People generally want to do the right thing and they want to matter whereas in my experience the average person is not a great systems thinker. So people are very receptive to calls to "be better" because it let's them fight for what they believe set in a framework where their actions matter at least to some degree.
The problem is, these are problems of scale and systems, and once people think they are fulfilling some responsibility they aren't going to pursue other solutions, at least as aggressively.
If we straight up told people: you are going to experience extreme pain within your life time due to climate change, and the only single thing you can do that matters is to put pressure on your government to attack these problems systematically, I think we'd get much better results.
Meanwhile, we haven't really tried an effective government policy. One that would replace other forms of taxation with a carbon tax.
We've only tried individual solutions, dabbling around the edges, carbon offsets, cap and trade. Manifestly they haven't reduced emissions.
People may indeed view individual action as a substitute for collective action. But we wouldn't ask people to increase government revenue by making donations.
You would have to combine the tax with more serious measures like duties based on either estimated or actual emissions level. Or outright bans.
Additionally mandating certain important practices like garbage disposal, reduction and methane capture.
High tariffs on countries not following suit will take care of that. Try the carrot first but if they don't want to contribute then use the stick.
For example, when every home has roof-top solar, everyone is riding bikes or scooters, growing food locally, not flying, etc. It's harder for politicians to create new subsidies for coal mining, or tax concessions for airlines. Instead they will be more likely to pass carbon fee and dividend schemes or similar.
On the other hand, while everyone continues to drive around in SUVs, buy cheap goods from China, long haul flights all the time, and food from the other side of the world, it's easy for politicians to maintain the status quo.
Individual action can't solve climate change by itself. But it is still meaningful and necessary. Our actions influence the actions of others around us, and we can redefine "normal" for our society. Studies have shown that somewhere between 10 and 20% of a population acting in a new way are enough to shift the opinions of the remaining majority.
Even if you went completely off the grid to live in the woods outside of the industrial civilization eating plants etc this wouldn't fix anything.
Yes, you would certainly reduce your emissions but this is not nearly enough.
Even if a miracle happened and we reached global zero emissions today there are already 415ppm in the atmosphere which will remain there for thousands of years.
Because of climate lag we are now only seeing the effects from the emissions from the 70s and early 80s. Even in 30-40 years when we can see the effects from our current emissions it will not stop there. There are many self sustaining climatic systems that will have been triggered and will continue to change the climate.
Humanity needs to invest all possible resources into clean energy and carbon sequestration. If we don't go all in during the next decade we are done.
Cite please?
> The lifetime in the air of CO2, the most significant man-made greenhouse gas, is probably the most difficult to determine, because there are several processes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Between 65% and 80% of CO2 released into the air dissolves into the ocean over a period of 20–200 years. The rest is removed by slower processes that take up to several hundreds of thousands of years, including chemical weathering and rock formation. This means that once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can continue to affect climate for thousands of years.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhou...
> There is sufficient uptake capacity in the ocean to incorporate 70 to 80% of foreseeable anthropogenic CO2 emissions to the atmosphere, this process takes centuries due to the rate of ocean mixing. As a result, even several centuries after emissions occurred, about a quarter of the increase in concentration caused by these emissions is still present in the atmosphere.
Apparently I'm a hateful person for noticing this discrepancy.
Probably because imposing natality rates would be quite unpopular. Humans tend to think having kids is an inalienable right.
China got away with it because China, but this would not work in other countries.
Imagine that all the people who believed in climate change - globally - committed suicide in some appropriately low-carbon manner. Everyone remaining does not believe in climate change. How long does it take the population to bounce back, and what sort of global warming mitigation do you think happens? Does the world in this thought experiment end up emitting less carbon?
Individual actions might have next to no effect, but institutional actions will. Giving up your opportunity to influence those institutional actions (whether through your own efforts or those of your children) is not beneficial to the environment. Of course, this calculus is different for the average person. But if you're the sort of person who's contemplating suicide to help the environment, you're exactly the sort of person that the world needs to not commit suicide.
Conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, called the most docile claims about global warming/climate change as radical, lies, socialism, communism, anti-business, pro-big government, and so on. The more aggressive claims were impugned as forms of eco-terrorism. It's the same today. The climate change deniers go so far as to insist that all of this is just delusional panic over nothing.
Michael Crichton, science fiction author, was a notable climate change denier who pushed exactly that: this climate change business is nonsense and people who claim otherwise are crazy. He wrote a book on the subject "State of Fear" about how global warming was a fraud, perpetrated by a few to exploit others.
A still sitting U.S. senator, James Inhofe from Oklahoma, says global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. And he cited "Dr. Crichton" and his book as the kind of real facts we need to pay attention to, and invited him to testify before Congress as a climate expert and scientist.
It's like humans are designed to make everything a dispute.
If we're aiming for more reasoned debate I'm not sure the throwing around of the 'denier' label really gets us much further forward.
Don't worry, there are people saying this all over every climate discussion on HN. And then a huge distracting discussion about whether that's a good idea or not.
I might be being disingenuous but I see it so often it makes me curious. I don't know.
This is really the only important thing that we can do. Except maybe not flying in an airplane, there is little the average person can do in their daily life to inhibit climate change. Whether due to preventive policies or due to resource shortages our lives will change in the near future. Expecting individuals to shame themselves when the society at large encourages the opposite is counter-productive.
It is not to say that anyone is wrong to choose to live more frugally. More importantly, we need to recognize that any hope we have must come from the top down. We have more research and more solutions than we've ever had for any problem, but we don't have someone to pull the trigger.
Politics is so short sighted that unless there's huge pressure from the masses nothing will be done, or just too little too late.
Even if the Science backing up Climate Change wasn't solid, which I think it is, what's the alternative? Take a gamble?
The Roman Civilization probably collapsed because, among other things, the climate optimum they experienced at their peak changed drastically and crops became less efficient. A joke compared to what we might be expecting in a few decades with such an overpopulated and hyper-efficient world, which is really fragile to climatic disruption.
Here's an interesting article about it: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-climate-ch...
The key factor, apparently, was "... an enormous spasm of volcanic activity in the 530s and 540s CE, unlike anything else in the past few thousand years. This violent sequence of eruptions triggered what is now called the ‘Late Antique Little Ice Age,’ when much colder temperatures endured for at least 150 years."
(New theories should always be taken with a grain of salt, but I found it interesting either way.)
That requires strong political leadership and buy in.
American needs to turn back into the country represented by Captain America. They need to be leaders again, instead of acting like they're being run by one of those infant English kings from the Middle Ages..
Brr... The problem is that making quick money on scale seems to me like some kind of condition. Some biological hoarding gene that made sense just a hundred years ago.
Evolution have not kept up with our success at building and automating stuff made from stars. It makes me sad.
What we need to do is to update the rules of Capitalism to internalize the externalities. Make carbon expensive. Make environmental destruction expensive. Make exploiting labor expensive.
Do that and you'll see extremely rapid changes for the good. Only it will never happen because the people and countries currently profiting from coal / oil will fight it with the enormous $$ they have (and they are; people like the Koch brothers are always babbling on about how the government is run by a shadow 'deep state' - that's clearly true, and they're clearly being greased by oil money).
To the extent that we have lots of influential people browsing this forum, make it clear that unless to any politician that unless they aggressively tackle global warming, they won't get any donations/votes no matter how good they are in other areas / how much influence they have over the business you are running.
- most of all, speak out for reneweable energies and against coal
- if possible use some solar yourself
- try to buy an electric car or a real fuel efficient one, don't drive too much
- in general, try to use energy efficient devices
And finally, eat less, especially meat and highly processed foods. It's not free neither for you, not for the environment.
Here are the most impactful things you can do as an individual in a democracy:
1. Convince as many people as you can of voting for anyone who supports carbon tax.
2. Vote for anyone who supports a carbon tax.
3. There is no 3.
We need to internalise this negative externality into the very fabric of every transaction we make. By the time you can see a product you have no idea how much carbon was produced to make it.
Don't just walk back from the abyss. Drive back in the same car that got us here.
(by all means of course reduce your footprint, but don't forget nr 1 & 2. they must be front and centre.)
First of all, it will seriously destabilise a large economy where democracy still plays an influential role. This will place more economic power at the hands of non-democratic nations, allowing them to produce more CO_2 at will.
Secondly, the taxed CO_2 will just circulate back to the government, to be spend again. On what? Due to the strong relationship of the dollar with oil, each dollar spend by the government will involve burning oil and producing CO_2.
Third, how will you check the CO_2 emissions of your products? How do you prevent fraud? How do you make sure the system is not gamed by shifting the CO_2 burden to other countries?
No, if you want to make a dent, vote for those who want to invest heavily in renewables R&D (solar, hydro, wind, thermal).
-Vote for politicians that will regulate carbon
-Lobby your elected officials to regulate carbon
-Give to NGOs that lobby to regulate carbon
-Reward companies that sell products that reduce your carbon footprint and add value to your life.
-Pivot your career to work with green NGOs, on the staff or campaigns of green-friendly politicians, or companies creating greed products.
Do a few of these things and you can litter all you like.
And nothing individuals do will be enough. The top causes of CO2 emissions are industrial power generation, production of concrete, resource extraction, deforestation/burning forests and transportation.
Fact is, the world's population is still increasing, developing countries will still develop, developed countries won't reduce emissions, there's no stopping it.
Even in the US, the DNC struck down the 'Green New Deal'.
Either we're all doomed, or it's not an existential threat.
I like my guns and EV; don’t know why they have to be antipodal in politics.
Up until very recently I thought this was the most important thing to do. The more I watch XR videos though the more I am convinced that that's not the case. Voting doesn't matter. None of the important social changes in the last century or so were initiated by the parliament. Think about women suffrage, civil rights movement, anti war movement, gay rights. We need to get out and get our hands dirty with direct action. Or at least support people who do.
I would just like to add. Absolutely vote. But please don't use it as an excuse to do nothing yourself. While you are waiting for politicians to act, start acting now. In case you are wondering what you can do yourself - here is a short list
- Stop flying to conferences. Go to a local meetup. It's fun. And cheaper. If you really need to get out of town, take a train. Let's hope one day Prometheus will give us carbon-neutral jet fuel https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19842240
- Shift your investments from fossil to green. If you can't find enough worthy greens, shift it to anything else. Some say it won't impact your returns http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/the-mythical-per... Move your deposits and savings to a more sustainable bank. https://fairfinanceguide.org
- Work less. Work part time, and part of that part time remotely. http://cepr.net/documents/publications/climate-change-worksh... A firm lets its employees work four days a week while being paid for five. Everyone is happy, lower electricity bills, fewer cars on the road https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/world/asia/four-day-workw...
- Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. They say these new vega burgers are not too bad. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/30/dining/climat...
Thank you.
I would also add - stop or reduce discretionary air travel. Similarly to local meetups, there are often so many undiscovered destinations/events that can be just as rewarding as an overseas trip, without the 20+ hours in transit that are required.
I thought that nuclear was also a GHG contributor because of the fossil fuels used in mining and refining it. Is this not the case? Like there is some cradle to grave GHG coefficient for different sources of power...
| Lignite | 1054 |
| Coal | 888 |
| Oil | 733 |
| Natural Gas | 499 |
| SolarPV | 85 |
| Biomass | 45 |
| Nuclear | 29 |
| Hydroelectric | 26 |
| Wind | 26 |
Nuclear produces less presently and holds the key to producing none at all.
And I am sorry to say that, but I don't think that a global framework enforcing the same environmental restrictions on every country in the world, regardless of its economic state, is realistic. Sorry.
That said, humanity has adapted to live in variety of environments, from African tropics to Canadian permafrost, centuries before the technological revolution. So once the global warming effects start noticeably affecting regular people, there will be a wave on businesses built around mitigating those effects, dealing with the causes and perhaps trying to reverse some of them. But before this becomes a pressing matter for pretty much everyone, I don't think there is much we can do.
This is just not true. World's richest 10% produce half of global carbon emissions [0] I would guess a fair share of HN readers are in the top 10%
[0] https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/mb-ex...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
It's pretty clear that if the west consumed less China wouldn't pollute nearly as much. So yes, everybody has a choice, either be actively part of it or try to pollute as little as possible.
You're saying "the impact of one person is limited therefore no one should take action". I'd argue that everyone should take action, show the example in your home, local community, &c. Little by little people get more engaged, just look at the green parties in Europe, 20 years ago they barely got 1% of votes in elections, now they get >20% in some countries.
Turn every thing you own upside down and find the scripture "Made in China".
Any clues?
Those frameworks already exist. There's a framework for CFCs that has been effective at slowing the destruction of global ozone. There's a framework that governs the disposal of radioactive materials. And yes, there's already one for greenhouse gases. The U.S. president just pulled the U.S. out of it. So, one thing that U.S. residents can do is vote for a new president who will put the U.S. back into it.
> once the global warming effects start noticeably affecting regular people, there will be a wave on businesses built around mitigating those effects
The fundamental problem is that real estate is by far the largest store of global wealth, and global warming will destroy some of that via sea level rise, and potentially alter some other parts by shifting weather patterns.
It is hard to solve social problems with profitable businesses in the face of large-scale declining wealth. That's usually called a recession or depression, and every time we've faced that sort of problem in the past century, the government has had to step in to help. In fact, addressing those sorts of problems is one reason humanity invented government in the first place.
We don't need a perfect global framework. We just need to shift incentives to some extent. The market is already coming up with some non-carbon alternatives. Adding a carbon tax will shift incentives further and increase tech development.
To mitigate the effects, business need an energy source. Either it's:
* a replacement to carbon, or
* still carbon
If it's still carbon, you can't reverse the causes, and mitigation gets harder and harder as you worsen the problem.
You're effectively arguing that:
1. There's no use trying now, it's basically impossible, but
2. Despite not trying now, we will solve the impossible problem at some future point.
You're perhaps arguing that the problems of global warming will help us. This seems rather like Bastiat's parable of the broken window.
Negative changes will only hurt us, and individual solutions can't fix a global atmosphere.
You hadn't mentioned this in your comment though, so I thought you were arguing something else.
Assuming there is a future generation :P
They won't. They'll be dead.
But there also ought to be a bottoms up culture change which encourages humans to recognize and self-limit their own impact. The world is too populous that our own actions won’t impact others at the new scale humanity exists. We won’t have political action without some parts or hopefully all of the culture embracing limits on our behavior. I don’t think these two approaches are mutually exclusive.
To address the parent comment here: Calling strangers bad people is very seldom a fruitful rhetorical approach, and I would advise against it. But individual action will end up being required someday; might as well start practicing today.
"Credible" is one difficult part of that, and the situation is also exploitable even if they are credible in that one regard.
For example, a person or group could produce a candidate who is credibly stronger on global warming than the competition, while at the same time the secret goal being to sell out constituents' fiscal interests or rights in some other regards.
(It's not far-fetched -- without getting into contemporary partisan examples, it's fair to say that this seems to already a strategy and tactic, on other single-issues, in some contests.)
No, it isn't. It's not even close. We can adapt to climate change.
The single scariest existential threat our species has ever faced is politicians and other public figures using FUD in order to convince we the people to give them more power. Which they will then use to screw things up even more.
Of the top of my head, asteroids, bio weapons, disease, the Sun, AI and authoritarianism are more serious. Especially AI - not being the dominate species anymore will be dangerous. But 10°C more? That just requires AC and migration.
There are a lot of reasons such as whether food or water scarcity might trigger nuclear war. But the biggest reason is that it puts us into the territory of previous mass extinction events on Earth. This article does a good job of illustrating the worst possible outcome. It does belong up with the others on the existential threat scale.
http://burro.case.edu/Academics/USNA229/impactfromthedeep.pd...
Give it a read and let me know if you think industrial civilization could adapt to these conditions.
2) We are probably already in a mass extinction event. That also has little change of causing human extinction - we're the most adaptable species this planet has ever seen.
"known colloquially as the Great Dying... approximately 252 million years ago. It is the Earth's most severe known extinction event, with up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct."
Seriously, it's a good article and quite short. I think you'd find it interesting food for thought and I'm honestly interested to hear your response to it, not some cheap dismissals.
Edit: if you really don't have time to read the whole thing, at least let me know what you think of the figure on page 6
Just look how poorly rich countries are reacting to the current levels of migration from less rich countries.
I was responding more to the callous nature of your comment than whether or not current warming trends are an absolute existential threat.
Plants, rainfall, and harvests are susceptible to changes in climate.
Globally, though, I'd be surprised if we could last a single year if every food crop failed. You can already see what this looks like in Africa and the Middle East - famine affects entire countries at a time. Imagine if there was a string of bad years - say 10 or 15.
As a kind-of related example, most of the US would starve within a week if there were no oil to power trucks. Our current globalized food production/transportation network is extremely fragile.
been reading into deep adaptation lately, kinda cool kinda pointless
We, presently, are deciding to do this and continue it.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=milankovitch+cy...
P.s. this is the most incredible climate study I know of. This is a topological statistical analysis that doesn't rely on any specific climate model to draw its conclusions about the strengths of causal relationships. So there can be no quibbling about the model being wrong. That simply doesn't matter with this awesome application of dynamical systems theory, it needs no model.
There are sites that suggest any number of things. Unspecified "sites" have little bearing on the actual facts.
I'm not sure that Milankovitch Cycles imply the dumping of CO2.
> Hopefully we can find a way to turn that into fuel.
This is the silliest and most thermodynamically backward thing I've read in a year. CO2 is burnt carbon. It's burnt. Burnt stuff ain't fuel; it's burnt.
[1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/07/carbon-engineering-and-harva...
You have to pick one. CO2 removal or creating energy. If you remove it, it must remain sequestered. If you create fuel from it, the CO2 will not have been removed.
I'm not against the idea of sourcing fuels from atmospheric CO2. It's a good way to get energy-dense fuel without adding new carbon to the atmosphere (assuming a carbon-free source of energy is used to synthesize the fuel). But that process won't remove CO2; it'll just not add more.
The problem isn't technology, the technology for genetically modifying alge or bacteria to consume CO2 and produce oil has been around for quite some time.
The problem is our powerstructures and our economic investments. It takes tremendous energy to move such a massive Goliath of a ship.
Our economy which brought us prosperity simply cannot move quickly enough to prevent our demise. Ironic and perhaps poetic really
Our future descendants will heap scorn and curses on our generation, and we deserve every bit of it. Every politician that refuses to do what is necessary or finds it convenient to play stupid language games about 'settled science' is doing incalculable harm.
As citizens, I encourage everyone to reducing their carbon footprint as much as possible (yes, that means that your life gets comfortable) and voting exclusively on how credible a politician is on tackling global warming. If you are a wealthy person and aren't buying carbon offsets for all your emissions, you are a bad person.