Wildfires in Canada and Russia. Floats in Germany. Etc, etc... We have known 40 years what will happen and now for our leaders those consequences seem to come as a surprise. I hope the Germans will vote for the Green party in the September's federal elections and other countries will follow the example.
I dearly hope the Greens will not win. Reducing consumption is an extremely tricky problem, and likely unfeasible without creating large amounts of poverty. I'd rather live in a rich, powerful nation with strong workforce and military rebuilding after each storm than being stripped my last rights and eating worms while a tiny elite still enjoying the freedoms we once had. Please do not fall for the propaganda.
> Please do not fall for the propaganda.
Yeah I don't know which one you've been listening to but this definitely doesn't only go for people voting green.
If there is anything covid has taught me its that collective action isn't something we can rely on and is a lot more wishful thinking about the state of humanity rather than a sober look at the reality. Governments need to tax CO2 emissions on the business side and pour the money into carbon capture technology in the private space through investment and perhaps some sort of bounty program (you get $x for each ton you…
This. A 200% value-added tax on fossil fuels that rises by 10% every year would provide the capital. EDIT: To clarify, this is not a suggestion to raise capital from the tax as much as it's to raise capital from the use of fossil fuels. It's a suggestion for an increasingly punitive financial cost to force behavioural changes.
We have an infinite money printing machine. We don't need access to any capital. That's not what the carbon tax is about. We need to change behavior. We need everyone that uses carbon to pay for its use (including the externalities) so that they stop using it as much as they are. This is why poor people can't be exempt. This is why the rich can't just pay for it. We all need a massive increase in the cost of everything that touches carbon (read everything) so we start driving to the next city once per year instead of every weekend, so that we start eating a BLT once a month instead of twice a week (a lot of heart issues down here in the south for a reason), and the list goes on.
The notion that humanity would go extinct from any of this is absolutely unrealistic. What we are talking about is at worst massive economic damage and loss of life, similar to a very serious war. Which is horrible, but really not the threat it is made out to be. Moreover, since these changes happen relatively slowly (compared to bombs and such) much of the loss of life can be mitigated. So we are talking economic da…
I'm not sure you'd take the same position if you were one of the people who was going to be immediately and directly affected by the change that's coming. I expect at some point some change will happen which does affect you and you won't like it. That moment has already come for some people, spare a thought for them.
I am. I’m saying let’s reduce the impact to them, which is likely doable.
Help them. Prioritize dealing with the effects of climate change over ‘fighting’ climate change.
If you are looking for an overview of future climate scenarios of each country worldwide: https://www.howhotwillitget.com. The coming months I am going to update the website with the new data and fix some running issues. Follow my Twitter if you want to stay updated.
If there is anything covid has taught me its that collective action isn't something we can rely on and is a lot more wishful thinking about the state of humanity rather than a sober look at the reality. Governments need to tax CO2 emissions on the business side and pour the money into carbon capture technology in the private space through investment and perhaps some sort of bounty program (you get $x for each ton you…
> The greatest hope I see for the future of humanity is the incentive for a brilliant mind/leader to become the next Bezos/Musk via climate change technology > ...isn't something we can rely on and is a lot more wishful thinking about the state of humanity rather than a sober look at the reality. I don't mean for this to sound too critical but how do you square these two concepts? The idea of a great inventor/scienti…
Came here to say this. I also want to add that there are no solutions with the West's current consumption habits. If we all switch to electric cars today, oil might be doing okay, but we'll still be exploiting workers and raiding resources in environmentally costly lithium mines. This is not a technical issue. This is a political issue. The question we should be asking is how we reduce our consumption and how to increase our reciprocity with the environment, not at an individual level, but at a systemic and societal level. And here's the hard part: this isn't done through innovation. This is done through reducing the capitalist pressures to consume and produce. This is driven locally, slowly, and radically by pushing back against what capitalism has done.
I have this overwhelming feeling that it’s over. Are there publications and articles or studies etc about how the rich are preparing for the impact of climate change? Are there large swaths of Alaska being bought up? Farms in California being sold cheap? Mega security mansions popping up in New Zealand? Fresh water supply chains suddenly being consolidated under the same biz? Is this part of the reason why China is g…
The propaganda and media cooptation is just staggering. It's extremely suspicious that very little attention is paid to the fact that reducing consumption will likely increase poverty. If you trace, for example, the supply chain of some medicine you might use, or might depend on in future: The machinery, chemical refinery, transport, sourcing or resources, management, markets, and infrastructure below all that. All o…
You have a kernel of truth there which isn't talked about enough (the fact that CO2 consumption brings advantages which reduce death and misery AND potentially reduce further CO2 consumption as well, in a "you gotta spend money to make money" way).
Unfortunately you are wrapping it in delusional hysteria such as "you will die of a horrible death from an infection without painkillers". So you're getting down voted because you are completely ignoring how things such as subsidies work.
If there is anything covid has taught me its that collective action isn't something we can rely on and is a lot more wishful thinking about the state of humanity rather than a sober look at the reality. Governments need to tax CO2 emissions on the business side and pour the money into carbon capture technology in the private space through investment and perhaps some sort of bounty program (you get $x for each ton you…
Each human being emits 25 tons of CO2 per year just by breathing, should the businesses also be taxed based on their number of employees? People often forget the good parts about the little CO2 increase from the past century, I care a lot about environment (I'm a countryside person) but CO2 - many people forget it is the food of the plants that we need to eat - just takes all the place in the environmental debate and…
> Each human being emits 25 tons of CO2 per year just by breathing
I believe you may be off by two orders of magnitude.
There were a study done in Sweden a few years ago that looked at the question about an individuals actions and the corresponding CO2 production. No car > skipping flight > buy green energy > Get a electric car > diet. https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/four-lifestyle-choi...
How could you leave out the one with the biggest impact, which is basically "less humans"?
Because most of the developed world (if not whole) is already there. How do you plan to implement it in less-develop states?
If the Sahara and Grand Canyon once flowed with water before civilization What makes a paper straw the solution so our polar ice caps have less thaw? This is a serious question and not denying climate change. What’s our ultimate end goal after everything has gone green if we cannot change the planet’s cycles?
* Plastic pollution is orthogonal to climate change
* It sounds like you are implying that there is no man-made climate change, only natural cycles. This is 100% false. We are facing extinction as a species, and it's due to greenhouse gases we emit.