The climate pooch is so thoroughly screwed that I'm glad to be 40; I may not have to see the worst of what's likely coming up. It's no wonder just about everyone I know who's my age or younger has some level of climate anxiety. I personally feel pretty hopeless about our chances: we're just smart enough to be able to fuck things up at scale, but not smart enough to do anything about it once it's become apparent
At this point, the only thing that can save us is science-fiction levels of global mobilization to fundamentally restructure civilization. Even if that could happen, it'd just end up making the rich even richer. The only times we've come close to that level of societal focus and unity have been in the name of killing. I've got no hope for the future. Climate change is going to ruin us completely, all we can do now is try to enjoy the last days of this era. (To be clear, there are things we can and should do as individuals to try and avoid the worst of climate change, not the least of which is rallying for legislative action. I just think we're past preventing widespread decay and suffering. The best we can accomplish is mitigation.)
I'm slightly more optimistic. We've waged war against each other on the scale necessary to impact this problem. I don't understand how wikipedia exists. I wouldn't have thought that human nature could be harnessed to create a useful open source repository of knowledge. Maybe, just maybe, we can harness our energies to terraform the planet and reverse our contribution to global warming.
I agree on the optimism. I'd say I'm cautiously optimistic. You reminded me of a quote I saw on a colleague's wall this morning. Margaret MeadNever doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
That's one of the biggest problems I've had to solve in my head with regards to solving climate change. The level of social restructuring required to avoid a climate catastrophe at this point would almost certainly lead to rioting in the streets. Millions of people would be out of work if we jacked the price of fossil fuels. People's livelihoods (and large parts of civilization) depend on fossil fuels directly or indirectly. At best I think we could transition entirely to nuclear energy to meet our current demand (there are negative externalities involving radioactive risks but we can ignore that for now). And then build electric cars? They are expensive, and what are we going to do about air/boat/large road vehicles? And then there is the problem of geopolitics in general. So much of power on the international scale is the ability to trade and having a thriving economy. Not giving a shit about the environment is the selfish choice if your country (assuming we're viewing nations as individual actors) seeks global dominance. Obama was certainly a realist on the international scale. In the end we're tribal fuckin' animals with enough technology to destroy the world. So fifty-something politicians are just as clueless to sort this all out as we are. We blame societal institutions but really it's individuals that don't give a shit. They can't just pull the lever and make it happen, as much as I want to pillory boomers. I appreciate Greta Thunberg a lot. It takes an obscene amount of courage to be an actor on that level in society at such a young age. Unlike redditeurs I do not believe that the sentimental value of time in life is worth the environmental cost and we can save that time anyway through clean energy. I was motivated into a politics major for similar reasons as a teenager so hopefully I can use that as a mitigating factor when we're all tried at the Hague 30 years from now.
One of humanity's dirty little secrets is that we judge our status and prosperity on a relative level rather than an absolute one. This is how entire nations cab ration supplies for years at a time- if everyone is doing it, your status is secure. The fundamental cause of climate change is energy usage above and beyond the planet's ability to recover. The solution is drastically reduced energy usage. This is tough when the Kardashians live on Learjets for your entertainment but easy when you ride alone you ride with Hitler. The basic problem is that a middle class American lifestyle is a climate-murdering lifestyle but an aspirational American lifestyle is a climate-exterminating lifestyle. We didn’t start recycling until everyone started recycling and we won't stop driving to work in air-conditioned solitude until everyone stops. There are massive mechanical changes necessary to reverse course but once the mechanics are in place, the social sphere will follow immediately. WWII was a period where every industry switched from making what they knew to making what would kill Nazis. If Lockheed, Boeing and Northrop were bidding against each other for a $100b worth of carbon sequestration equipment instead of $100b worth of stealth bombers you'd see some real innovation.
One hundo P, I can't imagine an easy solution for any of this. I've never wanted to live the Kardashian lifestyle, but I have travelled to more impoverished countries and the small children there peruse Taylor Swift lyrics and certainly aspire to a lot of the higher trappings of North American culture. "Mass mobilization" for war is much different because we like war (sorry, that's an edgy George Carlin routine but you see the point). There's a lot of money to be made and social glory to obtain. And as much as I try, I can't make people not want those things. I can't make people stop selling them and I can't make people stop wanting them. I suppose I'm praying for a technological miracle.
It's not that we like war, per se, it's that appeal to patriotism is more straightforward when you can point to the Hun and his gun. The nice thing about rallying around ecology is it's a positive sum competition. I mean, banning straws is a lot more aspirational than effective but holy fuck a whole bunch of municipalities jumped right up and banned straws. I honestly believe incremental change will get us there if support can be maintained.
This is a great analysis. There are costs and benefits to any approach, and no easy answers. The only alteration I would suggest is to change "not giving a shit" to "prioritizing the interests of oneself and loved ones, friends and associated people over more distant people, and prioritizing clear present desires over uncertain future desires" as pretty much everyone, everywhere has pretty much always done.
It all depends how you frame it really. What people want to call "selfish" is up to them. My point is humanity needs to collectively act so that our present desires don't ruin our future desires. But maybe there's cause for optimism and it'll work itself out.
She's a brilliant orator. She nails every element of clear public speaking. The fact she's saying the shit we all wish the people in power could hear, is just icing on the cake. It's funny. Even in our quiet little corner of the internet, the pro trolls are here panicked, attacking her as some corporate shill, trying to sow doubt about her personally, rather than addressing the actual issue she talks about. Standard troll fare. They are frikkin everywhere man. Even on Hubski...
Oh come on, Greta Thunberg is the molly Cyrus of climate change. An Astro turf construct of a climate change advocacy corporation called “We dont have time” . Shes 16year old being manipulated by large and powerful international institutions and interests not some sort of child prodigy. Instead of giving these people press we should be shaming them for manipulating our kids and using teenagers as pawns. Don’t kid yourselves the climate change debate is about money, not saving the planet. Different industries are throwing their weight around different positions based on if they think more or less regulation is profitable for them. That’s really all that’s happening here.
The problem I have with this assessment, is that the scenario in which Greta is not a pawn, but someone that struck a chord, does not look any different. I have a seven-year-old daughter. It's not about money with me. I have done enough physics to understand that global warming is the probable outcome of our emissions. Money doesn't influence that. I sense that Greta has done the math, and is responding in a reasonable manner. I have an email group that has been meeting for the last 19 years. Every year we each present on a topic. This year I chose sea level rise as I wanted to educate myself more on it. I'm primarily interested in how much can be expected, and how quickly will it come. Here's two interesting things I learned: 1) Historical sea level tracks CO2 reliably. Going back 50M years, when CO2 has been around the current 412ppm, sea level averaged 24m +7/-15m (+9m to \+31m) over the current level. 2) In their 2007 sea level projections, the IPCC only included thermal expansion in their projections, because they could not agree upon the contribution of ice shelves and glaciers. Thermal expansion has accounted for 30% of sea level rise since then. I learned a number of interesting things that don't seem to be common knowledge. One thing is that sea levels are going to continue to rise significantly. The conditions for that have already been met. What's happening is that we have created the conditions for global warming, and we continue to increase the rate and the extent of that warming. That's what's physically happening. The fact that industries are taking positions doesn't change the underlying physics.
These objections are peripheral. The fact that the speaker is young does not make the message incorrect. Money is involved in all big policy issues, and institutions always promote their own interests, we don't learn anything from those facts. Can you provide evidence that we are not in the beginning of a mass extinction? Do you disagree that carbon sequestration technologies "barely exist"? Should we not be concerned about #tippingpoints?
i think i do, or at least i have faith that in a decade they will be fully-fledged. there are several different possible avenues and necessity is ever the mother of inventionDo you disagree that carbon sequestration technologies "barely exist"?
I think I've ranted before about how much more efficient it is to not burn carbon than it is to burn carbon to produce electricity to run equipment to sequester carbon... Obviously the goal is to use renewable energy and stop digging/drilling, but it pisses me off because half the articles want to conclude there's nothing wrong with fossil fuels as there's someone in a lab experimenting with sequestration. I wonder if a bog could be sped up to sequester carbon faster with a little bit of agg equipment.
The speaker is not an independent agent and is a proxy for a different group who’s motives are not clear, that should immediately raise some eyebrows. In any honest discussion of the agents message we should be looking at the agency behind the agent and trying to figure out what their angle is. Is climate change a problem, sure that’s pretty well established, but there are lots of groups out there that see it as an opportunity to make money or entrench their interests and we have to be highly cautious of that. Lots of the climate money is chasing ineffective solutions at a local level that have little impact to the overall climate change problem but add significant cost and regulatory burden. I have no idea what this Astro turf group is aiming to do but I would put money on climate change being simply a convenient vehicle for their objectives.
Capitalist theory presumes that if the need is real, efficient and effective solutions will drive out inefficient and ineffective solutions. The basic problem right now is that there is no economic case for climate solutions because the impact of industry on the environment has been historically externalized. From a legislative standpoint, the argument at hand is one of rewriting the equation over a longer time frame and across a broader system. Simply put, the argument is that the stakeholders of any physical process are anyone whose well-being is affected by the process. Which drags capitalism kicking and screaming into the socialist sphere which is why Western countries are fighting so hard.Is climate change a problem, sure that’s pretty well established, but there are lots of groups out there that see it as an opportunity to make money or entrench their interests and we have to be highly cautious of that. Lots of the climate money is chasing ineffective solutions at a local level that have little impact to the overall climate change problem but add significant cost and regulatory burden.
Which is probably near impossible to do with the political systems currently in place because the people writing the rules are the same people who are supposed to be dragged kicking and screaming to the finish line. Meanwhile half the players don’t have to follow any regulations at all. My biggest fear with all this climate stuff is that the western World ends up regulating itself to into an increasingly lower standard of living. We keep setting up more and more roadblock and regulations on domestic producers but allowing foreign ones a free pass, thereby getting rid of domestic jobs and eventually domestic knowledge. Countries like China will just cheat and use that as another competitive advantage. I dont worry about the actual climate change as much because that tipping point was reached probably a decade ago. It’s happened, it can’t really be stopped though it might be slowed down a bit. Resources would be better spent developing better trees, seeds and farming techniques than trying to setup a international regulatory framework for carbon in hopes of slowing down warming by a little bit. There are things like bunker oil burning that should straight up be banned but at the same time we shouldn’t go all climate nutter and ban natural gas heating.
A lower standard of living is precisely what the planet needs. I don't need strawberries from Guatemala, I need decent produce grown nearby. I don't need a $12 bluetooth headset from Shenzen that will crap out in a week, I need a $50 headset from Detroit that will last me five years. The problem right now is that economies of scale make globalization work because they externalize the impacts. Trade regulations are all about keeping countries from "cheating" - what you're complaining about, basically, is the toothlessness of international trade policing and this is exactly where we need to beef things up. Something everybody misses when discussing Piketty is he outlines chapter and verse the size of the shadow economy, and points out that the only real change made in the past 100 years was the US Treasury Dept pursuing black market funding. As a result, anonymous Swiss banking is effectively no more. Where there's a will there's a way and will is gathering. Bunker oil burning is banned as of January.
"molly Cyrus" is now a meme. Be careful, you're only a few steps away from Dinesh D'Souza.
Yes, because we're twenty, thirty, forty, possibly even older somethings that have such little influence on the world compared to her that we need to sling shit instead of looking in the mirror less our plans of getting drunk on the cruise ship be rudely interrupted. Good for her. She's smarter than any of us. And good for Miley too. At least when the catastrophe finally does hit these "teenagers" will have enough money to get to the Arctic Circle. Because even the people that claim to accept climate change don't believe in it. Good thing I gave up trying to be an activist. Now just learning to code, getting some tech money and stocking the bunker with expensive booze.
I think it's awesome that there are powerful institutions that benefit financially from slowing climate change. Maybe we can take advantage of their power to help us get something done about it. Who cares about the motivations involved, if the problem gets solved?