We can reverse this, but only with drastic and immediate action.
How do we stop big fire? I mean, the use of fossil fuel?
I am of the personal belief that we past the point of no return about 10 years ago. This is it and we’re going to get to experience something like +4C to +6C before the end of the century (I’m only going to make it to 2050-2060 so /shrug)
The whole, we can change this around narrative might be true, but I feel disingenuous, we’re at the point where we need to institute a war time economy bent towards halting and reversing climate change.
Just do a quick back of the envelop calculation of how much power we generate with fossil fuels, and then how many solar panels/wind turbines/geothermal/whatever we need to replace that. Then look at global production of those renewable technologies. I’m fairly certain you will find that we will need to produce an order of magnitude more than we do now to maybe get in under the 2030 deadline they’ve got up.
I am not confident we can just, in the next year or two, suddenly start producing, and installing 10 times what we are already doing right now.
I hope all of you come out with some great arguments to prove me wrong headed or alarmist. I really hope you do. It’s the only hope I have left really.
Wasn’t planning on posting this, but as long as there’s a thread on exactly this topic.
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Taking a moment at the top of this thread to level-set that climate change is not the same thing as runaway greenhouse. Climate change is a whole raft of terrible shit that falls well-short of an apocalypse.
As the fiance of someone with a major anxiety trigger about that particularly pervasive genre of opinion piece, I am 100% done with having this conversation framed by hopelessness instead of frustration or anger. Don’t.
Until just now I’d never considered what this’d look like, and you just summed it up in a few words. We’d need to rededicate global production towards making alternative energy sources/collectors. Stores of energy, and ways to take CO2 and heat (if that second one is even possible) out of the atmosphere.
I’ve heard some interesting ideas about how while it’s really hard to pull CO2 out of the air directly (because there’s like 4 molecules of it per like 10^8 molecules of anything else) it’s a lot easier to nab it right as it’s created. So like put charcoal filters at the top of smoke stacks.
If the world started making these things the way WWII era America made tanks and munitions, we may have a shot.
More importantly, I’m told that the rush to make tanks and munitions and such in that time was both a large boon to the US economy, and something the US was never like… formally compensated for.
What I think I’m trying to say here, is theoretically, going into wartime economy mode may be actually a good move, not just environmentally but economically.
That or I don’t know shit and this is highschool level analysis of topics beyond my understanding. I’ll give that even odds.
FWIW, we probably also need to put nuclear power back on the table. Modern reactor designs are much safer and produce much less waste than the 1950s-1960s era designs most people think of. Of course, we need to combine nuclear with use/research in renewables as well as continue researching fusion power as well.
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It’s good, but it’s not fast enough. Nuclear Plants are not quick to build, we need solutions that we can deploy much faster - we simply don’t have the time to account for all the time it takes to get Nuclear plants built, let alone sites found and approved, building permissions, etc.
Shit’s fucked. I’m just gonna drive my V8 Mad Max style.
I’m a fan of the idea of stretching our window with a solar shade.
Send a large piece of foil out to a spot between us and the Sun, and cut down on the amount of collected radiation.
It does cut down on our Solar options but we can do other things.
I am similarly of the opinion that it’s probably too late because we are stubborn animals, but my response is a bit different.
If we’re probably too late anyway, then we don’t lose anything by fighting like hell. You’re backed into a corner - you can either resign yourself to your fate, or fight back with everything you’ve got on the off chance that you take a fucker out.
Don’t roll over and die. We’ve got one planet (so far, and likely into the future), and you’ve got one life. Wreck everyone who tries to stand between us and fixing this shit.
China and the US are the largest contributors, and we can directly affect one of those. Start by voting every single chance you get, and then we can figure out whether or not we need more dramatic action.
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Oh, that is very true. We need more short-term solutions, but any long term solution will require some use of nuclear barring a breakthrough in other power generation technologies. Although there are some designs for “mini modularized nuclear plants” out there that are quicker to build and deploy than the big plants with the trade-off that they don’t produce quite as much power due to their small size.
While I certainly think that Humanity has to try and address climate change now, and as much as possible, a lot of the “Gloom and Doom” people seem to undersell the possibility that someone will develop new technology in the future that will help us deal with climate change. Granted, governments need to fund more research into this area, but while I am concerned, I am not yet ready to stick a fork in the Human Race.
Think about all the technology that has been developed and become mainstream in just the past 10 years, 20 years, 50 years. Who knows, given proper funding and incentives, what we might be capable of doing in the next 50 or so.
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The problem is, in a manner of speaking, society is already operating in a Mad Max sort of way.
Fighting for resources, despite abundance.
There are too many false economies, in combination with prevalent cultures of consumerism and greed.
Sustainability isn’t in the vocabulary for most people’s daily living.
Humans can solve it for sure but it will likely involve everyone taking a time out and a few leaders being pulled out of office, and a few others put in place, who have global authority to mandate sweeping protocols that signatory states must abide. These authorizations being backed by substantial military and economic force.
Any companies with significant enough footprint would need to be taken under jurisdiction of this authority, no matter where in the universe they operate, and be forced to go green regardless of economic factors.
That, plus, solar shades and major engineering solutions. Get militaries to work on it. The defense of the planet against existential threat is worthy of their application and budget.
What’s the point of using it to make stop burning fossil fuel if the boats and jets you use actually burn even more fuel?
Fulcrums.
The relatively small amount of fuel needed to support the maintenance of a fleet of weapons platforms to force compliance is going to have an order of maginitude of force miltiplication if applied against the right policies.
And if we don’t do anything they just keep steaming and burning gas anyway until we use them to fight a war over who gets to be last tribe standing on a burning planet ball.
Or we ban fighter jets and coal burning ships?
One thing seriously at fault today (maybe not to blame for much but still) is the lack of optimistic or solution oriented media on the subject.
Everone making fiction loves to get in a big masochistic doom and gloom circle jerk under the auspices of creating a cautionary tale. But ultimately that’s all w e get.
How many significant movies or books show us a future where humans say “fuck it we can fix this shit” and then they do fix it? Where’s the movie which shows us a future where humans come together and pull out of this thing? I want a TV show based on a govt that is solving this. And it doesn’t all go to plan, plenty of drama and people fight over things. But end of the day we succeed!
Seems to me everything we consume feels more “oh no things are fucked. Guess we’re gonna die, corporations bad” Eeyore mode. Or it’s “stupid humans destroyed the planet now we must live on however we can” apocalyptic masturbation. (And I am guilty of enjoying my share of that.)
I want something positive that makes me go “watch this, we can do this shit!”
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Closest thing I can think of offhand would be Star Trek. It literally shows humans moving from global nuclear war to a post-scarcity near utopia and how much they cleaned up their shit in the process between First Contact and Enterprise. Sure, later Star Trek shows humans as part of a Federation consisting of multiple species, but humans were instrumental in putting it together. And Enterprise, for its faults, shows humans when they’re still pretty much on their own (Vulcans are pretty much just interested observers) and how much they solved their problems on their own.
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Apocalyptic masturbation is my favorite.