We should start talking about actions that contribute to global warming in a significant/active/systemic way as crimes against humanity. That is what they are. Executives and politicians need to know that that is how we will judge them in the future.
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Sue. If the true costs of burning fossil fuels were actually internalized, we would have stopped long ago.
https://qz.com/1129028/a-peruvian-farmer-is-suing-german-ene...
So every time you get in your car and start personally spewing excess CO2, that's a crime against humanity? Or you fire up your oil or gas furnace? Or you eat a burger or pretty much anything else produced by Big Ag? Or you build a concrete structure? And so on and so forth.
As the old saying goes: "Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones."
As pointed out, this is a rather trollish comment. I though the “significant” qualifier would be clear. Participating in a fossil fuel loving society is not enough; spending big money to systematically delay or silence climate research you know is valid, just might be.
But adding up any one person's carbon budget over a lifetime might be fairly significant. (And if it isn't, then why should any one of us make changes to their lifestyle?) Multiply that by the millions/billions and then it's really significant.
As the oil companies have rightly pointed out in the current court case (and this may matter a lot from a legal perspective), they aren't actually the ones who are emitting all the carbon - their customers are. (That would be "you" and "me".) The coal mines and the natural gas companies can make much the same claim, except their direct customers are generally the power companies.
Is there a recognized name for the fallacy southern_cross is using here?
It could be "Argument of the Beard", "Causal Reductionism", or "Fallacy of Composition" (http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html).
In any case, you're right to point out that it's troll behavior to dump all of the effects of industrial pollution and the resultant politics on a single individual's shoulders, as though one person would have a measurable impact on global climate.
~southern_cross is just framing their argument as, "if you haven't killed yourself yet, then you can't care about the environment", and that's an easy argument to ignore.
It seems you're doing some serious trolling there yourself - putting words in my mouth and all. And as to your "one person" argument, then by that logic none of us should be particularly concerned about making any changes to our own lifestyle, because it probably won't make any difference anyway - too insignificant. Amirite?
It's called "Avoiding taking personal responsibility by trying to point the finger of blame at others." And it's something that children and immature adults often do.
For those who are so torn up about the situation, nothing's stopping you from finding a piece of cheap real estate out in the middle of nowhere (maybe by a nice stream or a lake), building a yurt or whatever and then just living off the land. That's the kind of thing our ancestors often had to do, and that's the kind of thing people in underdeveloped countries still often have to do. (Hence why they are called "underdeveloped countries".)
So by your logic, because I have on occasion urinated outside in my backyard, where some small part of my urine will perhaps find its way to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, I cannot object to Victoria, BC's dumping of 21 million gallons a day of raw sewage into it without being a hypocrite?
Your argument is based on the assumption that if X and Y and Z all have a particular bad consequence, then X and Y and Z are all equally bad, with no consideration to how much of the bad consequence each has, or what other, good consequences each have.
That's not valid reasoning. I'm curious if it has a name.
I'm sorry that you're apparently having trouble with the concept of personal responsibility, but I guess I'll just attribute that to a lack of proper upbringing. I mean, even though you are presumably now an adult yourself, I'm sure you'll sleep better at night knowing that you can pawn such failings off on Mom and Dad.
Not many people like to think about what they're actually swimming in when they're at the ocean. (Let someone pee in the pool, though, and everybody freaks out!) In any case, I expect that you're smart enough to know that likely not a drop of that urine is going to make it out of your back yard! And even if you peed directly into the ocean (even if you personally generated 21 million gallons of effluent), that's not really much compared to what's already out there naturally - fish pee and poop and rotting dead things and such. (Fun fact: Much of the sand on the beaches that you and your family love to play on may have itself started out as fish poop.) Even less so when you consider that most of that 21 million gallons is just water anyway.
Quick quiz: What do you think becomes of things like E. coli and other nasties when they hit seawater? (Consider issues like temperature, salinity, and pH.) And if you're worried about viruses and such, then maybe you should go ask J. Craig Venter about that.
In other words, while 21 millions gallons of untreated sewage sounds like a lot (and I personally wouldn't want to swim in it or anything), it's probably less of big deal than you think it is. It would probably be best to filter out the biosolids first, though, since those may have actual value. As might the nitrogen in urine (urea), if that could be extracted.
> if X and Y and Z all have a particular bad consequence, then X and Y and Z are all equally bad
> That's not valid reasoning. I'm curious if it has a name.
The type of reasoning you describe is called a false equivalence.