Agriculture is a huge pollutant, so we should take steps towards alternatives that don't require large scale animal farming.
Fashion is another gigantic pollutant, where fast fashion generates and discards more clothes than it is feasible to wear.
etc.
Something like 40% of all shipping is moving hydrocarbons around the globe
I'm also in Western Europe and almost always needed a car for my commutes to work, unless I was willing to accept a 1-2+ h public transport commute each way, because tech employers where I live love locating their offices in the sticks where land is cheap because they're broke and cheap, and the city hasn't significantly updated public transport infrastructure in ~30 years, but the population and size of the metro area grew by like 3x.
>Before people tell me that I am an exception: I know other people like me in various other places in Europe!
The thing is, Western Europe is not a country, but a collection of various countries with various economies, cities, and infrastructure, and various people with various housing and career locations, some close and well connected to public transport, some not at all, and from my circle of acquaintances, yes, you are the exception, as most people I know get to work by car.
So, you can't possibly throw such blanket statement over everyone in Western Europe, unless you're massively obtuse or living in a bubble without realizing it.
Like, I'm sure most people in Munich, Paris, London, Madrid, Vienna, etc can easily get to work on the excellent public transport they have, but I don't live there and don't have such amazing public transport, so then car it is for us.
>It is possible and actually good for your body to have to move, at least to the train station, carrying groceries etc.
Bruh, I only need a car just to get to work in reasonable time, not to move or carry groceries.
I get my groceries from the supermarkets 5-10 minute walking distance to my place, but I don't have the luxury of employment jobs within the same distance, so car it is, unless I want to be wasting my life switching connections between slow and infrequent trams, busses and trains which often suffer delays.
And regarding the "body movement" as a pro for public transport, I'd rather have more free time to move in gym and to the workouts my body condition needs, rather than waste my time walking and sitting/standing on public transport, as that's not an actual workout but a waste of time, as all you can do is browse HN on the phone with the hand that's not grabbing the bar. Driving is also a waste of time, but at least it saves me almost 1 hour each way which is massive time save that I can use how I like.
The vast majority of people concerned about climate change think there is some paradise we could have kept if only we hadn't been so "climate-sinful". It's uncomfortable to contemplate that the world is changing uncontrollably around you.
You might be misled because you can find graphs of global average temperate that swing wildly by like 10C-20C. But look at the X axis, it's in hundreds of millions of years. Stretch it out to 100k years and it will look perfectly flat.
And yes there is some climate paradise we could have kept it we hadn't emitted so much CO2. The one where it isn't 50C in Baghdad and Europe isn't a dust bowl. Could we have kept it for 100 million years? Maybe not! But nobody is saying that. We could have kept it for 100k years, instead of like 100.
It's comforting to imagine it isn't a problem - both from an "I'm smarter than everyone else" perspective and "I don't have to worry about it", but you're lying to yourself. I dunno lots of people are happy to lie to themselves (at least 50% of religious people I reckon) but I can't do it.
Europe is now really stuck between two huge enemies, regarding climate. We can do a lot to prepare, we just need to wake tf up.
Our Union gives us many advantages. We just need to use it before our enemies destroy it.
What about wars? Unlikely anyone would completely electrify their armies anytime soon, and that blocks even starting the transition in the rest of economy. Some drones are electric, but you still need to move heavy stuff and many people in denied environments, and stationary electric grids are still more vulnerable than liquid fuels.
1. Electrify almost everything that can reasonably be electrified.
Move quickly to EVs, and replace anything that can practically become electric with an electric version. Self driving & fleet utilization will push transportation cost per mile lower than ever before.
For the power grid, data centers, and other large 24/7 consumers: solar + wind + battery storage. Deep geothermal also looks interesting.
Build lots of desalination capacity.
Maybe even planes can eventually be electrified. Imagine shorter hops with battery swaps at sea (aircraft carrier sorts of things). Too crazy?
2. Deal with the things that are much harder to electrify.
Cargo ships.
Long haul aviation, if the electric plane idea really is impractical.
For those, we can turn energy + CO2 into liquid fuels, creating something closer to a closed carbon cycle.
3. Remove excess CO2.
CO2 persists in the climate system for 200+ years, so getting emissions to zero does not necessarily return atmospheric CO2 to previous levels.
We will need to remove enough to be net negative & over time bring it back down to the CO2 levels we know worked long term.
That takes energy. Fortunately, solar + wind + storage are cheap enough now & getting cheaper.
4. Find places for all that solar.
Deserts are obvious.
Floating solar could potentially contribute.
Agricultural land is interesting too. Agrivoltaics can sometimes provide useful shading while still allowing crops to grow.
5. Deal with the transition period.
Once we are making a serious transition toward decarbonization and carbon removal, it may make sense to investigate temporary solar geoengineering, such as injecting reflective aerosols into the stratosphere, to partially counteract warming while atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations are being brought down.
The purpose would be to stop the feedback loops such as more forest fires, thawing permafrost, and loss of ice and other reflective surfaces.
Obviously geoengineering has major risks and should not substitute for reducing emissions. But as a temporary bridge, it seems like something that deserves serious research.
We can do all this.
None of it requires magic. We already have, or can plausibly engineer, most of the pieces.