I’m 38 years old, and I’ve worked in climate tech for the last 12 years. In my relatively short lifetime, and my relatively short career, I have seen the environment for political action, and funding for climate solutions, fluctuate maybe half a dozen times.
The physics, however, don’t change, and neither does the task in front of us.
I just spent ten months finding a job, the longest and most difficult job search of my career. It was hard because the macro environment is terrible, but also because I insisted on finding a role working on clean energy hardware.
At a time when basically all VC funding, and in many ways the entire productive capacity of the economy, is shifting to AI, it would have been smarter in some respects to just pivot to AI. I sat out the crypto bubble too, in which some of my peers made a lot of money by working on projects that were either useless, or straightforward scams.
We crossed the 1.5 degree threshold because the money can’t help itself. The slow, steady work of transitioning away from fossil fuels is never going to be as profitable, as quickly, as the various forms of gambling and addiction that have driven the tech industry for most of my lifetime.
But you, individually, can make the choice to keep your eye on the ball. You can commit to working on this problem until it’s done, no matter what. You can choose to find the others to organize and prepare, so that the ideas closest at hand when the next crisis comes are yours.
It’s the best solution I’ve come up with so far, and in spite of the challenges, it’s still working.
> You can commit to working on this problem until it’s done, no matter what.
My opinion is that the very first things people should do are:
1. Get a little bit informed. It doesn't require a PhD, it could be done instead of a fraction of the time they spend scrolling bullshit on their smartphone.
2. Accept the situation. Too many are in denial, with variants of "it's not that bad" or "it's because those in power are stupid, I would certainly fix the world" or "it's because of foreigners".
3. Vote accordingly.
It's too easy to say "we don't have any viable candidates" and "I don't understand why they haven't fixed the problem yet, they must be stupid (somehow implying that "in all likelihood I would have solved it by now")".
In relatively-functional democracies, the reason the people doesn't have viable candidates is because the people does not vote for competent people. Either because they vote for competent politicians (with modern politics being about getting elected, not exactly solving big problems) or because they proudly vote for extremists (which is of course even worse).
In a democracy, the people is the government. When the people says "the government is stupid", it reflects on the people. Maybe they're right: the government is stupid, because the people is stupid and elects stupid people, and that's why we're screwed.
I don’t know of any candidates (except a few outliers who have my support) who are pledging to reduce the footprint of the largest polluters. All anyone is willing to do is offer “feel-good” initiatives that make life harder for average people, building popular resistance to addressing climate issues, without actually taking the substantial, difficult steps that are needed. Meanwhile they work together on tightening the social control grid that is being rushed to completion before shit finally hits the fan.
> Maybe they're right: the government is stupid, because the people is stupid and elects stupid people, and that's why we're screwed.
Now you’re getting it. But they are stupid for a reason. The people are stupid because they are poorly educated and distracted by entertainment; they are poorly educated and distracted by entertainment because policy makers prefer passive consumers to active citizens; despite the long-term downsides, policy makers choose to create passive consumers because they are easier to control and unable to contest their power.
One of Reagan’s advisors warned that free higher ed was creating a dangerous “educated proletariat”, and he was right! The response to this danger was to end state funding of college tuition, to strip out funding for the humanities, and to gradually turn colleges into job prep centers rather than centers of higher learning. (This process started in earnest with Reagan, but you’ll notice that it was never rolled back.)
People did try to fight this, but we lost. And now here we are.
“ When the people says "the government is stupid", it reflects on the people. Maybe they're right: the government is stupid, because the people is stupid and elects stupid people, and that's why we're screwed.”
Yep, George Carlin said this best when he was still alive. Bad Government is simply garbage in, garbage out, if the people are stupid, they will elect stupid people
I went from voting to electoral campaigns to the kind of activism that gets you arrested to working in climate as an engineer. I landed here because the first three were insufficient. I still support and encourage all of it, but the best you can get from voting is creating a better regulatory and funding environment for the necessary engineering and implementation work.
Glueing to streets can lead to terrorism charges, taking part of a demonstration even if it is not a legal one so far not.
(but among those activists there are certainly more radical elements, also actual eco terrorists, they recently showed solidarity to someone who was hiding close there, who made attacks on power plants and transmission lines)
The ones that made Hambach happen were the people that camped there in the woods literally for years in tree houses and they (some of them) also got arrested for it.
The arrests and prosecution I know of, are not because of living in a tree house there.
There was a lot of intentional ideological violence towards police. Part of the reason why I did not engage with them further, but I know people there.
> I went from voting to electoral campaigns to the kind of activism that gets you arrested
You make it sound like you proved I was wrong... somehow? I never said "0% of the world is informed and votes accordingly". I said that the majority isn't and doesn't.
Sure, once you realise you personally aren't able to change that, you can move to the next thing that makes you feel good (in this case working on "green tech", if I understand correctly). Some people go live in a hut in the woods.
Doesn't change the fact that the people is the government, and can generally vote for change. But they don't, for many reasons, including "they actually spend very little time thinking about those things". I would argue that most people spend vastly more time saying that the government is stupid than actually getting informed on problems and what it would take to solve them.
"Doesn't change the fact that the people is the government"
That is not true in large parts of the world. Now even the most absolute monarchy has to listen to the people sometimes, but they absolutely can and do choose to do whatevery the small power circle on top wants, as long as the situation is somewhat under control for them.
I think you hit the root causes dead centre there but there's an unfortunate consequence to your argument that you didn't call out.
The only way this changes is if there is real political/government leadership on the issue. That leadership can direct national resources. It can legislate. It can even tax - if necessarily to a very high degree - less useful ways of spending available resources in the private sector to deter waste.
We can't get that kind of leadership in many countries at the moment because too many people will just vote for whichever party they always have or whichever populist nutter has the most convincing sound bites. So before the political problem can be resolved there needs to be much more public education on the realities of the issue.
This is unfortunately a circular argument because the public information campaigns that are needed to fix the education problem are only going to be run by political/government leadership of the required calibre. If anything the populist lightweights will push the other way because dumbing down the voting population helps to sustain their own control and importance.
My hope is that before it's too late there will be enough politicians who are both capable of dealing with the real issues here and capable of taking on the populists convincingly enough to get elected to start moving the needle. Unfortunately I don't really see any other way this gets fixed instead of spiralling downwards.
A little informed about what? That we are destroying the planet slowly? Yeah, we know.
What is your actual solution? That we tell people they can't have plastic straws? That we need to install solar and wind farms (which is already happening at mass scale in the West, by the way. That includes the US)?
What are you actually proposing? That we "vote"? Do you want to de-industrialize your corner of the world, like Europe is doing, while the rest of the world plows ahead unabated?
Until you're ready to go to war for this, it's unrealistic. And good luck trying to force any country to do anything you want without a well equipped war-machine. You think Russia, India or China care what Europe thinks about their climate policies?
So, yeah, go ahead and vote in your green parties.
Indeed and don't underestimate the influence you can have by participating in candidate selection (depending on your electoral system). For example in the UK the replacement candidate for a safe seat [i.e. almost guaranteed to be won by the party of the sitting representative] upon retirement of the incumbent may be decided by just a room full of people. Be in that room.
> 1. Get a little bit informed. It doesn't require a PhD, it could be done instead of a fraction of the time they spend scrolling bullshit on their smartphone.
The problem is that as soon as you start digging into it, you're essentially walking in a guilt trip.
The kind of "eating an hamburger pollutes more than driving an SUV for 50 miles" guilt trip.
And you realize most of the focus should be on materialism, consumerism and how/what you eat, not just cleaner transport.
But who really wants to do so? I myself am aware that me eating a beef steak per week has a gigantic impact on environment and resources. That switching to pork > chicken > eggs in that same meal would be better.
But I just don't want to enter the guilt trip. So I do a bit, but not as much as I could.
A carbon tax should help there. Make it so me eating a steak is not incentivized. But then good luck with farmers, the easiest like and empathy grabbing category of workers on the planet.
You can't vegan hamburger your way to terminating those enterprises. You can tax, regulate and ban them though; and use the revenue to help society adjust.
Extremists, as in lumping trump together left wing folks who want a green new deal and to actually do something about the problem?
No socialist/lefty has been elected in the US despite their ideas being super popular. Don't act like voting for a centrist dem like Biden would do anything but ever so slightly slow the climate change scenario we're in. We absolutely need and FDR new deal scope of attack on this problem.
The revisionist history on Joe Biden is insane. I honestly can’t even explain it, other than the idea that there must be an extremely effective opposition campaign to smear him.
The dude engaged in more climate action than any previous president. The Inflation Reduction Act was a huge clean energy manufacturing bill. This is established fact that isn’t even really disputed from what I can tell.
Remember those EV subsidies that disappeared under Trump’s second term? Yeah, those did more to curb fossil fuel consumption than just about anything else the government could have done with direct action. Transportation accounts for 28% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. The US is wildly car-dependent. The government should be practically forcing US auto buyers into EVs through EV incentives and gas taxes.
I think it is fundamentally a demographic problem. We have a growing aging population in the worst-offending western countries, soon to be the majority voters (in some countries we are approaching 50% voters above age of 50). Wealth and fortune tend to come with age, so the same group sits on the assets needed to make a change (and are the worst offenders regarding CO2 production). At the same time, this group cares the least about the future livability of the planet, as the worst symptoms will only start to show when they have already passed away.
That is a fundamental problem that you will not solve by asking youger folks, who are actually affected and have all reason to agree and comply, to make a change.
I doubt that even younger folks in developed countries will be affected as drastically as "livability" perhaps implies.
I get the feeling that many are confused and fear the literal destruction of our planet by accelerating warming.
The reality is that the underlying physics fundamentally work in the opposite way, with warming slowing down rather than accelerating. I understand that for warming below 2C, the confidence is high that it is roughly a linear relation to additional CO2 emitted.
I'm optimistic about most things in life, perhaps it's a flaw of mine.
I do think we have decades, if not centuries, to develop solutions to climate change. Our planet will remain livable.
That said, I understand some ecological damage that may occur with global warming could be irreversible, and it makes sense to reduce emissions as soon as possible.
I'm middle aged and have no kids so I probably fall into your category, in the sense that as long as it doesn't bite hard before I go it's in my top 5 political priorities but not at #1.
However my friends who have kids and grandkids care a great deal about climate change and generally do what they can politically (i.e. vote for Greens and so on) within the constraints of life (i.e. they're not out there throwing soup at paintings or whatever).
Maybe that's what it will take. I expect ecoterrorism to become a serious thing in the next decade or two. Who knew the Amish were right all along?
Right about what? When the Amish said that modern technology destroys the family, they weren't envisioning a climate catastrophe being the thing that destroyed the family.
I recently travelled to the old-order region of my country, where I hadn't been in about a decade, and all the old horses in the fields I remember have now been replaced by tractors. Let's be real: They don't fear climate change anymore than the average Joe does. All they have ever feared was families being broken apart by the kids leaving for the big city lights.
I always cared. But I care more as I age. Why? Because I know (vaguely) the danger and I have ____KIDS____.
Older people usually have kids too. For anyone, ANYONE who accepts/knows the dangers we face to just shrug, knowing it's their own kids and grand kids that will suffer (wars, political upheaval, riots, deaths, migration) - no. I don't buy it.
Principally, it's the ignorance of the people to the things that matters most. Maybe they are partially sticking their heads in the sand a bit. But if it truly was properly reported on prime-time news and so on, they would know, and they would care.
In my experience, being a parent is unfortunately a poor predictor of caring and being ready to act on climate change or its effects.
The split seems mostly generational; my parents and other parents around their age seem to not really care (there are still dinner table debates about whether Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was a scam or not), but as my other-millennial friends are becoming parents, the vast majority of them do care, because this issue has been so front-of-mind for people my age. We're hyperaware of the fact that my country has more wildfires, milder winters, and hotter summers than it did when we all were growing up.
(There may be selection bias at play here; while I don't go out of my way to avoid them, I don't have many friends who deny the issue of climate change).
Many of us are also tracking the second- and third-order effects of these things; crop failures, droughts, and the migration and public services strain that come as a result of this; most frustrating is that the biggest voter blocs won't enact policy that's responsive to this, so when the inevitable (mass, climate-change-driven migration) grows over the coming decades, we'll be unprepared, and we'll either be overwhelmed by the movement of people, or complicit in one of the greatest humanitarian crises in history (and very possibly both).
> But if it truly was properly reported on prime-time news and so on, they would know, and they would care.
I don't know a single person that isn't aware of the issue, it's just a significant portion of them think it is outright fake or they just otherwise don't care because they see it as a lame thing to care about. How does one fix that side of things? It seems a major impediment to any progress.
> That is a fundamental problem that you will not solve by asking youger folks, who are actually affected and have all reason to agree and comply, to make a change.
Younger folks tend to be more enthusiastic about "making a change" by direct action means, so you shouldn't count them out!
I'm not sure your age cut off is quite right, I'm 50 in a few months and my wife and our friends are all quite "pro climate" (just to easily sum it up), most people I know from the younger end of GenX are... the problem lies just a few years beyond that with the older GenX and up into the Boomers, which is where all the money is.
Yea it’s not an age thing as much as it’s a “I got mine and I’m gonna pull up the ladder and defend it” mentality. Yes, a stereotypical Boomer take, but not necessarily limited to or locked to the entire generation.
> and are the worst offenders regarding CO2 production
Unless you're doing those strange mental gymnastics of entities like oil companies are the emitters and not the consumers, that's not true. Old people who have gained large amounts of wealth have also lost large amounts of mobility and tend to not produce much co2 because they don't do much in life anymore, comparatively speaking. The data is clear that peak carbon emitters are in their 30s-40s, and they're still the ones most often seen crying about not being able to afford a home.
Democracies in general are suffering the fallout of losing its information economy.
From the death of local newspapers, the end of classifieds and the pressures on ad revenues, journalism had no real options but to shrink and consolidate.
The more content we create, the more the market focuses on creating content that could garner attention.
People are going to vote based on the information they have. If they are part of a captive market, then they are going to pick between the choices they are presented or decline to participate.
It’s some sort of irony, that as a society we developed ways to neutralize free speech and expression by flooding the zone with more content, not by controlling content.
I think partly it’s also that democracies aren’t great at longer term planning.
Like in my country there is a big election every 4 years and you have state elections in between. So any government needs to constantly appease the people to stay in power and do anything.
It’s basically impossible for them to make and more importantly realise any plans that go beyond that 4/5 year timeframe.
And to solve something like climate change we would need to think in decades or centuries.
Money/finance is the problem here, we've had the technology to make surplus exergy damn near free (in the ExROEI sense) since the 1960s but financial systems we had in place combined with political reticence and NIMBYISM/Nuclear fears have made the transition to the only energy source than can keep our modern civilization alive unattractive on the fiat ledger, and our civilizational malaise will continue to grow as our useful surplus exergy shrinks and shrinks with the available fossil fuels getting harder and harder (exergetically) to extract. Hydrocarbons were our consumable rope ladder to nuclear fission breeding cycles but we are almost out of remaining rungs to to make the climb IMO. Ban fiat currency, ban debt spending, ban the wallstreet casino and start the most ambitious project in human history to build out massive industrial parks around advanced cycle fission breeder reactors where we perform electrolysis, haber-bosch, direct carbon capture (atmospheric or from industrial exhaust) and manufacture synthetic hydrocarbons, while we directly electrify every single part of our civilization that is sensible to power that way (like homes, offices, stores and consumer transportation) with wind and solar.
Clean energy hardware meaning clean electricity generation, energy storage, or energy management and arbitrage hardware that reduces the need for fossil fuel-derived electricity.
It’s not always possible depending on where you are.
Actual real reasons like possibility of continuous dark cold windless weeks in the winter and then the more common/real one. Politics.
Also if someone wants to build nuclear why would you not let them? More production in general is better as long as the public money put into it is the same per kWh produced as wind/solar/whatever why would I care?
I applaud you for considering a change. However, you’re talking about making two career pivots at once, and I would suggest doing one at a time - i.e. either keep coding in clean energy, or do something other than coding, but not both. It’s hard to pivot.
If you want to be a senior SWE in clean energy, the Climatebase rec is good, or https://www.terra.do/, or subscribe to a newsletter like https://www.ctvc.co/tag/newsletter/ that announces when climate tech companies raise money (at the bottom of each newsletter), and apply to open roles at those companies when they start looking to spend their new money, usually ~1-3 months later.
Paris accords were made on the assumption that each human emits the same. At least the stated goal is 16Gt-carbon-equivalent, and at an individual level 2t/yr.
The usual criticism is that it means every human emits the same, which is extremely tied to consumerism level, i.e. level of living, since in the climate universe, we have far enough access to consumerism and we're not limited by resources, but by emissions. And, like every policy claiming equalitarianism-for-all, it means it's no worth working if you'll have the same right to consumerism. Criminal, hard worker, bad country, good country, all equal humans.
The second criticism is how it's impossible to impose less consumerism to another country, let alone a megacountry, so this climate scheme has always been just about limiting the Western civilization, generally by people who go length to explain what Whites have done wrong in the world.
The Paris climate accord is a racist ideology that means that I should disappear. Typical from the 2012 era, but outdated in the 2020ies, and the more people claim that Whites should consume less, the more the world will burn in flames.
I have been working in Climate Tech for a while but not as long as you.
Unfortunately my conclusion is that Climate Tech companies in general have been delusional thinking the mission is enough and there is no requirement to be a business.
The reason I am saying this is not to discourage from working in Climate Tech. The reason I say this is to please not go in with eyes closed which is all too common.
Climate Tech needs to grow and be sustainable both for the mission as well as a business. And for far too long I feel business smarts have been missing completely in this sector.
This is not true, it's fossil fuel propaganda that has been very successful. The overwhelming majority of people are concerned about the climate but assume that they are in the minority. See https://ourworldindata.org/climate-change-support for example.
"Fight pollution" is the old approach, it doesn't work as well because greenhouse gases are generally invisible and cause no noticeable short-term impacts, and because in the US the industry has been successful in distorting the law such that greenhouse gases do not legally count as pollutants.
This ignores the big wheezing elephant in the room: climate action is fighting extremely entrenched and monied interests that are betting on dying before the bill for their action comes due and are ready to lie on almost unimaginable scale.
Saying it is simply a "branding failure" is about as accurate as saying "planning failure" is why around 80% of Ukrainians lost power in 2024.
Climate change and renewables are broadly popular causes.
It might not seem like it if you live under a broken political system that can ignore what people want and so that doesn't translate into action.
When you point this out people say, "well it's not as important as cost of living or health or migrants from hot countries or getting out of wars in the middle east" despite it helping with all of those too.
The data says climate change is not broadly popular in the US. If it was, people (broadly speaking) would not have tripped over themselves buying bigger and higher vehicles and bigger houses in further flung suburbs. Not to mention the fierce political opposition to higher fossil fuel prices, which would be the easiest and most direct mechanism to combat carbon emissions.
A major problem, I think, is that humans insist on making everything a big package deal bound up with tribalism and ideology.
If you think climate change is a problem, you're more likely to be on the left of the political spectrum and hold a wide range of other views that have absolutely nothing to do with reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
(I'm not just picking on the left. Everyone does this with everything. It's human primate tribal behavior.)
The constant shifting winds are a result of political shifts and power struggles, often struggles over issues that are unrelated to climate change but are linked to it by this mechanism. It makes rational discourse and consistent action hard. The more bound up an issue is with politics the harder it is to even discuss reasonably.
Of course, people with a short term vested interest in not doing anything about this problem love it this way.
The problem is simple and the solution is to switch to power sources that emit far less CO2 or preferably none at all. This remains true regardless of our political, social, or cultural beliefs. Physics doesn't care.
Yes, it happens, but its cultural not an immutable human characteristic.
People make things that are a matter of opinion (politics, religion, whatever) a matter of identity.
This is worse in the US than in most places, but its become a lot worse in the UK, which I attribute to create American cultural influence, especially as it has come at the same time as specific American ideologies.
> But you, individually, can make the choice to keep your eye on the ball. You can commit to working on this problem until it’s done, no matter what. You can choose to find the others to organize and prepare, so that the ideas closest at hand when the next crisis comes are yours.
Why should the average person reduce his/her life quality in order to save the climate, when the average billionaire emits as much CO2 as one million people from the bottom 90% of the population combined? I do care about the climate, but it's clearly irrational to make sacrifices, when other people are unwilling to do that. Having a higher quality of life is more valuable to me than the tap on the shoulder I can give myself for playing my part in living responsibly.
> I do care about the climate, but it's clearly irrational to make sacrifices, when other people are unwilling to do that
We do irrational things daily in order to live harmoniously in groups. Heck, the entire field of behavioural economics was stood on its ear when they figured out that humans don’t behave rationally in all circumstances. Moral choices are individual. I limit my QOL in many “irrational” ways because it helps me
live with myself. Is it enough? Of course not. But we are too outnumbered by the greedy and the defeatists.
But if more an more people changed their attitude, stopped envying jet-setters and instead shamed them for their environmentally reckless attitude, maybe you would see a lot less plane travel, a lot less gas guzzlers, a lot less conspicuous consumption.
Shame works on the vast majority of people. We may lack inherent ethics, but we seldom like to swim against the stream.
> but it's clearly irrational to make sacrifices, when other people are unwilling to do that.
You realize that if everyone has that attitude then nothing will ever change, right? "You take the first step!" "No, you take the first step!"
> Why should the average person reduce his/her life quality in order to save the climate, when the average billionaire
I understand (and share) the sentiment, but there are not that many billionaires. Even if they all suddenly became vegans who never travel and live in a small house, that would not solve the problem. What the masses do is what has to change. How they travel, what they eat and buy and consume, their housing.
There are about 3500 billionaires in the world, meaning they emit as much CO2 in total as roughly 3.5 billlion people from the bottom 90%. They do play a huge part in this.
A quick google search indicates that the top 1% accouted for 16% of greenhouse gas emissions. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-emit-much-... Yes that is a lot. But 1% includes many more thn just the billionaires and it also means that if the remaining 99% don't get their emissions in check, it doesn't matter much what the top 1% do, let alone the billionaires.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the billionaires should not do anything. If anybody is in a position to adjust their behavior, it's them. But acting as if as long as the billionaires don't change their behavior, nobody needs to, is the route straight to failure, though it is a very easy narrative for sure.
We are better off focusing on the top 10 countries and just forget about the rest. But we don't we do symbolic things that do not matter. Why?
Top CO₂ Emitters by Total Volume
• China: ~13.12 billion tons (9.13 tons per capita)
• United States: ~4.63 billion tons (13.59 tons per capita)
• India: ~3.15 billion tons (2.19 tons per capita)
• Russia: ~2.01 billion tons (14.06 tons per capita)
• Japan: ~972 million tons (7.79 tons per capita)
• Iran: ~829 million tons
• Indonesia: ~812 million tons
• Saudi Arabia: ~653 million tons
• South Korea: ~588 million tons
• Germany: ~580 million tons
No, all CO2 emission must stop so everybody is gotta put on work anyway.
Also, if what you had in mind with "focusing on" is some sort of military solution, you are listing the wrong thing; what you need is a list of top fossil fuel exporters which looks different from the "top emitters" list.
It’s hard to find any really good site for these numbers because it is highly politicized. Looking at this, assuming it’s correct, paints a different picture:
“Over the past decade, the fastest growth has come from rapidly industrializing economies.”
It seems that countries have to evolve through this stage before things get better.
“Meanwhile, several advanced economies have moved in the opposite direction. Countries like the UK, Germany, and Japan have significantly reduced their carbon output, largely by phasing out coal and expanding renewable energy.”
Actually what has happened is that we exported our "cleanish" industry to areas that don't care so pollution shot up and co2 as well. The outsourcing fuelled a lot of the co2 production over the last couple of decades. We now have a dirtier and more polluting industrial base world wide than what we had 30 years ago.
Maybe your optimism is what we need, but I don't see the logic of it.
You've seen how the "money can't help itself". Individual choices matter only to a certain extent, and I haven't seen any evidence that "enough individuals making the right choices" is sufficient to effect any measurable positive change.
The logical conclusion of the evidence I've seen so far is to change the system. Capitalism sucks when your goal is not to make as much money as possible. But changing the system seems too hard (and too much like a commie/revolutionary/extremist), so instead people just try to try harder. It sounds almost like a religion (cult) -- if you are not favored by $deity, you don't have enough faith, so try to believe harder and your wishes will be granted.
It's not to say I don't respect your decisions and commitments. Just that there's 8+ billion people in the world and individuals are just one out of 8+ billion, and "try harder" doesn't seem to work so well given these numbers and facts.
At least if one is attempting to change the economic system, it would be tackling one actual thing that's preventing your desired change from happening.
Most people I worked with in tech cared about things like climate change, but they were making good money and the problem felt so far removed and difficult. What could they do to make a difference? It's always easier to focus on the next sprint, the next title, etc.
I mostly blame greedy billionaires, citizens united, and cowardly politicians, but I have a hard time respecting people making six figures who aren't doing something to improve our broken country, even if it's volunteering at homeless services.
> But you, individually, can make the choice to keep your eye on the ball. You can commit to working on this problem until it’s done, no matter what. You can choose to find the others to organize and prepare, so that the ideas closest at hand when the next crisis comes are yours.
> It’s the best solution I’ve come up with so far, and in spite of the challenges, it’s still working.
This helped. It’s pretty much the only thing you can do.
The system is looking for growth, not for sustainability, which is someone else’s problem.
Not to mention, this is all going to assume resources in America and issues from an American perspective. Not to ding America, just that the conversation will cluster around the topics that matter to funders.
I just read 'The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry', a selection of his essays and speeches. I'm quoting a relevant chunk of his 2011 speech 'The Future of Agriculture':
What must we do? First, we must not work or think on a heroic scale. In our age of global industrialism, heroes too lightly risk the lives of people, places, and things they do not see. We must work on a scale proper to our limited abilities. We must not break things we cannot fix. There is no justification, ever, for permanent ecological damage. If this imposes the verdict of guilt upon us all, so be it. Second, we must abandon the homeopathic delusion that the damages done by industrialization can be corrected by more industrialization. Third, we must quit solving our problems by ‘moving on.’ We must try to stay put, and to learn where we are geographically, historically, and ecologically. Fourth, we must learn, if we can, the sources and costs of our own economic lives. Fifth, we must give up the notion that we are too good to do our own work and clean up our own messes. It is not acceptable for this work to be done for us by wage slavery or by enslaving nature. Sixth, by way of correction, we must make local, locally adapted economies, based on local nature, local sunlight, local intelligence, and local work. Seventh, we must understand that these measures are radical. They go to the root of our problem. They cannot be performed for us by any expert, political leader, or corporation. This is an agenda that may be undertaken by ordinary citizens at any time, on their own initiative. In fact, it describes an effort already undertaken all over the world by many people. It defines also the expectation that citizens who by their gifts are exceptional will not shirk the most humble services.
>We crossed the 1.5 degree threshold because the money can’t help itself.
Which is why I think we need carbon pricing / tax. If the politicians focused on that then the forces of capitalism and startups would be unleashed to bring down co2. Instead they ban plastic straws while the Chinese burn another million tons of coal.
It could maybe be brought in quite gradually in a decade or two ahead so people have time to install renewables, heat pumps and the like.
> Instead they ban plastic straws while the Chinese burn another million tons of coal.
I know it's easier to blame China than look at what we've done, but:
- The US generates more co2 per capita than China does.
- A lot of what China makes is products that we buy from them.
- The US has about twice as many CUMULATIVE co2 emissions than China does (remember, the co2 stays trapped in the atmosphere)
- The feds have gleefully killed as many clean energy initiatives as possible. Meanwhile, China leads the world on clean energy, has driven down renewable and EV batteries by 90% since 2010, is the world's largest renewable energy producer and investor, and is on track to generate half of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.
Plastic straws are definitely a common form of beach trash, but they were never the "vast majority" of it. Not by item count, and certainly not by mass. They do rank in the top 10, but not at the top.
Ocean Conservancy has annual reports that include statistics from trash cleanup projects. The 2026 report[1] has a "global top items collected" list that covers 1986 to 2026; straws (& stirrers) are 5th at about 16 million items collected. Drinks bottles are number 3 at nearly 27 million. Cigarette butts are top (65 million)
Looking back at the report from the year 2000[2] as a comparison (this one lists numbers just for the year 2000 cleanup projects), straws are number 10 out of 12, cigarettes are still top, various other plastic items (not all of which are classified) are above straws.
Isn't the core issue that energy use and economic growth are deeply connected? If America uses a little less thanks to a carbon tax, it will just be cheaper for india and china, and their prosperity will grow more while americas begins to lag?
>Instead they ban plastic straws while the Chinese burn another million tons of coal.
The chinese quite literally have greener energy than germany at the moment and are building the shit that you buy off of amazon. China is the only reason the current solar push is as successful as it is. Tame your sinophobia.
> At a time when basically all VC funding, and in many ways the entire productive capacity of the economy, is shifting to AI, it would have been smarter in some respects to just pivot to AI. I sat out the crypto bubble too, in which some of my peers made a lot of money by working on projects that were either useless, or straightforward scams.
This is the problem with the "individual action" angle to fix structural problems. While it is commendable that you stood your ground and committed to your priors, structural problems are not fixed by good individual actions.
Capital demands that line goes up. Corporations are optimized to increase profits, all else be damned. Governments are beholden to GDP and Inflation goals, not to degrees Celsius.
A good example is meat consumption. Obviously it would be better for the environment if everyone went vegetarian, but doing so on an individual basis is foolish when governments give subsidies for raising cattle.
In other words, I would vote for banning meat consumption, but until it is tackled structurally, I am eating another ribeye.
> But you, individually,
Here lies the flaw of your argument. You, individually, can't do shit. You can work as much as you want in green tech while another GPU is fried while someone vibe-code their next slop copy of some open source software.
Because, as yourself said, money can't help itself. Self-destruction is inherent to the system. It's on the best interest of every individual to kill the world and keep raping its corpse while it makes another buck.
> i personally eat a mostly plant based diet and only eat sustainably wild caught fish a few times a week.
That's commendable, but also does not fix the structural incentives for raising cattle to sell meat.
It improves your individual health, which is good. Just don't fool yourself into thinking you're fixing thr former.
> the only solution is to make hella money (billions+) so we can control incentives.
How naive.
When you get there you will be beholden to the same incentives of any billionaire. You, too, will be raping the world at that point.
The system is not bad because billionaires are inherently bad people. A well-intentioned billionaire will be incentivized to be as destructive as their peers by the structure in place.
The problem is that most people do care about the environment but are hopelessly misinformed about what to do about it.
They think that personal acts of minor inconvenience like tolerating soggy paper straws saves the environment while fighting things that actually make a difference, like blocking transit to save a nest of bats; or blocking urban development to provide an extra 3 minutes a day of sunlight on a surface parking lot; or that somehow them flying across the USA to visit a national park and connect with nature or something is offset ecologically by token actions like reducing how many plastic grocery bags they use throughout the year. Most ordinarily people don’t understand the tradeoffs of their choices in the slightest.
And on top of that culture wars and geopolitics is getting in the way of progress - we could be blanketing the world in solar panels and batteries and EVs on the cheap right now, but it’s dominated by enemy #1, China, so we won’t; not to mention that the right in the USA seems to think that renewables are for girly sissies. And the alternatives we have, like nuclear power, are being shut down across EU countries because people have no idea of just how self sabotaging that action is, given that the alternative is going to be fossil fuels coming from Russia and the Middle East. They’d rather die of heat stroke than use energy efficient air conditioning, so the powers of most people’s imagination are shockingly weak.
Popular opinion wants to blame everything on capitalism when the reasons for these problems don’t actually stem from there. Capitalism will be the way out if it’s given the chance, but it’s not popular to say that, so it won’t.
There is obviously a deep desire for personal penance and absolution that manifests itself in the environmental space. (see: paper straws, plastic bags, formerly compact fluorescent lightbulbs, low-flow toilets, etc.) I'm not sure I agree that this fundamentally is about people being misinformed; it seems possible that people would want this even if they were fully clear that these penances were trivial -- even in aggregate -- in the big picture.
I think that people do care about "the environment," but what they mean by "the environment" is much more "my personal connection with spaces that feel unspoiled" than "atmospheric CO2 levels."
Yeah, which is what makes me think that environmentalists are one of the biggest groups blocking the protection of the environment. Mostly concerned with whatever makes themselves feel absolved or at least have a pretty view from their window, while fighting tooth and nail against anything that can actually make a real difference for conservation. The actual saviors of the environment will be the capitalists who manufacture the green revolution at scale for profit, as it always has been for the last centuries of poverty reduction and social progress.
So, the devil comes to Davos and says: "You can enjoy cheap energy, but some poor people in the global south will suffer and die" And after a long silence the US president says: "I feel like there is a catch there, but I just can't figure out what it is"
Except it's not cheaper. 70% of the world import fossil fuels. Many changes are happening because it is cheaper to not do that and use renewables instead. US Presidents are getting involved to stop cheaper energy getting built.
Offshore wind, which is more expensive than onshore wind, is cheaper than new coal in China. New solar and onshore wind competes with fuel costs for existing coal plants.
Like Putin in Ukraine. But decoupling from Russian gas is still slow going and controversial in Europe, and the "moderate" right is more and more inclined to collaborate with Putin’s little fringe-right helper parties, likely partly because they’re massively bleeding votes and partly out of real sympathies for fringe policies that just used to be unmentionable in polite company.
It's controversial because it's not just about changing gas provider, but paying way more for gas as well.
Americans keep strong arming us into buying their LNG, but we also pay 5 times as much for it as we paid for Russian gas.
And Norway, Algeria, etc and all the other providers know very well that our biggest provider has been cut off, so they can all ask much more.
So it's very easy and convenient to say "why don't you do differently Europeans", but it has a terrible effect on our manufacturing and export bound economies.
If global climate change is a problem, you can't just have some countries deindustrializing and reducing CO2 while others go full bore on scale manufacturing with any form of cheap energy including coal being used.
Plus ironically all of the batteries and solar panels for the West's climate mission will be made in China who didn't deindustrialize, has far lower energy prices, and less aggressive local rules around things like air pollution that let them be manufactured at all.
Meanwhile they are also rapidly going green by adopting this tech domestically since it's highly price competitive due to their manufacturing investments. They also invested heavily in Nuclear (which the government there openly welcomed).
Yes you can. China has barely emitted half the lifetimes emissions of the US because it didn't go through decades of inefficent and polluting technologies. The ozone hole wasn't caused by China.
Same thing applies to those up and coming countries: they immediately have more efficient technologies.
Be a tech maximalist- use tech and will power to pull ahead with green energy. Go hard on batteries and energy storage. I do not even care that I may sound delusional - the contrary doomer viewpoint is deluded in a far worse manner. The things we need either are or are not within our abilities- you will never know unless you try. Resigning with *it’s too hard* ensures we will know that we cannot.
Could someone explain this to me because it nags at me in these discussions. Nuclear - what happened in the West, and why isn't it discussed both to solve high energy costs and climate change. Take three countries.
Germany. Germany seems extremely dependent on natural gas which has connected it to Russia in ways that clearly cause political problems and geopolitical issues.
United States seems to be able to afford it but also dismantled its nuclear power plants. In New York State they got rid of a plant that fed NYC and provided jobs, Indian Point, and energy costs have gone up from what I understand.
France has nuclear but behaves culturally like everyone else, with high energy costs and curious behaviors like keeping AC away from people culturally and legally.
I'm all for progressive change, but what do you tell non-climate scientists? If I live in a northern climate in a wooded area, I can't get solar on my house. I can have an electric vehicle and try to keep usage low in the house, but honestly the rest feels like events completely beyond my control, making conversations like these pretty abstract. Okay, we're screwed in a few decades. What exactly do you want me to do? Vote for Greens who attack nuclear and AC like in Europe?
I would not say people have given up. The problem is that this search for saving the planet and humanity all together is hard to understand for the common folk, much in the same way other banners that have been imposed on people in the past 2 decades.
Common people want to go to work and know that they have a working transport system, that they can walk in between a few streets and feel safe, that they can have enough money for a mortgage and to feed themselves and their families.
None of these things are exactly addressed by putting solar panels, and wind farms all around, especially when the cost of fuel keep rising. When the security of the grid on a once thought-of super-power like UK is constantly put in question.
The common people doesnt care much about these topics and explanations because they don’t have time for it, because they do still need to get on with life. It’s generally youth and retirees the ones gluing themselves to the pavement, have you noticed? whats in common in these two groups is they can both still afford to be idealists.
Then you turn on the TV and see how much damage is being done to the environment in other regions, and so, why do I need to suck it up in my jumper all winter then? Why am I the one using paper straws that break before I finish my drink?
This whole thing was always a tough sale, but it’s gotten even harder in the current political climate.
> None of these things are exactly addressed by putting solar panels, and wind farms all around, especially when the cost of fuel keep rising.
Don't want to nitpick but this touches on a topic I think worth discussing. I feel that for many people, investments in green energy are a needless sacrifice we do for the sake of the environment (and a naive sacrifice at that since other countries can just keep on emitting their greenhouse gases anyway). It follows, since we invest in green this must have its costs elsewhere like in higher gas prices and obviously then people ask -- why should we keep doing this when we are hit with economic downturn?
But really green energy is all about the unaccounted for future costs. We can burn fossil fuels now but we are going to be in a whole lot of trouble when they become more expensive and dealing with their side effects (climate change) will become expensive as well. Green energy is a solution - you don't need to care about high fuel prices and what happens in Middle East if you can get all energy from the sun and wind.
Well the solution is just that green energy is already cost competitive with fossil fuels, so we just need to let the market do its thing and have people buy the cheap thing, which is increasingly green energy.
The argument is, why would the common folk care about the future? Why should they be the ones making the sacrifices if hardly ever they any benefit? None of this concerns the type of person that can easily just move on to green technology, of course not, I am not talking about your average HN user, I am talking about the people that has become ever more invisible, poor and disenfranchised.
For these people, what does the future has to offer anyway? Why do think people are not having babies anymore?
If you live day by day, and that is all you can afford, what kind of future you think people going to try and cultivate?
It’s also about energy security - why expose your energy markets to insane fluctuations in international fossil-fuel markets if you don’t have to? Surely the last few years have shown that energy independence is a critical social and defence policy now?
For many/most countries, investing in renewables is the best, cheapest and fastest way to move in that direction.
Your point about plastic straws reminded me of this interesting article Just Bury Your Trash [0]. There’s an argument to be made that recycling many types materials (except metal) is not worth it. Eg since recycled plastic is more expensive than virgin plastic, it might be better if the money we collectively spend on it could be redirected to something that’s more beneficial to the environment.
And while others have pointed out that plastic straw bans are not about climate change, I suspect many people think they are, lumping together “climate change”, “the environment”, and “pollution” into a monolithic thing. “I’m doing my part” with a plastic straw then as they eat beef, drive an SUV, and fly to vacation (disclaimer I do some of those things).
I was thinking about this a while back whilst I watched someone struggle with their shopping across the supermarket carpark without a plastic bag only to get in a Range Rover. I guess it's a form of moral self licensing[1].
Is China going woke and then broke on recycling? Or like renewables and EVs did they put engineers in charge and not Libertarians who irrationally hate all government programs?
It's not even that. If you take a look at videos of India etc you will see rivers full of plastic, plastic rubbish being burned, etc. It's just normal way of life for them.
But we are told that plastic straws are the issue, and switching to paper straws (that you need to use twice as many of when they inevitably dissolve) will solve the problems. Meanwhile, the H&M polyester dress that you wear 3 times before throwing it away takes as much energy as 2000x paper straws to manufacturer.
Chinas expansion of Coal power plants(1), India's behaviour with dirty rivers and pollution, Middle East burning rubber(2) so it is visible from space, etc, are all examples of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory on a global scale.
"the methane emissions alone from Turkmenistan’s two main fossil fuel fields caused more global heating in 2022 than the entire carbon emissions of the UK"
"The biggest event was a leak of 427 tonnes an hour in August, near Turkmenistan’s Caspian coast and a major pipeline. That single leak was equivalent to the rate of emissions from 67m cars, or the hourly national emissions of France."
Seems like a tough argument to make stick. The Chinese & Indians are clearly benefiting more from the economic growth than they are suffering from the downsides of pollution. They would not swap their current environmental problems for clean poverty.
It isn't a broken windows problem as much as drawing 2 billion people out of poverty is more urgent than most other concerns.
Exactly this. Living standards are closely correlated to energy use and no one is going to volunteer to live in poverty.
The environmental movement does itself no favours either by pursuing high social cost but low impact interventions like paper straws and ignoring (or outright vilifying) nuclear as a viable path forward.
Finally, there's a huge disconnect between the (supposed) low cost of renewables and what people experience on the ground. Countries like Germany are a good example of this. The constant refrain is that solar and wind are super cheap and are running more and more of the country, but those savings (if real) don't make it to the average rate payer. Something is clearly wrong here. Either the cost claims are incomplete and don't factor in something important or the auction mechanism used to set prices must be discarded. But the disparity between claiming massive cost benefits while having people pay more sours the public on the technology and destroys credibility.
> The environmental movement does itself no favours either by pursuing high social cost but low impact interventions like paper straws
How much energy has the environmental movement put into the paper straw topic compared to the attention it is continuously getting from those trying to ridicule the environmental movement?
None of my environment activist friends ever talks about plastic/paper straws. They tend to drink straight out of the glass/cup/bottle/can if anything. The only people bringing this up are those continuously pushing against change and those not realizing that it is just a big distraction topic to get people worked up.
It is quite exemplary how often the topic has been mentioned independently in just the discussions of this article.
Well, color me surprised, but you’re right: in contrast to china, Malaysia, and other SE Asia states, India’s plastic trash is mostly (97%) self-made, with the largest contributor being single use packaging for consumers.
What is this nonsense about straws? The reason plastic straws are banned is because they were one of the top 10 things littering European beaches. Indian plastic straws have fuck all to do with littering _our_ beaches.
And why then did plastic straws disapperaed in the US before slowly coming back? The story (in the US) I heard when I asked was usually "because we can and because it is good for the world".
That was a big self-own from a group that thought they have a carte blanche and can just ignore those pesky normies instead of explaining why the changes are good for them, too. And being smarter in picking battles. And minimizing inconveniences from unavoidable sharp edges.
> But we are told that plastic straws are the issue, and switching to paper straws (that you need to use twice as many of when they inevitably dissolve) will solve the problems.
Could we please stop with this strawman (sorry pun) topic of paper straws? Nobody claims that they solve the problems and they have just become this distracting meme that ridicules all efforts at environmental protection. Yes plastic straws are bad, no they are not among the top-10 problems humanity needs to address and yes the topic has been blown out of proportion just to make fun of things. If you care, do you not realize that every time you bring this up you are doing us all a disservice?
So, please, let's drop it and focus on actual issues of regulatory approaches to climate change instead.
Were paper straws ever about climate change? This feels like a red herring. Pollution has many aspects to it, and you can work on several problems simultaneously.
On the contrary in fact, I think a lot of people have decided to do something that will have a tremendously positive impact on the climate in the future: they've chosen not to have children. There will be downsides to that decision, but as far as climate goes it's by far the most impactful thing anyone can do.
It's hard to find a coherent perspective where that makes sense. Most parents have had kids when future conditions looked far worse than they do now. The situation actually looks rosy in 50 years given the promising moves the Chinese are making in nuclear and renewable technology.
It is more likely that children are inconvenient to the lifestyles people want to lead. That is more consistent with how bad people are at long-term planning.
They could off themselves as well. That would help too. 4 billions of years of evolution end with me! What an absurd take. I'd understand one child, fewer than desired, etc.. but no children as a conscious effort to help the climate is something I don't buy that ever happened. Other reasons are at play for that. Nothing to do with the climate.
but no children as a conscious effort to help the climate is something I don't buy that ever happened
That's not what I said. People are choosing not to have children for lots of reasons. One of the benefits is that they end up having much less impact on the climate; that's not saying it's the reason they're doing it.
Until recently I was strictly against having kids because of the world climate, both weather and political. But then my partner wanted them and I couldn't stand the notion of losing her, so I was able to compromise on my ideals.
This is the kind of take that causes more traditional (including right wing, but also people from non western countries) look at climate activists as crazy fanatics. You are technically right, but I think advocating for childlessness causes people to disregard the whole movement as insane.
an important factor, I believe, is that a lot of "common people" are childless. about half of Western millennials are, and that was the last generation that didn't grow up in the clown world we live in now. zoomers and forth will be even more so.
I don't know why should a childless person give a damn about the future beyond their own lifespan. I think most of them don't, in their heart of hearts, and that's the only logical stance.
what percentage of their income does "almost every childless person" willingly sacrifice for some greater good?
how much do they care about the hardships of currently existing strangers, beyond sending thoughts and prayers on reddit?
just consider how preciously few Westerners had gone to die in Ukraine over the past 5 years, despite the deafening cacophony of virtue signaling on the Internet.
You're tying together some pretty far-flung strands of argument there.
Regarding children and selfishness: some of the most selfish people I know have kids. They're selfish in the sense that they only care about their family, even to the detriment of everyone else.
Doubly frustrating when you consider that Americans would actually have needed to backslide on creature comforts for 1.5 to have ever been viable, at a time when people overwhelmingly want them.
This problem starts and ends with corporations and government regulations. It’s barely worth it to talk to people about it right now. Maybe in 10 years when things are a bit more on fire and people are more willing to listen.
>This problem starts and ends with corporations and government regulations.
That's what we have been relying on for the last forty years and we still have an issue.
Corporations respond to demand. If someone is willing to buy a barrel of oil to burn then you can be sure you will find someone else to pull it out of the ground for them.
"Tofu has been crowned the prince of protein by a scientific scoring system that measured human health, sustainability and affordability.
...
To assess the environmental impact of each food, MacDonald compared the greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, land use and water use involved in producing 100g (3.5oz) of protein from each food.
Tofu was judged the best in this category, followed by chia seeds, quinoa, beans and sunflower seeds. Meanwhile, pork, beef and cheddar cheese came last."
So you’re voluntarily choosing the higher carbon/infinitly higher cruelty option because… it’s better than beef? I understand beef is the main issue for climate change and that this is a climate change thread, but why not throw some good old compassion into the mix and just stop subjecting billions of animals to the horrors of the industry?
Your numbers for chickens only work if we keep them in the absolute worst conditions for life, jamming them into tight spaces so their carbon footprint is similar to tofu.
I think you're in a position comparable to me trying to get people to stop throwing their tyres, furniture etc. in the community dumpster (you're supposed to bring them to a municipal recycling center instead).
The people doing it don't care that the HOA (so us) pays a fine for each item and that we were already warned that there will be a doubling or quadrupling of the waste disposal fees. I can ask politely and sometimes it works, but ultimately I can't tell them what to do.
I don't really like tofu and I don't share your values, so I think I'll continue eating chicken breast - just sourced from a place that meets certain standards, as usual.
I don't believe in individual action and regarding eating animals I draw the line at those which don't readily breed in captivity - octopuses for instance.
haha first time I'm called that nice. Might be so. Nevertheless I believe that kind of attitude won't bring change and will sow divisiveness instead of co-operation. Food for thought.
The literal death camps where we systematically contain, breed and brutally slaughter billions of what sadly are among the most intelligent animals on the planet are a sight to behold. The amount of untold, unimaginable suffering we inflict without even blinking is breathtaking. By far the most psychopathic, murderous intelligence on the planet worries about AI “alignment” and with good reason: we are keenly aware of what a higher intelligence entails.
If you don’t want to give up meat right away, at least consider stopping beef. One pound of beef is roughly equal to 8 pounds of pork, 10 pounds of chicken, and 20 pounds of tofu in CO₂ emissions.
The emissions for lamb/pork/beef are terrible, beef looks an order of magnitude worse than the rest. The top 10 or so are fairly similar in comparison. Chicken isn't bad comparatively, but tofu still looks a decent bit better.
Supermarket tofu is around 3 kg of CO₂e per kg. If you fatten pigs in your backyard and butcher them on site you can get pork down to around 4 or 5. I do realize McDonald's isn't doing it that way though.
My point was that pork can compete with tofu under the right conditions.
Heck, unless you're riding your bike to buy groceries, you will spend more than the extra 1-2 extra kg in gas getting to the supermarket (3-4 miles per kg CO₂e)
I don't know as I'm not a native speaker, probably not, but I ate meat for 22 years and that included good fine dishes as well. Yet I have been able to find good vegetarian recipes that bring me as much joy as the meat did, but in different ways of course.
I'm glad it works for you. I've rarely tasted a vegetarian dish I really liked except maybe chili made with granulated soy protein rather than minced meat.
My girlfriend was vegetarian for many years, and she put the effort to make tasty dishes (tofu, specifically, always had some marinade). Once she started eating meat again though (and we're talking only white meat like chicken, rabbit, duck, not pork/beef), she almost never eats a vegetarian dish.
There’s plenty of delicious vegetarian dishes. I’m not a fan of the ones that try to be meat dishes replaced with vegetables or anything processed to pretend to be meat.
Vegetables are delicious on their own. There’s thousands of years of cultures around the world making vegetables taste wonderful.
It's a fun metric the author carefully crafted to justify his vegan/animal rights ideology. Personally, I value food that can provide the necessary micronutrients and macronutrients (including fat, which apparently the author thinks is inherently bad), so I'll continue eating meat and cheese.
There's no need to 'carefully craft a fun metric', if you're honest to yourself you'll notice that plant-based nutrition is the only sustainable way to feed billions of humans on this planet. But I'm curious, which micro- & macronutrients do you think are only available from meat and cheese?
> if you're honest to yourself you'll notice that plant-based nutrition is the only sustainable way to feed billions of humans on this planet
If you're honest to yourself, you'll notice that plant-based nutrition is not a sustainable way to feed billions of humans on this planet, because those billions of people would rather destroy the world than have some vegans enforce their morality on them while enjoying a lifestyle that consumes orders of magnitude more energy than some third world subsistence farmer's chickens.
> If you're honest to yourself, you'll notice that plant-based nutrition is not a sustainable way to feed billions of humans on this planet, because those billions of people would rather destroy the world than have some vegans enforce their morality on them
I’m not even vegan but why drag any morality into it? Plant-based food is less co2 intensive to produce. It’s not a controversial statement. Planet is heating up, also a fact. I get it that it feels bad but lashing out at vegans is not productive. Meat eaters (like me) should have the decency to at least shut up. Own your choices.
I don't travel by plane, live in a urban center without a car, am vegan and buy everything used. Not all vegans are performative. But that's not the point.
Growing soy crop to feed the animals that are then fed to humans is simply unoptimized, you can just grow soy crop for humans to eat and get rid of magnitudes of pollution. That is a fact.
Meat isn't a health food. Most Americans eat an unhealthy amount of meat. Especially red meat. You could probably eat half as much meat and not be in any danger of not getting enough macro nutrients.
The following come from beef, chicken, fish, eggs, and you don’t get from plants: Vitamin B12, EPA and DHA omega-3, Vitamin D3, Creatine, Taurine, Carnosine, retinol.
Plant provide, but less efficiently: iron, zinc, choline, calcium (some tofu provides, but depends on coagulant used), iodine.
On the flip side, plants provide fiber and numerous phytochemicals that meat, fish, and eggs lack.
Irrelevant amounts come from diet, adequate amounts come from sun exposure. Everyone should be supplementing this.
>Taurine, creatine, Carnosine
Irrelevant, synthesized by the human body.
>Retinol
Best consumed from carrots, sweet potatoes, etc. Only relevant animal source is organ meat (liver), which most people aren't consuming.
>B12
Even meat lovers get deficient on this, dietary intakes are usually inadequate. My mother and sister are rabid meat eaters and supplement it, everyone who has the means to should.
You can just pop a pill once a day and not care about those.
Also your sister in law hasn't been well informed - it's a known fact that vegetarian diets have less iron in them, and women especially should take an iron supplement because of menstruation combined with the diet. But it's just one pill.
I'm surprised that chicken breast is that low in (water) pollution, beating even lentils. Seems like the big takeaway here is really how awful beef is in comparison to basically anything else lol
The world population grows by 200,000 extra people, every day. Keep in mind any adaptations have to compensate for this growth in population, continually, for at least the next couple of decades.
Energy consumption per person also has a lot of room to grow. For every barrel of oil eschewed by a relatively rich person in the developed world, there are probably 3 or 4 ready to pickup the slack and increase their quality of life in the rest of the much poorer world.
This is like assuming people in africa need telephone lines strewn to every home in order to have telecommunications. The developing world doesn't need oil. It needs solar panels and ever cheaper batteries.
The growth of energy use is mostly in countries that are industrializing/developing. Places like India/Indonesia/Vietnam/... are where most energy will be added and they'll all add coal.
None of this requires fossil fuels and small rural villages in poor countries are never going to get electricity if they have to wait for large power plants and long distance transmission lines to be built. It makes far more sense for a village to have a solar farm, a battery bank and a small local grid.
I assume current technology requires significant fossil fuels to be used to manufacture and transport the type of batteries that can replace the heavy lifting that fossil fuels do.
We have electric cars and whatnot, but they're still far more expensive than fossil fuel cars with less bang for the buck in terms of power and portability. I doubt we will see cost effective construction vehicles, ships, planes, etc. powered via batteries anytime soon, at least not on a timescale that makes a material difference.
> there are probably 3 or 4 ready to pickup the slack and increase their quality of life in the rest of the much poorer world.
Don't forget that the developed world is falling over itself to bring in never-ending waves of people who normally would have far smaller carbon footprints if they just stayed where they were. It's hard for me to take serious any climate proposal that doesn't at least acknowledge this basic fact.
"But we need them, what about population decline in developed countries?" Yes, what about it? That also lowers carbon emissions.
Instead the pitch seems to be "look, we need infinity third worlders, you're just gonna have to do your part and stop eating beef or driving a car. And pay carbon taxes." Gee, why are people so up in arms over all this climate stuff?
You do know that capitalism requires labor and a shrinking workforce is undesirable for capital owners, right? Do you believe that importing large amounts of cheap, socially fragile (you could just deport them if they misbehave) third worlders is a policy decision pushed by climate activists?
> We could all try and do a bit with our daily choices:
Another thing to do would be to not vote more and more for extremists. "It's not working right now, it cannot be worse so I will vote for the most extreme person that says I am doing everything right and foreigners are the problem" is easy, but counter-productive and wrong.
I still don't know what to answer to someone who says "anyway the government is completely incompetent" while being incompetent themselves at the very first opportunity they have to contribute: voting.
Not saying that it is going well right now (it's not). But saying "because it's not going well means that it cannot be worse and therefore I can vote for whoever" is... just idiotic.
This goes for competence, and also for morals: it seems in many countries we now vote in politicians that are massively and overtly corrupt with the reasoning that it won't get worse because previous politicians were somewhat corrupt and tried to hide it).
Everyone's voting for the corruption that they think will help them. It is easy to say corruption is a problem, and everyone sees all the other sides corruption. However, they refused to look at other site is involved in corruption too.
Once in a while an extreme case will get in the news and someone will correct their own size but that is where generally you'll see people defending their own corruption.
Let's be honest. People aren't eating tofu because it's fundamentally not that nice. There's plenty of ways you can improve it, but it just doesn't taste good without effort like most meats do.
Realistically the only thing we'd be able to convince people to do is to eat less beef, but you're never going to be able to convince the population to switch over to tofu
This is a very western centric view, tofu is entirely unrelated to meat, and billions of people love tofu. Nobody needs to switch, it's just its own thing. It's like saying beef is tastier than kidney beans. Ok? Theyre not related at all.
I think it's largely what you are used to. I make an effort to prepare tofu for my kids. I find it "ok" generally, but my kids? They _love_ tofu. It's their favourite food.
I think it's just a matter of adapting, I was a meat eater for 22 years of my life and nowadays can't stand the taste of meat. Tofu tastes awesome when done well.
Buuuut people are different, and I could be an outlier. I just think there's more propaganda to it than people realize, especially currently with fitness influencers boosting meat consumption.
Have you tried eating meat or chicken without preparation? It's pretty disgusting. My mother used to leave chicken marinating in lemon overnight just so it would be edible. With tofu I can just throw some ginger and paprika on it, put it in the air fryer and it tastes awesome.
It lists 24 socio-ecological KPI across the planet since industrialisation beginning - as you can see:
There is not a single KPI where the curve shows even the slightest sign of recovery - and you can expect other graphs of adjacent KPI to show similar development.
In one sentence: There is no chance that humanity will ever come back to any pre-industry levels within the next 500 years. And by overusing our environment, our civilisation wont last 500 years. (sure, some hotspots will survive, but they wont have ASML Twin:Exe machines or cheap flight travel anymore etc.)
True!
Maybe its just a slowdown or the first clear signs of incoming collapse of these ressources?
Though, domestic land is already accelerating again over the last year, so it will be on par again with its previous high.
And this ensemble is only a collection of some KPI, there are additional ones I guess which will show similar upwards-trend.
The vast majority of countries in the world are aging. "Transistors per microprocessor" and "Phone subscriptions" are weird ones. As if the goal was to have sharp graphs...
Welcome to capitalism! Task #1: Figure out a couple of numbers. Task #2: Figure out if it's good when these numbers go up or bad. Task #3: Optimize everything against these numbers, never consider anything else but these numbers, they are your life now.
For instance there are more forests in much of Europe than we did before the industrial revolution, let alone the 1800s. e.g. more of France is covered in trees now than it was as far back as 1300. Of course that's a very narrow and specific "KPI", mostly just shows that humans already had a massive impact on the environment and ecosystems long before the industrial revolution.
I agree on the "we're on the wrong path" though I don't share your conclusion's gravity, but some of these indicators feel very weird to be included imho. Total FDI and transistor per processor makes very little point on the matter.
We are not trying to literally revert the planet to how it was 100 years ago, we are "just" trying to stop these trends as soon as possible so they don't continue for another 100 years. There are going to be consequences regardless, but they can always get worse.
Some of the planet is already much nicer than it was 100 years ago. At least in the European countries that industrialized the first or had high population density even before that.
Most growth is exponential (for a while, as a logistics curve (aka S-curve) does start exponentially), how about showing log(y(x)) instead of y(x).
But not always: if zero is not on the bar chart, e.g. log(y(x)) with [x] = Kelvin, such a plot will of course not work. So keep temperature as temperature increment over pre-industrial times or other baseline.
Also, does coastal nitrogen have three data points, or why the edge in the middle? Scatter charts plus trend are more the real thing than a curve if this is two linear relationships, with a second slope after a certain time, and keep y(x) plotting here, of course.
Ignoring the overly pessimistic and self-defeating overall tone:
> There is no chance that humanity will ever come back to any pre-industry levels within the next 500 years
How could you possibly predict this? We have moments of time in history which are basically "before/after", and no one saw those points coming until they were in effect. Electricity, atoms, nuclear energy, walking on the moon, transistors, internet, LLMs and more are examples of these things, that were short of impossible, and had lots of people claiming "We'll never do that in a hundred years!", up until we already accomplished those things.
What I'd like to know, is what the point is? Why claim "our civilisation wont last 500 years" and similar, what do you wish to achieve with this? What conversation do you wish your comment to spawn, that people tell you you are wrong? Or right?
It's difficult for humans to comprehend the scale of what it would take to stop the planet from heating up. There are 100+ years of extraction of massive quantities of sequestered carbon from the Earth's crust and burning it now baked into the system, with an approximate 15-year lag on observed atmospheric and ocean temperature increases i.e. the temperatures we are currently seeing are those caused by emissions up to around 2011. Since then, carbon emissions have increased, not decreased, so we have a minimum of 15 more years of temperature rises to come.
As a though experiment, ask people if it would be possible for humans to prevent the tides coming in and out each day. Mostly you will be laughed at. Yet the same people usually think that preventing the Earth from heating up, which is a problem on a similar scale, can be achieved with a bit of recycling, eating less meat and cycling to work.
This single graph [1] is enough to demonstrate that 'solving' climate change is beyond the scale of human capabilities.
I don't follow you. You say that the heating up is caused by "100+ years of extraction of massive quantities of sequestered carbon from the Earth's crust and burning it now baked into the system" but at the same time you say humans, who did the extraction and burning for 100+ years, cannot stop doing it? I mean, reverting the temperature to pre-industrial level it's not going to happen soon in any case, but at least stopping increasing it constantly IT IS a human-achievable goal, by definition.
> Yet the same people usually think that preventing the Earth from heating up, which is a problem on a similar scale, can be achieved with a bit of recycling, eating less meat and cycling to work.
No this is propaganda that fossil fuel companies have successfully imposed on us, that it's the consumers' fault when a large part of the pollution comes from the industrial side. But consumers have leverage in regards to industries - if they stop buying meat, the polluting meat industry would decrease and help solve this problem.
Also what do you suggest? It seems that you are implying that because we can't stop it now, we don't need to focus on the problem and can let it grow even higher?
It’s really not, lots of people have been doing this work for a long time, if you want to understand what it’s going to take you can start here: https://drawdown.org/
The oceans warmed up by half a degree celsius in only 5 years. Everybody talks about air temperature, but the amount of energy that gets stored in the oceans is simply unimaginable. Until now, the oceans have been a great heat buffer, but I fear that this might come to an end.
This. I have, lying around unpublished, a few science fiction novels that I wrote where I assumed we actually did everything realistically needed to stop climate change. Like, not the deal "we make some solar panels but keep all the industries," but the real thing: "we take down the industries, we promote degrowth, we embrace and promote a proper demographic collapse, we shame meat eaters, we put youth into environmental enforcement militias, and we change global culture to embrace all of that."
It's a world that has nothing to do with this one. Of course deceiving ourselves with plastic straws is easier.
I agree in principal, but what is it with the plastic straws thing?
That was never about climate change that I am aware of. It was about pollution, same with plastic bags.
Plastic is a curse on the environment, especially the single use plastic that goes directly in the bin and into landfill or the oceans. Eventually it ends up in the food chain as microplatics.
Do we not want to reduce plastic pollution now? OK, maybe straws are fraction of the plastic pollution created, but surely every little bit helps?
People moan because it is a regular minor incovience to their life. If society can't get over something so trivial we are fucked.
Well, it does. Which is the problem. We essentially have three choices: one , we walk the knife edge which is our current-day thinking, where we hope that we somehow enable some magical thing--in the future, always in the future--that solves climate change without making life even a little worse for anybody. Two, we do nothing and adapt to climate change however it comes. Three: we do something unpleasant. Four is "go and make colonies in space" but for most folk that's the same as three.
I hope the evil genius that came up with the idea of making young republican-voting libertarians so angry about plastic straws got a bonus.
Judging by these threads he's pretty much singlehandedly destroyed any attempt to move humanity to cheaper, cleaner, safer, inexhaustible energy supplies.
I don't think it was a republican the one who "destroyed... inexhaustible energy supplies". It was well-meaning environmentalists in Europe who didn't bother with math nor science when they demanded to take down nuclear power and to buy gas from Russia. They were raised in the "end of history" culture of the nineties that was a little too cheerful, but busy shifting manufacture to Asia, and it favored more humanities in schools in this part of the world, in itself not a bad thing, but to the detriment of exact and logical thinking. Maybe all of it made our thinking an easy prey of the people selling the oil and the gas.
Republican or German butterflies (as in "butterfly effect") should not be blamed when they start a big scale avalanche on loose snow.
We have much more than 15 more years of temperature rises to come. It's not like we reached net zero in 2026 or have a plausible plan to reach that anytime soon. Net zero is probably another few decades away.
The point is that even if we did get to net zero today heating would continue to rise for another 15 years. That's what the lag is. Whenever we get there, add 15 years.
True, but not much of an issue I think. I'd assume we reach net zero very gradually and fifteen years before net zero will be pretty close to zero already. But oh well, first we need a clear downward trend of global emission.
The climate change advocates have lost all their credibility by lobbying against nuclear. Because of their religious fanaticism Germany closed their nuclear plants and is compensating for it by burning coal. If this wasn't so tragic it would be hell of a comedy.
Centralized motivated groups have more political power than their "percentage" would suggest, that's why we have kosher/gluten/halal labels everywhere.
There is strong opposition to nuclear energy in Germany, which I disagree with, but I don't think "climate change advocates" (whatever the heck they are) have anything to do with it.
Well point is that Germany's CO2 emissions could be the same as in France had they not stopped building nuclear plants in the 80s and 90s. Obviously the psychosis amongst environmentalists who were hellbent on maximizing CO2 emissions (in addition to Germans electing a Russian agent to lead their country in 1998) was just one of the factors.
Storage still has some way to go until comparing the raw price per MWh ceases to be a partially apples to oranges comparison. You can't really have a stable grid in most of Europe with only solar + wing + storage. Unless you are willing to close down most of the factories during winter amongst other things.
Add a bit of firming and you can. Or just accept a tiny bit of fossil fuels. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
We still need to decarbonize agriculture, chemicals, aviation, shipping, heavy industry, construction and so on. Most of which use either chemical energy bearers, or fossil feedstock.
Siphoning off a tiny bit off that for grid firming duty is trivial. Or do sustainable biofuels from food waste and so on.
Which is also what the system studies lands on. Finding that adding new nuclear makes it far more expensive.
This kind of reasoning is exactly the reason why we're screwed. "I am smarter, it's because of them". "Look how good I am at criticising people without any nuance".
> The climate change advocates have lost all their credibility
If you think there is a need for "climate change advocates" at this point, you're a moron. Climate change is a scientific fact, it doesn't need advocates. It would be like criticising "gravity advocates".
> by lobbying against nuclear
Again that's a completely stupid take. A subset of the people you criticise lobbied against nuclear. And by the way nuclear energy does not magically solve all problems.
> If this wasn't so tragic it would be hell of a comedy.
What's tragic to me is that everybody is very keen on telling how everybody else is stupid, usually taking big stupid shortcuts showing that they are actually not better.
Sure, nuclear is a good tool that we should leverage. But the reality is that the situation is such that we need to change a bit of everything everywhere, and the first step to do that is to realise it, accept it and vote for it. What do people instead? Say "it's because of those other people, I am better, and I will now vote for an extremist because my lack of common sense tells me it cannot be worse".
> Sure, nuclear is a good tool that we should leverage. But the reality is that the situation is such that we need to change a bit of everything everywhere, and the first step to do that is to realise it, accept it and vote for it. What do people instead? Say "it's because of those other people, I am better, and I will now vote for an extremist because my lack of common sense tells me it cannot be worse".
It might be worth voting for an extremist if that extremist being in a position of power keeps people out of power who would otherwise work against nuclear power plants; even if the extremist himself doesn't care about nuclear power one way or the other.
History shows that very smart people and even groups of very smart people can do remarkably stupid things, pointing out their obvious errors is not a statement of intellectual superiority.
This comment shows how much disinformed you are on that question.
The temporary transition to coal was studied long time ago and identified as the best solution even though it would increase CO2 for a small time. But in compensation it would allow to transition faster to green energy thanks to savings done on nuclear, hence overall reducing faster CO2 emission.
> The temporary transition to coal was studied long time ago and identified
When and by whom? The "phase-out" in 2002 was enacted by a government led by a person who later turned out to be a paid Russian agent. How did that work out? Germany did almost nothing for 10-15 while it increased it's dependency on fossil fuel imports from Russia...
It certainly was in the 80s and early 2000s if negative externalities like CO2 emissions were factored in (of course nobody cared about that back then)
Another issue is they’ve lost their credibility going all in on geopolitics (Palestine) and being anti development which makes it impossible to create green energy and denser energy efficient cities
Unfortunately, even if we exceed and then bring temperature back to 1.5 degree over preindustrial, the damage has already been done. Many ecosystems and species will be lost, and many of the feedbacks (for example arctic sea ice) have hysteresis in them which will not get us to the same state even though nominally our temperature will be lower again. And because of hysteresis, larger reduction in CO2 might be required to get us back to 1.5 degrees.
That's why all this CO2 capture and drawdown using some kind of unspecified, new technology, is such a distraction. Ideally we shouldn't release the carbon in the first place.
That's not what I am saying at all, I am just pointing out that venturing to 2 degrees (or more) and back to 1.5 degrees incurs the cost. Maybe it's well-known at this point, and I am just stating the obvious; but it's not my general impression.
CO2 capture is obvious greenwashing, just like electric personal cars. They're here to save industries, not the planet, I don't think anyone half serious believes anything other than that
Yes on CO2 capture, but electric personal cars are substantially lower emissions than internal combustion cars. Anyone saying something different is pushing fossil propaganda - that is just not a fact-based argument.
Yes, getting everyone onto electrified public transport + scooters is better - but EVs do provide meaningful emissions reduction.
Maybe, but cement manufacturing by itself is responsible for a staggering 8% of global co2 emissions. And we really don't have a viable option for replacing cement, and probably won't for a long time. Capturing and removing that co2 has a meaningful impact. Even if CCS were limited to just that one industry.
There are absolutely viable ways to reduce concrete emissions by about 30% - but it is staggeringly difficult to get the construction industry (including architects, structural engineers, standards bodies etc.) to change practices.
It always puzzles me when people think fusion is just infinite free energy. You're not just gonna have one fusion plant producing a billion zetawatts of electricity. Each fusion plant will likely produce roughly the same as a large nuclear plant. So we would need to build hundreds/thousands of them, it would take many decades to build them. Fusion reactors are extremely complicated machines.
And even if we did this, we would also need tens of thousands of carbon capture facilities, and the infrastructure to actually store the CO2 somewhere.
Carbon capture (from air) is just completely infeasible. It's not even remotely realistic. There is absolutely no way it will ever make a significant difference.
It’s pretty easy to see how electric personal cars make a difference even if the initial vehicle manufacturing process is indeed dirtier, and plenty of serious people consider them a part of the solution. CO2 capture also isn’t greenwashing, it’s just handwaving away problems with the idea that tech will somehow save us, which is also true for like… every single solution to this problem we’ve considered.
Both perpetuate the idea that we can just continue business as usual and that we'll find a magic solution later.
2 to 3 tonnes of metal and batteries to transport 75kg of meat and sit uselessly 98% of the time is not the optimal way to transport people, no matter how you look at it
"the damage has already been done" is dangerous wording, because it implies that we won't cause more damage. However, we will cause way more damage than has already been done!
CO2 emissions trading is greenwash. CO2 capture not necessarily so. It could be a useful tool, so long as it's not used as an excuse to launder other emissions.
Carbon offsets are greenwash. Emissions trading mostly works, because it's just about the government setting a quota and then letting people figure out who gets to use it.
CO2 emissions trade for about 50$/t. CO2 capture costs 500$/t. So, both are useless - it costs 10 times more to get the carbon out, why are we selling them so cheap, it costs 10 times more to get the carbon out compared to not emitting it, it will never be economical.
Yes, but in an indirect way. Direct carbon capture (DAC) is so energy intensive that it's only viable in places with 100% clean electricity, like Iceland. It's a non-starter in most countries.
However, places that have 100% clean electricity are often isolated. You need to ship in all equipment, which is made elsewhere, and fly in all personnel. This quickly adds up:
Capturing carbon from the source, like a coal power plant, is much easier. But the capture rate is only 50% on average, so a coal power plant with carbon capture is still horrible while also ridiculously expensive, so it doesn't really make sense.
> That's why all this CO2 capture and drawdown using some kind of unspecified, new technology, is such a distraction. Ideally we shouldn't release the carbon in the first place.
But imagine your oil and gas...
One way to keep your expertise be valuable is to offer the solution to the externalities you produce. By proposing to store that externality using your drilling/rig assets. It's a win win, for the company, a loss loss for everyone else.
It was still worth it on the metrics most people care about: life expectancy, child mortality, poverty, food security. Cutting off cheap fossil energy decades earlier would have been far worse for humanity than the slight warming we're getting now.
To be fair switching to nuclear was an option in the 70s-90s. Obviously it would have a been a bit more expensive but it would have slowed down climate change by 10-20 years.
On average, maybe yes. But in the rich world we also used a huge chunk of fossil fuel for relatively small marginal gains in quality of life (adding a fifth weekend shopping trip per year, buying a superyacht), and sometimes worsening life expectancy (driving too much, eating too much beef).
Why should I believe your assessment that a huge chunk of fossil fuel use by the rich world went to "relatively small marginal gains in quality of life"? I think they went to massive quality of life gains for huge numbers of people, and that suddenly removing fossil fuels as an energy source would be catastrophically bad for huge numbers of people, and not obviously worse than the effects of global warming over a comparable timeframe.
I never suggested we should suddenly remove fossil fuels as an energy source, that is a huge exaggeration. We wouldn't have needed to do anything suddenly 40-50 years ago when we started to understand that there was a problem, and we won't suddenly remove fossil fuels in the upcoming few years either.
But that is also a false choice: Not all CO2 emissions in the past 40 years were net beneficial. I firmly believe humanity would have done better with fewer (not zero, fewer) flights, less (not zero) beef, and fewer (not zero) fossil fuel car journeys. All while continuing to raise people from poverty and providing real improvements, of course.
We could have just built nuclear power plants. Invested into the technology, built breeder reactors and all that. We wouldn't have had to sacrifice anything, except of course for the astronomical profits of oil and gas companies.
And sure this wouldn't have solved the entire problem, electricity generation only accounts for like 40-50% of CO2 emissions or so? But it would have made a huge difference, and allowed us to focus entirely on the other half of the problem.
And it's not "slight warming". 20,000 years ago the global average temperature was about 3 degrees celsius lower than the reference point. That was the last ice age. Today we are 1.5 degrees above the reference point, 4,5 above the ice age. In a few decades we'll be at 3 degrees above reference, 6 degrees above ice age.
The transition from ice age (-3) to the temperate climate that allowed humanity to thrive, took place over about 12,000 years. The transition from reference to +3 is taking place over about a century. And we won't stop at +3, it'll keep going. Already at 1.5 it's having huge profound effects.
This is literally the end of the world as we know it. It's already well on its way. We are already seeing widespread crop failures, water scarcity, blistering heat waves, extreme weather etc. It will get much worse, this is just the beginning.
> That's why all this CO2 capture and drawdown using some kind of unspecified, new technology, is such a distraction. Ideally we shouldn't release the carbon in the first place.
This is in my amateur opinion, an absolutely bonkers and crazy stance. I can't understand why any pro-green person would affirm this.
There are two facts, (again, imo) one - all our emission reducing efforts would maybe slow their acceleration or in other way to frame it, maybe we collectively would cut tens percents of annual emissions. We, humanity, will a always emit a lot of CO2 from the sources we can't reduce without going full stone age. Fact two - there is a lot of CO2 and other GH gas in the atmosphere now and even more would be there tomorrow. We MUST remove it somehow. Like, there are literally two components - either we remove the insulator (CO2&Co) or we remove the energy (sun rays). We can't do either of course, yet.
The more greenwashing and muddying happens, with overfocus on cutting emissions while deliberately skipping RnD on the CO2 capture or sun shield tech, the more humans will be fucked in future.
Or to provide a different analogy. We are in a completely closed system here, an oven. Turning the regulator from III to II helps of course, but the meat will eventually cook either way, unless either the power is disconnected or the insulating door is opened.
Fully agreed. We're not gonna get out of this without something a bit crazy, and CO2 capture at least has an actionable theory: "what if power was 10x cheaper". That's imaginable at least, much more so than "what if we committed a few genocides" as was proposed elsewhere in this thread.
The bonkers crazy stance is yours. Carbon capture cannot work. We would need to build at the very least tens of thousands of carbon capture plants, way more than we currently have power plants.
So to me, the bonkers crazy stance is "let's just continue destroying the world, and hope magic future tech will save it". Especially when the tech you're talking about it just completely obviously entirely infeasible. Add to that the fact that we are destroying the world now. The ship is currently sinking. A solution in 50 years is a solution 100 years too late.
The actual solution that we do have is nuclear power. We could have replaced all fossil fueled power production decades ago if we wanted to. That would have reduced our emissions by nearly 50% and we would have been able to put all our efforts into solving the remaining half of the problem.
As it stands right now I fully expect the world to end quite soon. Maybe within my lifetime. Unless I die early I'll definitely see +3C in like 20 years or so, and probably +4 and +5 as well if not even more than that. I'm not having children because I don't want to put someone into this world just to suffer through the end of it. I have absolutely no faith in our ability to solve climate change. I believe we could have, if the world wasn't full of corrupt rich people and stupid people voting for them. But it is what it is. We've doomed ourselves and we're watching the end unfold before our eyes while everyones like that meme with the dog in the burning house saying "this is fine".
First - I'm well aware about CO2 capture being a fantasy and not viable today. The "tiny" problem is that it is still one of the 3 possible faint solutions to overheating and we WILL need at least one of them operational in the next 50-200 years. If we won't start the RnD today, then it would still be a fantasy in a century or two, when we won't have any time left to play around.
Second - where exactly did you get a notion that CO2 capture = "let's just continue destroying the world"? Of course every other tech should be mobilized and improved too in parallel.
Third - nuclear generation at scale is as fantastical as DACs. Please read about actual issues with real life construction of plants and about actual emissions attributed to each plant cumulatively, without greenwashing like selectively ignoring whole parts of supply chain and maintenance and decommission. I love nuclear energy btw, despite literally suffered through the worst accident in their history (I'm from Kyiv) along with my whole family. We do should construct more of them and SMRs can't come quick enough.
Fourth - there is a collective delusion that moving 100% to renewable energy would cut emissions by 50% or any other similar fantasy number. In reality the whole world energy generation is only 1/4 to 1/3 of all world emissions, and course the so called "net zero" or "carbon neutral" catchphrases are greenwashing, it is impossible. A 100% world renewable generation would only cut part of that part of global emissions. So let's say renewables reduce energy emissions by 50% or maybe even 75%. So then the non-generation emissions would decrease by only 15-20% (for example Xnew = Xold * (1 - 0.25 * 0.75) = 0.8125 * Xold or 18% decrease in other words). This is what is often ignored in a green advertisements.
> The "tiny" problem is that it is still one of the 3 possible faint solutions to overheating and we WILL need at least one of them operational in the next 50-200 years
We need them now. We currently don't have any time left to play around. In 50 years the global average temperature will be somewhere in the 3-5C range, which is apocalyptic. We'll be too busy fighting wars over water and arable land etc, to do anything meaningful about global warming.
My view is that capturing CO2 is hopeless, what we need to do instead is simply not emit the CO2 in the first place. But we aren't doing that, we're just building new coal/gas plants every year instead like a bunch of idiots. Because that's what we are. Bunch of morons who are dooming ourselves.
Whatever money is earned burning a ton of coal/gas, it will cost multiple times that amount to sequester the resulting CO2.
> where exactly did you get a notion that CO2 capture = "let's just continue destroying the world"?
I view it as an excuse to continue burning fossil fuels. It's not actually a solution to the problem at all, but it's presented as a solution when the reality is that it simply will never make a dent in the actual problem. There is no money in CO2 sequestration. We have a huge amount of investment in fossil fuel extraction and power generation etc because it makes money. CO2 is worthless, the only way anyone could possibly make money capturing CO2 and pumping it into the ground is if states paid them to do it. So a much simpler solution would be to pay them to generate clean power instead. "But where would the money come from" I don't know, where will the money for CO2 sequestration come from? We can't afford to pay a little extra for clean energy but somehow magically future us will be able to pay way way way way more for CO2 sequestration? It's not going to happen.
> Third - nuclear generation at scale is as fantastical as DACs. Please read about actual issues with real life construction of plants and about actual emissions attributed to each plant cumulatively, without greenwashing like selectively ignoring whole parts of supply chain and maintenance and decommission.
Google AI:
Nuclear power plants produce zero direct carbon dioxide emissions during operation. Across their full lifecycle—including uranium mining, enrichment, plant construction, and decommissioning—nuclear energy averages about 12 to 50 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2e/kWh), making it one of the lowest-carbon electricity sources available.
Solar PV: ~85 g CO2e/kWh
Wind: ~26 g CO2e/kWh
Hydroelectric: ~26 g CO2e/kWh
Natural Gas: ~499 g CO2e/kWh
Coal / Lignite: ~888 to 1,054 g CO2e/kWh
There are over 400 operational nuclear power plants in the world, the technology clearly works. Yes Chernobyl was terrible, it was caused by the dysfunctional Soviet Union political environment, it's not a fault of the technology itself. The state withheld information about a critical flaw in the reactor design. Coal kills more people in a week, than nuclear has through its entire history.
> So let's say renewables reduce energy emissions by 50% or maybe even 75%.
As you can see from the numbers I shared above, renewables cut emissions by over 95% compared to coal, 90% compared to gas.
I'm not saying we could be entirely carbon-neutral. I'm saying emissions from electricity generation specifically, which according to Google represents over 40% of CO2 emissions, could be almost entirely eliminated. Instead of 40% it could be less than 5%. From there we could work on other things such as shipping, farming etc. Maybe we'd just stop farming cows. I love beef but I'd be okay with that. Aviation could go as far as I'm concerned. I love vacationing but I'd rather have a planet that's going to continue being habitable. I could still go pretty far using trains, electric buses, my own electric car etc. Shipping could be electrified - nuclear submarines and warships already exists, that could be an option.
And yes, I know all these solutions don't eliminate 100% of emissions. But they eliminate a large amount of them. EVs, over their lifespan, cause 60-70% less emissions than a comparable fossil fueled car. Yeah it's not 100% but it's a whole lot better than 0%.
All the "solutions" to global warming are entirely fictional. Yet we keep barreling headfirst into it, because the world is full of idiots who aren't taking the problem seriously. Any rational person who really understands what's at stake would happily sacrifice some comforts, but most people aren't rational, they don't trust science because they don't understand it, and the rich control the propaganda machines that fill their feeble minds with bullshit instead.
I think its more they don't have to reduce their pollution output. They can just pump it all out as much as possible, to make as much profit as possible, and "hope" a magical reversal tech arrives at some point in the future.
It's basically no regulation, to only focus on profit.
It's the fossil fuel industry who is pushing for carbon capture (because they know it isn't viable). The fossil fuel industry is just running the tobacco company playbook.
"Under current policies, only six G20 members
(China, India, Indonesia, Russian Federation,
South Africa and Türkiye) are assessed as likely to
achieve their unconditional 2030 targets, while the
assessment of the European Union is inconclusive.
Overall, this suggests limited progress in narrowing
implementation gaps across the G20."
"All G20 members except Argentina, Saudi Arabia
and the United States of America have new NDCs
with mitigation targets for 2035."
It is very important to add that not all targets were created equal in the agreement, that was a major part of the negotiation. Not saying anything else, just that a simple reading of that statement might make you come to an underlying conclusion that isn't correct.
Correct. For instance, still today China burns more coal than every other country combined. They are starting from a place that is so bad that even small improvements will look like huge gains.
Also, I read a few years back an explainer about China internal issues in the scope of energy generation. We westerners think that China is monolithic monarchy of sorts and everything "happens in China" is representative of the country average. Well, apparently it's not. According to that analyst, every province is semi-autonomous and reluctant to cede power to the central govt. or neighbors. So all the new fancy solar installations are logically in the low population western provinces, and connected to the grid there. And in the east there are still a lot of local coal generation. And eastern provinces are simultaneously way more populated, way richer and have way bigger modern crisis threats (housing, inflation, unemployment, job and study application saturation and over competitiveness etc.). So now the provincial govt. is facing a threat of losing both local power generation, profits from running a coal plant business, and the most important yet another job loss prospect from shutting down plants and all the related infrastructure - shipping, storage, management, distribution etc. Bear all costs and get zero gains.
So I suspect that there will be two mostly independent trends in China (and other industrial places like that) - solar installation will grow, but coal use won't be meaningfully cut without huge HUGE help from central and foreign powers at once.
China’s coal use has shifted from decades of rapid expansion to a historic decline. Coal’s share of electricity generation dropped below 50% for the first time in 2026 (reaching 49.7% in the first six months), down from over 75% in the early 2010s and a peak share of around 81% in 2007, driven by massive wind and solar growth.
It has still grown in absolute terms although even that seems to have flattened off in the last couple of years.
There was no coal for generation consumption decline in China, yet. You look at the relative units (percentages), but instead check absolute units. The consumption steadily grew up until 2023 and now it is flat for two years, but it is not yet declining. So all the existing coal generation is running as it were, it's just the new plants maybe aren't constructed. But we are far away from the "deliberately early decommissioning" stage.
It's not just a matter of population density, the sichuan basin and most the east coast is just doesn't get much sun/wind. If not for these 'resource provinces' they would've just gone full on coal.
The propaganda spilled since the 1970s by large cooperations and politicians had two effects. People understand the problem is huge, and worse, they feel they cannot do anything about this issue themselves.
What we tend to forget is that large changes in society tend to start with us. Try eating less meat, eat healthy food, reduce car and plane usage when possible, buy less stuff (especially online), these are things anyone can do (rich or poor). When you start, family members and friends might follow.
From there, more people will try to change their consumption, and when enough people do that, politicians that are willing to tackle these issues will be elected. And when politicians are elected at some point your government will take the right step. From there we go to countries and eventually a large part of the world will do what must be done to survive.
You want a better world? Start by improving your own life and health.
Well, but the companies exist because people buy their products, right? If I buy pork from a farm, CO2 was technically produced by that farm, but it's on me.
Ultimately those 50-cent companies are making things that we buy. Even if they're selling to another business, that other business is selling to you. The chain might be long and hard to figure out, but it all comes down to you.
I guess I can see that. And I can't help but make the most ethical choices I can. And I know for a fact that it has inspired other people in my community.
This is feel-good bullshit. The thing that will actually make people stop burning so much fossil fuels is if gas costed $50 a gallon and everyone who drives a car for any reason is thinking about this number before they use their car. Which is absolutely the sort of state of affairs that large numbers of people - and not just in the rich world - would legitimately riot about.
Fortunately we don't need $50 gas because these days we have $1 gas in the form of electric cars. Of course the price of electric varies very much from place to place. For some people electric cars are not competitive with gas but for other people electric is a lot cheaper and has been for a long time and now electric cars are practical.
The other thing you can do is start demanding better transit. Most people live in a city dense enough that transit could replace nearly all their transportation needs. Sure, we would still have to have trucks to get freight around, but that's a small minority of the energy used.
Human greed will lead to human extinction. It is a foregone conclusion, too many would rather die owning the latest iphone or latests trends than care about the global whole. You see it all around us, between the Congo, Sudan, Palestine, Ukraine and so much more... we just don't give a shit.
In summary, we are the architects of our own demise. (this is not pessimism, but realism)
Extinction means zero humans left, which is highly unlikely as we are a very resilient species. A global collapse is more likely sometime in the future, but even then some countries and communities might just keep going on.
To be honest, no company wants to lower their income. This is institutionalised (i.e. the stock holders will throw you out if you decide to lower the income)
That's why they are selling us new cars instead of converting the old ones to electric or semi- electric drive. The amount of CO2 emitted on the new car creation and shipping is tremendous. The same with phones, washing machines etc. And now AI. It should be done on optimising (the software, the reliability), not creating new and throwing out the old ones
Utter nonsense. This is not realism. This is your weird negative way of looking at the world.
A lot of European countries are now generating most of their electricity from renewables, and it's being built out rapidly. We can now produce grid-scale storage at lower and cheaper prices. In places like Texas, this is happening at a breakneck speed.
Also developing countries are adopting solar panels and batteries at a surprisingly fast pace, since they just buy them for cheap from China rather than waiting for a dysfunctional government to build out a proper grid to rural villages.
People are still talking about 1.5C at 2100 as if it's not some high fantasy? :) Wake up, it was greenwashing all this time. The question is rather are we lucky to have 3C by the end of the century, or the hot models are correct and we'll get 4-5C. That's the question. 1.5C... Phah! Fun joke :)
As much as I agree climate change is an important topic, I hate the rhetoric of "irreversible changes". Of course they're irreversible! Change is the only constant.
On my last vacation I came across a similar message on reddit[0] and it totally spooked me.
I have been telling my wife I want to move as my area (at some point) will be flooded. I live in the Netherlands and when the icecaps have melted (WHEN not IF) I live in the wrong part.
the thing with the climate goal is just an arbitrary number to the person on the street.
for us that come from poor countries - it fuels degrowth. you want us to shut down coal plants & yet you don't want us to trade with china.
even in rich countries such as Germany - cost of energy has been a factor in slowing down growth because bureaucrats said so. while private planes keep flying, good keep getting shipped from overseas.
china has enabled cheap solar - which in turn has enabled cheap access to electricity. china has enabled cheap electric vehicles. for a bunch of people in 'poor' or 3rd world countries - in the next few years their first cars will be chinese EVs not Japanese 2nd hands or other 2nd hands from western countries.
https://nowcity.org/ - Now City is an experiment in long-term urban planning based on the course we’ve set for ourselves, including complete loss of ice and roughly 4°C of warming with the associated shift in the human climate niche. This map accounts for the new hazards and new opportunities, and attempts to anticipate how populations might migrate and settle.
"While running for president in 2024, Donald Trump told oil and gas executives that he would pursue their policy priorities if the industry raised $1 billion for his campaign—and after returning to office last year, the Republican did just that, enriching those invested in fossil fuels, including himself, at the expense of the public and planet."
Nah, that is actually logical and helpful for ecology. Just in a roundabout way. EU is for now a spearhead in all things pro-green so to say, at least on paper. By protecting local economies via tariffs (foreign EVs, foreign uranium fuel rods etc.), EU will continue being a power block and continue influencing other countries to be more green too.
What is bad, is a the lack of a coherent and realistic green programs and climate forecasts in EU as a whole. There are no incentive programs to switch to expensive one time EV purchases and charger installations (I tried to research what what would it cost to install a personal charger in my freshly constructed 2024 apartment building parking in a big city, the AI app called me a fool, well almost(1)). There are no coherent plans to expand charging networks at a state or union levels.
There solar panels, V2G, B2G, multizone electricity meters, dynamic tariffs, incentives, all are either non-existent or very spotty and organized at local levels.
There are no union wide help to transition from coal, oil, gas to relatively greener energy.
No re-foresation incentives and little to no marine protection.
No preparation for a real 3C temperature hike by the year 2100, instead the fantasy 1.5C or 2C numbers are reiterated and the populace is lulled into thinking all will be well for their kids.
I can continue the list, but the picture is of incompetence and apathy really. A few token and inconsequential efforts are done, just enough for re-elections, and that's it.
1: "This is the classic "pioneer dilemma" discussed on Polish forums. If you pay the 3,000 PLN because you are the first, and next year Neighbor B and Neighbor C get EVs, it is deeply unfair for you to keep subsidizing the overall risk profile. To protect yourself, you must not sign a contract that binds you to a flat fee indefinitely." (c) generated by AI
Are you being sarcastic? Your first paragraph is very much Effective Altruism but for European cultural superiority. "European culture is the best, so, by protecting that culture's economic base, it's actually better for the rest of the world because we can export our Lovely Eco Friendly Culture more, the more we power it with coal and oil and gas."
I despise the EA sex cult, but the the irony in that comparison is indeed visible. Good catch, I guess, I'll think about it. :)
So yes, I do currently think that the reality of life is that certain whole societies are in the given moment (now) more progressive than others. Or do you believe that some BRICS pseudo-union would collectively push for more green tech than EU is doing now (even though EU foreign policy actions are mostly impotent)?
Sure, maybe China will eventually take a lead in green tech policies, or maybe it even already did, though I'm not convinced so far. As soon as that happens visibly,I would gladly change my opinion and would advocate that now EU should follow more progressive lead (as long as Xi don't start WW3 for some "dvizhukha" like other demented autocrats did).
PS: and don't attribute to me stuff I didn't say, like this "we can export our Lovely Eco Friendly Culture more, the more we power it with coal and oil and gas."(c)
Obviously protective measures for any country are done to make sure an economy doesn't become completely dependent on another's with strongly opposing values.
Europe's car manufacturers need to get their shit together, but not being able to buy any car whatsoever the moment China gets their own Donald Trump is worse than cars being slightly worse and a bit more expensive for a while.
Hilarious compared to what exactly lmao? The US? China? Russia? TYhE GlObAl SoUtH? OPEC?
The world is a giant school playground where the bullies in charge are competing for #1 position on the goober eating contest while the school is burning
I both agree and disagree. The EU isn't worse than others. For example, it's basically the only place that's willing to replace coal with imported gas, which is a major economical sacrifice.
On the other hand, with the money the EU spends on climate measures, the results leave a lot to be desired. The EU has prioritized things like hydrogen, biofuels and carbon capture, which all have very little to show for.
If Europe had spent all that money on EVs and heat pumps, emissions would have decreased drastically while prices woundn't even go up. But that's not possible if you want to preserve old jobs. Then you have to do those stupid things that aren't viable, like e-fuels for cars.
I'm also not sure if replacing coal with gas did actually decrease emissions on the whole. The gas lobby is a large reason why electrification has stalled in Europe, while China's coal lobby helped electric trucks to reach 50% share last month.
This might shock you because it happens outside your social bubble, but there is an insane amount of people (double-digit percentages for sure) that is simply unwilling to make even the smallest sacrifice in order to mitigate climate change, and they vote accordingly.
That does not make climate change any less of an emergency, but it limits politically feasible countermeasures a lot.
One difficulty you will encounter when looking into the effects of climate change is that you can't generally attribute individual events to it (or very rarely at least). Its effects are only really visible in more general (abstract) statistical measures (Just like me losing a coin flip doesn't mean the coin is weighted, but when i lose 8 out of 10 flips i will start getting suspicious)
That logic seems a bit weak, because it is saying we're already living in a world where the worst-case is happening, and we're just talking about the odds of any individual experiencing it are going up a little.
Compare it to https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-person-vs-... where there is strong evidence that using more energy directly leads to more prosperity. We've got much better chances to do well if we stick to using the cheapest available energy. Then people can just build over the top of any disasters that strike.
> because it is saying we're already living in a world where the worst-case is happening, and we're just talking about the odds of any individual experiencing it are going up a little.
I'm not sure I'm following? A raise in temperature doesnt in itself cause any particular wildfire, drought or tsunami (just like the weight in a coin won't), but these events get more and more likely (just like losing the coin flip as the coin gets more and more unfair). This doesn't assume anything about the actual probability or trajectory we're on, if i measure my coinflips and they turn out to be 50/50 the argument is just as valid
> strong evidence
I think that pointing to 1 singular graph as "strong evidence" is a bit shallow. there are plenty of reasons to think that there are many confounding variables here.
Global average temperature has risen about a degree over the last century. That's a truly terrifying amount of energy. Habitats are shifting, forests are burning away in places where their current composition has become unsustainable, regions are becoming arid, permafrost is becoming less permanent.
Technically most of everything else is weather, not climate, do you want a list of bad weather events?
Billions of dollars have been spent undermining science and electing corrupt fascists because people with control of fossil fuel wealth didn't want to deal with reality and laws and democracy.
That may well kill more people than climate change. Hard to tell as both have the potential to spiral out into a variety of intertwining tragedies.
If the human part of climate change wasn’t true and the fossil fuel industry’s wasn’t the culprit it would’ve been proven by now. It is very unlikely that the fossil fuel industry that is so rich and powerful wouldn’t have proven it by now.
There are none. The planet is greener, even the Sahara is shrinking. The Great Coral Reef has just had its best 5 years ever. On average, crops produce more due to higher CO2 levels.
Pacific islands failed to sink. Hurricanes failed to become more frequent. Fewer people died due to cold temperatures (which kill far more people than hot temperatures).
The planet is greener, I guess that you are pointing to; Nature Climate Change, 2016, Zhu et. al. where the authors of the study have warned that erroneous conclusions would be taken from the study.
I can't tell if this is sarcastic, or you're just lying?
> The planet is greener, even the Sahara is shrinking
The UK was baked brown in the heat and it was so bad it was visible by satellite, we had uncharacteristic wildfires all summer. Google has literally no idea what you're talking about by claiming the Sahara is shrinking, the best I can find is "maybe the expansion is slowing?"
> The Great Coral Reef has just had its best 5 years ever.
Apparently it had its most devastating coral bleaching event just 2 years ago, so I'm not sure this is true?
> On average, crops produce more due to higher CO2 levels.
I mean, yeah if you are into the average crop? People tend to like stuff like corn and coffee which are threatened by raised heat levels. With current heat levels we're projected to lose upwards of 1/5th the corn harvest by 2030.
> Pacific islands failed to sink.
I mean some of them did, like a decade ago, just none of the ones you care about.
> Hurricanes failed to become more frequent
Same frequency but wind force increases by water temperature, so a cat 1 hurricane like Rafael ends up a cat 3 hurricane due to climate change. I am seeing a pattern with your selective presentation of the facts.
> Fewer people died due to cold temperatures
Is that not because a large share of the world's old were taken out by COVID within the last 6 years? That is the group most likely to die to cold.
This is a genuinely interesting question - if humanity had the technological capacity to set the global temperature at any value, what value should that be? Is there any reason to think that the temperature in place from the beginning of the Holocene to the beginning of widespread fossil fuel usage by humans is the best one?
I agree! Intuitively i would think that most ecosystems evolved to adapt to their environment and, unless this environment is characterized by large swings in temperature and other conditions, will suffer in conditions different from the ones they evolved to thrive in. That means that any change in conditions needs to be slow enough for these ecosystems to gradually adjust by whatever means they have access to.
> The emissions gap is now a leadership gap. And the world is running out of time and excuses to close it.
The leadership of some countries, including the former "leader of the free world", fixed that by declaring global warming to be a hoax, so they don't need any excuses anymore and can just continue catering to their fossil fuel donors.
Skynet won't have to bother launching a nuclear war. It will just sit and munch digital popcorn, waiting for humanity to fix the humanity 'problem'. A tiny speck of time in the fullness of things.
Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine. :)
I remember 10 years ago when there greentech was a thing and "carbon neutral" (by carbon credit shams or not) was a goal. I was a bit proud then. That has passed.
Now it's just about heating data centers as much as possible. Apparently climate is a solved problem. The tech CEO's children and grandchildren are safe again, and we can go back to focus on profits. /s
Tired of the complete inability of the human race to take in the Pale Blue Dot [1], and what it means. No one is coming to rescue your grandchildren. And it would be much easier for us to do something today, than them in 50 years. Actions compound over time: perhaps those actions should then be long-term positive.
Don't need AGI, we know how to fix it (nuclear), and have chosen not to, because nobody gave a fuck about the climate, it was never about global warming.
Nuclear doomerism is what has lead us to this silly "status quo" and the subject of the article/thread.
There is more than one kind of nuclear, and the fuel situation has known reserves that aren't being used because of lack of demand. Fuel costs in reactors are only a very small part of their operational costs so new mines are not the priority. We also have viable seawater extraction technologies that are waiting for appropriate demand. Past that, there are also breeder and waste-burning reactors long held-up as a vital and fuel-conserving part of a complete nuclear eco-system.
Bluntly: the nuclear build-out France achieved in the 70s, scaled globally, would solve the climate problem and position us for synthetic fuel production at a civilizational scale. Modern technologies & robotics have us on track for facilities producing low greenhouse energy for more than a century. Global shipping, transport fuels, and energy-intensive industry require high-energy inputs. WWS are wonderful, but very awkward in those domains.
If you would start to re-rollout nuclear, Uranium will be consumed within 10-20 years by all participants. In most countries, nuclear supplied usually a small but stable fragment of the overall energysupply.
I eat vegetarian. I own a Fairphone. I take the night train instead of a flight when possible.
To me, the most workable solution to global warming I have heard of is: building a giant Cannon on the moon and have it shoot moon dust in-between the sun and the earth. This won't stop ocean acidification but at least things will cool down. And we have a cannon on the moon which is cool.
We live in clown world. Elections are decided by Meta and Twitter algorithms, both biased by their operators. Information doesn't get to people and lies abound. If you want to imagine the future of the world, picture indigenous children killed after being sucked into a gold mining machine:
The other problem is the prisoners dilemma: if the west stops having children and not-the-west does not stop then within a short time we will have replaced the west with an equivalent population breeding much faster for cultural or religious reasons.
There is also a world of social disruption, which could lead to environmentally disastrous wars, that come from those kinds of demographic inversions. The combination of worsening climate issues with those destabilizations might lead to acute depopulation at the global level, but not likely of a climate-friendly variety.
Destroying the world to improve some portion of the climate experienced by some portion of some population at some unspecified later date a century or more in the future versus, say, geoengineering and attacking the present-day cost structures of nuclear energy strikes me generally as a Bad Plan.
having less children if you live in a developed economy just means outsourcing your children to a developing economy.
If there are 1 million less children born in the US, it's very likely there will be 1 million more immigrants to take their place, and the places those immigrants come from will have higher birth rates to replace them
No skin in the game and less influence on the next generation having the skills and values needed to make the world better instead of carrying on the path it's on. Of course most people having kids aren't thinking of that aspect.
The problem is that people today do not have skin in the game for what happens generations down the line. No real consequences, little desire for actual change.
I remember, around 2016, a european climate scientist saying that he had to fill up more forms and prove every experiment in the most strict way. The justification was that their conclusions could have economical repercussions. The results of their experiments were always a few years late because of that.
Welcome to the "absence of economical repercussions" world.
Yes, a simple carbon tax could have been phased in over time. We already had nuclear and trains and insulation etc. and we now know from our present (their future) that solar, wind, heat pumps, EVs are cost effective.
Turns out the whole problem was politics, not science or technology or economics.
This is the same question I've asked myself. One country sacrifices its entire energy production in favor of green alternatives, while the rest of the world doesn't. It doesn't even move the needle. It's just a pitiful way to fail.
Renewables will be that fast in roll-out and much cheaper and then other countries will follow the path.
(which is funny, since China installed more solar in 2024/2025 than US+EU combined - so for them its working, in the beginning they were adptors, now they became shapers; same for africa: now a real option to get cheap energy, the only region where solar is more expensive than it should be, is actually EU + US)
I've seen the consequences of the shift to renewables here in Spain: entire ecosystems destroyed, drought everywhere, wildlife displaced, and native plant species disappearing because of wind turbines and solar farms.
I'm in favor of renewables, but at the individual level (your own home). Meanwhile, the Spanish government has made several moves to ban personal electric vehicles like EUCs and electric scooters, which only pushes people back toward gas-powered vehicles.
Solar/wind farms are great when you have the land suitable for those. My favourite example is replacing the U.S. farms growing corn that is used to produce ethanol (which is then added to the gas) with solar farms. This would produce more energy while not disrupting any ecosystems (at least not more than the existing farms).
So either Spain has no land like that, or the Spanish government has fucked something up. Judging by the rest of your post, I‘m leaning towards the latter :-)
Renewables did all that? Are you stupid? If you actually cared about habitat loss there is a big list of things that take up more space than renewables. This is so idiotic it has to be rage bait
That's not libertarian dogma by any libertarian, I know. It is right-wing, but libertarians it will remind you that politics is far too complex to try and move to one axis.
Historical fact: the developed world is developed mostly via industrial revolution, a.k.a. they find out how to turn coal into wealth first
Current situation: the developed world emits much more than the developing side per capita. Even France, a country powered by nuclear, emits twice as much as India per capita
Yeah, good luck convincing the developing countries to limit their emission. "Bro please stay poor" and "you have too much population" aren't very nice things to say.
The developing world is in many cases the past couple years leapfrogging fossil fuel infrastructure and going straight to solar electrification, thanks to China's cheap solar panels and improvements in energy storage battery systems.
Just a reminder that the worse climate change gets, the larger the difference is that a single 0.1 degrees makes. 1.0->1.1 degree difference in global warming is barely noticeable, but 2.9->3.0 makes a huge difference.
So, paradoxically, the worse the situation gets, the larger our incentive should become to avoid yet another increase in global warming.
Its time to admit that government will not be able to solve this in a reasonable amount of time. Can we please fund private charities that are actually doing something about this and could make a huge difference if they were funded better?
Demand that your government create a charity funding program where you as the tax payer get to decide where your tax money goes and choose a charity that aligns with your values and goals to tackle this once and for all.
Increased carbon emissions is a result of prosperity and progress.
I've always thought it's a little hypocritical that the first movers were 'allowed' to cut down all their trees, burn coal like no tomorrow, and yolo industry. However, when other cultures try and industrialise, it's a big nono.
We need to face the reality that our lifestyles come with a carbon cost which will impact the planet, and plan for something realistic. Setting moving, impossible goalposts is a pipedream, and a sign that someone has sat in a classroom too long.
The planet will change, it always has. Instead of endlessly whinging and spreading doom, we need to be realistic about who we are as a species and plan accordingly. We also need to build resilience into our systems so we can weather any future storms.
Also, a serious global carbon tax is the cleanest solution internationally; taxing extraction at source in line with the resulting costs of negative externalities and mitigation strategies. Could set up a nice fund for offering prizes to companies who hit certain milestones in green tech. A little bit like global competitions in Civ5.
>“Every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of warming above 1.5°C raises the risk of irreversible changes including in ice sheets, permafrost carbon, ocean circulation and coral systems, along with devastating human impacts,” the report states.
The mention to coral systems, from an ignorant perspective, seems weirdly specific to me. Kinda like "civilization will collapse and the price of sweaters will go up".
Does their disappearance have indirect consequences I'm not aware of?
Sometimes called rainforests of the sea, shallow coral reefs form some of Earth's most diverse ecosystems. They occupy less than 0.1% of the world's ocean area, about half the area of France. Yet, they provide a home for at least 25% of all marine species ...
Aside from being home to a lot of seafood they also play a not fully understood part in the breeding of a good number of other seafood in ways not yet fully understood.
ie. Lose the reefs .. and then we find out how our supply of seafood is impacted.
That's what I was missing yeah. I always took the bleaching of corals in media as a visible 'canary in the mine' situation, never knew they were so central to marine life.
> Coral reefs are some of the most diverse and valuable ecosystems on Earth. Home to over 4,000 species of fish, corals, and other marine life, coral reefs cover only 1% of the world’s oceans, but provide habitat for at least 25% of the world’s marine life, with many reef species still to be discovered.
> Coral reefs have an estimated global value of £6 trillion each year, due in part to their contribution to fishing and tourism industries and the coastal protection they provide.
Not sure what consequences you are aware of but the key point with corals is loss of biodiversity. It's (I believe) the tipping point that goes at the lowest temperature rise.
There was a book on the overshoot nonsense a few years ago (literally called Overshoot) that talks about the make believe story of carbon capture and how during the negotiations for CAP in the 2000s and 2010s those were included as otherwise the US would have agreed to no plan at all. And even if something like removing carbon at scale through forestry, burning, and co2 capture was ever so viable who would pay for that. That only works with emissions trading (which every other month gets watered down because muh energy bills, muh aviation cost, etc) or some “energy costs nothing” mythological tech. We are fucked and while there are many who care the vast majority of people oscillates between too dumb, too selfish, and too manipulated to ever be willing to give up today’s comforts for a happier tomorrow.
> The 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement is no longer viable
Good. Now, let's drop that goal and go on.
At least in Europe, higher priority should be saving human lives by providing air conditioning and a climate-friendly environment instead of putting more money into climate money washing machines.
We will continue extracting absolutely everything we can from Earth, at whatever the cost ... with the hope that technology will one day save us from our weakness.
And, yes, technologyy may "save us", but there are many different definitions of what that will look that ... some may be horrendous for the majority, but none of them will inconvenience those making the most significant decisions.
2 degree global warming means 5-6 degree more in new york (as the average mean temperature is meassured also above oceans/mountaints etc.) - and you can now ask yourself if you still want to live in NY when its 5-6 degree warmer than today?
"New goal: not exceed 2°C, then bring the temperature back down to 1.5°C"
It kind of feels people have given up. I'm working on a startup that aims to replaces aviation (the most difficult emissions to avoid) with night trains in Europe (currently economically uncompetitive). It's an obvious impact story, but impact appears to be "out".
Nice concept. I caught European Sleeper last week, my first time on a night train. It was ok but I'd like something better if I was using it regularly.
It's a tough time to do something about climate change. Short-termism is very attractive right now.
I'm against night trains. Much better to have high speed travel during the day and then at night close down the tracks completely and do your track maintenance so the tracks are good for the next day. You can get by with skipping maintenance here and there, but that quickly will come back to haunt you and make your trains even worse.
Take a great day train, get some plays and then take a hotel room for the night. That's the most sustainable way to travel.
I agree. I was looking at a night train from Milan to Lecce. It costed waaay more than flights+ the extra night in the hotel. Crazy if you think about it
IIRC night trains are kinda making a comeback - they are quite convenient that you can travel over night & wake up in your destination. Otherwise you would spend a day traveling & would need 1-2 days of accommodation on top of that.
Beds as opposed to seats mean fewer passengers per train carriage, so the fixed cost of operating the train is shared among fewer tickets.
You can make one trip per day with a night-train, whereas a seated train runs 16-20hrs per day. So again, fixed cost of the train existing is shared between far fewer ticket sales.
Then you need to store the train during the day, and you need to securely park the train when it arrives at its destination at night (a normal train yard isn't secure enough if you have a hotel full of people, and a train station usually needs all of its platforms).
The capacity really is the main issue, in terms of cost.
The second is lack of privacy, in terms of attractiveness. 6-people-per-cabin couchette cars have sufficient capacity, but the market isn't quite there anymore.
We basically want to get as many cabins as possible in railcar (to reduce cost), but they're are comfortable and private (to increase attractiveness). With these levers, you can change the operating margin from -15%..-10% to around 10%.
Hundreds of kilometres of good quality electric railway infra is expensive to maintain. And by good quality I mean capable of relatively decent speeds like say 120-160 km/h. With airports you need to maintain lot less.
Is there anyone who actually cares about any of this?
Look at flightradar. Look at Marinetracker. Look how many cars are used every day and the billions of barrels of oil we're consuming.
We are not going to consume less oil, unless there's some manufactured event that stops us (like COVID), or we physically run out.
People are addicted to moving about, making things, entire economies rely on it.
And nobody here would sacrifice opportunity for a future that may not even happen. Even if you're the most conscious consumer, the world's going to heat up anyway. You not driving a gas car, or not eating meat, won't make any difference because somebody else will be there to consume what you leave behind.
And I plan to use as much oil as possible, take as many planes and cruises as I can, eat as much meat, because I frankly care less and I'm not going to miss out if I have the choice. I know I am not alone in this thinking and many, many others also no longer care, not that they ever did.
But you're more than welcome to leave the resources to others who will gladly use them.
I think the difficult part may be to explain to your children why you didn't care about their future. I'm guessing you're child-free, or do you home school?
We are burning the only planet we have in a contest to be king of the ashes.
Who gives a fuck whether the US or China win the AI race if they both burn tons of hydrocarbon to get there? Either way, the race itself will fuck the planet up worse than either victor would.
Same about all the dumb wars of conquest, Ukraine, Iran. Who gives a fuck over those lines on a map if the map itself is on fire? All the burning of oil depots, all the explosives used are all an assault on humanity itself, not just on whatever state construct.
I have a growing suspicion that this is the Great Filter. Dumb, self-important squabbles that destroy the material basis for a species' survival in an attempt to gain control instead of cooperation.
> I have a growing suspicion that this is the Great Filter.
Ackshually... It can be our filter, but it cannot be the Great Filter.
The Great Filter has to apply universally, to every plausible society. If even a few are cooperative hiveminds, or empires ruled by an iron fist, or... whatever else you can imagine that doesn't squabble internally... then the Filter does not apply to them, which means that their absence is still weird.
The Filter has three plausible answers, IMO: (1) Some variant of the planetarium or zoo hypothesis; (2) every advanced society, universally, decides to transcend into data centers powered by rotating black holes and stable for trillions of years, or something similarly weird; potentially also New Physics, like waste heat to mass conversion; (3) the filter is in our past and abiogenesis is a lot rarer than assumed.
Maybe we'll manage to launch some datacenters, then at least there'll be a backup of the database of how much each person's net worth is, floating above the dead planet...
And if we have several of them in space, they'll use blockchain, of course.
Its the only corner where one can try to talk some sense into some of the people directly involved in this process.
The self-professed unideological technical minds that pride themselves on first-principle thinking.
The walking contradictions that fail to recognize that it is in fact their ideology that is pushing us to this outcome, based on said first principles (thermodynamics ffs!) they do not actually take into account.
I honestly hoped the end would be the White Walkers just coming and killing everyone because they were too distracted and petty to mount a united defense. It would've made for a much stronger metaphor and fit in much better with the dark vibe and unexpected killing off of audience favorites that made the show a success in the first place.
I feel like the Disneyfied ending we got instead really ruined the show for me.
Yes lets do it by continuing to outsource the pollution to China and deindustrialize Europe.
Cut the nuclear, add the imported solarpanels and experience the joy of 10x electricity prices.
Blame the consumer for not turning the kettle off during peak hours and make sure you give tax breaks to Google and BiGData to open a couple more datacenters that use more power than a average city.
Oh, ban combustion engines, fuck up every batteryfactory by thinking its enough to buy the Make-Your-Own-Battery-Kit on Aliexpress.
Europe's strategy has indeed been stupid, but not for the reasons you write.
Some parts of the energy transition are profitable, like EVs and heat pumps. This is where Europe dropped the ball.
Other parts are unprofitable, like hydrogen. This is what Europe has prioritized, without anything to show for it.
Then there are the ugly parts, like most carbon capture or importing virgin palm oil mislabelled as used cooking oil. Those things don't even decrease emissions. Again, Europe has focused too much on this.
If Europe would simply have banned combustion engines and gas boilers, emissions would have decreased drastically while prices would also decrease. Alas, Europe prioritized bad stuff instead.
Well, certainly not simple. It is actually workable and making a difference now because there's an alternative that works and is cheaper. the only thing we need to do is get people to start using it.
We probably shouldn't talk about an outright ban. There are a couple of places where we may need to say, in your niche, those don't work, so we'll let you continue using it. We'll worry about those later. Let's stop the vast majority of cases first. Then we start worrying about the niches.
I know i’ll be downvoted, but at this point whatever.
I largely stopped caring about these announcements and also about this initiatives.
The reason is that we see these pushes but at the same time we see no real initiative, with all the burden left on individuals with little to no power to make meaningful changes.
Some examples:
1. Travel: I’m constantly told that travel by airplane is bad and should be avoided and to prefer travel by train. Yet my last trip (milan <-> munich) was 1h for ~75€ each way via airplane BUT 8h and ~200€ each way via train. And this before even pulling in the “rich people private planes” talking point.
2. I still see essentially zero push towards widespread nuclear energy for proper electrification
3. Cars keep getting fucking larger and larger. It’s crazy to see how many SUVs i see everyday burning gas with just one person on board. Electric cars don’t really solve this issue because electricity generation is not yer 100% clean.
4. I still don’t see a general push towards unified public transportation. I don’t even want it to be completely free but FUCK i don’t want to deal with three different providers if i ever dare to get out of my city while staying within the region. God forbid i decide to go to another region somewhere outside a main city.
5. I still don’t see a general push towards work from home. I live in a city large enough to have public transportation but I know very well this is the exception and not the rule. Most people burn gas and emit co2 to unwillingly go to the office to do the same things they’d do from home while also bringing their company laptop from home. This is beyond moronic.
And don’t star blaming capitalism or whatever: i don’t see any meaningful push in the right direction from either side of the political tribune.
So whatever, shit is fucked up and stuff, we’re getting extinct, such is life i guess.
Stop caring because not seeing initiatives is like inverting responsibilities.
Initiatives will come if people care.
Never in history the solution to major crisis came from politicians or alike.
Even if your contributions is small, it doesn't prevent you to do them. By which extent is a personal choice, but personally I chose to be consistent with myself and my values, and I don't care about the choices of others.
Regarding airplane, I much prefer an 8h+5min trip in train than a 1h+2h trip in plane because comfort is way better and you are not dealt with like cattle. Of course I wish the price advantage would be different than nowadays.
Electric cars are not yet the perfect solution, but they are already way better than fuel cars. As for the rest, my government says its the way to go, then I go.
Note that in GIEC report, nuclear (fission or fusion) was not identified as a major solution to climate change (only contribute 10% of the whole). The main contributors were green energies.
To be fair: setting it as a temperature range was very
stupid from the get go. Also, to not consider the economic
impact, was also stupid, and the CO2-tax is also beyond
idiotic since it creates a fake-economy where people buy
the right to pollute. That runs counter to the idea of
green energy.
I think one should abandon the Paris Agreement and label
it as the failure as it was. However had that does not
mean that green energy should be abandoned. There need to
be more incentives towards green energy (see how Putin uses
gas as means to amplify his genocidal activity against
Ukrainians). Meaning, companies that verifiably transition
towards more renewable, need to get positive incentives to
go towards that and maintain it at all times. The CO2 tax
should also be eliminated without compensation. And there
also has to be more realism - it makes no sense to cut down
an economy, producing more unemployment in the process. It
has to be a cohesive unit.
Not sure which economic impact you mean when the ultimate economic impact of climate catastrophe will be the complete destruction of the global economy.
This is not hyperbole. If nothing changes that's a completely realistic outcome within 50 - 100 years.
Climate catastrophe will be the reason there's no food on the table.
This is already happening to crops like cocoa and coffee, and crops like maize and wheat are next.
If we're too stupid as a species to understand this, we can just let Darwin clean this up and give the planet another chance with different species in a few million years or so.
Humans are probably the only Earthlings that have any chance of achieving interplanetary civilization and persisting long term. If this civilization collapses and our energy technologies are lost then any future attempts at civilization will be facing a steeper slope to get those technologies back without the cheap and abundant fossil fuels we burned up. Many of those fuels may never return to this planet because life has evolved considerably so things like the Carboniferous may not happen again.
> Climate is going to be least important of your problems if you cant put food on the table.
??? We're already having record low crop yields CAUSED by climate change right now my dude. You won't have food on your plate BECAUSE of climate change
We could always make more war in the Middle East (and Europe) and then 1,5°C would be totally viable. /s
Seriously now: Attempts to cut fossil fuel supply are worthless unless done en masse and in big scale - any single country doing it will just spur investment in another country. Since the world will not come to a truly binding agreement, the only thing that can be truly regulated is demand which can be regulated locally without necessarily increasing demand elsewhere.
The big new ticket is data centers, which strongly tend to use fossils due to SLAs and regulations. This can be fixed by new regulations, but only if people act now before the new approvals and builds are done.
Well cutting is happening right now and very large scale. USA is kinda laggard here but eg new electric car sales is up 70% in Europe or new Solar installations are up 50% in Africa.
Your examples are examples of cuts on the demand side. They satisfy current transport/electricity demand with a means that costs much less carbon, so fossil demand goes down.
(By contrast, a supply cut is 'not developing new fossil resource cuz someone else will buy it and burn it', which is obviously a dead end).
I’m 38 years old, and I’ve worked in climate tech for the last 12 years. In my relatively short lifetime, and my relatively short career, I have seen the environment for political action, and funding for climate solutions, fluctuate maybe half a dozen times.
The physics, however, don’t change, and neither does the task in front of us.
I just spent ten months finding a job, the longest and most difficult job search of my career. It was hard because the macro environment is terrible, but also because I insisted on finding a role working on clean energy hardware.
At a time when basically all VC funding, and in many ways the entire productive capacity of the economy, is shifting to AI, it would have been smarter in some respects to just pivot to AI. I sat out the crypto bubble too, in which some of my peers made a lot of money by working on projects that were either useless, or straightforward scams.
We crossed the 1.5 degree threshold because the money can’t help itself. The slow, steady work of transitioning away from fossil fuels is never going to be as profitable, as quickly, as the various forms of gambling and addiction that have driven the tech industry for most of my lifetime.
But you, individually, can make the choice to keep your eye on the ball. You can commit to working on this problem until it’s done, no matter what. You can choose to find the others to organize and prepare, so that the ideas closest at hand when the next crisis comes are yours.
It’s the best solution I’ve come up with so far, and in spite of the challenges, it’s still working.
> You can commit to working on this problem until it’s done, no matter what.
My opinion is that the very first things people should do are:
1. Get a little bit informed. It doesn't require a PhD, it could be done instead of a fraction of the time they spend scrolling bullshit on their smartphone.
2. Accept the situation. Too many are in denial, with variants of "it's not that bad" or "it's because those in power are stupid, I would certainly fix the world" or "it's because of foreigners".
3. Vote accordingly.
It's too easy to say "we don't have any viable candidates" and "I don't understand why they haven't fixed the problem yet, they must be stupid (somehow implying that "in all likelihood I would have solved it by now")".
In relatively-functional democracies, the reason the people doesn't have viable candidates is because the people does not vote for competent people. Either because they vote for competent politicians (with modern politics being about getting elected, not exactly solving big problems) or because they proudly vote for extremists (which is of course even worse).
In a democracy, the people is the government. When the people says "the government is stupid", it reflects on the people. Maybe they're right: the government is stupid, because the people is stupid and elects stupid people, and that's why we're screwed.
I don’t know of any candidates (except a few outliers who have my support) who are pledging to reduce the footprint of the largest polluters. All anyone is willing to do is offer “feel-good” initiatives that make life harder for average people, building popular resistance to addressing climate issues, without actually taking the substantial, difficult steps that are needed. Meanwhile they work together on tightening the social control grid that is being rushed to completion before shit finally hits the fan.
> Maybe they're right: the government is stupid, because the people is stupid and elects stupid people, and that's why we're screwed.
Now you’re getting it. But they are stupid for a reason. The people are stupid because they are poorly educated and distracted by entertainment; they are poorly educated and distracted by entertainment because policy makers prefer passive consumers to active citizens; despite the long-term downsides, policy makers choose to create passive consumers because they are easier to control and unable to contest their power.
One of Reagan’s advisors warned that free higher ed was creating a dangerous “educated proletariat”, and he was right! The response to this danger was to end state funding of college tuition, to strip out funding for the humanities, and to gradually turn colleges into job prep centers rather than centers of higher learning. (This process started in earnest with Reagan, but you’ll notice that it was never rolled back.)
People did try to fight this, but we lost. And now here we are.
“ When the people says "the government is stupid", it reflects on the people. Maybe they're right: the government is stupid, because the people is stupid and elects stupid people, and that's why we're screwed.”
Yep, George Carlin said this best when he was still alive. Bad Government is simply garbage in, garbage out, if the people are stupid, they will elect stupid people
I went from voting to electoral campaigns to the kind of activism that gets you arrested to working in climate as an engineer. I landed here because the first three were insufficient. I still support and encourage all of it, but the best you can get from voting is creating a better regulatory and funding environment for the necessary engineering and implementation work.
"to the kind of activism that gets you arrested "
Glueing to the streets and alike?
I never found that to be helpful. Preventing chopping down forests to open new coal strip mining on the other hand .. I would be with you.
The latter gets you arrested even harder
Depends how you do it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_Forest
Glueing to streets can lead to terrorism charges, taking part of a demonstration even if it is not a legal one so far not.
(but among those activists there are certainly more radical elements, also actual eco terrorists, they recently showed solidarity to someone who was hiding close there, who made attacks on power plants and transmission lines)
What do you mean? A lot of people got arrested in the course of the Hambach protests
Not the ones demonstrating, but those who threw stones at police and did sabotage.
Again not sure what you’re referring to.
The ones that made Hambach happen were the people that camped there in the woods literally for years in tree houses and they (some of them) also got arrested for it.
The arrests and prosecution I know of, are not because of living in a tree house there.
There was a lot of intentional ideological violence towards police. Part of the reason why I did not engage with them further, but I know people there.
They still camp there btw
> I went from voting to electoral campaigns to the kind of activism that gets you arrested
You make it sound like you proved I was wrong... somehow? I never said "0% of the world is informed and votes accordingly". I said that the majority isn't and doesn't.
Sure, once you realise you personally aren't able to change that, you can move to the next thing that makes you feel good (in this case working on "green tech", if I understand correctly). Some people go live in a hut in the woods.
Doesn't change the fact that the people is the government, and can generally vote for change. But they don't, for many reasons, including "they actually spend very little time thinking about those things". I would argue that most people spend vastly more time saying that the government is stupid than actually getting informed on problems and what it would take to solve them.
"Doesn't change the fact that the people is the government"
That is not true in large parts of the world. Now even the most absolute monarchy has to listen to the people sometimes, but they absolutely can and do choose to do whatevery the small power circle on top wants, as long as the situation is somewhat under control for them.
I think you hit the root causes dead centre there but there's an unfortunate consequence to your argument that you didn't call out.
The only way this changes is if there is real political/government leadership on the issue. That leadership can direct national resources. It can legislate. It can even tax - if necessarily to a very high degree - less useful ways of spending available resources in the private sector to deter waste.
We can't get that kind of leadership in many countries at the moment because too many people will just vote for whichever party they always have or whichever populist nutter has the most convincing sound bites. So before the political problem can be resolved there needs to be much more public education on the realities of the issue.
This is unfortunately a circular argument because the public information campaigns that are needed to fix the education problem are only going to be run by political/government leadership of the required calibre. If anything the populist lightweights will push the other way because dumbing down the voting population helps to sustain their own control and importance.
My hope is that before it's too late there will be enough politicians who are both capable of dealing with the real issues here and capable of taking on the populists convincingly enough to get elected to start moving the needle. Unfortunately I don't really see any other way this gets fixed instead of spiralling downwards.
>1. Get a little bit informed
These viewpoints are exhausting.
A little informed about what? That we are destroying the planet slowly? Yeah, we know.
What is your actual solution? That we tell people they can't have plastic straws? That we need to install solar and wind farms (which is already happening at mass scale in the West, by the way. That includes the US)?
What are you actually proposing? That we "vote"? Do you want to de-industrialize your corner of the world, like Europe is doing, while the rest of the world plows ahead unabated?
Until you're ready to go to war for this, it's unrealistic. And good luck trying to force any country to do anything you want without a well equipped war-machine. You think Russia, India or China care what Europe thinks about their climate policies?
So, yeah, go ahead and vote in your green parties.
Indeed and don't underestimate the influence you can have by participating in candidate selection (depending on your electoral system). For example in the UK the replacement candidate for a safe seat [i.e. almost guaranteed to be won by the party of the sitting representative] upon retirement of the incumbent may be decided by just a room full of people. Be in that room.
> 1. Get a little bit informed. It doesn't require a PhD, it could be done instead of a fraction of the time they spend scrolling bullshit on their smartphone.
The problem is that as soon as you start digging into it, you're essentially walking in a guilt trip.
The kind of "eating an hamburger pollutes more than driving an SUV for 50 miles" guilt trip.
And you realize most of the focus should be on materialism, consumerism and how/what you eat, not just cleaner transport.
But who really wants to do so? I myself am aware that me eating a beef steak per week has a gigantic impact on environment and resources. That switching to pork > chicken > eggs in that same meal would be better.
But I just don't want to enter the guilt trip. So I do a bit, but not as much as I could.
A carbon tax should help there. Make it so me eating a steak is not incentivized. But then good luck with farmers, the easiest like and empathy grabbing category of workers on the planet.
Oh good lord do I hate this "your carbon footprint" rhetoric.
Eating a hamburger or driving a car is not the problem at an individual level.
These companies are: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed... Going to bet not much has changed since 2019.
You can't vegan hamburger your way to terminating those enterprises. You can tax, regulate and ban them though; and use the revenue to help society adjust.
Extremists, as in lumping trump together left wing folks who want a green new deal and to actually do something about the problem?
No socialist/lefty has been elected in the US despite their ideas being super popular. Don't act like voting for a centrist dem like Biden would do anything but ever so slightly slow the climate change scenario we're in. We absolutely need and FDR new deal scope of attack on this problem.
The revisionist history on Joe Biden is insane. I honestly can’t even explain it, other than the idea that there must be an extremely effective opposition campaign to smear him.
The dude engaged in more climate action than any previous president. The Inflation Reduction Act was a huge clean energy manufacturing bill. This is established fact that isn’t even really disputed from what I can tell.
Remember those EV subsidies that disappeared under Trump’s second term? Yeah, those did more to curb fossil fuel consumption than just about anything else the government could have done with direct action. Transportation accounts for 28% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. The US is wildly car-dependent. The government should be practically forcing US auto buyers into EVs through EV incentives and gas taxes.
>there must be an extremely effective opposition campaign to smear him.
In your world, Joe Biden was the modern day Abraham Lincoln, and the Russian propaganda firms are working overtime on HackerNews "smearing him".
In reality, Joe Biden was a career politician because he'd say whatever needed to be said to be elected at the time.
I think it is fundamentally a demographic problem. We have a growing aging population in the worst-offending western countries, soon to be the majority voters (in some countries we are approaching 50% voters above age of 50). Wealth and fortune tend to come with age, so the same group sits on the assets needed to make a change (and are the worst offenders regarding CO2 production). At the same time, this group cares the least about the future livability of the planet, as the worst symptoms will only start to show when they have already passed away.
That is a fundamental problem that you will not solve by asking youger folks, who are actually affected and have all reason to agree and comply, to make a change.
Do the voters matter?
A third of CO₂ emissions come from a country that is not a democracy.
I doubt that even younger folks in developed countries will be affected as drastically as "livability" perhaps implies.
I get the feeling that many are confused and fear the literal destruction of our planet by accelerating warming.
The reality is that the underlying physics fundamentally work in the opposite way, with warming slowing down rather than accelerating. I understand that for warming below 2C, the confidence is high that it is roughly a linear relation to additional CO2 emitted.
I'm optimistic about most things in life, perhaps it's a flaw of mine.
I do think we have decades, if not centuries, to develop solutions to climate change. Our planet will remain livable.
That said, I understand some ecological damage that may occur with global warming could be irreversible, and it makes sense to reduce emissions as soon as possible.
> I doubt that even younger folks in developed countries will be affected as drastically as "livability" perhaps implies.
From what I have seen its more linked to affluence of countries than anything else.
I'm middle aged and have no kids so I probably fall into your category, in the sense that as long as it doesn't bite hard before I go it's in my top 5 political priorities but not at #1.
However my friends who have kids and grandkids care a great deal about climate change and generally do what they can politically (i.e. vote for Greens and so on) within the constraints of life (i.e. they're not out there throwing soup at paintings or whatever).
Maybe that's what it will take. I expect ecoterrorism to become a serious thing in the next decade or two. Who knew the Amish were right all along?
> Who knew the Amish were right all along?
Right about what? When the Amish said that modern technology destroys the family, they weren't envisioning a climate catastrophe being the thing that destroyed the family.
I recently travelled to the old-order region of my country, where I hadn't been in about a decade, and all the old horses in the fields I remember have now been replaced by tractors. Let's be real: They don't fear climate change anymore than the average Joe does. All they have ever feared was families being broken apart by the kids leaving for the big city lights.
I just don't fully agree anymore.
I always cared. But I care more as I age. Why? Because I know (vaguely) the danger and I have ____KIDS____.
Older people usually have kids too. For anyone, ANYONE who accepts/knows the dangers we face to just shrug, knowing it's their own kids and grand kids that will suffer (wars, political upheaval, riots, deaths, migration) - no. I don't buy it.
Principally, it's the ignorance of the people to the things that matters most. Maybe they are partially sticking their heads in the sand a bit. But if it truly was properly reported on prime-time news and so on, they would know, and they would care.
In my experience, being a parent is unfortunately a poor predictor of caring and being ready to act on climate change or its effects.
The split seems mostly generational; my parents and other parents around their age seem to not really care (there are still dinner table debates about whether Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was a scam or not), but as my other-millennial friends are becoming parents, the vast majority of them do care, because this issue has been so front-of-mind for people my age. We're hyperaware of the fact that my country has more wildfires, milder winters, and hotter summers than it did when we all were growing up.
(There may be selection bias at play here; while I don't go out of my way to avoid them, I don't have many friends who deny the issue of climate change).
Many of us are also tracking the second- and third-order effects of these things; crop failures, droughts, and the migration and public services strain that come as a result of this; most frustrating is that the biggest voter blocs won't enact policy that's responsive to this, so when the inevitable (mass, climate-change-driven migration) grows over the coming decades, we'll be unprepared, and we'll either be overwhelmed by the movement of people, or complicit in one of the greatest humanitarian crises in history (and very possibly both).
> But if it truly was properly reported on prime-time news and so on, they would know, and they would care.
I don't know a single person that isn't aware of the issue, it's just a significant portion of them think it is outright fake or they just otherwise don't care because they see it as a lame thing to care about. How does one fix that side of things? It seems a major impediment to any progress.
90% of people are stupid and people who think this deep like you are basically <1%
so better to just live in SF or certain areas of the midwest
where climate change won’t affect me
It will affect you via second order effects
> That is a fundamental problem that you will not solve by asking youger folks, who are actually affected and have all reason to agree and comply, to make a change.
Younger folks tend to be more enthusiastic about "making a change" by direct action means, so you shouldn't count them out!
Individual action isn’t enough and they don’t have the resources.
Which is literally OPs point.
I'm not sure your age cut off is quite right, I'm 50 in a few months and my wife and our friends are all quite "pro climate" (just to easily sum it up), most people I know from the younger end of GenX are... the problem lies just a few years beyond that with the older GenX and up into the Boomers, which is where all the money is.
Yea it’s not an age thing as much as it’s a “I got mine and I’m gonna pull up the ladder and defend it” mentality. Yes, a stereotypical Boomer take, but not necessarily limited to or locked to the entire generation.
> and are the worst offenders regarding CO2 production
Unless you're doing those strange mental gymnastics of entities like oil companies are the emitters and not the consumers, that's not true. Old people who have gained large amounts of wealth have also lost large amounts of mobility and tend to not produce much co2 because they don't do much in life anymore, comparatively speaking. The data is clear that peak carbon emitters are in their 30s-40s, and they're still the ones most often seen crying about not being able to afford a home.
Democracies in general are suffering the fallout of losing its information economy.
From the death of local newspapers, the end of classifieds and the pressures on ad revenues, journalism had no real options but to shrink and consolidate.
The more content we create, the more the market focuses on creating content that could garner attention.
People are going to vote based on the information they have. If they are part of a captive market, then they are going to pick between the choices they are presented or decline to participate.
It’s some sort of irony, that as a society we developed ways to neutralize free speech and expression by flooding the zone with more content, not by controlling content.
I think partly it’s also that democracies aren’t great at longer term planning.
Like in my country there is a big election every 4 years and you have state elections in between. So any government needs to constantly appease the people to stay in power and do anything. It’s basically impossible for them to make and more importantly realise any plans that go beyond that 4/5 year timeframe.
And to solve something like climate change we would need to think in decades or centuries.
I guess that’s why I see a lot more future in China. No need these short term goals. They can have goals spanning decades.
Money/finance is the problem here, we've had the technology to make surplus exergy damn near free (in the ExROEI sense) since the 1960s but financial systems we had in place combined with political reticence and NIMBYISM/Nuclear fears have made the transition to the only energy source than can keep our modern civilization alive unattractive on the fiat ledger, and our civilizational malaise will continue to grow as our useful surplus exergy shrinks and shrinks with the available fossil fuels getting harder and harder (exergetically) to extract. Hydrocarbons were our consumable rope ladder to nuclear fission breeding cycles but we are almost out of remaining rungs to to make the climb IMO. Ban fiat currency, ban debt spending, ban the wallstreet casino and start the most ambitious project in human history to build out massive industrial parks around advanced cycle fission breeder reactors where we perform electrolysis, haber-bosch, direct carbon capture (atmospheric or from industrial exhaust) and manufacture synthetic hydrocarbons, while we directly electrify every single part of our civilization that is sensible to power that way (like homes, offices, stores and consumer transportation) with wind and solar.
> clean energy hardware
This sounds interesting. Tell us more?
Clean energy hardware meaning clean electricity generation, energy storage, or energy management and arbitrage hardware that reduces the need for fossil fuel-derived electricity.
So solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries?
I would add flexible demand response sw/hw and long duration energy storage
And nuclear if you all care about is the carbon footprint.
Not really given how ruinously expensive it is? Isn’t the most decarbonization per dollar the fastest what matters?
It’s not always possible depending on where you are.
Actual real reasons like possibility of continuous dark cold windless weeks in the winter and then the more common/real one. Politics.
Also if someone wants to build nuclear why would you not let them? More production in general is better as long as the public money put into it is the same per kWh produced as wind/solar/whatever why would I care?
Any tips for a senior SWE who would love to move away from coding and into the clean energy space?
I applaud you for considering a change. However, you’re talking about making two career pivots at once, and I would suggest doing one at a time - i.e. either keep coding in clean energy, or do something other than coding, but not both. It’s hard to pivot.
If you want to be a senior SWE in clean energy, the Climatebase rec is good, or https://www.terra.do/, or subscribe to a newsletter like https://www.ctvc.co/tag/newsletter/ that announces when climate tech companies raise money (at the bottom of each newsletter), and apply to open roles at those companies when they start looking to spend their new money, usually ~1-3 months later.
https://climatebase.org
If in the US, never vote for GOP canadites plus vote for progressive democrats.
But we all know the top 1% will make sure the US will never change so everyone needs to make sure they vote.
Paris accords were made on the assumption that each human emits the same. At least the stated goal is 16Gt-carbon-equivalent, and at an individual level 2t/yr.
The usual criticism is that it means every human emits the same, which is extremely tied to consumerism level, i.e. level of living, since in the climate universe, we have far enough access to consumerism and we're not limited by resources, but by emissions. And, like every policy claiming equalitarianism-for-all, it means it's no worth working if you'll have the same right to consumerism. Criminal, hard worker, bad country, good country, all equal humans.
The second criticism is how it's impossible to impose less consumerism to another country, let alone a megacountry, so this climate scheme has always been just about limiting the Western civilization, generally by people who go length to explain what Whites have done wrong in the world.
The Paris climate accord is a racist ideology that means that I should disappear. Typical from the 2012 era, but outdated in the 2020ies, and the more people claim that Whites should consume less, the more the world will burn in flames.
I don’t know. I have honestly given up on humanity. We are so fucking greedy, status-driven, and prone to violence.
We are no longer merit, science driven.
I have been working in Climate Tech for a while but not as long as you.
Unfortunately my conclusion is that Climate Tech companies in general have been delusional thinking the mission is enough and there is no requirement to be a business.
The reason I am saying this is not to discourage from working in Climate Tech. The reason I say this is to please not go in with eyes closed which is all too common.
Climate Tech needs to grow and be sustainable both for the mission as well as a business. And for far too long I feel business smarts have been missing completely in this sector.
I agree with this advice.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are several “climate tech” companies that abandoned the mission as soon as they raise a Series B
Normal people don't care about climate, and 1.5C is meaningless to them.
Pollution in the air they breathe, the water they drink and the soil their food comes from? That's something normal people care about and understand.
Climate change is a branding and communications failure. Fight pollution (bad thing) not "climate" or "change".
Why doesn't anyone understand this and rebrand?
> Normal people don't care about climate
This is not true, it's fossil fuel propaganda that has been very successful. The overwhelming majority of people are concerned about the climate but assume that they are in the minority. See https://ourworldindata.org/climate-change-support for example.
"Fight pollution" is the old approach, it doesn't work as well because greenhouse gases are generally invisible and cause no noticeable short-term impacts, and because in the US the industry has been successful in distorting the law such that greenhouse gases do not legally count as pollutants.
This ignores the big wheezing elephant in the room: climate action is fighting extremely entrenched and monied interests that are betting on dying before the bill for their action comes due and are ready to lie on almost unimaginable scale.
Saying it is simply a "branding failure" is about as accurate as saying "planning failure" is why around 80% of Ukrainians lost power in 2024.
Climate change and renewables are broadly popular causes.
It might not seem like it if you live under a broken political system that can ignore what people want and so that doesn't translate into action.
When you point this out people say, "well it's not as important as cost of living or health or migrants from hot countries or getting out of wars in the middle east" despite it helping with all of those too.
The data says climate change is not broadly popular in the US. If it was, people (broadly speaking) would not have tripped over themselves buying bigger and higher vehicles and bigger houses in further flung suburbs. Not to mention the fierce political opposition to higher fossil fuel prices, which would be the easiest and most direct mechanism to combat carbon emissions.
A major problem, I think, is that humans insist on making everything a big package deal bound up with tribalism and ideology.
If you think climate change is a problem, you're more likely to be on the left of the political spectrum and hold a wide range of other views that have absolutely nothing to do with reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
(I'm not just picking on the left. Everyone does this with everything. It's human primate tribal behavior.)
The constant shifting winds are a result of political shifts and power struggles, often struggles over issues that are unrelated to climate change but are linked to it by this mechanism. It makes rational discourse and consistent action hard. The more bound up an issue is with politics the harder it is to even discuss reasonably.
Of course, people with a short term vested interest in not doing anything about this problem love it this way.
The problem is simple and the solution is to switch to power sources that emit far less CO2 or preferably none at all. This remains true regardless of our political, social, or cultural beliefs. Physics doesn't care.
Yes, it happens, but its cultural not an immutable human characteristic.
People make things that are a matter of opinion (politics, religion, whatever) a matter of identity.
This is worse in the US than in most places, but its become a lot worse in the UK, which I attribute to create American cultural influence, especially as it has come at the same time as specific American ideologies.
> But you, individually, can make the choice to keep your eye on the ball. You can commit to working on this problem until it’s done, no matter what. You can choose to find the others to organize and prepare, so that the ideas closest at hand when the next crisis comes are yours.
Why should the average person reduce his/her life quality in order to save the climate, when the average billionaire emits as much CO2 as one million people from the bottom 90% of the population combined? I do care about the climate, but it's clearly irrational to make sacrifices, when other people are unwilling to do that. Having a higher quality of life is more valuable to me than the tap on the shoulder I can give myself for playing my part in living responsibly.
> I do care about the climate, but it's clearly irrational to make sacrifices, when other people are unwilling to do that
We do irrational things daily in order to live harmoniously in groups. Heck, the entire field of behavioural economics was stood on its ear when they figured out that humans don’t behave rationally in all circumstances. Moral choices are individual. I limit my QOL in many “irrational” ways because it helps me live with myself. Is it enough? Of course not. But we are too outnumbered by the greedy and the defeatists.
> Having a higher quality of life is more valuable to me than the tap on the shoulder I can give myself
It'll only be higher until things reach a tipping point. That point is only getting closer and very possibly within your lifetime.
> Why should the average person reduce his/her life quality in order to save the climate
Read what you quoted again. That's not what it says.
That's an easy option.
But if more an more people changed their attitude, stopped envying jet-setters and instead shamed them for their environmentally reckless attitude, maybe you would see a lot less plane travel, a lot less gas guzzlers, a lot less conspicuous consumption.
Shame works on the vast majority of people. We may lack inherent ethics, but we seldom like to swim against the stream.
> but it's clearly irrational to make sacrifices, when other people are unwilling to do that.
You realize that if everyone has that attitude then nothing will ever change, right? "You take the first step!" "No, you take the first step!"
> Why should the average person reduce his/her life quality in order to save the climate, when the average billionaire
I understand (and share) the sentiment, but there are not that many billionaires. Even if they all suddenly became vegans who never travel and live in a small house, that would not solve the problem. What the masses do is what has to change. How they travel, what they eat and buy and consume, their housing.
There are about 3500 billionaires in the world, meaning they emit as much CO2 in total as roughly 3.5 billlion people from the bottom 90%. They do play a huge part in this.
3.5 billion people are the bottom 90%?
A quick google search indicates that the top 1% accouted for 16% of greenhouse gas emissions. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-emit-much-... Yes that is a lot. But 1% includes many more thn just the billionaires and it also means that if the remaining 99% don't get their emissions in check, it doesn't matter much what the top 1% do, let alone the billionaires.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the billionaires should not do anything. If anybody is in a position to adjust their behavior, it's them. But acting as if as long as the billionaires don't change their behavior, nobody needs to, is the route straight to failure, though it is a very easy narrative for sure.
We are better off focusing on the top 10 countries and just forget about the rest. But we don't we do symbolic things that do not matter. Why?
Top CO₂ Emitters by Total Volume • China: ~13.12 billion tons (9.13 tons per capita) • United States: ~4.63 billion tons (13.59 tons per capita) • India: ~3.15 billion tons (2.19 tons per capita) • Russia: ~2.01 billion tons (14.06 tons per capita) • Japan: ~972 million tons (7.79 tons per capita) • Iran: ~829 million tons • Indonesia: ~812 million tons • Saudi Arabia: ~653 million tons • South Korea: ~588 million tons • Germany: ~580 million tons
No, all CO2 emission must stop so everybody is gotta put on work anyway.
Also, if what you had in mind with "focusing on" is some sort of military solution, you are listing the wrong thing; what you need is a list of top fossil fuel exporters which looks different from the "top emitters" list.
It’s hard to find any really good site for these numbers because it is highly politicized. Looking at this, assuming it’s correct, paints a different picture:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-where-emissions-are-...
“Over the past decade, the fastest growth has come from rapidly industrializing economies.”
It seems that countries have to evolve through this stage before things get better.
“Meanwhile, several advanced economies have moved in the opposite direction. Countries like the UK, Germany, and Japan have significantly reduced their carbon output, largely by phasing out coal and expanding renewable energy.”
Actually what has happened is that we exported our "cleanish" industry to areas that don't care so pollution shot up and co2 as well. The outsourcing fuelled a lot of the co2 production over the last couple of decades. We now have a dirtier and more polluting industrial base world wide than what we had 30 years ago.
Maybe your optimism is what we need, but I don't see the logic of it.
You've seen how the "money can't help itself". Individual choices matter only to a certain extent, and I haven't seen any evidence that "enough individuals making the right choices" is sufficient to effect any measurable positive change.
The logical conclusion of the evidence I've seen so far is to change the system. Capitalism sucks when your goal is not to make as much money as possible. But changing the system seems too hard (and too much like a commie/revolutionary/extremist), so instead people just try to try harder. It sounds almost like a religion (cult) -- if you are not favored by $deity, you don't have enough faith, so try to believe harder and your wishes will be granted.
It's not to say I don't respect your decisions and commitments. Just that there's 8+ billion people in the world and individuals are just one out of 8+ billion, and "try harder" doesn't seem to work so well given these numbers and facts.
What is your approach to changing the global economic system that doesn't involve trying harder? That sounds very hard.
At least if one is attempting to change the economic system, it would be tackling one actual thing that's preventing your desired change from happening.
Maybe it will fail. There's no guarantee.
Most people I worked with in tech cared about things like climate change, but they were making good money and the problem felt so far removed and difficult. What could they do to make a difference? It's always easier to focus on the next sprint, the next title, etc.
I mostly blame greedy billionaires, citizens united, and cowardly politicians, but I have a hard time respecting people making six figures who aren't doing something to improve our broken country, even if it's volunteering at homeless services.
But.. how does volunteering at homeless services help with climate change?
I'm not saying volunteering isn't helping to create a better world, but there seems to be a disconnect in the logic.
> But you, individually, can make the choice to keep your eye on the ball. You can commit to working on this problem until it’s done, no matter what. You can choose to find the others to organize and prepare, so that the ideas closest at hand when the next crisis comes are yours. > It’s the best solution I’ve come up with so far, and in spite of the challenges, it’s still working.
This helped. It’s pretty much the only thing you can do.
The system is looking for growth, not for sustainability, which is someone else’s problem.
Not to mention, this is all going to assume resources in America and issues from an American perspective. Not to ding America, just that the conversation will cluster around the topics that matter to funders.
I just read 'The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry', a selection of his essays and speeches. I'm quoting a relevant chunk of his 2011 speech 'The Future of Agriculture':
What must we do? First, we must not work or think on a heroic scale. In our age of global industrialism, heroes too lightly risk the lives of people, places, and things they do not see. We must work on a scale proper to our limited abilities. We must not break things we cannot fix. There is no justification, ever, for permanent ecological damage. If this imposes the verdict of guilt upon us all, so be it. Second, we must abandon the homeopathic delusion that the damages done by industrialization can be corrected by more industrialization. Third, we must quit solving our problems by ‘moving on.’ We must try to stay put, and to learn where we are geographically, historically, and ecologically. Fourth, we must learn, if we can, the sources and costs of our own economic lives. Fifth, we must give up the notion that we are too good to do our own work and clean up our own messes. It is not acceptable for this work to be done for us by wage slavery or by enslaving nature. Sixth, by way of correction, we must make local, locally adapted economies, based on local nature, local sunlight, local intelligence, and local work. Seventh, we must understand that these measures are radical. They go to the root of our problem. They cannot be performed for us by any expert, political leader, or corporation. This is an agenda that may be undertaken by ordinary citizens at any time, on their own initiative. In fact, it describes an effort already undertaken all over the world by many people. It defines also the expectation that citizens who by their gifts are exceptional will not shirk the most humble services.
>We crossed the 1.5 degree threshold because the money can’t help itself.
Which is why I think we need carbon pricing / tax. If the politicians focused on that then the forces of capitalism and startups would be unleashed to bring down co2. Instead they ban plastic straws while the Chinese burn another million tons of coal.
It could maybe be brought in quite gradually in a decade or two ahead so people have time to install renewables, heat pumps and the like.
> Instead they ban plastic straws while the Chinese burn another million tons of coal.
I know it's easier to blame China than look at what we've done, but:
- The US generates more co2 per capita than China does.
- A lot of what China makes is products that we buy from them.
- The US has about twice as many CUMULATIVE co2 emissions than China does (remember, the co2 stays trapped in the atmosphere)
- The feds have gleefully killed as many clean energy initiatives as possible. Meanwhile, China leads the world on clean energy, has driven down renewable and EV batteries by 90% since 2010, is the world's largest renewable energy producer and investor, and is on track to generate half of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.
plastic straws have been banned for a different reason than fighting climate change: they were the vast majority of trash showing up on shorelines.
I am with you with wanting carbon taxes, but it's not like there's a single issue that can ever be tackled at a time.
Plastic straws are definitely a common form of beach trash, but they were never the "vast majority" of it. Not by item count, and certainly not by mass. They do rank in the top 10, but not at the top.
Ocean Conservancy has annual reports that include statistics from trash cleanup projects. The 2026 report[1] has a "global top items collected" list that covers 1986 to 2026; straws (& stirrers) are 5th at about 16 million items collected. Drinks bottles are number 3 at nearly 27 million. Cigarette butts are top (65 million)
Looking back at the report from the year 2000[2] as a comparison (this one lists numbers just for the year 2000 cleanup projects), straws are number 10 out of 12, cigarettes are still top, various other plastic items (not all of which are classified) are above straws.
[1] https://oceanconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026... [2] https://oceanconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2000...
Isn't the core issue that energy use and economic growth are deeply connected? If America uses a little less thanks to a carbon tax, it will just be cheaper for india and china, and their prosperity will grow more while americas begins to lag?
I think the pollution from the USA are way beyond what's necessary for their GDP
>Instead they ban plastic straws while the Chinese burn another million tons of coal.
The chinese quite literally have greener energy than germany at the moment and are building the shit that you buy off of amazon. China is the only reason the current solar push is as successful as it is. Tame your sinophobia.
line must go up forever, otherwise you are a communist or a luddite it seems.
> At a time when basically all VC funding, and in many ways the entire productive capacity of the economy, is shifting to AI, it would have been smarter in some respects to just pivot to AI. I sat out the crypto bubble too, in which some of my peers made a lot of money by working on projects that were either useless, or straightforward scams.
This is the problem with the "individual action" angle to fix structural problems. While it is commendable that you stood your ground and committed to your priors, structural problems are not fixed by good individual actions.
Capital demands that line goes up. Corporations are optimized to increase profits, all else be damned. Governments are beholden to GDP and Inflation goals, not to degrees Celsius.
A good example is meat consumption. Obviously it would be better for the environment if everyone went vegetarian, but doing so on an individual basis is foolish when governments give subsidies for raising cattle.
In other words, I would vote for banning meat consumption, but until it is tackled structurally, I am eating another ribeye.
> But you, individually,
Here lies the flaw of your argument. You, individually, can't do shit. You can work as much as you want in green tech while another GPU is fried while someone vibe-code their next slop copy of some open source software.
Because, as yourself said, money can't help itself. Self-destruction is inherent to the system. It's on the best interest of every individual to kill the world and keep raping its corpse while it makes another buck.
speaking of meat it isn’t really the subsidies imo.
it’s a political thing. most people are dumb and politics is made for the lowest common denominators.
you’re called slurs if you reject factory farmed meat.
i personally eat a mostly plant based diet and only eat sustainably wild caught fish a few times a week.
meat is like 5x more expensive than tofu. beans and lentils are cheap. i get about 130g of protein a day and my health results are in the 99pct.
we live in a world surrounded by absolute dumb fucks.
the only solution is to make hella money (billions+) so we can control incentives.
> i personally eat a mostly plant based diet and only eat sustainably wild caught fish a few times a week.
That's commendable, but also does not fix the structural incentives for raising cattle to sell meat.
It improves your individual health, which is good. Just don't fool yourself into thinking you're fixing thr former.
> the only solution is to make hella money (billions+) so we can control incentives.
How naive.
When you get there you will be beholden to the same incentives of any billionaire. You, too, will be raping the world at that point.
The system is not bad because billionaires are inherently bad people. A well-intentioned billionaire will be incentivized to be as destructive as their peers by the structure in place.
The problem is that most people do care about the environment but are hopelessly misinformed about what to do about it.
They think that personal acts of minor inconvenience like tolerating soggy paper straws saves the environment while fighting things that actually make a difference, like blocking transit to save a nest of bats; or blocking urban development to provide an extra 3 minutes a day of sunlight on a surface parking lot; or that somehow them flying across the USA to visit a national park and connect with nature or something is offset ecologically by token actions like reducing how many plastic grocery bags they use throughout the year. Most ordinarily people don’t understand the tradeoffs of their choices in the slightest.
And on top of that culture wars and geopolitics is getting in the way of progress - we could be blanketing the world in solar panels and batteries and EVs on the cheap right now, but it’s dominated by enemy #1, China, so we won’t; not to mention that the right in the USA seems to think that renewables are for girly sissies. And the alternatives we have, like nuclear power, are being shut down across EU countries because people have no idea of just how self sabotaging that action is, given that the alternative is going to be fossil fuels coming from Russia and the Middle East. They’d rather die of heat stroke than use energy efficient air conditioning, so the powers of most people’s imagination are shockingly weak.
Popular opinion wants to blame everything on capitalism when the reasons for these problems don’t actually stem from there. Capitalism will be the way out if it’s given the chance, but it’s not popular to say that, so it won’t.
There is obviously a deep desire for personal penance and absolution that manifests itself in the environmental space. (see: paper straws, plastic bags, formerly compact fluorescent lightbulbs, low-flow toilets, etc.) I'm not sure I agree that this fundamentally is about people being misinformed; it seems possible that people would want this even if they were fully clear that these penances were trivial -- even in aggregate -- in the big picture.
I think that people do care about "the environment," but what they mean by "the environment" is much more "my personal connection with spaces that feel unspoiled" than "atmospheric CO2 levels."
Yeah, which is what makes me think that environmentalists are one of the biggest groups blocking the protection of the environment. Mostly concerned with whatever makes themselves feel absolved or at least have a pretty view from their window, while fighting tooth and nail against anything that can actually make a real difference for conservation. The actual saviors of the environment will be the capitalists who manufacture the green revolution at scale for profit, as it always has been for the last centuries of poverty reduction and social progress.
So, the devil comes to Davos and says: "You can enjoy cheap energy, but some poor people in the global south will suffer and die" And after a long silence the US president says: "I feel like there is a catch there, but I just can't figure out what it is"
Except it's not cheaper. 70% of the world import fossil fuels. Many changes are happening because it is cheaper to not do that and use renewables instead. US Presidents are getting involved to stop cheaper energy getting built.
Offshore wind, which is more expensive than onshore wind, is cheaper than new coal in China. New solar and onshore wind competes with fuel costs for existing coal plants.
If anything, Trump fucking around in Iran is helping the switch more than anything, such irony.
Like Putin in Ukraine. But decoupling from Russian gas is still slow going and controversial in Europe, and the "moderate" right is more and more inclined to collaborate with Putin’s little fringe-right helper parties, likely partly because they’re massively bleeding votes and partly out of real sympathies for fringe policies that just used to be unmentionable in polite company.
It's controversial because it's not just about changing gas provider, but paying way more for gas as well.
Americans keep strong arming us into buying their LNG, but we also pay 5 times as much for it as we paid for Russian gas.
And Norway, Algeria, etc and all the other providers know very well that our biggest provider has been cut off, so they can all ask much more.
So it's very easy and convenient to say "why don't you do differently Europeans", but it has a terrible effect on our manufacturing and export bound economies.
If global climate change is a problem, you can't just have some countries deindustrializing and reducing CO2 while others go full bore on scale manufacturing with any form of cheap energy including coal being used.
Plus ironically all of the batteries and solar panels for the West's climate mission will be made in China who didn't deindustrialize, has far lower energy prices, and less aggressive local rules around things like air pollution that let them be manufactured at all.
Meanwhile they are also rapidly going green by adopting this tech domestically since it's highly price competitive due to their manufacturing investments. They also invested heavily in Nuclear (which the government there openly welcomed).
Yes you can. China has barely emitted half the lifetimes emissions of the US because it didn't go through decades of inefficent and polluting technologies. The ozone hole wasn't caused by China.
Same thing applies to those up and coming countries: they immediately have more efficient technologies.
Agreed! If we can’t try and save the Earth perfectly, we shouldn’t try at all.
Well the rich western nations need to sacrifice.
Be a tech maximalist- use tech and will power to pull ahead with green energy. Go hard on batteries and energy storage. I do not even care that I may sound delusional - the contrary doomer viewpoint is deluded in a far worse manner. The things we need either are or are not within our abilities- you will never know unless you try. Resigning with *it’s too hard* ensures we will know that we cannot.
Could someone explain this to me because it nags at me in these discussions. Nuclear - what happened in the West, and why isn't it discussed both to solve high energy costs and climate change. Take three countries.
Germany. Germany seems extremely dependent on natural gas which has connected it to Russia in ways that clearly cause political problems and geopolitical issues.
United States seems to be able to afford it but also dismantled its nuclear power plants. In New York State they got rid of a plant that fed NYC and provided jobs, Indian Point, and energy costs have gone up from what I understand.
France has nuclear but behaves culturally like everyone else, with high energy costs and curious behaviors like keeping AC away from people culturally and legally.
I'm all for progressive change, but what do you tell non-climate scientists? If I live in a northern climate in a wooded area, I can't get solar on my house. I can have an electric vehicle and try to keep usage low in the house, but honestly the rest feels like events completely beyond my control, making conversations like these pretty abstract. Okay, we're screwed in a few decades. What exactly do you want me to do? Vote for Greens who attack nuclear and AC like in Europe?
I would not say people have given up. The problem is that this search for saving the planet and humanity all together is hard to understand for the common folk, much in the same way other banners that have been imposed on people in the past 2 decades.
Common people want to go to work and know that they have a working transport system, that they can walk in between a few streets and feel safe, that they can have enough money for a mortgage and to feed themselves and their families.
None of these things are exactly addressed by putting solar panels, and wind farms all around, especially when the cost of fuel keep rising. When the security of the grid on a once thought-of super-power like UK is constantly put in question.
The common people doesnt care much about these topics and explanations because they don’t have time for it, because they do still need to get on with life. It’s generally youth and retirees the ones gluing themselves to the pavement, have you noticed? whats in common in these two groups is they can both still afford to be idealists.
Then you turn on the TV and see how much damage is being done to the environment in other regions, and so, why do I need to suck it up in my jumper all winter then? Why am I the one using paper straws that break before I finish my drink?
This whole thing was always a tough sale, but it’s gotten even harder in the current political climate.
> None of these things are exactly addressed by putting solar panels, and wind farms all around, especially when the cost of fuel keep rising.
Don't want to nitpick but this touches on a topic I think worth discussing. I feel that for many people, investments in green energy are a needless sacrifice we do for the sake of the environment (and a naive sacrifice at that since other countries can just keep on emitting their greenhouse gases anyway). It follows, since we invest in green this must have its costs elsewhere like in higher gas prices and obviously then people ask -- why should we keep doing this when we are hit with economic downturn?
But really green energy is all about the unaccounted for future costs. We can burn fossil fuels now but we are going to be in a whole lot of trouble when they become more expensive and dealing with their side effects (climate change) will become expensive as well. Green energy is a solution - you don't need to care about high fuel prices and what happens in Middle East if you can get all energy from the sun and wind.
Well the solution is just that green energy is already cost competitive with fossil fuels, so we just need to let the market do its thing and have people buy the cheap thing, which is increasingly green energy.
Yes, totally correct in all points, but people just don't care about the future. I fear it's easy as that.
They aren't having any children, so it's hard to care about 100 years from now.
The argument is, why would the common folk care about the future? Why should they be the ones making the sacrifices if hardly ever they any benefit? None of this concerns the type of person that can easily just move on to green technology, of course not, I am not talking about your average HN user, I am talking about the people that has become ever more invisible, poor and disenfranchised.
For these people, what does the future has to offer anyway? Why do think people are not having babies anymore?
If you live day by day, and that is all you can afford, what kind of future you think people going to try and cultivate?
It’s also about energy security - why expose your energy markets to insane fluctuations in international fossil-fuel markets if you don’t have to? Surely the last few years have shown that energy independence is a critical social and defence policy now?
For many/most countries, investing in renewables is the best, cheapest and fastest way to move in that direction.
Your point about plastic straws reminded me of this interesting article Just Bury Your Trash [0]. There’s an argument to be made that recycling many types materials (except metal) is not worth it. Eg since recycled plastic is more expensive than virgin plastic, it might be better if the money we collectively spend on it could be redirected to something that’s more beneficial to the environment.
And while others have pointed out that plastic straw bans are not about climate change, I suspect many people think they are, lumping together “climate change”, “the environment”, and “pollution” into a monolithic thing. “I’m doing my part” with a plastic straw then as they eat beef, drive an SUV, and fly to vacation (disclaimer I do some of those things).
[0] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/just-bury-your-trash
I was thinking about this a while back whilst I watched someone struggle with their shopping across the supermarket carpark without a plastic bag only to get in a Range Rover. I guess it's a form of moral self licensing[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licensing
Counterpoint: China
Is China going woke and then broke on recycling? Or like renewables and EVs did they put engineers in charge and not Libertarians who irrationally hate all government programs?
https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/articles/chinas-cir...
There is no amount of paper straws that will offset anything the rich deciders do. It's a ploy for time for no reason whatsoever.
It's not even that. If you take a look at videos of India etc you will see rivers full of plastic, plastic rubbish being burned, etc. It's just normal way of life for them.
But we are told that plastic straws are the issue, and switching to paper straws (that you need to use twice as many of when they inevitably dissolve) will solve the problems. Meanwhile, the H&M polyester dress that you wear 3 times before throwing it away takes as much energy as 2000x paper straws to manufacturer.
Chinas expansion of Coal power plants(1), India's behaviour with dirty rivers and pollution, Middle East burning rubber(2) so it is visible from space, etc, are all examples of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory on a global scale.
1. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-coal-power-ri...
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJPxWu0qqiQ
And it gets worse. Like LOOK AT THIS
"the methane emissions alone from Turkmenistan’s two main fossil fuel fields caused more global heating in 2022 than the entire carbon emissions of the UK"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/31/turkmeni...
"The biggest event was a leak of 427 tonnes an hour in August, near Turkmenistan’s Caspian coast and a major pipeline. That single leak was equivalent to the rate of emissions from 67m cars, or the hourly national emissions of France."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/06/revealed...
Seems like a tough argument to make stick. The Chinese & Indians are clearly benefiting more from the economic growth than they are suffering from the downsides of pollution. They would not swap their current environmental problems for clean poverty.
It isn't a broken windows problem as much as drawing 2 billion people out of poverty is more urgent than most other concerns.
Exactly this. Living standards are closely correlated to energy use and no one is going to volunteer to live in poverty.
The environmental movement does itself no favours either by pursuing high social cost but low impact interventions like paper straws and ignoring (or outright vilifying) nuclear as a viable path forward.
Finally, there's a huge disconnect between the (supposed) low cost of renewables and what people experience on the ground. Countries like Germany are a good example of this. The constant refrain is that solar and wind are super cheap and are running more and more of the country, but those savings (if real) don't make it to the average rate payer. Something is clearly wrong here. Either the cost claims are incomplete and don't factor in something important or the auction mechanism used to set prices must be discarded. But the disparity between claiming massive cost benefits while having people pay more sours the public on the technology and destroys credibility.
> The environmental movement does itself no favours either by pursuing high social cost but low impact interventions like paper straws
How much energy has the environmental movement put into the paper straw topic compared to the attention it is continuously getting from those trying to ridicule the environmental movement?
None of my environment activist friends ever talks about plastic/paper straws. They tend to drink straight out of the glass/cup/bottle/can if anything. The only people bringing this up are those continuously pushing against change and those not realizing that it is just a big distraction topic to get people worked up.
It is quite exemplary how often the topic has been mentioned independently in just the discussions of this article.
Please stop falling for this.
If you see a neighbour with an untidy lawn does it make you want to give up keeping your lawn clean?
If the neighbor is on the other side of the globe, hardly makes a difference to most people.
My actual neighbor, gets a talk then a call to the local enforcement agency if it doesn't improve.
>My actual neighbor, gets a talk then a call to the local enforcement agency if it doesn't improve.
Is there a local enforcement agency for... tidy lawns where you live?
Enforcement of tidy lawns is genuinely a thing in very many places in the US.
I suppose homeowner associations are useful for something.
But according to his post it makes a difference? "Why should I care because they are polluting on the other side of the planet?"
It's unfortunate we can't call a local agency to fix their attitude, but at least we can do our part. What it's worth if you don't even try?
You do understand that they are suffering because of choices made for them, by the west? Its our plastic that flows through their rivers.
It's not, it's their plastic, and their choices.
Well, color me surprised, but you’re right: in contrast to china, Malaysia, and other SE Asia states, India’s plastic trash is mostly (97%) self-made, with the largest contributor being single use packaging for consumers.
Another thing that might surprise you is 75% of the waste in the great pacific garbage patch is lost or discarded fishing gear.
What is this nonsense about straws? The reason plastic straws are banned is because they were one of the top 10 things littering European beaches. Indian plastic straws have fuck all to do with littering _our_ beaches.
And why then did plastic straws disapperaed in the US before slowly coming back? The story (in the US) I heard when I asked was usually "because we can and because it is good for the world".
That was a big self-own from a group that thought they have a carte blanche and can just ignore those pesky normies instead of explaining why the changes are good for them, too. And being smarter in picking battles. And minimizing inconveniences from unavoidable sharp edges.
similarly for plastic bags.
> But we are told that plastic straws are the issue, and switching to paper straws (that you need to use twice as many of when they inevitably dissolve) will solve the problems.
Could we please stop with this strawman (sorry pun) topic of paper straws? Nobody claims that they solve the problems and they have just become this distracting meme that ridicules all efforts at environmental protection. Yes plastic straws are bad, no they are not among the top-10 problems humanity needs to address and yes the topic has been blown out of proportion just to make fun of things. If you care, do you not realize that every time you bring this up you are doing us all a disservice?
So, please, let's drop it and focus on actual issues of regulatory approaches to climate change instead.
Were paper straws ever about climate change? This feels like a red herring. Pollution has many aspects to it, and you can work on several problems simultaneously.
No, they are about cleaning up European beaches. Anyone using plastic straws as an argument against combating climate change is acting in bad faith.
I never hear environmentalists talking about plastic straws, only people with an anti-environmentalist agenda.
I would not say people have give up.
On the contrary in fact, I think a lot of people have decided to do something that will have a tremendously positive impact on the climate in the future: they've chosen not to have children. There will be downsides to that decision, but as far as climate goes it's by far the most impactful thing anyone can do.
It's hard to find a coherent perspective where that makes sense. Most parents have had kids when future conditions looked far worse than they do now. The situation actually looks rosy in 50 years given the promising moves the Chinese are making in nuclear and renewable technology.
It is more likely that children are inconvenient to the lifestyles people want to lead. That is more consistent with how bad people are at long-term planning.
Late-stage individualism.
They could off themselves as well. That would help too. 4 billions of years of evolution end with me! What an absurd take. I'd understand one child, fewer than desired, etc.. but no children as a conscious effort to help the climate is something I don't buy that ever happened. Other reasons are at play for that. Nothing to do with the climate.
but no children as a conscious effort to help the climate is something I don't buy that ever happened
That's not what I said. People are choosing not to have children for lots of reasons. One of the benefits is that they end up having much less impact on the climate; that's not saying it's the reason they're doing it.
Until recently I was strictly against having kids because of the world climate, both weather and political. But then my partner wanted them and I couldn't stand the notion of losing her, so I was able to compromise on my ideals.
But yeah without her, definitely.
This is the kind of take that causes more traditional (including right wing, but also people from non western countries) look at climate activists as crazy fanatics. You are technically right, but I think advocating for childlessness causes people to disregard the whole movement as insane.
Rising cost of fuel must be a very good reason to invest in renewable sources, like solar and wind.
The red herring, paper straws, why mention that? It is just some shit that is created to keep ”common people” distracted from the real problem.
an important factor, I believe, is that a lot of "common people" are childless. about half of Western millennials are, and that was the last generation that didn't grow up in the clown world we live in now. zoomers and forth will be even more so.
I don't know why should a childless person give a damn about the future beyond their own lifespan. I think most of them don't, in their heart of hearts, and that's the only logical stance.
Also, what "most people" think is largely irrelevant when it comes to policy.
It’s an equally valid (i.e., not valid) observation that most of the people with children obviously don’t give a damn, or we wouldn’t be here.
Do you not do any good deeds unless they directly benefit you?
>I don't know why should a childless person give a damn about the future beyond their own lifespan.
Pretty wild thing to say. I assure you that almost every childless person cares about someone or something, and would like to protect it.
what percentage of their income does "almost every childless person" willingly sacrifice for some greater good?
how much do they care about the hardships of currently existing strangers, beyond sending thoughts and prayers on reddit?
just consider how preciously few Westerners had gone to die in Ukraine over the past 5 years, despite the deafening cacophony of virtue signaling on the Internet.
You're tying together some pretty far-flung strands of argument there.
Regarding children and selfishness: some of the most selfish people I know have kids. They're selfish in the sense that they only care about their family, even to the detriment of everyone else.
Doubly frustrating when you consider that Americans would actually have needed to backslide on creature comforts for 1.5 to have ever been viable, at a time when people overwhelmingly want them.
This problem starts and ends with corporations and government regulations. It’s barely worth it to talk to people about it right now. Maybe in 10 years when things are a bit more on fire and people are more willing to listen.
>This problem starts and ends with corporations and government regulations.
That's what we have been relying on for the last forty years and we still have an issue.
Corporations respond to demand. If someone is willing to buy a barrel of oil to burn then you can be sure you will find someone else to pull it out of the ground for them.
The problem is: when things will be on fire, it will be much more difficult or impossible to get them back to an acceptable level.
We could all stand to drive less and wear sweaters inside during the winter.
We could all try and do a bit with our daily choices:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/best-source-protein-tofu
Key figure missing in this article is "by how much"?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221214-what-is-the-lowe...
Compared to chicken breast it's about 2.87x less impactful, but the real offender is beef, which has 25x the footprint of tofu.
Overall we really just need to get rid of beef. On an annual basis the carbon footprint of the respective protein sources is:
-tofu - less than 500kg
-chicken - less than 1250kg
-beef - over 10 tonnes
Mix one part peas with two parts chicken and you're around a tonne - a reasonable amount without having to even touch tofu.
> we really just need to get rid of beef
you don't even have to get rid of it, even consuming less beef has significant impacts.
Just consuming the amount that your doctor considered healthy would be a massive reduction for many people.
So you’re voluntarily choosing the higher carbon/infinitly higher cruelty option because… it’s better than beef? I understand beef is the main issue for climate change and that this is a climate change thread, but why not throw some good old compassion into the mix and just stop subjecting billions of animals to the horrors of the industry?
Your numbers for chickens only work if we keep them in the absolute worst conditions for life, jamming them into tight spaces so their carbon footprint is similar to tofu.
JUST EAT THE FUCKING TOFU.
I think you're in a position comparable to me trying to get people to stop throwing their tyres, furniture etc. in the community dumpster (you're supposed to bring them to a municipal recycling center instead).
The people doing it don't care that the HOA (so us) pays a fine for each item and that we were already warned that there will be a doubling or quadrupling of the waste disposal fees. I can ask politely and sometimes it works, but ultimately I can't tell them what to do.
I don't really like tofu and I don't share your values, so I think I'll continue eating chicken breast - just sourced from a place that meets certain standards, as usual.
I don't believe in individual action and regarding eating animals I draw the line at those which don't readily breed in captivity - octopuses for instance.
I get your point but your comment is why people hate us vegans. Stop it.
You are free to be a pick me vegan, I’ve got more integrity than that.
haha first time I'm called that nice. Might be so. Nevertheless I believe that kind of attitude won't bring change and will sow divisiveness instead of co-operation. Food for thought.
The literal death camps where we systematically contain, breed and brutally slaughter billions of what sadly are among the most intelligent animals on the planet are a sight to behold. The amount of untold, unimaginable suffering we inflict without even blinking is breathtaking. By far the most psychopathic, murderous intelligence on the planet worries about AI “alignment” and with good reason: we are keenly aware of what a higher intelligence entails.
Swearing and shouting gets you downvoted. Your opinion and life-style do not. Hugs from another pick-me-vegan.
> We could all try and do a bit with our daily choices:
Or our annual choices - a transatlantic flight is 1000kg vs a steak which looks to be more like 20kg (depending on your source).
A hundred axes we can spin on
So an annual return trip is two steaks per week.
If you don’t want to give up meat right away, at least consider stopping beef. One pound of beef is roughly equal to 8 pounds of pork, 10 pounds of chicken, and 20 pounds of tofu in CO₂ emissions.
Does it account for diary, eggs, leather?
- Beef (1 lb): 0.45 kg (454 g)
- Pork (8 lbs): 3.63 kg (3,629 g)
- Chicken (10 lbs): 4.54 kg (4,536 g)
- Tofu (20 lbs): 9.07 kg (9,072 g)
Ok Ok. Lemme convert that.
One kilo of beef is roughly equal to 8 kilos of pork, 10 kilos of chicken, and 20 kilos of tofu in CO₂ emissions.
Though I agree with you that using metric system is better, here's what's important is the ratio, so the unit is not really relevant.
It's unfortunate it's a ranking... there could be huge or tiny gaps between the entries.
The original source https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-system... links betterproteininstitute.com which then links https://www.betterproteininstitute.com/_files/ugd/7be592_a59...
The emissions for lamb/pork/beef are terrible, beef looks an order of magnitude worse than the rest. The top 10 or so are fairly similar in comparison. Chicken isn't bad comparatively, but tofu still looks a decent bit better.
It depends on how you do it.
Supermarket tofu is around 3 kg of CO₂e per kg. If you fatten pigs in your backyard and butcher them on site you can get pork down to around 4 or 5. I do realize McDonald's isn't doing it that way though.
What's the point of this? You would need to take care of the pigs and have all the infra for that (fixed costs), and tofu still wins?
Because pork tastes better than tofu. It's the whole reason that tofu isn't more popular
For one thing, many people can't afford to feed their family tofu at supermarket prices.
Also, infra? Poor people just call it their yard.
Not many poor people have a yard
My point was that pork can compete with tofu under the right conditions.
Heck, unless you're riding your bike to buy groceries, you will spend more than the extra 1-2 extra kg in gas getting to the supermarket (3-4 miles per kg CO₂e)
In rural areas I’d guess having access to at least a little land is more common. Not that it necessarily makes the original idea practical.
>What's the point of this?
an internet's worth of bacon jokes imply the answer.
Tofu lose soundly in human preference category (well for some people) which they neglected to take in account.
Have you ever tasted good tofu recipes?
Have you ever enjoyed a reverse seared marbled ribeye?
I don't know as I'm not a native speaker, probably not, but I ate meat for 22 years and that included good fine dishes as well. Yet I have been able to find good vegetarian recipes that bring me as much joy as the meat did, but in different ways of course.
I'm glad it works for you. I've rarely tasted a vegetarian dish I really liked except maybe chili made with granulated soy protein rather than minced meat.
My girlfriend was vegetarian for many years, and she put the effort to make tasty dishes (tofu, specifically, always had some marinade). Once she started eating meat again though (and we're talking only white meat like chicken, rabbit, duck, not pork/beef), she almost never eats a vegetarian dish.
There’s plenty of delicious vegetarian dishes. I’m not a fan of the ones that try to be meat dishes replaced with vegetables or anything processed to pretend to be meat.
Vegetables are delicious on their own. There’s thousands of years of cultures around the world making vegetables taste wonderful.
Yeah we people are so different. Why she started eating meat again, was it part convenience so you could share the same foods?
now I'm hungry
Source? Or did you just came up with that category based on your own personal experience?
It's a fun metric the author carefully crafted to justify his vegan/animal rights ideology. Personally, I value food that can provide the necessary micronutrients and macronutrients (including fat, which apparently the author thinks is inherently bad), so I'll continue eating meat and cheese.
There's no need to 'carefully craft a fun metric', if you're honest to yourself you'll notice that plant-based nutrition is the only sustainable way to feed billions of humans on this planet. But I'm curious, which micro- & macronutrients do you think are only available from meat and cheese?
> if you're honest to yourself you'll notice that plant-based nutrition is the only sustainable way to feed billions of humans on this planet
If you're honest to yourself, you'll notice that plant-based nutrition is not a sustainable way to feed billions of humans on this planet, because those billions of people would rather destroy the world than have some vegans enforce their morality on them while enjoying a lifestyle that consumes orders of magnitude more energy than some third world subsistence farmer's chickens.
> If you're honest to yourself, you'll notice that plant-based nutrition is not a sustainable way to feed billions of humans on this planet, because those billions of people would rather destroy the world than have some vegans enforce their morality on them
I’m not even vegan but why drag any morality into it? Plant-based food is less co2 intensive to produce. It’s not a controversial statement. Planet is heating up, also a fact. I get it that it feels bad but lashing out at vegans is not productive. Meat eaters (like me) should have the decency to at least shut up. Own your choices.
I don't travel by plane, live in a urban center without a car, am vegan and buy everything used. Not all vegans are performative. But that's not the point.
Growing soy crop to feed the animals that are then fed to humans is simply unoptimized, you can just grow soy crop for humans to eat and get rid of magnitudes of pollution. That is a fact.
Maybe beside the point, but um, yeah, nobody's going to sign up for a global ban on meat. It would cause civil wars.
Meat isn't a health food. Most Americans eat an unhealthy amount of meat. Especially red meat. You could probably eat half as much meat and not be in any danger of not getting enough macro nutrients.
Which macronutrients and micronutrients are those?
The following come from beef, chicken, fish, eggs, and you don’t get from plants: Vitamin B12, EPA and DHA omega-3, Vitamin D3, Creatine, Taurine, Carnosine, retinol.
Plant provide, but less efficiently: iron, zinc, choline, calcium (some tofu provides, but depends on coagulant used), iodine.
On the flip side, plants provide fiber and numerous phytochemicals that meat, fish, and eggs lack.
>Vitamin D3
Irrelevant amounts come from diet, adequate amounts come from sun exposure. Everyone should be supplementing this.
>Taurine, creatine, Carnosine
Irrelevant, synthesized by the human body.
>Retinol
Best consumed from carrots, sweet potatoes, etc. Only relevant animal source is organ meat (liver), which most people aren't consuming.
>B12
Even meat lovers get deficient on this, dietary intakes are usually inadequate. My mother and sister are rabid meat eaters and supplement it, everyone who has the means to should.
Calcium, iron, zinc, et al. To avoid deficiencies on a plant-based diet, you have to carefully manage your diet around them.
Anecdotally, my sister in law has been vegetarian for over a decade and just recently been diagnosed with anemia.
You can just pop a pill once a day and not care about those.
Also your sister in law hasn't been well informed - it's a known fact that vegetarian diets have less iron in them, and women especially should take an iron supplement because of menstruation combined with the diet. But it's just one pill.
Perfect choice! Just try to keep beef at minimum, if you can, because it is the most damaging one for the enviroment.
I'm surprised that chicken breast is that low in (water) pollution, beating even lentils. Seems like the big takeaway here is really how awful beef is in comparison to basically anything else lol
I'll start the day Elon and Taylor Swift stop flying private planes. I promise.
The world population grows by 200,000 extra people, every day. Keep in mind any adaptations have to compensate for this growth in population, continually, for at least the next couple of decades.
I didn’t think it was growing that fast but it is: https://www.hurtyourbrain.com/p/how-many-people-are-added-to...
Energy consumption per person also has a lot of room to grow. For every barrel of oil eschewed by a relatively rich person in the developed world, there are probably 3 or 4 ready to pickup the slack and increase their quality of life in the rest of the much poorer world.
This is like assuming people in africa need telephone lines strewn to every home in order to have telecommunications. The developing world doesn't need oil. It needs solar panels and ever cheaper batteries.
The growth of energy use is mostly in countries that are industrializing/developing. Places like India/Indonesia/Vietnam/... are where most energy will be added and they'll all add coal.
That would be dumb of them to add one of the most expensive forms of energy
Energy sources aren't perfect substitutes
I didn't know that. Maybe someone could invent a device to convert PV electrons into coal electrons.
No, it’s like assuming people in Africa want developed country luxuries like detached single family homes, individual cars, and flights.
And while telephone wires might not be needed, much more energy intensive infrastructure like water and sewer pipes and power lines are needed.
None of this requires fossil fuels and small rural villages in poor countries are never going to get electricity if they have to wait for large power plants and long distance transmission lines to be built. It makes far more sense for a village to have a solar farm, a battery bank and a small local grid.
I assume current technology requires significant fossil fuels to be used to manufacture and transport the type of batteries that can replace the heavy lifting that fossil fuels do.
We have electric cars and whatnot, but they're still far more expensive than fossil fuel cars with less bang for the buck in terms of power and portability. I doubt we will see cost effective construction vehicles, ships, planes, etc. powered via batteries anytime soon, at least not on a timescale that makes a material difference.
https://www.iea.org/world/energy-mix
22.9% natural gas + 30% oil + 27.6% coal = 80.5% of the world's energy coming from fossil fuels today.
Fossil fuels are still a very powerful, cost effective, and versatile battery compared to electric batteries.
> there are probably 3 or 4 ready to pickup the slack and increase their quality of life in the rest of the much poorer world.
Don't forget that the developed world is falling over itself to bring in never-ending waves of people who normally would have far smaller carbon footprints if they just stayed where they were. It's hard for me to take serious any climate proposal that doesn't at least acknowledge this basic fact.
"But we need them, what about population decline in developed countries?" Yes, what about it? That also lowers carbon emissions.
Instead the pitch seems to be "look, we need infinity third worlders, you're just gonna have to do your part and stop eating beef or driving a car. And pay carbon taxes." Gee, why are people so up in arms over all this climate stuff?
You do know that capitalism requires labor and a shrinking workforce is undesirable for capital owners, right? Do you believe that importing large amounts of cheap, socially fragile (you could just deport them if they misbehave) third worlders is a policy decision pushed by climate activists?
you can have a look at all the underlying impact assessments for food here: https://brightway.eaternity.ch/
> We could all try and do a bit with our daily choices:
Another thing to do would be to not vote more and more for extremists. "It's not working right now, it cannot be worse so I will vote for the most extreme person that says I am doing everything right and foreigners are the problem" is easy, but counter-productive and wrong.
I still don't know what to answer to someone who says "anyway the government is completely incompetent" while being incompetent themselves at the very first opportunity they have to contribute: voting.
Not saying that it is going well right now (it's not). But saying "because it's not going well means that it cannot be worse and therefore I can vote for whoever" is... just idiotic.
This goes for competence, and also for morals: it seems in many countries we now vote in politicians that are massively and overtly corrupt with the reasoning that it won't get worse because previous politicians were somewhat corrupt and tried to hide it).
Everyone's voting for the corruption that they think will help them. It is easy to say corruption is a problem, and everyone sees all the other sides corruption. However, they refused to look at other site is involved in corruption too.
Once in a while an extreme case will get in the news and someone will correct their own size but that is where generally you'll see people defending their own corruption.
Unfortunately the party that claims government can't solve problems can point to the failures they create when they get power to prove their thesis.
Let's be honest. People aren't eating tofu because it's fundamentally not that nice. There's plenty of ways you can improve it, but it just doesn't taste good without effort like most meats do.
Realistically the only thing we'd be able to convince people to do is to eat less beef, but you're never going to be able to convince the population to switch over to tofu
This is a very western centric view, tofu is entirely unrelated to meat, and billions of people love tofu. Nobody needs to switch, it's just its own thing. It's like saying beef is tastier than kidney beans. Ok? Theyre not related at all.
I think it's largely what you are used to. I make an effort to prepare tofu for my kids. I find it "ok" generally, but my kids? They _love_ tofu. It's their favourite food.
I think it's just a matter of adapting, I was a meat eater for 22 years of my life and nowadays can't stand the taste of meat. Tofu tastes awesome when done well.
Buuuut people are different, and I could be an outlier. I just think there's more propaganda to it than people realize, especially currently with fitness influencers boosting meat consumption.
Have you tried eating meat or chicken without preparation? It's pretty disgusting. My mother used to leave chicken marinating in lemon overnight just so it would be edible. With tofu I can just throw some ginger and paprika on it, put it in the air fryer and it tastes awesome.
I hadn't thought of this, just tried in an convection oven and I think I found a new recipe (still needs perfecting). Thanks!
I highly recommend this graphic to everyone:
https://globaia.org/_astro/GA_1750-2024_DARK2.CKx3duw8_ZQd9m...
It lists 24 socio-ecological KPI across the planet since industrialisation beginning - as you can see:
There is not a single KPI where the curve shows even the slightest sign of recovery - and you can expect other graphs of adjacent KPI to show similar development.
In one sentence: There is no chance that humanity will ever come back to any pre-industry levels within the next 500 years. And by overusing our environment, our civilisation wont last 500 years. (sure, some hotspots will survive, but they wont have ASML Twin:Exe machines or cheap flight travel anymore etc.)
> There is not a single KPI where the curve shows even the slightest sign of recovery
ozone, marine fish capture, tropical forest loss, and domesticated land are shown as below peak, aren't they?
True! Maybe its just a slowdown or the first clear signs of incoming collapse of these ressources? Though, domestic land is already accelerating again over the last year, so it will be on par again with its previous high.
And this ensemble is only a collection of some KPI, there are additional ones I guess which will show similar upwards-trend.
The vast majority of countries in the world are aging. "Transistors per microprocessor" and "Phone subscriptions" are weird ones. As if the goal was to have sharp graphs...
> As if the goal was to have sharp graphs
Welcome to capitalism! Task #1: Figure out a couple of numbers. Task #2: Figure out if it's good when these numbers go up or bad. Task #3: Optimize everything against these numbers, never consider anything else but these numbers, they are your life now.
> pre-industry levels within the next 500 years
For instance there are more forests in much of Europe than we did before the industrial revolution, let alone the 1800s. e.g. more of France is covered in trees now than it was as far back as 1300. Of course that's a very narrow and specific "KPI", mostly just shows that humans already had a massive impact on the environment and ecosystems long before the industrial revolution.
The world population graph is misleading. Looking at it one could be lead to believe that in 2100 there will be 13bln people.
In reality by 2100 the world's population will be around 10.2bln and declining from 10.3bln in 2084 or so.
And that also assumes the UN won't revise its projections once again, as every time they did, they had to lower their estimates.
I think they are about to revise their projections again, the population is continuing to decline much faster than estimated.
That is my feeling as well.
I expect a major revision after India's census concludes next year.
We really don't know how many people there are in the world - some countries (mainly in Africa) hadn't had a census in years.
I agree on the "we're on the wrong path" though I don't share your conclusion's gravity, but some of these indicators feel very weird to be included imho. Total FDI and transistor per processor makes very little point on the matter.
Optimistic to think humanity will survive 500 years on this planet.
We are not trying to literally revert the planet to how it was 100 years ago, we are "just" trying to stop these trends as soon as possible so they don't continue for another 100 years. There are going to be consequences regardless, but they can always get worse.
Some of the planet is already much nicer than it was 100 years ago. At least in the European countries that industrialized the first or had high population density even before that.
Most growth is exponential (for a while, as a logistics curve (aka S-curve) does start exponentially), how about showing log(y(x)) instead of y(x).
But not always: if zero is not on the bar chart, e.g. log(y(x)) with [x] = Kelvin, such a plot will of course not work. So keep temperature as temperature increment over pre-industrial times or other baseline.
Also, does coastal nitrogen have three data points, or why the edge in the middle? Scatter charts plus trend are more the real thing than a curve if this is two linear relationships, with a second slope after a certain time, and keep y(x) plotting here, of course.
>There is not a single KPI where the curve shows even the slightest sign of recovery
Ozone, I believe.
Ignoring the overly pessimistic and self-defeating overall tone:
> There is no chance that humanity will ever come back to any pre-industry levels within the next 500 years
How could you possibly predict this? We have moments of time in history which are basically "before/after", and no one saw those points coming until they were in effect. Electricity, atoms, nuclear energy, walking on the moon, transistors, internet, LLMs and more are examples of these things, that were short of impossible, and had lots of people claiming "We'll never do that in a hundred years!", up until we already accomplished those things.
What I'd like to know, is what the point is? Why claim "our civilisation wont last 500 years" and similar, what do you wish to achieve with this? What conversation do you wish your comment to spawn, that people tell you you are wrong? Or right?
It's difficult for humans to comprehend the scale of what it would take to stop the planet from heating up. There are 100+ years of extraction of massive quantities of sequestered carbon from the Earth's crust and burning it now baked into the system, with an approximate 15-year lag on observed atmospheric and ocean temperature increases i.e. the temperatures we are currently seeing are those caused by emissions up to around 2011. Since then, carbon emissions have increased, not decreased, so we have a minimum of 15 more years of temperature rises to come.
As a though experiment, ask people if it would be possible for humans to prevent the tides coming in and out each day. Mostly you will be laughed at. Yet the same people usually think that preventing the Earth from heating up, which is a problem on a similar scale, can be achieved with a bit of recycling, eating less meat and cycling to work.
This single graph [1] is enough to demonstrate that 'solving' climate change is beyond the scale of human capabilities.
[1] https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/?dm_id=world2
I don't follow you. You say that the heating up is caused by "100+ years of extraction of massive quantities of sequestered carbon from the Earth's crust and burning it now baked into the system" but at the same time you say humans, who did the extraction and burning for 100+ years, cannot stop doing it? I mean, reverting the temperature to pre-industrial level it's not going to happen soon in any case, but at least stopping increasing it constantly IT IS a human-achievable goal, by definition.
> Yet the same people usually think that preventing the Earth from heating up, which is a problem on a similar scale, can be achieved with a bit of recycling, eating less meat and cycling to work.
No this is propaganda that fossil fuel companies have successfully imposed on us, that it's the consumers' fault when a large part of the pollution comes from the industrial side. But consumers have leverage in regards to industries - if they stop buying meat, the polluting meat industry would decrease and help solve this problem.
Also what do you suggest? It seems that you are implying that because we can't stop it now, we don't need to focus on the problem and can let it grow even higher?
It’s really not, lots of people have been doing this work for a long time, if you want to understand what it’s going to take you can start here: https://drawdown.org/
The oceans warmed up by half a degree celsius in only 5 years. Everybody talks about air temperature, but the amount of energy that gets stored in the oceans is simply unimaginable. Until now, the oceans have been a great heat buffer, but I fear that this might come to an end.
This. I have, lying around unpublished, a few science fiction novels that I wrote where I assumed we actually did everything realistically needed to stop climate change. Like, not the deal "we make some solar panels but keep all the industries," but the real thing: "we take down the industries, we promote degrowth, we embrace and promote a proper demographic collapse, we shame meat eaters, we put youth into environmental enforcement militias, and we change global culture to embrace all of that."
It's a world that has nothing to do with this one. Of course deceiving ourselves with plastic straws is easier.
I agree in principal, but what is it with the plastic straws thing?
That was never about climate change that I am aware of. It was about pollution, same with plastic bags.
Plastic is a curse on the environment, especially the single use plastic that goes directly in the bin and into landfill or the oceans. Eventually it ends up in the food chain as microplatics.
Do we not want to reduce plastic pollution now? OK, maybe straws are fraction of the plastic pollution created, but surely every little bit helps?
People moan because it is a regular minor incovience to their life. If society can't get over something so trivial we are fucked.
The solution you suggest is necessary sounds absolutely horrible and very anti human.
Well, it does. Which is the problem. We essentially have three choices: one , we walk the knife edge which is our current-day thinking, where we hope that we somehow enable some magical thing--in the future, always in the future--that solves climate change without making life even a little worse for anybody. Two, we do nothing and adapt to climate change however it comes. Three: we do something unpleasant. Four is "go and make colonies in space" but for most folk that's the same as three.
Is it more human to barrel forward filled with greed into extinction? I guess so, sadly
With the way the world is nowadays, maybe a fascist hellhole really is more human to the average idiot.
I hope the evil genius that came up with the idea of making young republican-voting libertarians so angry about plastic straws got a bonus.
Judging by these threads he's pretty much singlehandedly destroyed any attempt to move humanity to cheaper, cleaner, safer, inexhaustible energy supplies.
I don't think it was a republican the one who "destroyed... inexhaustible energy supplies". It was well-meaning environmentalists in Europe who didn't bother with math nor science when they demanded to take down nuclear power and to buy gas from Russia. They were raised in the "end of history" culture of the nineties that was a little too cheerful, but busy shifting manufacture to Asia, and it favored more humanities in schools in this part of the world, in itself not a bad thing, but to the detriment of exact and logical thinking. Maybe all of it made our thinking an easy prey of the people selling the oil and the gas.
Republican or German butterflies (as in "butterfly effect") should not be blamed when they start a big scale avalanche on loose snow.
We have much more than 15 more years of temperature rises to come. It's not like we reached net zero in 2026 or have a plausible plan to reach that anytime soon. Net zero is probably another few decades away.
The point is that even if we did get to net zero today heating would continue to rise for another 15 years. That's what the lag is. Whenever we get there, add 15 years.
True, but not much of an issue I think. I'd assume we reach net zero very gradually and fifteen years before net zero will be pretty close to zero already. But oh well, first we need a clear downward trend of global emission.
The climate change advocates have lost all their credibility by lobbying against nuclear. Because of their religious fanaticism Germany closed their nuclear plants and is compensating for it by burning coal. If this wasn't so tragic it would be hell of a comedy.
> Because of their religious fanaticism Germany closed their nuclear plants
Must have missed when Merkel left the CDU and joined the Greens...
Centralized motivated groups have more political power than their "percentage" would suggest, that's why we have kosher/gluten/halal labels everywhere.
By 2011 hardly mattered anyway. Nuclear was doomed when Western countries stopped developing and building new plants in the 80s and 90s.
There is strong opposition to nuclear energy in Germany, which I disagree with, but I don't think "climate change advocates" (whatever the heck they are) have anything to do with it.
100%, we had a solution to the biggest source of emissions decades ago. The greens across Europe have done more damage to the environment than good.
Given that Germany's coal burning levels are the lowest in over 70 years please do explain how Germany replaced nuclear with coal.
I just can't comprehend why some people get so upset by Germany.
Well point is that Germany's CO2 emissions could be the same as in France had they not stopped building nuclear plants in the 80s and 90s. Obviously the psychosis amongst environmentalists who were hellbent on maximizing CO2 emissions (in addition to Germans electing a Russian agent to lead their country in 1998) was just one of the factors.
Which is crying over spilled milk. We live in 2026.
Today renewables and storage are the cheapest energy source in human history, and is reshaping the global energy system.
Storage still has some way to go until comparing the raw price per MWh ceases to be a partially apples to oranges comparison. You can't really have a stable grid in most of Europe with only solar + wing + storage. Unless you are willing to close down most of the factories during winter amongst other things.
Add a bit of firming and you can. Or just accept a tiny bit of fossil fuels. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
We still need to decarbonize agriculture, chemicals, aviation, shipping, heavy industry, construction and so on. Most of which use either chemical energy bearers, or fossil feedstock.
Siphoning off a tiny bit off that for grid firming duty is trivial. Or do sustainable biofuels from food waste and so on.
Which is also what the system studies lands on. Finding that adding new nuclear makes it far more expensive.
This kind of reasoning is exactly the reason why we're screwed. "I am smarter, it's because of them". "Look how good I am at criticising people without any nuance".
> The climate change advocates have lost all their credibility
If you think there is a need for "climate change advocates" at this point, you're a moron. Climate change is a scientific fact, it doesn't need advocates. It would be like criticising "gravity advocates".
> by lobbying against nuclear
Again that's a completely stupid take. A subset of the people you criticise lobbied against nuclear. And by the way nuclear energy does not magically solve all problems.
> If this wasn't so tragic it would be hell of a comedy.
What's tragic to me is that everybody is very keen on telling how everybody else is stupid, usually taking big stupid shortcuts showing that they are actually not better.
Sure, nuclear is a good tool that we should leverage. But the reality is that the situation is such that we need to change a bit of everything everywhere, and the first step to do that is to realise it, accept it and vote for it. What do people instead? Say "it's because of those other people, I am better, and I will now vote for an extremist because my lack of common sense tells me it cannot be worse".
> Sure, nuclear is a good tool that we should leverage. But the reality is that the situation is such that we need to change a bit of everything everywhere, and the first step to do that is to realise it, accept it and vote for it. What do people instead? Say "it's because of those other people, I am better, and I will now vote for an extremist because my lack of common sense tells me it cannot be worse".
It might be worth voting for an extremist if that extremist being in a position of power keeps people out of power who would otherwise work against nuclear power plants; even if the extremist himself doesn't care about nuclear power one way or the other.
History shows that very smart people and even groups of very smart people can do remarkably stupid things, pointing out their obvious errors is not a statement of intellectual superiority.
> What's tragic to me is that everybody is very keen on telling how everybody else is stupid
And yet your comment repeatedly tells this person how stupid they are, even going as far as calling them a moron. Take a step back.
This comment shows how much disinformed you are on that question.
The temporary transition to coal was studied long time ago and identified as the best solution even though it would increase CO2 for a small time. But in compensation it would allow to transition faster to green energy thanks to savings done on nuclear, hence overall reducing faster CO2 emission.
> The temporary transition to coal was studied long time ago and identified
When and by whom? The "phase-out" in 2002 was enacted by a government led by a person who later turned out to be a paid Russian agent. How did that work out? Germany did almost nothing for 10-15 while it increased it's dependency on fossil fuel imports from Russia...
why would you have such a phase? why turn off nuclear before you have your renewables in place?
What about the savings, I thought nuclear was the cheapest form of energy
It certainly was in the 80s and early 2000s if negative externalities like CO2 emissions were factored in (of course nobody cared about that back then)
Another issue is they’ve lost their credibility going all in on geopolitics (Palestine) and being anti development which makes it impossible to create green energy and denser energy efficient cities
Unfortunately, even if we exceed and then bring temperature back to 1.5 degree over preindustrial, the damage has already been done. Many ecosystems and species will be lost, and many of the feedbacks (for example arctic sea ice) have hysteresis in them which will not get us to the same state even though nominally our temperature will be lower again. And because of hysteresis, larger reduction in CO2 might be required to get us back to 1.5 degrees.
That's why all this CO2 capture and drawdown using some kind of unspecified, new technology, is such a distraction. Ideally we shouldn't release the carbon in the first place.
> the damage has already been done
"I lost a finger, the damage has already been done. No need saving my arm, you can go ahead and cut it".
Unless you meant "Damage has already been done, there is a lot we won't get back. And that's exactly why we should now fight to preserve what we can"?
That's not what I am saying at all, I am just pointing out that venturing to 2 degrees (or more) and back to 1.5 degrees incurs the cost. Maybe it's well-known at this point, and I am just stating the obvious; but it's not my general impression.
CO2 capture is obvious greenwashing, just like electric personal cars. They're here to save industries, not the planet, I don't think anyone half serious believes anything other than that
Yes on CO2 capture, but electric personal cars are substantially lower emissions than internal combustion cars. Anyone saying something different is pushing fossil propaganda - that is just not a fact-based argument.
Yes, getting everyone onto electrified public transport + scooters is better - but EVs do provide meaningful emissions reduction.
Maybe, but cement manufacturing by itself is responsible for a staggering 8% of global co2 emissions. And we really don't have a viable option for replacing cement, and probably won't for a long time. Capturing and removing that co2 has a meaningful impact. Even if CCS were limited to just that one industry.
There are absolutely viable ways to reduce concrete emissions by about 30% - but it is staggeringly difficult to get the construction industry (including architects, structural engineers, standards bodies etc.) to change practices.
You could apply it to existing power plants for example. I could see a use there.
But don't use it as a justification for a new coal plant saying it's zero carbon now....
with fusion you would have enough energy to do it?
We have biggest fussion reactor available to us on the sky everyday relatively for free. But that won't stop our greed and overpopulation.
It always puzzles me when people think fusion is just infinite free energy. You're not just gonna have one fusion plant producing a billion zetawatts of electricity. Each fusion plant will likely produce roughly the same as a large nuclear plant. So we would need to build hundreds/thousands of them, it would take many decades to build them. Fusion reactors are extremely complicated machines.
And even if we did this, we would also need tens of thousands of carbon capture facilities, and the infrastructure to actually store the CO2 somewhere.
Carbon capture (from air) is just completely infeasible. It's not even remotely realistic. There is absolutely no way it will ever make a significant difference.
It’s pretty easy to see how electric personal cars make a difference even if the initial vehicle manufacturing process is indeed dirtier, and plenty of serious people consider them a part of the solution. CO2 capture also isn’t greenwashing, it’s just handwaving away problems with the idea that tech will somehow save us, which is also true for like… every single solution to this problem we’ve considered.
Both perpetuate the idea that we can just continue business as usual and that we'll find a magic solution later.
2 to 3 tonnes of metal and batteries to transport 75kg of meat and sit uselessly 98% of the time is not the optimal way to transport people, no matter how you look at it
"the damage has already been done" is dangerous wording, because it implies that we won't cause more damage. However, we will cause way more damage than has already been done!
CO2 emissions trading is greenwash. CO2 capture not necessarily so. It could be a useful tool, so long as it's not used as an excuse to launder other emissions.
Carbon offsets are greenwash. Emissions trading mostly works, because it's just about the government setting a quota and then letting people figure out who gets to use it.
CO2 emissions trade for about 50$/t. CO2 capture costs 500$/t. So, both are useless - it costs 10 times more to get the carbon out, why are we selling them so cheap, it costs 10 times more to get the carbon out compared to not emitting it, it will never be economical.
A while ago (years ago?) I read something about how carbon capture is so energy intensive that it doesn’t really help much. Is that still true?
I guess if you powered it with green energy, that’d be a net positive?
Yes, but in an indirect way. Direct carbon capture (DAC) is so energy intensive that it's only viable in places with 100% clean electricity, like Iceland. It's a non-starter in most countries.
However, places that have 100% clean electricity are often isolated. You need to ship in all equipment, which is made elsewhere, and fly in all personnel. This quickly adds up:
https://heimildin.is/grein/24581/climeworks-capture-fails-to...
Capturing carbon from the source, like a coal power plant, is much easier. But the capture rate is only 50% on average, so a coal power plant with carbon capture is still horrible while also ridiculously expensive, so it doesn't really make sense.
> That's why all this CO2 capture and drawdown using some kind of unspecified, new technology, is such a distraction. Ideally we shouldn't release the carbon in the first place.
But imagine your oil and gas...
One way to keep your expertise be valuable is to offer the solution to the externalities you produce. By proposing to store that externality using your drilling/rig assets. It's a win win, for the company, a loss loss for everyone else.
It was still worth it on the metrics most people care about: life expectancy, child mortality, poverty, food security. Cutting off cheap fossil energy decades earlier would have been far worse for humanity than the slight warming we're getting now.
To be fair switching to nuclear was an option in the 70s-90s. Obviously it would have a been a bit more expensive but it would have slowed down climate change by 10-20 years.
On average, maybe yes. But in the rich world we also used a huge chunk of fossil fuel for relatively small marginal gains in quality of life (adding a fifth weekend shopping trip per year, buying a superyacht), and sometimes worsening life expectancy (driving too much, eating too much beef).
Why should I believe your assessment that a huge chunk of fossil fuel use by the rich world went to "relatively small marginal gains in quality of life"? I think they went to massive quality of life gains for huge numbers of people, and that suddenly removing fossil fuels as an energy source would be catastrophically bad for huge numbers of people, and not obviously worse than the effects of global warming over a comparable timeframe.
I never suggested we should suddenly remove fossil fuels as an energy source, that is a huge exaggeration. We wouldn't have needed to do anything suddenly 40-50 years ago when we started to understand that there was a problem, and we won't suddenly remove fossil fuels in the upcoming few years either.
But that is also a false choice: Not all CO2 emissions in the past 40 years were net beneficial. I firmly believe humanity would have done better with fewer (not zero, fewer) flights, less (not zero) beef, and fewer (not zero) fossil fuel car journeys. All while continuing to raise people from poverty and providing real improvements, of course.
We could have just built nuclear power plants. Invested into the technology, built breeder reactors and all that. We wouldn't have had to sacrifice anything, except of course for the astronomical profits of oil and gas companies.
And sure this wouldn't have solved the entire problem, electricity generation only accounts for like 40-50% of CO2 emissions or so? But it would have made a huge difference, and allowed us to focus entirely on the other half of the problem.
And it's not "slight warming". 20,000 years ago the global average temperature was about 3 degrees celsius lower than the reference point. That was the last ice age. Today we are 1.5 degrees above the reference point, 4,5 above the ice age. In a few decades we'll be at 3 degrees above reference, 6 degrees above ice age.
The transition from ice age (-3) to the temperate climate that allowed humanity to thrive, took place over about 12,000 years. The transition from reference to +3 is taking place over about a century. And we won't stop at +3, it'll keep going. Already at 1.5 it's having huge profound effects.
Look at this chart, this should help you understand the severity of the situation. https://www.dpg-physik.de/veroeffentlichungen/publikationen/...
This is literally the end of the world as we know it. It's already well on its way. We are already seeing widespread crop failures, water scarcity, blistering heat waves, extreme weather etc. It will get much worse, this is just the beginning.
> That's why all this CO2 capture and drawdown using some kind of unspecified, new technology, is such a distraction. Ideally we shouldn't release the carbon in the first place.
This is in my amateur opinion, an absolutely bonkers and crazy stance. I can't understand why any pro-green person would affirm this.
There are two facts, (again, imo) one - all our emission reducing efforts would maybe slow their acceleration or in other way to frame it, maybe we collectively would cut tens percents of annual emissions. We, humanity, will a always emit a lot of CO2 from the sources we can't reduce without going full stone age. Fact two - there is a lot of CO2 and other GH gas in the atmosphere now and even more would be there tomorrow. We MUST remove it somehow. Like, there are literally two components - either we remove the insulator (CO2&Co) or we remove the energy (sun rays). We can't do either of course, yet.
The more greenwashing and muddying happens, with overfocus on cutting emissions while deliberately skipping RnD on the CO2 capture or sun shield tech, the more humans will be fucked in future.
Or to provide a different analogy. We are in a completely closed system here, an oven. Turning the regulator from III to II helps of course, but the meat will eventually cook either way, unless either the power is disconnected or the insulating door is opened.
Fully agreed. We're not gonna get out of this without something a bit crazy, and CO2 capture at least has an actionable theory: "what if power was 10x cheaper". That's imaginable at least, much more so than "what if we committed a few genocides" as was proposed elsewhere in this thread.
The bonkers crazy stance is yours. Carbon capture cannot work. We would need to build at the very least tens of thousands of carbon capture plants, way more than we currently have power plants.
So to me, the bonkers crazy stance is "let's just continue destroying the world, and hope magic future tech will save it". Especially when the tech you're talking about it just completely obviously entirely infeasible. Add to that the fact that we are destroying the world now. The ship is currently sinking. A solution in 50 years is a solution 100 years too late.
The actual solution that we do have is nuclear power. We could have replaced all fossil fueled power production decades ago if we wanted to. That would have reduced our emissions by nearly 50% and we would have been able to put all our efforts into solving the remaining half of the problem.
As it stands right now I fully expect the world to end quite soon. Maybe within my lifetime. Unless I die early I'll definitely see +3C in like 20 years or so, and probably +4 and +5 as well if not even more than that. I'm not having children because I don't want to put someone into this world just to suffer through the end of it. I have absolutely no faith in our ability to solve climate change. I believe we could have, if the world wasn't full of corrupt rich people and stupid people voting for them. But it is what it is. We've doomed ourselves and we're watching the end unfold before our eyes while everyones like that meme with the dog in the burning house saying "this is fine".
First - I'm well aware about CO2 capture being a fantasy and not viable today. The "tiny" problem is that it is still one of the 3 possible faint solutions to overheating and we WILL need at least one of them operational in the next 50-200 years. If we won't start the RnD today, then it would still be a fantasy in a century or two, when we won't have any time left to play around.
Second - where exactly did you get a notion that CO2 capture = "let's just continue destroying the world"? Of course every other tech should be mobilized and improved too in parallel.
Third - nuclear generation at scale is as fantastical as DACs. Please read about actual issues with real life construction of plants and about actual emissions attributed to each plant cumulatively, without greenwashing like selectively ignoring whole parts of supply chain and maintenance and decommission. I love nuclear energy btw, despite literally suffered through the worst accident in their history (I'm from Kyiv) along with my whole family. We do should construct more of them and SMRs can't come quick enough.
Fourth - there is a collective delusion that moving 100% to renewable energy would cut emissions by 50% or any other similar fantasy number. In reality the whole world energy generation is only 1/4 to 1/3 of all world emissions, and course the so called "net zero" or "carbon neutral" catchphrases are greenwashing, it is impossible. A 100% world renewable generation would only cut part of that part of global emissions. So let's say renewables reduce energy emissions by 50% or maybe even 75%. So then the non-generation emissions would decrease by only 15-20% (for example Xnew = Xold * (1 - 0.25 * 0.75) = 0.8125 * Xold or 18% decrease in other words). This is what is often ignored in a green advertisements.
> The "tiny" problem is that it is still one of the 3 possible faint solutions to overheating and we WILL need at least one of them operational in the next 50-200 years
We need them now. We currently don't have any time left to play around. In 50 years the global average temperature will be somewhere in the 3-5C range, which is apocalyptic. We'll be too busy fighting wars over water and arable land etc, to do anything meaningful about global warming. My view is that capturing CO2 is hopeless, what we need to do instead is simply not emit the CO2 in the first place. But we aren't doing that, we're just building new coal/gas plants every year instead like a bunch of idiots. Because that's what we are. Bunch of morons who are dooming ourselves. Whatever money is earned burning a ton of coal/gas, it will cost multiple times that amount to sequester the resulting CO2.
> where exactly did you get a notion that CO2 capture = "let's just continue destroying the world"?
I view it as an excuse to continue burning fossil fuels. It's not actually a solution to the problem at all, but it's presented as a solution when the reality is that it simply will never make a dent in the actual problem. There is no money in CO2 sequestration. We have a huge amount of investment in fossil fuel extraction and power generation etc because it makes money. CO2 is worthless, the only way anyone could possibly make money capturing CO2 and pumping it into the ground is if states paid them to do it. So a much simpler solution would be to pay them to generate clean power instead. "But where would the money come from" I don't know, where will the money for CO2 sequestration come from? We can't afford to pay a little extra for clean energy but somehow magically future us will be able to pay way way way way more for CO2 sequestration? It's not going to happen.
> Third - nuclear generation at scale is as fantastical as DACs. Please read about actual issues with real life construction of plants and about actual emissions attributed to each plant cumulatively, without greenwashing like selectively ignoring whole parts of supply chain and maintenance and decommission.
Google AI: Nuclear power plants produce zero direct carbon dioxide emissions during operation. Across their full lifecycle—including uranium mining, enrichment, plant construction, and decommissioning—nuclear energy averages about 12 to 50 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2e/kWh), making it one of the lowest-carbon electricity sources available.
Solar PV: ~85 g CO2e/kWh Wind: ~26 g CO2e/kWh Hydroelectric: ~26 g CO2e/kWh Natural Gas: ~499 g CO2e/kWh Coal / Lignite: ~888 to 1,054 g CO2e/kWh
There are over 400 operational nuclear power plants in the world, the technology clearly works. Yes Chernobyl was terrible, it was caused by the dysfunctional Soviet Union political environment, it's not a fault of the technology itself. The state withheld information about a critical flaw in the reactor design. Coal kills more people in a week, than nuclear has through its entire history.
> So let's say renewables reduce energy emissions by 50% or maybe even 75%.
As you can see from the numbers I shared above, renewables cut emissions by over 95% compared to coal, 90% compared to gas.
I'm not saying we could be entirely carbon-neutral. I'm saying emissions from electricity generation specifically, which according to Google represents over 40% of CO2 emissions, could be almost entirely eliminated. Instead of 40% it could be less than 5%. From there we could work on other things such as shipping, farming etc. Maybe we'd just stop farming cows. I love beef but I'd be okay with that. Aviation could go as far as I'm concerned. I love vacationing but I'd rather have a planet that's going to continue being habitable. I could still go pretty far using trains, electric buses, my own electric car etc. Shipping could be electrified - nuclear submarines and warships already exists, that could be an option. And yes, I know all these solutions don't eliminate 100% of emissions. But they eliminate a large amount of them. EVs, over their lifespan, cause 60-70% less emissions than a comparable fossil fueled car. Yeah it's not 100% but it's a whole lot better than 0%.
All the "solutions" to global warming are entirely fictional. Yet we keep barreling headfirst into it, because the world is full of idiots who aren't taking the problem seriously. Any rational person who really understands what's at stake would happily sacrifice some comforts, but most people aren't rational, they don't trust science because they don't understand it, and the rich control the propaganda machines that fill their feeble minds with bullshit instead.
I agree with the second paragraph. It seems as if some among the industry see a simple cash grab here.
I think its more they don't have to reduce their pollution output. They can just pump it all out as much as possible, to make as much profit as possible, and "hope" a magical reversal tech arrives at some point in the future.
It's basically no regulation, to only focus on profit.
It's the fossil fuel industry who is pushing for carbon capture (because they know it isn't viable). The fossil fuel industry is just running the tobacco company playbook.
From the report:
"Under current policies, only six G20 members (China, India, Indonesia, Russian Federation, South Africa and Türkiye) are assessed as likely to achieve their unconditional 2030 targets, while the assessment of the European Union is inconclusive. Overall, this suggests limited progress in narrowing implementation gaps across the G20."
"All G20 members except Argentina, Saudi Arabia and the United States of America have new NDCs with mitigation targets for 2035."
It is very important to add that not all targets were created equal in the agreement, that was a major part of the negotiation. Not saying anything else, just that a simple reading of that statement might make you come to an underlying conclusion that isn't correct.
Correct. For instance, still today China burns more coal than every other country combined. They are starting from a place that is so bad that even small improvements will look like huge gains.
Also, I read a few years back an explainer about China internal issues in the scope of energy generation. We westerners think that China is monolithic monarchy of sorts and everything "happens in China" is representative of the country average. Well, apparently it's not. According to that analyst, every province is semi-autonomous and reluctant to cede power to the central govt. or neighbors. So all the new fancy solar installations are logically in the low population western provinces, and connected to the grid there. And in the east there are still a lot of local coal generation. And eastern provinces are simultaneously way more populated, way richer and have way bigger modern crisis threats (housing, inflation, unemployment, job and study application saturation and over competitiveness etc.). So now the provincial govt. is facing a threat of losing both local power generation, profits from running a coal plant business, and the most important yet another job loss prospect from shutting down plants and all the related infrastructure - shipping, storage, management, distribution etc. Bear all costs and get zero gains.
So I suspect that there will be two mostly independent trends in China (and other industrial places like that) - solar installation will grow, but coal use won't be meaningfully cut without huge HUGE help from central and foreign powers at once.
China’s coal use has shifted from decades of rapid expansion to a historic decline. Coal’s share of electricity generation dropped below 50% for the first time in 2026 (reaching 49.7% in the first six months), down from over 75% in the early 2010s and a peak share of around 81% in 2007, driven by massive wind and solar growth.
It has still grown in absolute terms although even that seems to have flattened off in the last couple of years.
There was no coal for generation consumption decline in China, yet. You look at the relative units (percentages), but instead check absolute units. The consumption steadily grew up until 2023 and now it is flat for two years, but it is not yet declining. So all the existing coal generation is running as it were, it's just the new plants maybe aren't constructed. But we are far away from the "deliberately early decommissioning" stage.
It's not just a matter of population density, the sichuan basin and most the east coast is just doesn't get much sun/wind. If not for these 'resource provinces' they would've just gone full on coal.
That too, yes
The propaganda spilled since the 1970s by large cooperations and politicians had two effects. People understand the problem is huge, and worse, they feel they cannot do anything about this issue themselves.
What we tend to forget is that large changes in society tend to start with us. Try eating less meat, eat healthy food, reduce car and plane usage when possible, buy less stuff (especially online), these are things anyone can do (rich or poor). When you start, family members and friends might follow.
From there, more people will try to change their consumption, and when enough people do that, politicians that are willing to tackle these issues will be elected. And when politicians are elected at some point your government will take the right step. From there we go to countries and eventually a large part of the world will do what must be done to survive.
You want a better world? Start by improving your own life and health.
>You want a better world? Start by improving your own life and health.
Not trying to have a gotcha win here, but I don't agree with the sentiment that it falls on the individual. Here's why
"From 2016 to 2022, 80% of global carbon dioxide emissions were produced by just 57 companies"
https://climatecontroljournal.com/compared-to-individuals-ho...
Well, but the companies exist because people buy their products, right? If I buy pork from a farm, CO2 was technically produced by that farm, but it's on me.
Ultimately those 50-cent companies are making things that we buy. Even if they're selling to another business, that other business is selling to you. The chain might be long and hard to figure out, but it all comes down to you.
I guess I can see that. And I can't help but make the most ethical choices I can. And I know for a fact that it has inspired other people in my community.
Is there any precedent for the majority of humanity to do something for the common good without being physically coerced to do it?
This is feel-good bullshit. The thing that will actually make people stop burning so much fossil fuels is if gas costed $50 a gallon and everyone who drives a car for any reason is thinking about this number before they use their car. Which is absolutely the sort of state of affairs that large numbers of people - and not just in the rich world - would legitimately riot about.
Fortunately we don't need $50 gas because these days we have $1 gas in the form of electric cars. Of course the price of electric varies very much from place to place. For some people electric cars are not competitive with gas but for other people electric is a lot cheaper and has been for a long time and now electric cars are practical.
The other thing you can do is start demanding better transit. Most people live in a city dense enough that transit could replace nearly all their transportation needs. Sure, we would still have to have trucks to get freight around, but that's a small minority of the energy used.
Human greed will lead to human extinction. It is a foregone conclusion, too many would rather die owning the latest iphone or latests trends than care about the global whole. You see it all around us, between the Congo, Sudan, Palestine, Ukraine and so much more... we just don't give a shit.
In summary, we are the architects of our own demise. (this is not pessimism, but realism)
Extinction means zero humans left, which is highly unlikely as we are a very resilient species. A global collapse is more likely sometime in the future, but even then some countries and communities might just keep going on.
To be honest, no company wants to lower their income. This is institutionalised (i.e. the stock holders will throw you out if you decide to lower the income)
That's why they are selling us new cars instead of converting the old ones to electric or semi- electric drive. The amount of CO2 emitted on the new car creation and shipping is tremendous. The same with phones, washing machines etc. And now AI. It should be done on optimising (the software, the reliability), not creating new and throwing out the old ones
Utter nonsense. This is not realism. This is your weird negative way of looking at the world.
A lot of European countries are now generating most of their electricity from renewables, and it's being built out rapidly. We can now produce grid-scale storage at lower and cheaper prices. In places like Texas, this is happening at a breakneck speed.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-mix?source=to...
Also developing countries are adopting solar panels and batteries at a surprisingly fast pace, since they just buy them for cheap from China rather than waiting for a dysfunctional government to build out a proper grid to rural villages.
Eventually of course this must be true, but eventually is a very long time and thus not susceptible of reasonable analysis.
I think a realist would likely imagine a long period of suffering and confusion rather than extinction (which is actually a sort of psychic panacea).
People are still talking about 1.5C at 2100 as if it's not some high fantasy? :) Wake up, it was greenwashing all this time. The question is rather are we lucky to have 3C by the end of the century, or the hot models are correct and we'll get 4-5C. That's the question. 1.5C... Phah! Fun joke :)
As much as I agree climate change is an important topic, I hate the rhetoric of "irreversible changes". Of course they're irreversible! Change is the only constant.
On my last vacation I came across a similar message on reddit[0] and it totally spooked me. I have been telling my wife I want to move as my area (at some point) will be flooded. I live in the Netherlands and when the icecaps have melted (WHEN not IF) I live in the wrong part.
[0] https://reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/comments/1vejkf4/i_am_a_...
the thing with the climate goal is just an arbitrary number to the person on the street.
for us that come from poor countries - it fuels degrowth. you want us to shut down coal plants & yet you don't want us to trade with china.
even in rich countries such as Germany - cost of energy has been a factor in slowing down growth because bureaucrats said so. while private planes keep flying, good keep getting shipped from overseas.
china has enabled cheap solar - which in turn has enabled cheap access to electricity. china has enabled cheap electric vehicles. for a bunch of people in 'poor' or 3rd world countries - in the next few years their first cars will be chinese EVs not Japanese 2nd hands or other 2nd hands from western countries.
https://nowcity.org/ - Now City is an experiment in long-term urban planning based on the course we’ve set for ourselves, including complete loss of ice and roughly 4°C of warming with the associated shift in the human climate niche. This map accounts for the new hazards and new opportunities, and attempts to anticipate how populations might migrate and settle.
"While running for president in 2024, Donald Trump told oil and gas executives that he would pursue their policy priorities if the industry raised $1 billion for his campaign—and after returning to office last year, the Republican did just that, enriching those invested in fossil fuels, including himself, at the expense of the public and planet."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-oil-executives-1-bil...
It's hilarious that the EU is busy putting tariffs on electric vehicles and blocking nuclear power... but they still call it an "emergency".
Nah, that is actually logical and helpful for ecology. Just in a roundabout way. EU is for now a spearhead in all things pro-green so to say, at least on paper. By protecting local economies via tariffs (foreign EVs, foreign uranium fuel rods etc.), EU will continue being a power block and continue influencing other countries to be more green too.
What is bad, is a the lack of a coherent and realistic green programs and climate forecasts in EU as a whole. There are no incentive programs to switch to expensive one time EV purchases and charger installations (I tried to research what what would it cost to install a personal charger in my freshly constructed 2024 apartment building parking in a big city, the AI app called me a fool, well almost(1)). There are no coherent plans to expand charging networks at a state or union levels.
There solar panels, V2G, B2G, multizone electricity meters, dynamic tariffs, incentives, all are either non-existent or very spotty and organized at local levels.
There are no union wide help to transition from coal, oil, gas to relatively greener energy.
No re-foresation incentives and little to no marine protection.
No preparation for a real 3C temperature hike by the year 2100, instead the fantasy 1.5C or 2C numbers are reiterated and the populace is lulled into thinking all will be well for their kids.
I can continue the list, but the picture is of incompetence and apathy really. A few token and inconsequential efforts are done, just enough for re-elections, and that's it.
1: "This is the classic "pioneer dilemma" discussed on Polish forums. If you pay the 3,000 PLN because you are the first, and next year Neighbor B and Neighbor C get EVs, it is deeply unfair for you to keep subsidizing the overall risk profile. To protect yourself, you must not sign a contract that binds you to a flat fee indefinitely." (c) generated by AI
Are you being sarcastic? Your first paragraph is very much Effective Altruism but for European cultural superiority. "European culture is the best, so, by protecting that culture's economic base, it's actually better for the rest of the world because we can export our Lovely Eco Friendly Culture more, the more we power it with coal and oil and gas."
I despise the EA sex cult, but the the irony in that comparison is indeed visible. Good catch, I guess, I'll think about it. :)
So yes, I do currently think that the reality of life is that certain whole societies are in the given moment (now) more progressive than others. Or do you believe that some BRICS pseudo-union would collectively push for more green tech than EU is doing now (even though EU foreign policy actions are mostly impotent)?
Sure, maybe China will eventually take a lead in green tech policies, or maybe it even already did, though I'm not convinced so far. As soon as that happens visibly,I would gladly change my opinion and would advocate that now EU should follow more progressive lead (as long as Xi don't start WW3 for some "dvizhukha" like other demented autocrats did).
PS: and don't attribute to me stuff I didn't say, like this "we can export our Lovely Eco Friendly Culture more, the more we power it with coal and oil and gas."(c)
The tariffs are on Chinese EVs only - that's right, EVs built in place that burns more coal each year than every other country combined.
We both know that China's coal production is not the reason the tariffs are in place
Obviously protective measures for any country are done to make sure an economy doesn't become completely dependent on another's with strongly opposing values.
Europe's car manufacturers need to get their shit together, but not being able to buy any car whatsoever the moment China gets their own Donald Trump is worse than cars being slightly worse and a bit more expensive for a while.
> It's hilarious that the EU is busy
Hilarious compared to what exactly lmao? The US? China? Russia? TYhE GlObAl SoUtH? OPEC?
The world is a giant school playground where the bullies in charge are competing for #1 position on the goober eating contest while the school is burning
I both agree and disagree. The EU isn't worse than others. For example, it's basically the only place that's willing to replace coal with imported gas, which is a major economical sacrifice.
On the other hand, with the money the EU spends on climate measures, the results leave a lot to be desired. The EU has prioritized things like hydrogen, biofuels and carbon capture, which all have very little to show for.
If Europe had spent all that money on EVs and heat pumps, emissions would have decreased drastically while prices woundn't even go up. But that's not possible if you want to preserve old jobs. Then you have to do those stupid things that aren't viable, like e-fuels for cars.
I'm also not sure if replacing coal with gas did actually decrease emissions on the whole. The gas lobby is a large reason why electrification has stalled in Europe, while China's coal lobby helped electric trucks to reach 50% share last month.
How is the EU blocking nuclear power? Also the tariffs are on Chinese EVs, not those built in the EU.
This is the energy commissioner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_J%C3%B8rgensen
But if it is a real emergency, surely we would just want any EVs we can get, to encourage building out the infrastructure for them.
You haven't really answered my question. Germany shut down its last nuclear power plant in 2023, this guy you linked got appointed in December 2024.
You want to destroy the automotive industry in Europe so we can increase dependance on Chinese EVs?
This might shock you because it happens outside your social bubble, but there is an insane amount of people (double-digit percentages for sure) that is simply unwilling to make even the smallest sacrifice in order to mitigate climate change, and they vote accordingly.
That does not make climate change any less of an emergency, but it limits politically feasible countermeasures a lot.
Where there's no will, there's no way.
Can anyone provide a list of bad things that have happened because of climate change, genuinely curious and I want to learn from the experts here!
This is a good starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change
One difficulty you will encounter when looking into the effects of climate change is that you can't generally attribute individual events to it (or very rarely at least). Its effects are only really visible in more general (abstract) statistical measures (Just like me losing a coin flip doesn't mean the coin is weighted, but when i lose 8 out of 10 flips i will start getting suspicious)
That logic seems a bit weak, because it is saying we're already living in a world where the worst-case is happening, and we're just talking about the odds of any individual experiencing it are going up a little.
Compare it to https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-person-vs-... where there is strong evidence that using more energy directly leads to more prosperity. We've got much better chances to do well if we stick to using the cheapest available energy. Then people can just build over the top of any disasters that strike.
> because it is saying we're already living in a world where the worst-case is happening, and we're just talking about the odds of any individual experiencing it are going up a little.
I'm not sure I'm following? A raise in temperature doesnt in itself cause any particular wildfire, drought or tsunami (just like the weight in a coin won't), but these events get more and more likely (just like losing the coin flip as the coin gets more and more unfair). This doesn't assume anything about the actual probability or trajectory we're on, if i measure my coinflips and they turn out to be 50/50 the argument is just as valid
> strong evidence
I think that pointing to 1 singular graph as "strong evidence" is a bit shallow. there are plenty of reasons to think that there are many confounding variables here.
Global average temperature has risen about a degree over the last century. That's a truly terrifying amount of energy. Habitats are shifting, forests are burning away in places where their current composition has become unsustainable, regions are becoming arid, permafrost is becoming less permanent.
Technically most of everything else is weather, not climate, do you want a list of bad weather events?
Can't tell if genuine or ragebait...
https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/82686/climate...
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/19/unpreced...
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1...
For example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change
Billions of dollars have been spent undermining science and electing corrupt fascists because people with control of fossil fuel wealth didn't want to deal with reality and laws and democracy.
That may well kill more people than climate change. Hard to tell as both have the potential to spiral out into a variety of intertwining tragedies.
If the human part of climate change wasn’t true and the fossil fuel industry’s wasn’t the culprit it would’ve been proven by now. It is very unlikely that the fossil fuel industry that is so rich and powerful wouldn’t have proven it by now.
There are none. The planet is greener, even the Sahara is shrinking. The Great Coral Reef has just had its best 5 years ever. On average, crops produce more due to higher CO2 levels.
Pacific islands failed to sink. Hurricanes failed to become more frequent. Fewer people died due to cold temperatures (which kill far more people than hot temperatures).
The planet is greener, I guess that you are pointing to; Nature Climate Change, 2016, Zhu et. al. where the authors of the study have warned that erroneous conclusions would be taken from the study.
I can't tell if this is sarcastic, or you're just lying?
> The planet is greener, even the Sahara is shrinking
The UK was baked brown in the heat and it was so bad it was visible by satellite, we had uncharacteristic wildfires all summer. Google has literally no idea what you're talking about by claiming the Sahara is shrinking, the best I can find is "maybe the expansion is slowing?"
> The Great Coral Reef has just had its best 5 years ever.
Apparently it had its most devastating coral bleaching event just 2 years ago, so I'm not sure this is true?
> On average, crops produce more due to higher CO2 levels.
I mean, yeah if you are into the average crop? People tend to like stuff like corn and coffee which are threatened by raised heat levels. With current heat levels we're projected to lose upwards of 1/5th the corn harvest by 2030.
> Pacific islands failed to sink.
I mean some of them did, like a decade ago, just none of the ones you care about.
> Hurricanes failed to become more frequent
Same frequency but wind force increases by water temperature, so a cat 1 hurricane like Rafael ends up a cat 3 hurricane due to climate change. I am seeing a pattern with your selective presentation of the facts.
> Fewer people died due to cold temperatures
Is that not because a large share of the world's old were taken out by COVID within the last 6 years? That is the group most likely to die to cold.
So how high should we drive temperature in your opinion? Sounds like you do think it's rising, just that the effects are largely positive
This is a genuinely interesting question - if humanity had the technological capacity to set the global temperature at any value, what value should that be? Is there any reason to think that the temperature in place from the beginning of the Holocene to the beginning of widespread fossil fuel usage by humans is the best one?
> This is a genuinely interesting question
I agree! Intuitively i would think that most ecosystems evolved to adapt to their environment and, unless this environment is characterized by large swings in temperature and other conditions, will suffer in conditions different from the ones they evolved to thrive in. That means that any change in conditions needs to be slow enough for these ecosystems to gradually adjust by whatever means they have access to.
Utter nonsense.
See also:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/27/what-caused-th...
Yep, no consequences. Europeans didn't have heat waves this summer and they certainly didn't think of buying aircons this year.
> The emissions gap is now a leadership gap. And the world is running out of time and excuses to close it.
The leadership of some countries, including the former "leader of the free world", fixed that by declaring global warming to be a hoax, so they don't need any excuses anymore and can just continue catering to their fossil fuel donors.
I remember way back when exceeding 1.5 was in the past, not the future.
When did it become a future event again?
When AGI is here we just have to ask how to fix it :)
42 yeah. But we already know what to do, why would AGI suddenly make us do that:D
Skynet won't have to bother launching a nuclear war. It will just sit and munch digital popcorn, waiting for humanity to fix the humanity 'problem'. A tiny speck of time in the fullness of things.
We might not like how it fixes it.
Darken the sky.
Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine. :)
I remember 10 years ago when there greentech was a thing and "carbon neutral" (by carbon credit shams or not) was a goal. I was a bit proud then. That has passed.
Now it's just about heating data centers as much as possible. Apparently climate is a solved problem. The tech CEO's children and grandchildren are safe again, and we can go back to focus on profits. /s
Tired of the complete inability of the human race to take in the Pale Blue Dot [1], and what it means. No one is coming to rescue your grandchildren. And it would be much easier for us to do something today, than them in 50 years. Actions compound over time: perhaps those actions should then be long-term positive.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot
Don't need AGI, we know how to fix it (nuclear), and have chosen not to, because nobody gave a fuck about the climate, it was never about global warming.
Nuclear is not an option, esp most countries with nuclear do import their uranium primarily from one country...
Nuclear doomerism is what has lead us to this silly "status quo" and the subject of the article/thread.
There is more than one kind of nuclear, and the fuel situation has known reserves that aren't being used because of lack of demand. Fuel costs in reactors are only a very small part of their operational costs so new mines are not the priority. We also have viable seawater extraction technologies that are waiting for appropriate demand. Past that, there are also breeder and waste-burning reactors long held-up as a vital and fuel-conserving part of a complete nuclear eco-system.
Bluntly: the nuclear build-out France achieved in the 70s, scaled globally, would solve the climate problem and position us for synthetic fuel production at a civilizational scale. Modern technologies & robotics have us on track for facilities producing low greenhouse energy for more than a century. Global shipping, transport fuels, and energy-intensive industry require high-energy inputs. WWS are wonderful, but very awkward in those domains.
If you would start to re-rollout nuclear, Uranium will be consumed within 10-20 years by all participants. In most countries, nuclear supplied usually a small but stable fragment of the overall energysupply.
Mass solar + wind + hydro and geothermal, with nuclear as a grid stabilizer for when solar and wind aren't working and the batteries are empty.
I eat vegetarian. I own a Fairphone. I take the night train instead of a flight when possible.
To me, the most workable solution to global warming I have heard of is: building a giant Cannon on the moon and have it shoot moon dust in-between the sun and the earth. This won't stop ocean acidification but at least things will cool down. And we have a cannon on the moon which is cool.
How is everyone preparing to the climate doomsday? How many years do we have?
We live in clown world. Elections are decided by Meta and Twitter algorithms, both biased by their operators. Information doesn't get to people and lies abound. If you want to imagine the future of the world, picture indigenous children killed after being sucked into a gold mining machine:
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/two-yanomami-boys-dro...
Furthermore, imagine that the politician that incentivized and enabled such gold mining will be re-elected, forever.
For those who want the Emissions Gap Report the article is based on, here's the Executive Summary: https://wedocs.unep.org/rest/api/core/bitstreams/80aaab0e-2a...
And full report: https://wedocs.unep.org/rest/api/core/bitstreams/8819b586-8d...
I recommend putting the full report in your favorite LLM and asking questions as a start!
The number #1 best thing we in the west can do to mitigate climate change is having fewer to no children.
Source:https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
The problem is that having no children means having no skin in the game. Which defeats the whole purpose.
The other problem is the prisoners dilemma: if the west stops having children and not-the-west does not stop then within a short time we will have replaced the west with an equivalent population breeding much faster for cultural or religious reasons.
There is also a world of social disruption, which could lead to environmentally disastrous wars, that come from those kinds of demographic inversions. The combination of worsening climate issues with those destabilizations might lead to acute depopulation at the global level, but not likely of a climate-friendly variety.
Destroying the world to improve some portion of the climate experienced by some portion of some population at some unspecified later date a century or more in the future versus, say, geoengineering and attacking the present-day cost structures of nuclear energy strikes me generally as a Bad Plan.
having less children if you live in a developed economy just means outsourcing your children to a developing economy.
If there are 1 million less children born in the US, it's very likely there will be 1 million more immigrants to take their place, and the places those immigrants come from will have higher birth rates to replace them
As long as we don't fill the gap with more immigration from poorer countries.
No skin in the game and less influence on the next generation having the skills and values needed to make the world better instead of carrying on the path it's on. Of course most people having kids aren't thinking of that aspect.
"Après moi, le déluge"
The problem is that people today do not have skin in the game for what happens generations down the line. No real consequences, little desire for actual change.
You didn't think that 77 year old Joe Biden sincerely cared about his climate plan for the year 2050? /s
The question is... Was it ever viable?
I remember, around 2016, a european climate scientist saying that he had to fill up more forms and prove every experiment in the most strict way. The justification was that their conclusions could have economical repercussions. The results of their experiments were always a few years late because of that.
Welcome to the "absence of economical repercussions" world.
Yes, a simple carbon tax could have been phased in over time. We already had nuclear and trains and insulation etc. and we now know from our present (their future) that solar, wind, heat pumps, EVs are cost effective.
Turns out the whole problem was politics, not science or technology or economics.
This is the same question I've asked myself. One country sacrifices its entire energy production in favor of green alternatives, while the rest of the world doesn't. It doesn't even move the needle. It's just a pitiful way to fail.
The paradigm was:
Renewables will be that fast in roll-out and much cheaper and then other countries will follow the path.
(which is funny, since China installed more solar in 2024/2025 than US+EU combined - so for them its working, in the beginning they were adptors, now they became shapers; same for africa: now a real option to get cheap energy, the only region where solar is more expensive than it should be, is actually EU + US)
I've seen the consequences of the shift to renewables here in Spain: entire ecosystems destroyed, drought everywhere, wildlife displaced, and native plant species disappearing because of wind turbines and solar farms.
I'm in favor of renewables, but at the individual level (your own home). Meanwhile, the Spanish government has made several moves to ban personal electric vehicles like EUCs and electric scooters, which only pushes people back toward gas-powered vehicles.
Everything is being done wrong.
Solar/wind farms are great when you have the land suitable for those. My favourite example is replacing the U.S. farms growing corn that is used to produce ethanol (which is then added to the gas) with solar farms. This would produce more energy while not disrupting any ecosystems (at least not more than the existing farms).
So either Spain has no land like that, or the Spanish government has fucked something up. Judging by the rest of your post, I‘m leaning towards the latter :-)
Renewables did all that? Are you stupid? If you actually cared about habitat loss there is a big list of things that take up more space than renewables. This is so idiotic it has to be rage bait
do you know of any politician in charge who is doing anything/whatever-at-least-one-thing right?
As libertarian, of course not.
Is it official libertarian dogma that solar panels and wind turbines cause droughts?
Seems like an incredibly convenient, yet insane, thing to believe if you want to deflect blame from fossil fuel driven climate change.
It's not the solution the problem, it's who execute it.
It has to be bait. No one could be that stupid.
That's not libertarian dogma by any libertarian, I know. It is right-wing, but libertarians it will remind you that politics is far too complex to try and move to one axis.
I agree, countries that do not adhere to CO2 targets should be heavily sanctioned. They are killing us, after all.
I have to say, if you looked at the graphs of the last reports, 1.5C was never going to happen.
Historical fact: the developed world is developed mostly via industrial revolution, a.k.a. they find out how to turn coal into wealth first
Current situation: the developed world emits much more than the developing side per capita. Even France, a country powered by nuclear, emits twice as much as India per capita
Yeah, good luck convincing the developing countries to limit their emission. "Bro please stay poor" and "you have too much population" aren't very nice things to say.
The developing world is in many cases the past couple years leapfrogging fossil fuel infrastructure and going straight to solar electrification, thanks to China's cheap solar panels and improvements in energy storage battery systems.
It was born dead.
Regards, A meteorologist
Humans are given heaven on earth, only to turn it into hell itself
I try to imagine the mind of an executive or millionaire who willingly destroys the environment for profit, and I just can't do it.
I'm sure temperature ceiling will just work like debt ceiling.
Difference being nobody ever died as a direct consequence of the national debt.
debt is imaginary, temperature is not
I would build some thousands of datacenters and ask AI how can we solve this problem, I'm sure this will fix the problem.
Just a reminder that the worse climate change gets, the larger the difference is that a single 0.1 degrees makes. 1.0->1.1 degree difference in global warming is barely noticeable, but 2.9->3.0 makes a huge difference.
So, paradoxically, the worse the situation gets, the larger our incentive should become to avoid yet another increase in global warming.
Wait, is using gas powered data centers to produce AI slop bad for the climate?
Its time to admit that government will not be able to solve this in a reasonable amount of time. Can we please fund private charities that are actually doing something about this and could make a huge difference if they were funded better?
Demand that your government create a charity funding program where you as the tax payer get to decide where your tax money goes and choose a charity that aligns with your values and goals to tackle this once and for all.
For something as unpredictable as the climate, setting goals is not viable.
Increased carbon emissions is a result of prosperity and progress.
I've always thought it's a little hypocritical that the first movers were 'allowed' to cut down all their trees, burn coal like no tomorrow, and yolo industry. However, when other cultures try and industrialise, it's a big nono.
We need to face the reality that our lifestyles come with a carbon cost which will impact the planet, and plan for something realistic. Setting moving, impossible goalposts is a pipedream, and a sign that someone has sat in a classroom too long.
The planet will change, it always has. Instead of endlessly whinging and spreading doom, we need to be realistic about who we are as a species and plan accordingly. We also need to build resilience into our systems so we can weather any future storms.
Also, a serious global carbon tax is the cleanest solution internationally; taxing extraction at source in line with the resulting costs of negative externalities and mitigation strategies. Could set up a nice fund for offering prizes to companies who hit certain milestones in green tech. A little bit like global competitions in Civ5.
>“Every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of warming above 1.5°C raises the risk of irreversible changes including in ice sheets, permafrost carbon, ocean circulation and coral systems, along with devastating human impacts,” the report states.
The mention to coral systems, from an ignorant perspective, seems weirdly specific to me. Kinda like "civilization will collapse and the price of sweaters will go up".
Does their disappearance have indirect consequences I'm not aware of?
Aside from being home to a lot of seafood they also play a not fully understood part in the breeding of a good number of other seafood in ways not yet fully understood.
ie. Lose the reefs .. and then we find out how our supply of seafood is impacted.
That's what I was missing yeah. I always took the bleaching of corals in media as a visible 'canary in the mine' situation, never knew they were so central to marine life.
> Coral reefs are some of the most diverse and valuable ecosystems on Earth. Home to over 4,000 species of fish, corals, and other marine life, coral reefs cover only 1% of the world’s oceans, but provide habitat for at least 25% of the world’s marine life, with many reef species still to be discovered.
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_corals/cora...
> Coral reefs have an estimated global value of £6 trillion each year, due in part to their contribution to fishing and tourism industries and the coastal protection they provide.
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/quick-questions/why-are-coral...
Not sure what consequences you are aware of but the key point with corals is loss of biodiversity. It's (I believe) the tipping point that goes at the lowest temperature rise.
It’s the marine equivalent of “forests die worldwide.” You might not know why you need them, but you’ll probably miss them when they’re gone
A quick Google suggests 25% of marine life and 1bn people.
People really like coral reefs. "Civilization will collapse and this baby kitty will die."
Baby kitty and 1bn people competing for your dinner.
Coral systems are a major part of aquatic life, so you'd lose a ton fish, a major food source.
You'd also lose erosion protection on coasts, plant systems like Mangroves (e.g. CO2 sinks).
Additionally, the biodiversity in coral systems has been a rich source of biochemicals, think Alzheimer treatments, cancer and arthritis research.
replace "corals" with "temperate forests" to realize the scale of affected animal populations/species
corals are along the coasts all around the tropics and they are food chain, from plants to herbivores to predators
You mean more datacenters wasn't a move in the right direction?
There was a book on the overshoot nonsense a few years ago (literally called Overshoot) that talks about the make believe story of carbon capture and how during the negotiations for CAP in the 2000s and 2010s those were included as otherwise the US would have agreed to no plan at all. And even if something like removing carbon at scale through forestry, burning, and co2 capture was ever so viable who would pay for that. That only works with emissions trading (which every other month gets watered down because muh energy bills, muh aviation cost, etc) or some “energy costs nothing” mythological tech. We are fucked and while there are many who care the vast majority of people oscillates between too dumb, too selfish, and too manipulated to ever be willing to give up today’s comforts for a happier tomorrow.
Wanting to control the temperature is the worst kind of thing we want.
why? We know that we influence it, but the direction is unfavourable. why its bad to want to control it in the right direction?
> The 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement is no longer viable
Good. Now, let's drop that goal and go on.
At least in Europe, higher priority should be saving human lives by providing air conditioning and a climate-friendly environment instead of putting more money into climate money washing machines.
If anyone cared about the Paris Agreement nuclear adoption would have been significantly more rapid, but the fact is, it was never about climate.
We will continue extracting absolutely everything we can from Earth, at whatever the cost ... with the hope that technology will one day save us from our weakness.
And, yes, technologyy may "save us", but there are many different definitions of what that will look that ... some may be horrendous for the majority, but none of them will inconvenience those making the most significant decisions.
2 degree global warming means 5-6 degree more in new york (as the average mean temperature is meassured also above oceans/mountaints etc.) - and you can now ask yourself if you still want to live in NY when its 5-6 degree warmer than today?
I think the point is that - tragically and infuriatingly - it seems we'll answer that question when it happens.
Personally, I think it's time for some metaphorical guillotines to change our current directon.
Since Covid no one seems to care that much any more.
Even the Greens party in Australia is more interested in social issues than environment.
"New goal: not exceed 2°C, then bring the temperature back down to 1.5°C"
It kind of feels people have given up. I'm working on a startup that aims to replaces aviation (the most difficult emissions to avoid) with night trains in Europe (currently economically uncompetitive). It's an obvious impact story, but impact appears to be "out".
Nice concept. I caught European Sleeper last week, my first time on a night train. It was ok but I'd like something better if I was using it regularly.
It's a tough time to do something about climate change. Short-termism is very attractive right now.
Well, European sleeper is an operator -- their ability to improve the technology/interior is limited, it's a huge task just to keep running.
We are not an operator, so we will work with operators, basically adding our railcars to their trains.
I'm against night trains. Much better to have high speed travel during the day and then at night close down the tracks completely and do your track maintenance so the tracks are good for the next day. You can get by with skipping maintenance here and there, but that quickly will come back to haunt you and make your trains even worse.
Take a great day train, get some plays and then take a hotel room for the night. That's the most sustainable way to travel.
The problem is the people you would need to convince. You'd be selling to people who largely won't care and don't want to be inconvenienced.
I agree. I was looking at a night train from Milan to Lecce. It costed waaay more than flights+ the extra night in the hotel. Crazy if you think about it
IIRC night trains are kinda making a comeback - they are quite convenient that you can travel over night & wake up in your destination. Otherwise you would spend a day traveling & would need 1-2 days of accommodation on top of that.
Yeah, why _are_ night trains uncompetitive? Is it just so simple as "air travel doesn't have externalities priced in"?
Beds as opposed to seats mean fewer passengers per train carriage, so the fixed cost of operating the train is shared among fewer tickets.
You can make one trip per day with a night-train, whereas a seated train runs 16-20hrs per day. So again, fixed cost of the train existing is shared between far fewer ticket sales.
Then you need to store the train during the day, and you need to securely park the train when it arrives at its destination at night (a normal train yard isn't secure enough if you have a hotel full of people, and a train station usually needs all of its platforms).
The capacity really is the main issue, in terms of cost.
The second is lack of privacy, in terms of attractiveness. 6-people-per-cabin couchette cars have sufficient capacity, but the market isn't quite there anymore.
We basically want to get as many cabins as possible in railcar (to reduce cost), but they're are comfortable and private (to increase attractiveness). With these levers, you can change the operating margin from -15%..-10% to around 10%.
Hundreds of kilometres of good quality electric railway infra is expensive to maintain. And by good quality I mean capable of relatively decent speeds like say 120-160 km/h. With airports you need to maintain lot less.
I think last time I looked it was that jet fuel is exempt from taxes in the EU? but trains aren't so flights are artificially cheap
Jet fuel is barely taxed and most touristic places subsidies the tickets to bring in the consumer cash cows.
Yes but the discussion is about places in Europe that a night train can reach, are these price-subsidizing tourist places among them?
I don't think there is much of an overlap between the train mafia and the airline mafia, you'd have to ask them.
You can start by asking that guy: https://www.politico.eu/article/ryanair-lashes-out-at-air-fr...
Exactly. Outcompeting this is hard when you basically don't pay taxes for fuel.
Pretty much yeah.
> night trains in Europe
That company from austria seems quite successfull, IIRC?
Is there anyone who actually cares about any of this?
Look at flightradar. Look at Marinetracker. Look how many cars are used every day and the billions of barrels of oil we're consuming.
We are not going to consume less oil, unless there's some manufactured event that stops us (like COVID), or we physically run out.
People are addicted to moving about, making things, entire economies rely on it.
And nobody here would sacrifice opportunity for a future that may not even happen. Even if you're the most conscious consumer, the world's going to heat up anyway. You not driving a gas car, or not eating meat, won't make any difference because somebody else will be there to consume what you leave behind.
And I plan to use as much oil as possible, take as many planes and cruises as I can, eat as much meat, because I frankly care less and I'm not going to miss out if I have the choice. I know I am not alone in this thinking and many, many others also no longer care, not that they ever did.
But you're more than welcome to leave the resources to others who will gladly use them.
I think the difficult part may be to explain to your children why you didn't care about their future. I'm guessing you're child-free, or do you home school?
We're now in 'stage 4':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYHwgQLvjqs
Humanity is near its end. And all we have to show for it is AI slop.
Thank the billionaires for always protecting your bottomline. I truly hope your plans to exit Earth via deep space exploration fail.
We are burning the only planet we have in a contest to be king of the ashes.
Who gives a fuck whether the US or China win the AI race if they both burn tons of hydrocarbon to get there? Either way, the race itself will fuck the planet up worse than either victor would.
Same about all the dumb wars of conquest, Ukraine, Iran. Who gives a fuck over those lines on a map if the map itself is on fire? All the burning of oil depots, all the explosives used are all an assault on humanity itself, not just on whatever state construct.
I have a growing suspicion that this is the Great Filter. Dumb, self-important squabbles that destroy the material basis for a species' survival in an attempt to gain control instead of cooperation.
> I have a growing suspicion that this is the Great Filter.
Ackshually... It can be our filter, but it cannot be the Great Filter.
The Great Filter has to apply universally, to every plausible society. If even a few are cooperative hiveminds, or empires ruled by an iron fist, or... whatever else you can imagine that doesn't squabble internally... then the Filter does not apply to them, which means that their absence is still weird.
The Filter has three plausible answers, IMO: (1) Some variant of the planetarium or zoo hypothesis; (2) every advanced society, universally, decides to transcend into data centers powered by rotating black holes and stable for trillions of years, or something similarly weird; potentially also New Physics, like waste heat to mass conversion; (3) the filter is in our past and abiogenesis is a lot rarer than assumed.
Maybe we'll manage to launch some datacenters, then at least there'll be a backup of the database of how much each person's net worth is, floating above the dead planet...
And if we have several of them in space, they'll use blockchain, of course.
Let us put the Servers with the Blockchain into Space, so we can be sure the net worth status is stored really really save? :-D
You're right but you're on the wrong corner of the internet for such take
Its the only corner where one can try to talk some sense into some of the people directly involved in this process.
The self-professed unideological technical minds that pride themselves on first-principle thinking.
The walking contradictions that fail to recognize that it is in fact their ideology that is pushing us to this outcome, based on said first principles (thermodynamics ffs!) they do not actually take into account.
Sense isn't common.
Even in this forum you won't find consensus on what to do, it's all complaining and grandstanding.
I don't have a solution, but what I do know is that any idea here that doesn't involve human psychology and motivation will never suceed.
Never saw Game of Thrones? Which maybe should have ended with everyone dying?
I honestly hoped the end would be the White Walkers just coming and killing everyone because they were too distracted and petty to mount a united defense. It would've made for a much stronger metaphor and fit in much better with the dark vibe and unexpected killing off of audience favorites that made the show a success in the first place.
I feel like the Disneyfied ending we got instead really ruined the show for me.
Yes lets do it by continuing to outsource the pollution to China and deindustrialize Europe.
Cut the nuclear, add the imported solarpanels and experience the joy of 10x electricity prices.
Blame the consumer for not turning the kettle off during peak hours and make sure you give tax breaks to Google and BiGData to open a couple more datacenters that use more power than a average city.
Oh, ban combustion engines, fuck up every batteryfactory by thinking its enough to buy the Make-Your-Own-Battery-Kit on Aliexpress.
Wow such strategy.
Europe's strategy has indeed been stupid, but not for the reasons you write.
Some parts of the energy transition are profitable, like EVs and heat pumps. This is where Europe dropped the ball.
Other parts are unprofitable, like hydrogen. This is what Europe has prioritized, without anything to show for it.
Then there are the ugly parts, like most carbon capture or importing virgin palm oil mislabelled as used cooking oil. Those things don't even decrease emissions. Again, Europe has focused too much on this.
If Europe would simply have banned combustion engines and gas boilers, emissions would have decreased drastically while prices would also decrease. Alas, Europe prioritized bad stuff instead.
"simply ban combustion engines and gas boilers" - there's nothing simple about this
Well, certainly not simple. It is actually workable and making a difference now because there's an alternative that works and is cheaper. the only thing we need to do is get people to start using it.
We probably shouldn't talk about an outright ban. There are a couple of places where we may need to say, in your niche, those don't work, so we'll let you continue using it. We'll worry about those later. Let's stop the vast majority of cases first. Then we start worrying about the niches.
What are you on about with niches? Most people can't afford a brand new EV car and have nowhere to charge it.
I know i’ll be downvoted, but at this point whatever.
I largely stopped caring about these announcements and also about this initiatives.
The reason is that we see these pushes but at the same time we see no real initiative, with all the burden left on individuals with little to no power to make meaningful changes.
Some examples:
1. Travel: I’m constantly told that travel by airplane is bad and should be avoided and to prefer travel by train. Yet my last trip (milan <-> munich) was 1h for ~75€ each way via airplane BUT 8h and ~200€ each way via train. And this before even pulling in the “rich people private planes” talking point.
2. I still see essentially zero push towards widespread nuclear energy for proper electrification
3. Cars keep getting fucking larger and larger. It’s crazy to see how many SUVs i see everyday burning gas with just one person on board. Electric cars don’t really solve this issue because electricity generation is not yer 100% clean.
4. I still don’t see a general push towards unified public transportation. I don’t even want it to be completely free but FUCK i don’t want to deal with three different providers if i ever dare to get out of my city while staying within the region. God forbid i decide to go to another region somewhere outside a main city.
5. I still don’t see a general push towards work from home. I live in a city large enough to have public transportation but I know very well this is the exception and not the rule. Most people burn gas and emit co2 to unwillingly go to the office to do the same things they’d do from home while also bringing their company laptop from home. This is beyond moronic.
And don’t star blaming capitalism or whatever: i don’t see any meaningful push in the right direction from either side of the political tribune.
So whatever, shit is fucked up and stuff, we’re getting extinct, such is life i guess.
Stop caring because not seeing initiatives is like inverting responsibilities.
Initiatives will come if people care.
Never in history the solution to major crisis came from politicians or alike.
Even if your contributions is small, it doesn't prevent you to do them. By which extent is a personal choice, but personally I chose to be consistent with myself and my values, and I don't care about the choices of others.
Regarding airplane, I much prefer an 8h+5min trip in train than a 1h+2h trip in plane because comfort is way better and you are not dealt with like cattle. Of course I wish the price advantage would be different than nowadays.
Electric cars are not yet the perfect solution, but they are already way better than fuel cars. As for the rest, my government says its the way to go, then I go.
Note that in GIEC report, nuclear (fission or fusion) was not identified as a major solution to climate change (only contribute 10% of the whole). The main contributors were green energies.
> Initiatives will come if people care.
yeah sure keep caring if you want. keep living in denial about the fact that people cared already, and shit still hit the fan.
you do you, i guess.
> As for the rest, my government says its the way to go, then I go.
lol
To be fair: setting it as a temperature range was very stupid from the get go. Also, to not consider the economic impact, was also stupid, and the CO2-tax is also beyond idiotic since it creates a fake-economy where people buy the right to pollute. That runs counter to the idea of green energy.
I think one should abandon the Paris Agreement and label it as the failure as it was. However had that does not mean that green energy should be abandoned. There need to be more incentives towards green energy (see how Putin uses gas as means to amplify his genocidal activity against Ukrainians). Meaning, companies that verifiably transition towards more renewable, need to get positive incentives to go towards that and maintain it at all times. The CO2 tax should also be eliminated without compensation. And there also has to be more realism - it makes no sense to cut down an economy, producing more unemployment in the process. It has to be a cohesive unit.
Not sure which economic impact you mean when the ultimate economic impact of climate catastrophe will be the complete destruction of the global economy.
This is not hyperbole. If nothing changes that's a completely realistic outcome within 50 - 100 years.
> complete destruction of the global economy. This is not hyperbole. If nothing changes that's a completely realistic outcome within 50 - 100 years
Saying the global economy will be completely destroyed within 100 years does indeed sound hyperbolic, uninformed, alarmist, FWIW.
> Also, to not consider the economic impact
It's going to be the least of your problem
Its the other way around. Climate is going to be least important of your problems if you cant put food on the table.
Climate catastrophe will be the reason there's no food on the table.
This is already happening to crops like cocoa and coffee, and crops like maize and wheat are next.
If we're too stupid as a species to understand this, we can just let Darwin clean this up and give the planet another chance with different species in a few million years or so.
Humans are probably the only Earthlings that have any chance of achieving interplanetary civilization and persisting long term. If this civilization collapses and our energy technologies are lost then any future attempts at civilization will be facing a steeper slope to get those technologies back without the cheap and abundant fossil fuels we burned up. Many of those fuels may never return to this planet because life has evolved considerably so things like the Carboniferous may not happen again.
> Climate is going to be least important of your problems if you cant put food on the table.
??? We're already having record low crop yields CAUSED by climate change right now my dude. You won't have food on your plate BECAUSE of climate change
Abandon the Paris agreement and then what? International politics won't allow for anything better to be put in its place for the foreseeable future.
We could always make more war in the Middle East (and Europe) and then 1,5°C would be totally viable. /s
Seriously now: Attempts to cut fossil fuel supply are worthless unless done en masse and in big scale - any single country doing it will just spur investment in another country. Since the world will not come to a truly binding agreement, the only thing that can be truly regulated is demand which can be regulated locally without necessarily increasing demand elsewhere.
The big new ticket is data centers, which strongly tend to use fossils due to SLAs and regulations. This can be fixed by new regulations, but only if people act now before the new approvals and builds are done.
Well cutting is happening right now and very large scale. USA is kinda laggard here but eg new electric car sales is up 70% in Europe or new Solar installations are up 50% in Africa.
Your examples are examples of cuts on the demand side. They satisfy current transport/electricity demand with a means that costs much less carbon, so fossil demand goes down.
(By contrast, a supply cut is 'not developing new fossil resource cuz someone else will buy it and burn it', which is obviously a dead end).