Although "environmentally friendly" is not strictly equal to "minimum possible GHG footprint". The plastic bag may have a lower carbon footprint, but it isn't going to biodegrade as quickly, and may end up turning into microplastics that persist for a long time.
An “effective environmentalism” might be a good meme to attempt a rebrand of nuclear, microwaves, and factory farming. But there’s nothing about how to prevent effective environmentalism from becoming performative just like how the author notes environmentalism has.
This is what happens when you optimize for only a single variable.<p>And the end result won't be what you want it to be. It doesn't do us any good to stop climate change if the ecosystem still collapses out from under us.<p>Creating a sustainable environment is a systems problem and carbon is just one of <i>many</i> variables in that system. Yes, it's a really important one and in many ways it is the most pressing. But biodiversity and maintaining ecosystem services are close seconds, and if you optimize your eating for carbon in the way the author is describing you inevitably end up doing more net harm by undercutting those other two.<p>Further, a lot of the "data" she's linking is completely with out method or context. And method and context can make a huge difference in these sorts of lifecycle analyses. They are fraught with pitfalls. It's one of the reasons it's been so fucking hard to pin down exactly what the most environmental behavior is.<p>And this whole mess is one of the prime motivators behind my current effort to write an open academic publishing platform [1] that would allow review to be crowdsourced so that we can open and centralize the whole literature. Because then we actually <i>could</i> get a complete picture of what the best current answer to these questions is with out having to go through secondary sources like this which inevitably cherry pick studies, data, and lack context.<p>[1] <a href="https://blog.peer-review.io/we-might-have-a-way-to-fix-scientific-publishing" rel="nofollow">https://blog.peer-review.io/we-might-have-a-way-to-fix-scien...</a>
The author confuse being environmentalist with trying to reduce her carbon footprint.<p>Environment is not all about carbon footprint. Reducing...or rather not increasing as much global warming doesn't help reducing the 7th continent or the micro plastics/graphene/whatever life threatening microscopic waste we are sending in the environment.
I support the use of plastic for many packaging tasks. The lighter weight helps offset the other environmental impacts.<p>Still support plastic bag and straw 'bans' though.<p>One small factor to add to the mix is giving less money and power to fossil fuel producers, which I think has an outsize effect.<p>So I'd like to see most plastics move towards non-fossil feedstocks and better recycling.<p>Luckily, Extended Producer Responsibility laws lead to both less packaging, less harmful packaging and more recycling of packaging by putting the cost of disposal onto the people with the ability to make systematic change.<p>The people pushing the "all regulations backfire" line are just anti-regulation because they know they can foist the costs onto other people. If they'd lie about climate change then they've kind of blown their trust with me.<p>I agree environmentalalsim should be data driven, in both identifying problems and potential solutions. I believe that the meme that it's not is an obvious political fabrication by genuinely bad people.
You can't make decisions about "environmentalism" if you haven't decided on your goals. Reduce greenhouse gases? Reduce solid waste and microplastics? Reduce animal suffering? Preserve biodiversity and habitat? Give the social appearance of being "green"?<p>My imperfect personal tactic is to consume less of everything.<p>Refuse -> Reduce -> Reuse -> Recycle
These kind of articles usually have a summary buried in them, this might be it:<p>> "Lab-grown meat, dense cities, and nuclear energy need a rebrand. These need to be some of the new emblems of a sustainable path forward."<p>1) Lab-grown meat is nowhere near commercialization. At best we have plant-based meat substitutes that have similar nutritional profiles (high protein) to meat that can be produced at scale.<p>2) Dense cities don't really matter that much, as each human requires a similar amount of arable land to grow the food they need each year. That per-human land area might be a bit less for vegetarians, but I doubt it's that big of a factor.<p>3) Nuclear energy is still quite expensive relative to wind/solar/storage, and that won't change because nuclear's catastrophic failure potential requires over-engineering and high-security, plus the uranium ore and cooling water requirements can be problematic.
I find this questionable.
Sure, the type of food is more important than where it comes from - IF you eat meat. This argument effectively states that you can stop making environmentalist choices once you have avoided the biggest offenders.<p>Now, if you really care about moving towards a more environmentally friendly world, you'll not stop there. You'll first want to change your diet to be plant-based, but then also want to make sure that those plant-based foods you buy are best-in-class (environmentally speaking), i.e. lead to healthier soil and less microplastics.<p>Beyond the environmental aspect, I'd also suggest looking at what impact your choices have along social and economical axes.
The issue with environmentalism is that we are all the victims of multi decades PR campaigns crafted to deflect people attention from what’s really polluting towards meaningless things.<p>People are angry their neighbours don’t properly sort their trash while recycling is a shame. Meanwhile planned obsolescence is prevalent.<p>Making people feel guilty about their very small impact prevent them looking at the real culprits: electricity production, oil companies, global manufacturing and shipping and construction.
Two that I hear constantly: rooftop solar and urban gardening (or "farming" if you must). Both are ecological catastrophes when they prevent the effective use of cities to house people in energy-efficient buildings with low demand for transportation. Protecting rooftop solar with "solar access rights" is something that some find superficially green but is actually ruinous.
Don‘t think about microwave vs. stove. Instead, do the following:<p>1. stop buying meat<p>2. stop eating meat<p>3. stop buying dairy-based products<p>4. stop eating dairy-based products<p>5. stop eating eggs, honey, fish<p>6. use public transport, if possible<p>7. don‘t fly, if possible<p>Congrats, you now are an environmentalist.
Some of the arguments seem misplaced via bad assumptions. This is exactly the approach that will alienate trad thinkers who need to be convinced in order for any effective action to be taken. Here are the issues I had:<p>- Highly processed food, including fake meat, could be extremely bad for you. The point is we just don't know yet as there isn't good data.<p>- Dense cities have the potential to be inhumane and not worth living in for various health (e.g. particulates, aerosols, nitrogen, disease) and social (digital-gov tight controls over movement, work, and access to resources) reasons. Just look at covid era China. Large groups of people displaced into under resourced cities ends badly.<p>-Nuclear is great until you get something like Ukraine where its used as a stick against the rest of Europe. Thyroid cancer rates in western europe would spike as a result of a critical incident. Or ofc Fukashima and Chernobyl. I'm totally pro nuclear but not mentioning its failures is a bad take and I don't believe the figures about nuclear related deaths.
The climate's been changing since the world came into being. Stop trying to play God and think you can control nature. Fear mongering. Look how miserable western countries are with their eco warrior solutions.