Not driving is not an option in many cases.

Starting to bike doesn't solve climate change problems.

Not sure how you would plant a raspberry tree in a New York apartment.

There is very little the normal person can do about climate change without radically changing the way they live their lives and thats just not an option for most people.

Forgive me for the forthcoming rant, this is not a slight at you, but I really dislike the kind of attitude that you are projecting here. Al Gore famously said in his documentary that a lot of people go from Denial to Despair without pausing at the middle step of Doing Something about it.

Biking definitely can solve climate change. Seems to me that people simply do not get it through their heads that climate change starts with what they expect out of life. As long as everyone wants to drive an SUV or a fucking pickup truck because it is "safe", live 25 miles from work, own a new smartphone every two years, have a perfectly manicured front and back yard etc., we are all fucked. For too many people, climate change is a "their" problem:

* Wind turbines? Sure, just not in my backyard because it spoils my fucking view.

* Nuclear reactors? Hmm, maybe, but definitely not in my state, and preferably not in my country.

* Not travelling to exotic locations every holiday, and instead going on local hikes a bit more? No way!

* Give up owning a new smartphone every two years? Dead on Arrival.

* Wearing a sweater indoors in the winter instead of constant 25 deg C temperature indoors and 20 minute hot showers? Go fuck yourself. No, but look! I installed a Nest thermostat, so the do-gooder halo around my head is glowing bright!

* Biking to work? I can't! Live too far from home this and sweaty at work that.

Nothing but excuses. And wait! Is this uber-consumeristic lifestyle making me happier? No?! How is that possible?

Climate change is NOT a problem that more technology can solve. It is a sociological problem. A problem of what people expect out of life. As long as people keep thinking it's the politicians at fault and they don't owe anyone a damn thing, well, we'll keep on keeping on with business as usual. And you know what business as usual is? We haven't even started decreasing the rate of CO2 increase, what to talk of a zero emission civilization.

Sorry this is incoherent and comes across as a jab at you. It's not. It's just me expressing my frustration as an engineer. I hate that the layperson is convinced that it is engineering that will solve climate change, and That Technology to cure us of all ails is just around the corner. It's not. We need to stop fucking raiding this planet.

I don't know anyone that wants to live 25 miles from work. But almost everyone I know cannot afford to live closer and wants to. I'd love to live in the city. Too bad it's completely unaffordable, even at 3x the median income. This particular solution you have provided is also a solution only the upper class can employ, just like the one in the article. Wind turbines and nuclear reactors: now we're finally getting somewhere. And to build those, you need politicians that are willing to propose and fund them. I'm all for wearing sweaters indoors and only buying phones when the planned obsolescence of modern software makes them unusable (3-5 yrs), but that's an insignificant drop in the bucket. You will never get enough people to adopt such actions without legislation.

I disagree that this is an avenue open only to the upper class [1]. Not everyone can do everything, sure (if you're working two jobs, for example, the climate can rightly go fuck itself) but a lot of people can do a lot more.

I also disagree that they are insignificant drops in the bucket. The point I'm trying to make is that "culture" is infuriatingly hand-wavy and difficult to quantify, but it matters. As an example, I live in Geneva. Here, all shops close at 7 PM. This means that there less commercial activity past those hours, fewer people mindlessly roaming around in malls etc. Now, surely there are regulations guiding this too, but any government official wanting to undo this because "muh freedom", will be laughed out of the room because there is a culture here that treats this as deeply important.

[1]: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/04/06/frugal_living_in_m...

Great. Give me a 2bdm/2ba apt in Manhattan for less than $1700 and I'll give up my car completely too. You're just proving my point for me.

That over $1700 price is a negative externality of home-as-investment culture and racist downzoning. There is no natural law that says the 2 bed/2 bath apartment has to be so expensive.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/realestate/sure-build-it-...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/upshot/popping-the-housin...

Supply and demand does if the jobs are also mostly in the big cities

What about Brooklyn or somewhere else commutable by PT or cycle? Do you really need two bedrooms - and two bathrooms? What space can you really live in?

none of that have any effect on climate change what so ever. you need to effect the industry to have any impact and thats not going to happen enough to have any effect.

I downvoted this comment. Why? Not because I think you're a bad person or something. Contrary, I think it's fucking awesome that we are on here having this conversation, and I think it's very important. Props on that. That wasn't why I downvoted it. The downvote was a way for me to say "I don't have energy right now to go back and forth like this, maybe if I press this button this person will take a step back and think about their attitude as a whole."

Okay, now I've eaten dinner and had some coffee. So what was my gripe with your comment?

1) It makes a strong, absolute claim with no evidence. Have you studied nonlinear systems? Even informally? We're dealing with hugely non-linear systems. Little things can compound into tumultuous waves. Look at the way viral memes spread. Culture changes in tumultuous waves. One generation might be hopelessly lost, while the next one comes in with unbelievable clarity, saying "that's just obvious."

2) It's implicitly discouraging of other peoples' perspectives and wisdoms. Imagine some great singer had let their irritable aunt or uncle's mean comments get to them when they were little and couldn't quite keep a pitch. We are learning, and there are without a doubt many, many ways to approach and tackle this. If anything, tackling something so ominously looming is going to take some serious imagination, vision and hope. You might not be hateful, but one doesn't need to be hateful or malicious to be discouraging or to play the part of hater.

3) Culture has, can, does, and will affect industry. Maybe not overnight, but they are inevitably interdependent. We have the power to engage with norms and at the very least set examples. We have the power to abstain, to moderate, to make demands, to dream, to actualize, on short and long term scales. In another comment, you pointed out that people are not systems, they are human beings. To me, that's actually a strength. It makes this struggle messier, but to me it's also an asset. It means that we have the ability to undergo rebirth in imagination and culture, which in the long haul makes us resilient and adaptable.

So basically even though you cant back your own claims up with any substantial evidence you decided to downvote me because you dont like what i said. The irony.

thats ok i can take it but what you dont seem to get is that we are humans not systems and thus wont be making the changes any other way than through technology.

you are basically asking humans not to be human which i believe is a common engineering blind spot :)

dont hate the players hate the game.

Yeah, you're right of course. Any solution requiring humans to change at large scales through raw appeals to emotion is itself Dead on Arrival.

This is where I'm really happy that the cult of mustachianism[1] is spreading as virally as it is. More people than anyone could ever have imagined, up and down the economic spectrum and up and down the Cost Of Living spectrum, are banding together to save money, and by extension, reducing their carbon footprint.

It's getting big enough that I get the feeling that the new status signifier is (slowly/glacially) becoming being able to live without excess. This is great because it will slowly shift the goalposts of what people aspire to.

[1]: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/03/07/frugality-the-new-...

i think you are a victim of a little wishful thinking here. with around a billion people getting into the middle class you are going to see one thing only and that is an increase in resource usage. the normal populations usage is not the problem but the industry that support their consumption.

you arent seeing humans change, you are seeing technology allowing for other types of living but any actual effect on climate they wont have.

Maybe you're underestimating how human culture can change in few years, specially when you consider the rising economical impact of climate change...

i dont think i am. humans have mostly changed because technology allowed them to. its those large progresses which gave us new opportunities to change.

Edit: why the down vote? care to qualify rather than going trough all my comments you dont like and downvote them whoever you are?

I did not downvote you, but I can point out that your focus on technology as the single most important factor in human behavior change may be oversimplistic.

Thats a discussion we can have its certainly not domething i am alone of thinking nor does it warrant downvotes.

I know that sometimes I downvote as a way of saying "dude, come on, will you please just look outside yourself for one second!" Or because I'm tired and frustrated about something that means a lot to me, but somebody is approaching it in a polemical or absolute style.

Perhaps you should take a step back and reread what they actually said.

Then we will sooner or later loose. It is true that this time we might avoid disaster (it will be very rough whatever we do from now on) with the help of technology. But that is just luck that there is a technology available to help us. In a slightly different world, solar would never be cheap enough or good enough to provide energy in a sustainable way. And this is true for many other aspects, tragedy of the commons is hundreds of years old.

The fact is we need regulations and incentives to do the right thing.

i am unconvinced regulation will help. i still find it quite telling that the biggest drop in US co2 emission was because of fracking not anything the otherwise very progressive obama adminstartion.

just becuase its luck and we dont lime that doesn't mean regulation will work, thats simply the wrong way to think about this.

Well the person in New York has the luxury of decent public transportation.

And the person who needs to drive, presumably they live in a suburb or a place with a yard, and they could plant 10 raspberry bushes.

Come on! Enough with the excuses! It's getting me down!

I'm not saying that people should go and sabotage themselves. I'm saying that there are lots of different things that different people can do to upset this situation.

A big one for me is not buying new if at all possible. That goes for computers, cell phones, cars, clothes, etc.

There are many other reasons why people need to drive than them working in the suburbs and globally even more reasons why biking in a city is far from enough (Just look at some Chinese cities)

The thing is that if you really were to change your life for it to have an effect we wouldn't do it. Just the threat to reliable food supply is enough to make most people accept things as they are.

There are two things you can do which are the only rational things to do.

1) Invent non-polluting, technical solutions that either produce, at scale, enough energy to replace existing solutions and which are easy to implement

2) Prepare for the consequence of climate change and find solutions to help that.

Thats what you can do. Shouting on FB, Twitter or HN doesn't help anyone.

"There are two things you can do which are the only rational things to do."

I think those are the two things that you can rationally do! But not everyone is you. I think that your focus on technical and engineering solutions is actually a "one finger points three point back" kind of situation. I think that you are probably capable in those solutions, and I encourage you to take them as strengths, not as the only solutions possible.

Here's an example, one that comes to mind, of another skillset that's going to be valuable in times to come: mediation. I live in Minnesota, where it's very cold in the winter (gets down to -30 to -40 F) and very hot in the summer (gets up to 100 to 105 F of humid heat every year). I see the effects of heat. People get violent, impatient, antsy. Stuff comes out. Pots boil over. There are is quality research into these correlations (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/opinion/sunday/weather-and...), so it's not just anecdotal. When times get hot around here, what we need is conversation, patience, spiritual introspection, therapies, caring people. We are going to need people with good leadership, with soft skills, who have the ability to motivate people, to guide people out of conflict, to model what's possible. Artists, parents, teachers, even just plain old solid friends who hold people together.

Okay, I'm not arguing that these are "the solutions to climate change". What I'm arguing is that they are necessary pieces of the puzzle!

"The thing is that if you really were to change your life for it to have an effect we wouldn't do it. Just the threat to reliable food supply is enough to make most people accept things as they are."

I've seen people change so drastically over the course of one lifetime, because they had to in order to survive. I've seen my religiously conservative people close to me go from being homophobic and anti-drug to being open minded and hearted. I've seen my somebody go from seriously flailing (with chronic substance issues, suicidal thoughts, body image struggles, etc) to being one of the most kick ass moms I know in 1 year flat. Don't underestimate! "When the spirit says move, move". And people will move.

P.S. I'm planning on building a web app to help people do interactively plan companion planting and permaculture gardens. If you're interested I'll let you know when I put up the source. I'll probably post it on here either way.

No i cant even do any of that and thats the point.

Instead of lulling people into the believe that human culture on its own can change things perhaps the time was better spent on the things that actually help. You havent provided anything but an emotional argument that culture can solve this, nor is there any evidence in history which points to this.

Technological progress brought us in this situation, technological progress can get us out of it.

The problem is not the individual consumer but the whole system that supports them and that wont be going anywhere as most people dont have the luxury of spending time planting or meditating.

Anecdotes on people changing is not anything but a great story. Of course people change but your argument need them to change in exactly the same way which is exactly the wrong way to understand humans. We aren't rational agents.

Couldn't agree more. I cycle 30 km every day to work and back. When I was a student, I cycled 40km every to Uni and back. You just have to get used to it. While I own a car, I use it maybe only once per month. To get some wood or transport some things from the IKEA. I have to admit, I live in Amsterdam, so the infrastructure for cycling is great.

It's funny, I have a lime tree and fig tree in my apartment, along with some other plants.

Even if not driving is not an option, there's always carpooling which should approximately halve the impact of driving alone.

We can either wait for climate change to disrupt our lives, or we can disrupt climate change.

what about just preparing for the consequences of climate change.

We could practice by colonizing Venus.

  Not sure how you would plant a raspberry tree in a New York apartment.

Buying a brand new fuel efficient car is generally suboptimal for a NYC apartment dweller as well.

Not driving is always an option. What if fuel cost $10,000 a gallon? Would you still drive? No, you'd figure something else out. You would convince your boss to let you telecommute, you'd take the train, bike or walk. Or you would find another job.

thats the thing though fuel would never be regulated to cost $10k a gallon the economy would get killed along with the political careers of those who voted it through.

That's not the point. Cars are optional. The question is, is giving them up worth the cost?

Cars are not optional for most people. They dont just buy them for fun, especially not in china, india and large part of europe. So the answer is no its not worth the cost.

And if the cost is that the planet is going to heat up like Venus within the next 100 years?

Devoting new land to forest is the important bit. Trees have been planting trees for a while now.

I wouldn't be terribly surprised if all the driving around people do on Arbor Day makes the direct effect negative.