How would you propose we actually combat climate change?
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First, people need to accept that we exist within a culture of overconsumption that directly contributes to climate change. Sacrifices to common conveniences will need to be made before we can make any meaningful change.
I'm not saying this is all on the individual. Corporations contribute tremendous waste. But they do so in service to society's demand for convenience and instant gratification. We all need to learn to live with less.
And to add: Corporations won't adjust without being forced politically or economically, and both of those options depend entirely on individual action - either at the voting booth or with our purchases.
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Sorry, not sorry, but the
I dont think its as simple as "tax billionaires out of existence and ban jets, airplanes, and cars" because thats not realistic.
is not something we can skip as ducking billionaires and private jers are a large part of the reason we're here in the first place.
Ban private jets, all of them. Maybe exceptions for medical flights only. There is no reason for their existence, there is no human right that says "well humans must be able to own their own airplane!"
Ban super yachts, there is no reason why they should exist beyond showing off what an abusive hoarding asshole the owner is.
Make cities for humans, not for cars. That doesn't mean ban cars outright but do make cities like in the Netherlands and more. Cars should be kept out of cities asuch as possible. Pedestrians and bicycles first (and in many places, only) and replace the vast majority of cars with electrified public transport. Make neighborhoods mixed buildings with homes, stores and bars and restaurants. All industrial stuff in industrial parks.
This will change the urban design of cities. You'll get many more smaller stores all around, people don't need a car to go yo Walmart, they walk to their neighborhood store. This will make all countries as nice as "oh my god the Netherlands is so nice, it's so nice with the small streets and the bicycle allowing you to go everywhere". It'll also lower CO2 by a shit load. In the Netherlands, a huge amount of the population doesn't have a car because they don't want a car. It's expensive and they no longer actually NEED one. Cars that are left should all be electrified.
Tax the rich, and not just a little bit. The 1% and 0.1% are extreme polluters and take and waste beyond anything that can be construed as normal. There is no inherent human right to be a billionaire. Tax the rich and prohibit anyone from having a networth over 10 million dollars (example figure, but something around that) by taxation. Any income after you reach that is 100 % taxed. Of course there will be tax brackets, starting at zero for the poorest, going up and up to that 100%.
Limit company sizes to 1 billion dollars networth and or 1000 employees. After that billion, revenue taxes go to 100% equally. No company should be too big. If the company is worth that, btw, you'd need loads of shareholders as each individual can only have a networth of 10 million, remember?
Teach our children that being super rich is something shameful. You've been abusive, you've been hoarding, it's abusive and you should be ashamed, and (as said above) prohibited
Require all product producers that all their products are recyclable, repairable, built with sustainable materials from sustainable sources. If it's not sustainable, don't sell it.
Same for packaging, bit also require all packaging to have only one packaging, not twenty, and all packaging material must be paper
Require stores to also sell used versions of their products. This requires that they also buy used products from their customers. This of course doesnt apply to food and such
Prohibit stores from dumping unsold items. If something doesn't sell, they can give it to the government for distribution
Ban plastics where possible. No plastic in packaging, for example. No plastic bottles, go back to glass. Standardize certain bottle sizes and colors for easier reuse.
Teach kids hat he basics of Capitalism is okay, but that it can become an evil beast if not controlled well. Consumerism is not okay, you don't need half the crap people have in their homes these days
With that said, prohibited ALL advertising. If I'd have to see another single lie from a company about how their product really is the best, it'd be too much
Stop inheritance. You should be able to inherit some memorabilia from your loved ones, not that castle they owned
Make all enormous homes with 50 rooms into nice spa hotels. Nobody has the right to have a home that is crazily oversized.
Tax meat heavily. It's still okay (for now) as it's such a staple of everyone's diets, but seriously, you don't need a two pound steak. Limit the amount of meat allowed in single servings. Push for laboratory meat.
Require farms to have all livestock to be able to roam free, have good food, etc.
Those are a few rules to staet with a generally healthier and better world for everyone. I'm sure some rules are incomplete, need more detail, need exceptions or slight modifications, but the basics are there.
Nothing not what we have today HAS to be the way it is, it is the way it is because we all allow it. Changing economic systems is usually disastrous, so let's keep capitalism, it's the best system to make capital. But with these basic limits, nobody gets too rich. The government gets loads of money that it can use for social systems like free healthcare, free education, free food and housing, universal basic income, etc.
Sounds pretty neat in my head, I'll start refining and adding to this list.
But how?
Sounds great what you're proposing - sounds also like magical thinking.
What's a realistic way to achieve all the changes you're suggesting? That's the question we actually have to answer. Right now you're just daydreaming which systemic changes would change the system for the best outcome.
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Why are you showing data on renewables? Of course their use is increasing. Our overall demand for power is increasing all the time. Renewables aren't the problem.
Oil production, is. And aside from a few outliers involving economic collapses, production has been steadily increasing for decades, without any signs of slowing down.
Nothing will change unless we do something to stop that. Adding renewables to the supply, does nothing to decrease the effects of fossil fuel use, unless you stop using fossil fuels. How is this so hard for you to understand?
Because renewables are replacing a large portion of oil based fuels? The global use of fossil fuels is also increasing as China/Africa/India and SEA nations are becoming more industrialized. This isn't a new concept. Even your own link shows this.
I'll say it again, good luck banning oil/coal. No one will do so.
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None of this is realistic though. What you're asking for is akin to an absolute miracle. Where would the political forces come from that do that? How could a majority be motivated to vote them into office? How could we get a whole capitalist machinery on board not to counteract and sabotage this?
They're good ideas, but realistically speaking we have to start somewhere else.
Oh absolutely not realistic as a whole (at least not currently, maybe after another decade or two of increasingly destructive hurricanes, wildfires and floods there will be the political appetite), but I do think some of the individual pieces of legislation have a chance.
The remote work one would be the easiest single piece of legislation on my list since the only people hurt by it are commercial property investors
The railroad nationalization almost happened once already following the second largest bankruptcy in US history and the railroad industry is far more consolidated now than it was in the Penn Central and Conrail days (there's literally 5 major railroads: Canadian National, CPKC, Union Pacific, BNSF and Norfolk Southern. And to top it off UP and NS have announced their merger which is pending government approval) so if one of these major railroads goes bankrupt we could very well be looking at nationalization again
Carbon taxes have been tossed around as an idea for quite a while, and it's been partially implemented in some areas (usually in conjunction with a carbon credit marketplace so polluting industries and buy carbon credits from negative carbon industries, similar to how automakers currently buy CAFE credits from Tesla to avoid paying extra penalties for their gas guzzling trucks and SUVs)
Easier ADU permits and easier multifamily zoning have been passing piecemeal city by city and state by state across the country, so that's already a thing in many places
Right to repair legislation has been gaining steam and several states have already passed right to repair legislation
Many cities have been creating ebike rebates because the more people who bike the less the city has to spend repairing roads (road wear grows exponentially based on the weight and number of wheels on a vehicle. A single small car making a trip down a road does a much wear as thousands of bicycle trips, and a single semi truck trip does a much wear as thousands of large SUV trips, so there's real maintenance cost savings for cities in decreasing car trips, not to mention how reducing car trips reduces traffic thereby saving the city on costly road reconfiguration)
The EPA was created under Nixon because air quality had gotten so bad that whoever was in power at that point would've done something. It's honestly foreseeable that the state of the climate will get bad enough to force even the most reluctant government to change. China for example created huge subsidies for electric vehicle and solar panel production because the air quality in Bejing and other major cities became so terrible
The current Amtrak Connects Us plan is a much smaller but still ambitious expansion plan, and the subsidies that were created for it give it a solid chance of surviving Republican legislature (it's dolled out as grants to meet specific milestones, so by the time any government starts trying to claw back money they already have studies into the viability of the given rail line so it's already known just how much demand exists) additionally the first couple of services are already in place and have been greatly exceeding ridership projections so there's absolutely appetite for more passenger rail options
So in short, yeah my policy vision isn't likely as a single unified vision, but many of the policies are already showing promise and being implemented on a smaller scale, so there's a solid chance of some of these policies becoming reality for more of the country
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Id like lemmings take on how they would actually reduce emissions on a level that actually makes a difference (assuming we can still stop it, which is likely false by now, but let's ignore that)
I dont think its as simple as "tax billionaires out of existence and ban jets, airplanes, and cars" because thats not realistic.
Bonus points if you can think of any solutions that dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life.
I know yall will have fun with this!
Call a halt to this AI bullshit for a start. I've just received a (UK) government questionnaire about my personal energy usage and how I might reduce it. Meanwhile, I learn said government has mooted giving everyone in the country ChatGPT Plus for free!
There are innumerable ways businesses and governments can reduce their energy footprint etc and make a difference.
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Oh yeah? And how are other countries going to enforce it if one country breaks the treaty? With bombs? Bombs that release CO2? Think it through! /s
I guess the same way all of the other ones get enforced, imperfectly
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Id like lemmings take on how they would actually reduce emissions on a level that actually makes a difference (assuming we can still stop it, which is likely false by now, but let's ignore that)
I dont think its as simple as "tax billionaires out of existence and ban jets, airplanes, and cars" because thats not realistic.
Bonus points if you can think of any solutions that dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life.
I know yall will have fun with this!
Other than inventing time travel, I don't think there's a realistic method at this point. (and then I'm not so sure that time travel is that realistic either)
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Id like lemmings take on how they would actually reduce emissions on a level that actually makes a difference (assuming we can still stop it, which is likely false by now, but let's ignore that)
I dont think its as simple as "tax billionaires out of existence and ban jets, airplanes, and cars" because thats not realistic.
Bonus points if you can think of any solutions that dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life.
I know yall will have fun with this!
wrote last edited by [email protected]With all the world (at least western nations) drifting backwards at least into nationalism (some countries even at full throttle into fascism), this could be used as an advantage: Why not shifting the narrative into the direction, that a stable, clean and healthy enviroment is pinnacle of patriotism (like the narrative of a healthy body was used in national-socialist propaganda 90 years ago in Germany), along with renewable energy that makes each nation independent from others. Wind turbines and solar power for freedom, so to say. Things like coal rolling or similar acts like wasting resources will be deemed as un-patriotic then.
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Because renewables are replacing a large portion of oil based fuels? The global use of fossil fuels is also increasing as China/Africa/India and SEA nations are becoming more industrialized. This isn't a new concept. Even your own link shows this.
I'll say it again, good luck banning oil/coal. No one will do so.
Then I guess we're fucked.
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Id like lemmings take on how they would actually reduce emissions on a level that actually makes a difference (assuming we can still stop it, which is likely false by now, but let's ignore that)
I dont think its as simple as "tax billionaires out of existence and ban jets, airplanes, and cars" because thats not realistic.
Bonus points if you can think of any solutions that dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life.
I know yall will have fun with this!
Make it sexy.
If we had an easier time getting laid fighting back instead of going along, then that's what people would start doing.
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Id like lemmings take on how they would actually reduce emissions on a level that actually makes a difference (assuming we can still stop it, which is likely false by now, but let's ignore that)
I dont think its as simple as "tax billionaires out of existence and ban jets, airplanes, and cars" because thats not realistic.
Bonus points if you can think of any solutions that dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life.
I know yall will have fun with this!
I see an opportunity with rising electricity costs due to AI infrastructure building. People are getting angry about their high bills. If enough out solar panels on their houses and install batteries, we’ll be off the grid in short order.
