We may or may not have hit the physical point of no return. It doesn't really matter, because we obviously hit the point of political no return a long time ago.
In too much of the world, nobody with any kind of power cares. (My own country included.) It's the prisoner's dilemma yet again: why should any of us who might care cooperate, when everyone else is cheating?
We hit that point a long, long time ago.
The situation isn't hopeless, I think, but this talk of "point of no return" doesn't work because it doesn't acknowledge the reality that, as ever, it's political and some people actively do not want to address it.
So, what can individuals do? I can stop using airplanes, stop eating meat, switch to bev and heat pumps, vote for green parties, go to rallies against fossil energy and tell my friends to do all that as well. Yet I still have a government (German), that reverses everything its somewhat progressive predecessor did with regards to climate change. And other countries are in an even worse spot. It just looks like everyone need to accept that we will simply not doing enough and that everyone under 20 will face 3°C global warming.
The German goverment of the late 90's and early 00's, along with a very small number of contemporaries such as Denmark can claim a large portion of the credit for the good climate news that we do have.
Today, solar & wind power are the cheapest form of electricity generation, and form the vast majority of new electricity capacity being built. That's likely the primary reason why CO2 emissions have flat-lined and may even start decreasing in 2026. (China's emissions are down 1% in the first 6 months of the year). Worst case scenario is now 6 degrees rather than 8 degrees.
And why are they so cheap? Because Germany and a few others installed a large amount of wind and solar in the 90's and 00's at stupidly ridiculous prices. This volume kickstarted the production learning curve that resulted in the actually reasonable prices we enjoy today.
Germany and others spent billions a couple decades ago, and probably have saved millions of lives and will be responsible for trillions of GDP a few decades in the future.
14 years later and the most politically powerful person in the world spends a lot of time yapping about "clean coal" and the evil of windwills because he feels wronged by Scotland for allowing them to be installed near his golf course.
Peter Thiel (also politically powerful, even if unelected, due to immense wealth) unironically calls a young woman a "legionnaire of the Antichrist" because she peacefully protests for positive change in this area. Instead of thinking he is a dangerous sociopath many people worship him, because, well, he's very wealthy.
I'm nearly 53. We've known about this longer than I've been alive, and have made very little to no significant forward progress, with the slight exception of there being a shift to solar power, but even this was only done because it happened to become more economical than dirty alternatives. And even this small positive concession (that we got lucky on the economics of) is still being strongly resisted by the current US government for political reasons (as increased solar power usage is seen to benefit China):
The bulk of emissions come from freight, electricity generation and the production of physical materials that need high heat to form (predominantly cement, iron, steel, copper, aluminium, lime, paper, brick, plastics and glass). Since none of those are easily forgone the only reasonable option is to combine accelerating the adoption of alternate methods for them (chiefly bottlenecked by energy costs) with accelerating the buildout of carbon capture technologies (chiefly bottlenecked by lack of funds).
Unless this is reformed, there is likely to be agricultural failures large enough to kill most currently-living first worlders prematurely. For instance, the recent update of "Limits to Growth" predicted that absent any black swan events to either the positive or negative direction the "business as usual scenario" would lead to direct and indirect food shortfall mortality being the cause of death for over half of all people living in the North American region between 2024 and 2100.
It's not all doom and gloom. Studies that estimate the results of trying to solve the energy issue by covering vast swathes of decently-sunny land with solar panels suggest that it can range wildly from ruinously expensive to amazingly successful, depending on the construction and maintenance methods. Drones and robotics are on the amazingly successful side of the buildout hypotheticals, so up and out is feasible, as long as the politics don't get in the way.
Carbon capture with or without mineralisation would still need huge subsidies to work, however. Is it really money printing if it's all siloed inside a big money sink?
The problem is not just temperature, is speed. The idea was to avoid the 1.5°C mark, by 2100, but we are reaching it now, while still having the feet on the pedal, while the reached compromise by most nations were to try to be carbon neutral by 2060.
And while that, positive feedback loops get powered up, and adaptation gets harder because the speed of change. Even if we manage to do something to i.e. protect the crops we directly depend on, the rest of the system may fall down, or adapt in harmful for us directions.
We got lucky in the Holocene, with predictable enough climate to develop agriculture and civilization after it, but it was not the norm in Earth history, and we are ending that opportunity.
Here's a grim shower thought: how bad does it have to get before one can justify going to war with governments that are willfully ignoring climate change and endangering all of humankind as a result?
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[ 14.5 ms ] story [ 618 ms ] threadIn too much of the world, nobody with any kind of power cares. (My own country included.) It's the prisoner's dilemma yet again: why should any of us who might care cooperate, when everyone else is cheating?
We hit that point a long, long time ago.
The situation isn't hopeless, I think, but this talk of "point of no return" doesn't work because it doesn't acknowledge the reality that, as ever, it's political and some people actively do not want to address it.
Today, solar & wind power are the cheapest form of electricity generation, and form the vast majority of new electricity capacity being built. That's likely the primary reason why CO2 emissions have flat-lined and may even start decreasing in 2026. (China's emissions are down 1% in the first 6 months of the year). Worst case scenario is now 6 degrees rather than 8 degrees.
And why are they so cheap? Because Germany and a few others installed a large amount of wind and solar in the 90's and 00's at stupidly ridiculous prices. This volume kickstarted the production learning curve that resulted in the actually reasonable prices we enjoy today.
Germany and others spent billions a couple decades ago, and probably have saved millions of lives and will be responsible for trillions of GDP a few decades in the future.
So yes, voting matters. It matters a lot.
https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
14 years later and the most politically powerful person in the world spends a lot of time yapping about "clean coal" and the evil of windwills because he feels wronged by Scotland for allowing them to be installed near his golf course.
Peter Thiel (also politically powerful, even if unelected, due to immense wealth) unironically calls a young woman a "legionnaire of the Antichrist" because she peacefully protests for positive change in this area. Instead of thinking he is a dangerous sociopath many people worship him, because, well, he's very wealthy.
I'm nearly 53. We've known about this longer than I've been alive, and have made very little to no significant forward progress, with the slight exception of there being a shift to solar power, but even this was only done because it happened to become more economical than dirty alternatives. And even this small positive concession (that we got lucky on the economics of) is still being strongly resisted by the current US government for political reasons (as increased solar power usage is seen to benefit China):
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sbvp4ULD6GI
Unless this is reformed, there is likely to be agricultural failures large enough to kill most currently-living first worlders prematurely. For instance, the recent update of "Limits to Growth" predicted that absent any black swan events to either the positive or negative direction the "business as usual scenario" would lead to direct and indirect food shortfall mortality being the cause of death for over half of all people living in the North American region between 2024 and 2100.
It's not all doom and gloom. Studies that estimate the results of trying to solve the energy issue by covering vast swathes of decently-sunny land with solar panels suggest that it can range wildly from ruinously expensive to amazingly successful, depending on the construction and maintenance methods. Drones and robotics are on the amazingly successful side of the buildout hypotheticals, so up and out is feasible, as long as the politics don't get in the way.
Carbon capture with or without mineralisation would still need huge subsidies to work, however. Is it really money printing if it's all siloed inside a big money sink?
But we really do seem to have been intent on doubling down since then
And while that, positive feedback loops get powered up, and adaptation gets harder because the speed of change. Even if we manage to do something to i.e. protect the crops we directly depend on, the rest of the system may fall down, or adapt in harmful for us directions.
We got lucky in the Holocene, with predictable enough climate to develop agriculture and civilization after it, but it was not the norm in Earth history, and we are ending that opportunity.