How would you propose we actually combat climate change?
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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.
"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.
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We would have to go all-in on a climate focused economy and lifestyle, invest heavily on clean energy, technology and degrowth. Outlaw anti-climate lobbying of any kind, and hunt the billionaires for sport
"climate based economy"?
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"climate based economy"?
Er, focussed
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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!
Geoengineering: Whether through launching solar shades into space to block sunlight and cool the planet down, pump aerosols into the atmosphere, cloud seeding, or anything else. I think this is where our research should be going. I think it's too late to avoid the worst-case-scenarios of climate change from merely cutting emissions, so more drastic measures to alleviate or even reverse the effects may be necessary. Plus it'll help us with any future colonizing and terraforming of worlds outside of Earth.
Public transport infrastructure to reduce our reliance on cars & planes: While I don't think hyperloops or a transatlantic tunnel are feasible, building tens of thousands of kilometres worth of overground and underground railway routes to interconnect towns and cities with high speed maglev trains is. China have the right idea.
Right to work from home: Remote working reduces our dependency on cars and frees up real estate to address the various housing crises we have.
Right to repair and outlawing planned obsolescence: Should we have to buy a new smartphone every 3 or so years because Apple or Samsung want to maximize profits? Do we care at all about the amount of electronic waste we're producing?
Accelerate our efforts to reverse desertification and plant trillions more trees: If we can turn parts of the Sahel, Gobi Desert and the Australian outback green, that could have a very beneficial effect on the environment.
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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!
Not possible. In order to be effective we need a global generational commitment that is beyond our current capacity for cooperation.
China, US, India, Russia. 1, 2, 3, 4. Guess who is least likely to take part in a global agreement?
Russia and China signed on to the Paris agreement, but largely ignore it. Trump famously pulled the US out of the agreement. Twice.
India has been making the right noises about hitting goals by 2030, but I'm not sure how they're actually progressing, not that it means much without Russia, China and the US.
We need an agreement that commits our people not just now, but for multiple generations into the future without regard to who the individual rulers of the countries are. Won't happen.
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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]Soo by realistic do you mean something you and me could actually do? Then almost nothing. It will stop when it stops, because the other 8 billion people have a say. I do political activism on the off chance it will indirectly affect something somehow, but I don't think it has, to date.
If you just mean non-disruptive per the 99% comment, a carbon tax is often thought to be the way to go. It makes greener things cheaper and so more favoured by buyers in a really balanced, fair way.
We had a small one in Canada, and a massive political movement for cheap gas started and crushed it.
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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!
Eat the rich. I remember when the Twitter account that posted where Musk's private jet is all the time and holy shit, he travelled a lot.
Like, multiple times a week where this machine that fucks up the environment is used to transport a single person.
Or the disgusting mega yacht that Zuckerberg uses.
During my whole life I'm not gonna destroy the environment like every single one of leeches on society does in a month.
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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!
The idea of personal action vs. corporate/government action is a false choice. The government can force the corpos to stop burning the planet, but that will mean significant lifestyle changes for everybody.
It also means getting our shit together about immigration/ migration/ refugees. And not just in the US, but globally. A humanitarian catastrophe is assured otherwise.
I'm not optimistic.
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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.
I agree but you should emphasize the positives of degrowth otherwise everyone either gets scared or dismisses it as a non-serious solution politically. The main one being more leisure and less work.
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Vote.
Edit: to be clear, vote in every election you have access to. Local voting and primaries are just important. Voting even if you don’t like any of the options is still important.
If you don’t vote then you’re part of the problem.
Depends on where you live.
In some places, voting is extremely important and can affect things majorly.
In some places, voting is completely useless because the voter has legitimately no power in a rigged system.
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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.
Our standards of living should not include planned obsolescence where you gotta buy or exchange a new phone every year, stuff should be designed to last at least 10 years, if not longer...
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Stop burning fossil fuels. There is no way that doesn't include that.
How we gonna melt steel, copper, titanium, tungsten, etc?
Sadly, fossil fuels aren't going away anytime soon.
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Depends on where you live.
In some places, voting is extremely important and can affect things majorly.
In some places, voting is completely useless because the voter has legitimately no power in a rigged system.
If a rigged vote gets 100 votes to person A and 0 votes for person B then you will think person B’s ideas aren’t valid.
If a rigged vote gets 100 for person A and 35 for person B, well person B’s ideas shouldn’t be ignored. It also shows the 90 people that didn’t vote that maybe they should vote next time.
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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!
The simple fact is, we buy what's available on the market. If we want to phase out fossil fuels...the government needs to step in and ban using them. Then, car companies will all be forced to switch to cleaner alternatives, and that's what consumers will start buying.
This goes for every single product on the market. Regulate the shit out of it, and the market will shift. But if you leave it up to the market to decide...it will always choose the cheapest, most profitable option.
We, as consumers, have almost no say in the matter. We buy what we need, based on the available options.
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Encourage decentralisation and self-sufficiency. Produce and consume more locally. I think residential solar is a good start, as it may lead to reduction in overseas shipping for LNG, oil and coal. Small farms and workshops for daily necessities or repairs will further reduce need for commercial transportation. Work from home or encouraging local offices instead of corporate campuses will spread the population, make local businesses more viable, and reduce personal transportation.
All these encouragements should be done via tax credits or subsidies, so vote for parties who'd deliver those.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Decentralization in general is less efficient and therefore requires more resources. For example small scale farming has less yield per acre compared to large scale farming, thus you have to use more acres to produce the same yield leading to more environmental destruction. Or with the small local workshops, each of those workshops will require a vast array of machines and tools to handle every situation, some that may be rarely used if at all, so you need to produce thousands of copies of these tools for every shop that may not be used, using more resources, as opposed to having to only create one copy for a central repair facility.
The cost, including the environmental cost, of transport rarely exceeds the gains in efficiency from centralization. Working at an office for a computer job is the exception as theres very little gain. But working from home in a job where you cant send your work over a wire to the next worker would obviously lose a lot of efficiency from work from home.
We don't want to spread people out, the more spread out they are the longer it will take to get places and the more likely they will use a car. We need people in dense centralized places because that's where we get these efficiencies of scale. Public transportation becomes better with density, distribution of goods becomes easier, heating and cooling large complexes is more efficient than individual homes.
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Biggest problem is that only about 20% of the population of our planet is trying to make a difference and the rest are too poor to care and the 1% are busy building bunkers with the money they stole from the once middle class that are now too poor to do anything.
My answer isn't to tax the rich, it's to get rid of them and invest all that money into green tech, funding reforestation, improving EVs, that's just of the top of my head.
wrote last edited by [email protected]That 80% may care, especially since climate change will hit them the hardest, but there's a lot less they can do to lower emmisions. Ask them to:
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stop flying
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stop driving
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stop buying cheap plastic clothes, toys etc.
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eat less meat
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don't use as much AC
They'll just reply OK, already doing all that...
The richest 10% globally (~$50,000) account for half of carbon emmisions while the poorest half only account for 10%. The problem isn't that the top 20% are the only ones who care, the problem is there lifestyle is disproportionately causing this.
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Adopt. Don't make new people. Take in people who have been abandoned. My father had the same idea in the 1970s — I suppose I should be fortunate my mother overruled him on that one. But he had the idea almost 50 years ago, for similar reasons.
And apply a similar philosophy to the rest of your life. We all know the word recycle. And I have been a proponent of recycling for over 30 years. I've heard it doesn't help. I've heard some municipalities take it all to the same place. I don't care. I still do it. But I also remember when there were three words. The original slogan went "Reduce. Reuse. Recycle." Many people forgot the first two. You can reuse and repurpose a lot of things. But you should also reduce consumption as well. Eat less processed food. Stick to protein — plant and animal (unless you're a vegetarian/vegan obviously). Stick to the outside of the grocery store (produce, dairy, deli, meat). Bakery is nice for an occasional treat, but find out what they make in-house and not ship in frozen.
I don't think I'm doing enough on my own. I also don't have illusions I'll convince many others. I'm not really trying to. I'm not trying to save the world, just survive it.
Why do you say stick to protein? I understand for health reasons but emissions wise starches like wheat and maize are some of the most efficient per calorie, especially when compared to animal protein..
I guess you could argue there less filling so you'll eat more but you'd need to eat a ton of potato chips to get to the same amount of emmisions as a steak.
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The simple fact is, we buy what's available on the market. If we want to phase out fossil fuels...the government needs to step in and ban using them. Then, car companies will all be forced to switch to cleaner alternatives, and that's what consumers will start buying.
This goes for every single product on the market. Regulate the shit out of it, and the market will shift. But if you leave it up to the market to decide...it will always choose the cheapest, most profitable option.
We, as consumers, have almost no say in the matter. We buy what we need, based on the available options.
Negative, you don't ban things to get them to go away, you just end up with tons of legal fights that last forever. You make the next gen stuff cheaper. You fund solar, electric and nuclear, and anything else that's renewable and cleaner than what we have now to the max. You kill the market for it, not try and ban it.
Fund the hell out of the research and you'll make the old tech obsolete. People will choose via their wallets and kill the industry overnight basically.
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How we gonna melt steel, copper, titanium, tungsten, etc?
Sadly, fossil fuels aren't going away anytime soon.
️There are ways to melt those without burning fossil fuels. Whether the alternatives are easy, affordable, or can run at a useful rate is debatable
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If a rigged vote gets 100 votes to person A and 0 votes for person B then you will think person B’s ideas aren’t valid.
If a rigged vote gets 100 for person A and 35 for person B, well person B’s ideas shouldn’t be ignored. It also shows the 90 people that didn’t vote that maybe they should vote next time.
In a rigged election, you’re not going to be delivered legitimate vote totals.
