Re:What fossil fuels are doing to our oceans
by adrianN on Thursday March 02, 2017 @06:33AM
(#13773341)
Improving local infrastructure to improve walkability and prioritize cycling over cars helps, but in the near term we need to stop producing GHGs completely. So unless you have a found a cheap way to get fusion power to market in the next fifteen years or so, or have grid scale power storage up your sleeves, a large scale, expensive shift of our whole economy seems necessary. I don't see how you can do that without politics.
Re:What fossil fuels are doing to our oceans
by TeMPOraL on Thursday March 02, 2017 @06:54AM
(#13773428)
Politics will necessarily have to be a part of it - even if you could bring fusion power to market in the next decade. Politics responds to the shape of the solution landscape, so I see working on technologies (and "social technologies") as one way to influence it, with possibly better ROI than just voting for people who promise to "fix things".
(Also, voting is really a low-hanging fruit, so the best response here would probably be "why not both?".)
My worries about engaging directly in politics - becoming a politician - is that I see it as a very inefficient process, in which you'll have to give away most of your morality (and possibly interest in the original problem) before you get in a position to effect big changes.
I like technical solutions because they're undemocratic - they can step around conflicting short-term agendas and force change by exploiting market / people's preferences. In the day and age when climate is at best a very distant concern for most people, political solutions seem like a hard work for little and uncertain effect.
I wish I could be proven wrong on that though. Are there any low-hanging, high-impact fruits one could focus on? Maybe one should refocus on local politics? It seems much less messy and corrupt than national-scale politics.