 about a fusion reactor concept that would fit in a shipping container. If this tech existed it would mean you could literally just deliver new power capacity to an area on the back of a truck.
The design as presented forgoes the turbines, cooling towers, etc and has a higher efficiency than designs that depend on a thermal power station as the energy converter, but sadly relies on things like an X-Ray photovoltaic converter that they didn't invent yet.
Thank you! I'll give that a watch.
Would have been good if we had copied France and used nuclear power to generate 80% of our electricity since the 80s, but unfortunately organisations like the Greens were busy spreading misinformation, so we burned enormous quantities of coal for decades instead. Let's see, have they educated themselves yet?
No. Let's check their website...
Just more misinformation.
Greens have no credibility on the environment.
The UK is the home of giving parties that have screwed us over in the past the opportunity to screw us over again.
How do I fly green?
That stands out on the list.
Don't do it often, avoid it where possible? Would be my guess.
You can't, but his point would be that we aren't going to solve climate change with individual flygskam.
I don't know how Polanski specifically thinks we can solve the impact of flying, but I'd argue the cat is out of the bag for international travel. The only way we are going to reduce its environmental impact is with sustainable aviation fuels.
On the other hand, nuclear power is critical for scaling up SAF with current technology and they're still opposed to that.
I’d love to see electric blimps make a come back.
They are slow but would be a great way to travel sustainably
He is right that we need to focus more on the systemic issues, which is not things like personal foot prints etc. and getting all caught up in that is a distraction. Purity tests are also unhelpful when you are trying to build a moment and find collaboration, what we have in common is more important than what divides us.
However that does not mean personal choices do not matter even in a complex system, so it is important to understand which matter the most and why. Hannah Ritchie has a good blog post on this very point. https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/the-false-dichotomy-of-systemic-and
She sees the the big ones as.
Then beyond direct things
Living by one's values brings eudaimonia so do what you can do and the wider that moral circle the more you have. However we are caught in the system we are in. For some driving a petrol car could be the only option etc. So mental flexibility is also key (which is also good for wellbeing).
Remind me what party is the vibes based politics again?
Saving the environment is more of, like, a vibe you know? It's a state of mind.
Abnormal man tries to appear normal. More at 10
Hardly.
I think what he’s saying is that your actions can be whatever you like them to be. You shouldn’t feel because you do a certain thing, then that excludes you from ‘being green’.
Which is obviously populist nonsense
He is the Nigel Farage of green politics! Full on populist.
He knows that the standard of green message of go veggie, cycle everywhere and never go on a foreign holiday. Would be about as popular as asking the electorate to eat a plate of green vomit.
I mean he has thrown the environment under the bus but to be fair, he did that ages ago, with his insane immigration policies.
Reasonable enough message but it doesn't fit the idea of a "green party" to me, I'm also unsure why they are opposed to nuclear energy? I was under the impression this was a clean energy source
The steel-man of being green and anti-nuclear is that leaving radioactive waste lying around for thousands of years is a terrible thing to do for future generations, there's a risk of catastrophic incidents and nuclear weapon proliferation, and batteries are improving to the point where you could use solar/wind/hydro for your base load, even though they are highly variable.
IMO they're wrong about this in a few ways:
* current gen nuclear reactors are very safe, when you think of chernobyl or fukushima you need to remember that you are thinking of a reactor maintained by the soviets in the 80s, or on a literal earthquake fault line. There's no reason they'd be unsafe in the UK.
* Nuclear can scale a lot more. If we switched to only renewables, we might need to cut our energy consumption. Everything that takes energy to produce (i.e. everything) would be more expensive. OTOH, nuclear would allow us to 10x our energy output, while still being cheap, which be a huge boon to our local industries, electric vehicles, heating bills, etc.
The biggest problem with nuclear is project delays and cost overruns, see https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power-construction for a ton of info on this, but construction costs are around 75% of the cost of nuclear energy, and a lot of this comes from changing regulation while the plant is under construction
Plus, the waste can be safely stored away until we have viable fusion in ten years or so ahem and then just bung it all in there.
Construction costs are not 75% of the cost in the UK - clean-up liabilities and pensions are much bigger albatrosses around the UK nuclear industry and we as taxpayers have had to pick up the (very significant) tab for those for more than fifty years now.
Part of the problem is that proponents of nuclear in the UK have a very long track record of saying "yes, we know this went to shit economically last time but this time it will be better" when we are getting near a century of that not happening. At some point it might be time to start distrusting their economic projections.
Dang thank you for writing this out, I appreciate it. My conclusions on nuclear are sadly few and far between, only knowing that France have done well with them according to some videos I've seen and Japan not so much but that seems to mainly be caused by geography that simply isn't a concern for us(?). The point you make about switching purely to renewables also seems true, I wouldn't like scheduled brownouts like they have in South Africa or anything similar ideally.
That cost challenge when building nuclear power plants seems insane, idk how you're supposed to manage that. I guess somehow build faster, or find a way to make exceptions to the changes for plans that are currently being built? Maybe deferring regulation or making exceptions for large scale builds?
One approach to the cost problem is to build smaller reactors (you may have heard the term SMR) - sadly the greens are anti this as well, they plan to phase out nuclear entirely
Ah are these SMRs the ones that were proposed recently with Rolls Royce making them? I think I read there would be a site in Wales or something? Ye that definitely sucks that they would be opposed to small ones, I understand the long term goal but surely going off of the power from soe SMRs instead of imported oil would be good in the medium term.
It costs a lot (and takes a long time) to add new nuclear production capacity, Greens think money should be invested in renewable energy production instead
Then your idea is clearly wrong... The Green Party has always advocated for systemic change.
Ye that's fair enough. I've not had much exposure to the green party really, I've only started hearing bits and pieces since Polanski came about as their leader
Of course you can. Doesn’t make Polanski any less of a fraud though
Honestly that's a fair view.
The output of the average person vs the super rich is so overwhelming, and also the mega corporations pushing individual responsibility whilst at the same time using big data to discover the perfect, personalised way to reel you in
I saw someone calculate recently that the super yacht Leo was on outputs more co2 in a fortnight than a single western person would in 600 years
You can be anti science and green policies and still call yourself the green party
Quotes like this are exactly why this man will be tossed aside at the next Green Party leadership election.
Are you kidding? Green membership has more than doubled since he became leader. He's the only credible threat to Farage and Reform and he's only increasing in popularity.
Unless the Greens actually near 30% of the vote (no signs of that currently), then he's no more credible a threat to Reform than Keir Starmer, Ed Davey or even Kemi Badenoch. Probably less of one because they have little overlap in the kind of seats and voters they appeal to.
Its all projection for anyone that's on the "brexit man bad" vibe wave.
Which is exactly why the party will regicide him.
They are specifically joining because they support him and his politics
I'm really unsure what the Greens are for these days
I can't see many environmentally minded voters going for this message. Maybe he's trying to attract more Reform types...
Green or green?
Anyway, presumably being green (as in eco-friendly) is a spectrum and not just a binary choice.
He's saying this to try and appeal to the centre and centre left, he knows if he wants to be anywhere near power then the Green purity tests aren't gonna get him anywhere.
His voters won't like this though I imagine.
If it’s seen as a collective responsibility while not thinking it needs to apply to yourself (Or you can just pay a ‘sin tax’ in form of a carbon tax) why can’t I just say instead of a national responsibility (Or rather ‘make it unaffordable for the poor’) it should be a global responsibility and first world countries can continue driving, going on holidays, eat meat regularly and so on but third world countries can be forced to not do any of that ‘for the greater good’? Or at a less extreme level just apply huge carbon related import fees for anything arriving from high polluting countries like China, including for businesses ordering stuff from there?
Also a lot of environmental measures become farcical if you’re also for AI data centers that require huge amounts of electricity and water for things that are inessential in the extreme like generating images and videos.
You can: you just don't fly too often, take public transport when it's an option, don't drive an oversized and/or uneconomical car, eat a couple of veggie meals a week, and try and opt for chicken where possible.
It's really not rocket-science to make a massive reduction as a nation, without losing any quality of life.
We all forget that privileged can cloud our mind.
For some people not flying is not seeing their family or not taking a holiday because routes might be more expensive by train.
Not driving might mean that you can't work because public transport might be too infrequent. Some people drive an EV.
You can be green and do your best to minimising your footprint but it is costly in a cost of living crisis, these things are expensive because of austerity and artificial societal decline
I think he recognises that the rich and powerful lecturing us about climate change while jetting to lavish banquets undermines any support for green policies.
Or if you’re Ed Miliband you can fly private jets to climate jamborees
This man says the absolute right thing and then the absolute wrong thing the very next day.
Never seen somebody score so many own goals
What about the current government?
Isnt this guy heavily aligned with Russian goals???
This is like the Prosperity Gospel in America: God wants you to be rich and have a good time.
I mean, if God as described (benevolent) existed, he would want you to prosper. But there's a difference between yoking the labour of others for a life of absurd opulence, and having the good things in life (good food, fulfilment, safety, friends and family).
The desire for more than you could ever need or use is a sickness.
If we’re going by the Gospels, Jesus doesn’t seem to be a big fan of wealth e.g. “you cannot serve God and money”, “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” turning over the money lenders’ tables. He was happy for people to pay taxes though “give to Caesar things that are Caesar’s.”
There are some sections like God rewarding Job with material wealth for passing his trials and some bits in the Epistles but I find saying you follow Jesus but like accumulating wealth a hard circle to square.
Indeed. Although you probably shouldn't fly too much.