COP26 in Glasgow
As we all know (I hope), there is a huge conference coming up in Glasgow starting October 31st. This is the most important climate conference since Paris in 2015.
Interested in where we stand on the Forum. (By "concrete," below, I mean commitments that align with what scientists are recommending -- and that are binding.)
Interested in where we stand on the Forum. (By "concrete," below, I mean commitments that align with what scientists are recommending -- and that are binding.)
Comments (260)
We'll get some nice slogans, some nice pseudo-commitments, which always get pushed back anyway. Almost certainly nothing legally enforceable, which is what should matter in these things.
We're running out of time. It would be nice if the 2030 date got pushed back, but nature is speaking. It will be interesting/horrifying to see (if one is alive) what these countries and companies will be spewing out circa 2025 or so.
If there is a focus on agriculture, the oceans, greater energy efficiency and on research & innovation in new tech. I think those combined would be a positive step.
A lot will rely on China, Russia and Germany I think. Given the current change in Germany we could see something more concrete established between Russia and Germany. I'm pretty sure Russian tensions are high because of the change in Germany and this could lead to some steps in the right direction.
I don't have any faith in the US government but from the US the billionaires who are actually humanitarian may be enough to counterbalance the stulted nature of the government in this area.
There has to be some serious technological advancements soon that can be exported to developing countries. Maybe solar and wind will help a bit more but the crux seems to be energy storage or just simply efficient use of energy. An agricultural revolution that can be exported to poorer nations would be ideal so anything in that area would be a useful focus imo.
The decent thing the US government could try and do is ban gas guzzling cars ... but I don't see that happening because it would require a more authoritarian rule (something that would be opposed with violence in the US by the citizens).
I certainly don't think the world should be looking to the US to do anything significant or view that nation as leading the way.
One thing is for certain. I DO NOT think anyone should be bullying countries like India. They have problems of their own and it is delusional to expect them to starve their people to death (more than they are already).
COP coming to Glasgow. Leaders staying at Gleneagles Hotel & 20 Tesla cars (£100K each) bought to ferry them 75km back & forth. Gleneagles has 1 Tesla charging station, so Malcolm Plant Hire contracted to supply Diesel Generators to recharge Tesla’s overnight. Couldn't make it up.
Quoting I like sushi
That is the problem, and that is why we have fantasists in government talking nonsense and making no decisions. It's past time to make some sacrifices or become the sacrifice. So far, emissions are still increasing, even through Covid lockdowns. We haven't even begun to reduce.
Cut out the beef, and reduce the demand for more rainforest to become pasture and reduce the methane.
Cut out the car, and use public transport sparingly. There is not enough old cooking oil to power mass tourism, whatever the New Scientist says.
Insulate.
Plant trees and re-wild.
Expect to become poorer and learn to live simple and consume little.
Vote green.
And HURRY UP. If you don't change your lifestyle, you won't have a life of any style.
Nice way to say this very important aspect. Yet do notice the huge political implications: modern agriculture is simply industrialized agriculture. It doesn't create jobs, the vast majority of those farmers and peasants (and their children) have to find work in other sectors. Subsistence farming has to go, it only extends povetry as in a prosperous country a subsistence farmer is the poorest of the poor.
Not an easy issue to handle, that's for sure.
Quoting I like sushi
So would bullying China then help more? I doubt it, especially when the country is suffering from blackouts. In fact, bullying Americans and Europeans hardly improves anything. Some like that some Greta Thunberg climbs on the podium to chasten the grown ups for not doing much doesn't help (ohhh...we are so bad). As explained well, a lot of the summit will be one huge theater piece.
Quoting unenlightened
What I think the most important is to hurry up technological change and simply make renewable energy simply cheaper than fossil fuels. That's the real change.
You see, the problem is that poor countries cannot implement technological change, but prosperous countries can. They can invest in research & development of new eco-friendly tech and make the leap from the fossil fuel economy. Hence you have to have more prosperous countries, not less of them. And since at least for a while the global population is growing, or economies should grow (or we will have huge tragedies in the future). Unfortunately this thinking goes against the moral vision that prosperity is bad, globalization is bad, we should repent at our sin of consumerism...
I think you'll find in terms of poverty China and India are miles apart. The US, Europe, China and Australia cannot be 'bullied' as they are doing pretty damn well. China, US and Australia have to step up, and Europe needs to push harder too.
In India 1 million die a year of starvation related causes (prior to pandemic). MANY more are in extreme poverty now than before. Per capita India is nothing. Per Capita the US is WAY ahead of China.
These may be old but hey paint a picture: https://www.statista.com/statistics/270508/co2-emissions-per-capita-by-country/
Canada and Russia is understandable to a degree due to weather. Other high output have tiny populations, but can do much more.
I'd expect something somewhat concrete to come out of it because at this point it would seem very hard to defend not doing anything concrete, but who knows... Whatever does come out of it, it probably won't be enough by a long shot though.
And what has been the reason why people aren't dying of famines in China anymore and why they are miles apart?
Economic growth.
Quoting I like sushi
I wouldn't say that. India has finally started to grow. Thanks goes to abandoning socialist policies and embracing globalization.
(one statistics, with rosy forecasts. But notice that it's per Capita, so population growth is noted here)
A smart thing would be to give aid for India to use renewables and non fossil fuel alternatives in it's buildup of energy production and veer off from coal. A good way to understand just where the problem lies in the use of coal power can be seen from this interactive map "Carbon Brief".
Dutch pension giant spurns fossil fuels as funds shift before COP26
https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/dutch-pension-fund-abp-sell-175-bln-fossil-fuel-assets-2021-10-26/
Much more of this, would be of some importance.
Ah! Well, with more prosperity, India could truly modernize it's infrastructure. India is the third largest consumer of electricity and about 80% of it's electricity production comes from fossil fuels. As being so big as it is and having such potential, the climate change fights front line is in India. For 1 million not to die of starvation annually, I think it would be a good thing.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-urges-g20-nations-to-bring-down-per-capita-emissions-by-30-101627152729395.html
They'll hang on to the bitter end. Look at where we are in the US congress. After this year (and many others before it) of wildfires, draughts, flooding, hurricanes, and billions of dollars spent on these disasters, over 99% of climate scientists saying time is running out, the IPCC saying we've already wasted so much time that much climate change is already locked in, the Lancet saying climate change is the biggest health threat to the world, the defense department saying it's the greatest security risk, oil companies admitting it's a huge threat, documents showing Exxon's own researchers knew what was happening back in the 80s, etc. etc. etc. -- what is the result?
The result is that the meager efforts to slash emissions -- the clean electricity program -- gets cut because of one senator who makes $500 thousand a year in dividends from a coal company. So they propose a carbon tax -- that gets cuts. And this is from a guy who claims he "listens to the science" and wants to "do something" to lower emissions. It's something you would expect in 1991, and it would have been ridiculous then. 30 years later, with the signs all around us and nearly everyone in the world in agreement that time is running out, and this is still where we're at.
So clearly it's going to come down to the people, as always. If we don't wake up and organize, and either violently overthrow the government (which won't happen) or vote these people out while focusing on our local situations, we'll waste even more time. I see younger people getting off their asses, which is good -- but the fact that the Republican party, still a party of climate denial, has even the possibility of being elected anywhere in the US is probably the death knell. Who knows.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yeah -- see above. There'll be nothing done -- just words.
Quoting I like sushi
People not only are bad at planning for the future, especially when it makes the present more inconvenient, but they're also inundated with climate denial and misinformation, and have been for years. True, over 60% or so of the US thinks climate change is a serious issue, but they've not prioritized it enough -- and that number is already much too low. And that's because of the Republican party and their media, especially the Koch brothers big push in the late 2000s.
Quoting I like sushi
Maybe. We have Bill Gates and Larry Fink and maybe a handful of others. But I'm not sure that'll be enough. We need the Fed involved in all this as well, and thus monetary policy, since the American populace have been made too confused to vote their interests -- so fiscal policy is out (as we're currently seeing). Biden has a chance to appoint a new chair in the upcoming months -- there should be heavy pressure to get rid of Powell.
Quoting RussellA
I think way too much is made of stuff like this. It's all you hear on Fox News. It's all you hear on the Internet generally. Who gives a shit. In the scheme of things, it's negligible. Good for headlines, but really a distraction.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Agreed.
Quoting Manuel
Bill McKibben has good articles about this. The divestment movement is definitely a bright spot -- more and more places are divesting. However, others are coming in like vultures to pick up the slack.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/15/climate-crisis-cop26-bill-mckibben
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/26/opinion/climate-change-divestment-fossil-fuels.html
That said, nothing motivates like a do-or-die situation. Climate change is a global emergency and we've all got a taste of what horrors lie in wait for us just 2 or so decades down the line if we fail to act and act now. Well, I'm feeling quite optimistic now.
Yes. Agreed. Maybe it is using a term too broadly, but I think this is tightly connected to the neoliberal agenda, which, during this Pandemic at least, has shown some signs of weakening a little. Not nearly enough, but it's something. As long as people keep getting diverted by cultural issues of little survival significance, then money will do as it pleases.
I mean people are screaming about AOC, about as milk toast "left" as you could be in a European country, at least until not so long ago. If that's how they behave with like 5 or 6 members of congress, what on Earth would they do if the left of the Dems actually had, say, 30 representatives or more? I shudder to think.
Quoting Xtrix
Herein lies the key. These people are just the embodiment of ruthless "bottom line-ism", all cleverly cloaked under nice sounding, meaningless names. The only way I can think of moving Republicans a little to the center, is to make Democrats actually come to the center-left.
With so much propaganda and misinformation and everything else, the task looks galactic in scale. I know that it can't be that hard in real life, but, these mega-corporations have to lose some power or it's over. It won't be gifted, that's clear, but how to take it away, when leftists fight each other is... perplexing.
Not that they mean anything but alot of people are, for good reason, pessimistic about climate change. I try to be hopeful about it all because I feel like I have to be, but I also have a "believe it when I see it approach" as well. In particular with respect to COP26 I'll be watching what the US is doing with regards to their infrastructure plans and how that will be received by other countries next month. At the very least it can't be any worse than the Trump years, where he was an easy scapegoat for other countries' inaction so there's that at least.
Here's hoping. At least the conservative government in Australia, ten years too late, and without much conviction, is mouthing support. A year ago they would have denigrated the whole thing.
?
In reality total emissions matter, not per capita emissions. In fact having lower per capita missions means basically that these countries are even more important: they can easily increase their emission if and when the economy grows. It's the US and Europe where per capita emissions can fall.
And here's the US per capita carbon dioxide emissions. It's already happening in the US and Europe, the decrease of per capita emissions. India and China are really what we the World should focus on.
Think of the encouraging aspect of the poll. Nobody has answered "Don't care".
I'm very pessimistic. The only way out would be a president who orders the placing of solar panels on every rooftop within a week, closes all carbon-exhausting devices, orders the construction of hydrogen production units, the construction of a distribution system thereof,
the replacement of all fossil-fuel-based engines by hydrogen ones (although an exception can be made for classical cars and boats), and the order to income-tax the 10 richest people of the Earth with 90%, mister Tesla with 99, for the financing. They will be left with enough material wealth. 90% of 100 000 000 000 is still 10 billion, for which I would settle) Huge fresh water from the sea extractors should be built in the dessert. To prevent the so feared water wars. t's as simple as that.
Indeed, at least people have figured out it's a do-or-die scenario. :up:
China will honour its climate pledges – look at the changes we have already made.
Quoting Guardian: article by Zheng Zeguang - Chinese ambassador to the UK
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/27/china-climate-pledges-cop26-emissions
Charity says lower income countries handing over billions of dollars in debt is impeding their ability to tackle crisis.
Quoting Guardian: Climate Crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/27/poorer-countries-spend-five-times-more-on-debt-than-climate-crisis-report
Before voting, do we have all the information about binding scientific recommendations ?
Quoting Xtrix
There has always been a bit of a gap between talking and acting.
Don't have to look far in the UK for that. Think Tory Shit Flow... :rage:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/26/downing-street-to-oppose-raw-sewage-amendment-in-stand-off-with-lords
However, if lack of political will/action continues...then at least we have become more aware.
Differences can be made, if there's a will, there's a way. Or so they say....
Not all of us do know.
A go-to guide to see you through COP26, and get you up to speed on what it’s all about and why it’s so important.
https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/resources/cop26-explained/
China and India both have nearly x5 the population of the US. Yet China has under twice the amount of emissions as the US whilst India produces less than half that that the US does.
Out of the top 20 Indonesia, India and Brasil are extremely low per capita. The US is in no position to pat themselves on the back or point the finger at India or China. Such a thing is ridiculous as China is around on par with the UK AND has the ability to make sweeping changes overnight due to their authoritarian regime.
Finger pointing doesn't work. It only irritates people. The blame game is simply stupid. Far more important is a) change in energy policy and b) invest in R&D and changing infrastructure & power production into non-fossil fuel alternatives. And I'll just repeat it once again: to counter climate change, it is the top 10 largest economies that matter and that growth in the developing countries happens with using non-fossil fuel energy. That is possible when renewable energy continues to get the investment as it has gotten as already the prices have dramatically dropped. Little countries don't matter so much.
That the carbon emissions in the US are decreasing is in my view a good thing.
As I in the other Climate Change mentioned, the role of energy policy can be seen from the example of France or Sweden. France consumes electricity 10th most in the World, but in carbon dioxide emissions the country is at number 19. Reason: France depends a lot on nuclear energy. Sweden's electricity consumption is 28th largest, however in carbon emissions the country is at 63rd place.
(One of the worst ways to produce electricity, but in many places the only solution: using personal power generators that run on diesel & gas. Yet in many countries the only way to get reliable power. Nigeria has more power generators than cars.)
It is the case that a world economy COULD BE ORGANIZED around renewable energy production, mass transit, sustainable food, fibre, housing production, and so forth, but anything resembling a fast transition (like, by 2035) would produce wrenching, social-shredding dislocations throughout the world. If it takes 50 years (a more manageable period for massive global change) we will end up far overshooting the deadline when helpful changes could be made. We may have already completed that most unhelpful achievement.
Quoting unenlightened
This is a critical part of the solution about which one hears almost nothing. The economic status quo has to give way to economic contraction (in terms of volumes produced and consumed, as well as the kinds of materials). The immediate effect of contraction will be economic depression, probably severe and long, until a new, reduced equilibrium is reached. Given resource redistribution, retraction could be achieved quite sustainably and humanely. Resource redistribution will of course be resisted, as in "over my dead body".
Quoting tim wood
Climate-displacement is going to be a touchstone for all kinds of disruption, everywhere.
Quoting I like sushi
Actually humanitarian billionaires? Dream on.
Well that's your problem: you are being reasonable and looking at the evidence.
I think it's important to keep in mind that nothing's set in stone until it happens, and there is plenty of climate science activism. Quite a lot, actually. But it's not enough. This is so crazy that you have countries like Australia pledging neutrality by 2050 and Saudi Arabia by 2060. That's 20 and 30 years too late, respectively.
US, China and others too, everybody really, minus a few scattered countries. Nothing against Australians or Saudi's here, it's simply that governments and business as you point out, aren't taking this seriously enough. By the time they do, it's going to be too late to mitigate the worst of it.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Those things you mention could happen in a quick transition, sure. But if we don't do it quickly, it's just going to be brutal beyond words.
Still, we keep the pressure up, however we can and hope something big happens that changes the situation accordingly. There's nothing else I can see that can be done.
Will it be enough? It's an open question, which is quickly coming to a close.
Well Bitter, I think you are the age that remembers the 1970's quite well.
A lot has changed in the World since the 1970's, so a lot can change also in the next 50 years. Even more quicker. We likely won't be seeing the 2070's, but I'm still optimistic. In general.
In other words, ignore the apocalyptic whining from those with vested interests. Kick them to the unemployment line and go boldly into the future. We'd be surprised at how fast the economy will adjust and we move on. But that takes a leader. Like Gretta Thunberg, Bernie Sanders, AOC and their counterparts around the world. Nobody wants to follow girls, women and old Jewish socialists. People like the comfort of good honest salt-of-the-earth, hard working men-of-the-people white men like Joe Mansion and Mitch McConnel. After all, they are looking out for our best interests. Carry on, people.
Quoting Manuel
Yes, both.
1). Asia: 518 million vehicles on the road -- 0.14 vehicles per capita
2). Europe: 419 million vehicles -- 0.52 vehicles per capita
3). North America: 350 million vehicles -- 0.71 vehicles per capita
4). South America: 83 million vehicles -- 0.22 vehicles per capita
5). Middle East: 49 million vehicles -- 0.18 vehicles per capita
6). Africa: 26 million vehicles -- 0.05 vehicles per capita
7). Antarctica: about 50 vehicles
There just HAS to be a better idea than replacing 1.4 billion cars powered by internal combustion engines with 1.4 billion cars powered by wind, solar, nuclear, and hydro. We can not conger up 1.4 billion cars and the means to power them electrically without causing further damage to an already ailing world. It isn't the case that what's good for Tesla is good for the world. We used to think that what was good for GM was good for the USA.
Part of @Unenlightened's "poorer and learn to live simple and consume little" will be doing without a car, electric or combusted. Therefore, mass transit or walk. Americans especially find the idea of using mass transit every day bizarre and/or distasteful. We will have to get over that. No flying around for meetings, or lounging on the beach, either.
Industry and fossil-fuel friendly governments can tell when a very large portion of the populace is too tired and worried about feeding/housing themselves or their family, and the virus-variant devastation still being left in COVID-19’s wake — all while on insufficient income — to criticize them for whatever environmental damage their policies cause/allow, particularly when not immediately observable. (In fact, until a few weeks ago, I had not heard Greta’s name in the mainstream corporate news-media since COVID-19 hit the world.) Needless to say, big polluters most likely will not be made to account for their environmental damage while they're already paying out (kickbacks?) to big politicians' election budgets, etcetera. And who knows what else?
As individual consumers, far too many of us still recklessly behave as though throwing non-biodegradable garbage down a dark chute, or pollutants flushed down toilet/sink drainage pipes or emitted out of elevated exhaust pipes or spewed from sky-high jet engines and very tall smoke stacks — even the largest toxic-contaminant spills in rarely visited wilderness — can somehow be safely absorbed into the air, water, and land (i.e. out of sight, out of mind); like we’re inconsequentially dispensing of that waste into a black-hole singularity, in which it’s compressed into nothing.
Collectively, we need environmentally conscious and active young people, especially those approaching or reaching voting age. In contrast, the dinosaur electorate who have been voting into high office consecutive mass-pollution promoting or complicit/complacent governments for decades are gradually dying off thus making way for voters who fully support a healthy Earth thus populace.
The larger public has never had much say in how major new technologies will be deployed. "The People" were not crying out for crude oil. It was people like John D. Rockefeller who decided that his fortune could be made in petroleum. It wasn't the general public who decided that individual cars were going to be the only way to get around. You can thank GM, Ford, et al. They made the decision that America run on cars.
The public has basic needs they have to meet, and corporations provide it, quite often on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
It isn't the public that is addicted to fossil fuels, it is major corporations.
True change happens from the masses of people that we do not know or hear about. The engineers, the scientists, the inventors and those leading the companies and research groups making the change. Those doing the real answer of humanity to the problem are unknown to us and perhaps history will remember them later. We just assume our leaders are so important because they say they are.
Quoting Guardian: Cop26 Handbook by Children
Easier said than done...
but hope the delegates at least listen to the voice and concerns of children :hearts:
LESLEY DUNCAN | SING CHILDREN SING | Charity Single 1979
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4KRukPmfhU
So, will it take more strikes, what kind ?
Pepsi ads of children singing... or suffocating?
Well, they do have anxieties about these issues, rightly so, and our inaction fuels these anxieties. Kids never fully trusted grown-ups, but now they have a very good reason to feel betrayed by grown-ups. Their future is sacrificed on the altar of the Almighty Dollar, Molloch style.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2021/oct/27/martin-rowson-on-rishi-sunaks-age-of-optimism-budget-cartoon
Excellent BTL comments. This one a stand-out:
Quoting Guardian: Cartoon and Comment re Shit Budget
Well said by 'WhatEnlightenMeant' :sparkle:
Exactly. Growing anxieties about a whole host of problems...for us all.
It's almost like nobody cares.
Except them kids...
And musicians and anyone paying careful attention...or suffering NOW the destruction of their world. *
The Concerned. The Past, Present and Future challenges ahead.
Quoting Guardian: Soundtrack to Cop26
The 20 Greatest - from different decades and diverse genres.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/oct/28/the-greatest-songs-about-the-climate-crisis-ranked
--------
*
We can’t live like this’: climate shocks rain down on Honduras’s poorest.
Winter Amaya, 37, with his wife Luisa Mendoza, 31, in the makeshift home they share with their three children, after their home in another part of Chapagua was swept away by the River Aguán during Hurricane Eta. Photograph: Daniele Volpe/The Guardian
Rural communities like Chapagua that have done least to stoke the climate crisis barely have time to recover from one disaster before another hits...
It’s not just that the climate is increasingly chaotic. In recent years a wave of environmentally destructive megaprojects – including dams, tourist resorts, mines and African palm plantations – has exacerbated the situation, leading to worse flooding and water shortages.
Around 2008, African palm magnates redirected the mighty Aguán river to help irrigate their plantations. Every year, as it settled into its new course, rains and landslides shifted it further, leaving some communities dangerously close to the river while others were left without water.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/28/honduras-climate-crisis-floods-hurricanes-poor-community
I remember from my childhood what kind of bullshit propaganda was fed to us as children by the "progressive" environmentalists. My educative parents bought these children books for me warning of the perils of pollution, as environtalism was known back then. Of course the real hysteria back then in the 70's and especially 80's was nuclear war and oh boy, did they want to scare us children with that. Those images of burn victims from Hiroshima did look scary for a young boy. And of course, that the US had dropped the atomic bombs wasn't forgotten, Oh no! (Somehow the "progressive" forgot the Soviet Union from the equation) I remember that in my childhood I got very confused and negative image of the US, thanks to leftist progressives in the media and the educational sector. There was hardly anything positive about the US in the media, while Soviet Union was promoted and talked with respect. But then I got the chance to be in the US and wow! It was so different from the depiction given by the leftists. Seattle Washington was a very nice place with friendly people and I really enjoyed a lot my time there, which made my country to look gloomy and an unhappy place with rather unfriendly people.
But coming back to the environmental educative books for children. First it was condescendingly naive, of course, as the target audience were simple children. There were the evil corporations billowing smoke because, they just were to billow perilous smoke and chemicals to the environment, and the solution given in the book was to put filters on the smokestacks and dig the ugly factories underground. Perhaps the filters part was true. But then as now, the real evil was capitalism, especially American capitalism.
The propaganda seems to continue with a similar tone as back then.
Climate change was already well studied and non-controversial when I was at school, in the 1970s and 80s. It was not propaganda at all; on the contrary, its denial was propaganda and still is.
If they save us, then we need to do whatever it takes to encourage others to emulate them. That will be making a virtue of necessity.
Just out of curiosity, Tim, in what way do you view the issue of dp's as an adjunct to climate remediation? Is this simply the type of "pork" (to use a legislative term for lack of a better) that gets amended to any negotiation? It would seem to me that bringing relatively poor people into a societal situation within which they can become as strongly carbon-positive polluters as the rest of us "first worlders" might be antithetical to climate remediation. In short (and I know it sounds terrible): from an environmental perspective, the world's poor seem less haful where they are, where their relative lack of resources limits the environmental harm that they can do. Not that I don't feel badly about poverty and war...(fer chrissake, I am one of the poor, and here in America, to boot!)
Technology can help. Hydrogen-powered planes would be nice to have for instance, or fusion power.
But other things can help and should be made virtue of, such as frugality. Do we really need to eat meat everyday, to drive for hours everyday, or to fly every week (for some)? Do we want to? Being a bit more conscious and careful about what resources we consume would help. Not to say that people aren't; the idea of change via consumer information
and behavior change is gaining momentum.
I agree, sort of. But in a capitalist system, if I conserve a gallon of gas, I just increased the supply, reducing the price, stimulating demand so some asshole can roll-coal with his gas guzzler, one more mile. Government action is needed to force that guzzler off the road while the owner screams about his rights.
Yeah, I'm not actually advocating misery; imagine removing all the cars from the roads. Imagine the peaceful environment that results. Add back plenty of quiet, clean cheap electric busses, and trams. Society saves billions in the cost of cars, and can afford for transport to be very cheap. It's interesting to consider what one expects to have privately and what one expects to share. Perhaps instead of a car, everyone needs a garden or allotment. Travel independence or food independence?
What I want to emphasise is that the things folk find impossible to contemplate giving up are very very recent necessities, that many people have done without for many centuries and many people still live without. And that we are not noticeably happier for our private transport or our central heating. On the contrary, we have a worse diet, worse health, more stress and an impoverished environment.
Poorer is better.
Quoting ssu
It's Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.
If you plan x time for doing something, it will take x time (and then some) to do it.
Oh yes, the horror, the horror... :razz:
And how will the future generations do in America with the US?
Quoting Olivier5
I think there is an obvious difference in what is said in a childrens book and what is taught at school. At least here.
Oh, but the ego, the ego, the hurt to the ego!!
To say nothing of the logistic nightmare that would result due to downsizing, saving etc. What could help is have people live close to their place of work, or that all employees of a company live in the same place, so that transport can be organized for all of them efficiently. But that would require of people extreme levels of mobility and living minimalistically.
Neither optimism nor hope can defeat facts.
Indeed. And if it is an international program with many countries participating, it will take a lot of bureaucracy also.
For example, the ITER-project, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, a project on fusion energy, was basically started at 1985 by Reagan and Gorbachev, which replaced the Intor-project of 1979. One participating country has even collapsed during the time the project has gone on...
So, hope they finally get the project done I guess. Completion of the reactor is planned to happen in 2025.
One possible answer is in the second season of The 100. Another in Hunger Games. These echo (or try to) today's teenagers' views of the future as pretty bleak.
You couldn't do an optimistic scifi movie nowadays. Nobody would believe it.
Ego is extraordinarily resilient.
Unfortunately.
Quoting baker
One thing Covid has demonstrated is the flexibility of logistics. Don't cook, Just Eat. Don't shop, Deliveroo. Consumerism on tap like another utility. Easy! It's time to stop eulogising work - the creation of the devil. Civilisation is about labour-saving devices. Let the robots work, and let us play! But play smart.
The only positive thing that I've seen coming out of COP26, was from Russia, regarding defining nuclear as green technology.
I'm glad to see my country of former residence (Poland) opting for nuclear in the near future to offset carbon emissions.
Of course, if more people did that, the economy would collapse. Minimalism is not economically viable.
1) Once a technology is created, it takes time for public acceptance. Wind-generation first met with opposition (owing to its unfamiliarity). Opposition in the upper midwest, for instance, is uncommon 25 years on.
2) Production of new technologies takes time to build up and perfect. Worker require training and supply chains need to be created (or repaired--currently).
3) Infrastructure has to be put into place -- another major operation. Wind generation in the narrow band running from North Dakota to west Texas doesn't work unless the transmission lines are in place. Transmission lines (high voltage wires on towers) are very strongly resisted by affected populations.
4) The end user of new technology (the all-electric home or factory for example) require time and financing to be in place. 90% of Minnesotans, for example, heat and cook with natural gas. Transitioning from gas to electricity is another major undertaking.
That's why it takes more time than one might think. And wind generation is just one set of technologies. Solar, electricity-driven transportation for freight, mass transit, energy-use upgrades in housing and business buildings, and so on also require time. We have hardly begun.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/big-oil-climate-change-hearing-10-28-21/index.html
Quoting Guardian: Cop26 Cartoon
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/29/net-zero-by-2050-is-just-snake-oil-we-need-an-actual-hold-it-in-your-flippers-zero
It's more that people are taught to look at the future negatively and critically. Being optimistic sounds too much as being care free and not being worried about future. It isn't politically correct.
Hence Science Fiction is the best window for the feelings of the day when they were written or filmed. People show actually better the "signs of the times" with Scifi than with anything happening at the present.
It is an interesting point. Just look at the Star Trek movies and series of today and compare it to the original series (or even to the Next Generation). Not much if anything to do with the vision of Gene Rosenberry nowdays. Of course the optimism before the oil crisis is totally understandable. I remember the makers of the absolutely brilliant 60's movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, did emphasize in an interview that they wanted the movie to be as realistic in describing the technology. If you make a simple extrapolation of the advances is space technology from the 1960's to the next 40 years with looking how the exploration of space advanced from the 1920's to the 1960's, it seems totally possible and realistic.
What the scifi-movies don't understand is the presence of history even in the future and that once a technology has advanced to some level, it remains so as there is no need to improve it.
It's also not scientifically correct, and honestly, simply not credible. Trump is part of our reality, and scifi must reflect that sinister turn taken by our civilisation toward crass stupidity, ignorance of consequences and sadism. Strong, aggressive climate change is now certainly our future. People are just too stupid or too crass to change, and the kids know it. They can read the news just like adults can.
Optimism was perhaps the biggest BS you were made to believe in as a kid...
What is stupid and crass is sizing up the overwhelming majority of people who had no say about past or future energy policy and calling them stupid and crass.
On the other hand, I agree with you that climate pessimism makes more sense than climate optimism.
I don't think they're 'taught' this exactly. It is just fashionable to be moody most of the time. Whilst negative nobodies writhe in despair the rest get to work. It's been like that for a long time it's just that now the nobodies have a megaphone created by those they holler at sadistically.
Enough people grow up to become children again thankfully :)
Quoting Bitter Crank
One without the other is stupidity. I'm a self confessed pessimist. Because of my pessimism I am always rewarded with reasons to be optimistic because nothing is ever as bad as I imagined it would be. Wallowing in pessimism, and/or raging about it, is the kind of thing I spit on though ;)
They do everytime they vote, though. Why vote for climate deniers or do-nothingers again and again? In the US, Bush and Trump were deniers, and Obama did nothing much while sabotaging international agreements. Biden, I don't know yet but I doubt he'll do anything.
As Uncle Karl said, "The government is a committee to organize the affairs of business." We The People are SOL.
We could have a revolution, of course, and just do away with capitalism. There are reasons why that hasn't happened and isn't going to happen. In order to have a revolution, a popular political movement is required to inform, educate, and organize We The People. Such organizations have appeared. Then what happened? They were vigorously attacked and crushed--like the labor movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; the Socialist Party (first third of the 20th century); the Communist Party; and anyone to the left of Attila the Hun (the McCarthy witch-hunt); and the labor movement again in the latter part of the 20th century.
Americans are quite literally schooled to accept the lies of big business. It takes heroic efforts to break through the smoke screen -- literally that, in countering the denials of the tobacco companies in the 1960s and forward (and still not finished).
Bernie could have done something useful I think. He's still trying.
Shankar Vedantam, the host of the public radio program, Hidden Brain, put it this way: We face an existential threat from survive climate change. Compared to WWII, are we at D Day, or are we at Dunkirk?
Dunkirk! Like the British Expeditionary Force, many localities around the world (including places in the US) will have to retreat to survive. D Day--the long-awaited massive counter offensive against Hitler's western front--isn't in the offing. Global sea level rise (between 3 feet and 10 feet, depending on the model, and whether its the middle case or worse case) is baked in -- even if we stopped producing CO2 right now.
There aren't any great alternatives; there are no over-looked wonderful solutions.
I'm pessimistic about climate change -- not a fatalist. Too bad we didn't act sooner, too bad things are going to get worse, regardless. But we can, we will adapt to the consequences of bad decisions. I don't like it, we could have done better, but here we are.
I heard part of that. An excellent discussion. I was a meteorologist long ago and my opinion is that it's far more important now to prepare for the inevitable. Sure, we can push intelligently toward green energy, but Miami could take a clue from the Maldives where efforts focus on building up the ground levels on the islands. As Shanker stated, we have lost the battle with climate change and must adapt. Little Greta notwithstanding.
I'm 75; I don't have a lot of water and climate worries, provided I don't live too much longer. I wonder what plans informed adolescents and young adults are making in light of the ongoing crises which they will have to live with.
Many people like Bernie but not enough to ever vote for him. Instead, they voted for someone else, someone who looked more serious and less bizarre, someone who could be trusted to never lift a finger against corporations. And then they shed crocodile tears about how they can't change a thing by their vote... That's how the con works: you don't even try because you think you never had a chance.
That's a very different question than CC. Capitalism is like gravity: you cannot escape it. My point was simply that people are only powerless against climate change when they want to be powerless. There's always something to do, including through your vote.
I don't know - has anyone asked them ?
Even if they are like 'informed adults', there will be a variety of responses.
Depending on where they live, their education and work opportunities, their physical/social and psychological state of wellbeing. Passion or pessimism. Swinging moods if not opinion.
A good first step is to be 'informed' in the first place.
Knowledge of what can or should be done/not done is at the heart of any decision-making process.
Does everyone agree ? Are electric cars the future ? Perhaps build that ark now...
Cop26 might only be a blah-blah-blah exercise for some politicians and world leaders but the young are making their voices heard with demands for immediate and effective action.
"There is no Planet B".
Education at primary level for all children is key to giving a sense of possibility as well as responsibility.
Quoting TES: Tackling climate crisis - 8 things schools can do
https://www.tes.com/news/8-things-schools-can-do-tackle-climate-crisis
Yes. It's important to state this. To prevent total apathy and encourage people still to care and to take care of self and others in the face of a growing crisis. It's a matter of adapting and quickly...
Difficult but not impossible for creatures of habit. How soon can new habits be formed ?
Young adult fiction says a lot. As I explained, a lot of nowadays scifi has a dystopian angle, which I guess helps kids and young adults prepare psychologically. In the US, the 100 is a good example. In Italy, there was Anna; in France, L'Effondrement.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U2UoR-oB1M
"Do as I say and not as I do"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U2UoR-oB1M
Neil Oliver telling it like it is :fire: :100:
Excoriating the presidents, princes and politicians.
Encouraging the 'hollow bags of wind' to lead by example: "Walk the walk".
Biden and his cavalcade of cars...private jets for those coming to mumble some more...
Oliver suggests there should be vital, virtual meetings every day over the internet.
Now that would make sense, no ?
Not sure how many fiction writers will be attending Cop26 but interesting to consider the role of sci-fi.
Quoting Tor.com: Climate change and Sci-fi authors
In this simulation, Paris is mostly under water if sea level rises 50 metres, the level predicted to happen in 500 years or so, in the worst case scenario.
Cover art for: Valérian - La Cité des Eaux Mouvantes, by Jean-Claude Mézières, 1970
Yes to optimism but no to denial. This sub-genre of scifi (called Climate Fiction) cannot be all gloom and doom of course, and mankind may indeed still thrive. But the challenge cannot be ignored anymore, nor wished away via some future technology.
I'm ten years older, so much of what happens will be beyond my awareness. Here in Colorado there is a looming water issue that extends to the Pacific. Over sixty million people rely on the Colorado River.
I meant to reply to this and other aspects of your post, including the video which I haven't yet watched.
Voting Green would seem a sensible thing to do but some see it as a wasted vote, given our political electerol system.
However, it has to be said the Greens have made a significant impact; people are paying attention and taking them seriously. Thanks to Caroline Lucas speaking out loud and clear, here:
Quoting Guardian: Cop26 - Caroline Lucas Interview
About Cop26, Lucas admits that it’s hard, looking at the evidence, to feel optimistic.
And yet...she remains hopeful...
--------
I hadn't expected this thread to take a scifi turn...but yeah, of course - it is imagination based on reality; our lives, fears and hopes. The stories past, present and future.
Quoting Olivier5
The cover is too beautiful.
I didn't read scifi until way past average age of adulthood. I just didn't see its relevance.
Shows how wrong a person can be...
Quoting Olivier5
Indeed.
The interview picks out one of Lucas' favourite films, 'The Age of Stupid'.
Have you seen it ?
Those people might consider UKIP. Didn't win many elections, but got their policy through. Losing votes influence winning politicians and other voters; they are never wasted.
Didn't they just. Major job done and dusted.
>>> Brexit :rage:
What lessons can be learned, then, from those wishing successful outcomes to Cop26 ?
How to engage the masses ?
Fear of incoming...floods ?
This is more about changing our lifestyles and habits of consumption. We are fighting ourselves, our impulses, what we think we need.
Quoting unenlightened
Yes. I think many are already poorer and consuming less.
However, for so long, shopping was ( still is ) seen as 'retail therapy'. Buy this and you'll feel better.
Be better. More beautiful. Sexy and Superior.
Buy the best toys and labels for Christmas. Keep everyone happy by spending money.
Even if you didn't have it. Credit cards made everything easy - just one swipe.
Self-esteem wrapped up in a red, satin bow.
Humans, eh ? :roll:
Keep it simple; keep it nostalgic; keep it racist; repeat hypnotically. Something like this:
"Bring back our White Christmases!" :scream:
:lol:
OMG, that was the best laugh I've had in forever. Really needed that :100: :sparkle:
It seems to me that the problem now is politicians lagging behind the views of the informed public. This is worst in totalitarian states where they can safely ignore the public - ie China, Russia. The dictators have their own continued power uppermost in mind, not enacting economic sacrifices to safeguard the planet's future. Trump was the most apposite example. Most democracies are accepting the inevitable
now though as even the most boneheaded concede the extreme weather events are warnings of worse to come. I forecast India will quickly come on board. So we - the consumers - have to start boycotting Chinese and Russian goods - hit them the only way they understand. I hope those who can advise on what products we can most effectively stop buying will soon do so..
By the time we get to 2030, we might actually see politicians say "we've totally destroyed the planet, we cannot believe we have failed so miserably, but we have to do something for our children!."
And then we can have a good laugh. And then burn or something.
There's no point in me reducing my carbon footprint when The Bogeyman is increasing his
The Bogeyman is increasing his carbon footprint.
Therefore there is no point in me reducing my carbon footprint.
It's a familiar story; virtue is expensive and painful. So let's all be Bogeymen.
But in this case there is another argument.
The Bogeyman will kill us all if he doesn't stop being a Bogeyman.
Therefore I am going to stop being the Bogeyman.
Would you like to stop too?
Yeah, that's the gist of the logic. And the solution is really that straightforward. Stupid competition and bragging rights about "growth" and the like will cost us dearly.
But if countries do not sign legally binding treaties, what can be done? Give these types of speeches and empty promises.
Have to keep pressuring these people to change policy, or we're done.
The species will adapt to the change. There's no reason now to think we can't.
We haven't faced something this big ever, involving the entire world population and the vanishing of countries and cities. We may adapt, but maybe billions will die.
It's going to get very ugly. I hope you're right.
This is about representative of the state of things.
We've faced worse. Look up Younger Dryas.
Quoting Manuel
Not all at once. We'll go into a warmer climate for a few thousand years and the oceans will absorb the CO2. We'll be back something close to baseline in 10,000 years.
Yeah, that's not with billions of people living in cities who don't know how to survive in the wilderness.
Quoting frank
If we are still here, I guess. It took about 250 years to get to this point, most of the harm being done in the last few decades, so hopefully we'd have learned not to repeat the same mistakes.
It's still quite hard to absorb the idea that we are willing to destroy most sentient life on Earth, many if not most of our fellow citizens for reasons of power and profit, essentially.
Yeah, so no worries. Go back to sleep. We’ll probably survive a nuclear war, too.
Quoting Manuel
Nihilistic greed wins in the end, perhaps. But don’t worry — because maybe we all survive in 10 thousand years or something.
:up: Why do you think that is?
Shouldn't it have been the other way round? We make such a big fuss about morality - ethics of this, ethics of that - that what should've happened is all other areas of human interest and activity should've aligned themselves with it by now, it's been nearly 2.5k years and counting. Virtue should be cheap and joyful. Yet it is not! :chin:
Our fellow citizens will already be dead when the spike comes. It's not a high speed event.
I'd like some citations on that if you have them. Because the story I heard is that there's no going back. Rather a new equilibrium will be established (assuming no substantial reduction in global emissions) 5 - 8 degrees warmer; no ice on Antarctica or Greenland and that means a sea level rise of about 70 metres.
Quoting TheMadFool
If virtue was fun and profitable, every arsehole would be virtuous.
Such as dumping iron into oceans or planting more trees and so on.
:rofl: And that's why, ladies and gentlemen, "virtue is expensive and painful."
The Long Thaw by David Archer, one of the few who's done long range climate modeling.
No, it's not permanent. CO2 is water soluble.
With a global government and maybe a new global religion, with China as host, yes.
I don't believe anyone would object to dumping scrap iron into the oceans for algae to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere.
And, that's just one idea out of 100's others.
Dude, the book is called "The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth's Climate ". Not 10,000 years. I'm not sure I'll be around that long.
That's quite optimistic you know. At least with us gone, the world has less worries. :joke:
We'll be back to close to baseline in 10,000 years. In 100,000, all the CO2 humans pumped out will be absorbed.
There's a long tail. That book is a little out of date on some things, but it's an easy, fascinating read and you'd understand the future a little better if you read it. It goes into details about the pending glacial period, which is why I read it.
True. There are several ginormous chunks of coal on the planet that are left to be burned. If we could avoid doing that, it would make it easier to scrub CO2 and limit the volatility of the change.
Volatility is the thing that will challenge us, not the heat.
So great news! Maybe we survive, and in a few thousand years maybe things get back to normal. So no need to panic, folks. Get a grip.
I read a book once talking about various ways we may survive a nuclear fallout and emerge from underground in a few thousand years. Since then I've stopped advocating for nuclear weapons reductions.
[quote=David Archer]About 10% of the CO2 from coal will still be affecting the climate in one hundred thousand years.[/quote]
You are misrepresenting your source, I'm afraid.
Oh, sorry. 90%, not 100%.
And you're welcome for turning you in to the reliable shit.
:roll:
I've had a realization. David Archer is wrong. It's a permanent change and it will positive feedback until the Earth's surface becomes pretty similar to that of Venus.
This will transpire in the next 15 years because we didn't do anything new at the conference.
It's just so endlessly fucking poignant, isn't it?
No dude, 10 % after 100,000 years, not 10% after 10,000 years, You're missing a zero again.
If you will bother to read the book: we will be close to baseline in 10,000 years.
No wait, you're right! It's a permanent change and it will escalate quickly in the next 3 years, so you will actually get to see the Atlantic Ocean boil!
It's gruesome. Your skin will fry like bacon.
If we do, it's very bad news. I don't have children, nor plan to, but they will not be living a good life or even get a sliver of a chance of a decent life due to this disaster.
Why do you think that?
Mass migration, serious food shortages, increased natural disasters, job scarcity, not being able to be outside a building for much time at all. If you live in a coastal city or on an island, like I do, you're going to have to move to a place that's already over populated.
The outcomes of climate change are worse than the initial predictions, due to how interconnected the climate is with everything that goes on in Earth. So the announced problems will likely be worse, not better, than what is predicted now.
So all that and likely more.
We already get mass migrations, serious food shortages and lots of natural disasters. We're still capable of living high tech, pretty decent lives.
How did you get the idea people wouldn't be able to be outside a building for much of the time?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/freylindsay/2021/09/13/world-bank-predicts-massive-internal-migration-from-climate-change-by-2050/?sh=49b8333510e4
The report is notable for focussing on internally displaced people, or IDPs - a class of migrants who don't leave their own country and are therefore excluded from many of the protections at least nominally afforded those that cross a border. There were more than 50 million IDPs around the world at the end of 2020, most of them forced from their home regions by violence and conflict, but many of them by natural disasters as well.
The number of IDPs referenced above was the highest on record, but if the World Bank is correct in its predictions, it will be dwarfed in the coming decades. According to the report, by 2050 there could be up to 86 million internal climate migrants in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as 49 million in the East Asia and Pacific region, 40 million in South Asia, 19 million in North Africa, 17 million in Latin America, and 5 million in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
As for the heat info, this article is interesting:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2021/climate-change-humidity/
Scientists have found that Mexico and Central America, the Persian Gulf, India, Pakistan and Southeast Asia are all careening toward this threshold before the end of the century.
I understand what you're saying.
I don't doubt that dramatic change is before us. I just think that the level of misery in the world won't actually increase much for the simple reason that a portion of our species loves upheaval and sees peace and security as deathly.
I expect mass migrations northward. I expect famines that kill millions. I expect world war.
I was thinking about this recently: destruction is creative. Creation is destructive. Something will arise from the human potential as a result of climate change that will be unique and beautiful.
I can't say that it shouldn't come into being. I bless life either way.
As for equatorial communities, yes, sooner or later they'll have to move north. But north is where primates originally evolved during the PETM, speaking of the creativity in climate change.
At one point or other, it would seem normal to think we would disappear as a species.
To have it be of our own conscious decision making, is sad.
Sad isnt the word I would use, but yes, we have the power to end our species in a number of ways.
Yeah, but you're still utterly doomed. That's the important take away.
Not doomed— provided we act now. But hopefully we can convince enough people not to, since a book says things will maybe get back to normal in ten thousand years.
Quoting frank
:rofl:
I just don't see that happening.
If you followed the PETM reference, you'd see that we are the result of climate change. Too philosophical?
Neither do I, thanks in part to efforts from geniuses like you.
Can’t wait for things to calm down again in ten thousand years though. Look forward to it.
That's really not true. You're just bitter.
Heh.
That's true. Nature is powerful enough that in thousands of years, we should predict for some kind of intelligent life to return.
Of course, since I have some doubts as to my longevity and that of my family and friends, I'd prefer if it weren't that long...
Well, you could be a "libertarian" and want the ice to melt, better for shipping and commerce and stuff.
Notice how you have to get more and more aggressive to get the same satisfaction? It's dopamine withdrawal.
Yes. So we can safely go back to sleep.
Reduction wouldn't solve the problem. We need to stop burning hydrocarbons period.
There's no way to get the whole world to make the transition without a global government.
I did read it in my teens.
Definitely. I don't think a global government is likely. Next best thing: a new global religion.
Can't plan for that, though. They just pop up when they're ready.
Doesn’t matter because it’s probably not permanent. All we have to do is wait it out for ten thousand years of so. Yes, we’ll suffer in the meantime, but gotta think positive.
:smile: you're doomed
What isn't? I'm not sure what you're anaphorically referencing there old chap
Can't say the same for Greta, that's for sure.
Always glad to join the ragging of a national treasure. What I find hypocritical is the way he spent most of his long career being the acceptable face of Nature as entertainment and avoided all controversy or lending his support to any of the many environmental campaigns and issues over the years, until they became mainstream, and then suddenly in the last few years makes like he is the Spokesman for the Environment, and longstanding member of the Vanguard of the Green Revolution. If eating raw monkey brains was respectable, David would make a programme to celebrate it.
Did you get David Archer's book?
Because basically what it means is that a source you trusted was really really wrong, as in must have made up the stuff about permanent global warming. You'd have to know next to nothing about climatology to assert that.
I'm interested in how people adjust to that kind of thing. If they're even capable of adjusting.
Just satirizing the ramblings of one of our several town idiots.
I generally just change my mind when I find I am wrong, which I quite often am. But you have yet to point me to where I am wrong about climate change, apart from treating 100,000 years as 'permanent', which is a bit of a picky criticism even by your standards.
100,000 years isn't permanent. I don't think it's picky to say so.
The fact that warming will come in a dramatic spike (the size of which we don't know) over a few thousand years will be more challenging for us in some ways.
As soon as we adapt to the change, we'll have to adapt again.
As David Archer explains, warming will have a long tail, thus the 100,000 year figure.
I guess I wonder why people who show interest in this particular topic are resistant to learning more. It seems like it would be a high priority to know the facts.
https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/ocean-chemistry/climate-change-and-methane-hydrates/
Picky isn't the right word. Idiotic. Stupid. Ignorant. Moronic. Imbecilic. Buffoonish. Doltish. Shallow. All these suffice.
I'll spell it out for those following along (not for you -- go back to sleep), in case it isn't crystal clear why this is so stupid:
Greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, and the planet is warming along with them. We're currently on track to a roughly 2.7C rise, which will make the world unrecognizable and probably lead to tipping points which would be irreversible and, as David Archer (for those who have read him) explains, will last for thousands of years to come. Emissions need to be phased out as quickly as possible.
That's the challenge that we face. To throw in something like "Well, maybe we don't ALL end up dead," or "We'll probably adapt," or "in 10,000 years things may get back to livable conditions," is more denialist bullshit -- nothing more. That's not the argument David Archer, or anyone serious, is making. No one should take it seriously. What we should be doing is all we can to educate and organize -- to do all we can to contribute to stopping the "digging of our own graves," as Guterres rightly says. Not to speculate about how a few human beings may survive, or about how the dust will settle in thousands of years. It's true in the case of nuclear war, it's true in the case of climate change -- totally irrelevant. If there were a 1% chance that humanity will be wiped out, or the earth significantly altered for the worse, than we should take it seriously. It's far beyond 1%.
I agree and never said otherwise.
Quoting Xtrix
The world won't be unlivable during the worst part of the warming. I'm astonished that you put so much energy into this topic and don't know that.
Quoting Xtrix
Maybe put a little more emphasis on educate?
Partly, yes. Many aren't bought by fossil fuel interests, but by other corporate interests -- so they don't care about changing the energy sector. But they're all motivated by power, and the way they maintain their power is through getting elected. Getting elected requires a lot of money and a lot of propaganda, because the "people" (the voters) still have a say. If you're running for office, you've already been filtered out -- probably come from a wealthy family, have gone to elite universities, or have come around to the ideology of the ruling class.
Big Oil is becoming a persona non grata, like tobacco before it, so more politicians are giving lip service to reeling them in. Still very little has been done, because they still have a lot of lobbying power and have nearly the entire Republican party completely under their control, so passing any meaningful legislation is next to impossible. But even if some did get through, they use the courts (now completely reshaped thanks to the hard work of McConnell and the election of Trump) to delay or overrule it.
Quoting John McMannis
We have the solutions. Renewable energy is now at a level of technology that it can be employed, and is "cost effective." What's needed right now is electrification of the infrastructure, which will take while and require a lot of investment. It'll require nuclear energy as well, in my view. It'll require divesting from fossil fuel companies, which is gaining momentum. Most importantly, it'll require -- as with nearly anything beneficial that has ever happened in history, from the New Deal to civil rights to women's rights to gay rights -- ordinary citizens to come together and demand it. Seems cliched, but it's true. That requires education, communication, organizing, collective action.
Quoting John McMannis
All good and basic questions. We're stuck in a two-party system in the United States, and both are beholden to corporate interests. The Republicans get much more money from fossil fuel companies than Democrats, and so the former are outright deniers (led by Trump, who once said that climate change is a Chinese hoax) and the latter say nice words but never deliver. As this issue becomes more and more severe, we see painfully slow movement. Now the Republicans, led by the fossil fuel companies themselves, are saying climate change is a real threat and we should do something, but offer nothing but greenwashing bullshit. The Democrats are making some lovely proposals, knowing full well there's no chance of them passing and deliberately letting them fail. Biden, for example, makes a lot of noise about the importance of climate change, and then turns around and begs OPEC to pump more oil. Why? Because high gas prices hurt his approval ratings.
So the voter is stuck between a rock and hard place. If they punish the Democrats by not voting, or voting third party, then the Republicans win, who are even worse. Third party candidates like Ralph Nader gain almost no traction and then are blamed for siphoning votes. Bernie and progressive candidates, many of which are no doubt sincere, have to take the label "Democrat" but are often fought against by the DNC. They're made it through in recent years thanks to social media and independent fundraising, but they're still a small minority.
So no easy answers, but nothing will happen at all if we give up.
:lol:
Interesting to see the variants of climate denial crop up.
Quoting frank
You don't know what you're talking about. Which is not so astonishing.
The "worst part of warming" is meaningless. The worst case is that we spiral out of control, and hit over 4 or 5 degrees of warming. Do you know what that will look like? Are you aware of what even a 2C rise will do? No, you don't. You have no idea. None. So until you look into that a little more, I'll continue to laugh in your "astonished" face.
[quote= a nobel prize for literature winner]While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in
But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him
[/quote]
That was the temperature during the Eocene. Yes, we know exactly what it looked like.
Did you get that book yet?
When human beings weren't even a dream. Yes, and the earth was practically a fireball if you go back far enough.
Like I said, look into it a little more. That may help your denial.
Fascinating
Should we continue to rape the Earth because it feels good, she's no longer a virgin, she has it coming, and we want to get our nut? It's too late to pull out now? It's natural to do what we are doing? Or should we just fuck her slower, whisper in her ear, and kiss her on the neck in the hopes she likes it better? Maybe it's not too late and she'll love us if we start acting like we should have been acting all along?
Or better yet, how about "no means no." How about we pay reparations and start re-wilding. Or just STOP and let her heal on her own?
Disturbing analogy.
Agreed, but it pales in comparison to what we are doing to the Earth. Talk about disturbing. But we've become numb to it.
Why all the "IMMEDIATELYs"? Because few if any politicians in office in 2021 will be in office in 2030. They can be held to account for what they do this year and next year, and the year after...
I feel / fear that what 2030, 2050, or 2070... deadlines mean is that "We'll worry about it then. In the meantime, we'll wait and see how fast things get worse. With any luck, things will get so bad that nothing can be done about it, and then we'll be doomed; but at least I'll be off the hook for making difficult decisions."
:100: We've been stalling for 40 years or more.
Bill McKibben
Kinda like the "Free Beer Tomorrow" sign in the pub?
I actually don't pay any attention to any of this shit because I already know what's going to get done...not a damn thing, until it's obviously too late. As we stand right now, I think it's probably already "too late" to prevent eventual tropic zone catastrophe, only now it's just not yet obvious. All I feel I can do is say "Que sera, sera", and thank my lucky stars I don't live in the tropics.
The eventual has already eventuated. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/3/madagascar-is-on-brink-of-first-climate-induced-famine-un-warns
I wonder if any studies have been done (sociology, history, poly sci?) that winnowed out those few (if any) cases where humanity saw a looming threat and decided to nip it in the bud? If such cases exist, what was the controlling factor that moved the needle toward action, over-and-above the kicking and screaming of those who championed doing nothing? Was it money? Leadership? Propaganda? Violence?
It has been my lay-observation that the threatened negatives have to come home to the recalcitrant before anything gets done.
The meanness in me would pretend to not be satisfied with an "I told you so" after the fact. I would want to exact horrible punishment upon those who allowed the threats to come to fruition. I would not want to see them get on board at the last minute and profit from only then doing the right thing. I would want to claw-back their gains, and then some.
But I'm too old for any of that. I do, however, see how the younger generation might feel like a newly-freed slave if they ever over-come the threat. You can't, after all, let a man up after abusing him, and then expect him to let by-gones-be-by-gones, thanking you for stopping what you never should have been doing in the first place. There will be some push-back as the field is re-leveled and the score-board reset.
I wonder how the Earth will react. She seems to not calculate things like forgiveness, vengeance, etc. As William Muny said before shooting Little Bill in the face: "Deserves got nothing to do with it."
Anyway, if we ever did do the right thing before we had to, and before their was a monetary incentive to do it, we might look to the motivating factors from history and try that yesterday.
Yeah physics doesn't care about any of that... and eventhough a case could no doubt be made for it, I don't think finger-pointing will get us closer to a solution either.
Quoting James Riley
Propaganda, some kind of story would be my guess. You convince people into believing that the necessary transition wouldn't actually be a sacrifice for them, but a beneficial thing... which it probably would be to some extend. Finger pointing and fear-mongering will only get you so far because for most it's not possible to be in this constant state of panic/urgency psychologically speaking.
I read somewhere there is no limit to what can be done if you give others credit for it. And something about letting people think it was there idea. However, I think those tactics are old, foreseen and undermined by interests that want to conserve (ative) the status quo. Maybe smarter people than me can figure it out.
Quoting James Riley
I agree, chances don't look that hot...I do think maybe the time is ripe for some kind of politician or political movement that can connect the dots in the right way considering how out of time and detached mainstream political parties are... there definitely seems to be a market for it.
Should be headline news all over the world. I'm not giving up, of course, but this seems to be the reality. Who knew we'd eventually die from capitalism? One would have thought radical fundamentalism, but I repeat myself.
Yeah, but that sounds like ordinary people -- who I don't necessarily blame. I blame the people at the top, the corporate, political, and intellectual leaders who have duped the vast majority of the population with their bullshit belief/value system. For them it's more like: "We're heading for destruction, but our job is to raise profit and share prices every quarter or we're out on our ass, so let someone else handle it." Or they deny it all together, as the fossil fuel industry did for decades.
We've known for decades. Just like smoking, over fishing, pollution and diminishing biodiversity.
"Après nous, le déluge..."
Can't say that. There was at least an attempt. The Australian PM was obliged to stand up to a world audience and say climate change is something that has to be dealt with. No Australian PM has ever had to do that in a public forum, or at least, the last one that did lost his office over it. We all know that his response is 'not good enough' but he was obliged, at least, to say it. Cynicism, writing it all off as hopeless, is just another way to abandon any hope of change.
And I just wanted to add, if you weren’t already aware the /r/Antiwork subreddit has now surpassed 1 million subscribers and is continuing to grow. Climate change damage maybe set in stone but I don’t think I’m wrong to be a little optimistic that something could change here
Very true, although I’d argue I’m being realistic. Nevertheless, as I said, I’m not by any means using it as an excuse to give up, because I never really thought much would come of it anyway. Same with this reconciliation bill being negotiated in congress— everything worthwhile has been removed. So it’s a matter of simply continuing on.
Quoting Albero
We can. We have far more power and privilege than other people in the world today and throughout history, who have fought under much harsher conditions.
I’m not saying I’m hopeless, or that nothing can be done —I’m saying that like anything else in history, change will have to come from below. That means you and I, and those around us. It means joining together. Educating ourselves and others, creating solutions and programs, and pressing for those programs.
Plenty of organizations. The Sunrise Movement is incredible— Fridays for Future, likewise. 350.org, the divestment movement, Extinction Rebellion, Greenpeace, the NRDC, etc. All very important.
It’s local involvement as well. The Sierra Club has many local chapters. Labor unions are crucial to all of this too because it’s business that will need to change, and if workers have no say then not only will the status quo continue, but people will increasingly be too poor and too exhausted to care.
Can't really say nothing, but it's more half-measures that are woefully insufficient to solve the problem at hand. At the very least it's more than I expected but that isn't saying much.
It wouldn't have to be new. But I get your point.
COP26 Achievements :love:
(This is an unironic tweet btw - Canavan is a sitting Australian senator and ex resource minister).
Who are the millions in poverty he's talking about?
But they're paying for the coal. It's not going to lift them out of poverty. And why does India need coal? Isn't it hot there?
What's weird about this is that the average American bank account rose during the pandemic. India got poorer?
With such a display of bold, fearless, undaunted courage, surely salvation is at hand!
Kindly forgive my sarcasm, if you will.
The first big climate conference was in Geneva in 1979. "It issued a declaration calling on the world's governments "to foresee and prevent potential man-made changes in climate that might be adverse to the well-being of humanity". 42 years later, there has been action -- however modest: Consciousness of global warming, modest efforts to reduce use of fossil fuels, a considerable effort in wind/solar power generation, and so on. Still, global monthly average concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen from around 339 parts per million in 1980 (averaged over the year) to 412 parts per million in 2020, an increase of more than 20%.
So it isn't that NOTHING has been done, but that not nearly enough has been done to change the dire outcomes before us. "Crisis" has not mobilized the huge range of actions that are required by the small population who own/direct the world economy.
I know, I know. The Australian government in particular is a display of pusillanimous double-talk and backwards-looking hypocrisy.
Let's hope awareness continues to spread and that businesses, investors and consumers continue to make better choices so that environmental friendly products are no longer optional but necessary to survive as a company.
Somebody -- don't remember who -- said we must stop talking about 2030, 2050, or 2100. No more 5 year plans. The movers and shakers need to be held to a time horizon of a year out, at the most. Better, "What are you doing RIGHT NOW?"
If their piles of money were burning, they wouldn't talk about future plans to reduce the fire. They would swing into action with big hoses IMMEDIATELY. No such urgency for the future of the planet.
People do make the link from the political leadership to the economic performance: if the economy is bad, it's the fault of the politicians. People don't make this link with the climate or weather... especially when it's trend that matters, not individual specific years.
It may be too much to ask (as people do take the climate and weather as an act of God), but should we start similarly check the performance of our politicians as with the economy?
[tweet]https://twitter.com/BlockadeAus/status/1460742924799414273?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet[/tweet]
"Zianna and Hannah abseiled off coal handling machinery this morning at Newcastle coal port. This is the tenth consecutive day in a row Blockade Australia has shut down the worlds largest coal port!
“We are here to challenge the ruling order of domination and exploitation that is buckling our life support systems. Australia has been deliberately designed, and it needs to be deliberately confronted. We must create true decision-making power over our lives through scaling up offensive direct action and resist injustice where power operates on the ground.”
“Another system is possible and we know that because one existed on this continent for tens of thousands of years. It is now our duty to defend the biosphere that gives us life and to every person that Australia has forgotten and ignored”.
Stupid kid activists.
No— stupid activists. Probably voted against Trump to boot.
The same Australians who highlighted "not choosing the give away political agency to a symbolic demonstration every four years".
My bad— just stupid activists then.
Not reducing, no. But that’s exactly what they’re doing.
Oh dear. Looks like someone's never heard of direct action, nor can they recognize it when staring at it in the face. Some homework for you.
Is an abstraction -- one of many types of activism.
Oh ok, I get it now. Only direct action counts as "activism." Cool. :up:
MLK was a real suck up to power, too.
Ah yes, MLK, famous democratic party activist, known best for his electioneering and campaign contributions.
Ohh so he was an activist, didn't engage solely in direct action, but he's OK because he didn't "electioneer" and give "campaign contributions." Got it. So not a "suck up to power."
But perhaps a response to this more in line with COP26?
Worth taking another look at the poll — most were correct, in the end.
I want to lay the blame on someone but we're all family, I don't wanna do that! You want us all to die together? :ok: :heart:
I'd never heard of this guy before seeing this, so thanks for that at least.
Actual appropriate steps would be more of investments in the "Manhattan project" -scale to tackle climate issues and simply get non-fossil fuels and energy to be cheaper than fossil fuels. Then things would change rapidly. But otherwise we just create a mess.
But too many times the offered woke answer is that "we have to dramatically cut everything" and other silly but good sounding policies that don't care at all how complex the world is. The juxtaposition between an effective response to climate change and "the economy" isn't actually correct.
This stupid statement is like something out of Don’t Look Up.
You're the resident genius, eh? :lol:
Jokes aside, what's "stupid" about it, o wise one?
Forget it. Go back to sleep. You’re right: economic collapse. Thank God you’re here to save the economy. True, without a livable planet there is no economy— but no matter. Carry on.
Don't be coy. Educate me. I'm an avid learner, to the extent possible. I'm serious. Why is what I said "stupid"?
I actually wanted to know why what I said was stupid. I drew my conclusion from how pollution and environmental degradation go hand in hand with what is passed off as economic success.
Without further use of fossil fuels there can be no growth economy as we know it.
With further use of fossil fuels there can be no livable planet.
You might think that this is merely an ideological (juxta)position, and that there are other options than those two... but that's because you haven't looked into the specifics of those 'alternatives'. There are no alternatives that work because fossil fuels were a one-time, easy to use energy-dense source of energy.
Now if there indeed needs to be made a choice between those two, then the choice should be pretty clear, because without a livable planet you can have no economy.
The whole discussion is moot anyway because fossil fuels (and other resources too) are a limited resource. Even if we would want to keep using them, we can't because we will run out of them soon enough. The economy will have to collapse no matter how you want to look at it.
Since economic growth tracks energy consumption, it doesn't look to hot for the economy going forward.
Do notice what I said. If alternative energies ARE MORE CHEAPER than fossil fuels, then the transformation will be rapid. And do notice what is happening in the World. Things don't happen in an instant, but they do change in decades.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I disagree. There are alternatives that are totally realistic. Just look at how for instance the price of solar energy has come down. In fact, the situation where non-fossil fuels are cheaper than fossil fuels isn't at all a distant hypothetical anymore. It is starting to be reality.
Just compare this to then fossil fuels:
The real hurdle are niche things like aircraft. But here the also there is a lot of investment in hydrogen fueled or electric aircraft. (Hydrogen can be made by electrolysis without causing emissions)
The real problems happen when don't invest and just ruin our economies. Then there isn't going to be any investment and then we will have to rely on fossil fuels just to keep our present energy consumption. Ruining the global economy will create political instability and at worst widespread war. Not much investment will then go to climate change. And just notice how for example the US energy consumption has leveled off in this millennium. And do note from below how huge the level of fossil fuels are in the US. But in for example France, it's a different matter (as they have opted smartly for nuclear energy).
So I do disagree in the idea that the global economy cannot grow without fossil fuels. The way things are going now, with little and sporadic investment in technology, with pompous declarations by politically correct politicians (who know people don't remember the promises six months from now), it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Now things might prevail somehow, but likely that isn't enough for those who are against the how our society works in general. They surely will be as disappointed as now are, even if we do manage along for the next one or two hundred years without any cultural collapse.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Hmm, looking at this statistic, comes to my mind a statistic of the consumption of whale oil. The 19th century likely would produce such a graph. Yep, whales were really hunted down to extinction in the 19th Century, but then came an alternate way of producing similar oil.
The long time question is of course if we need economic growth after we have hit peak human population. More prosperous people have less children, and when the fertility rate is well below 2, do we in the long run need perpetual growth? It's more a like a question for our debt-based monetary system, which needs perpetual growth itself. But otherwise, I don't think so.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
But just how limited is the question. That's why the economy is far more capable to deal with these changes.
You see, it's all about the price. Higher the price, more exotic ways to create oil become profitable. With a lower price, those exotic ways are left to the pages of scientific papers in universities and R&D laboratories and never implemented in real life.
In fact current history of oil production shows this perfectly. Actually "peak conventional oil" happened already years ago (and at the same time when forecasted in the 1970s). But then, what do you know, the US became again a huge producer thanks to technological advances.
I'm going to start here, because I don't know what it is that people just keep believing perpetual growth is even possible in theory. It isn't, resources and energy are finite. If you keep taking a percentage growth of what has previously grown a percentage, you get exponentials and bump against that finitude of resources pretty quick. It's not a serious question, we can't grow perpetually. The only question is how long can we grow before we bump against all sorts of limits?
Quoting ssu
It would be similar except there is no alternative to fossil fuels once used up. You cannot get ease of use, energy density and other byproducts from renewables.
Quoting ssu
If they are cheaper than fossil fuels then transformation will be rapid, seem like it would be evidentially true, but I don't think it necessarily is.
At some point fossil fuels will become so expensive that it costs more energy to extract them than you are getting from the extraction. Let's call that a negative Return On Energy (ROE). If ROE is negative it's not worth is from an energy-point of view to extract them... maybe you'd still do it for other applications like plastics, lubricants etc etc, but not for the energy.
If alternative energies are only cheaper than fossil fuels when ROE of it becomes negative, than we wouldn't transform rapidly because it wouldn't be worth it, either way.
Quoting ssu
Yeah solar-panels that are produced by a fossil-fueled economy and mass-production process. I'd want to see how that works without fossil-fuels to jump-start the whole process.
And even if it would be theoretically possible, it surely isn't in practice as we haven't even succeeded to reduce fossils fuels one iota since we started trying to reduce them consciously. Consumption of new energies just get stacked on consumption of previous sources of energy. No way we will succeed in replacing that mountain of fossil fuels with renewables in time:
Quoting ssu
Hydrogen is no source of energy, just a way to store it. It is energy negative to produce and we don't find it on earth. If you want to produce it without emissions then you need to rely on renewables that aren't all that energy-efficient to begin with...
And let's not forget that aside from the question of cheap energy, oil-byproducts are also used almost everywhere in production-processes. Lubricants, plastics, etc etc... I don't know if you even can have a "production-proces" without oil.
Quoting ssu
The really real problems happen when we run out of cheap energy to keep feeding a growing economy. That may be because of lack of investements, or maybe there just isn't cheap enough energy to be found or invested in anymore to be able to mass-produce a tennisball in china and sell it somewhere in Europe.
I dunno,I think people just all to easily gloss over the fact that it's not evident (not possible I'd say) to just replace oil and gas, which is solar-energy densely-stored over millennia gushing out of the ground.
Quoting ssu
I think aside from the obvious political and moral failings of our societies and leaders, there's also a non-moral, 'fated' side to this tragedy. We were born and raised in the candy-store, never to know anything else, how could we realistically conceive and really feel like it was not to last? Fossil-fuels being such a potent, yet one time source of energy, really threw us a nasty curve-ball there.
Market mechanism creates the obvious limits. But if those are disregarded, then simply you will have "official" prices that nobody can get the stuff and then a black market. Perhaps the following remark on what you later note sheds light what I'm trying to say.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Glad you take this up. First of all, market mechanism will stop the use far before you get negative ROE. Negative ROE is for research stuff. For example, we are quite capable of making Fusion reactors with very low or negative ROE. Profitability goes negative far before a negative ROE is reached.
And you are correct that the end product does determine what is used, hence fossil fuels surely will be used for some of the high end stuff now produced from fossil fuels.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Well, energy policies DO MATTER. The fixation on the US based fossil fuel guzzling economy doesn't tell the truth. Let's compare it with another country.
Here is the fossil-fuel dominated electricity production in the US:
As I said, just look how different the electricity production has been in France, which opted for nuclear:
End result? An actual real difference. Here are the biggest fossil fuel users country by total aggregate use. Do you notice one thing? Yes. The large economy of France is not included:
So policies actually matter. But are they truly implemented? That's the real question.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Have we really tried? Have we had enormous Manhattan-project like programs on this?
No. Here is one statistic that shows the effect to be quite puny even on a global scale:
In today's dollars the Manhattan project was about 20 billion dollars (btw the B-29 was more costly). Nothing close to Biden's Reconciliation Bill (or the trillions to pump up the US economy in general) and the amounts that we put into transfer payments and welfare, which is simple spending that doesn't help this issue at all.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Yes, but doesn't put carbon into the atmosphere, especially when made by non-fossil fuel energy.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Do notice what is important for climate change is the amount of carbon released to the air. Having lubricants or hell, I warming my sauna in the countryside with wood isn't as important as gas engines being the dominant vehicle motor or the coal plants producing energy. It's the aggregates that matter.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
You are totally correct and I agree with you. It isn't at all simple. And likely there isn't the actual political will.
The worst thing is that people won't understand it when or as the climate change is happening. Because the real outcome of draughts, famines, economic crises is political crises and wars. And those have a different narrative: it was this and that politician, it was these factions that started the conflict. Nowhere do you see an link to some political conflict to truly happened because of climate change. Now every smart facet will understand this (like the US Armed Forces), but it simply won't go down to the level of political narrative on how we explain political developments.
In the end, people will take the weather as "Gods will", if the link isn't as obvious as the London smog was to how houses were heated back then. This is the real problem.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I still am an optimist and think that we can prevail. We are still standing on the "shoulders of giants" and all that gathered knowledge that science has given us is available for us. The economy hasn't collapsed as it did during antiquity and we haven't gone full backward that we would be going back to the "dark ages part 2". I'm not sure that it will happen. I think it's going to be just a bumpy road. After all, we are living during a global pandemic right now, @ChatteringMonkey. :mask:
And still, I cannot say that my grandparents or especially their parents lived a far more affluent and easier life than me. For me as a young second grader, I remember the first time I walked into an American Supermarket, a Safeway in Seattle in the early 1980's. I just laughed with my father at how much stuff there was. How many entire rows of cereals. It was something I'd never seen in Finland and no, Finland was not part of the eastern bloc back then. But it was ruled by euro social-democrat type semi-controlled economy and such "gluttony" of the US standard basically landed in the country in the 1990's. Now it's quite similar to the US. Ah, the hated capitalism!
And many countries around the World are starting to be like Seattle of the 1980's. So yet we haven't seen this slide downward. Not yet, at least.
A Supermarket in Kenya. Things are changing...
I think I do get what you are trying to say, oil prices will rise, renewables will get cheaper... and so in the end the idea is that market will sort it out by pricing out fossil fuels in favour of renewables.
I just don't think you will end up with anything like the same kind of economy because they are not that interchangeable as one might think, i.e. one energy for another type of energy. Renewables are more expensive to begin with, not as reliable (which means you need storage which makes it even more expensive), you need a far more expanded electric net if you want to switch to electricity, you don't have the same usefull byproducts as oil etc etc..
It not just one thing that needs to be resolved, the entire system is geared around fossil fuels, as I believe are our ideas about economic growth, capitalism and globalization too. Energy out of fossil fuels is I think not just another resource the market can sort, it's the basis on which the entire industrial system was build.
Quoting ssu
Quoting ssu
A smaller difference then one might think. The graphs only show electricity production, which is only what, generally about 20% of all energy-usage? Non-electricity energy usage is still predominately fossil fuels in both countries.
Quoting ssu
Sure, not that hard probably, but that's part of the problem no? We can't really make abstraction of our social and political systems, as if they don't exist or will magically change.
Quoting ssu
There isn't political will because nobody wants to hear that we have to de-grow, that they probably will have to do with less. No political party can push that program and get elected, which is kind of interesting in its own right... the fact that we apparently have a political system that just can't have de-growth as an end.
Quoting ssu
Maybe... I suppose these things always have to end on a note of hope. Knowledge and technology is the biggest unknown certainly, I wonder how much of it a difference it makes on it's own when you take away the energy.
Yes, keep enabling denialism. You’re doing great work.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
But think about all the money we’ll lose in the short term.
The “choice” is a ridiculous one. First, it’s no where close to true. Second, even if it were, is “economic collapse” worse than literal annihilation?
The issues people find puzzling…it’s incredible.
Yeah, having a debate about the actual issues is enabling denialism.
Doom is nigh and we have to repent our sins!!! (?)
Strange that you go around resurrecting all my old threads. But thanks!
China produces a quarter of the greenhouse gases that are affecting the climate. China is also ascending among global powers. For those two reasons alone China's approach to global warming is a great importance.
But there's another reason that China's approach is possibly the most important. We often think of global warming as a problem that we own, as if it's something that we need to fix, and of course we contribute significantly. But but we are only part of a much bigger picture. Ahead of us is a two to three hundred year window during which time the species will make a choice about what to do with the remaining fossil fuel that's available to us, particularly in the form of coal, but also in the form of frackable natural gas and oil. Because this is a problem that will continue to exist for the next few generations, China's approach is significant because of the way that it contrasts with the Western approach which is neoliberal.
This contrast will provide future generations with empirical data about which approach works best; central planning or free markets.
Neoliberalism is hardly the same as free markets — which don’t exist, anywhere.
I have no doubt China will handle this better than the US, which is a failed state.
It occurred to me a few minutes after I wrote that why it's wrong:
Why what’s wrong?
The implication being that China doing more in fighting climate change will result in a nuclear war?
Economic outlooks aren't arrived at via empiricism. It always comes from deeper psychological issues and the winners of wars write the economic textbooks.
I think there will be war eventually between the United States and China.
And please spare me whatever insulting bullshit you had planned to say. I'm not interested.
Nuclear war?
Nevermind.