What does this mean? All I've read about this points to that we should be investing heavily in nuclear power. Renewables are good to continue to do research on, but we're nowhere near the point where it is a viable option.
[*]Emissions trading schemes
How do these actually work? To me it mostly just looks like magic with numbers.
Consumer behaviours:
[*]Buy products and food made from ingredients grown using sustainable land management practices.
So no tiger shrimps. But that's it isn't it? Are there any more unsustainable foods? I don't know of any. Oh, yeah... walnuts in California. But that's all the one's I know.
I'm a big friend of GMO. And the environmentalists seem to have this as their main target. Which makes me sad.
[*]Switch from hardcopy bills and paperwork to digital document management.
I wonder about this. I do this anyway. But because it's practical. Not because it saves on the environment. I strongly question whether there's any actual benefits to the environment by switching from paper to high tech screens.
I know that the entire paper recycling project is a colossal waste of time. It doesn't fix anything.
But aren't there plastics and plastics? Are all plastics really alike?
[*]Buy an electric, self-driving car once they are available, use electric taxis and shuttles, or ride a bike to work.
Is there really such a gain from electric cars over gasoline cars? Isn't the polution just moved somewhere else? Isn't the problem the car at all?
[*]Purchase products that are designed for disassembly and maintain them in good repair for as long as possible.
Or buy light-weight disposables that are cheap and easy to make. I wonder whether all these heavy duty high-quality things really help the environment. They are more work to build. And maintenance also require energy. It's hard to do the maths on how much it actually benefits.
I mean, chucking something on a rubbish dump doesn't impact the environment negatively. It might not look pretty. But we can do what we've always done. Cover them up by soil and plant trees on them. And then we get a pretty rubbish forest that is indistinguishable from nature around it. This is not a problem. Also carbon capture.
[*]Purchase reusable products over single-use disposable alternatives; use canvas bags instead of disposable shopping bags.
I recently saw a study on the canvas bags. The cotton industry is horrendously filthy. The plastic bag industry isn't. It's highly questionable whether going for the canvas bags actually has a positive impact. They calculated that you need to use each bag 95 times for it to pay off. I put this in the category of environmentalists thinking it's more important looking like they're doing stuff for the environment than actually doing stuff that helps. And even if you use that canvas bag more than 95 times the actual cumulative gains are so small it's a complete waste of time.
Based on what I've read 2/3'rds of all the energy we use is geared toward heating or cooling our homes and buildings. That's where we should put the greatest effort. The single greatest contribution a private person can do is to move into an apartment building. As well as not having a car. In my mind a person who walks around with a canvas bag but drives a car and lives in a house, doesn't really care about the environment. They just care about appearing that they do. Which is worse than doing nothing because it creates the illusion it's enough.
