Comment by iamtheworstdev
4 years ago
that seems unfair.. OP is a nerd doing nerd things with the side effect of a feel good environmental story/reward.. vs turning off a hot water heater between daily showers is more like a misunderstanding of thermodynamics(?) or some part of physics. or not running an A/C which, hey, if they're happy, who gives a shit?
> hey, if they're happy, who gives a shit?
They should, and the reason why is recycling.
Everyone believed the claims that recycling would help the planet. But it turned out that most (not all, but most) recycling was being burned or buried, because it was never going to be cost effective. Nobody verified the claims, but it "made them happy" to think they were helping the planet. And now we live in a world with just as much trash and even more microplastics, when we could have been making real changes to actually reduce our waste impact. Letting people blithely say "oh I'm doing it to help the climate" helps people be happy while exacerbating the problem they're pretending to be helping to fix.
Another example is people who say "hey I'm not racist! my best friend is black!" while their subconscious bias at work actively prevents black people from being hired or promoted. Or "I'm not sexist! I love women!" while speaking over them in every meeting and shooting down their ideas. It's not enough to just feel good about what we're doing. We need to verify we're actually helping, not just assume we are.