Yes and the sooner we accept that this is a part of human nature the better. Fighting what is clearly innate is futile. We have not evolved the ability to ever be satisfied. We a stupid apes who want more, more, more at all costs.
We need to accept this reality instead of shaking our heads at one another in faux reproach (probably over dinner, made from 20 ingredients shipped from all across the globe).
The only way to make actions against climate change a reality is to make it profitable. If we can work out how to make it so that people make gobs of money by reversing climate change then things will be peachy.
If we can't figure out a way to turn a buck from fixing climate change then we are all, collectively, fucked.
That's not part of human nature. There have always been people who've renounced much of the world and made a lot of sacrifices, even to the point of giving everything they own away and dedicating themselves completely to helping others. At times there were even mass social movements in that direction.
It's just that we're going through a period in history where some people are particularly selfish. Many of these people are unfortunately in control at the moment, or have undue influence on what happens. But there are others who are less self-centered and are even actively working towards constructive change, even at great cost to themselves. There always have been.
The question is how to get more people to act constructively and not passively accept what's happening. Education, discussion, and consciousness-raising are all great ways to do that. Disempowering narratives about limitless consumerism being an inevitable part of human nature are not.
The OP was right. We need to make using less profitable. A carbon tax would be perfect for that, and we could reduce the income tax to offset. We get less of what we tax, so we'd have more income and less carbon.
I actually think international efforts should be focussed on getting countried to agree to swap existing taxes for carbon taxes.
The other way would be 'international politics'. I know it has run out of fashion, but maybe in 10 years we can re-instantiate democracy.
> If we can't figure out a way to turn a buck from fixing climate change then we are all, collectively, fucked.
Well, that old world is fucked. But if you look at the lifestyles of, e.g. American Indians, they lasted 10,000 years in North America in a much more sustainable fashion. Granted, it wasn't perfect. Humans caused the extinction of megafauna in North America as elsewhere, but organized agriculture never really took off there, and because of that, that continent was relatively unspoiled until Columbus.
Sure! And why did they change their lifestyle as soon as they could? Before it was MUCH more comfortable!
Cheap energy has revolutionized the world. It is unfortunate that, for the moment, we can only find cheap energy in polluting fossil fuels but, short of discovering a less polluting cheap energy source (if it ever exists), there is no going back! You'll never be able to convince billions of people to give up their car and air conditioning to go back ploughing the fields.
Climate change will get irreversible if we don't drastically lower our quality life? OK, let it be! Let's accept it already and start doing what we can do to adapt. But don't talk about going back: nobody will listen to you.
Overall though your point stands. It’s not like billions of people are going to willingly give up the comforts that we have. Though in part this is because it is no longer feasible to live off the land as people did thousands of years ago. The only way to go back, as you call it, is for the population of the world to decline. This would mean a drastic reduction in the birth rate. There is a number for the size of the population of the world such that if everyone of those people lived like Americans pollution wouldn’t be large enough to be a problem.
Check out the size of this pile of buffalo skulls, to get a sense of the scale of destruction we did:
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/bison-skulls-pile-used-fert...
I did nothing of the sort, thank you very much.
This just not what anyone wants to see here at HN. No one personally attacked you, yet you feel compelled to spew anger. That's just not our culture. There are other places for shitposting.
Ah, men, the logical gender, the rational ones, and certainly never given to fits of emotion.
FWIW, the carbon footprint of shipping produce from e.g. Chile is so low that you would create a bigger impact by driving an extra mile to get farm-fresh produce.
Whatever the solution is, "eating local" isn't it: it literally makes things worse.
For instance, every time the weather is on and there's a terrible storm, they need to say "because we haven't taken the steps to curb CO2, this disaster is far more terrible then it would have been" or "that's the 30th day over 100 degrees this year. Our voluntary inaction on climate change and our refusal to do anything is causing more dramatically hot days each year" or "the migration problem is due partially to food and resource scarcity because we have chosen to not care about climate change" or "these terrible fires are record breaking because we are refusing to switch to renewables".
We could even make it a budget item, earmarking the disaster response, increased disease, increase emergency room visits and all the rest as the taxpayer burden of not doing anything.
It needs to be visceral, direct, repeated, and a daily experience. The lines clearly need to be drawn connecting the dots.
If this was said, every single time it's partially true in non-scientific casual language that the general public understands, things will start happening
This is a faint idea, but what if we could achieve better collective leverage / incentive alignment through something like this? We already have brand boycott campaigns based on similar notions of environmental awareness, but I think there's a finite energy for being aware of these.
On an individual level, we have small economic influence. Collectively, we [can] have leverage. If we are effortlessly aware of both, there is that "visceral" daily experience where the lines are drawn between our basic split-second purchases (meat vs. vegan mince) and their impacts.
In theory. But in reality the bigger challenge is to actually work together as humanity for a common goal. And given our history the current amount of cooperation is allready impressive - so it might be a good challenge to unite humanity in general. I am quite optimistic in the long run.
I mean, the internet is barely 20 years old for the common people ... it just takes time to grow together, when we have a history (and probably genetic heritage) of caring only about the immediate things around us. And the more drastic the droughts etc. get ... the more people see it as a problem and act. And yes, the great barrier riff and the polar bears might die out, but there are worse things, that can and probably will also happen. But we as humanity will survive, maybe on a slightly different planet, though.
So I don't think it makes sense to fall into depression, when the expectations were simply unrealistic.
I mean, sure, I would like to stop coal and fracking rather tomorrow and get power from solar plants in the desert ... but we simply are not there yet, as the challenge is big and not only technically.
People cooperate fantastically when there is economic gain to be had. We're fucking atrocious at cooperating if one (or both) sides are set to lose out (as is the case wrt reduced consumption).
Cooperating when all/most parties are better off isn't impressive.
Real cooperation would be something like the Saudis announcing over night that "you know what, climate change sucks so we're going to stop pulling oil out of the desert regardless of how much it hurts us".
How likely is that?
At the root of the issue is the fact that since humans aren’t able to measure the damage and see all the knock on effects of their actions, many large scale environmental and societal costs are externalized. And if you don’t take advantage of that, then someone else will and win in the market with lower prices.
I think the most depressing part about this whole situation is that I agree with most of what you wrote, up until this sentence. We like to believe that we are clever and resourceful, but the facts on the ground are that we are not, in fact, clever and resourceful. At least not in this period of history. In this period of history we are demonstrably fucking dumb, and have destroyed ourselves.
The next phase of human existence absolutely will require cleverness and resourcefulness, for it will be borne out in a dying world where ecosystems are unraveling, political systems have failed, and the vast majority of humanity has...sadly, died.
> It's all so very sad.
If the word sad could be stretch to cover the enormity of 10s of billions of human lifetimes of tragic short-sightedness giving rise to literally trillions upon trillions of organisms being snuffed out of existence, then yeah.
Almost the same with cars. Elecrical cars are a thing. And yes, while electric cars are different from ICE vehicles, this is actually a good thing. Why would people line up for Teslas, if they didn't provide the better driving experience? Of course, prices have to come down and so they will with larger production numbers. But switching from ICE to electric might be a noticable switch, but hardly a personal sacrifice either.
We have the ability to reduce our cabon footprint by 90% by just throwing existing technology at the problem. I fail to see why we shouldn't do that.
If not run 0-100%, lithium ion batteries can have thousands of cycles. For stationary storage one can optimize the chemistry for long-term stability rather than weight and volume. A lithium battery doesn't just fail, rather it continuously uses capacity over the cycles used. So the rated number of cycles marks the point where it has 75% of its capacity left, for storage it can be used far beyond that.
On the grid scale, beyond large batteries, one can of course used pumped water storage - still the most efficient mass grid storage available. If really long-term storage is desired, synthesizing methane could be considered, which can easily be stored and then used to drive high efficient gas power plants.
This is glib assertion. You might explain how the economics of this would be accomplished country by country. Earlier this year the UK was without significant wind power for nine days. Well, in absence of fossil fuel, that would indeed be personal sacrifice - Old Testament style.
Individuals can just make their own lives poorer with nothing to show for it.
Governments are for large scale action where individual action is meaningless -- the army, protection against national disasters like floods, and action against global warming.
Unfortunately the government of the largest polluter is hopelessly corrupt.
What's the backup plan, for instance for the US? Invade Canada where climate change may make arable land accessible?
It's not the 1950s anymore where people knew about climate change but only speculated that it will only become relevant some time in the far future. The effects occur now and will change the world by the end of the 21st century, even humans with their inability to comprehend long-term consequences should grasp this now.
I really don't get how - at this point, with our current knowledge - the world is still just doing nothing.
- Reduce benefits to increase number of people who are unable to afford food
- Reduce availability of healthcare to encourage people to die early
- Blame immigrants and round them up into camps
- Fire on demonstrators if people complain
US on the other hand dropped out of the climate deal.
But that's just not true, that's the line of the denialists. Doing something about it means reducing the carbon output by taxing those who produce it. The move can be fiscally neutral, i.e no net revenue for the government by decreasing other taxes.
We have the technological means to reach a 4t/year-person emission level without sacrificing quality of life. That's a sustainable global level the planet can accept. In 15-20 years we can roll that technology out globally and stem global climate change by 2050.
The problem we have is a political one: countries, political establishments, incumbent industry and whole constituencies are dependent on carbon emissions and would be drastically disadvantaged by such a move, hence they are fighting against it tooth and nail.
There are a lot of easy win-wins when it comes to lowering our carbon footprints. Eating more vegetables has health benefits. More home working can improve quality of life, reduce pollution and congestion. Less street lighting improves sleep quality. Something people can do is lobby their employers and representatives to point these things out.
Commit to two days a week as a vegetarian (if you normally consume meat). If everyone did that it would be huge. Industrial agriculture is a large source of pollution that affects not only the health of our ecosystems but our health directly as well.
Little things make a difference.
But a painful observation made in the op/ed pages is that the general feeling is that this is just how it is; we can't do anything about it. That sense of being able to tackle problems and shape the world and society in a way that benefits us — it is gone.
Many people just submit to the notion that they can't do anything about it. Usually because 'doing something about it' on a personal level means sacrificing luxuries (consume less, buy less, stop flying half way around the world for a holiday twice a year, reduce your energy footprint). Climate change is an inconvenient truth, and a lot of folk seem quite content to just give up — consequences be damned, or rather, ignored.
Some flee into convenient falsehoods. Claiming that, yes, climate change is happening, but we don't have any influence on that, and did you know that [insert denialist trope].
A lot of people do continue to do what they reasonably can — balancing their modern comfortable lifestyle with genuine attempts at affecting change. Even if it means just lowering their own personal footprint and voting for the politicians are at least willing to explore solutions. But it's not enough, and that risks making one feel that all efforts are pointless.
We're clever and resourceful enough as a race to deal with this problem. We're also too self-centred (on a national, tribal, and personal level) to actually do more than take the absolute bare minimum of measures; and even those attempts are watered down time and time again by the leaders of the world's nations. Because either they don't understand the problem, or because they do and don't care.
It's all so very sad.