What Are You Doing To Prepare For Climate Change?

[writingprof]

I recycle.  Beyond that, not much. 

And that grim little goblin shaking her finger at the UN is going to change precisely nothing.

Indeed, a room full of globalist elites cheering wildly as someone condemns them is a perfect microcosm of our age.  That they all took private jets to get there--and that the child fascist had to fly her boat crew across the world--is merely the glaze on the donut.

[pigou]

Just adding that recycling is generally worse for the environment than throwing things in the trash/landfill, especially when it comes to using scarce groundwater. The saving grace is that recycling in the US is now so contaminated, because people "recycle" non-recyclables, that pretty much nothing gets recycled anymore and all just ends up back in the same waste stream and a landfill. But people are sorting and that makes them feel better, which is another wonderful microcosm of our age. (It's lovely transparent at my university, where facilities staff just take the 3 different containers we have and dump them in the same trash bag. We've given up pretending, just as long as the students don't observe it.)

Although an even better use would be to burn it for electricity, which some European countries (the most environmentally friendly!) do, it is mistakenly thought to be "dirty" in the US and hence would have no chance of gaining local approval.

The history of recycling is actually quite fascinating... people thought the world was running out of landfills to bury stuff in (not policymakers, obviously, but local concerned voters) and didn't want to build more. NPR has a fantastic episode on it, followed by a sequel on whether we should recycle (spoiler: perhaps metallic cans, absolutely nothing else): https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739893511/episode-925-a-mob-boss-a-garbage-boat-and-why-we-recycle

I think it is valuable to find the academics who can advance the next steps when we hit the limits of what we can do in our own subdiscipline. The more common action is to throw up our hands when we realize we can't take it farther ourselves, and attributing it all to politics.

But the problem isn't academic research. The outcomes we observe are the direct result of economic incentives in markets and political incentives in policy, along with the profitability of being a doomsday priest. And I don't even mean this in reference to Greta: happens in financial news (the next recession! Unemployment figures are wrong! Etc.), technology (AI will take all our jobs!), immigration (immigrants are here to murder you!), even topics as boring as congressional district setting. Gerrymandering is supposedly undermining our Democracy! And while it's bad on principal, it potentially affects 10 seats in the house out of 435, and since both parties engage in it (yes, really) the advantage for any one party is even fewer than that.

Also take the bushfires in Australia: 20 million acres. An unimaginably huge landmass that's burned down so far, and counting. How does that compare to an average year in Australia? Well, on average, every year, about 125 million acres are burned. This current bushfire is more than a rounding error, but the reason it's news is that it affects parts of the country with people in it, increasing the potential cost to (human) life and property. But it's covered as an environmental crisis, which just neglects how (remarkably) usual such huge fires seem to be.

edit: mind you, the world is full of terrible non-solutions. There's genuinely a non-profit that's recovering plastic from the ocean... at a fraction of the rate (and with much greater damage to microorganisms) than if they set up a cheap net at one of the rivers where all the trash gets into the ocean. They're selling stuff made out of this recovered plastic, so there's that. I don't generally mind, because charitable giving primarily serves to make donors feel good and they're accomplishing that.

But then I do have to listen to geniuses talking about disinvestment, because they were evidently not required to learn the basics of how financial markets work before making policy proposals. Dumping stocks because you're concerned about the morality of the company's business model has precisely zero effect on the company's stock price. Stock prices, which frighteningly many people don't seem to understand, are the discounted expectation of future cash flow... which does not actually change when a university decides no longer to invest in oil companies.

So maybe the proper academic question is: how can we make people care less and disengage? Maybe this could lower health costs, too, because anxiety disorders cost the US about $45bn per year and affect about 1 in 5 adults.

[nebo113]

I recycle.  Beyond that, not much. 

And that grim little goblin shaking her finger at the UN is going to change precisely nothing.

I am in the 'I'll be dead about the time the worst hits" AND I live in a county which has NO recycling.  None.  Nada. Nil.  I would have to drive about 70 miles to recycle.  We are a consumerist culture.  Buy anything on line lately?  How much packaging vs. amount of product?  i get ragey....

[mamselle]

Well, I've recently bought an insulated tent to be used inside my apartment to sleep in if the weather gets too cold.

And I've kept all my very light dancewear components (like thin tights and gauzy overblouses) to wear in case it gets too hot.

But beyond that, I don't own a car, I rent*, I keep the thermostat very low, all my windows are sealed with bubblewrap inside and thermo-plastic outside

I buy a mix of fresh and pre-made stuff, and I fly economy when I fly.

I figure I can change myself, but I can't change much else, unless it wants to change.

M.


*My only heat inefficiency issue is not of my doing: my inane landlord blocks open the basement door on the back landing whenever he goes to Florida for the winter. (I think he thinks it will prevent radon buildup, for which there is zero evidence, but whatever...). This makes my place colder; I wait a week until his son or daughter have come and gone a couple times, then I take out the rolled-up rug he's stuck in the door, pull a looped wire through to lock the hook-and-eye contraption at the top of the door, and let them each think the other did it.

That's worked for 5 years now....keeps my heating bills down, too. - M.

[apl68]

Early on Sunday our region had a severe March storm--in what's supposed to be the dead of winter!  Our town was virtually unscathed, but neighboring towns and rural communities were hit very hard.  The county seat is still entirely without power after two days.  Several of my staff still don't have power in their homes.  There were three separate tornadoes, leaving several church buildings and a number of homes wrecked.  Thank God there were no serious injuries.

More 70-degree weather bringing more storms expected within the next few days.  It's all very well to speak complacently about how it's only projected to cost us X percentage of our GNP and so on, but the increase in violent weather is costing real people and communities dearly.  Some of them are our own friends and neighbors.

[Hibush]

Well, I've recently bought an insulated tent to be used inside my apartment to sleep in if the weather gets too cold.

And I've kept all my very light dancewear components (like thin tights and gauzy overblouses) to wear in case it gets too hot.

Is this a worthwhile activity for that dancewear?
Fighting Climate Change with Dance | KQED Arts

[mamselle]

Well, I've recently bought an insulated tent to be used inside my apartment to sleep in if the weather gets too cold.

And I've kept all my very light dancewear components (like thin tights and gauzy overblouses) to wear in case it gets too hot.

Is this a worthwhile activity for that dancewear?
Fighting Climate Change with Dance | KQED Arts

Well, like much else in dance (in my opinion), the choreography is excellent, but the dancer should avoid making claims about motivation that rely on half-baked ideas whenever possible....

I very much like the shifts in impetus, the swift, fluid directional changes, and the exhilarating range-of-motion challenges, but sometimes dancers and artists should shut up and let their work speak for itself/themselves.

If it's good work, it doesn't need an apologia, although a few balloon strings let down to help out a populace that's never been trained to look at and appreciate dance in and of itself seem to be necessary these days, and some kind of angst-driven statement about meaningfulness and intentionality always plays well in those arenas as well....

The light-green stuff works well, provides good visual contrast, and lightens the scene.

But it will probably be read by the audience as "leaves," not "green snow" (and if you have to tell them, that's bogus as well.)

Likewise, this is not the first or only dance to allude to the environment: one thinks of Taylor's "Esplanade" as a celebration of life 'en pleine aire':

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-B2J7YyiOk

(This is the original, and the rich petal-like colors are gorgeous-- but I'm pretty sure by the time I saw it, 5 years later, they'd gone to dappled white, light blue and green 'tights and 'tards, but I might be wrong about that...)
   
or "Airs," (go to 1.45 to skip the discussion):

   https://the-dots.com/projects/how-merce-cunningham-reinvented-the-way-the-world-saw-dance-dazed-digital-307160
   
or both Cunningham's "Rainforest" and "Summerspace" (my favorite ever), both shown in clips here:

   https://the-dots.com/projects/how-merce-cunningham-reinvented-the-way-the-world-saw-dance-dazed-digital-307160

As I say, the choreography is excellent and I'd like to see the whole piece if possible. It would be very worthwhile.

And yeah, that little gossamer overblouse I used to use for warmups would work well as part of a costume for this or some other piece...


But I get irritated with the idea that a work of art a) has to "say something" and b) only gets funded if you tie it to some good cause.

I'm absolutely for responsible living and consideration for the stewardship we owe the earth as our wider global homeland.

But I'm with Bell (Clive, that is) in those situations where the question of Art's purpose (significant form, basically) are up for discussion....and with Paul Weiss, who (he would say, with Aristotle) saw energetic action as a representation of life in and of itself, therefore needing no "explanation," or apologetic (as opposed to positively stated) apologia.

M.

[magnemite]

We put up a solar power plant that was a bit overbuilt for our household needs, and sell the surplus power to our local utility, providing more low carbon power to our community.

We chose to live near work, so day to day driving is not significant.

Next steps:

Improve the insulation in our house, research a switch from our current natural gas heater to an electro-powered heat pump system. We may look into adding a small wind turbine, and the ability to store electricity in a large battery system.

We also decided that relocation (looking for a better/different job elsewhere) is not advantageous (in terms of anticipating climate changes) given where we currently live, so optimizing our home and staying in it is the plan.

I looked into solar energy some years back.  Sticker shock kept me from ever revisiting the idea.  I live in an (already) warm and humid climate where household cooling is a bigger energy demand than heating.  And getting more so in a hurry at this point--this is the third year in which our usual mild winter has been replaced by what amounts to a ludicrously prolonged month of March.  This is the second day in January with 70-degree temperatures, something unheard of only five years ago.  Less than a decade ago 70-degree highs on any day in the winter months were unknown.  Our winters are vanishing so rapidly around here that I wonder whether we've already reached some kind of tipping point here.

I don't know of anybody locally who uses household solar power, but there are large solar farms in the works in the region.

If your largest use of power is home cooling, and this is needed during the longer-daylight portions of the year, then it seems to me that solar would be ideal. Prices have gone down quite a bit, there is still a federal tax credit, and it is worth checking your state to see what they do (my state offered a sales tax break, and also requires the power company purchase the surplus power our system produces).

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

I drive an 18 year old car *knocks on wood*, recycle, watch my water and electricity usage and reuse plastic bags for veg. When things break, we try to fix them instead of just buying another item. Clothes are mended, electronics are taken apart and repaired, etc.

[Anselm]

The only thing I am preparing for long term is running out of cheap energy.  When I can't make it to the gym I go for a long walk instead and try to get psychologically prepared for when I might have to walk more often.  I would like to bike more but my town is sort of hilly and dangerous for biking.

Regarding recycling, keep in mind that with more technology society tends towards dematerialization.  Bucky Fuller called this ephemeralization.   We do more with less material.  All of your food packaging has gotten thinner.  Copper phone lines were replaced with glass fiber optic cables and then now WiFi signals.  I gave up on saving bottles and cans for two reasons.  I can't accumulate too much garbage in my apartment and the local recycling centers are useless.  They close down for various reasons or they say they are out of cash to pay back your deposits.  I did start recycling plastic bags and cardboard boxes simply to use for my online selling gig.

The only serious change to fossil fuel consumption will happen when we have effective urban planning and mass transit but that won't be easy in the USA. 

[Puget]

On the plus side I don't own a car, mostly walk, sometimes take transit, rarely ride share. However, I do fly about 4-5 times a year, which probably cancels a lot of that out (but better than driving AND flying).

As someone mentioned earlier on the thread, my biggest contribution is probably being a life long vegetarian.

I moved from an apartment to my own house this summer, which is probably net negative in that I'm using more space and it's an older house which is not very energy efficient and has an oil boiler. However, it has enabled me to start composting my food waste which will keep it from producing methane in the landfill, and I'll be putting in a veggie garden this spring.

I pay a small premium to get 100% wind energy (yes, I know the electrons are the same, but it offsets costs of increased production).

Things I'm planning to do: see about adding more insulation to the house and replacing the windows with modern insulated ones (need to save up for that though), looking into solar panels (there are companies that will essentially lease your roof and sell the electricity back to you), looking into converting the boiler to natural gas (still not great but better than heating oil).

Its hard not just to feel helpless about it all, but we do what we can. . .

[spork]

Snowfall total this winter seems to be less than a third of the average. I heard a brief radio announcement a few days ago about heightened brush fire risk. In February. I think I'm going to invest in some rain barrels.