I hope a lot of people have made at least some changes in their lifestyle by now.
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Guerilla gardening fruit trees.
Surprisingly, also: gorillas gardening. 
Don't forget gardening gorillas!
"The primates are really coming along well this year, darling. Too bad about the petunias, though"
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Greta! ✊
Go vegan
Having less children, car free and plane free have more impact.
Killing other people's children is even more environmentally friendly!
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This whole "have one fewer child" thing is totally bonkers, because even on the face of it, it really only makes sense for people in Western nations with their current lifestyles. It's also an average over all the people in that country, meaning it's heavily spoiled by rich kids. Essentially, 1. you can't know beforehand how your child will live and 2. emissions don't scale linearly with the number of people (again, look at the difference between countries). And then there's the anti-humane undertone of it.
The average environmental impact of even poor people in rich nations is many times higher than even rich people in poor nations.
a) Having fewer kids is extremely environmentally friendly, in any nation, and especially the West. Each child produces around 60x the CO2 offset by one person going vegan for life. This is just CO2. Consider the countless other ways an individual pollutes the environment during the course of their lives.
b) Migration from poor nations to rich nations is extremely damaging to the environment. Consumption matches Western patterns almost immediately.
The average environmental impact of even poor people in rich nations is many times higher than even rich people in poor nations.
It's often around 1t CO~2~e for a poor person in developing country vs. 5-10t CO~2~e for a poor person in an industrialized country.
However, rich people in Western countries tend to be in the 100s or 1000s of tons of CO~2~e/p/y which is extremely far off from being sustainable.
But I want to emphasize that this is just the current state. How your child lives in 20 or 30 years, you don't know. It may use much fewer resources or much more. I am cautiously optimistic that they will use fewer resources than we do. The question is more whether it will be enough.
a) Having fewer kids is extremely environmentally friendly, in any nation, and especially the West
1t CO~2~e/person/year is roughly sustainable within the current ecosystem. Thus, many people in poor countries are at or near climate neutrality already. If people live sustainably already, then no, there is no inherent need to reduce population or necessarily have fewer children.
That's not to say there may not be other benefits to having fewer children.
Each child produces around 60x the CO2 offset by one person going vegan for life.
Again, this is true only in the current situation and in Western countries.
b) Migration from poor nations to rich nations is extremely damaging to the environment. Consumption matches Western patterns almost immediately.
Blaming CO~2~e emissions on migrants is a bit disingenuous. But if it helps you make the case to yourself that Western countries should do more to give people in developing nations safer lives so they don't have to flee, I guess I'll take it.
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And we have to choose only one?
edit: Also, I have avoid one fewer child for more than 2 decade !
And avoided transatlantic plane travel too!
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Or just you know, all of the above :)
Your point is valid, but the fact is none of those are enough on their own. Even if we get rid of all emissions except for the cattle industry, wed still shoot way past the 1.5° mark. So not going at least vegetarian was never an option.
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The environmentally beneficial effects of plant based diets or a vegan lifestyle are not reduced to harmful GHG emissions alone but encompass a wide range of advantages. To name some:
- Reduced agricultural land use (the vast majority of land is used to grow cattle feed). This can also reduce deforestation (especially interesting in the Amazon region), increase ground water and soil quality. Avoids soil erosion. It also perserves eco systems on land and helps to mitigate species extinction.
- Water usage. It takes about 1000x to produce meat than to produce an equivalent amount of, e.g., wheat.
- Reduction of overfishing and thereby protecting and stabilizing oceanic eco system.
- Reduction of the huge amount of water and air pollution caused by the animal industry.
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I've only gone vegan after two things happened:
- FFF strikes made environmentalism "a thing"
- Easy vegan alternatives have been easily accessible and cater to my carnivorous eating habits
There are likely other factors as well. Point is: it's never just one thing, and therefore every little thing helps.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Almost a third of Swiss people changed their daily habits as a result of Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future climate strikes, new research has found.
Now, a study by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) has examined the wider impact of these strikes on people’s environmental choices.
To examine the wider impact of the school climate strikes, EPFL researchers surveyed Swiss residents in the wake of the protests in October and November 2019.
“Our findings showed that people have become more aware of how their behaviour affects the environment and that significant shifts are under way at an individual level,” says Livia Fritz, a researcher and the study’s lead author.
Changes in transport habits included looking for alternatives to driving to work, such as walking or cycling, and avoiding flying by choosing holiday destinations closer to home.
Survey participants also reported seeking out local, organic produce, eating more vegetarian meals, and making a bigger effort to reduce plastic waste following the climate protests.
The original article contains 421 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 61%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Changes in transport habits included looking for alternatives to driving to work, such as walking or cycling, and avoiding flying by choosing holiday destinations closer to home.
Survey participants also reported seeking out local, organic produce, eating more vegetarian meals, and making a bigger effort to reduce plastic waste following the climate protests.
Positively surprised to see effective measures, like avoid flying and meat.
IIRC Switzerland also has quite an exemplary carbon pricing scheme. I'm totally unaware how much flights and meat are encompassed. The general point I'm trying to make: It's probably hard to say wether people changed their habits due to FFF, or due to policy changes. Of course, FFF likely influenced policy changes.
Either way, thanks for the uplifting news :)
Now I'm waiting for the more serious news how Swiss companies have changed their business practices ;)
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Look, any progress being made about environmental awareness is great, HOWEVER; this bullshit concept of offloading the responsibility of climate change strictly to the consumer is never going to fix the problem.
The people responsible for the largest amount of climate change are the insatiably wealthy that give absolutely no fucks about how much their mega corp ruins the planet.
I don't know how the rest of the world feels, but here in the U.S., it's basically impossible to buy anything that doesn't come packaged in single use plastics, and half our population has been brainwashed to believe climate change is not even a concerning issue.
The companies that profit from blowing everything up should be responsible for cleaning everything up. I do my best to reduce, reuse and recycle, but my city doesn't even recycle plastic bags because it clogs the machines, and everything comes in damn plastic bags. Putting solar on your house now comes with a high possibility of having your insurance policy canceled, etc, it's literally one barrier after another, and my carbon footprint is pretty damn low.
Sorry for my rant, it is just very frustrating.
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This is great. Now we only have to get the governments to regulate global companies that spent millions on propaganda that climate change isn't real.
Today they told in the radio news that FFF had an impact on "only" 25 % of Germans. IMHO that's a lot.
The study is Open Access. If someone else wants to read it, just click the doi link:
Fritz, L., Hansmann, R., Dalimier, B. et al. Perceived impacts of the Fridays for Future climate movement on environmental concern and behaviour in Switzerland. Sustain Sci 18, 2219–2244 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-023-01348-7
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