Buy the cheapest viable land you can and build an Earthship home out of tires, cans, bottles, and compressed Earth. Take yourself off the grid as much as possible.
I’d also suggest a career in or adjacent to alternative energy.
So buy land, dump trash on it. Got it.
No. Build an Earthship home by recycling and reusing inexpensive, rejected materials that don’t break down easily and would otherwise become trash to affordably construct an off-grid structure that will gather and generate electricity, water, warmth, and food for potentially centuries.
Also Earthship.com
How long would it take for the environmental cost (including CO2 emissions, and the inefficient use of resources associated with trying to live away from others) of the new building to be overcome by the savings in energy (and thus CO2 and associated environmental degradation involved in gathering those resources) when compared to just living in an already built house?
I’d wager that just maintaining an old house is better. Of course if you ignore everything else other than energy use and diverting something from a landfill, earth ships are very cool. Maybe not $10,000 either.
Its unclear whether one person building an earth ship instead of buying and maintaining an older house would make any positive environmental change.
Instead, if you took your $10,000 and partnered with others who have similar investments, you could build a small mixed use building which includes a couple shops on the ground floor, and dwellings on the next few floors (likely you would have enough combined to get a mortgage/loan to build). Why? Living in an apartment style building is going to be more efficient than any kind of single person dwelling (and you could use some of the earth ship ideas as well), having shops near homes would also help eliminate occasional car trips by having amenities right where you live. As a bonus, if this building was built for the investors to live in, you all now have equity and relatively low cost housing that is much easier to sell than an Earth ship in the middle of nowhere, should you ever need to move.
*Repurpose trash…
You could buy a couple of acres of land and turn it into a forest preserve. And then don’t let anyone buy it to build or cut down trees / etc.
Depending on how much you care, you could even plant a sustainable forest and grow hardwood as an investment.
You need to be careful with this. Depending on your location, there might be laws imposing that you use the land, otherwise you might lose it. I don’t know the exact conditions, and I suppose they vary.
Also, 10000 USD doesn’t buy you a lot of land, depending on location.
Where I live, that could buy a parking space.
In the nearest metro region (about 3 hrs away), ten times that amount might buy a parking space. A very sketchy parking space, at that.
Land prices in British Columbia - even way out in the boonies - is totally f**ked.
Invest it into a mutual fund fighting climate change. My bank has one. I guess many banks do. Some relevant terms in their fund names: fossil-free, climate, forest, sustainable agriculture.
Several funds in my bank have ESG in the name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social,_and_governanceUnfortunately investing money does veeeeeeeery little against climate change. Think like 0.1% of your invested sum. The money you invest still goes to shareholders, just those of companies that meet certain criteria.
Of course it is better (i.e. has bigger impact) than investing elsewhere, dont get me wrong. But investing doesnt promote actual changes. For someone to make changes in politics or public opinion, they need to be paid. Spending the money on such projects is the way to make actual change.
Source: my spouse works in ESG scoring at a big bank
solar panels or something? No one is stopping climate change with $10K, I don’t even think $10B would make a substantial dent.
10B could make a couple underground metro lines in an otherwise extremely car dependent city with no public transport
Ya its a decent start. My point here is the scale of what we’re facing. Its going to take trillions of dollars, synchronous action taken by many nations simultaneously and a complete restructuring of the current world order. There’s always hope but at this point i’m fairly cynical and don’t have a lot of faith that the right people are in charge to even start the conversation.
More effective would probably to buy yourself (or a person that has political potential/influence with the right intentions) into politics like president muskrat, and do well placed populistic propaganda against the actually evil fossil industry. You don’t even have to lie, just do some good rethoric speech, ads etc… We need policies on a larger level, and I think 10B$ should be enough to gain significant political influence for something that the major mass of people is already behind of, just needs a good spark. I think Thunberg has shown that. Not that we shouldn’t of course improve public transport in cities. Additionally do (employ) investigative journalism probably in the same process to give all of this a good foundation…
10K is a home solar investment. Where I live, people tend to live in multi-family buildings about 3-6 floors high, often split between siblings and their families. Depending on how many are in the country year-round, that might even be enough for the whole building with careful management. Obviously wouldn’t be the same if the neighbors are strangers. (I appreciate that the familial emphasis might seem a bit random in your culture). Ideally 10K might just be enough for one or two households.
The much more interesting prompt is 10B, imo.
10B? Oh man. I’m in Lebanon. We’ve effortlessly squandered more generous fortunes than a measly 10B grant, but here’s how I’d do it:
1B: buses, trams and parking garages to decongest some of the nicer (and underperforming, touristy) old town areas. Should give them a sorely needed boost 3B: modern seaside train running from north to south, with a small number of branches into the interior. Mostly freight. 3B: start phase of a Beirut metro. It’s not enough for a full metro system especially with our geological conditions, but the core city isn’t too big and one line should be feasible? 2B: functional army so we still have civilian infrastructure next time our noisy neighbor gets a hissy fit (infrastructure is worthless if it’s destroyed) 1B: modern fossil fuel power plant. Yeah it’s not green, but we generate a fraction of our needed power, meaning most people have to pay off a local generator mob for electricity. They use diesel and relatively inefficient smaller generators. Our existing ancient power plants use dogshit-tier diesel. I insist that some kind of LNG plant maybe would actually make the situation more green. As it stands the convenience of combustible fuel is more pertinent than the environmental cost
I think they’re just asking, from a categorical imperative perspective, what is the most effective way for all individuals with a bit of savings to help the climate situation.
And tbh, at this point OP is probably better off spending that $10k on preparing for:
- inclimate weather (HVAC, water proofing, warm clothing)
- inconsistent power (battery backups, a generator)
- food/clean water shortages (home gardening skills, rain catching/water purification).
At this point, there’s virtually nothing that can be done to stop the impact of climate change, there is only adapting to survive it. The best we can do is vote and/or hope for our global political situation to finally reach its inevitable crisis point. But I don’t expect that to be a pleasant experience.
The only ways you can fight climate change in any meaningful way with 10k also involve going to prison
The only ways you can fight climate change in any meaningful way […] involve going to prison
correct
10k is cutting it thin… the Accuracy International ACSR is just a hair under $10k USD… and that is before taxes. Then you need the 1,000-10,000 rounds of ammo for training before you become good enough to start taking out card-carrying members of the Parasite Class from a kilometre-plus distance.
Now granted, you can go a lot cheaper than that, but accuracy and range will suffer. Remember, you want to be far enough away that you can reliably pack up and sanitize the scene before you leave.
Alternatively, swarming AI drones in the hundreds, with on-board explosive packages, would allow you to deploy from abandonable emplacements that can loiter for many hours to even days. No-one is going to question a cube van that sits in a paid spot for a week, at least until it’s roof opens up and a thousand tiny drones with facial recognition take off and take out a few oligarchs.
But honestly, you’re likely talking a few tens of thousands for that scenario, at minimum. I would likely bank at it being in the low hundreds of thousands for a truly effective and difficult-to-counter deployment.
3 meals and no rent? Doesn’t sound too bad.
Oh there’s rent. Most US prisons charge per diem rates for housing, and they charge for many “services” and they charge literal extortion rates. Prisoners leave US prisons deeeeeply in debt
I wouldn’t even want to be in an Austrian luxury prison. There’s a reason why people have went as far as dying while fighting for their freedom, it’s one of our most precious possessions.
Freedom outside of prison is still a delusion. You are a servant of the rich elite.
10k is cutting it thin… the Accuracy International ACSR is just a hair under $10k USD… and that is before taxes. Then you need the 1,000-10,000 rounds of ammo for training before you become good enough to start taking out card-carrying members of the Parasite Class from a kilometre-plus distance.
Now granted, you can go a lot cheaper than that, but accuracy and range will suffer. Remember, you want to be far enough away that you can reliably pack up and sanitize the scene before you leave.
Alternatively, swarming AI drones in the hundreds, with on-board explosive packages, would allow you to deploy from abandonable emplacements that can loiter for many hours to even days. No-one is going to question a cube van that sits in a paid spot for a week, at least until it’s roof opens up and a thousand tiny drones with facial recognition take off and take out a few oligarchs.
But honestly, you’re likely talking a few tens of thousands for that scenario, at minimum. I would likely bank at it being in the low hundreds of thousands for a truly effective and difficult-to-counter deployment.
More likely dead (shot to death by cops)
I think that depends on your skill, i.e. good planning, and obviously execution. If you’re really good, you don’t even get caught, although that might help politically as we currently see with Mangione
You’re not personally responsible or able to prevent climate change. This is a societal issue that requires societal changes. Don’t feel obligated to put yourself in financial trouble since the impact to your life is potentially devastating and your impact to solving climate change would be negligible. It fucking sucks but we live in a brutal capitalist system and you need to make sure you can care for yourself.
I might suggest seeing if there are local advocacy groups where you can contribute your time and, if you truly have excess wealth, help with direct financial support as needed, small contributions to things like mailing campaigns or buying a booth at a faire will help much more than blanket contributions - but, IMO, the bigger need is in effort and time.
You’re not personally responsible
While I agree with your overall comment, I disagree with how it starts. We are all responsible for the decisions we make, once we are educated about those decisions.
Example: You can buy bamboo toilet paper for less than Charmin when purchased online. This reduces the deforestation of old growth trees by reducing the demand. Now that you know this, you are responsible for the choice you make on what you purchase. Or buy a bidet. Every person who talks about this spreads education, which is what influences larger scale decisions about regulation (albeit much more slowly than campaign donations).
For those whop ask, source: https://savetrees.co/products/bulk-toilet-paper?variant=44493957431458 vs https://www.walmart.com/ip/Charmin-Ultra-Gentle-Toilet-Paper-18-Mega-Rolls-231-Sheets-per-Roll/2846366584
$0.0039991667 per sheet vs $0.0048027898 per sheet for Charmin.
Political advocacy is the way to go. Pushing politicians to change laws is what got renewables to be cheap in the first place. We need more of that.
Delay, deny, defend.
Why is this so low in the comment section
You could get a decent boomstick for 10k
If you had a genie, you could just stop the global warming
via nuclear winter
If you have any natural gas appliances in your home (like water heater, dryer, stove, oven, HVAC), transition to an electric version. Cancel your gas service.
Also, improve insulation and other items to reduce you heat/cooling loss.
Yeah that should offset the massive pollution from global industry right? I feel that the shift of responsibility to the individual is a distraction.
These are ways to immediately reduce your carbon footprint with $10,000, which is what OP asked for. There is absolutely no “shift of responsibility” involved in deciding to stop giving natural gas manufacturers and distributors your money.
Please show me where OP asked for ways to “immediately reduce their carbon footprint.”
That is not what was requested in the post title. “Carbon Footprint” is a piece of propaganda perpetuated by the biggest industry offenders to shift blame to the individual and distract from their own massively disproportionate contribution to climate change.
That totally ignores the demand side of the equation. If people didn’t want to buy X believe me, they wouldn’t sell X. I’m pretty sure the horse and buggy industry and cathode ray tube tv industries would’ve loved to have kept selling their products.
I can’t help but notice you’ve contributed nothing productive to this conversation. Industries and companies have carbon footprints too. A carbon footprint is how much CO2 is generated by x. OP has $10,000 and control over themselves. They’re not going to be stopping Chevron. Jesus man
So you’re gonna skip over the part where I was right and you were plainly wrong?
If I were to suggest an actually productive solution with a $10k budget, my comment would be removed and I’d be on a list. We both know what that means.
It means 1) you lack the imagination to describe your ideas with any nuance and 2) you’re the kind of guy who tells other people to put themselves in danger while sitting behind your keyboard doing nothing
You have a very interesting way of ascribing motive here. You say I lack imagination, I say you have an excess of imagination.
10K could be leveraged toward making oil executives live in constant fear.
A gun and lots of ammo and a one way ticket to D.C. is a start, I’d say.
Nah, that’s where the puppets live. The puppet masters are all over the place.
If the puppets are more afraid of the citizenry than the billionaires then that’d go a long way towards solving some of our big problems.
I think we can agree that both methods would be effective
A few guns won’t do anything. Guns and violence are never effective without the right ideas behind them.
Think Occupy Wall Street, but everyone has an AR-15.
deleted by creator
Seek help buddy
Enjoy the money and tell yourself its not your fault.
Or alternatively, become an eco-terrorist.
Think of:
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Pipelines - buy explosives
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Certain individuals pertaining to the oil industry - buy a firearms
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Certain politicians - buy firearms
I am not a lawyer, this comment is for entertainment pur-
Hmm, why is there loud knocking on my door?
Why are you making your fed work on the lord’s day?
NO KINGS!
NO GODS!
Ted Kaczynski is still alive it seems.
When did he get out?!
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Comrade! I like the way you think.
Solar panels and a vasectomy
The perfectly alienated and isolated liberal approach that changes nothing. Festooning a suburban house with solar panels is like washing your oversized pickup truck with those unbleached brown recycled paper towels.
However, advocating for vasectomies and such gestures towards eugenics and eco-fascism.
People who care about climate change aren’t the ones who need to get a vasectomy.
I agree with the other guy, get yourself some solar panels and make yourself climate friendly, or even look at other ways you yourself an change in order to be carbon neutral
