If we feel guilty enough maybe we can work on seeding other planets.
If we just miss nature for our own enjoyment maybe we can throw a bunch of science at it.
I think there's this desire to cling onto what's original or authentic. I'm trying to see past that because it's so delicate that it's basically transient.
<cynical response>I wonder what historical and eons-old natural wonder on Mars we're going to ruin when we start driving around on it in a fleet of Tesla Model S and growing potatoes by burning surplus rocket fuel?
I understand the concern but I just see it as two equal choices: preserve what's there or make something new.
Perhaps easier to understand if it's "let's take some time to understand what's there before we go make something new."
Surely this is an unapproved perspective. It goes against the popular will of science and really goes against our inherent desire not to muck stuff up. I just can't bring myself to really see it being wrong.
Yeah - the 13 year old scifi reading nerd in me would prefer we build a Dyson Sphere or a Niven Ring - I'd mind much less about environmentally fucking up something we built ourselves...
(The downside being that probably requires dismantling both Mars and Earth for construction materials... But hey - we've fucked The Great Barrier Reef already, so why not???)
> We've collectively chosen short term excess over long term sustainability
No. Damage to the environment is done because it's cheap. And why is it cheap? Because the owner of the thing (the state, the town, the "community") doesn't care. Now if there were a real market driven cost (throwing away a plastic bag or a TV would actually cost something), you would reconsider.
Next in line is consumption: How about the houses built everywhere on the planet with low interest rates that will never be inhabited because there are not enough people nearby to inhabit it.
Next is (as an example) military production in the US (>= 10x the military budget of Germany or Russia), using up money to destroy even more things of value.
There are a million reasons and most of them lead down to
- low interest rates (incentivizing producers to produce things people wouldn't want, disincentivizing consumers to save)
- a lack of democracy and/or accountability of the people in charge (those wars weren't exactly a consequence of people protesting on the streets)
You seem to think nobody would ever damage the environment of land they owned. Except that oil companies and other industries do that constantly, across the world, to make money. And in addition to that, throwing things away does have a cost, that’s what we have garbagemen for. It just turns it to be extremely cheap for the most part.
Honestly people like you that worship the free market as a panacea confuse me. How does a free market prevent me from dumping toxic waste in the ocean? How does it prevent micro plastics from flowing down rivers into the ocean? How does it prevent me from releasing however much CO2 into the air as I want? I just don’t see it.
> You seem to think nobody would ever damage the environment of land they owned.
Not the OP but there's literally nothing in the comment you're replying to that would indicate that.
> And in addition to that, throwing things away does have a cost, that’s what we have garbagemen for.
We pay garbos to transport garbage to landfill, and perhaps sort it for recycling. The OP was clearly talking about the cost of environmntal degradation caused by landfill, which the person disposing of the garbage doesn't currently pay for. I can throw away a kilo of batteries and a kilo of banana peels (no compost in my apartment) and it would cost the same.
> How does a free market prevent me from dumping toxic waste in the ocean? How does it prevent micro plastics from flowing down rivers into the ocean? How does it prevent me from releasing however much CO2 into the air as I want?
By charging you. As mentioned in the comment you're replying to but don't seem to have taken the time to read.
> You seem to think nobody would ever damage the environment of land they owned.
Yes. Of course, you can also hurt yourself if you want and there are no rules that can avoid this BUT most of the time people will like to avoid it.
> It just turns it to be extremely cheap for the most part.
Well, that's the problem. If you suddenly have to pay for those 5k lung cancers in the area, extremely cheap it will not be.
> How does a free market prevent me from dumping toxic waste in the ocean?
If you do it cleverly and secretly, nothing in the world will stop you from doing it. No communism, free market, or whatever.
But if you're a company and you have at least one disloyal or environmentalist worker willing to blow the whistle, you (as a director of that company) might have to live in what amounts to effective slavery for the rest of your miserable life trying to clean up your mess and pay reparations.
Please listen to the audio, there are cases where civil law suits are expensive enough to effectively discourage you (that is, if you're sane and not stupid).
Ive been to Airlie / port Douglas every couple years for a decade, it’s unbelievable how incredible the place was and how it just isn’t now.
First couple times was exactly like Finding Nemo, now it’s a barren wasteland (and this is going to spots that are supposed to be better). Beaches in QLD still best in the world if you’re visiting, give the diving a pass or manage expectations unless you’re quite south
Barren wasteland is a bit far fetched, not sure which sites you are visiting off Port/Airlie but most of the tourist operator sites are still in fairly good shape, except maybe low Isles i.e. not pristine but they remain some of the best in the world and worth a visit. Lots of endemic species/corals etc. Which isn't to say there isn't a problem, the reports are correct, the signs are there, and repeats of the bleaching events of the past few years will definitely lead to the wasteland you describe (as seen in areas of the gbr and many of the other Pacific and american reefs). The original numbers were 90% of the reef had died, what this actually meant was that of all the sites surveyed 90% showed some sign of bleaching - which basically means stress due to heat exposure. The death bit comes later when the coral doesn't have time to rejuvinate.
And that’s the thing maybe it’s great comparative to the rest of the world, but not itself. Was with tour operators in 2015 so youd think it was the good spots, going again in a month so hopefully looking ok.
I always wanted to see this Great Barrier Reef since I was a small child, now it looks like there might not be any of it left by the time I get there. Is it even worth it at this point, or should I just look at pictures and imagine what once was?
I don't know. If there is no money that get infused into the local environment around the corals then less people will work to fix it. It is also rather well established that conservation must focus on awareness or things don't usually improve by them self. Comparing the drawback to the benefits of tourism, I suspect the benefits win.
>If there is no money that get infused into the local environment around the corals then less people will work to fix it.
The ocean has warmed to the point where to coral cannot survive. The reef is H-U-G-E (1,400 miles long according to the article). If there was a technology capable of reducing the ocean temperature around the reef, the waste heat the technology would create would cause more problems elsewhere.
The reef is an indication that the global warming problem has become to big for human technology to fix.
It may well be under grave threat. This is possibly completely true.
I have been hearing about it being dying and on the way out since the 1980s. This time may be different and it may not be a wolf cry as it turned out to be each time in the past.
If it really is in deep trouble, that card has been played so often that I'm jaded hearing it yet again. Maybe I shouldn't be but you see the downside of playing this card repeatedly as hyperbole.
Imagine that the coral reefs were going extinct. How long would it reasonably take to go from full health to gone? 1 year, 10, 100? Geologically speaking, having an entire biome wiped out in 100 years is insanely fast.
The point is that it may well be under grave threat your entire life and still exist when you die. That doesn't mean it isn't under grave threat. There have been northern white rhinos in existence my entire life. There still are presently: 2 -- both female. Last chance to see...
Decades ago the reef was endangered by run-off from agriculture (fertilisers, agri-chemicals etc) and I believe this has been managed, since it's largely under human control (ie, we could stop song them tomorrow if we wanted).
There have occasionally be natural predators too, like the Crown of Thorn starfish.
The current threat to the reef is ocean warming -- a vastly different threat. There is not much humans can do in the short term to mitigate the problem.
You could also find the beautiful things that you can easily reach. You'll have a better life that way, less filled with longing for the scarce, the disappearing, the already gone.
It turns out cutting is one of the hardest things for people to do. Just look at how many obese people there are who cannot reduce their intake despite the immediate inconvenience and discomfort of being fat, not to mention the risk to their health. If so many can't even do it for themselves or their children, there's not much hope of them doing it for others.
It also leaves me utterly convinced that nobody really believes in god or an afterlife. People constantly demonstrate that the only thing that matters to them is that today is at least as convenient as yesterday.
No change will ever happen from the bottom up. And while our "leaders" continue to be people with already massively inflated lifestyles, nothing will happen from the top down either.
IMO main the problems are poverty and old traditions (e.g. animal products) and general confusion of priorities.
The bad media sells the latest news or problem as the most important news or problem.
People elect or at least accept the politicians.
People pay for or at least accept the bad greedy business practices of small and big companies in the name of holy competition and individual struggle for life.
Too many people have faith that god (notably in the USA) and the traditional conservative political parties do what should be done.
There is a lack of motivation and desire for life changing real science and technology as national priority to end poverty, to bring wealth to all, to prolong life (anti-aging) and to protect nature including coral reefs.
Science and technology would allow people to eat all they want and do no sports and still look like models and be perfectly healthy.
Cutting and austerity is not a strategy and not a replacement of urgent progress of science and technology.
Cutting and austerity is an unfortunate tactic because of lack of science and technology.
But you're dreaming of technology that may never happen. There is no way at the moment that we can sustain our current lifestyles without fossil fuels. In addition, if we remain unsustainable then we'll just grow to fill the next level unsustainability if a new technology did come along.
> But you're dreaming of technology that may never happen.
IMO automation, genetic engineering, implants and replacement of natural body parts by artificial body parts will start social, economic and medical revolutions within the next decade.
One of the worst misbeliefs is that the end of poverty (at least world hunger) and the end of large-scale wars (e.g. Middle East) is just futurist idiocy while it is actually achievable within a year with existing technology. But political priorities prevent it.
Anyway, my point is that effort is required to advance science and technology. To call it a dream and to do nothing to realize it is the wrong way. It only wastes time because the efforts and investments must be made anyway (by future generations).
> There is no way at the moment that we can sustain our current lifestyles without fossil fuels.
True. But again: There was and is not enough effort to create the technological alternatives.
Besides, a lot of energy (and burned forests) could be saved by simply not eating animal products any more.
> In addition, if we remain unsustainable then we'll just grow to fill the next level unsustainability if a new technology did come along.
Humanity is always at the frontier of sustainability or possibilities for one reason or another. Science and technology lead to creation of resources (e.g. use of steel, use of fossil fuel, use of Uranium, use of solar power) and more efficient use of resources like e.g. man power (e.g. by better program languages, better programs, better computers, better cars, better houses) and less religious societies and less wars and lower birth rates.
> IMO automation, genetic engineering, implants and replacement of natural body parts by artificial body parts will start social, economic and medical revolutions within the next decade.
That's not an opinion, it's a belief.
In any case, we're both talking about people cutting their lifestyles which is the correct thing to do. It is an extreme error to simply hope for technology to save us. Most people, especially those that decided to breed, have their heads in the sand and are implicitly hoping technology will make their children's lives OK.
"Science and technology lead to creation of resources..."
No, they lead to finding and digging up of resources.
"and more efficient use of resources"
Efficiency doesn't make anything better, it just increases the amount of the resources that we create--oops---use.
"and less religious societies and less wars"
Okay, it's clear you have a story in your mind that ultimately leads to jetpacks among the stars.
"and lower birth rates."
This doesn't mean much. We went from 3.5 to 7.5 billion in 45 years. We had plenty of science and technology during that time, all doing their thing with the uranium and the fossil fuel and the steel.
Corals are fascinating creatures and incredible symbiots. Vulcan (where I work) has been contributing to the advancement of science to save reefs. We've funded Ruth Gates and Madeleine VanOppen's work in human-assisted evolution of corals, among other projects.
I recommend everyone watch "Chasing Corals" on Netflix if they want a more detailed explanation of problems and potential solutions. Trailer: https://youtu.be/Mmqqi_DnPEE
I mean, the coral are dying because the ocean temperature has gotten too high. Donate to yourself and stop using fossil fuels, that’s the only way out at this point.
I often hear this, and for the sake of discussion I tried to find some numbers. I could mainly find presentation notes[1], and half page (quite similarly structured) posts, even from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority[2]
Does anyone have a link to the research behind these releases? I don't doubt the effect of raising acidity and temperature, but would like to see a comparison to the aftermath of oil spills, radiation leaks etc. throughout the Pacific.
Your individual impact is minuscle compared to what you can achieve with targeted dontations or activism.
It's a good thing to start with your own lifestyle, but if you do only that, you won't have much impact.
For example, your daily CO2 emission is 10-20 tons per year.
This is the same amount that can be saved with a donation of only $27 to a highly effective climate charity:
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/cool-earth/
First of all, it's clearly not the only way out, because the comment I replied to shows at least another way worth exploring.
Second of all, me reducing my fossil fuel usage to 0 wouldn't magically drop industrial fossil fuel usage to 0, so that's not even a solution to the problem.
A new technology or enforced policy would have a much greater effect.
This attitude in the general public is our death knell. The only, and I do mean ONLY, solution to not fucking up the environment beyond repair is the concept of less.
Less SUVs, less air travel, less fast fashion, less computer monitors, less phones replaced less quickly, less heating and cooling of our homes and more getting acclimated to the climate, less fucking juiceros and interent connected butt-plugs, less non-seasonal vegetables and meat, less eating of beef and pork and chicken and more plants. Reduce.
I love to quote idlewords on this all the time, but we as a species can't even handle male pattern baldness. To somehow expect that we can engineer our way out of the complexities of nature with time to spare and without any impacts on how we live life in the wes is a completely misguided belief. The technological breakthrough that will be our saviour is not just around the corner. Musk and Tesla aren't our saviours. 'Less' is.
Agree on the first, but the second is hardly likely. We would have to devise some miraculous means of global collective decision-making, with an eye to long-term consequences. Not even the most Panglossian UN weeny could imagine we're within decades of this (millennia is more likely).
The moment evolution tossed up a creature with the cognitive flexibility to invade all niches, and evade population-scale threats to fitness, universal overrun was a biological inevitability. Next time perhaps.
I would not be at all surprised if the second will come within most of our lifetimes. Probably under something akin to a wartime economy.
It will come when climate change is obvious even to the most arrogant denier troll. It won't be pretty, for anyone. We'll get to watch governments trying to force things whilst our major infrastructures are still built for economics of short term growth and ignoring externalities.
I can't see a route from here to there. If such a thing were to come about, it would obviously have to happen via some form of (hopefully transitional) authoritarianism, since a century (give or take) of assiduous cultivation of a culture of greed has left our citizenries largely too enfeebled to willingly and/or competently participate in such a change.
Going from a couple of hundred very disparate nation States to a global benevolent & rational authoritarian regime isn't something I can imagine happening in the next 50 years or so without nukes getting involved.
Admittedly predicting the future outside of immediate trends is a mug's game.
How do you propose enforcing that? Telling society 'use less' doesn't work, just like saying 'smoking kills, stop it' doesn't work: you have to either enforce some policy like tax hikes or graphic images on packs, or introduce a new technology like vaping or nicotine patches.
There's a huge boom of solar at the moment not because people give a shit about the environment, but because the technology has made it a viable alternative, and tax incentives have reduced the barrier to entry.
I'm saying we're already so far fucked up the ass that there is no hope. Nature will herself tell us it doesn't work, just like it tells people that smoking causes cancer. I wish I could be the Bill Gates brand of optimist but I'm not. The world is getting worse not better.
There is a "wonderful" movement called the Dark Mountain movement. It is a collection of formerly uber-passionate environmental activists who've essentially thrown in the towel and decided Humanity ist kaput. Their leader now gives lessons on how to use scythes instead of lawn mowers to cut grass. Others have found similarly low tech pastimes to keep themselves occupied.
The Dark Mountain folks seem to revel in it all a bit much don't you think? They're a kind of refreshingly dark counterpoint to the 'everything will be saved by an organic urine-fermented artisanal hemp startup' Guardianista crew. But they seem equally silly (not to mention wanky).
I'm not disagreeing with you, just pointing out that all "movements" are theater in a way. They have a position to state, and they get it out there by saying the words and doing the things. If it looks a bit artificial, well, it is. But it's nonetheless well meant. I'm sure some of them eat cheeseburgers sometimes, and that doesn't detract from the message.
According to a meta study on personal greenhouse impact the biggest "less" thing a person can do is to not have too many children. To their data a single child represent yearly the cost in CO2e as is saved by 20 people not driving, 40 less air trips, or about 100 people eating a purely vegetarian diet for the same time period. (http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541)
If we want less we need to understand the order of magnitude that the different forms of less have.
> Less SUVs, less air travel, less fast fashion, less computer monitors, less phones replaced less quickly, less heating and cooling of our homes and more getting acclimated to the climate, less fucking juiceros and interent connected butt-plugs, less non-seasonal vegetables and meat, less eating of beef and pork and chicken and more plants. Reduce.
I note that such a reduction is achieved either by having less per person, or by having fewer people.
Charity Evaluator "Giving What We Can" has determined that Cool Earth is very effective, based on their direct impacts:
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/cool-earth/
For example, they are able to save as much CO2 as you emit in a year (20 tons) with a donation of only $27.
Other organizations work on political change, which may be much more effective but is harder to measure.
https://350.org/ is the biggest organization working on that.
http://catf.us/ is focussing on carbon-free energy.
People interested in joining a movement that engages with climate change and the future of the reef (through circular economy principles) should check out Citizens: https://citizensgbr.org/s/39cB
Is a extremely complex ecosystem. Yes, you can grow coral in captivity. Some species are much more difficult to keep alive than other, but can be done. Is done since years in aquariums. The problem is that this not the same as cloning a entire ecosystem with a net of 10.000 species living together.
You can't do it in the sea otherwise, because there is not a lot of accurate and still free areas. Coral needs a lot of light. Must be shallow. Pirate and lawful fishing, commercial sea routes, tourism (coral reef attracts big predators like sharks), and a net of vested interests will block it.
And you'll need to wait 3000 years to have a coral reef at '3000 years level', of course. Corals are terribly slow and fight with their neighbors all the time. Such project would be extremely expensive.
There's already projects doing this. Both on the GBR and in places like Florida in the USA. The coral being grown is mainly staghorn due to its rapid growth cycles with the idea that it can help replenish high value sites only, i.e. not the whole reef. These kind of measures are seen as being part of a spectrum of solutions. Check out the Reef Restoration Project: https://citizensgbr.org/c/coral-nurseries
A staghorn-only reef is "equivalent" to a monoculture forest. Staghorn is the "Eucalyptus" of corals. Much faster than most species. Will overgrowth and overshadow more delicate species that rely in potent poisons and good niches to survive and grow much slower.
Staghorn could make a good skeleton of a reef in, dunno, maybe 50 or 100 years and would attract a wonderful biodiversity if left alone; but is not enough in reef terms. we are talking of the cream of the cream. One of the finest works of this planet. The staghorn ecosystem is just a baby and a lot of species would be sorely missing.
This article is strikes a rather alarmist tone which isn't warranted. This reef has been around in some form for 2M years and has experienced average global temperatures about 10 degrees colder and warmer. Reefs in the Arabian/Persian Gulf survive seawater temperatures about 8 degrees warmer than this one.
If the heat is killing them, they just need time to adapt.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 95.2 ms ] threadIf we just miss nature for our own enjoyment maybe we can throw a bunch of science at it.
I think there's this desire to cling onto what's original or authentic. I'm trying to see past that because it's so delicate that it's basically transient.
Perhaps easier to understand if it's "let's take some time to understand what's there before we go make something new."
Surely this is an unapproved perspective. It goes against the popular will of science and really goes against our inherent desire not to muck stuff up. I just can't bring myself to really see it being wrong.
(The downside being that probably requires dismantling both Mars and Earth for construction materials... But hey - we've fucked The Great Barrier Reef already, so why not???)
I used to have hope; now it seems past the point of no return. I figure we should just try to enjoy it all while we still can, like everybody else.
No. Damage to the environment is done because it's cheap. And why is it cheap? Because the owner of the thing (the state, the town, the "community") doesn't care. Now if there were a real market driven cost (throwing away a plastic bag or a TV would actually cost something), you would reconsider.
Next in line is consumption: How about the houses built everywhere on the planet with low interest rates that will never be inhabited because there are not enough people nearby to inhabit it.
Next is (as an example) military production in the US (>= 10x the military budget of Germany or Russia), using up money to destroy even more things of value.
There are a million reasons and most of them lead down to
- low interest rates (incentivizing producers to produce things people wouldn't want, disincentivizing consumers to save)
- a lack of democracy and/or accountability of the people in charge (those wars weren't exactly a consequence of people protesting on the streets)
- "public ownership" which basically translates to "no one gives a f* because it's not theirs'" - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
I suppose the last point is probably the least orthodox, so here are two sources that discuss the issue:
Audio: https://mises.org/ko/library/5-environmentalism
PDF: https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/Environmentalism%20and%...
Honestly people like you that worship the free market as a panacea confuse me. How does a free market prevent me from dumping toxic waste in the ocean? How does it prevent micro plastics from flowing down rivers into the ocean? How does it prevent me from releasing however much CO2 into the air as I want? I just don’t see it.
Not the OP but there's literally nothing in the comment you're replying to that would indicate that.
> And in addition to that, throwing things away does have a cost, that’s what we have garbagemen for.
We pay garbos to transport garbage to landfill, and perhaps sort it for recycling. The OP was clearly talking about the cost of environmntal degradation caused by landfill, which the person disposing of the garbage doesn't currently pay for. I can throw away a kilo of batteries and a kilo of banana peels (no compost in my apartment) and it would cost the same.
> How does a free market prevent me from dumping toxic waste in the ocean? How does it prevent micro plastics from flowing down rivers into the ocean? How does it prevent me from releasing however much CO2 into the air as I want?
By charging you. As mentioned in the comment you're replying to but don't seem to have taken the time to read.
Yes. Of course, you can also hurt yourself if you want and there are no rules that can avoid this BUT most of the time people will like to avoid it.
> It just turns it to be extremely cheap for the most part.
Well, that's the problem. If you suddenly have to pay for those 5k lung cancers in the area, extremely cheap it will not be.
> How does a free market prevent me from dumping toxic waste in the ocean?
If you do it cleverly and secretly, nothing in the world will stop you from doing it. No communism, free market, or whatever.
But if you're a company and you have at least one disloyal or environmentalist worker willing to blow the whistle, you (as a director of that company) might have to live in what amounts to effective slavery for the rest of your miserable life trying to clean up your mess and pay reparations.
Please listen to the audio, there are cases where civil law suits are expensive enough to effectively discourage you (that is, if you're sane and not stupid).
First couple times was exactly like Finding Nemo, now it’s a barren wasteland (and this is going to spots that are supposed to be better). Beaches in QLD still best in the world if you’re visiting, give the diving a pass or manage expectations unless you’re quite south
The ocean has warmed to the point where to coral cannot survive. The reef is H-U-G-E (1,400 miles long according to the article). If there was a technology capable of reducing the ocean temperature around the reef, the waste heat the technology would create would cause more problems elsewhere.
The reef is an indication that the global warming problem has become to big for human technology to fix.
I have been hearing about it being dying and on the way out since the 1980s. This time may be different and it may not be a wolf cry as it turned out to be each time in the past.
If it really is in deep trouble, that card has been played so often that I'm jaded hearing it yet again. Maybe I shouldn't be but you see the downside of playing this card repeatedly as hyperbole.
The point is that it may well be under grave threat your entire life and still exist when you die. That doesn't mean it isn't under grave threat. There have been northern white rhinos in existence my entire life. There still are presently: 2 -- both female. Last chance to see...
There have occasionally be natural predators too, like the Crown of Thorn starfish.
The current threat to the reef is ocean warming -- a vastly different threat. There is not much humans can do in the short term to mitigate the problem.
It also leaves me utterly convinced that nobody really believes in god or an afterlife. People constantly demonstrate that the only thing that matters to them is that today is at least as convenient as yesterday.
No change will ever happen from the bottom up. And while our "leaders" continue to be people with already massively inflated lifestyles, nothing will happen from the top down either.
The bad media sells the latest news or problem as the most important news or problem.
People elect or at least accept the politicians. People pay for or at least accept the bad greedy business practices of small and big companies in the name of holy competition and individual struggle for life.
Too many people have faith that god (notably in the USA) and the traditional conservative political parties do what should be done.
There is a lack of motivation and desire for life changing real science and technology as national priority to end poverty, to bring wealth to all, to prolong life (anti-aging) and to protect nature including coral reefs. Science and technology would allow people to eat all they want and do no sports and still look like models and be perfectly healthy.
Cutting and austerity is not a strategy and not a replacement of urgent progress of science and technology.
Cutting and austerity is an unfortunate tactic because of lack of science and technology.
IMO automation, genetic engineering, implants and replacement of natural body parts by artificial body parts will start social, economic and medical revolutions within the next decade.
One of the worst misbeliefs is that the end of poverty (at least world hunger) and the end of large-scale wars (e.g. Middle East) is just futurist idiocy while it is actually achievable within a year with existing technology. But political priorities prevent it.
Anyway, my point is that effort is required to advance science and technology. To call it a dream and to do nothing to realize it is the wrong way. It only wastes time because the efforts and investments must be made anyway (by future generations).
> There is no way at the moment that we can sustain our current lifestyles without fossil fuels.
True. But again: There was and is not enough effort to create the technological alternatives. Besides, a lot of energy (and burned forests) could be saved by simply not eating animal products any more.
> In addition, if we remain unsustainable then we'll just grow to fill the next level unsustainability if a new technology did come along.
Humanity is always at the frontier of sustainability or possibilities for one reason or another. Science and technology lead to creation of resources (e.g. use of steel, use of fossil fuel, use of Uranium, use of solar power) and more efficient use of resources like e.g. man power (e.g. by better program languages, better programs, better computers, better cars, better houses) and less religious societies and less wars and lower birth rates.
That's not an opinion, it's a belief.
In any case, we're both talking about people cutting their lifestyles which is the correct thing to do. It is an extreme error to simply hope for technology to save us. Most people, especially those that decided to breed, have their heads in the sand and are implicitly hoping technology will make their children's lives OK.
No, they lead to finding and digging up of resources.
"and more efficient use of resources"
Efficiency doesn't make anything better, it just increases the amount of the resources that we create--oops---use.
"and less religious societies and less wars"
Okay, it's clear you have a story in your mind that ultimately leads to jetpacks among the stars.
"and lower birth rates." This doesn't mean much. We went from 3.5 to 7.5 billion in 45 years. We had plenty of science and technology during that time, all doing their thing with the uranium and the fossil fuel and the steel.
I recommend everyone watch "Chasing Corals" on Netflix if they want a more detailed explanation of problems and potential solutions. Trailer: https://youtu.be/Mmqqi_DnPEE
Does anyone have a link to the research behind these releases? I don't doubt the effect of raising acidity and temperature, but would like to see a comparison to the aftermath of oil spills, radiation leaks etc. throughout the Pacific.
[1] https://archive.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/expeditions/temp-...
[2] http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/managing-the-reef/threats-to-the-re...
For example, your daily CO2 emission is 10-20 tons per year. This is the same amount that can be saved with a donation of only $27 to a highly effective climate charity: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/cool-earth/
Second of all, me reducing my fossil fuel usage to 0 wouldn't magically drop industrial fossil fuel usage to 0, so that's not even a solution to the problem.
A new technology or enforced policy would have a much greater effect.
This attitude in the general public is our death knell. The only, and I do mean ONLY, solution to not fucking up the environment beyond repair is the concept of less.
Less SUVs, less air travel, less fast fashion, less computer monitors, less phones replaced less quickly, less heating and cooling of our homes and more getting acclimated to the climate, less fucking juiceros and interent connected butt-plugs, less non-seasonal vegetables and meat, less eating of beef and pork and chicken and more plants. Reduce.
I love to quote idlewords on this all the time, but we as a species can't even handle male pattern baldness. To somehow expect that we can engineer our way out of the complexities of nature with time to spare and without any impacts on how we live life in the wes is a completely misguided belief. The technological breakthrough that will be our saviour is not just around the corner. Musk and Tesla aren't our saviours. 'Less' is.
Agree on the first, but the second is hardly likely. We would have to devise some miraculous means of global collective decision-making, with an eye to long-term consequences. Not even the most Panglossian UN weeny could imagine we're within decades of this (millennia is more likely).
The moment evolution tossed up a creature with the cognitive flexibility to invade all niches, and evade population-scale threats to fitness, universal overrun was a biological inevitability. Next time perhaps.
It will come when climate change is obvious even to the most arrogant denier troll. It won't be pretty, for anyone. We'll get to watch governments trying to force things whilst our major infrastructures are still built for economics of short term growth and ignoring externalities.
Going from a couple of hundred very disparate nation States to a global benevolent & rational authoritarian regime isn't something I can imagine happening in the next 50 years or so without nukes getting involved. Admittedly predicting the future outside of immediate trends is a mug's game.
There's a huge boom of solar at the moment not because people give a shit about the environment, but because the technology has made it a viable alternative, and tax incentives have reduced the barrier to entry.
There is a "wonderful" movement called the Dark Mountain movement. It is a collection of formerly uber-passionate environmental activists who've essentially thrown in the towel and decided Humanity ist kaput. Their leader now gives lessons on how to use scythes instead of lawn mowers to cut grass. Others have found similarly low tech pastimes to keep themselves occupied.
If we want less we need to understand the order of magnitude that the different forms of less have.
I note that such a reduction is achieved either by having less per person, or by having fewer people.
Other organizations work on political change, which may be much more effective but is harder to measure. https://350.org/ is the biggest organization working on that. http://catf.us/ is focussing on carbon-free energy.
You can't do it in the sea otherwise, because there is not a lot of accurate and still free areas. Coral needs a lot of light. Must be shallow. Pirate and lawful fishing, commercial sea routes, tourism (coral reef attracts big predators like sharks), and a net of vested interests will block it.
And you'll need to wait 3000 years to have a coral reef at '3000 years level', of course. Corals are terribly slow and fight with their neighbors all the time. Such project would be extremely expensive.
Staghorn could make a good skeleton of a reef in, dunno, maybe 50 or 100 years and would attract a wonderful biodiversity if left alone; but is not enough in reef terms. we are talking of the cream of the cream. One of the finest works of this planet. The staghorn ecosystem is just a baby and a lot of species would be sorely missing.
If the heat is killing them, they just need time to adapt.
"I think we are now getting to this idea that actually, in some cases, these mechanism can arise very quickly, within a few years." (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hot-water-corals-...)
Will this encourage Australians to contribute their fair share in the fight against climate change?
CO2 emissions (tons) per capita in 2016
Canada: 18.62 Australia: 17.22 USA: 15.56 Japan: 9.68 Netherlands: 9.61 Germany: 9.47 New Zealand: 7.14 UK: 5.59 Sweden: 4.54
http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/overview.php?v=CO2andGHG1970-2...