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The world is losing the war against climate change

economist.com

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Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#61

Post by mmphosis »

317070 wrote: post #2

Legitimate question: will there be a point where we speak about this war in the past tense, as in `The world lost the war against climate change'? How do we determine that turning point?

War is in the past. The war on drugs. The war on whatever. We are not waging war. War doesn't work. War is what has exacerbated the problem. We needn't dwell on the past but maybe learn from it.

I agree that wording is important. Talking about climate changes is important. We need an effort, perhaps greater than the war effort in world war 2 to make the changes necessary because whether we do nothing or make needed changes for the better, change is coming. There is no turning point. The Great Turning is a shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life-sustaining civilization.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#62

Post by sykhic »

chosenbreed wrote: post #54
sykhic wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The uncomfortable reality is that 7 billion people can’t all live like Americans (or Europeans). Extracting the resources necessary for everyone to live like Americans would be very bad for the environment. The effective action is to greatly reduce the number of births worldwide. It seems to me all other options are not effective.

> The effective action is to greatly reduce the number of births worldwide. It seems to me all other options are not effective. Good luck with that ;-)

Yeah, it’s not a practical solution in terms of implementation. However, if implemented it would work and not require Star Trek levels of innovation. There are simply too many people in the world.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#63

Post by maze-le »

Sol- wrote: post #37

Was there a serious attempt to begin with? Yes, there are some efficiency gains and in some developed nations CO2 emissions seemed to stagnate, but much of that seems incidental (for instance partly caused by the Great Recession 10 years ago) and rarely part of a coordinated effort. Though I guess you can at least partly credit the rise of renewable energy like Solar to some government programs. Wonder how much faste…

Its not that much, but it's a start:

https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/international/negotiatio...

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#64

Post by strainer »

okket wrote: post #6

I don't know if the "war against" theme fits here. There is no enemy but ourselves.

Agreed, describing essential struggles and challenges as wars, promotes the ruthless traumatic destructiveness which actual war necessitates. The idea of making war should be repulsive, sadly it is freely glorified and normalised - and made.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#66

Post by mattygh »

317070 wrote: post #2

Legitimate question: will there be a point where we speak about this war in the past tense, as in `The world lost the war against climate change'? How do we determine that turning point?

It's all about changing the goalposts. We have probably lost the war against 1.5 deg C climate change, as even if we were to freeze emissions now, I believe we would hit that (need fact check on that). We are currently losing the war against 2 deg C climate change. The next war is against 3 or 4 deg C climate change. All of these milestones have severe consequences more significant than the last, so all are worth fighting.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#67

Post by alkonaut »

So we need a quick plan B. The required goals from nations won’t be met and people won’t change lifestyle to do something about it. We need to also do something that ensures warming stops without any sacrifice made by people (other than taxe to fund the massive programs)

Maybe we could turn things around in 10 or 30 years but the damage done may either be irreversible or runaway.

So a short term solution that ensures no temperature increase for the next 30 years would be great. But what is it? Carbon capture? Artificial Whitening of oceans? Is there any solution that is even remotely viable?

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#69

Post by nonbel »

SamUK96 wrote: post #59
nonbel wrote: post #33

"War against" ("War on") seems to mean it is a never-ending boondoggle that, at best, wastes a bunch of resources. Is there any example of these "wars" being a success? The three that come to mind are: War on drugs: fail War on cancer: fail War on poverty: fail Why is the economist trying to link climate change to this?

War on cancer has been...not completely a fail? Certainly made harder by profiteering, but, y'know. Also, I find "War on poverty" hilarious. Like a country saying it's "making crime illegal".

The war on cancer is a total fail in my book. They surrendered when they started calling it "many diseases", meaning there will never be a "cure for cancer" by definition.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#70

Post by chosenbreed »

andy_ppp wrote: post #40
konschubert wrote: post #8

Do we know what will happen if we keep burning all fossil we can find, at today's rate?

Sort of... https://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/21/opinions/sutter-6-degrees... I worry that all the sink holes appearing in Russia are massive methane deposits which are probably are not factored into estimates. It being this hot in Europe and specifically the UK for this long is insane.

Yep. That could be a bit of a problem. The land mass affected appears to be huge...
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