421–430 of 581 posts
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Bluntly: far fewer people, sustainability built into every process, no more oil, very high cost for transportation unless it is by ship, personal transport will be very costly and you won't do it unless you really have to. Think '1850' but with transistors.
>far fewer people Also bluntly: how would we do that ethically without severely restricting reproductive rights or "cleansing" populations?
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While some meat eating being required for nice food is subjective, I'm struggling to see what the suggested alternative to cars for all weather personal mobility is. I want to go to visit my friend Bob who lives 10 miles away but the rain is pouring down. What do I do in a carless world? Btw: CO2 emission taxes, road taxes and congestion charges are a great idea.
> I want to go to visit my friend Bob who lives 10 miles away but the rain is pouring down. What do I do in a carless world? - you wait until it stops raining - you bring an umbrella - you bring a change of clothing - you bike or walk - you ask Bob to meet you halfway Kids here in NL do this every day, sometimes across even longer distances (when they're high school age and live in rural parts of the country).
(That comment must be satire)
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> while putting a substantial portion of GDP into building nuclear reactors and removing carbon from the atmosphere. The first thing takes years and we still don’t have feasible technology for the second. Not to mention that we would still have a lot of emissions from transport, manufacture, and meat consumption. A technological silver bullet would be cool but the reality is that we don’t have one and there’s nothing…
The problem with the term "silver bullet" when used in these discussions is that it's used to dismiss any proposal for a technological solution. I can flip that around and say "a societal silver bullet would be cool but the reality is that we aren't going to convince people to reduce their consumption." Which I actually sort of believe. I think a technological solution has a much better chance of succeeding than a so…
Now imagine it's not just some meaningless project at your job but a matter of life and death for the majority of life on Earth, which do you pursue?
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While some meat eating being required for nice food is subjective, I'm struggling to see what the suggested alternative to cars for all weather personal mobility is. I want to go to visit my friend Bob who lives 10 miles away but the rain is pouring down. What do I do in a carless world? Btw: CO2 emission taxes, road taxes and congestion charges are a great idea.
This is what OP means by changing the way we live. Sorry but getting rained on a bit is least of our troubles. Imagine there are places like Netherlands where it rains all the time and people (including very old ones) bike around the city…
if you want to shape the behaviors of the world's people as you suggest, you'll need fascism. hard sell when there are already two paths to clean energy abundance, two paths to sustainable driving, and many paths to damage control competing in the public discourse.
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>That is why discussions around such technological silver bullets are always toxic: people want to believe. On the flip side, some people reject technological solutions on principle because for them, it's not about solving problems, it's about atoning for the sins of humanity. What does the alternative future look like where we solve the climate crisis by changing the way we live and organize society? Personally, I w…
We have enough resources to provide heating and running water for every living person on Earth, it is just not allocated fairly and smartly (e.g. in my country we flush the toilet with very good grade water meant for drinking, because historically we don’t have separate piping for less potable water and we are rich in waters). But do we really need to be able to order some bullshit plastic shit from China for 2 dolla…
You're just following what feels like it would be good for the environment (and maybe it is good for your local environment) but isn't actually impactful at a large scale.
You write eloquently, but futilely.
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>That is why discussions around such technological silver bullets are always toxic: people want to believe. On the flip side, some people reject technological solutions on principle because for them, it's not about solving problems, it's about atoning for the sins of humanity. What does the alternative future look like where we solve the climate crisis by changing the way we live and organize society? Personally, I w…
We have enough resources to provide heating and running water for every living person on Earth, it is just not allocated fairly and smartly (e.g. in my country we flush the toilet with very good grade water meant for drinking, because historically we don’t have separate piping for less potable water and we are rich in waters). But do we really need to be able to order some bullshit plastic shit from China for 2 dolla…
So do you want governments to legislate that you must live with your parents? Or that you must not eat meat? Otherwise it's fine and good that a small share of the populace will make these choices on their own, but we need an order of magnitude more.
The enthusiasm with geoengineering among the HN community is worrisome. Not sure which computing analogy would drive home the complete recklessness of this mentality but the Earth is not something you can reboot to the last working state once you harebrained patch implodes. It is true that we have been slowly geoengineering for ages (initially unwittingly, recently with eyes wide open) and it is also true that our mo…
It reflects the gravity of the situation. What I find incomprehensible is a reluctance to consider investigating such steps when the extremes of climate model forecasts are so horrific.
the oversimplified explanations of "this gas bad" are finally worth collapsing because nothing only ever does just one thing.
on the bright side, if this cloud seeding business helps keep everything cooled, i suppose that's a good takeaway.
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Am I understanding that page correctly? Sounds like 3–4 deg C of cooling for an estimated $5 bn/yr.
Yeah, if climate change really was an “emergency”, mitigation would be extremely cheap. With big side effects. Nevertheless if it really were an emergency … in real emergencies, triage happens, and downsides are taken for granted. Thankful that there’s no real emergency yet, but I suspect governments will drag their feet long enough that there will eventually be one, and then emergency relief will be deployed anyway,…
Once it's working, I expect they won't be allowed to shut it down.
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> Not sure which computing analogy would drive home the complete recklessness of this mentality Geoengineering is an act of desperation. Its like your laptop is on fire, so you throw some water on it.
> Its like your laptop is on fire, so you throw some water on it. Is it a lithium fire? I think this might be a very good analogy.
But it might just be a simpler fire.
But if smothering isn't an option, you take the lowest risk choice, which is the water.