This is a pretty good guide. And it’s always good to see conservatives caring about the environment, as that is one sign that the importance of this issue is being recognized as non-partisan.
A data-driven approach, however, produces some different and, unfortunately, unsettling results.
My own alternative list for actions you can do as an individual consumer to save the environment would be:
1. Have one fewer child.
2. Have one fewer child.
3. Have one fewer child.
4. Have one fewer child.
...
...
...
...
...
60. Live car-free
61. Avoid one round-trip trans-Atlantic flight
Etc. Etc.
These are indeed painful sacrifices that not everyone will have the stomach for. That’s okay. I’m not going to say that having a kid makes you a terrible person. At the end of the day, folks are going to have kids. And we must find a way to live sustainably in a planet that could soon support 10-12 billion human beings or more, all with rising incomes and aspirations. The goal is finding a way to satisfy all these legitimate desires within nature’s limits.
To that end, the scope of the project of saving the environment from our ravenous appetites is so massive that individual actions alone cannot hope to solve them. That is where coordinated action — i.e. government — comes in.
Though I know you dislike that idea, you have already tacitly acknowledged the importance of politics in this issue yourself, when it comes to items like “support the transition to nuclear energy.” Well: Support how? Support politically.
Indeed, Fukushima is actually assuring: read past the headlines. Nobody died of radiation, at least, not yet. But the earthquake, tsunami and flooding themselves killed far more (18,500 dead), and more immediately.
Sadly, the world’s governments took the exact wrong lesson from this, and countries like Germany started phasing out nuclear power and replacing it with dirty coal.
Environmental policy must be based on rationality, not fear.
Caption this Meme
