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Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

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Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#181
post #41

The responses in this topic alone are enough to see the chances of success are very low.

One of the biggest problems I've come across are older people who say or think "I've got mine, I won't be alive when the shit hits the fan, so I don't care." If you can address that aspect of the problem, then you're probably half way there to solving it.

To me it looks more that people from rich countries got theirs, but people from poorer countries aren't allowed to have theirs. The people from rich countries will stop them because of climate change.

It's easy to demand that others change their behavior.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#182

As usual the elephant in the room is the global population. We can't eradicate poverty, protect the environment, and maintain the human population we currently have. Bikeshedding is always easier than facing hard issues so people focus on marginal things, like air travel or plastic cups, rather than facing the root cause of it all. Do we want all humans to have a good life with high living standards among a thriving…

Okay, what’s your policy going to be?

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or are we still going to go after individuals eating traditional food I mean, yes, we should continue doing that. Our relationship with food is unhealthy and also a massive contributor to environmental decline. I'm not sure why you contrast this with other improvements we can make, many of which, individually, would be less impactful than a transition to a more sustainable diet.

The point I got from the OP was that traditional culture was low-carbon from day 0, and that at least Britain's climate change minister was jetting about an AWFUL lot, and there are plenty of jet-setters pushing a vegan diet upon the world when home-kept chickens are obviously a net plus, both in terms of food waste (accounts for a significant carbon and other pollution footprint, as we pay to produce it) and in term…

You gotta kill some chickens if you want eggs.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also people need to be presented with the consequences. I still know a lot of people who genuinely believe it means slightly warmer summers. They think I'm a crazy person when I mention the never-ending storms and lack of drinking water. Also just dropping this link here as I remember watching it at the time and thinking isn't it great we're not there yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CXRaTnKDXA

> They think I'm a crazy person when I mention the never-ending storms and lack of drinking water. If you put it that way it's no wonder that they think you are crazy. Storms mean heavy rainfall that means more drinking water. What is your point, exactly?

That if you try to drink storm water run off, you'll die of diarrhea. A lot of the damage in Germany right now is polluted drinking water

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#186
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covid put a minuscule dent into the carbon emmision, but we are basically back to normal. Death don't have a great effect as the general carbon production (oil, coal, gas) are still rising.

True. But I was thinking that since a million people have died there would be some dent in carbon

A million deaths assuming they reduce carbon emissions equally would only be 0.0125%. In reality considering that vaccines are unevenly distributed in favor of countries with high CO2 emissions, it's likely much less than that.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#187
post #51
post #16

> This pact aims to keep the rise in global temperatures well below 2C this century and to pursue efforts to keep it under 1.5C. It seems to me that continuing to communicate just the average temperature increase is a missed opportunity to engage with a greater portion of the population. 1.5 or 2 degrees do not seem like much, but once one understands that’s an average made out of much bigger positive and negative sw…

An ice age is a global temperature difference of about 5 degrees. So we are going to have at least a third of an ice age’s temperature delta in heating, if we do everything right, and two thirds if we do business as usual.

In comic form: https://xkcd.com/1379/

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#188

It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production. Some are high-pain, low-gain (switching devices off instead of standby?), some are opposite (cycling instead of driving when possible etc). For that if for no other reason, I’d rather if consumer prices included an explicit CO2 tax. The here can be a rebate for poorer people, or personal allowance, whatever, but there would be a fixed yardstic…

Even if every person on the planet did what you reasonably expect of yourself, we would still not even be close to reducing CO2 production.

By all means do those things. But if you want to make a real difference you need to look beyond your own activities.

Change your community, your company, your industry. What can you do that changes the defaults for everyone else? Try and find low-hanging fruit.

Join your local climate activist group e.g. 350.org — they'll be full of people with solutions.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#189
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or are we still going to go after individuals eating traditional food I mean, yes, we should continue doing that. Our relationship with food is unhealthy and also a massive contributor to environmental decline. I'm not sure why you contrast this with other improvements we can make, many of which, individually, would be less impactful than a transition to a more sustainable diet.

> Our relationship with food is unhealthy Your American relationship with food is unhealthy. Our relationship with food here in France, and many other countries is perfectly fine.

France has a higher meat consumption per person than the Europe-wide average: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-meat-consumption-pe...

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#190

Every one is focused on climate change. But climate change is just a symptom, and absolutely not the disease. No one seems to want to discuss or even mention the actual root cause of climate change, namely: there are simply too many people on the planet. Go back to less than 1B human on planet earth, and climate change will stop being a problem in a heartbeat. But the implications of such a drastic population decreas…

>there are simply too many people on the planet.

This is false. Only a minority of the population is responsible for the catastrophe. Take Africa, a continent with over 1.2 billion inhabitants: their carbon footprint, *all import included*, is below what our ecosystems can support. The way of live of the majority of human beings is sustainable.

Why force countries that are sustainable overall (at least in terms of C02 emissions) to not have children because the richest are destroying the climate.

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