141–150 of 522 posts
Nobody seems to mention cars, they run on burning fossils and they are a large factor due to the amount of cars in use (ever increasing worldwide). Forcing the industry to replace the exhaust by whatever thing which does not consume fossils to create energy (directly or indirectly e.g. by electrical power that needs to be generated by burning coal) is what might contribute a lot to a better atmosphere (at least in th…
I generally get funny looks and the feeling that people are imagining me with a toothbrush mustache and a comb-over when I suggest this: Wouldn't population control to an extent help slow the rate of emissions? Caps on births or higher taxes on family sizes, etc. I know political/moral/ethical issues would make it impractical but I don't think any potential solution is worth ignoring.
Not only is this too totalitarian, it's too late . Most western countries are already at stable or slightly declining population levels. It's worth reducing fertility in poorer countries, but this is best done by carrot rather than stick: education and job opportunities for women, and decent free baseline healthcare with contraception included. One of the main obstacles to the latter is US religious conservatives.
I should imagine Catholic church's condemnation of birth control is the larger political issue in countries that are not US.
How does animal agriculture affect this? Are there any authorities on the subject on HN? Everything I've heard suggests the greenhouse gas emissions in support of animal agriculture far outstrip those of pretty much anything else, but nobody seems to really talk about it. Pre-empting a couple of replies here - I already don't eat meat, and yes I've seen "Cowspiracy". :)
I generally get funny looks and the feeling that people are imagining me with a toothbrush mustache and a comb-over when I suggest this: Wouldn't population control to an extent help slow the rate of emissions? Caps on births or higher taxes on family sizes, etc. I know political/moral/ethical issues would make it impractical but I don't think any potential solution is worth ignoring.
When debugging performance problems you always search for the biggest bottlenecks not the minor ones, so what are the biggest contributors to CO2? I don't think the problem is the number of people living on earth but how modern society is making people live, for example some big contributors are high meat consumption (cattle methane) inefficient transportation (big suvs with just the driver inside sitting in traffic…
CO2 levels is just one of a myriad of indicators that are off the scale now.
By lifestyle I mean supermarkets and restaurants and iPhones and planes ... all the stuff that we're so proud of as a society.
Winning, getting ahead, being number one, outcompeting, etc. All those ego-centric values that are the basis of our socio-economic systems - focused on disconnecting the `self` from `other` - are wrong on a fundamental level.
Ultimately it is the lack of spirituality in people that's killing the planet. Religions, Inc are a major part of the problem, not a solution.
By 'spirituality' I mean the deep realisation of the larger context in bio-space and bio-time that I as a creature exist in:
My body is just a cell of a larger organism - Earth - and my life is a drop in the river of life that's been flowing for billions of years - the constant unfolding and re-merging of the DNA molecule.
`I` am the privileged observer of this Process and my ultimate mission is to leave it in better shape than I found it.
Well, most of us are failing at it.
Russians fail to manage their swamps and forests. They burn regularly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Russian_wildfires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_wildfires I bet that contributed a lot to the 2010-s CO2.
Burning renewables (wood) is fundamentally different than burning fossil fuels.
Those are modern analog of those carboniferous-period forests.
While some people consider peat as renewable, the renew rate is very slow. Until burned, there was a lot of carbon stored for quite some time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you, but I don't think it's wrong that there's a general feeling that we're working on this problem, and we're getting better. Look at all these solar panels and electric vehicles we're reading about. We know there's still C02 being pumped out, but at least we're starting to get a handle on it. This shows that actually we're not. We've got a positive second derivative here. The current path leads pretty…
Are you referring to the "competent" housing policies of the Libs that have made BC into the biggest housing bubble in the entire world ? I'm not sure the conservatives (ultra-right) or NDP could have done this simply because their bases would not let them (for different reasons). So because of this competence we're in a sitch such that we can't stop the housing boom for fear of an entire collapse of the BC economy?…
As far as NDP policies I find questionable, a few are
-Remove tolls on lower mainland bridges. - this just seems like blatant vote-buying. It will worsen congestion and pollution, and reduce provincial revenue, while benefiting a small segment of the provincial population.
-(Further) delay acceptance of ride-sharing companies (Uber, etc.) - The NDP has always been the "workers' party," so I assume their interests align with the taxi drivers' union here. The policy seems poor though, from both environmental and fiscal perspectives (again). Also seems unwise politically, and I get nervous about a party when they do something that's both unwise and unpopular.
-Significantly increase minimum wage. - I support initiatives to reduce inequality. However, I don't agree that increasing minimum wage from $10.85 to $15 is the best approach. I expect it will have a significant impact on both businesses and minimum-wage employees. (Positive for some; negative for those who can no longer find work.) I believe there are better ways to help people, and that minimum wage tends to be chosen because it doesn't have a direct impact on the provincial deficit, so it's a 'free' promise. Increasing minimum wage with inflation is one thing, but a ~40% jump is another.
Those are a few things. Many of their other positions I agree with in theory, but there are few details presented so far. (Full platform is yet to be released.) Unfortunately the details that they have put forward, like those above, I find worrisome. That said, I will still likely vote NDP (or possibly Green if my riding doesn't look competitive) since I do expect they will be better for the environment (removal of tolls and blocking of ride-share notwithstanding), and I support most of their goals, even if I don't expect they'll be entirely competent in achieving them.
I generally get funny looks and the feeling that people are imagining me with a toothbrush mustache and a comb-over when I suggest this: Wouldn't population control to an extent help slow the rate of emissions? Caps on births or higher taxes on family sizes, etc. I know political/moral/ethical issues would make it impractical but I don't think any potential solution is worth ignoring.
When debugging performance problems you always search for the biggest bottlenecks not the minor ones, so what are the biggest contributors to CO2? I don't think the problem is the number of people living on earth but how modern society is making people live, for example some big contributors are high meat consumption (cattle methane) inefficient transportation (big suvs with just the driver inside sitting in traffic…
Just look at airlines. As a random example, Qantas Airlines, in the 2015 financial year, burned $3.9 billion AUD worth fuel! (About $3 billion in USD).
Source: page 15 of their annual report: http://www.qantas.com.au/infodetail/about/corporateGovernanc...
How does animal agriculture affect this? Are there any authorities on the subject on HN? Everything I've heard suggests the greenhouse gas emissions in support of animal agriculture far outstrip those of pretty much anything else, but nobody seems to really talk about it. Pre-empting a couple of replies here - I already don't eat meat, and yes I've seen "Cowspiracy". :)
As far as I know, this issue is not comparable to our carbon economy, I.e. Natural gas extraction, coal mining, oil, etc. Key difference is that agriculture is a closed cycle, animals produce a lot of green house gas, but it's gas that's already a part of our ecosystem. When we did stuff from the ground we add new carbon to the ecosystem, and this feat is what's destabilizing the environment. I heard this argument fr…
How is it a closed cycle? They require a lot of food and water to be grown, all of which has its own greenhouse gas cost to produce, and then they fart methane while they're alive and require more fuel to process/transport. All the while the world demand for meat is increasing pretty quickly, right?