321–330 of 400 posts
Maybe if I develop really strong anxiety about this, it's gonna solve the problem
I'm guessing you're being facetious? The options aren't to either develop anxiety or not care at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s always struck me as interesting about these conversations is that both you and I and many, many of the other people we talk to are willing to make significant life changes to deal with this problem, and yet we all seem convinced the blocker here is that everyone else is an asshole. It seems to me that assholes do in fact exist, but by all measures make up a much smaller percentage of the population than we’ve…
I tend to attribute most problems to low intelligence and/or ignorance more than plain asshole-ness. I don't disregard the complexity of fixing climate change, and the need for global cooperation, but we have had plenty of time and too little was done, even in more peaceful times than today. I think that the problem won't be solved by us, it will balance itself out. A bigger chunk of the planet will become more hosti…
And, regarding “living at lower scales and polluting less” - consider how many things in your life are sold to you as disposable items and how many don’t need to be, and how many things can be produced in a substantially more sustainable fashion without negatively impacting their utility or quality. The average person can live an extremely rich, fulfilling, and comfortable life on a low carbon budget.
Not much of a surprise. Government action has been anemic at best. Industry action (overall) has been net negative. The only hope now is exponential growth of (solar and wind)+batteries making other sources uneconomic. This seems to be slowly happening, so I hope we hit the exponential curve soon and we're there quicker than we expect. This only stops it. Then, to fix it, we'll need a massive Direct Air Capture indus…
The technology-will-save-us mentality is part of the reason we are here. We live in a society that doesn't do anything unless it makes money for some set of decrepit old men. We had the means to avoid this (strict vegan diets, ground based mass transit, dense development & re-wilding, energy transition) but people made money doing the opposite. And more people made money sabotaging solar+battery pricing in the US. So…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s always struck me as interesting about these conversations is that both you and I and many, many of the other people we talk to are willing to make significant life changes to deal with this problem, and yet we all seem convinced the blocker here is that everyone else is an asshole. It seems to me that assholes do in fact exist, but by all measures make up a much smaller percentage of the population than we’ve…
I tend to attribute most problems to low intelligence and/or ignorance more than plain asshole-ness. I don't disregard the complexity of fixing climate change, and the need for global cooperation, but we have had plenty of time and too little was done, even in more peaceful times than today. I think that the problem won't be solved by us, it will balance itself out. A bigger chunk of the planet will become more hosti…
You have a lot of personal problems to fix before you have to worry about climate disaster.
It's hard to have people use data in these types of conversations, so I'll just link two charts. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita and https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re... Notice which countries are going down. Notice which countries are going up.
The other country that has grown significantly in the last 20 years (India) is still far below using their fair share of the world emission budget, and they are rapidly adding renewables.
The sane way for a planet to use fossil fuels is for countries to use them to build up to the stage where they are wealthy enough to switch to renewables. If the ones that do that earlier stay on fossil fuels too long so that you get climate problems they can't just expect the countries that are not as far a long to just give up on becoming wealthy. They need to heavily subsidize those other countries in renewables so they can shorten or skip the fossil fuel bootstrap stage.
Because of the long time CO2 stays around in the atmosphere, about 40% of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere from human activity came from the US and Europe.
It’s way easy to preach vegan diets, solar/wind installations, etc. from the comfy chairs by the citizens of first world countries. But for someone living in a dirt poor country, climate change is the last thing in their mind even though they might be the hardest hit population. For them it’s about survival and meeting basic human needs.
At this point its not preached from comfy first world countries, but rather countries that are getting unbareably hot in the summer. So much that more and more people are going to die each year as a result
Also now you say because there were heat waves in Europe it's not preaching, then what's the excuse before that?
It’s way easy to preach vegan diets, solar/wind installations, etc. from the comfy chairs by the citizens of first world countries. But for someone living in a dirt poor country, climate change is the last thing in their mind even though they might be the hardest hit population. For them it’s about survival and meeting basic human needs.
Solar/wind installations are demonized from comfy chairs by the citizens of first world countries. Anti environmental agenda is agenda of rich conservatives, CEOs and their western right wing friends. Dirt poor countries do care about climate change per polls.
Which polls? the ones by Western NGOs that made out of thin air?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you point to any examples where democratic populations have engaged in the kinds of sacrifice at scale needed to avert this problem? Do you have any specific, actionable proposals to solve this problem that don’t rely on us magically solving the collective action problem? A vague sense that “we can do it if we just try!” is no better than what you’re decrying.
There are long histories of cultures managing collective resources democratically over extremely long periods. Both the water temples of Southeast Asia and the rituals around salmon runs and controlled burns in the Pacific Northwest maintained careful husbandry of scarce resources across time periods that extend well beyond the time period since the tragedy of the commons was discovered by the same people who are ass…
And your solutions are basically “we could all change our view and start taking coordinated collective action together”, which is not actionable. I mean, it clearly hasn’t happened, and you can villainize whoever you want about that, but the problem remains. You can declare that the problem is cultural, but the problem remains. You can blame Elon or Sam or Trump, but the problem remains. People do not vote for what you want, politicians do not do what you want, and that’s not even getting into the fact that we need action that requires great sacrifice from the majority of the globe, and quickly. What are we actually going to do about it? Do you have anything tangible that people can do today that will make any difference whatsoever? Because if not, why waste my life shaking my fist at the clouds?
Your original derisive comment implied that because we’re hackers, we should be able to do something more here. What is that? How do we hack this?
EDIT since I cant reply:
Many of the “cynical” people you’re deriding here have been doing the actionable things you suggest for decades now. Hell, in the last decade my fellow Americans have elected a man who promised to undo all the climate progress we’ve been fighting for, and then cheered as he did so. They voted for this! Twice!
Can you blame us for realizing that our fellow citizens don’t actually care enough to do the stuff you’re talking about, especially in time?
I’m actually an optimist, I think the future of humanity is bright, I think we’re a remarkable species who can do amazing things. I don’t think we have demonstrated any ability whatsoever to rise to the scope of this challenge in the time required to avoid a lot of suffering in the coming decades.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tend to attribute most problems to low intelligence and/or ignorance more than plain asshole-ness. I don't disregard the complexity of fixing climate change, and the need for global cooperation, but we have had plenty of time and too little was done, even in more peaceful times than today. I think that the problem won't be solved by us, it will balance itself out. A bigger chunk of the planet will become more hosti…
> low intelligence You have a lot of personal problems to fix before you have to worry about climate disaster.