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We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

aljazeera.com

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Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#91

Post by petodo »

InitialLastName wrote: post #18

It's worth keeping in mind that Al Jazeera (as the state-funded news outlet of an extremely wealthy state that is built entirely and existentially on the sales of oil) may not be unbiased on this particular analysis.

> Vijay Kolinjivadi is a Writer with Earth Negotiations Bulletin, as well as a post-doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Development Policy (IOB) of the University of Antwerp. He is a U.S. national and has focused on assessing biodiversity and ecosystem service-based policies, especially ""payments for ecosystem services"" for the better part of a decade.

Al Jazeera may not be unbiased, but it seems the author is not on Qatar's payroll.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#92

Post by garbagecoder »

InitialLastName wrote: post #18

It's worth keeping in mind that Al Jazeera (as the state-funded news outlet of an extremely wealthy state that is built entirely and existentially on the sales of oil) may not be unbiased on this particular analysis.

Gas not oil, but the point remains.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#93

Post by garbagecoder »

alexb_ wrote: post #28
InitialLastName wrote: post #18

It's worth keeping in mind that Al Jazeera (as the state-funded news outlet of an extremely wealthy state that is built entirely and existentially on the sales of oil) may not be unbiased on this particular analysis.

[flagged]

I did and if you don't consider the source then I'm not sure what kind of reader you are. Al-Jazeera English is happy to publish some of the most lefty writers on other topics but strangely not here.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#94

Post by ElectricalUnion »

erulabs wrote: post #38

> billions of dollars have been poured into big pharma, instead of public health and policies My biggest pet peeve is this idea that the human race or even some large swath (“investors”) are doing one thing instead of another. How does one “pour billions in to policies” anyways? How do investors investing in bigpharma in any way impact public health policy? It’s as if the author wants to take the entire human race as…

> Public policy was mostly a disaster and thank god for all the taxpayers who poured R&D funds into “big pharma”.

FTFY.

You mean the estimated USD 39.5bi taxpayer dollars that went into big pharma R&D just in the US?

Or the US 3.6Bi, Europe 1.9Bi of taxpayer money invested in the first 2 years in big pharma?

Big pharma doesn't exist in a vacuum. Someone needs to be interested in large scale research, purchasing and applying all those vaccines, or their effectiveness is hampered.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#95

Post by t43562 »

willnonya wrote: post #27
t43562 wrote: post #5

Climate change has only one priority: stop releasing carbon into the atmosphere. We're all dead if we don't and we cannot afford to add one tiny extra burden onto that monumental task. Sorry. The alternative is death for us all and no chance of any justice ever.

This comes across as histrionics based on misinterpreting the worst case predictions to drive yet more unfounded FUD.

If you think about it we are all tempted to ignore a problem and hope that our lives won't be changed. It's very common in history to find resistance to necessary change especially when it's inconvenient.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#96

Post by rootusrootus »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #79
Xymist wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps don't advocate making good things in life shittier in order to make comparatively shit options you happen to approve of look good by comparison? If you want public transport to be an even barely acceptable alternative to cars: - Make it door to door, no connections, no hiking to or from a station/stop/port at either end - Make it on demand, no timetables or shortages - Make it actually show up, and not be sus…

If you want cars to be an even barely acceptable alternative to public transport: - They should not be stuck in traffic jams - They should not kill children, pedestrians and cyclists - They should be electric without heavy and polluting batteries These aren't unreasonable requirements, or some utopia situation. They're all things that trains and subways provide that cars do not. > - Make a ticket cost the same as or…

You can solve almost all of those problems more easily by improving road design with knowledge we already have. In relative terms cars are actually amazingly safe given that we drive them trillions of miles a year.

> They're all things that trains and subways provide that cars do not.

Figure out how to get trains to operate everywhere instead of only on fixed routes, and then this comparison will be valid. Until then you're talking about two (more, really) different use cases with a minimal amount of overlap.

So at the very least we will need buses, and a lot of them, to feed the areas where it't uneconomical or otherwise unfeasible to run rails. Do the environmental math on that -- how full does a bus need to be before the pollution per passenger is better than a compact car with one passenger? How about a compact car with four passengers? Public transit would need a fundamental change in approach.

And of course this is only talking about people. Always lost in this conversation is that moving humans from place to place is just one use case.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#97

Post by ebiester »

ravenstine wrote: post #46

The very premise of modern environmentalism necessitates human extinction by logical extension. You can't act or believe as if humans can or should have no impact on the environment without entertaining humanity's gradual demise as part of the process of "saving the earth" when all other known options are exhausted.

You are mixing up advertising slogans and beliefs, and it's why "save the earth" has largely been abandoned as a slogan in favor of "the earth is fine -- it's humans that are in danger."

Even that is a bit difficult. We're really talking about reducing the carrying capacity of the earth in most scenarios for both humans and other animals. Environmentalism is saying that many humans will die on the default path, and this is a path that can be diverted with sufficient action. The longer we wait, the worse the action is going to need to be and the more people that may die.

But nuances are difficult to communicate when the other side is working in wholesale disinformation.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#98

Post by ClumsyPilot »

ArnoVW wrote: post #73
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was an oil company executive, I would want carbon offsets to actually work, because they could enable my business to function for longer. Am I getting this wrong?

They don't have to actually work. Just seem for long enough to work, until I have made enough money.

> until I have made enough money

Does this ever actually happen? Like have you made 'enough' by the time you become CEO of ExxonMobil?

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#99

Post by rootusrootus »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #65
rootusrootus wrote: post #31

> the push to replace fuel-engine vehicles with electric ones As opposed to what, replacing cars with public transit? It takes a serious amount of hubris to look at the world and think that we can just wave a magic wand and make public transit work in places that largely rely on cars (even in Europe, which is much denser and more friendly to public transit, there are a lot of personal cars). We will run out of oil wa…

What strikes me is that even in the Neatherlands, a place with the absolute best mix of public transit and bike infrastructure, there is still 1 car for every 2 people. When people make comparisons of car ownership vs public transit, they always vastly inflate the cost of ownership, and more importantly, they do not account for the value of one's time. Just to give an example, if I were to replace the driven commute…

I think we need both, and that will be true indefinitely. The Netherlands is a great point. Cars aren't cheap, this is true, which is a strong indicator that they provide a lot of value. Otherwise people would just stop buying them.

Re: We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction

#100

Post by Gasp0de »

ravenstine wrote: post #48
rootusrootus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> solar and wind only makes sense to use where it can offset the carbon footprint that it created when it was manufactured IIRC, PV panels become (on average) carbon neutral after three years of operation. Given the lifespan, this suggests that there are very few locations you can put them where they won't more than pay back the carbon emitted in their production. I'm a former nuclear fan. In anything like its curren…

> I'm a former nuclear fan. In anything like its current form it is a dead end, and it is past time we move on. Could you further elaborate on this take? I'm not interested in challenging you or anything, but the anti-nuclear position is often out of fear of catastophe, so it's refreshing to hear an opinion that it's a dead end.

And why would catastrophe not be a valid reason? How do you suggest we store nuclear waste for thousands of years? What if an accident happens (and they will happen, just like Fukushima and Tschernobyl) and huge amounts of land can't be used for ages? That might be an option for some sparsely populated areas but not for Europe for example. Also, renewables are an order of magnitude cheaper than nuclear.
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