Look. I care about climate change a lot. I'm close to a single-issue voter on the subject!
But we have GOT to stop worrying about what are, in the scheme of things, rounding errors. I hate, hate, hate this kind of personal-responsibility climate stuff, it's deeply counterproductive.
— Django Wexler (@djangowexler.bsky.social) May 25, 2024 at 3:48 PM
And now, for something completely different… (BlueSky really does have some fantastic posters!)
According to their data here (which is, for various reasons, wildly overstating the case) buying 3 paper books per month for four years yields roughly a metric ton of CO2. That’s the equivalent of 110 gallons of gasoline. Less then 3,000 miles for a decent car!
If *publishing companies* want to take steps to reduce their footprint, that’s great — they have the scale to do real good. But to pretend that changing your individual purchasing habits for books is going to achieve anything is nonsensical.
The whole idea that climate change can be meaningfully address to consumers altering their personal decisions is so horribly counterproductive it’s not surprising to discover it was invented, in large part, by energy companies and other pro-climate apocalypse forces.
Because it generates maximum pain for minimum gain. Consumers seriously affect their lives and make compromises, in order to achieve essentially nothing. Politically, this
a) Staves off more effective government action, and
b) Convinces people that action is going to be a personal hardship.You see this in conservative talking points — climate action is framed in terms of having to give up your pleasures, your oven, your favorite food.
Actual effective climate action overwhelming looks like regulation, taxes, and subsidies–to consumers, this might mean “pay a little more in taxes”.
Which, look, nobody likes paying more in taxes. (And there’s lot to be done to make sure the wealthy pay as much as possible.) But the government isn’t going to come in and take away your burgers at gunpoint.
Some excellent commentors, as well…
I get your point— but I read the article and was glad i did, because I didn’t know if trad pub’s footprint vs e-pub’s was a rounding error or not. This argument— how can you write books if they kill trees?—comes up a lot.
— Daryl Gregory (@darylwriterguy.bsky.social) May 25, 2024 at 4:07 PM
It's actually even MORE of a rounding error then the article describes, because their methodology is assigning CO2 to the cutting down of trees; but most paper for books comes from tree farms, where the trees are grown to be cut down and then replaced with new trees.
— Django Wexler (@djangowexler.bsky.social) May 25, 2024 at 4:10 PM
In some sense if you cut down trees, make books out of them, and then plant new trees, and then don't let the books decay, you've taken CO2 *out* of the atmosphere, since that carbon is what the books are made of. (In practice the fossil fuel emissions swamp this.)
— Django Wexler (@djangowexler.bsky.social) May 25, 2024 at 4:11 PM
I now have a slightly confused image of libraries as carbon sequestration facilities.
— James Aylett (@james.tartarus.org) May 25, 2024 at 4:52 PM
We should build more libraries anyway, but maybe this is a way to pitch them to get funding?
— James Aylett (@james.tartarus.org) May 25, 2024 at 6:59 PM
I’m a climate scientist and you are absolutely right. The most important thing anyone can do to fight climate change has nothing to do with our personal carbon footprints and everything to do with catalyzing systemic change! bsky.app/profile/kath…
— Katharine Hayhoe (@katharinehayhoe.com) May 25, 2024 at 8:20 PM
Jamie Raskin: How to Force Justices Alito and Thomas to Recuse Themselves in the Jan. 6 Cases
Baud
As long as that doesn’t mean voting blue, I’m in!
MomSense
Also, too fuck the green new deal. The know it all progressives who decided to attack Dems over an aspirational resolution that doesn’t even deal with the biggest international contributors drive me insane.
dr. bloor
If DougJ ever tires of pitchbotting the NYT, NPR is the next extremely target-rich environment for him to move to. Peak NPR.
trollhattan
My books are all printed on repurposed cotton underwear stock. The trees breathe on.
dr. bloor
Trickle Down, Virtue Up. Everyone knows this.
Baud
I was on a flight recently, and lots of people if all ages were reading, and I was surprised that almost all of them were reading paper books rather than ebooks.
Baud
Also, too, YouTube thinks I’m really interested in BP’s ads portraying themselves to be good on the climate.
Although recently YouTube thinks I want to join the dating site Bumble.
trollhattan
He”s a Prince of a King.
A good lawyer will argue Prince King was merely using his workout stretch bands and hey, just see how healthy he is today, at a sprightly 81!
Barbara
Well, I do think its useful to personally invest in the kind of technology you want to see on a larger scale if it’s feasible. I think it helps build momentum. For that reason I have solar panels on my roof.
There are so many better targets for reducing carbon footprint than books that I feel compelled to call BS. It reminds of the eco wars that erupted over cloth versus disposable diapers.
Baud
@trollhattan:
Damn.
VFX Lurker
Wherever and whenever possible, I choose eBooks over physical books. It has nothing to do with my carbon footprint and everything to do with living in an apartment without that much storage space.
This also means that I will have to visit my local library to read the first half of Art Spiegelman’s award-winning Maus, which is not legally available in a digital format. I read the second half (Maus II) in the 90’s because my local bookshop had it on sale, but I have not yet read the first part.
West of the Rockies
He literally could have put eyes out. Lock his geriatric ass up.
Baud
@West of the Rockies:
I don’t like the direction they’ve taken with Christmas Story Part 2.
Barbara
@trollhattan: A 70 year old woman was arrested today in my county for malicious wounding after she trapped a much younger man in an elevator and pepper sprayed him.
narya
I’ve switched to purchasing or borrowing mostly ebooks for awhile now; I make exceptions for one or two authors (Richard Russo being one of them)–the main reason for me is that it’s easier to carry an iPad than several books, if I’m traveling, and it’s easier to check them out of the library. I also get the library to send books I want to my local branch; not everything I want is available as an ebook. That said, I visited the main library last week (I had time to kill downtown) and I found myself smiling as I wandered the fiction aisles again, for the first time in years; it felt like I was visiting an old friend. I think I’m going to restart my old habit of going to the main branch occasionally and leaving with a pile of books.
eta: I mostly borrow ebooks; only occasionally buy them.
NeenerNeener
I have solar panels and a plug-in hybrid car. I also have eReaders because the arthritis in my thumbs makes holding big, fat books really painful, even if the hard copy is better for the environment. Plus, I don’t have room for hard copy books any more since I downsized my living quarters, and I belong to multiple Overdrive libraries with out of state library cards. The libraries offering out of state cards are getting fewer and farther between now, but I’m going to enjoy them while I have them.
karen gail
For years there was a push to get rid of one-use plastic bags; so now we go to store and use own bags or purchase paper bag. (Which will rip immediately if handled wrong, what happened to bags of old when we used them for book covers that last a whole school year. I also used them for paper clothing patterns and they would last for years.) So I began to notice that there are fewer and fewer items in glass jars and bottles; at one time you could count on replacing broken canning jars by choices when buying groceries. We no longer have plastic grocery bags but I find that the bagger has put so many things in plastic film bags; not just meat but soap, detergent, onions even box of cookies. The plastic makers didn’t cut back production with loss of one-use bags but increased production by manufacturers putting so much of product in plastic bottles and jars.
Villago Delenda Est
Goddamn, NPR is fucking worthless. Ripley treatment for them, just like the fucking Heritage Foundation and the Vichy Times.
dr. bloor
@Barbara: I’ll take “things that will be their own subcategory on Pornhub in a week” for $1000, Alex.
Old Dan and Little Ann
My neighbor who I like has a neighbor who everyone hates. It’s a long story worth a movie but the latest installment involved my buddy neighbor dressing up as Jesus and standing near other neighbor’s yard and preaching to love thy neighbor. Hated neighbor called the cops to complain my buddy neighbor was making fun Iof his religion (he was). Good times in my hood.
Chris
Okay, this is a perfect example of the thing I was talking about this morning: mainstream media institutions exist to launder right-wing talking points into left-leaning audiences, and that’s where they do the real damage.
Because the end result is that they’re allowed to define the two sides of any debate in whatever ways benefit the right, and derail people with good intentions towards dead ends or actively counterproductive tracks.
So not only is the environmental debate defined, as far as a ton of people are concerned, by “we shouldn’t care about pollution” on the right versus “we should inconvenience ourselves in our personal lives in ways that achieve nothing at all” on the left, but a bunch of well-meaning people who just want to do the right thing end up pissing away all their energy inconveniencing themselves in ways that achieve nothing at all, instead of doing anything useful.
Cheryl from Maryland
They will have to pry my illustrated books, especially art museum catalogs, out of my cold, dead hands. Print is almost always off from the original, but computer colors are always misaligned.
Brachiator
@Baud:
And also, in your case, it doesn’t mean wearing pants.
p.a.
Notice the plastic industry commercials out now? Basically “no, really, this current plastic really is recyclable! Honest! Not like before!”
p.a.
See! SEE! The book-banners are really environmentalists. Ugh.
Harrison Wesley
So when are we going back to hemp paper?
Marmot
@Chris:
Omg this bears repeating:
I often think about this one time I was trying to convince a sincere and dedicated young environmentalist of this very point. In my mind, it’s the “if everyone would only” trap. If everyone would only choose paper over plastic bags; recycle; eat farm-to-table; and on and on. What a waste.
I also think about a young, smarter friend of mine more recently saying, “Yeah, make better choices, sure. But how about shutting down Exxon-Mobil?”
cain
@dr. bloor: por los dos?
cain
@Baud: as soon as we reach peak digital advertising and AI inference, we’re gonna do more of the analog stuff. I expect GenZ and whatever after to just start doing records and what not.
Baud
@Marmot:
That’s a problem in the other direction. If you’re going to think big, you have to think slow, because it’s not possible to make major structural changes in short order.
Percysowner
I’m mostly buying E-books these days. They are easier to read in bed and tote to my kids house when I watch their kids. OTOH, if I really like a book I will then buy it again in hard copy, because no one can suddenly decide that oopsie, whoopsie something is wrong with copyright and they are just going to pull the book away. Plus, I have been reading Asian books recently and the covers are absolute works of art, which often doesn’t show in e-books.
Scout211
Uh, could someone please tell me what “catalyzing systemic change” means in words that don’t buzz?
Geminid
@Harrison Wesley: Hopefull, hemp packaging is on its way. I’d love to see hemp replace styrofoam in packaging.
Jeffro
all of this, times infinity!
it was part of Big Oil’s strategy from the beginning
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
@MomSense: AMEN
cain
@karen gail: I always get concerned when I look at how much plastic I have. It is sometimes really frightening how much shit we put into the ground. Plastic is fucking evil.
Jeffro
1,140%
“But…but…I recycle!”
Great. Now how about you vote for higher taxes (including carbon taxes) on big corporations and the rich to pay for our transition to much greener energy?
narya
@Chris: @Marmot: Yup. I try to avoid the “if-only-everyone” arguments, while at the same time I also try to reduce my own footprint as much as I can. I also have my lines in the sand: if the greener product doesn’t actually work as well, doesn’t even work adequately for my needs, then I’m not gonna choose it.
cain
@Chris:
This worked really well for Reagan. That motherfucker did a great job to give an alternative that spoke to a generation “greed is good, we’re awesome, you don’t need to change a thing”
satby
@Brachiator: not wearing pants is the ecological choice, fast fashion and our consumerist societies have created a clothes dump you can see from space in the Chilean desert.
Baud
That says it all to me.
cain
@Jeffro: But also extremely strong punitive damages on corporations that pollute.
You dump shit into our rivers, you’re going to pay motherfucker!
(I’m all about “motherfucker!” this thread) I blame Baud
bbleh
Ok to take a (heh) alternative point of view, it’s actually NOT a bad thing to encourage people to make choices and take actions that are ecologically sensible but materially relatively insignificant because (1) the usual logic that if millions of people take relatively insignificant steps, the collective impact is not insignificant, and (2) perhaps more importantly, it encourages them to be conscious of the environmental impact of their actions and to pay attention to environmental issues generally, some of which can be significant indeed.
IOW: someone who recycles IS more likely to support sensible regulation of oil companies.
And also, not all environmentally conscious choices impose “pain.” Most in my experience are relatively painless, and there can be some satisfaction (maybe illusory but whatever) in taking them. (And I *LOVE* my hybrid, just sayin’.)
satby
@Geminid: One thing that’s catching on is corn starch packing peanuts instead of styrofoam ones. I put them right in my garden to decompose, they dissolve in the rain.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: That is so last year. This year they have all turned into Middle East experts.
schrodingers_cat
Gardner BJers what evergreens do you suggest for a south facing flower bed that gets full sun.
eclare
@Baud:
Wow, that’s cool. Last time I traveled, ten years ago, everyone was on their iPad except for me.
bbleh
@schrodingers_cat: in New Mexico, Missouri, Maryland or Maine?
karen gail
We forget that the US is ranked the second largest world polluter behind China; it isn’t just the lack of mass transportation but number of vehicles clogging the highways and byways. Along with the massive amounts of pollution created by the military; while the Navy is talking about cutting pollution on bases it says nothing about the amount of pollution and fuel consumption that takes places by ships and aircraft.
MomSense
I guess I’m doing my part. It’s getting dark but I can’t find my lamps. I also can’t get my internet to work.
Baud
@MomSense:
You sure?
satby
@schrodingers_cat: None. The evergreens will eventually grow so big your flowers will be shaded out, and they tend to make the soil too acid for other plants. I’ve mostly removed evergreens from beds around houses I’ve bought. What about some dwarf shrubs?
Eric S.
@Baud: the morning of my last flight I discovered my e-reader was out of battery. I grabbed a couple analog books off the shelf as I went out the door.
eclare
@schrodingers_cat:
Why do you want evergreens?
Princess
Trust NPR to focus climate attention on personal choices with trivial weight to deflect from the really big things that need to be done about climate by corporations.
wjca
Absolutely this.
For example, I’ve had solar panels on my roof for a couple of decades now. Yes, there was an initial capital expense. But they paid for themselves in a very few years, and I’ve gotten cheap/free power ever since.
Saving money — not my definition of pain. Quite the contrary.
schrodingers_cat
@bbleh: Massachusetts.
schrodingers_cat
@eclare: Dwarf evergreens for winter interest.
JaySinWA
So book burning is a climate crime.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Eric S.: I mostly use ebooks, but when I travel, I also carry a physical book for backup.
Ebooks are cheaper, more convenient, and easier to store. But lots of people really like physical books. On booktok, people are lunatics about it. Having those books visible around them seems to say something to them and about them.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: Rosemary stays green year-round. Various thymes make good ground covers, and I think they stay green. Vinca,minor (small periwinkle) stays green but it does better in partial shade.
Martin
I disagree with the thesis here. The current push toward urbanism is mostly out of the environmental movement to achieve the kind of systemic change that is needed. Yes, riding your bike won’t solve climate change, but when you do that and signal to others that it’s okay to ride your bike, that it’s fun, and a nice bit of exercise, and cheap, and easier than you might think and that catches on – even if only 5% of the population, that becomes a constituency that your city needs to deal with – especially if you can organize that a bit. Next thing you know cities are shifting their budgets toward transit. But you couldn’t get there if you didn’t walk the walk.
There’s too much focus on national policy and not enough on local. It’s easy for Exxon to lobby congress but really hard to lobby 20,000 municipal governments. And you can find easy touchstone issues like banning gas lawn equipment (my city’s ban goes into effect in 32 days) that are popular with the public. And as these laws become more common locally, it gets easier to do them at the state level, then at the national level.
Not only is it hard to outflank the lobbyists, it’s hard to outflank USSC who will side with the lobbyists 9 times out of 10. But if you build it up from the bottom, change the culture, recruit other voices, it becomes a lot more durable.
I’ve told the story of putting up my solar and in getting my neighbors signatures that I informed them we were putting them up, several of my neighbors complained that they’d be ugly (you can’t even see them) and that they didn’t like the idea. After they went in we’d chat and they’d ask how I like them, and I’d comment I like not paying a power bill. All of my neighbors have since gotten my signature so they could install them. They really needed someone to go first. This is standard adoption curve stuff. Their objection isn’t objective, but subjective. They don’t want to be the weird one going first, to make a mistake. So I go first and yell back ‘the waters fine, come on in’. Same with my ebike, same with a ton of things. Bike use in my city has nearly quadrupled in the last 4 years. Did I do that? I helped. I was visible. The old guy carrying a week of groceries and having fun doing it. I talked to a LOT of people who had questions. I saw some of those people later riding their own bikes. They probably were me as well.
Americans talk in objective absolutes, but are cultural creatures like everyone else. If doing the environmental thing is seen as not weird, it starts being acceptable. You recruit the next group, they make it more socially acceptable, and it grows. But the early adopters need to go out and do it. The market builds off of them.
Citizen Alan
@Princess:
That’s just conspiracy talk. I mean, it’s not like NPR is heavily funded by donations from oil compa— Oh, wait!
Baud
@Martin:
I agree about building up from the bottom. One mistake libs make is putting all their energy on national solutions.
ETA: although much of your comment doesn’t really apply to books vs. e-readers in 2024.
Chet Murthy
@bbleh:
This is true, but the obvious ones that jump out: take mass transit, don’t fly — these do involve pain. I do these things, and I know that my life is materially impoverished for it. Doesn’t change that I do these things, b/c I feel guilty AF about what I’m leaving to my siblings. But I can see a lot of people just refusing.
I’m not saying you’re wrong: just that, there is some truth to the notion that being good on climate change involves personal sacrifice. And we Americans (humans) aren’t good at that.
Citizen Alan
@Martin:
I am still waiting from the Sinister Six to destroy the regulatory state and make it completely impossible for the feds to address climate change or any other issue of national importance.
Baud
@Chet Murthy:
Not flying is hard. I usually prefer mass transit, but it’s situational.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
You won’t have to wait long.
Redshift
@bbleh: It’s not a bad thing to encourage more sustainable practices, it is a bad thing to present them as the solution. They’re worthwhile, but if voluntary action was going to solve this it, that would be a lot further along by now.
Chet Murthy
@Baud: Not flying means basically no vacations. No car means there are places that are nearby in crow-flies terms, but are essentially unreachable. There’s a surf beach about 15mi away: unreachable by (reasonable) mass transit. Ah, well. I think about buying a car, but an electric would be prohibitively costly.
Kayla Rudbek
@Geminid: and mushrooms to replace styrofoam and other plastic as well…
Eric S.
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Like several others mentioned, I also have a collection of physical books. Mostly paperback from my pre e-reader days. I still will but the occasional physical book for something I really love and want to keep. The e-reader is invaluable when traveling and that includes riding public transit.
Martin
@Baud: Yeah, books are fine. CA is carbon neutral on agriculture – the forestry industry sequesters more CO2 than the ag industry produces (when it’s not on fire, that is).
Pretty much anything involving wood and trees is neutral provided you are replanting – even burning wood is fine. It’s when society veered off of wood and into oil and coal that things went to shit because that’s emissions that can’t be recaptured.
Don’t worry about your books or campfires. They’re fine.
Mr. Bemused Senior
They let you on a plane?
Baud
@Chet Murthy:
Right. For intracity travel, mass transit > driving, usually.
Baud
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
I was wearing those Groucho eyeglasses.
Jeffro
@cain:
THIS
you too? =)
Kayla Rudbek
@Dorothy A. Winsor: it also depends on the genre/use of the book, at least for me. I prefer my sewing, embroidery, and cross-stitch books in hard copy as those may include paper patterns or transfers. Cookbooks, I need an electronic version so that I can check ingredient lists at the grocery store. Pleasure reading (SF, fantasy, romance, mystery) I have been going with ebooks because otherwise I will run out of space even faster than I already am. Although there are some authors that I will buy in both ebooks and print books version, and I find it difficult to purge out print books that I have owned for decades now. Knitting and crochet books, I want a PDF version so I can put the PDF into the Knit Companion app so I have vertical and horizontal sliders to mark my position in the pattern.
Martin
@Chet Murthy: Vacation doesn’t need to mean travel. Ms Martin and I were talking about this today, because we’re going to Paris soon and she said I didn’t seem to be too excited – I’m not.
For me, a vacation isn’t a place to go necessarily, but a change in state of being. Paris would be interesting if I could disappear into the community and enjoy the normal flow of the community, but this trip has an itinerary that doesn’t allow for that. Really I want to sit in a cafe and have wine with lunch, but you know what? I can do that here. Maybe not here in my house, but here in my community. I can go 10 miles from here and still escape my day-to-day without going all the way to Paris. I can save those dollars and emissions. Now, going to the beach or the mountains or whatever biome is serene to you is hard to substitute, but again, most people don’t have to go that far for these things.
A lot of the point of going to Paris is to tell people you went to Paris or achieving some internalized notion that traveling like that is a sign of success or achievement, combined with being forced to break your routine and spend time with the people you are traveling with to build memories. But you can do that anywhere.
Suzanne
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It’s the whole aesthetic of “bookshelf wealth” and “dark academia”.
Martin
@Redshift: The biggest problem in the US, why the US trails so much behind many parts of Europe, is that Americans have no real sense of collective justice or protection. All decisions revolve around the individual and maybe the household. If my decision indirectly kills my neighbor, well, that’s what laws are for – I don’t need to consider my neighbor.
The US won’t really get there until we learn to care about each other. You can’t force that through laws. You can make progress, but it needs to become front-of-mind and in the US it’s not even back-of-mind.
Martin
@Suzanne: Americans really rely on consumerism to define and project their personality, as though were are constantly insecure about it.
narya
I realize too that I’m influenced by my dad. He read voraciously and was an autodidact, but the books were all from the library. Thus, if you came to my childhood home, you wouldn’t see many books other than the stack of library books next to Dad’s chair.
geg6
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
I love your neighbor who you like. I want him to be my friend.
Gvg
@Baud: there is some substitute for foam peanuts that look exactly like them but dissolve in water. I think it’s made of waste rice hulls but I am not sure. I started getting packages with them and didn’t know it a couple of years ago. The problem was the companies shipping with them didn’t boast. I had a large bag of what I thought was regular peanuts before I found out from one company. After some thought I tried water on my whole bag of “peanuts” and about half of them melted. Truly biodegradable almost instantly. Why didn’t they brag?
geg6
@narya:
Same.
Gvg
@Baud: Florida and Texas have been passing laws that forbid counties and cities from doing certain liberal things. It’s pissing me off. I think you have to do ALL levels, all the time, but different people are good at local or national or state. Look and see what is being neglected and help there.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@narya: Books used to be expensive. The paperback revolution made a difference in how many the average person could afford.
Another Scott
@Martin: Yup.
It’s the “fossil” in fossil fuels that threw the atmosphere hugely out of whack.
(Though all the New World people being wiped out and the forests taking over and apparently greatly contributing to / causing the Little Ice Age in Europe does give me a bit of a pause…)
Cheers,
Scott.
Warren Senders
Katharine Hayhoe is the only evangelical Christian in the public sphere whom I respect wholeheartedly.
Papa Boyle
Lemme see if I understand how to whatabout:
(stretches fingers, multiple knuckles pop satisfyingly)
“A survey conducted on NPR staff and their offices after puplication of the article found multiple instances of physical book possession. Staff were also found to have engaged in printing and possession of loose physical paper documents, many of which were later deemed a frivilous contribution to the climate change crisis. The staff involved in these incidents were walked out behind the NPR office building and beaten to death with a reclaimed rustic white oak kitchen table leg purchased from a furniture store within verifiable walking distance.
NPR’s carbon footprint was not enlarged in the process of this investigation“
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Baud:
You bastard! I was taking a drink of milk when I read that.
Baud:1 Odie: /splat
Another Scott
Meanwhile, example 83,414,213,577 of how social media “algorithms” aren’t our friends. In fact, they’re our enemy.
Stux on Mastodon – a short video (apparently originally from IG).
Grr…,
Scott.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Gvg:
Keep those peanuts away from cats! One of our cats got one in his mouth when I was opening a package and he started choking on it when it partially dissolved and glued itself into his mouth. He started to panic, shaking his head and backing up trying to get away from it. I scooped him up and risked a finger to dig it out of his mouth.
Good idea but watch out for the pets!
RaflW
I read a mildly horrifying Philly Inquirer article about the utterly massive e-commerce fulfillment warehouses going up all over eastern PA and New Jersey.*
OK, maybe a fraction of that is books. But I’m gonna spitball that a lot more of it is Swiffer Wet Jet refills and Super Sugary Crunch Blobs that people have now been trained to want delivered (in oversized cardboard boxes with single use bubble bags to fill em up) in two hours or less or I will Veruca Salt my way into the stratosphere.
*eta: And I noted on Bsky that the 1.2 million sqft building that illustrated the article didn’t have a single skylight, nor even one token solar panel. Just such an arrogant statement of “f**k green building concepts, here’s a ginormous old school energy suck. Enjoy your instacart.”
Timill
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Ouch. Same rule as for pilling a cat: prop the cat between your legs, use non-dominant hand (left, in my case) to force open their mouth and the right hand to extract the peanut.
Works for 3 of the 4 I’m currently pilling; the fourth is easier: put his pills in a bowl and cover with Churu. Leonidas will then eat all the Churu, saving the pills for dessert. But he does eat them…
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Timill:
Yup, except for our tough cat. He gets a purrito wrap and the pill cannon to keep our blood loss to a minimum. What’s funny is that he doesn’t fight the wrap at all.
Try it without the wrap and he will fight like a wildcat!
E.
@Another Scott: Whoa.
Sister Golden Bear
@Chet Murthy:
Is an electric bike doable for your area? Obviously loading a surfboard on one would be tough, but I assume there’s trailers that could accommodate it.
Sister Golden Bear
@Martin: For me a vacation is ideally a time to see and experience new places, people, etc. — preferably in a foreign country, or as least a very different part of the U.S. Which I why I’ve visited seven continents, 45 countries, and 40 states. So for me, sitting in a cafe 10 miles from home doesn’t scratch that itch. To each their own. But there’s still a lot of world I want to see.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@dr. bloor:
Fuck NPR.
Brachiator
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
Just seeing this. Gave me a chuckle. I love it.
Did the cops actually come out for this?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Chris:
I characterize it as follows:
The pipeline is such that glibertarian-funded places, think CATO, Heritage, various academic depts that have whored themselves out, produce the crap, then “mainstream” outlets like Vox/Atlantic launder them for broader consumption, aimed primarily at the Totebagger Radio audience.
Places like LGM and Atrios are nothing but that.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@Brachiator: The local police did show up for this. It was the freaking Sunday before Memorial Day. They asked my buddy neighbor to please not antagonize his neighbor on Monday so they wouldn’t get a call and have to waste their time on another bullshit visit. Personally, I think they should arrest my other jerk neighbor for abusing 911.
Gin & Tonic
@Chet Murthy: 15 miles is a comfortable bike ride away. More comfortable with an electric bike.
PJ
@Martin: The point of going to Paris is to be and live in Paris. You can’t do that in California. No one is making you got to Paris so that you can wish you were back home in California.
Ruckus
The whole idea that climate change can be meaningfully address to consumers altering their personal decisions is so horribly counterproductive it’s not surprising to discover it was invented, in large part, by energy companies and other pro-climate apocalypse forces.
I can see a lot of possible change where I live. There really aren’t a lot of big cars to purchase today. Sure there are cars that don’t get as good gas milage as it is reasonably possible to obtain, but in LA county, and I’d imagine other areas, full size pickup trucks with zero noticeable load are a rather common sight. Now they may get better milage than full size pickups used to 20 or more years ago, they still don’t do as well as a lot of cars, because of the weight and aerodynamics. And most of these are the high end models so I doubt many of them are work trucks – ever. Now the aerodynamics are changing to some degree so the milage is likely up from 20 yrs ago, there is still more weight and not as good of aerodynamics as many/most modern cars.
@karen gail:
Here in LA County we have a series of electric transit train routes and I use them rather extensively. It has on occasion been standing room only when I boarded. That’s likely to be around 50-60 people per car and they are generally 3 double cars long so that’s a fair number of people riding, and they run every 12 minutes during the day. I’ve never been on one other than at the end of a line that wasn’t reasonably full, sometimes more than reasonably full – standing room only, all seats taken.
Ruckus
@karen gail:
In my part of LA we have plastic grocery bags but I self check out so I just wheel my cart to the car and load up my cloth bags with handles. I’ve got one insulated one and 2 carry bags. All of these bags last for, as best as I can tell, forever, which is how long I’ve had them. I often walk to the store and use my day pack so I don’t waste any bags. I drive to the store maybe 3 times a month.
Martin
@PJ: My point was that there is a societal cost to going to Paris. It’s about ¼ of a person’s annual CO2 budget. I’m not paying that societal cost, but someone will pay it. That doesn’t help Paris feel more enjoyable. It makes it feel selfish, tbh.
NotMax
@Ruckus
Plastic shopping bags have been banned on Maui for years (well over than a decade IIRC). Ditto (but somewhat more recently) for styrofoam takeout containers and any accompanying plastic utensils. Small plastic bags available inside food markets for fruits, veggies and meats.
Pretty much everyone adapted quickly with minimal fuss.
NotMax
#110
well over than a decade = well over a decade
::sigh::
Ruckus
@NotMax:
My mind does automatic translations from additional words/letters into normally intended english. If it didn’t I’d never be able to read my own typing…. I used to think I had dyslexia but it’s just my normal dyslexic brain.
AM in NC
@schrodingers_cat: Two questions:
do you mean evergreen perennial flowers, or evergreen larger plants (shrubs, trees).
Where (in general terms) do you live, so we know temperature/humidity conditions for these plants?
JML
several people in my gaming groups have gone to PDF only for their rpg books, mostly for convenience: it is a pain to have to load up a backpack full of heavy books for a game, but I can’t really do it. I just prefer the hard copy, especially for reference. It’s much faster for me to find a rule flipping through the hard copy than trying to scan or search the pdf (the indexes tend to be better than a search function). But I’m increasingly tempted by e-books on my tablet.
Kay
If Democrats lost their 35-40% of white men they woud never win another national election. If Democrats lost their 47% of white women they would never win another election. If Democrats lost their 80-90% of AA voters they would never win another election. If Democrats dip below 50% w/Latinos and yung people they would lose some (western and midwestern) states, so therefore a national election. It’s a coalition. Every piece matters – no group can excude another without harming the whole, because each counts for one. There’s no extra vote for loyalty.
jlowe
While rusticating in my basement during the pandemic, I read Climate Leviathan by Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann. I gained from the book some useful insights about governance in a climate-changed future, though the Hobbes-Carl Schmitt mashup was a bit concerning and there is a fair amount of Marxist doctrinal sludge to wade through in order to find the nuggets of wisdom. Still, it was worthwhile reading. Our current focus on adaptation, personal responsibility, and so forth (almost anything other than measures to steeply and promptly reduce emissions), arise in the widespread hope that these will forestall draconian emissions controls. Out of the scenarios for future governance studied in the book, the authors concluded with some sorrow that Climate Leviathan was the most likely: some day, a government will come after our hamburgers.
jlowe
@Baud:
Yes, it is possible to make the needed, major structural changes extremely rapidly. It just would be highly unpleasant for all of us, though.
The Lodger
@Old Dan and Little Ann: Never mind what Jesus said, I llove your neighbor.