> You can always find some metric where your side looks better and the other worse, the trick is not to let yourself use it to excuse your own bullshit unless you love to actively harm yourself.
This is such an important point. My family’s been in the Los Angeles area since the 1950s and I remember a semi-constant stream of whining from conservatives about California’s environmental laws, and that “someone else will just pollute more” excuse for inaction was a common refrain. This was always annoying because even if we assume that the global situation will get worse, it’s not just less bad than it would have been but also locally they reduced a massive number of deaths, illnesses, asthma cases, etc. not to mention the quality of life improvements from not getting headaches or having days where you can’t see across the street. Even if removing plastic straws or bags isn’t going to save the world, anyone who likes going to the water is going to appreciate not having all of that trash visible.
The other thing we always need to keep in mind is that we are living in huge, well-developed economies with millions of people. We can do many things at once and something like a ban on single-use plastic is not a huge time sink. We banned disposable plastic bags here, and despite all of the dire predictions it took less than a week to adjust.
This is such an important point. My family’s been in the Los Angeles area since the 1950s and I remember a semi-constant stream of whining from conservatives about California’s environmental laws, and that “someone else will just pollute more” excuse for inaction was a common refrain. This was always annoying because even if we assume that the global situation will get worse, it’s not just less bad than it would have been but also locally they reduced a massive number of deaths, illnesses, asthma cases, etc. not to mention the quality of life improvements from not getting headaches or having days where you can’t see across the street. Even if removing plastic straws or bags isn’t going to save the world, anyone who likes going to the water is going to appreciate not having all of that trash visible.
The other thing we always need to keep in mind is that we are living in huge, well-developed economies with millions of people. We can do many things at once and something like a ban on single-use plastic is not a huge time sink. We banned disposable plastic bags here, and despite all of the dire predictions it took less than a week to adjust.