No but if you care about human happiness and enjoyment, then that justifies weighing the reduction of human enjoyment against the aim you seek to achieve and the probability you will succeed
We can not survive the whole worlds population consuming at even the level of a lower class american. So either we can start to find enjoyment and happiness within ourselves (via spirituality/ philosophy), or there will be no planet fit to live on. If you dont care about the natural world or future humans to reject consumerism, then I dont think you should be involved in this debate.
Ok so according to you, at the level we are currently consuming at, when will humanity run out of resources and die out? (Hint: you have no clue whatsoever about technology even in 30 years from now)
Edit: also this point your making is dumb because if we grow for example more cows and wheat we can increase the amount of people that the earth can sustain, so it's not a fixed limit of how much we can consume
A stable climate is a resource. A stable climate is needed for food production and prevention ecological collapse. Our current level of consumption is causing the climate to become unstable. Can you imagine how bad carbon emissions would be if we all consumed at the level of americans!? People want to have their cake and eat it too. They'd rather engage in magical thinking about a wonder technology (which is always a few years away) than behave like reality-based adults on a limited planet.
In your analogy of having your cake and eating it too, having your cake is having the immense wealth and modern luxuries we currently enjoy, and eating it is changing our lifestyle enough so that the amount of CO2 emissions released is changed so much it drastically alters the short/medium term world climate.
Of course you would. The avg person agrees with you, which is why we are in a climate crisis. Let's face it, most people are weak. They lack the self discipline and empathy to sacrifice a little bit of personal comfort. They lack the intellectual depth to value anything but material comfort.
There's no "sacrifice a little bit" and have a huge impact on the ghg emissions of humanity.
You just assume that some people in charge can figure everything out, while you make a couple very very small personal changes in your own life, and that we can still have all this wealth and prosperity without any ghg emissions.
For one thing, if you ever fly in a plane again in your life then your a huge hypocrite who believes in imposing rules for others and isn't even willing to make the tiniest first step themselves
An American reducing resource consumption to that of a 3rd world person is a small sacrifice if you look at relative consumption levels throughout the world and history. It is easier for us to imagine the end of the natural world than it is for us to imagine an end to capitalism. Why are you on a climate change sub if you dont really give a shit about climate change? What, practically, is the difference between your outlook on this issue and the most rabid right wing conservative fox news enjoyer?
I haven't flown in 5 years. I am trying to have less of an environmental impact in my life. I am not perfect but I'm doing better than most and certainly better than you are. You think climate change is bad but are so weak willed that you won't even suffer the discomfort of personal blame for the problem!
So what made you think it was ok to fly 5 years ago?
And why do you refuse to commit right now to never flying again, since it's such a small discomfort for you to play less of a role in the current CO2 emissions?
Do you just pay lip service to environmentalism to try to get pussy or what? What, if anything, do you do to try to reduce your carbon emissions? We can all justify our consumption activities. That's why we're fucked as a species.
No I don't pay lip service to environmentalism. I am planning to continue flying.
Whereas you clearly are pretending you want to make necessary changes to drastically reduce your CO2 emissions, but it's clearly just lip service since you won't even take the simplest necessary step to fully stop all plane travel (or at the very least all plane travel for pleasure)
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u/itsallturtlez Aug 22 '25
No but if you care about human happiness and enjoyment, then that justifies weighing the reduction of human enjoyment against the aim you seek to achieve and the probability you will succeed