How would you propose we actually combat climate change?
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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 don't think I can. I try and make the least impact I can for my own moral reasons. Essentially I want to know I did as much as I could when I leave this existence. I accept that there are forces beyond me that I can only influence indirectly and that despite my efforts can and have gone in a massively opposite direction of reducing climate change.
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I'm not a doomer, in large part because I think that economic forces will reduce greenhouse emissions significantly on their own, and despite hitting recent setbacks in policymaking that would push those reductions to happen more more quickly or with deeper cuts, that decarbonization back down to 1990 levels is still going to happen in our lifetimes.
Here's how I think we'll get there:
- Phasing out fossil fuel electricity generation. Solar power is just ridiculously cheap compared to any other method of generation. As we deploy grid scale storage, demand-shifting technology and pricing structures, develop redundancy with wind and advanced geothermal (and possibly fusion in the coming decades), we're going to make fossil fuel electricity generation uncompetitive on price. Maybe ratepayers and governments don't want to subsidize carbon-free energy, but why would they want to subsidize carbon emitting energy when those are no longer competitive?
- Electrification of transportation (electric vehicles, including big stuff like trains and buses and small stuff like bikes and scooters).
- Electrification of heat, both for indoor climate control and furnaces/boilers for water and industrial applications. Heat pumps are already cost effective for new construction in most climates, and even retrofits are approaching cost competitiveness with fossil fuel powered heaters.
- Carbon capture as a feedstock into chemical production, including alternative fuels like sustainable aviation fuel. Once electricity is cheap enough, even only at certain times of day, energy-intensive chemical production can hit flexible output targets to absorb surplus energy supply from overproduction of solar, to store that energy for later or otherwise remove carbon from the atmosphere.
To borrow from a Taoist concept, we shouldn't expend effort fighting the current of a river when the current itself can be utilized to accomplish our goals. In this case, the capitalist incentive structure of wanting to do stuff that makes money is now being turned towards decarbonization for cost savings or outright profit.
I miss being this optimistic. No hate, I just don’t have that hope in me.
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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!
Guns, we fly a space ship to Mercury make a landing party and start shooting everything we have at the Sun. Tell it to cut the crap or we'll tarrif all of its light.
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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]Physically destroy oil and gas production and storage facilities. Seems like the most straightforward method. If Ukraine can reduce Russian oil production 20% in a matter of months then people who care about the planet should be easily capable of doing the same.. I have been looking into producing a google maps style overlay of global infrastructure that anyone who wants to contribute could use as a target list.. but there might be others out there more au fait with mapping technology who could do it better. I’ve been inspired by the book How to Blow up an oil pipeline by Andreas Malm.
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This would have almost 0 impact on climate change. It wouldn't stop new stuff being produced and bought, people still want shinier things than they had yesterday, long lasting or not. It'd be a positive change, but not for climate change.
Many many would not get the new shiny. In my lifetime my vehicles have had few appreciable improvements. Mostly around safety like air bags and view cameras. I could care less about the radio and if I did its easy enough to upgrade that part.
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This is extremely important: we are not at the point of no return.
Climate change can be stopped, even now. It will take lots of work, but it's possible.
ClimateAdam, who has a PhD in climate science from Oxford, made a video about this. It's 5 years old, but he's still making videos with similar points today. It's my understanding this is still the predominant view amongst climate scientists. The main reason I think this is that there aren't many calling for geoengineering, which if we were at the point of no return would be something we'd have to explore.
The reason this is so important is because as climate change denial becomes more and more infeasible, it will get replaced primarily with climate change defeatism. The sooner we start pushing back on this, the better.
No reasonable scientist is going to call for geoengineering unless they could be sure they are not making it worse. We are certainly in a point of no return in that we will not get back to 0 but until we are actually falling apart we won't know for sure if we can't survive at +3 or +5.
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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!
Buy less crap. That’s it. It sounds like a sacrifice, but stuff doesn’t make you happy (provided your basic needs are met). If you are working longer hours to pay for your cars and tvs and fast fashion, your life might improve.
Playing with a cellphone is kinda fun. Know what’s really fun? Friends.
If you’re under 60, buying less crap is going to disrupt your life less than climate change will, so i think i am entitled to the aforementioned bonus points.
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I miss being this optimistic. No hate, I just don’t have that hope in me.
US carbon emissions peaked in 2007 and have been coming down since. US capita carbon emissions peaked in the 1970s and have been coming down since.
The concern has always been with the much, much larger developing world, if they would one day become rich enough to emit carbon like North America. And as it turns out, China's push for low cost solar and low cost EVs have revolutionized the energy world for development economics. Now if you're a poor agrarian country looking to industrialize, the cheapest energy available just happens to be clean.
It's like how the developing world mostly skipped landline infrastructure in the 2000's because cell phones became easier and cheaper to build. We're seeing the same thing play out with fossil fuel electricity generation, where most new capacity coming online, even in the third world, is solar.
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"Point of no return" is a simplistic concept. It depends on the your threshold for how bad it gets. Most climate scientists would agree that we're just at or about to pass the 1.5°C target. But they would also agree that ever extra fraction of a degree matters. It's not a question of "when are we fucked?" Its a question of "how quickly can we act to minimise severity of change?"
Source: am climate scientist, have been to a major climate conference in the last few months, and talk to other climate scientists regularly.
I am not a climate scientist and have not been to conferences but im a reasonably intelligent human who has five decades of experience on this planet and I can see we are already fucked in that things have changed in how the planet works. I see the storms (not just the news making ones but how unoften light rain has become around me and how often general storms have become), I see the flooding, I see the change in the seasons, etc. To me its now when are we fucked because again we already see that we are. To me its how roughly we want the fucking to be ultimately and can we bring it back down to a more tender and loving level.
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Oh hell no. Lets not fuck with nature even more. We must not play god! Geoengineering might cause more problems than its use!
I agree and it concerns me how much geoengineering bro talk there is and responding to descent with luddites and your concerns are overdone its all good.
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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]Redistribute all excess wealth perpetually.
Seize control of the corporations that control most of the polution due to global shipping, shut all non-essential services down until our fleet of vehicles are upgraded to carbon neutral.
Reroute military funding to public infrastructure, take away everyone's gas cars and drivers licenses and force the public to use public transport.
Force the meat industry to cull 99%of cows on earth
Reinvest into the satellite tracking for carbon emissions and stamp out the random offenders.
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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!
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But it's time to disrupt 99% of life.
Survey humanity, produce an agreed on level of technology and lifestyle.
We probably need to limit ourselves to housing, food, internet, and safety/defense for everyone and not much else - then slow all industries based on HOW people want to live.
So getting rid of things like, plastic toys, gizmos, extravagances. Phones wouldn't be updated as often. People would only be able to update their tech if they could meaningfully show it was necessary.
Lots of technology companies would be folded. Lots of industries would be nationalised and folded. International tourism would be greatly restricted. All the stuff we don't need basically.
People would be mostly employed in the basics: Housing, food, internet. Too far beyond that and you'd have to rely on local people/groups/makers/repair companies.
So massive degrowth, nationalization, and restrictions/regulations to the market.
Most of all, corporations would no longer count as people. In fact society should have to rely on person to person contracting. I don't really think corporations should exist becuase they become Zombies/Golems that do a lot of destructive things.
Basically degrowth, and restructuring society around degrowth.
Security would go a long way. Not national security but life security. For example I own a bunch of tools and I sorta wish I did not. If I was guaranteed access to something like a tool library that had everything I might need to buy from home depot of such I would not carry any. Heck it could be home depot where when you buy the paint you get the rollers and brushes and equipment to clean it up with your purchase and you return it when your done. Heck could return the leftover paint. Also internet replaces a lot of things. My wife and I are committed to not buying physical things so we using streaming services and buy digital copies of stuff. We get books in pdf now and use games and such to get away from toys and such.
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Redistribute all excess wealth perpetually.
Seize control of the corporations that control most of the polution due to global shipping, shut all non-essential services down until our fleet of vehicles are upgraded to carbon neutral.
Reroute military funding to public infrastructure, take away everyone's gas cars and drivers licenses and force the public to use public transport.
Force the meat industry to cull 99%of cows on earth
Reinvest into the satellite tracking for carbon emissions and stamp out the random offenders.
wrote last edited by [email protected]You missed a step: "Force States to invest in public transportation."
In America, There are so many states that have absolutely unbearable public transportation because they are significantly underfunded
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solutions that dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life
This is not possible. Barring some miracle technologies being developed, we would have to radically change our standards of living and give up our modern convenient lives to make meaningful changes.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Renewable electricity seems like it gets us most of the way there.
The remaining problems I can think of are concrete and fuel for air travel. We could probably go without concrete, although it would suck, and otherwise we just have to recapture the CO2 from the atmosphere. Direct capture and storage has proven trucky because the kilns are large, hot, and rotating, making them difficult to seal E-fuel or biofuel would have to be the solution for air travel. Maybe airships are close enough to qualify as non-disruptive, I guess.
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How we gonna melt steel, copper, titanium, tungsten, etc?
Sadly, fossil fuels aren't going away anytime soon.
️wrote last edited by [email protected]Arc furnaces are standard already.
The thing you really need a reducing agent for is smelting, and for that hydrogen is already used at smaller scales.
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But it's time to disrupt 99% of life.
Survey humanity, produce an agreed on level of technology and lifestyle.
We probably need to limit ourselves to housing, food, internet, and safety/defense for everyone and not much else - then slow all industries based on HOW people want to live.
So getting rid of things like, plastic toys, gizmos, extravagances. Phones wouldn't be updated as often. People would only be able to update their tech if they could meaningfully show it was necessary.
Lots of technology companies would be folded. Lots of industries would be nationalised and folded. International tourism would be greatly restricted. All the stuff we don't need basically.
People would be mostly employed in the basics: Housing, food, internet. Too far beyond that and you'd have to rely on local people/groups/makers/repair companies.
So massive degrowth, nationalization, and restrictions/regulations to the market.
Most of all, corporations would no longer count as people. In fact society should have to rely on person to person contracting. I don't really think corporations should exist becuase they become Zombies/Golems that do a lot of destructive things.
Basically degrowth, and restructuring society around degrowth.
Yeah, but that's a fantasy, people will not do that. OP is specifically asking for something more realistic.
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dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life.
This is ridiculous, because the problem inherently requires cooperative change, and as we've seen people will throw shitfits over things as small as plastic straws.
A big thing would be to start switching from ever expanding auto infrastructure to public transit systems where possible.
- Fewer vehicles that transport more people
- Can use the space that is currently occupied for parking cars better
Another big thing requires changing our diets. Some types of food are more resource intensive than others, but also we ship food all over the planet and the resources for transport also contributes. Eating food that is in season on your continent would make a big difference.
The last thing is maybe the least obvious to regular people, but maybe we don't need to build that data center yet if we can't power it without fossil fuel. We need to entirely stop expanding energy usage until we've switched over entirely to sustainables.
In summary, basically everything that needs to happen is going to affect regular people, and they're going to have to get over it, or we're going to make the planet completely unlivable.
and as we’ve seen people will throw shitfits over things as small as plastic straws.
That's still depressing as hell, on both sides. One because they're freaking out over slightly different straws, the other because it's such a token gesture to plastics pollution that solves nothing.
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and as we’ve seen people will throw shitfits over things as small as plastic straws.
That's still depressing as hell, on both sides. One because they're freaking out over slightly different straws, the other because it's such a token gesture to plastics pollution that solves nothing.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Yup. ALL single use plastics except maybe for medical need to go. I take my own containers to restaurants for leftovers and people act like I have 2 heads
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I'm not a doomer, in large part because I think that economic forces will reduce greenhouse emissions significantly on their own, and despite hitting recent setbacks in policymaking that would push those reductions to happen more more quickly or with deeper cuts, that decarbonization back down to 1990 levels is still going to happen in our lifetimes.
Here's how I think we'll get there:
- Phasing out fossil fuel electricity generation. Solar power is just ridiculously cheap compared to any other method of generation. As we deploy grid scale storage, demand-shifting technology and pricing structures, develop redundancy with wind and advanced geothermal (and possibly fusion in the coming decades), we're going to make fossil fuel electricity generation uncompetitive on price. Maybe ratepayers and governments don't want to subsidize carbon-free energy, but why would they want to subsidize carbon emitting energy when those are no longer competitive?
- Electrification of transportation (electric vehicles, including big stuff like trains and buses and small stuff like bikes and scooters).
- Electrification of heat, both for indoor climate control and furnaces/boilers for water and industrial applications. Heat pumps are already cost effective for new construction in most climates, and even retrofits are approaching cost competitiveness with fossil fuel powered heaters.
- Carbon capture as a feedstock into chemical production, including alternative fuels like sustainable aviation fuel. Once electricity is cheap enough, even only at certain times of day, energy-intensive chemical production can hit flexible output targets to absorb surplus energy supply from overproduction of solar, to store that energy for later or otherwise remove carbon from the atmosphere.
To borrow from a Taoist concept, we shouldn't expend effort fighting the current of a river when the current itself can be utilized to accomplish our goals. In this case, the capitalist incentive structure of wanting to do stuff that makes money is now being turned towards decarbonization for cost savings or outright profit.
Yes. OP can't solve it. Lemmy can't solve it. But even not solving it will be okay unless you're a coral reef, because we got lucky and technology is bailing out our asses. The few token political initiatives will help a bit.
If we end ourselves it will be in a different way.
