It is obviously not the case that 'humanity seems to do nothing'.

The United Nations have the IPCC working on the issue and their reports influence national policy in many countries. There are the Kyoto and Paris agreements that are based on the details from the IPCC reports. Is the world doing enough? No, I don't think countries are doing enough, but to say humanity seems to do nothing is patently ridiculous.

I don't think any nation, not one, will meet Paris commitments. Paris was broadly thought to be far from enough at the time it was signed, and science has moved on markedly since then. IPCC reports are the most optimistic interpretation as necessarily they take a most conservative view on every study. IPCC are all government appointed after all. G20 fossil subsidies just went up, again. Why does fossil need any subsidy, anywhere in the world, given how much profit has come from fossil fuel for a century or two?

That seems pretty near to nothing to me. Let's say "nothing substantive" then.

Looks like one nation is on course to meet Paris. Morocco, who emit 0.17% of the world's CO2.

https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/morocco/

Emissions are still rising when they should be falling since the Rio summit in 1992. You know, back when we still had a chance of saving the coral reefs and the penguins. Right now it looks like we started triggering the melting of the permafrost, which, once it gets going, will make all efforts we can make totally nil.

Whatever humanity is doing, it's got little to do with preventing the climate catastrophe. Remember that the total amount of GHG emissions in the atmosphere is what counts. We're not even getting the second derivative to go in the right direction.

We are doing nothing: https://climateactiontracker.org/

National responses range from "critically insufficient" all the way to merely "insufficient".

You are tragically misinformed if you think some responsible people somewhere are taking action.

Shame that site treats all the EU as one bloc - individual countries within the EU diverge quite a bit.

The Paris agreement was known since the beginning to be insufficient to meet their own targets. And I believe the US has pulled out of that? We’re seriously behind where we need to be. So yes we’re not doing literally nothing, but perhaps we’re doing nothing that would actually stop climate change from causing catastrophic damage to earth.

all of those things are pure talk, no action

The problem is that is too little too late.

If I get sick, I cant just solve my problem with some ibuprofen.

Solving climate change requires a major overhaul in culture, lifestyle, expectation, technology and politics.

We did it before, mostly in War situations, I do not understand why this is different.

People on HN hate it when you say we have to change our whole society to deal with this problem. I agree with you though. I don’t think we’re willing to do what is necessary to avoid serious catastrophe. We’ve done a good job demonstrating that for 50+ years so far.

> People on HN hate it when you say we have to change our whole society to deal with this problem.

We obviously don't have to change our whole society to deal with that problem.

1) I've been told that renewable are now grid competitive in cost and the power system is switching over to them naturally.

2) At any point we could go nuclear - even the most pessimistic anti-nuclear activist would have to admit that the risks from nuclear power are localised and that the raw volume of pollution rounds to 0 compared to what we do now.

It would take a couple of breakthroughs in battery technology to solve the transport problem and the whole thing might get solved in the background without much more serious effort. Most people wouldn't even notice.

You'd be surprised how much anti-nuclear activists would disagree with your second point. I'm sure I know a couple that would rather watch the world burn than vote for someone that will build a single reactor.

I think once an issue like that becomes a left/right black/white thing all logic just goes straight out the window. You can't even say the word nuclear without hearing a cacophony of statements about the price of nuclear vs renewables, as if those claims don't need any actual numbers to go along with them.

When you break it down, for California (a relatively sunny place) it would take more than $3.63 trillion dollars to be 100% renewable.

[1]https://youtu.be/h5cm7HOAqZY?t=709

No it wouldn't. The assumptions made in that video are ridiculous.

You don't need to have storage for all your solar; you turn other sources off when you have excess supply. Or you can switch them off simply by covering them. Batteries are not the only form of storage. Hydro exists and is in use already. You are allowed to import electricity. There are other renewables besides solar and wind. etc etc etc...

I disagree. Assumptions made in the video are realistic. You kinda need battery storage for your solar/wind.

Other sources can be hard/impossible to stop.

Batteries are the only form of storage that's scalable. Hydro exist, but you can't expect to just add another hydroelectric dam, whenever your solar overwhelms your current capacity. Hell even storing gravitational energy probably requires frankly massive amounts of development.

You are allowed to import/export electricity, but the assumption is others will have similar power sources, no? When there is the excess sun in one area, it's either going to be excess in nearby areas (because day happens nearby at the same time). Sure, you want to export to countries without sun, but the loses are probably going to be huge (loses mean infrastructure is stressed additionally).

What other renewable resources?

- Hydro? Destructive for the environment kills migrating fish, ruins ecosystems and not available everywhere.

- Geothermal? Only available at a few places can possibly lead to earthquakes.

- Bioenergy? Causes horrible air pollution.

> I disagree. Assumptions made in the video are realistic.

Nope, they're the opposite of realistic because they disagree with reality.

> You kinda need battery storage for your solar/wind.

You kinda don't. Here in Scotland, we've gone from around 15% renewables in 2007 to 70% in 2017. We closed our last coal station in 2016. Guess how many battery storage facilities we have? None. There are plans to build one in the near future. And yet we have a perfectly fine and consistent electricity supply. When reality disagrees with your theory, it's your theory that's wrong.

The other obvious renewable in California would be tidal.

Oh, and you can get rid of all your hydro when you no longer have any need for water. I swear sometimes people forget what dams are actually used for.

> Nope, they're the opposite of realistic because they disagree with reality.

Or, your premises are different. From what I see Scotland derives like 90% of its power from Wind, which is possible its unique property. Another thing to take into consideration is that California has a larger population than Scotland.

But overall I get what you are saying. I still suspect going 100% renewable won't be feasible for most countries.

1. Take a look at https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=map&solar=false&remote=... -- renewables are certainly not switching over fast enough.

2. Even if nuclear were not controversial, it cannot be deployed quick enough. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080304100413.h... I recall seeing a calculation that it would require us to turn on a new nuclear power plant every day for the next several decades. That's obviously not going to happen, when countries are currently decommissioning nuclear plants.

> the whole thing might get solved in the background without much more serious effort. Most people wouldn't even notice.

Frankly, this is a ridiculous and dangerous assumption. Globally, we have a limited carbon budget remaining in order to prevent catastrophic warming. That means we must be decreasing emissions on the order of at least 10% per year until we're at zero emissions, and then continue taking carbon out of the atmosphere. Such a scale requires massive transformation across all sectors of society.

> I've been told that renewable are now grid competitive in cost and the power system is switching over to them naturally.

These are more lies and half-truths, for the most part. Wind and solar as always quoted on a "nameplate" basis - how much power they can theoretically produce under ideal conditions. But most don't produce anywhere near that, on average, and I suspect that many can't even make their "nameplate" promises either. Add in the fact that they will have to have more traditional power plants as backup for when they fail to produce, and actual costs are easily a multiple of what is currently being quoted, perhaps a relatively high multiple at that.

Greed seems to be the primary engine driving humanity as a whole.

IMO the most viable path forward is to find some overlap between our desire to obtain and consume more, and the pressing need to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Maybe if we find a way to make carbon capture super lucrative or something?

It's really easy to implement a carbon tax. And it solves the problem. But what politicians want is more power grabs, not solutions. All of our wars on poverty, drugs, terror etc are intended this way. They are wars on people. This is the same. These people dont give a fuck about you. That's rarely ever been the case.

Implementing an unpopular measure (more tax) is almost equivalent to political suicide, and people in power tend to want to stay in power.

So yeah, technically it may be easy, but politically (which is what really matters here) this is almost impossible.

Every president has been essentially increasing taxes in the sense that they are raising spending, and spending increases are tax increases. People just dont want their gas prices to go up. Their fine with ignoring a financial catostrophe for the next generation which is the national debt. They are also very happy to soap box and advertise that they care about the next generation by talking nonsense about global warming.

You don’t need more taxes (on net) at all. You just do a carbon tax and distribute all the money equally. Rational people would reduce their spending on items that put a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Ideally nobody pays the tax at all. That’s the whole point of it.

No politician who would implement _real_ (very intrusive) carbon tax would be elected. Not easy at all.

On a millennium scale level an increase in global temperatures has been occurring for about 15,000 years (give or take), since the start of the last interglacial. On a century scale level temperatures have been increasing for about 150 years, since the end of the Little Ice Age. On a decadal level temperatures have been increasing since the great "Global Cooling" scare of the 1970s.

So it should be no surprise, then, that right now temps may be a bit on the warm side, comparatively speaking. This situation might be quite inconvenient for us, though.