Individual Climate Action

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Discuss actions that we can directly take as individuals to reduce environmental harm.

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What Can We Do About It? (climatehealers.org)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by wolfyvegan@slrpnk.net to c/climate_action_individual@slrpnk.net
 
 

“It is our duty to induce people, by every honest means, to go Vegan.”

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the facts

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/22921894

Across four different experiments he could see that perceived unfairness - especially when the tax was proposed to be distributed in an unfair way that would make poor people pay disproportionally much, compared to richer groups and corporations - not only limited support for the proposed climate taxes, it also made the participants perceive the taxes as less effective and lowered their trust in policymakers.

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A reminder folks: people engage in this kind of radical protest because it works:

Results of two online experiments conducted with diverse samples (N = 2,772), including a study of the animal rights movement and a preregistered study of the climate movement, show that the presence of a radical flank increases support for a moderate faction within the same movement. Further, it is the use of radical tactics, such as property destruction or violence, rather than a radical agenda, that drives this effect. Results indicate the effect owes to a contrast effect: Use of radical tactics by one flank led the more moderate faction to appear less radical, even though all characteristics of the moderate faction were held constant. This perception led participants to identify more with and, in turn, express greater support for the more moderate faction. These results suggest that activist groups that employ unpopular tactics can increase support for other groups within the same movement, pointing to a hidden way in which movement factions are complementary, despite pursuing divergent approaches to social change.

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/22442359

  • In Michigan, food waste is fueling climate change as methane emissions from landfills soar. Ranking 8th nationwide for food waste landfilled, the state sees 58% of fugitive landfill methane emissions stemming from discarded food.
  • Volunteers and organizations are stepping up, distributing food to those in need, tackling pre-consumer waste, and advocating for composting and rescue efforts.
  • Yet, Michigan's policy landscape remains sparse, with limited and uneven implementation hindering progress.

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Share what you can, compost what you can't.

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Once a month between April and October, a group of stitchers takes to the streets of Edinburgh, making themselves comfortable on camping chairs decorated with hand-embroidered banners inviting people to #stitchitdontditchit. Equipped with sewing baskets and mending skills, they repair their garments in public and teach interested passers-by how to do the same.

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Earlier this month, President Donald Trump doubled down on his long-standing complaint about low-flow showerheads taking too long to clean his “beautiful hair.” He ordered his administration to repeal a rule, revived by the Biden administration, that aimed to save water by restricting flow from the fixtures. A White House fact sheet promised the order would undo “the left’s war on water pressure” and “make America’s showers great again.”

Efficiency standards used to have bipartisan support. But today, many Republican politicians see restrictions on gas stoves, refrigerators, and laundry machines as symbols of Democratic interference with people’s self-determination. That’s the idea Trump advanced when he signed an executive order targeting efficiency standards for home goods and appliances “to safeguard the American people’s freedom to choose.” The message echoes talking points from industry groups that have an interest in keeping homes hooked up to natural gas for stoves and water heaters.

"This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen efficiency standards thrust into the culture wars,” said Andrew deLaski, the executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, which advocates for stricter energy-efficiency legislation. “But President Trump has put that into overdrive.”

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The scientific consensus regarding dietary change as climate and conservation solution has reached remarkable clarity, resembling the consensus on climate change itself both in evidential strength and in the organized effort to undermine it. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change explicitly acknowledges the critical role of reduced meat consumption in meeting climate targets. Studies in prestigious journals like Nature Communications, Science, and PNAS quantify the exact relationship between dietary choices and environmental impacts with increasing precision. As these findings permeate public consciousness, veganism continues its evolution from fringe lifestyle to rational response to planetary boundaries — a transformation accelerated by celebrity endorsements, documentary exposés, and social media. This scientific clarity renders continued resistance to dietary change not merely uninformed but actively anti-intellectual.

The psychological barriers to dietary change reveal much about human cognition and moral reasoning. Cognitive dissonance theory explains why individuals who consider themselves environmentally conscious often react defensively when confronted with evidence linking their food choices to ecological destruction. Rather than adjusting behavior to align with values, many adjust perception instead — minimizing the impact of meat consumption while exaggerating the difficulty of dietary change. Confirmation bias leads consumers toward information supporting continued meat consumption while discounting contradictory evidence. The “meat paradox” further complicates matters; many express concern for animal welfare while continuing practices requiring animal suffering. These psychological patterns highlight the insufficiency of information alone in changing behavior; effective interventions must address emotional and identity-based attachments to meat consumption rather than merely providing facts.

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20554167

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...one thousand trucks poured into the national park, offloading over 12,000 metric tons of sticky, mealy, orange compost onto the worn-out plot. The site was left untouched and largely unexamined for over a decade. A sign was placed to ensure future researchers could locate and study it.

16 years later, Janzen dispatched graduate student Timothy Treuer to look for the site where the food waste was dumped.

Treuer initially set out to locate the large placard that marked the plot — and failed.

Compost your fruit scraps! (Or just throw them on the neighbour's pasture land.)

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27834912

SAO PAULO, April 4 (Reuters) - Indigenous protests and poor roads have disrupted shipping of Brazil’s bumper soybean crop in recent days via the river port of Miritituba in the Amazon rainforest, worrying global companies including Cargill and Bunge (BG.N) which have important operations.

Abiove, an association representing grain handlers, said on Friday road access to Miritituba has remained under partial or total blockade for two weeks, preventing the shipment of around 70,000 tons of grains per day, which corresponds to almost $30 million in product value.

Someone is doing something! But those roads won't stay unpaved forever unless people continue to intervene.

(As noted in the link above, Cargill also has a major terminal in Santarém.)

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^^^ ignore that shitty preview above and visit the link! ^^^

Microsoft and Google are terrible for the environment (per the linked post). Yet every time you email someone on those platforms you support an ecocidal corporation.

So a climate action, as ironic and counter-intuitive as it sounds, is to send more faxes and paper letters. It rightfully annoys office workers, many of whome think you are working against the environment -- until they read your informative explanation of the harms of MS or Google at the end of your letter.

Of course, you have to weigh whether it makes sense to state why you’re sending paper. If they have discretion in processing whatever you’re sending, it doesn’t always make sense to risk having the letter ignored. But if the recipient has an obligation to treat your letter, it’s a good idea to take the opportunity to bash their choice of email providers on the off chance that they tip off the IT guy that the email provider is objectionable.

I know it will seem painfully inconvenient at first. Stop being lazy.

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The idea that boycotting is not participating in society could not be more perversely incorrect. Boycotting prioritizes society above yourself. Neglecting to boycott is the selfish act of putting your own personal benefit above all else and abandoning one of the few tools we have to improve things while feeding harms of society. Both kinds of consumption are “participation” but if you choose to feed the baddies then your participation is detrimental.

It’s really perverse to refer to boycotters as non-participants when they are actively taking on the burden of informing themselves of who the bad players are, tracking supply chains to brands, and sacrificing selfish benefits in order to participate in the least destructive way for the purpose of improving society.

Convenience zombies who just grab whatever they want may choose poorly, or not. But it’s worse than a coin toss whether the outcome is detrimental because the most harmful suppliers have the advantage of not being burdened by ethics. Scrapping ethics enables them to offer the most value for the money and undercut the more ethical choices. So if you simply neglect ethics in your consumer decision, you are only looking at value for the money and statistically expected to choose a more socially detrimental option.

It harms everyone because the lesser of evils gets driven out and the worst suppliers prevail. The US saw this with printers when Oki pulled out of the US marketplace. Now the least detrimental option tends to be Brother, which still exposes people to shenanigans. We lost the most ethical option while HP dominates.

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