71–80 of 377 posts
I strongly recommend 'Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All' by Michael Shellenberger https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B07Y8FHFQ7&preview=new...
Most smokers are unable to quit. Most fat people are unable to lose weight. I worry that most civilizations are unable to cut carbon emissions.
The difference between these is that stopping smoking and losing weight make your life overall better. Reducing carbon emissions will make life worse for everyone who's already on the lower rungs of humanity. No realistic amount of resource redistribution is going to work here. It's also not enough. We will have to start sucking up that carbon from the atmosphere whether we cut emissions or not.
The people on the "lower rungs of humanity" emit an order of magnitude less carbon than everyone else, and should be the last to cut.
Boomers ruined this world so they can retire…no they won’t even retire.
The economics of solar are good news. Hopefully we've hit an inflection point where coal power is no longer economical [1] [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90583426/the-price-of-solar-elec...
The problem is that developing countries like China and India are so desperately short of electricity (growth in demand is so high) that any new builds just add to existing production rather than replacing it. - Governments will prop up uneconomic generators to maintain total supply.
I don't know how to scale up PV and wind quickly enough to just replace coal in this situation.
Edit: the Chinese experiments with thorium molten salt and pebble-bed high temperature fission reactors are interesting here.
If they can easily swap out coal furnaces with nuclear reactors and retain the other 80% of the power stations, they'll get great benefits in air quality and and emissions while making use of of their investment in thermal generation.
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Not true. Calories are not created equally in terms of environmental impact.
Are you suggesting the average American got fat off environmentally friendly low-carbon-impact food products? Because I suspect they got fat off Oreos and Coca-Cola.
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> God grant me the serenity > to accept the things I cannot change; > courage to change the things I can; > and wisdom to know the difference. Civilisation as we know it, and perhaps even humanity is in the process of ending. The ending is inevitable, whether it is now or nearer to the heat death of the universe. If you can personally try and affect change, then you should do it. But more likely, you are a slave to t…
if this is your attitude then at least get out of the way
Maybe you could post your own attitudes and provide some justification for them instead? This may convince the other poster to change theirs. Currently your comment is pointless.
Young people need to follow the news less. It’ll play up any little issue for eyeballs.
Most smokers are unable to quit. Most fat people are unable to lose weight. I worry that most civilizations are unable to cut carbon emissions.
you can't easily force 7B people to act individually. you have to regulate at the source (the mfgs). we are far beyond individual action as a viable solution.
The problem with this is that it means not only are they not doing anything to help, they're much less likely to vote for people who would too because they're unwilling to accept inconveniences. Instead they'll vote for people who's policies would only inconvenience others, or make performative gestures while accomplishing nothing.
I'm afraid I have come to agree with others who believe this is a problem that society simple can't solve because it lacks any mechanism to make the necessary choices.