To save the world we need: a substantial price on carbon, a faster path to developing advanced nuclear power (in addition to continuing renewables deployment), a major rollout of lab-grown meat as soon as it's affordable with decent quality, negative emissions methods both technological (direct air capture) and biological (kelp, reforesting), and maybe some kind of solar radiation management if things go too far.

In short we need a global WWII-level effort. Instead we're encouraging people to ride bikes and eat their veggies.

People making individual efforts like that is about as useful as praying when it comes to preventing tragedy of the commons scenarios.

So sure, people are not going to be perfect immediately, but there's no doubt that even the non-vegetarians are far more aware of these issues due to the number of vegetarians around them. Meanwhile, the environmentally-friendly parties in my country and the surrounding ones have been growing in popularity.

Besides, I'm not quite sure how you think people are going to be pushing for drastic changes if every step towards that actually is a step away from it. Would actively dumping toxic waste in our rivers be better?

For change to happen, there needs to be a widespread push for it, and that widespread push isn't going to happen unless awareness spreads. Sure, it might already be too late for that push to make a difference, but about not doing anything we can at least be sure that it will not make a difference.

However, I think that the second order effects need to be considered. As I mentioned in another post, sometimes you doing a thing makes it easier for others to do a thing, until a critical mass brings about a major change in state. For example, buying a fuel efficient vehicle encourages manufacturers to produce them. Eating and asking for vegetarian options encourages them to be offered, making it easier to become a vegetarian without being a stick in the mud. It can also change norms. Sometimes people won't do a thing because they don't want to go against norms. Like a guy out with his buddies ordering a burger instead of the salad he actually might prefer.

Also, if a wealthy person cannot justify extra insulation to prevent energy waste, i sure don’t expect a poorer person to ever take the idea seeiously.

I agree.

"It’s been a couple of weeks now since the IPCC report came out. You know what it says. If the whole damn species pulls together in a concerted effort “without historical precedent”— if we start right now, and never let up on the throttle— we just might be able to swing the needle back from Catastrophe to mere Disaster. If we cut carbon emissions by half over the next decade, eliminate them entirely by 2050; if the species cuts its meat and dairy consumption by 90%; if we invent new unicorn technologies for sucking carbon back out of the atmosphere (or scale up extant prototype tech by a factor of two million in two years) — if we commit to these and other equally Herculean tasks, then we might just barely be able to keep global temperature from rising more than 1.5°C.[1] We’ll only lose 70-90% of the word’s remaining coral reefs (which are already down by about 50%, let’s not forget). Only 350 million more urban dwellers will be exposed to severe drought and “deadly heat” events. Only 130-140 million will be inundated. Global fire frequency will only increase by 38%. Fish stocks in low latitudes will be irreparably hammered, but it might be possible to save the higher-latitude populations. We’ll only lose a third of the permafrost. You get the idea.

We have twelve years to show results.

If we don’t pull all these things off— if, for example, we only succeed in meeting the flaccid 2°C aspirations of the Paris Accords— then we lose all the coral. We lose the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Greenland Ice Shelf (not that it isn’t already circling the bowl, of course). Twice as many people suffer “aggravated water scarcity” than at 1.5°C; 170% more of the population deals with fluvial flooding. The increase in global wildfire frequency passes 60% and keeps going. Marine fisheries crash pole to pole. The number of species that loses at least half their traditional habitat is 2-3 times higher than would have been the case at 1.5°C. It goes on." [1]

(Edit) Yet in my experience nobody is talking about this. A few weeks ago the IPCC told us we have a gun to our head and a decade to solve the problem. A few days ago we learned that "population sizes of wildlife decreased by 60% globally between 1970 and 2014" [2]. And now we're on to the next thing and everyone is walking around like things are normal. People should be focussed on this and nothing else, but they're not.

And also: how exactly do I explain to my children that the world they're growing-up in is in a dire state and soon may not even be able to support anything like a normal life for them? Ideas anyone?

[1] The Adorable Optimism of the IPCC, by Peter Watts https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433

[2] https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/living-planet-report-2018

They'll think it's normal, which is the real tragedy, but that's been happening for generations already. Your idea of normal is not as rich as your ancestors'. Wasn't North America abundant with wildlife when the Europeans arrived?

Tangential xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1321/

I'm not sure what you mean. I consider my life to be substantially richer than my ancestor's lives. I live in Europe, not North Americal, but yes there was more wildlife around a couple of centuries ago. It would be nice to have that again, but i'd settle for something like the current fairly poor situation it it meant that my kids and their contemporaries don't have to risk being made into refugees by climate change, or face a future of water/food/energy shortages, failed states and frustrated potential.

No we don't. Global warming is a self-reinforcing effect. So there's no point to slowing down emissions. No point at all. Even if you get it to zero, the resulting concentrations will still accelerate into the right. Even if you get it negative at the same rate we're producing it today (which would eliminate all human co2 contributions EVER in ~60 years) would do nothing but delay.

So why bother ? This avenue is closed, and useless.

We glued a grenade to our hand, and pulled the pin. Messing around trying to insert the pin back in provides nothing but comic relief. We need to adapt. To limit the damage, and fix things.

As you say, only direct geoengineering can work. On the plus side: doesn't require global cooperation. On the downside: that'll make someone clearly directly responsible for the (MUCH worse) effects global cooling will have, especially locally ... so it's extremely incompatible with how current green parties think and "influence policy".

Whereas the current "complain and do nothing but token efforts" is very good at getting constant attention, votes and money. But only if the problem keeps getting worse.

So just like everyone they accuse, green and leftist parties themselves are dependent on global warming happening and getting worse. Maybe that, too, is a reason why we have nothing but token efforts. Also, they would have to admit that "mother nature"/gaia is definitely NOT going to save our ass, even if we stop polluting.

Additionally, Gaia, so to speak, has already decided to inflict global warming on us, as a punishment or just because, take your pick, effectively for what humanity did at the end of the 19th (not 20th) century. So we need to inflict further damage on the ecosystem artificially controlling the temperature to prevent worse. But that'll futher destroy habitats, and on a much larger scale than what we've seen so far.

Not eating meat, capturing co2, lab-grown meat, even nuclear power ... just can't work. Only geoengineering can work.

Doing nothing but solar radiation management has serious downsides: it does nothing for ocean acidification, and if you ever stop pumping out that sulfur dioxide or whatever, all that pent-up warming hits you at once. I see it as a temporary emergency measure, to head off heat-driven feedback effects.

This right here sums up about 97% of the entire issue. People look at the scale of problem, figure they can't make "a real difference" and use that as justification for continuing on with business as usual. It boils down to "The pain and nuisance of me personally taking fewer airplane trips, walking more or eating less meat (or whatever) far outweighs in my mind the benefit to The World of me inconveniencing myself. So Why Bother?"

And, conveniently, it's an argument that frames itself in a way that is nigh impossible to argue with.

Taxes can always be repealed, but I’d like to see us start giving a shit before we assume this won’t work, because whatever we are doing now doesn’t work!

> We need to adapt. To limit the damage, and fix things.

The first contributes to the second.

The implied corollary is of course that if we slow down emissions global warming will stop. And it won't. It will slow down, but not stop. Not even if we get net emissions to zero.

Deploying renewable energy generators is just so much fast and more flexible, and demolition (either controlled or uncontrolled) isn't such a risk as with a nuclear power plant.

Stopping our existing coal power plants while cutting down on energy consumption; Sure, it's an educational problem but during WWII people collected scrap metal for the war effort.

That's great as part of a diverse grid but some areas don't have hydro/geothermal, so if those places want to go entirely carbon-free without nuclear we need to rely entirely on wind/solar/battery. That means, at a minimum, we need to get through a windless night.

So let's say about 12 hours. For 12 GWh we'd need 12,000/129=93 Tesla-scale plants, costing $8.3 billion. That's just for minimum storage, not including the wind turbines and solar panels.

We have to take the current cost of wind/solar and add another 50% or so, since we need to generate enough to fill the storage, not just meet current needs during the day. Then we need to overbuild even more, because on a cloudy day we only get about half as much energy out of our solar panels. Another issue is the sheer amount of lithium and cobalt you'd need; we're pushing the limits already, and we'll need a lot more for electric cars.

At this point you're probably thinking long-distance transmission to collect wind power from a wide area, but that's also expensive. More importantly, it's politically difficult and time-consuming to get the land rights.

By comparison, construction cost for modern conventional nuclear plants is under $8 billion/GW: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-as...

Of course, there are emerging technologies to help with all of this. Wind, solar, and batteries are all getting cheaper, and batteries using other raw materials are being developed.

But if we're going to look to future technologies, let's do that with nuclear as well. Molten salt reactors look way cheaper than conventional reactors, and fast reactors can eat nuclear waste. At least half a dozen startup companies are working on molten salt reactors, several are working on fast reactors, and Russia has two commercial fast reactors on their grid right now.

Also note that we need all of the above in place within the next 10-15 years.

https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fos...

Honestly, we're just going to keep sleepwalking into catastrophe.

Hence the anti-refugee, anti-immigrant talk -- might as well start early and get people in the mindset to deal harshly with mass migration caused by climate change.

Hence the continued military build-up and the consolidation of armed forces in hot-zones (multiple meanings to 'hot')

Hence the rise of protectionism (free trade won't mean much in a climate crisis world anyways)

Hence the rise of nationalism (what's "mine" is mine)

There are too many advantages to being the last to do anything, and it's too late to do anything without a major revolution or civil war. The whole world economy goes into a tailspin over a relatively minor increase in the barrel price of oil -- imagine what it will do if oil goes up by 1000%, which is what it would need to do to stop its rampant consumption...

I love my kids, but sometimes wish I hadn't had any.

The problem of climate change is just too big and happening over too long a timescale for us to address. None of our personal or political systems are evolved to deal with it.

That said, don't kid yourself for a minute that the people with large amounts of capital don't meet and discuss these things amongst themselves. They have both public-facing institutions (political parties, etc.) and private ones for this purpose.

BREAKING NEWS: Rich guys also hope their families survive the water wars.

Not sure what/why we're arguing about here.

Carbon pricing is what really is going to set things in motion on a large scale.

5) Stop buying stuff.

Most ads are designed to make you want to buy something you don't need.

They keep you in a state of permanent dissatisfaction to keep you on the consumption treadmill.

Consequently they contribute to both global unhappiness and environment destruction.

It will never happen.

We need more practical solutions.

Only 10% of people in developed countries would even think of making major changes to their lifestyle for such reasons ...

And there are 5 billion people in poor countries who are rapidly becoming 'consumers' and they don't care, at all. They want cars, appliances and 'stuff' now.

There's hope but I think it'll have to be really quite pragmatic, and more focused on supply and less on demand, i.e, solar, wind, a lot more nuclear and I wish we'd invest more in Fusion research.

If you still want meat in your diet, start buying less beef and more eggs or chicken. That'll be a good start. https://timeforchange.org/eat-less-meat-co2-emission-of-food

Reducing meat consumption is by far the easiest way to reduce your carbon footprint.

It takes far more fertilizer and irrigation to produce food for mass-produced meat. Well-maintained pasture has diverse plants year round soaking up a small amount of CO2 versus land for corn that is plowed under. And land for ethical meat often has trees to shade the animals. Mass-produced meat requires highly intensive cleaning of stalls. And for things like beef, it is still unclear whether one diet or another produces more methane, which is a huge portion of the climate impact.

Then there are things like what is done with the manure. In a well-managed factory farm, it is digested. But there are tons of stories about polluted rivers near factory farms that make it clear that often isn't the case. Those polluted rivers result in algal blooms, which is a whole other matter.

Basically, a statement like "more resources to ethically produce meat" confuses the price to a farmer of producing meat with a calculation that incorporates all the externalities, which is a whole lot less clear.

What? It is pretty clear cut that humans eating plants directly requires growing a lot less plants than humans eating meat, which ate those plants. Animals don't grow on sunlight, so they are basically a reactor for turning plants from one type of food into another. And the laws of thermodynamics tell us they aren't 100% efficient, so... eating meat requires more plants to be grown than eating plants themselves...

Had the herbivores been harvested from the wild this would all be true. In practice the herbivores are fed not just grass but beans, grains and other produce. Which has to be grown just like the vegetables eaten by vegetarians. Since the 'conversion factor' - the efficiency by which an animal transforms 1 kg of fodder into 1 kg of edible animal - varies from about 2 (insects) via 5-7 (chicken) via 9-11 (pig) to 14-18 (cow) it becomes clear that it takes a lot more grains, beans and such to feed a carnivore than it takes to feed a vegetarian.

After meeting a couple of "relaxed vegetarians", who said something like "I'm vegetarian, but if there is no vegetarian option, I can eat meat too" my partner became pseudo vegetarian: she allows herself to eat meet one weekend per month. As myself, I became indoors vegetarian, as we do not consume meet indoors.

EDIT: I'm honestly curious. It doesn't bother me too much, and I'm sure I've made comments that I thought were valuable but in hindsight were probably just me wanting to be present. It's mostly the consistency of such comments from you that fascinates me.

But it's honestly fucking weird that you are tracking my comments.

That said, I did write a bunch of code that actually allows me to track a user's comments. But I wrote that mostly so I can get updates if infrequent but great commenters post something. Perhaps that is a bit weird.

There is no such meat in the beef or chicken industry. There are sustainable methods to raise and provide enough meat for the demand and there are ethical methods (e.g. cage free, free range) that are absolutely not sustainable given the demand for meat. There is no overlap.

If demand is lowered by the population at large consuming a lot less meat, then it's perfectly reasonable to produce meat ethically and sustainably.

Chickens/eggs, etc.

The utilitarian in me wants to see the existence of the pig as an ethical net positive overall.

Eating meat can actually be a moral act. If the animal you eat lead a better life than it otherwise would have because of the care you provided in raising it, it's a net good. To put this in perspective, imagine you were impoverished and living a miserable existence and someone offered to let you live in comfort and luxury, and promised to take care of your offspring, but in exchange you had to agree to euthanasia at age 30. That might not be attractive to you from a first world perspective, but a lot of people would take that in a heartbeat.

I’ve read that a medium sized dog has the carbon footprint of a medium sized SUV, approximately.

I have two small-medium dogs. They eat a lot of vegetables and legumes. 90% of their snacks / treats are sweet potato / carrots / apples. Their main meals consist of a mix of grated veggies, cooked brown rice, cooked and puréed split peas, and two or three tablespoons of kangaroo or chicken mince to flavour. Sometimes I leave out the mince, so their meals are vegan too. They love it! They can’t get enough of the split pea purée.

With the added benefit that their poop is well formed and easy to pass, goes really well in the compost!

Thanks :)

I feel like social change is going to be the slowest, a government may tend to lag but they can do the most in the quickest amount of time with industry regulation.

Now, category 3 is illegal, and the cheap eggs are category 2: barn-raised (not way better, but at least they can walk about)

This did not happen because egg producers or the agricultural regulatory agencies felt bad about how they were keeping their chickens, but because enough of the public who cared pushed the government to make category 3 eggs illegal - and the only reason they had that whole categories thing to begin with was enough of the public who cared.

I usually buy category 1 eggs (free-range, for some minimal value of free range) from small local producers here - I don't care what the chickens ate because the chickens don't really care what they eat, but I'll buy category 0 (free-range, organic feed) if category 1 isn't available.

Doing the above can't hurt (and while you're at it you could forego long distance travel too).

But it will be much better/more-useful to be the annoying person who contacts your federal representatives every month and more importantly will not shut up about it to friends, family, and colleagues.

(I am sad to say that I have not been such a person myself, but I've resolved recently to be better about that. Let's hope I'm not too weak.)

Making a change yourself and normalising it is a huge signal to those you come into contact with that they should do the same.

Governments change when politicians realise they are growing out of touch with the people they are trying to coerce.

I don't think this is true. In the USA, incandescent lightbulbs were more-or-less banned in favour of energy-efficient CFLs and LEDs, and people whined and moaned like crazy. Then they very quickly got over it. If you'd waited around for everyone to convince their friends and neighbors to spend 300% more up front on light bulbs, that would never, ever have happened.

We need political leaders to show real leadership. I am not optimistic.

- Gone vegetarian

- Bought a tiny used car instead on new one or one with more space.

- Moved to a neighborhood where I could walk to work.

- Declined for my employer to send me on an expenses paid trip to a conference 2000 miles away.

This has had ZERO effect on the behavior of any of the witnesses. And if I voice too much disapproval of people's ecologically destructive behavior, all that will happen is that I will be branded as some weirdo puritanical eco-prude, who's opinions and values are too fringe to be given any weight.

Industry will not do what is best for you and I, let alone the planet, if it means an extra dollar. You think you can vote with your wallet but frankly, the rest of the world doesn't care like you and I do. They don't and won't change soon enough. Not only that, but marketing is really good at tricking people into thinking they are doing good. Sugar free, fat free, organic foods, marketing finds ways to pedal the same food and processes with different labels and the same negative effects. It takes regulation to change it. False advertising isn't prevelant in Australia because our government regulates the crap out of food labels for one example.

Another example is green energy. People are swapping to green energy only now rather than years ago because the government has subsidised it so hard that the dollars make sense. People didn't care until it saved them money, and electricity companies who were in the best position to make changes didn't care until they were forced to. If it were up to them they will pedal coal until we all die, and if it were up to the consumer we would just use more dirty electricity to run our aircons.

Thank you for your comment by the way, I am appreciating the discourse.

But your point is well taken: we need to address these issues at all levels.

I am finding to create something just as satisfying that's vegetarian is some form of pie or lasagne that is delicious but takes an entire evening to cook.

What would the vegetarian equivalent to a quick steak be?

Lentils and onions over rice will fill you up, but it's certainly less fun than a steak.

Stir fries are quick, fun to cook and satisfying. Slice a couple of hard-boiled eggs, add soy sauce and sesame seeds, and serve over the stir-fried veg.

For red beans and rice, I soak the beans the night before, which reduces the needed cooking time.

Maybe that's why you don't see too much focus on telling people what their personal goals should be - the situation encourages defeatism if you actually try to find a personal solution to the problem.

What we need is a wartime economy, geared towards surviving climate change. In my view, that could actually be very good for us - western societies haven't had a concrete goal to unify their citizens for as long as I've been around, at least. And this time, the goal wouldn't revolve around killing people!

Now, how do we get started?

We have environmental regulations, they just aren't strong enough and they often have loopholes specifically for the worst offenders (e.g. animal agriculture and shipping both externalize tremendous environmental costs on everyone). There's also differences between nations that make it possible to outsource environmental impact, which needs to be balanced.

It's not realistic to tell consumers, "Don't buy products made overseas", because for most people in most parts of the world, most of the products they need are made overseas. I don't think it's a bad thing for manufacture to flow to where it is most efficient, but it is a bad thing when environmental impact explodes because of it. There needs to be pressure on the companies hauling those goods, from every nation they ship to, to reduce emissions dramatically.

And, while I've been vegetarian or vegan for 24 years, and I encourage everyone to do so, both to reduce suffering and to reduce environmental impact, it turns out asking people to become vegetarian or vegan doesn't actually work. There have been organizations encouraging plant-based diets for decades, and yet only a small percentage of people eat a plant-based diet. The industry has to be made to internalize those costs, so they change their practices. It'll also raise prices to more realistic levels, which would shift consumption to plant-based alternatives which have orders of magnitude lower environmental impact (though still high, when talking about feeding a few billion people, but certainly more sustainable than feeding a few billion people beef).

But yes, things need to change. And yes, that requires changes by governments and corporations, but all of that is set in motion by regular people. Change your habits, even if they don't make a difference on their own - they show others that this is important, and will influence them to make their own changes. It will spread, not just to our regular behaviour, but also to our consumption and voting decisions. People are more likely to do as you do than to do as you say.

Eh? I have many examples that prove otherwise.

Like, government mandating solar panels on new buildings. People aren't happy with those because of how expensive they are. Or government mandating certain cars cannot go through cities certain days. People aren't happy because they'd rather use their SUVs. Or government mandating you have to pay for plastic bags and in the end they will be banned altogether. Which sucks and is inconvenient.

Eg: "Why buy a green car if it's going to cost me way more than a good old diesel and the apocalypse is coming the same anyway ?"

It's sure looking like we might as well get our boozing in before last call.

Get into decision-making positions and advocate for energy saving on a corporate scale.

I don't expect them to agree, however.

Yeah, everyone who disagrees with me is wrong and we should prevent them from reproducing. /s

I fully believe in climate change but your opinion that eugenics is part of the solution is out in left field and incompatible with the values of most people on this planet to put it charitably.