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Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is like saying "weight loss has only one priority; eat less food and exercise more". Of course, but people simply won't. So what do we do?
Descend into a planet of billions of migrants, mass famine, ultra right wing governments, while the population drops by billions
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.
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But I should warn you that it's literally against the rules to call people out when they clearly didn't read the article.
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…
> PV panels become (on average) carbon neutral after three years of operation That depends on where you install them. Almost anywhere in Europe it doesn't make sense to use solar, and yet they're doing it.[1] [1]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fn4clWEWAAkadtu.jpg:large
These critiques and the silly book's premise that since solar/wind might not break even from an embodied carbon standpoint, that somehow burning actual carbon molecules in their place is "better" are just politically correct denialism.
> 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…
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 to my office with public transit, my commute time would grow from 30m to 90m each way.
Do not get me wrong. Public transit and especially protected bike infrastructure would be wonderful to have, but we're not going to be replacing cars any time soon. We need to be pushing EVs hard.
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.
Some of what the author says is false. Consumer choices do make a difference. I work in climate tech and the product my company produces monitors electricity usage in the home. The average user reduces their home electricity usage by 7% in the first month, solely due to becoming aware of what they are using. Residential electricity usage is something like 45% of electricity usage here in the states, I believe. That’s huge progress due to consumer choice.
Electric vehicles are progress. There are companies developing new ways to extract lithium that do not destroy the environment as much as brining does. As where ICEs inherently must pollute (good luck having combustion without emitting CO2), electric power has the ability to become renewable and green. Oil companies are a hundred years ahead and have governments in their pockets, subsidies, and well-established infrastructure in place already. If renewable energy were in that position, there would be no contest in what was more eco-friendly.
Calling for “reparative justice” is another fear-mongering, divide-and-conquer strategy. The proper path forward IMO is capturing externalities so they can be incorporated into the existing economic framework. That’s what drives behavior of companies. I’m talking about putting a price on carbon. I’m talking about taxing land use at different rates for agricultural operations based on the type of agriculture being done. Imagine how quickly companies would change their behaviors if they had to pay the full price of what their fossil fuel usage or monoculture farming costs us collectively.
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.
In that sense climate deniers and climate pessimists are on the same side: do nothing, business as usual.
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.
> 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…
Saved whom?
As I understand what happened it was the biggest wealth transfer in the history of humanity. The disaster investments pouring into the pharmaceutical industry before the pandemic wasn't the reason that the vaccines existed at all; there was decades of research that went into mRNA based vaccines. The pharmaceutical industry was more than profitable already and able to meet demands without the influx of investment.
It seems to me that while it was beneficial to have the vaccines we had rolled out it didn't "save" all of us. It protected a good number of people. It wasn't evenly or fairly distributed. And it made a very few number of extremely wealthy people even more wealthy while increasing the number of already financially precarious people in the world.