• 3 Posts
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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: August 16th, 2024

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  • Just to make the case for the smart meter. The UK energy industry is trying to bring something called market-wide alf hourly settlement into play, which is meant to make more energy use data available and therefore make it easier and more efficient to respond to changing demand.

    Assuming you think it’ll work, then smart meters will play a role in enabling greater renewables in a way that “dumb” meters can’t.

    I don’t really like the idea of things being phased out so quickly either, but at least (unlike phones, TVs, computers, ebooks, smart watches etc) smart meters are being phased out to bring out to potentially lessen overall environmental impact.


  • I find this whole “it’s not milk if it’s not dairy” argument really hard to take in good faith.

    I’m not an expert at all, but when I’ve heard people talk about these kind of decisions, it sounds like it’s normally meant to come down to consumer benefits.

    Who’s gaining here (aside from dairy lobbies)? I don’t think there’s any reasonable argument that UK citizens are confused by the term “oat milk”, and buying it because they were tricked into thinking it was a dairy product.










  • The main pictured on looks pretty goofy, especially because of the bright green, but this sent me down a youtube rabbit hole of seeing a bunch of reallymawesome house tours.

    Side note: I find ‘new build ecofriendly’ architecture liks this awesome, but wonder a lot about adapting existing homes which is surely the most environmentally friendly option. If you were to go all out on making an existing home solarpunk, what would that look like?


  • I think this is a real struggle. I’ve felt massively depressed by the state of things in the past. I don’t have a silver bullet, but some stuff has really helped me:

    • Do something about it! Even if it’s as small as talking to your friends, voting on green issues and signing petitions. Positioning yourself on the side of fighting against environmental damage, is a much happier place than watching it happen fron the sidelines.

    • Remember the environment in the big and the small. As in, CO2 needs to be reduced, we should fight for that, but also, bringing more environmental stewardship in your life, whether joining a nature reserve conservation group, or just taking care of your houseplants and garden.

    It might feel devastating sometimes to be witnessing the loss and danger that’s happening. But the people mist perpatuating climat change are the one’s who don’t even understand what we’re loosing.

    Ronald Regan once said “a tree is a tree is a tree” to justify deforestation. What an idiot! Trees are beautiful and amazing and individual. I would much rather feel anxious than blind to the incredible beauty that exists in our world.





  • There’s a great distinction that Norwegian philosopher and deep ecologist Anre Naess makes between long-range and short-range movements which I think helps explain the disagreement a little.

    In the short term, we need to reduce CO2 for our own survival. Nuclear helps this, so from this angle it seems counterproductive for anyone who claims concern over the environment to object to its development.

    In the long term, humans need to transition away from a society based on resource extraction, and long term damage. It’s a lot harder to see how nuclear helps with this- mining and enriching uranium are destructive processes, and nuclear waste needs containment for thousands of years.

    Our current situation is pretty critical, so I think it’s pretty legitimate to think that we might need to make some compromises between the long and short term. But I think the distinction makes it a lot clearer about why people seem to be shouting passed each other sometimes.