I’m not sure what the individual action is here. But I also struggle with why any action makes sense. When there is no pipeline, the fuel is still transported. It goes via 16 wheelers instead of by pipes, and those 16 wheelers have substantial emissions on their own. On the upside, it drives up their cost of transport to not have a pipeline. But OTOH consumers are addicts. They will just buy their fuel at any price. It doesn’t quite work like typical markets. Car drivers will pay for the nose for fuel. They get more angry as price goes up but they cannot be broken. Even a 10-fold fuel increase wouldn’t get those stubborn motherfuckers onto bicycles. So it seems like fighting pipelines is not the best use of human energy.
I actually voted radical left this time. Not because I'm a commie, but because they were the only party left that I could use as a "protest vote", which is what MOST of the far right's votes are. People (well, most of them) aren't clamoring for a ridiculously rigid right-wing society, they just feel completely ignored on the topic of immigration, and that ONE issue is going to be the death of the EU and all of us down the line. (the conflict about it, not the immigrants themselves).
Since we didn't even have a radical left running this time, I picked an ordinary social democrat. One whom I've met and talked to, and who seems a reasonable person... and is already a MEP. He will narrowly continue to be a MEP.
As for priorities - the transition to a sustainable economy is indeed on the back burner currently. I like to imagine that everyone knows it must happen and soon - but maybe I over-estimate people.
The local hot topics this time were economic crisis and war.
given that they do not take it seriously unless they can use to rail against foreigners, i think it is less important to me than European Unity and Climate Change.
At the same time the EU has a number of laws worth protecting. The carbon market with no offsets is a good tool to go towards zero(-61% of certificates compared to 2005 for a good part of EU emissions and another system with lower goals covering transport and heating). Ban of sales of new fossil fuel cars by 2035 is also a good policy. Those policies are worth defending and that is possible, with the council having to vote on it. Realisticly as long as two out of Germany, France, Italy and Spain are still for them it is possible. So please France make sure to not elect Le Pen in the next election on the 30th.
Also there is some good news on the country level. Poland a massive polluter, which has so far done a relativly bad job in climate matters has shifted conservative, which is good since they used to be far right. Orban also got some more serious competition is Hungary.
However this is bad news. The EU parliament was probably the most pro climate parliament in the world calling for some truely progressive laws. It is really sad to see that gone.
That being said more on the ground action is needed. Local politics and so forth are good options. The EU is probably not going to enact pro climate laws for some time.
This...won't do anything in an average household. A consumer grade router is quite efficient, unless you just turn off the entire device
A per-port choice of 1 Gbits/sec or 100 Mbits/sec. Apparently capping it to 100 Mbits/sec saves energy because they’re calling it a green setting. I’m a bit surprised the savings would be notable enough to justify the option.
It doesn't, unless you've repurposed a computer as a router, then the CPU has to do the heavy lifting of packet handling. The faster you go, the more it has to work, but any consumer grade router uses ASIC chips dedicated for Ethernet handling.
It's true cellular uses considerably more power because of the distance so you should use the far more efficient and local WiFi
Disable image loading in the browser. Most images are junk anyway.
Great for speeding up browsing on a limited connection, pointless for energy savings
Btw your reverse tethering option probably stopped being maintained because that is now built in to Android
Great for speeding up browsing on a limited connection, pointless for energy savings
We know from this research that video conferencing has a notable emissions impact, which could only be a consequence of energy consumption. Bandwidth doesn’t just cost energy at home but also all the servers and equipment that carry the payload upstream to the other end.
Video conferencing is like sending low resolution images with many diffs. Still images in a browser would be higher res (and bigger with higher pixel addressability), though much fewer in numbers, but still considerably more consumption than text.
Btw your reverse tethering option probably stopped being maintained because that is now built in to Android
What happens on the server side with recent versions? PCs don’t normally expect network traffic on USB (edit: well, not sure about windows, but not linux AFAIK). Gnirehtet is installed on the PC and it uses ADB to run the mock VPN on the Android.
(edit) Looks like on the linux side it’s just a matter of setting up a bridge with no extra software. But for the Android side every approach I find calls for an app. Does anyone know which Android version introduced built-in reverse tethering?
There's a huge difference between video and images, video is always expensive bandwidth-wise and intense. I can definitely see it having an emissions impact. Nearly all the images you'll encounter on your day to day browsing otoh is tiny and heavily compressed, bigger than text, but not enough to have a notable impact like video can.
As far as reverse tethering, it's under USB "internet" in settings, once that's going you go back to network connections in Windows and you'll have the computers Ethernet and another Ethernet that your phone is emulating. Select your computer Ethernet connection, right click properties, sharing tab and share to the other to bridge the connections
Nearly all the images you’ll encounter on your day to day browsing otoh is tiny and heavily compressed, bigger than text, but not enough to have a notable impact like video can.
I’ve noticed that people are quite bad at choosing the right compression algo for the job. And Wired mag concurs. SVG should be favored, but JPEG, PNG and GIF dominate. And even if you don’t have a vector graphic to start with, people often make the wrong choice between the three.
“reducing emissions can also be as simple as limiting the number of images that feature on each web page.”
-- Wired
“Images are the single largest contributors to page weight. The more images you use and the larger those image files, the more data needs to be transferred and the more energy is required,”
-- Vineeta Greenwood, account director at design agency Wholegrain Digital
edit: I just realized this is another problem Cloudflare brings us. When web admins opt to offload their job onto Cloudflare, they have less incentive to ensure their website is lean. The Wired article says web pages have quadrupled in weight since 2010. I’m sure much of that can be attributed to Cloudflare facilitating the bloat.
As far as reverse tethering, it’s under USB “internet” in settings
So you navigate this way: settings » USB internet? (my ~6+ y.o. device does not have USB anything in the top level)
Is the reverse tethering switch in a different place than the forwards tethering switch in your case? I found this well-written guide by someone who favors configs over software for this. Unfortunately the article has no date but it was archived in Oct.2020. He says root is required as well as terminal commands, but since it was possible with root for a long time I assume you’re saying recent versions make the option available without root. The article mentions this path:
and that’s what I have. There is a “USB tethering” boolean in the Tethering & portable hotspot page. I have always figured that option was strictly for forward tethering. And to reinforce that assumption, when Gnirehtet is running that “USB tethering” switch is in the off position (but perhaps because it uses the phony vpn approach). The article seems to be using that boolean for reverse tethering, unlike Gnirehtet.
For anyone curious about how this might play out, take a look at Telus Health. Telus is a Canadian telecom company that has branched out into several health care businesses, from clinics to building and hosting¹ electronic healthcare records. There are currently battles over whether it is legal to force prescription fulfillment through Telus providers.
That's right, a telecom company, that most reviled, least trusted sector of the economy, is trying to take over healthcare in a country with a (mostly) single-payer, tax-funded, (mostly) free at the point of delivery, public healthcare system. And they're doing so successfully.
Amazon is actually late to the game.
(1) I don't know for sure that they are hosting the records, but the fact that the word "Telus" shows up in the url makes it seem like like a reasonable conclusion.
“Amazon is destroying millions of items of unsold stock every year, products that are often new and unused, ITV News can reveal. (That article covers the UK, but an insider tells me it's happening in the US too)”
Amazon overstocks their warehouse and then has to prioritize the space for the most profitable stock. They destroy everything that does not make the cut. That strikes me as very inefficient. I think any perceived efficiency draws from the sort of work environment that causes employees to pee in jars. That’s not really the kind of efficiency that benefits the environment.
That's fairly normal in retail, both online and bricks-and-mortar. That doesn't make it better, but it's perhaps not an outstanding black mark against Amazon alone.
I suppose it would be interesting to know what extent the various retailers go to in order to assure destruction of the stock. Amazon does not tolerate stuff being tossed in the dumpster, and then someone popping by the dumpster after their shift ends -- in fear that they would sell the stuff on eBay (their competitor). So the excess stock area is secured with only approved people getting access and Amazon somehow ensures that the select few who get access are likely to comply with the destruction. I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon recorded the destruction on video. (and if they do, would be very nice if someone would leak that)
I've seen staff, from at least one retailer, in the middle if summer, putting working fans in the dumpster and then beating them with hammers until destroyed. They needed more shelf space for AC units. The staff weren't happy doing it, but weren't given much choice about it.
Ultimately, what should retailers do with overstock? You'd hope they could sell it off cheap or donate it to a suitable charity, and I'm sure some percentage is, but it works against them as customers buy the discounted items rather than the higher profit ones. The retailers don't want to destroy stock as it's lost profit, but it's the most economical path for them to take in that situation. I suspect it'll take a change in regulations to change that arithmetic.
Ultimately, what should retailers do with overstock?
Some companies in the US offer mail-in rebates, and sometimes the rebates go as far as making the product gratis. So if they overproduced product X, they will price it at $50 but then offer a rebate for $50. Consumers have to go through some hoops to get the reimbursement (fill out a form, copy the receipt, cut out a UPC code from the package, and mail it before an aggressive deadline). This obviously boosts sales and gets stuff out of stock quick. Some customers are lazy or incompetent, so they are enticed by the rebate, they buy, but then fail to follow all the rules or fail to meet the rigid schedule. So the seller gets some revenue from consumer failures, as opposed to zero revenue by trashing. They also outsource the rebate effort to a rebate company, and they are often a bit nefarious and (IMO) pretend to lose mail. The amount of mail that gets lost with those mail-in rebates statistically disproportionate to other mail. In any case, that’s an approach that apparently gets shareholder approval. Both manufacturers and big merchants do that. They also have a big window of time to decide when to mail out the refunds. They can choose which fiscal quarter they want to take that hit in for tax purposes.
Amazon is surely quite calculated in what the do, so it’s unclear to me why they don’t use MIRs to dump stuff. As consumers, we can influence that calculation by boycotting. So us doing our job can control this.
I suspect it’ll take a change in regulations to change that arithmetic.
I’m not generally a fan of overly micro-controlled interventionalism but I would support a hard and fast ban on destruction and disposal of non-defective goods. They should be forced to contact the city waste management and say “we have 1000 smartphones new in box to dump”, and the city should manage it in a way that the phones do not get wasted. If Amazon doesn’t like their own products competing against them, they will reorganize their stock situation to be more optimal for profits in a non-destructive way, which might mean not overstocking in the first place.
The most effective way to fight back against this dystopian crap is to unionize so that the union can reject sub-par health care plans.
I don't think I could fault an individual person for accepting a job that uses Amazon as a healthcare provider. Hopefully, you could channel the same principles that would lead one to boycott Amazon into unionizing your workplace so that you can actually have a say in the healthcare plan.
Unionizing is a collective action. Not that there’s anything wrong with collective actions. But a boycott on Amazon is not the sort of thing that I would expect to gain momentum on across a workforce unless Amazon Care were to actually offer a quite poor quality health plan. Don’t workers’ unions tend to just advocate for the worker’s own personal benefits? I imagine someone showing up to a union meeting to propose prioritizing the environment would likely get marginalized and pushed out. The best they could probably get away with is motivate the union to compel an employer to offer more plans to compete with Amazon Care.
The beauty of individual actions is that you can make a snap change with instant effect (however small) without interference. It seems in this case it requires an organized collective effort to merely reach a position by which some people can make their drop in the ocean individual action.
Although I have to wonder if it could work as simply as my Coca-Cola boycott, where I simply asked for more options with no support. Maybe I would make that a condition of hiring me. “I’ll accept your job offer as-is except I require a non-Amazon health plan as a precondition”.
It would be more useful to separate individual actions from collective actions. If I want to know what /I can do now/ to ensure I’m doing all I can, the collective stuff is just clutter.
Switch to Ecosia
Ecosia looks like a greenwash to me:
Microsoft syndicate
MS partnered with the absolute worst of the worst oil companies to help them find places to drill for oil (#Chevron and #ExxonMobil) which also feeds the republican party and climate denial lobbyists
Patronizes Amazon for hosting (it’s hard to be more evil than Amazon)
Reverse proxies through Cloudflare who then pushes countless graphical CAPTCHAs (see ¶9).. not to mention being responsible for compromising the privacy of everyone in the world while enshitifying 30% of the web.
Forces use of Paypal so they can sell swag, yet Paypal was caught under estimating their CO₂ footprint by something like 4000%.
Ties to Google, who helps Total Oil find places to dig for oil.
The list just goes on and on... And Ecosia hopes planting some trees will somehow offset the damage of their own existence. Not even close. Mojeek does less environmental harm by far.
Prioritize transit over cars
W.r.t. individual actions public transport doesn’t improve much because public transport systems are also quite harmful. Bicycles are the answer here. I had to take the car → tram step because it’s psychologically harder to make the big change to bicycle. But then eventually realized I could skip the wait at stops by going to bicycle. I wish I had been faster to upgrade from tram to bicycle.
Ride your bicycle instead of the car
Ah, so you had that already.. that’s the problem with this list. I guess the public transport prioritization was a collective action.
-More widespread use of contactless payments
Cash is better for the environment. The #WarOnCash is giving far too much power to banks, who also have a huge CO₂ footprint that shadows what the armored trucks do. Those banks are dumping huge amounts of money into oil companies -- see the Banking on Climate Chaos report. And see the environmental abuses column on this page. The best move is to use cash for everything.
-Require all office work to be done from home for as much as possible
Suppose it’s the middle of winter or middle of summer and 1000 employees work in an insulated energy efficient commercial building. Sending 1000 people home to heat or cool 1000 uninsulated homes is not favorable, even if those homes have heat pumps. Teleworking likely only makes sense during moderate climate times of the year.
-Improve insulation in older buildings
Perhaps a rule that employees who live in a passive home or heavily insulated home can telework all year long would inspire that.
Increase energy efficient standards with new houses with solar panels mandatory
I heard Belgium has mandated that all new builds must be a passive, meaning the not just insulated but designed with big south facing windows and everything necessary to not even need a heating or cooling system. They go as far as not even allowing a windowsill to act as a thermal bridge. Whereas in much of the US people haven’t even heard the term passive house. I spoke to a real estate agent who never heard of a passive house but he was confident that no such house existed in his state.
Someone living in a significantly sized city in the US could not find a single roofer who could install a vegetated roof. So what do you do there? Ideally roofers would get asked for a vegetated roof often enough that they come to realize they should adapt.
I didn't know about the Apple one, but ever since I found out that Google was mapping Wi-Fi networks (many many moons ago), it has infuriated me that this is opt-out rather than opt-in.
The tags are only intended for two services specifically: Google maps and Apple. If you catch Google or Apple not properly treating these tags in Europe, please report it as a GDPR violation under articles 5¶1(a) and 6¶1.
Outside of Europe, you could probably still take some civil action if you can dig up the privacy policy whereby Google or Apple agree to honor the tags. For Google, this may be sufficient.
You got any resources online that back this up? This feels like one of those Facebook posts stating that you don't consent to Facebook reading your data...
Individual Climate Action
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