"New goal: not exceed 2°C, then bring the temperature back down to 1.5°C"
It kind of feels people have given up. I'm working on a startup that aims to replaces aviation (the most difficult emissions to avoid) with night trains in Europe (currently economically uncompetitive). It's an obvious impact story, but impact appears to be "out".
Hundreds of kilometres of good quality electric railway infra is expensive to maintain. And by good quality I mean capable of relatively decent speeds like say 120-160 km/h. With airports you need to maintain lot less.
I agree. I was looking at a night train from Milan to Lecce. It costed waaay more than flights+ the extra night in the hotel. Crazy if you think about it
IIRC night trains are kinda making a comeback - they are quite convenient that you can travel over night & wake up in your destination. Otherwise you would spend a day traveling & would need 1-2 days of accommodation on top of that.
Nice concept. I caught European Sleeper last week, my first time on a night train. It was ok but I'd like something better if I was using it regularly.
It's a tough time to do something about climate change. Short-termism is very attractive right now.
The last couple of nightjets in the order from Siemens were converted back to day trains (rail jets), presumably because the trainsets are not economical enough (too few beds).
I'm against night trains. Much better to have high speed travel during the day and then at night close down the tracks completely and do your track maintenance so the tracks are good for the next day. You can get by with skipping maintenance here and there, but that quickly will come back to haunt you and make your trains even worse.
Take a great day train, get some plays and then take a hotel room for the night. That's the most sustainable way to travel.
"Under current policies, only six G20 members
(China, India, Indonesia, Russian Federation,
South Africa and Türkiye) are assessed as likely to
achieve their unconditional 2030 targets, while the
assessment of the European Union is inconclusive.
Overall, this suggests limited progress in narrowing
implementation gaps across the G20."
"All G20 members except Argentina, Saudi Arabia
and the United States of America have new NDCs
with mitigation targets for 2035."
It is very important to add that not all targets were created equal in the agreement, that was a major part of the negotiation. Not saying anything else, just that a simple reading of that statement might make you come to an underlying conclusion that isn't correct.
Correct. For instance, still today China burns more coal than every other country combined. They are starting from a place that is so bad that even small improvements will look like huge gains.
Also, I read a few years back an explainer about China internal issues in the scope of energy generation. We westerners think that China is monolithic monarchy of sorts and everything "happens in China" is representative of the country average. Well, apparently it's not. According to that analyst, every province is semi-autonomous and reluctant to cede power to the central govt. or neighbors. So all the new fancy solar installations are logically in the low population western provinces, and connected to the grid there. And in the east there are still a lot of local coal generation. And eastern provinces are simultaneously way more populated, way richer and have way bigger modern crisis threats (housing, inflation, unemployment, job and study application saturation and over competitiveness etc.). So now the provincial govt. is facing a threat of losing both local power generation, profits from running a coal plant business, and the most important yet another job loss prospect from shutting down plants and all the related infrastructure - shipping, storage, management, distribution etc. Bear all costs and get zero gains.
So I suspect that there will be two mostly independent trends in China (and other industrial places like that) - solar installation will grow, but coal use won't be meaningfully cut without huge HUGE help from central and foreign powers at once.
It's not just a matter of population density, the sichuan basin and most the east coast is just doesn't get much sun/wind. If not for these 'resource provinces' they would've just gone full on coal.
There was no coal for generation consumption decline in China, yet. You look at the relative units (percentages), but instead check absolute units. The consumption steadily grew up until 2023 and now it is flat for two years, but it is not yet declining. So all the existing coal generation is running as it were, it's just the new plants maybe aren't constructed. But we are far away from the "deliberately early decommissioning" stage.
Yes lets do it by continuing to outsource the pollution to China and deindustrialize Europe.
Cut the nuclear, add the imported solarpanels and experience the joy of 10x electricity prices.
Blame the consumer for not turning the kettle off during peak hours and make sure you give tax breaks to Google and BiGData to open a couple more datacenters that use more power than a average city.
Oh, ban combustion engines, fuck up every batteryfactory by thinking its enough to buy the Make-Your-Own-Battery-Kit on Aliexpress.
We are burning the only planet we have in a contest to be king of the ashes.
Who gives a fuck whether the US or China win the AI race if they both burn tons of hydrocarbon to get there? Either way, the race itself will fuck the planet up worse than either victor would.
Same about all the dumb wars of conquest, Ukraine, Iran. Who gives a fuck over those lines on a map if the map itself is on fire? All the burning of oil depots, all the explosives used are all an assault on humanity itself, not just on whatever state construct.
I have a growing suspicion that this is the Great Filter. Dumb, self-important squabbles that destroy the material basis for a species' survival in an attempt to gain control instead of cooperation.
I honestly hoped the end would be the White Walkers just coming and killing everyone because they were too distracted and petty to mount a united defense. It would've made for a much stronger metaphor and fit in much better with the dark vibe and unexpected killing off of audience favorites that made the show a success in the first place.
I feel like the Disneyfied ending we got instead really ruined the show for me.
> I have a growing suspicion that this is the Great Filter.
Ackshually... It can be our filter, but it cannot be the Great Filter.
The Great Filter has to apply universally, to every plausible society. If even a few are cooperative hiveminds, or empires ruled by an iron fist, or... whatever else you can imagine that doesn't squabble internally... then the Filter does not apply to them, which means that their absence is still weird.
The Filter has three plausible answers, IMO: (1) Some variant of the planetarium or zoo hypothesis; (2) every advanced society, universally, decides to transcend into data centers powered by rotating black holes and stable for trillions of years, or something similarly weird; potentially also New Physics, like waste heat to mass conversion; (3) the filter is in our past and abiogenesis is a lot rarer than assumed.
Don't need AGI, we know how to fix it (nuclear), and have chosen not to, because nobody gave a fuck about the climate, it was never about global warming.
I remember, around 2016, a european climate scientist saying that he had to fill up more forms and prove every experiment in the most strict way. The justification was that their conclusions could have economical repercussions. The results of their experiments were always a few years late because of that.
Welcome to the "absence of economical repercussions" world.
Yes, a simple carbon tax could have been phased in over time. We already had nuclear and trains and insulation etc. and we now know from our present (their future) that solar, wind, heat pumps, EVs are cost effective.
Turns out the whole problem was politics, not science or technology or economics.
The goals were chosen so countries and industries could stave off the climate doomerism on the long term.
Countries like Saudi Arabia, but also India, are currently trying to delay the next report to make it miss the 2028 deadline to lessen efforts for combatting climate change where it doesn't align with their industries.
Risks will always be underreported while targets will be optimisic, because that's safest for countries dealing in and reliant on fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, even if we exceed and then bring temperature back to 1.5 degree over preindustrial, the damage has already been done. Many ecosystem and species will be lost, and many of the feedbacks (for example arctic sea ice) have hysteresis in them which will not get us to the same state even though nominally our temperature will be lower again. And because of hysteresis, larger reduction in CO2 might be required to get us back to 1.5 degrees.
That's why all this CO2 capture and drawdown using some kind of unspecified, new technology, is such a distraction. Ideally we shouldn't release the carbon in the first place.
CO2 emissions trading is greenwash. CO2 capture not necessarily so. It could be a useful tool, so long as it's not used as an excuse to launder other emissions.
Carbon offsets are greenwash. Emissions trading mostly works, because it's just about the government setting a quota and then letting people figure out who gets to use it.
CO2 emissions trade for about 50$/t. CO2 capture costs 500$/t. So, both are useless - it costs 10 times more to get the carbon out, why are we selling them so cheap, it costs 10 times more to get the carbon out compared to not emitting it, it will never be economical.
> That's why all this CO2 capture and drawdown using some kind of unspecified, new technology, is such a distraction. Ideally we shouldn't release the carbon in the first place.
But imagine your oil and gas...
One way to keep your expertise be valuable is to offer the solution to the externalities you produce. By proposing to store that externality using your drilling/rig assets. It's a win win, for the company, a loss loss for everyone else.
It was still worth it on the metrics most people care about: life expectancy, child mortality, poverty, food security. Cutting off cheap fossil energy decades earlier would have been far worse for humanity than the slight warming we're getting now.
On average, maybe yes. But in the rich world we also used a huge chunk of fossil fuel for relatively small marginal gains in quality of life (adding a fifth weekend shopping trip per year, buying a superyacht), and sometimes worsening life expectancy (driving too much, eating too much beef).
Why should I believe your assessment that a huge chunk of fossil fuel use by the rich world went to "relatively small marginal gains in quality of life"? I think they went to massive quality of life gains for huge numbers of people, and that suddenly removing fossil fuels as an energy source would be catastrophically bad for huge numbers of people, and not obviously worse than the effects of global warming over a comparable timeframe.
I never suggested we should suddenly remove fossil fuels as an energy source, that is a huge exaggeration. We wouldn't have needed to do anything suddenly 40-50 years ago when we started to understand that there was a problem, and we won't suddenly remove fossil fuels in the upcoming few years either.
But that is also a false choice: Not all CO2 emissions in the past 40 years were net beneficial. I firmly believe humanity would have done better with fewer (not zero, fewer) flights, less (not zero) beef, and fewer (not zero) fossil fuel car journeys. All while continuing to raise people from poverty and providing real improvements, of course.
If you raise people from poverty, they'll want to spend the money they now have as non-poor-people on things like taking airplane flights, cars, and eating beef, because those now no-longer-impoverished people consider access to those things to be part of their good quality of life. In particular all of these things happened to over a billion people in China as China has gotten less impoverished over the past half-century. Another way of looking at it is that causing there to be fewer flights, beef, and fossil fuel car journeys is literally the same thing as making most people poorer - the only way to make there be fewer of those things is to make them drastically more expensive so that even people who are generally getting richer (like, for instance, the average person in China) find it harder to afford them.
We could have just built nuclear power plants. Invested into the technology, built breeder reactors and all that. We wouldn't have had to sacrifice anything, except of course for the astronomical profits of oil and gas companies.
And sure this wouldn't have solved the entire problem, electricity generation only accounts for like 40-50% of CO2 emissions or so? But it would have made a huge difference, and allowed us to focus entirely on the other half of the problem.
And it's not "slight warming". 20,000 years ago the global average temperature was about 3 degrees celsius lower than the reference point. That was the last ice age. Today we are 1.5 degrees above the reference point, 4,5 above the ice age. In a few decades we'll be at 3 degrees above reference, 6 degrees above ice age.
The transition from ice age (-3) to the temperate climate that allowed humanity to thrive, took place over about 12,000 years. The transition from reference to +3 is taking place over about a century. And we won't stop at +3, it'll keep going. Already at 1.5 it's having huge profound effects.
This is literally the end of the world as we know it. It's already well on its way. We are already seeing widespread crop failures, water scarcity, blistering heat waves, extreme weather etc. It will get much worse, this is just the beginning.
To be fair switching to nuclear was an option in the 70s-90s. Obviously it would have a been a bit more expensive but it would have slowed down climate change by 10-20 years.
"the damage has already been done" is dangerous wording, because it implies that we won't cause more damage. However, we will cause way more damage than has already been done!
> That's why all this CO2 capture and drawdown using some kind of unspecified, new technology, is such a distraction. Ideally we shouldn't release the carbon in the first place.
This is in my amateur opinion, an absolutely bonkers and crazy stance. I can't understand why any pro-green person would affirm this.
There are two facts, (again, imo) one - all our emission reducing efforts would maybe slow their acceleration or in other way to frame it, maybe we collectively would cut tens percents of annual emissions. We, humanity, will a always emit a lot of CO2 from the sources we can't reduce without going full stone age. Fact two - there is a lot of CO2 and other GH gas in the atmosphere now and even more would be there tomorrow. We MUST remove it somehow. Like, there are literally two components - either we remove the insulator (CO2&Co) or we remove the energy (sun rays). We can't do either of course, yet.
The more greenwashing and muddying happens, with overfocus on cutting emissions while deliberately skipping RnD on the CO2 capture or sun shield tech, the more humans will be fucked in future.
Or to provide a different analogy. We are in a completely closed system here, an oven. Turning the regulator from III to II helps of course, but the meat will eventually cook either way, unless either the power is disconnected or the insulating door is opened.
The bonkers crazy stance is yours. Carbon capture cannot work. We would need to build at the very least tens of thousands of carbon capture plants, way more than we currently have power plants.
So to me, the bonkers crazy stance is "let's just continue destroying the world, and hope magic future tech will save it". Especially when the tech you're talking about it just completely obviously entirely infeasible. Add to that the fact that we are destroying the world now. The ship is currently sinking. A solution in 50 years is a solution 100 years too late.
The actual solution that we do have is nuclear power. We could have replaced all fossil fueled power production decades ago if we wanted to. That would have reduced our emissions by nearly 50% and we would have been able to put all our efforts into solving the remaining half of the problem.
As it stands right now I fully expect the world to end quite soon. Maybe within my lifetime. Unless I die early I'll definitely see +3C in like 20 years or so, and probably +4 and +5 as well if not even more than that. I'm not having children because I don't want to put someone into this world just to suffer through the end of it. I have absolutely no faith in our ability to solve climate change. I believe we could have, if the world wasn't full of corrupt rich people and stupid people voting for them. But it is what it is. We've doomed ourselves and we're watching the end unfold before our eyes while everyones like that meme with the dog in the burning house saying "this is fine".
First - I'm well aware about CO2 capture being a fantasy and not viable today. The "tiny" problem is that it is still one of the 3 possible faint solutions to overheating and we WILL need at least one of them operational in the next 50-200 years. If we won't start the RnD today, then it would still be a fantasy in a century or two, when we won't have any time left to play around.
Second - where exactly did you get a notion that CO2 capture = "let's just continue destroying the world"? Of course every other tech should be mobilized and improved too in parallel.
Third - nuclear generation at scale is as fantastical as DACs. Please read about actual issues with real life construction of plants and about actual emissions attributed to each plant cumulatively, without greenwashing like selectively ignoring whole parts of supply chain and maintenance and decommission. I love nuclear energy btw, despite literally suffered through the worst accident in their history (I'm from Kyiv) along with my whole family. We do should construct more of them and SMRs can't come quick enough.
Fourth - there is a collective delusion that moving 100% to renewable energy would cut emissions by 50% or any other similar fantasy number. In reality the whole world energy generation is only 1/4 to 1/3 of all world emissions, and course the so called "net zero" or "carbon neutral" catchphrases are greenwashing, it is impossible. A 100% world renewable generation would only cut part of that part of global emissions. So let's say renewables reduce energy emissions by 50% or maybe even 75%. So then the non-generation emissions would decrease by only 15-20% (for example Xnew = Xold * (1 - 0.25 * 0.75) = 0.8125 * Xold or 18% decrease in other words). This is what is often ignored in a green advertisements.
> The "tiny" problem is that it is still one of the 3 possible faint solutions to overheating and we WILL need at least one of them operational in the next 50-200 years
We need them now. We currently don't have any time left to play around. In 50 years the global average temperature will be somewhere in the 3-5C range, which is apocalyptic. We'll be too busy fighting wars over water and arable land etc, to do anything meaningful about global warming.
My view is that capturing CO2 is hopeless, what we need to do instead is simply not emit the CO2 in the first place. But we aren't doing that, we're just building new coal/gas plants every year instead like a bunch of idiots. Because that's what we are. Bunch of morons who are dooming ourselves.
Whatever money is earned burning a ton of coal/gas, it will cost multiple times that amount to sequester the resulting CO2.
> where exactly did you get a notion that CO2 capture = "let's just continue destroying the world"?
I view it as an excuse to continue burning fossil fuels. It's not actually a solution to the problem at all, but it's presented as a solution when the reality is that it simply will never make a dent in the actual problem. There is no money in CO2 sequestration. We have a huge amount of investment in fossil fuel extraction and power generation etc because it makes money. CO2 is worthless, the only way anyone could possibly make money capturing CO2 and pumping it into the ground is if states paid them to do it. So a much simpler solution would be to pay them to generate clean power instead. "But where would the money come from" I don't know, where will the money for CO2 sequestration come from? We can't afford to pay a little extra for clean energy but somehow magically future us will be able to pay way way way way more for CO2 sequestration? It's not going to happen.
> Third - nuclear generation at scale is as fantastical as DACs. Please read about actual issues with real life construction of plants and about actual emissions attributed to each plant cumulatively, without greenwashing like selectively ignoring whole parts of supply chain and maintenance and decommission.
Google AI:
Nuclear power plants produce zero direct carbon dioxide emissions during operation. Across their full lifecycle—including uranium mining, enrichment, plant construction, and decommissioning—nuclear energy averages about 12 to 50 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2e/kWh), making it one of the lowest-carbon electricity sources available.
Solar PV: ~85 g CO2e/kWh
Wind: ~26 g CO2e/kWh
Hydroelectric: ~26 g CO2e/kWh
Natural Gas: ~499 g CO2e/kWh
Coal / Lignite: ~888 to 1,054 g CO2e/kWh
There are over 400 operational nuclear power plants in the world, the technology clearly works. Yes Chernobyl was terrible, it was caused by the dysfunctional Soviet Union political environment, it's not a fault of the technology itself. The state withheld information about a critical flaw in the reactor design. Coal kills more people in a week, than nuclear has through its entire history.
> So let's say renewables reduce energy emissions by 50% or maybe even 75%.
As you can see from the numbers I shared above, renewables cut emissions by over 95% compared to coal, 90% compared to gas.
I'm not saying we could be entirely carbon-neutral. I'm saying emissions from electricity generation specifically, which according to Google represents over 40% of CO2 emissions, could be almost entirely eliminated. Instead of 40% it could be less than 5%. From there we could work on other things such as shipping, farming etc. Maybe we'd just stop farming cows. I love beef but I'd be okay with that. Aviation could go as far as I'm concerned. I love vacationing but I'd rather have a planet that's going to continue being habitable. I could still go pretty far using trains, electric buses, my own elect...
Fully agreed. We're not gonna get out of this without something a bit crazy, and CO2 capture at least has an actionable theory: "what if power was 10x cheaper". That's imaginable at least, much more so than "what if we committed a few genocides" as was proposed elsewhere in this thread.
That's not what I am saying at all, I am just pointing out that venturing to 2 degrees (or more) and back to 1.5 degrees incures the cost. Maybe it's well-known at this point, and I am just stating the obvious; but it's not my general impression.
I am not sure what you are saying then, with this:
> Unfortunately, even if we exceed and then bring temperature back to 1.5 degree over preindustrial, the damage has already been done.
We won't be able to get back to 1.5, and in fact the way it's going we're still accelerating our emissions, so it will get a lot worse.
Now, if we could get back to 1.5, it would most definitely be better than not getting back to it. So "the damage has already been done" is wrong.
If we managed to keep it at 2 instead of higher, it would most definitely be better than not keeping it at 2. So "the damage has already been done" is wrong.
If we managed to keep it at 3 instead of higher, ... you get my point.
What's happening is that we've already caused damage that will hurt, and we are now actively working towards causing more damage that will hurt more. The faster we get our shit together, the less it will hurt. There is no "it's too late, it's done". There is "it will be painful" and "it will be more painful" and "it will be a lot more painful" all the way down.
Nope. "damage" will be done. "The damage" implies "all of it", and that is wrong. Going back to 1.5 actually means less damage than not going back. So "the damage" is not "completely" done.
"Going back to 1.5 actually means less damage than not going back."
That's a different claim, but also no. Let's imagine we go 1.5 -> 2 -> 1.5 in a few decades (and keep in mind capture is more difficult, so the 2nd transition will take longer), compared to just 1.5 -> 2. In the return case, we stress all the ecosystems twice by change, rather than once. So it's not at all clear it's less damaging.
>“Every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of warming above 1.5°C raises the risk of irreversible changes including in ice sheets, permafrost carbon, ocean circulation and coral systems, along with devastating human impacts,” the report states.
The mention to coral systems, from an ignorant perspective, seems weirdly specific to me. Kinda like "civilization will collapse and the price of sweaters will go up".
Does their disappearance have indirect consequences I'm not aware of?
Coral is the first to go. It's the metaphorical canary in the coal mine. We will probably survive without coral (we might lose a lot of fish but humanity will persist).
Coral bleaching is also accelerated by ocean acidification. Acidification due to CO2 being absorbed into the ocean affects all marine life, but importantly, also plankton. Phytoplankton produces most of the oxygen on earth, and we kind of need that to live. It's not exactly "coral reefs are dead = oxygen depleted", but you don't get many visual representations of oceanic climate change that could threaten all mammals on earth.
We could always make more war in the Middle East (and Europe) and then 1,5°C would be totally viable. /s
Seriously now: Attempts to cut fossil fuel supply are worthless unless done en masse and in big scale - any single country doing it will just spur investment in another country. Since the world will not come to a truly binding agreement, the only thing that can be truly regulated is demand which can be regulated locally without necessarily increasing demand elsewhere.
The big new ticket is data centers, which strongly tend to use fossils due to SLAs and regulations. This can be fixed by new regulations, but only if people act now before the new approvals and builds are done.
Well cutting is happening right now and very large scale. USA is kinda laggard here but eg new electric car sales is up 70% in Europe or new Solar installations are up 50% in Africa.
To be fair: setting it as a temperature range was very
stupid from the get go. Also, to not consider the economic
impact, was also stupid, and the CO2-tax is also beyond
idiotic since it creates a fake-economy where people buy
the right to pollute. That runs counter to the idea of
green energy.
I think one should abandon the Paris Agreement and label
it as the failure as it was. However had that does not
mean that green energy should be abandoned. There need to
be more incentives towards green energy (see how Putin uses
gas as means to amplify his genocidal activity against
Ukrainians). Meaning, companies that verifiably transition
towards more renewable, need to get positive incentives to
go towards that and maintain it at all times. The CO2 tax
should also be eliminated without compensation. And there
also has to be more realism - it makes no sense to cut down
an economy, producing more unemployment in the process. It
has to be a cohesive unit.
Not sure which economic impact you mean when the ultimate economic impact of climate catastrophe will be the complete destruction of the global economy.
This is not hyperbole. If nothing changes that's a completely realistic outcome within 50 - 100 years.
I would not say people have give up. The problem is that this search for saving the planet and humanity all together is hard to understand for the common folk, much in the same way other banners that have been imposed on people in the past 2 decades.
Common people want to go to work and know that they have a working transport system, that they can walk in between a few streets and feel safe, that they can have enough money for a mortgage and to feed themselves and their families.
None of these things are exactly addressed by putting solar panels, and wind farms all around, especially when the cost of fuel keep rising. When the security of the grid on a once thought-of super-power like UK is constantly put in question.
The common people doesnt care much about these topics and explanations because they don’t have time for it, because they do still need to get on with life. It’s generally youth and retirees the ones gluing themselves to the pavement, have you noticed? whats in common in these two groups is they can both still afford to be idealists.
Then you turn on the TV and see how much damage is being done to the environment in other regions, and so, why do I need to suck it up in my jumper all winter then? Why am I the one using paper straws that break before I finish my drink?
This whole thing was always a tough sale, but it’s gotten even harder in the current political climate.
Were paper straws ever about climate change? This feels like a red herring. Pollution has many aspects to it, and you can work on several problems simultaneously.
Plastic straws are simply emblematic of the environmental movement as a whole. "Political capital" is not infinite, folks will only tolerate so much disruption to their lives. Going after plastic straws instead of something more consequential was a mistake.
Even in America and among Republicans there's support for using less plastic straws and unless there's some extremely unexpected overlaps in opinion it basically means the only people who think it's a bad move also don't care about climate change seperate from the straw issue.
Doubly frustrating when you consider that Americans would actually have needed to backslide on creature comforts for 1.5 to have ever been viable, at a time when people overwhelmingly want them.
This problem starts and ends with corporations and government regulations. It’s barely worth it to talk to people about it right now. Maybe in 10 years when things are a bit more on fire and people are more willing to listen.
>This problem starts and ends with corporations and government regulations.
That's what we have been relying on for the last forty years and we still have an issue.
Corporations respond to demand. If someone is willing to buy a barrel of oil to burn then you can be sure you will find someone else to pull it out of the ground for them.
No, for the last 40 years we’ve been trying paper straws, “reduce reuse recycle”, and keeping our thermostat low while corporations build such intense computing centers we can’t buy a damn personal PC anymore.
Of course companies respond to demand. That’s why we need governments with militaries to give them a second consideration to respond to.
Nope. Not even close. I will turn my thermostat up 3 degrees for every degree you lower yours. It still will make such an insignificant difference that I’m less than a rounding error.
This is on corporations. They use millions upon millions of gallons of water, they use entire cities-worth of electricity, and they break environmental regulations with wanton disregard.
This idea that personal responsibility is standing between us and a clean planet is also, by the way, a primary strategy of these criminals.
On the contrary in fact, I think a lot of people have decided to do something that will have a tremendously positive impact on the climate in the future: they've chosen not to have children. There will be downsides to that decision, but as far as climate goes it's by far the most impactful thing anyone can do.
They could off themselves as well. That would help too. 4 billions of years of evolution end with me! What an absurd take. I'd understand one child, fewer than desired, etc.. but no children as a conscious effort to help the climate is something I don't buy that ever happened. Other reasons are at play for that. Nothing to do with the climate.
Until recently I was strictly against having kids because of world the climate, both weather and political. But then my partner wanted them and I couldn't stand the notion of losing her, so I was able to compromise on my ideals.
but no children as a conscious effort to help the climate is something I don't buy that ever happened
That's not what I said. People are choosing not to have children for lots of reasons. One of the benefits is that they end up having much less impact on the climate; that's not saying it's the reason they're doing it.
But that is the root of the climate crisis. When it was just 150M Americans living a developed-world lifestyle, the climate was fine. As soon as you broaden that out to the 8B+ people living today, allowing all the folks in China/India/Africa to have the same lifestyle as the West, you have problems. In 1960 the average American emitted 16 metric tons of CO2; China emitted 0.5 metric tons and India 0.2. In 2020 US emissions actually decreased to 13.8, but China is at 9.2. Per capita emissions can decrease modestly but if you increase the number of capita by 50x, total CO2 emissions will increase accordingly.
Likewise, the climate crisis is far more likely to be solved by WW3 reducing the population down to ~1B than by individual per capita reductions.
I don't think there's any expectation that humans will go extinct. We're here to stay. Suggesting this is about the extinction of the human race is a strawman.
The question is each of us needs to answer around having kids is firstly about whether or not you want to raise them in the world we live in, and secondly about whether you want (or care) that your children live in a world where the climate is broken, and having to deal with the resource issues, heat, wars over liveable land, etc. Heck, I'm sure plenty of people on HN are under 30 - there's every chance that they'll be around to see these problems first hand.
People who do want to have children are arguably very fortunate that there are lots of people who don't. The children who are born with have to deal with less contention for resources. That said though, they're still in for a pretty bad time by all accounts. Even if technology magically fixes everything, you still have to wonder if your kids will be in the part of society that can afford it.
CaaS? Sounds like a business plan. I don't propose anything, except the notion was a bit absurd. Takes mostly two to make a child, so even having (only) one is still a cull that goes well into that narrative. Make one, teach it to take care of nature, to prompt less and thus consume less energy, and to teach the same to others.
This is the kind of take that causes more traditional (including right wing, but also people from non western countries) look at climate activists as crazy fanatics. You are technically right, but I think advocating for childlessness causes people to disregard the whole movement as insane.
I'm not really advocating for childlessness. I'm accepting of people who choose that life, but I don't have any skin in the game regarding whether or not anyone besides myself have kids. It's their choice.
The only judgement I make is people who have children and have no regard for the environment. I think those people are risking their children's long term welfare. That's a dick move. If you have kids you have a moral obligation to try to make sure the planet they live on in adulthood isn't fucked.
It's hard to find a coherent perspective where that makes sense. Most parents have had kids when future conditions looked far worse than they do now. The situation actually looks rosy in 50 years given the promising moves the Chinese are making in nuclear and renewable technology.
It is more likely that children are inconvenient to the lifestyles people want to lead. That is more consistent with how bad people are at long-term planning.
> None of these things are exactly addressed by putting solar panels, and wind farms all around, especially when the cost of fuel keep rising.
Don't want to nitpick but this touches on a topic I think worth discussing. I feel that for many people, investments in green energy are a needless sacrifice we do for the sake of the environment (and a naive sacrifice at that since other countries can just keep on emitting their greenhouse gases anyway). It follows, since we invest in green this must have its costs elsewhere like in higher gas prices and obviously then people ask -- why should we keep doing this when we are hit with economic downturn?
But really green energy is all about the unaccounted for future costs. We can burn fossil fuels now but we are going to be in a whole lot of trouble when they become more expensive and dealing with their side effects (climate change) will become expensive as well. Green energy is a solution - you don't need to care about high fuel prices and what happens in Middle East if you can get all energy from the sun and wind.
It’s also about energy security - why expose your energy markets to insane fluctuations in international fossil-fuel markets if you don’t have to? Surely the last few years have shown that energy independence is a critical social and defence policy now?
For many/most countries, investing in renewables is the best, cheapest and fastest way to move in that direction.
Well the solution is just that green energy is already cost competitive with fossil fuels, so we just need to let the market do its thing and have people buy the cheap thing, which is increasingly green energy.
an important factor, I believe, is that a lot of "common people" are childless. about half of Western millennials are, and that was the last generation that didn't grow up in the clown world we live in now. zoomers and forth will be even more so.
I don't know why should a childless person give a damn about the future beyond their own lifespan. I think most of them don't, in their heart of hearts, and that's the only logical stance.
You're tying together some pretty far-flung strands of argument there.
Regarding children and selfishness: some of the most selfish people I know have kids. They're selfish in the sense that they only care about their family, even to the detriment of everyone else.
Because some people said that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is bad, and that our political leaders should support Ukraine?
Might be time to turn off your devices and go touch some grass. It doesn't seem like you're in a good head space to be worrying about global politics right now.
but I'm talking about living without heating or cooling, subsisting on gruel, owning nothing und being happy, and all the other thing the young global leaders insist we must do to save the planet. and I don't think it's fair to ask that of people who have no reason to care what happens in 100 years.
Your point about plastic straws reminded me of this interesting article Just Bury Your Trash [0]. There’s an argument to be made that recycling many types materials (except metal) is not worth it. Eg since recycled plastic is more expensive than virgin plastic, it might be better if the money we collectively spend on it could be redirected to something that’s more beneficial to the environment.
And while others have pointed out that plastic straw bans are not about climate change, I suspect many people think they are, lumping together “climate change”, “the environment”, and “pollution” into a monolithic thing. “I’m doing my part” with a plastic straw then as they eat beef, drive an SUV, and fly to vacation (disclaimer I do some of those things).
I was thinking about this a while back whilst I watched someone struggle with their shopping across the supermarket carpark without a plastic bag only to get in a Range Rover. I guess it's a form of moral self licensing[1].
Is China going woke and then broke on recycling? Or like renewables and EVs did they put engineers in charge and not Libertarians who irrationally hate all government programs?
Plastic is fine for recycling as long as the process is simple and cheap. Pressing plastic into panels using a sheet press, for use in construction, signage, or art/crafting, is actually fairly efficient versus trying to recreate “virgin” plastic through melting and mixing. It can also be done on a smaller scale. See https://www.onearmy.earth/news/sheetpress
But I agree that typical plastic recycling is inefficient.
I think the plastic straw ban was such a self-own that I find it hard to believe it wasn't astroturfed to undermine climate change (it wasn't). While I don't give a shit about straws myself (since I'm not an infant[0]) it was just such empty gesture politics that became a key culture war issue.
As you say it's not really about climate change as such, the problem is climate change becomes an omni-cause grouping pollution, waste management, biodiversity loss, etc. We end up being tarred with the same brush. A reasonable person should feel free to disavow the straw ban since it doesn't achieve its aims and is a distraction from real problems.
The campaign was started by a 9 year old[1] using an estimate that was roughly 2-3 times too high and fed by an unsourced claim[2] around the amount of plastic straws on beaches. As you say it becomes a cultural signifier of effort while achieving basically nothing. And this takes away so much energy around the broader issue of single-use plastics and ocean plastic pollution. Both of these are better served by advocating for domestic landfills rather than the current practice of dumping the plastic waste on 3rd countries.
[0]: yes some disabled people need to use straws as adults
Plastic recycling was about one thing: getting people to use more plastic.
Less than like 7% of plastics get recycled and basically all of that comes from industrial sources, not our homes.
The best thing you can do with plastic is use less of it and throw it in the trash. This tells you it is garbage and not going off to some magical facility to get recycled.
Also, keeping plastic in the environment by using it in building materials/fake grasses is a microplastics nightmare. We need to be removing plastic from the environment, not putting more out there.
The only way to force common people to do something is to create scarcity.
If resources are scarce, people automatically start rationing. I lived in third world developing county for 30 years. There were many times when I had running water available for 1 hour a day and electricity available for 12 hours a day. So I did what I had to do and saved the climate.
In the West obviously you can't cut off water and electricity. So they impose taxes and such to create artificial scarcity. Like $1.5 gas tax is California forces people to go electric or take public transportation (not).
The problem is some "people" with more money, resources and influence game the system and do multiplicatively more damage. These are called corporations.
I'm not entirely sure what definition of "common folk" we're using here but it's my experience that most people can understand climate change but that it's difficult to do anything while there are billions of dollars moving in favour of fossil fuels, unregulated shipping, the meat industry etc. Some of these comments are really surprising. There's a lot of criticism here for "environmentalists" and paper straws, but very little criticism for the groups that actively maintain the status quo.
Hilarious compared to what exactly lmao? The US? China? Russia? TYhE GlObAl SoUtH? OPEC?
The world is a giant school playground where the bullies in charge are competing for #1 position on the goober eating contest while the school is burning
This might shock you because it happens outside your social bubble, but there is an insane amount of people (double-digit percentages for sure) that is simply unwilling to make even the smallest sacrifice in order to mitigate climate change, and they vote accordingly.
That does not make climate change any less of an emergency, but it limits politically feasible countermeasures a lot.
Obviously protective measures for any country are done to make sure an economy doesn't become completely dependent on another's with strongly opposing values.
Europe's car manufacturers need to get their shit together, but not being able to buy any car whatsoever the moment China gets their own Donald Trump is worse than cars being slightly worse and a bit more expensive for a while.
And attacking them for burning coal is dumb, China burns coal because they have nothing else.
The US burns gas, because the US produces massive amounts of it as a byproduct of oil, there are a limited number of NG pipelines and LNG tankers and they cannot export all the gaas produced from oil drilling. SO they dump this natural gas into regional pipelines sometimes for near zero prices.
A business building EV's in the US would pay less for electricity than a business in China
Nah, that is actually logical and helpful for ecology. Just in a roundabout way. EU is for now a spearhead in all things pro-green so to say, at least on paper. By protecting local economies via tariffs (foreign EVs, foreign uranium fuel rods etc.), EU will continue being a power block and continue influencing other countries to be more green too.
What is bad, is a the lack of a coherent and realistic green programs and climate forecasts in EU as a whole. There are no incentive programs to switch to expensive one time EV purchases and charger installations (I tried to research what what would it cost to install a personal charger in my freshly constructed 2024 apartment building parking in a big city, the AI app called me a fool, well almost(1)). There are no coherent plans to expand charging networks at a state or union levels.
There solar panels, V2G, B2G, multizone electricity meters, dynamic tariffs, incentives, all are either non-existent or very spotty and organized at local levels.
There are no union wide help to transition from coal, oil, gas to relatively greener energy.
No re-foresation incentives and little to no marine protection.
No preparation for a real 3C temperature hike by the year 2100, instead the fantasy 1.5C or 2C numbers are reiterated and the populace is lulled into thinking all will be well for their kids.
I can continue the list, but the picture is of incompetence and apathy really. A few token and inconsequential efforts are done, just enough for re-elections, and that's it.
1: "This is the classic "pioneer dilemma" discussed on Polish forums. If you pay the 3,000 PLN because you are the first, and next year Neighbor B and Neighbor C get EVs, it is deeply unfair for you to keep subsidizing the overall risk profile. To protect yourself, you must not sign a contract that binds you to a flat fee indefinitely." (c) generated by AI
Are you being sarcastic? Your first paragraph is very much Effective Altruism but for European cultural superiority. "European culture is the best, so, by protecting that culture's economic base, it's actually better for the rest of the world because we can export our Lovely Eco Friendly Culture more, the more we power it with coal and oil and gas."
I despise the EA sex cult, but the the irony in that comparison is indeed visible. Good catch, I guess, I'll think about it. :)
So yes, I do currently think that the reality of life is that certain whole societies are in the given moment (now) more progressive than others. Or do you believe that some BRICS pseudo-union would collectively push for more green tech than EU is doing now (even though EU foreign policy actions are mostly impotent)?
Sure, maybe China will eventually take a lead in green tech policies, or maybe it even already did, though I'm not convinced so far. As soon as that happens visibly,I would gladly change my opinion and would advocate that now EU should follow more progressive lead (as long as Xi don't start WW3 for some "dvizhukha" like other demented autocrats did).
PS: and don't attribute to me stuff I didn't say, like this "we can export our Lovely Eco Friendly Culture more, the more we power it with coal and oil and gas."(c)
It’s kind of hard to clean the pool when everyone around is constantly taking a shit in it, and then people like you point and laugh at the person cleaning the pool, take their tools away, disrupt the cleaning, disregard any ideas, then complain they are inefficient.
One difficulty you will encounter when looking into the effects of climate change is that you can't generally attribute individual events to it (or very rarely at least). Its effects are only really visible in more general (abstract) statistical measures (Just like me losing a coin flip doesn't mean the coin is weighted, but when i lose 8 out of 10 flips i will start getting suspicious)
That logic seems a bit weak, because it is saying we're already living in a world where the worst-case is happening, and we're just talking about the odds of any individual experiencing it are going up a little.
Compare it to https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-person-vs-... where there is strong evidence that using more energy directly leads to more prosperity. We've got much better chances to do well if we stick to using the cheapest available energy. Then people can just build over the top of any disasters that strike.
There are none. The planet is greener, even the Sahara is shrinking. The Great Coral Reef has just had its best 5 years ever. On average, crops produce more due to higher CO2 levels.
Pacific islands failed to sink. Hurricanes failed to become more frequent. Fewer people died due to cold temperatures (which kill far more people than hot temperatures).
I can't tell if this is sarcastic, or you're just lying?
> The planet is greener, even the Sahara is shrinking
The UK was baked brown in the heat and it was so bad it was visible by satellite, we had uncharacteristic wildfires all summer. Google has literally no idea what you're talking about by claiming the Sahara is shrinking, the best I can find is "maybe the expansion is slowing?"
> The Great Coral Reef has just had its best 5 years ever.
Apparently it had its most devastating coral bleaching event just 2 years ago, so I'm not sure this is true?
> On average, crops produce more due to higher CO2 levels.
I mean, yeah if you are into the average crop? People tend to like stuff like corn and coffee which are threatened by raised heat levels. With current heat levels we're projected to lose upwards of 1/5th the corn harvest by 2030.
> Pacific islands failed to sink.
I mean some of them did, like a decade ago, just none of the ones you care about.
> Hurricanes failed to become more frequent
Same frequency but wind force increases by water temperature, so a cat 1 hurricane like Rafael ends up a cat 3 hurricane due to climate change. I am seeing a pattern with your selective presentation of the facts.
> Fewer people died due to cold temperatures
Is that not because a large share of the world's old were taken out by COVID within the last 6 years? That is the group most likely to die to cold.
Did you read it? The Great Barrier Reef (largest reef on Earth) monitored by a government agency (AIMS) shows that since it started measuring coral coverage in the 1980s, the current level is near the highest recorded.
If you fell down and broke your legs and they healed to be 20% longer and stronger than before, yes.
I encourage you to take your own advice and actually read the links to get a full picture of the available science and data. Climate change is real and a serious problem, but not every single thing you are fed by your algorithms is the ground truth. Nitpicking one example and ignoring the entire body of science is just as dishonest as folks who deny climate change.
Here's a paper you can read and not just dismiss as something that I didn't read [1]. Some islands will vanish, some will grow, it's not as simple as everything is doomed everywhere. Have fun reading :)
> This record comprises 568 islands from 42 atolls spanning the western to the central Pacific Ocean from the Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Kiribati and Tuvalu, and is one of the first robust attempts to statistically attribute the drivers of observed island changes within the past half-century. Our analyses demonstrate that island change and a range of its potential controls, including oceanographic, climatic and local-scale morphometric characteristics of reefs and islands, are not correlated, underscoring that no single variable could predict a uniform response across the study islands. The lack of association between sea-level rise and shoreline change on this large sample of islands addresses the common notion of a linear relationship between rising sea levels and magnitude of erosion in reef island systems.
> Analysis of 568 islands across the Pacific indicates that most islands have exhibited significant morphological changes over the timescale of analysis (1944–2018). Accretion was observed on 39% of transects, while 27% of transects showed erosion. Aggregated at the island scale, the balance of erosional and accretionary changes indicates a predominance of accretion on islands, with an average shoreline change of 0.51 m/decade resulting in a net expansion of 444.63 ha (~ 2.25%) of land area.
The planet is greener, I guess that you are pointing to; Nature Climate Change, 2016, Zhu et. al. where the authors of the study have warned that erroneous conclusions would be taken from the study.
Billions of dollars have been spent undermining science and electing corrupt fascists because people with control of fossil fuel wealth didn't want to deal with reality and laws and democracy.
That may well kill more people than climate change. Hard to tell as both have the potential to spiral out into a variety of intertwining tragedies.
If the human part of climate change wasn’t true and the fossil fuel industry’s wasn’t the culprit it would’ve been proven by now. It is very unlikely that the fossil fuel industry that is so rich and powerful wouldn’t have proven it by now.
Global average temperature has risen about a degree over the last century. That's a truly terrifying amount of energy. Habitats are shifting, forests are burning away in places where their current composition has become unsustainable, regions are becoming arid, permafrost is becoming less permanent.
Technically most of everything else is weather, not climate, do you want a list of bad weather events?
In Belgium alone 665 people died in June's extreme heatwave that would otherwise still be alive. This is not even just old people. Other European countries have similar numbers.
Europe's inland waterways have extremely low water levels because of climate change related drought. Mainly the Rhine, which is a very important transport route. Ships can't load as much, meaning goods can be delivered at a slower pace. This causes enormous economic damage.
Not only droughts are a problem, but floods as well. In the past few years we've already seen large scale floods necessitating people to flee their homes
People will name heat waves, but look up stats on how many die of cold vs. heat.
For the argument to work it must be that climate change causes more extremes on both sides. It's difficult to look at the evidence through an objective lens, but whenever I've looked it seems like warming the earth by a few degrees is most likely to save lives overall. There are of course other unknowns and it it's a very risky experiment to run.
There was a book on the overshoot nonsense a few years ago (literally called Overshoot) that talks about the make believe story of carbon capture and how during the negotiations for CAP in the 2000s and 2010s those were included as otherwise the US would have agreed to no plan at all. And even if something like removing carbon at scale through forestry, burning, and co2 capture was ever so viable who would pay for that. That only works with emissions trading (which every other month gets watered down because muh energy bills, muh aviation cost, etc) or some “energy costs nothing” mythological tech. We are fucked and while there are many who care the vast majority of people oscillates between too dumb, too selfish, and too manipulated to ever be willing to give up today’s comforts for a happier tomorrow.
We will continue extracting absolutely everything we can from Earth, at whatever the cost ... with the hope that technology will one day save us from our weakness.
And, yes, technologyy may "save us", but there are many different definitions of what that will look that ... some may be horrendous for the majority, but none of them will inconvenience those making the most significant decisions.
2 degree global warming means 5-6 degree more in new york (as the average mean temperature is meassured also above oceans/mountaints etc.) - and you can now ask yourself if you still want to live in NY when its 5-6 degree warmer than today?
"Tofu has been crowned the prince of protein by a scientific scoring system that measured human health, sustainability and affordability.
...
To assess the environmental impact of each food, MacDonald compared the greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, land use and water use involved in producing 100g (3.5oz) of protein from each food.
Tofu was judged the best in this category, followed by chia seeds, quinoa, beans and sunflower seeds. Meanwhile, pork, beef and cheddar cheese came last."
The emissions for lamb/pork/beef are terrible, beef looks an order of magnitude worse than the rest. The top 10 or so are fairly similar in comparison. Chicken isn't bad comparatively, but tofu still looks a decent bit better.
It's a fun metric the author carefully crafted to justify his vegan/animal rights ideology. Personally, I value food that can provide the necessary micronutrients and macronutrients (including fat, which apparently the author thinks is inherently bad), so I'll continue eating meat and cheese.
Meat isn't a health food. Most Americans eat an unhealthy amount of meat. Especially red meat. You could probably eat half as much meat and not be in any danger of not getting enough macro nutrients.
You can just pop a pill once a day and not care about those.
Also your sister in law hasn't been well informed - it's a known fact that vegetarian diets have less iron in them, and women especially should take an iron supplement because of menstruation combined with the diet. But it's just one pill.
The following come from beef, chicken, fish, eggs, and you don’t get from plants: Vitamin B12, EPA and DHA omega-3, Vitamin D3, Creatine, Taurine, Carnosine, retinol.
Plant provide, but less efficiently: iron, zinc, choline, calcium (some tofu provides, but depends on coagulant used), iodine.
On the flip side, plants provide fiber and numerous phytochemicals that meat, fish, and eggs lack.
Irrelevant amounts come from diet, adequate amounts come from sun exposure. Everyone should be supplementing this.
>Taurine, creatine, Carnosine
Irrelevant, synthesized by the human body.
>Retinol
Best consumed from carrots, sweet potatoes, etc. Only relevant animal source is organ meat (liver), which most people aren't consuming.
>B12
Even meat lovers get deficient on this, dietary intakes are usually inadequate. My mother and sister are rabid meat eaters and supplement it, everyone who has the means to should.
Omega-3 comes from seaweed and kelp, that's where the fish got it in the first place. You can get vegan Vitamin D3 capsules where the source is lichen. B12 is available in nutritional yeast (nooch) in very high amounts, it's also in many energy drinks. None of this is a serious issue.
There's no need to 'carefully craft a fun metric', if you're honest to yourself you'll notice that plant-based nutrition is the only sustainable way to feed billions of humans on this planet. But I'm curious, which micro- & macronutrients do you think are only available from meat and cheese?
> if you're honest to yourself you'll notice that plant-based nutrition is the only sustainable way to feed billions of humans on this planet
If you're honest to yourself, you'll notice that plant-based nutrition is not a sustainable way to feed billions of humans on this planet, because those billions of people would rather destroy the world than have some vegans enforce their morality on them while enjoying a lifestyle that consumes orders of magnitude more energy than some third world subsistence farmer's chickens.
I don't travel by plane, live in a urban center without a car, am vegan and buy everything used. Not all vegans are performative. But that's not the point.
Growing soy crop to feed the animals that are then fed to humans is simply unoptimized, you can just grow soy crop for humans to eat and get rid of magnitudes of pollution. That is a fact.
Vitamin B12 deficiency in vegans is a pretty obvious one.
But this is ignoring my point: if you go to the billions of people in the developing world and tell them they're going to have to switch their diets to soylent green because we, the first world, emitted too much CO2", they will rightfully tell you to fuck off.
Your other point is likely true, but I never said anything to that extent, and most importantly the point does not validate the claims "Humans are designed to eat meat." and "Soy crop is shit for humans." that CrimsonRain made. So, no studies?
> If you're honest to yourself, you'll notice that plant-based nutrition is not a sustainable way to feed billions of humans on this planet, because those billions of people would rather destroy the world than have some vegans enforce their morality on them
I’m not even vegan but why drag any morality into it? Plant-based food is less co2 intensive to produce. It’s not a controversial statement. Planet is heating up, also a fact. I get it that it feels bad but lashing out at vegans is not productive. Meat eaters (like me) should have the decency to at least shut up. Own your choices.
I used to be an idealist, and looking back at them now I realize it was a waste of time and energy.
I once had to work on a project where my employer signed a contract with a client to have *no bugs* in the delivered software. The massive burnout that resulted in trying to accomplish that ideal taught me to prioritize practicality over idealism.
The world population grows by 200,000 extra people, every day. Keep in mind any adaptations have to compensate for this growth in population, continually, for at least the next couple of decades.
Energy consumption per person also has a lot of room to grow. For every barrel of oil eschewed by a relatively rich person in the developed world, there are probably 3 or 4 ready to pickup the slack and increase their quality of life in the rest of the much poorer world.
> there are probably 3 or 4 ready to pickup the slack and increase their quality of life in the rest of the much poorer world.
Don't forget that the developed world is falling over itself to bring in never-ending waves of people who normally would have far smaller carbon footprints if they just stayed where they were. It's hard for me to take serious any climate proposal that doesn't at least acknowledge this basic fact.
"But we need them, what about population decline in developed countries?" Yes, what about it? That also lowers carbon emissions.
Instead the pitch seems to be "look, we need infinity third worlders, you're just gonna have to do your part and stop eating beef or driving a car. And pay carbon taxes." Gee, why are people so up in arms over all this climate stuff?
You do know that capitalism requires labor and a shrinking workforce is undesirable for capital owners, right? Do you believe that importing large amounts of cheap, socially fragile (you could just deport them if they misbehave) third worlders is a policy decision pushed by climate activists?
> is a policy decision pushed by climate activists?
No, but there is a significant overlap between climate activists and "we need more immigrants, and definitely leave those illegal ones alone" activists. And more to your point, have there BEEN any climate activists sounding the alarm over mass migration?
>And more to your point, have there BEEN any climate activists sounding the alarm over mass migration?
What's "my point" here? That a rightoid moral panic bait topic is less important than the rapid poisoning of the atmosphere that's pushing the planet into unlivable conditions?
My point was actually just pointing out that your scenario where the birth rate goes down and the population "just shrinks" is not interesting to your ruling class, which is why it doesn't happen. Its also why it pushes tradwife psyops and other birth rate and "race replacement" panic bullshit.
So you’re voluntarily choosing the higher carbon/infinitly higher cruelty option because… it’s better than beef? I understand beef is the main issue for climate change and that this is a climate change thread, but why not throw some good old compassion into the mix and just stop subjecting billions of animals to the horrors of the industry?
Your numbers for chickens only work if we keep them in the absolute worst conditions for life, jamming them into tight spaces so their carbon footprint is similar to tofu.
The literal death camps where we systematically contain, breed and brutally slaughter billions of what sadly are among the most intelligent animals on the planet are a sight to behold. The amount of untold, unimaginable suffering we inflict without even blinking is breathtaking. By far the most psychopathic, murderous intelligence on the planet worries about AI “alignment” an with good reason: we are keenly aware of what a higher intelligence entails.
I think you're in a position comparable to me trying to get people to stop throwing their tyres, furniture etc. in the community dumpster (you're supposed to bring them to a municipal recycling center instead).
The people doing it don't care that the HOA (so us) pays a fine for each item and that we were already warned that there will be a doubling or quadrupling of the waste disposal fees. I can ask politely and sometimes it works, but ultimately I can't tell them what to do.
I don't really like tofu and I don't share your values, so I think I'll continue eating chicken breast - just sourced from a place that meets certain standards, as usual.
I don't believe in individual action and regarding eating animals I draw the line at those which don't readily breed in captivity - octopuses for instance.
Let's be honest. People aren't eating tofu because it's fundamentally not that nice. There's plenty of ways you can improve it, but it just doesn't taste good without effort like most meats do.
Realistically the only thing we'd be able to convince people to do is to eat less beef, but you're never going to be able to convince the population to switch over to tofu
I think it's just a matter of adapting, I was a meat eater for 22 years of my life and nowadays can't stand the taste of meat. Tofu tastes awesome when done well.
Buuuut people are different, and I could be an outlier. I just think there's more propaganda to it than people realize, especially currently with fitness influencers boosting meat consumption.
This is a very western centric view, tofu is entirely unrelated to meat, and billions of people love tofu. Nobody needs to switch, it's just its own thing. It's like saying beef is tastier than kidney beans. Ok? Theyre not related at all.
I think it's largely what you are used to. I make an effort to prepare tofu for my kids. I find it "ok" generally, but my kids? They _love_ tofu. It's their favourite food.
Have you tried eating meat or chicken without preparation? It's pretty disgusting. My mother used to leave chicken marinating in lemon overnight just so it would be edible. With tofu I can just throw some ginger and paprika on it, put it in the air fryer and it tastes awesome.
I know people that do like 4 transatlantic trips per year and eat meat for every single dish.
Convincing them to reduce their impact would have waaaay more effect than lecturing someone that already travels by bike/train and eats vegetarian diet.
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[ 0.34 ms ] story [ 40.2 ms ] threadIt kind of feels people have given up. I'm working on a startup that aims to replaces aviation (the most difficult emissions to avoid) with night trains in Europe (currently economically uncompetitive). It's an obvious impact story, but impact appears to be "out".
It's a tough time to do something about climate change. Short-termism is very attractive right now.
That company from austria seems quite successfull, IIRC?
Take a great day train, get some plays and then take a hotel room for the night. That's the most sustainable way to travel.
"Under current policies, only six G20 members (China, India, Indonesia, Russian Federation, South Africa and Türkiye) are assessed as likely to achieve their unconditional 2030 targets, while the assessment of the European Union is inconclusive. Overall, this suggests limited progress in narrowing implementation gaps across the G20."
"All G20 members except Argentina, Saudi Arabia and the United States of America have new NDCs with mitigation targets for 2035."
So I suspect that there will be two mostly independent trends in China (and other industrial places like that) - solar installation will grow, but coal use won't be meaningfully cut without huge HUGE help from central and foreign powers at once.
Cut the nuclear, add the imported solarpanels and experience the joy of 10x electricity prices.
Blame the consumer for not turning the kettle off during peak hours and make sure you give tax breaks to Google and BiGData to open a couple more datacenters that use more power than a average city.
Oh, ban combustion engines, fuck up every batteryfactory by thinking its enough to buy the Make-Your-Own-Battery-Kit on Aliexpress.
Wow such strategy.
Who gives a fuck whether the US or China win the AI race if they both burn tons of hydrocarbon to get there? Either way, the race itself will fuck the planet up worse than either victor would.
Same about all the dumb wars of conquest, Ukraine, Iran. Who gives a fuck over those lines on a map if the map itself is on fire? All the burning of oil depots, all the explosives used are all an assault on humanity itself, not just on whatever state construct.
I have a growing suspicion that this is the Great Filter. Dumb, self-important squabbles that destroy the material basis for a species' survival in an attempt to gain control instead of cooperation.
I feel like the Disneyfied ending we got instead really ruined the show for me.
Ackshually... It can be our filter, but it cannot be the Great Filter.
The Great Filter has to apply universally, to every plausible society. If even a few are cooperative hiveminds, or empires ruled by an iron fist, or... whatever else you can imagine that doesn't squabble internally... then the Filter does not apply to them, which means that their absence is still weird.
The Filter has three plausible answers, IMO: (1) Some variant of the planetarium or zoo hypothesis; (2) every advanced society, universally, decides to transcend into data centers powered by rotating black holes and stable for trillions of years, or something similarly weird; potentially also New Physics, like waste heat to mass conversion; (3) the filter is in our past and abiogenesis is a lot rarer than assumed.
I remember, around 2016, a european climate scientist saying that he had to fill up more forms and prove every experiment in the most strict way. The justification was that their conclusions could have economical repercussions. The results of their experiments were always a few years late because of that.
Welcome to the "absence of economical repercussions" world.
Turns out the whole problem was politics, not science or technology or economics.
Countries like Saudi Arabia, but also India, are currently trying to delay the next report to make it miss the 2028 deadline to lessen efforts for combatting climate change where it doesn't align with their industries.
Risks will always be underreported while targets will be optimisic, because that's safest for countries dealing in and reliant on fossil fuels.
That's why all this CO2 capture and drawdown using some kind of unspecified, new technology, is such a distraction. Ideally we shouldn't release the carbon in the first place.
But imagine your oil and gas...
One way to keep your expertise be valuable is to offer the solution to the externalities you produce. By proposing to store that externality using your drilling/rig assets. It's a win win, for the company, a loss loss for everyone else.
But that is also a false choice: Not all CO2 emissions in the past 40 years were net beneficial. I firmly believe humanity would have done better with fewer (not zero, fewer) flights, less (not zero) beef, and fewer (not zero) fossil fuel car journeys. All while continuing to raise people from poverty and providing real improvements, of course.
And sure this wouldn't have solved the entire problem, electricity generation only accounts for like 40-50% of CO2 emissions or so? But it would have made a huge difference, and allowed us to focus entirely on the other half of the problem.
And it's not "slight warming". 20,000 years ago the global average temperature was about 3 degrees celsius lower than the reference point. That was the last ice age. Today we are 1.5 degrees above the reference point, 4,5 above the ice age. In a few decades we'll be at 3 degrees above reference, 6 degrees above ice age.
The transition from ice age (-3) to the temperate climate that allowed humanity to thrive, took place over about 12,000 years. The transition from reference to +3 is taking place over about a century. And we won't stop at +3, it'll keep going. Already at 1.5 it's having huge profound effects.
Look at this chart, this should help you understand the severity of the situation. https://www.dpg-physik.de/veroeffentlichungen/publikationen/...
This is literally the end of the world as we know it. It's already well on its way. We are already seeing widespread crop failures, water scarcity, blistering heat waves, extreme weather etc. It will get much worse, this is just the beginning.
This is in my amateur opinion, an absolutely bonkers and crazy stance. I can't understand why any pro-green person would affirm this.
There are two facts, (again, imo) one - all our emission reducing efforts would maybe slow their acceleration or in other way to frame it, maybe we collectively would cut tens percents of annual emissions. We, humanity, will a always emit a lot of CO2 from the sources we can't reduce without going full stone age. Fact two - there is a lot of CO2 and other GH gas in the atmosphere now and even more would be there tomorrow. We MUST remove it somehow. Like, there are literally two components - either we remove the insulator (CO2&Co) or we remove the energy (sun rays). We can't do either of course, yet.
The more greenwashing and muddying happens, with overfocus on cutting emissions while deliberately skipping RnD on the CO2 capture or sun shield tech, the more humans will be fucked in future.
Or to provide a different analogy. We are in a completely closed system here, an oven. Turning the regulator from III to II helps of course, but the meat will eventually cook either way, unless either the power is disconnected or the insulating door is opened.
So to me, the bonkers crazy stance is "let's just continue destroying the world, and hope magic future tech will save it". Especially when the tech you're talking about it just completely obviously entirely infeasible. Add to that the fact that we are destroying the world now. The ship is currently sinking. A solution in 50 years is a solution 100 years too late.
The actual solution that we do have is nuclear power. We could have replaced all fossil fueled power production decades ago if we wanted to. That would have reduced our emissions by nearly 50% and we would have been able to put all our efforts into solving the remaining half of the problem.
As it stands right now I fully expect the world to end quite soon. Maybe within my lifetime. Unless I die early I'll definitely see +3C in like 20 years or so, and probably +4 and +5 as well if not even more than that. I'm not having children because I don't want to put someone into this world just to suffer through the end of it. I have absolutely no faith in our ability to solve climate change. I believe we could have, if the world wasn't full of corrupt rich people and stupid people voting for them. But it is what it is. We've doomed ourselves and we're watching the end unfold before our eyes while everyones like that meme with the dog in the burning house saying "this is fine".
Second - where exactly did you get a notion that CO2 capture = "let's just continue destroying the world"? Of course every other tech should be mobilized and improved too in parallel.
Third - nuclear generation at scale is as fantastical as DACs. Please read about actual issues with real life construction of plants and about actual emissions attributed to each plant cumulatively, without greenwashing like selectively ignoring whole parts of supply chain and maintenance and decommission. I love nuclear energy btw, despite literally suffered through the worst accident in their history (I'm from Kyiv) along with my whole family. We do should construct more of them and SMRs can't come quick enough.
Fourth - there is a collective delusion that moving 100% to renewable energy would cut emissions by 50% or any other similar fantasy number. In reality the whole world energy generation is only 1/4 to 1/3 of all world emissions, and course the so called "net zero" or "carbon neutral" catchphrases are greenwashing, it is impossible. A 100% world renewable generation would only cut part of that part of global emissions. So let's say renewables reduce energy emissions by 50% or maybe even 75%. So then the non-generation emissions would decrease by only 15-20% (for example Xnew = Xold * (1 - 0.25 * 0.75) = 0.8125 * Xold or 18% decrease in other words). This is what is often ignored in a green advertisements.
We need them now. We currently don't have any time left to play around. In 50 years the global average temperature will be somewhere in the 3-5C range, which is apocalyptic. We'll be too busy fighting wars over water and arable land etc, to do anything meaningful about global warming. My view is that capturing CO2 is hopeless, what we need to do instead is simply not emit the CO2 in the first place. But we aren't doing that, we're just building new coal/gas plants every year instead like a bunch of idiots. Because that's what we are. Bunch of morons who are dooming ourselves. Whatever money is earned burning a ton of coal/gas, it will cost multiple times that amount to sequester the resulting CO2.
> where exactly did you get a notion that CO2 capture = "let's just continue destroying the world"?
I view it as an excuse to continue burning fossil fuels. It's not actually a solution to the problem at all, but it's presented as a solution when the reality is that it simply will never make a dent in the actual problem. There is no money in CO2 sequestration. We have a huge amount of investment in fossil fuel extraction and power generation etc because it makes money. CO2 is worthless, the only way anyone could possibly make money capturing CO2 and pumping it into the ground is if states paid them to do it. So a much simpler solution would be to pay them to generate clean power instead. "But where would the money come from" I don't know, where will the money for CO2 sequestration come from? We can't afford to pay a little extra for clean energy but somehow magically future us will be able to pay way way way way more for CO2 sequestration? It's not going to happen.
> Third - nuclear generation at scale is as fantastical as DACs. Please read about actual issues with real life construction of plants and about actual emissions attributed to each plant cumulatively, without greenwashing like selectively ignoring whole parts of supply chain and maintenance and decommission.
Google AI: Nuclear power plants produce zero direct carbon dioxide emissions during operation. Across their full lifecycle—including uranium mining, enrichment, plant construction, and decommissioning—nuclear energy averages about 12 to 50 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt-hour (g CO2e/kWh), making it one of the lowest-carbon electricity sources available.
Solar PV: ~85 g CO2e/kWh Wind: ~26 g CO2e/kWh Hydroelectric: ~26 g CO2e/kWh Natural Gas: ~499 g CO2e/kWh Coal / Lignite: ~888 to 1,054 g CO2e/kWh
There are over 400 operational nuclear power plants in the world, the technology clearly works. Yes Chernobyl was terrible, it was caused by the dysfunctional Soviet Union political environment, it's not a fault of the technology itself. The state withheld information about a critical flaw in the reactor design. Coal kills more people in a week, than nuclear has through its entire history.
> So let's say renewables reduce energy emissions by 50% or maybe even 75%.
As you can see from the numbers I shared above, renewables cut emissions by over 95% compared to coal, 90% compared to gas.
I'm not saying we could be entirely carbon-neutral. I'm saying emissions from electricity generation specifically, which according to Google represents over 40% of CO2 emissions, could be almost entirely eliminated. Instead of 40% it could be less than 5%. From there we could work on other things such as shipping, farming etc. Maybe we'd just stop farming cows. I love beef but I'd be okay with that. Aviation could go as far as I'm concerned. I love vacationing but I'd rather have a planet that's going to continue being habitable. I could still go pretty far using trains, electric buses, my own elect...
"I lost a finger, the damage has already been done. No need saving my arm, you can go ahead and cut it".
Unless you meant "Damage has already been done, there is a lot we won't get back. And that's exactly why we should now fight to preserve what we can"?
> Unfortunately, even if we exceed and then bring temperature back to 1.5 degree over preindustrial, the damage has already been done.
We won't be able to get back to 1.5, and in fact the way it's going we're still accelerating our emissions, so it will get a lot worse.
Now, if we could get back to 1.5, it would most definitely be better than not getting back to it. So "the damage has already been done" is wrong.
If we managed to keep it at 2 instead of higher, it would most definitely be better than not keeping it at 2. So "the damage has already been done" is wrong.
If we managed to keep it at 3 instead of higher, ... you get my point.
What's happening is that we've already caused damage that will hurt, and we are now actively working towards causing more damage that will hurt more. The faster we get our shit together, the less it will hurt. There is no "it's too late, it's done". There is "it will be painful" and "it will be more painful" and "it will be a lot more painful" all the way down.
"The urgent task is to ensure that global warming remains below the 2°C threshold, with the aim of returning to 1.5°C by the end of the century."
I disagree it's impossible but I agree it is difficult, and (as I said) the damage will be done.
Nope. "damage" will be done. "The damage" implies "all of it", and that is wrong. Going back to 1.5 actually means less damage than not going back. So "the damage" is not "completely" done.
That's a different claim, but also no. Let's imagine we go 1.5 -> 2 -> 1.5 in a few decades (and keep in mind capture is more difficult, so the 2nd transition will take longer), compared to just 1.5 -> 2. In the return case, we stress all the ecosystems twice by change, rather than once. So it's not at all clear it's less damaging.
Are you just making this up?
I am not saying I have all the answers, I am just not convinced that "returning" is strictly better option.
It's not "just" that people will go to the beach more in the north during their holidays, you do realise that?
The mention to coral systems, from an ignorant perspective, seems weirdly specific to me. Kinda like "civilization will collapse and the price of sweaters will go up".
Does their disappearance have indirect consequences I'm not aware of?
Coral bleaching is also accelerated by ocean acidification. Acidification due to CO2 being absorbed into the ocean affects all marine life, but importantly, also plankton. Phytoplankton produces most of the oxygen on earth, and we kind of need that to live. It's not exactly "coral reefs are dead = oxygen depleted", but you don't get many visual representations of oceanic climate change that could threaten all mammals on earth.
Seriously now: Attempts to cut fossil fuel supply are worthless unless done en masse and in big scale - any single country doing it will just spur investment in another country. Since the world will not come to a truly binding agreement, the only thing that can be truly regulated is demand which can be regulated locally without necessarily increasing demand elsewhere.
The big new ticket is data centers, which strongly tend to use fossils due to SLAs and regulations. This can be fixed by new regulations, but only if people act now before the new approvals and builds are done.
I think one should abandon the Paris Agreement and label it as the failure as it was. However had that does not mean that green energy should be abandoned. There need to be more incentives towards green energy (see how Putin uses gas as means to amplify his genocidal activity against Ukrainians). Meaning, companies that verifiably transition towards more renewable, need to get positive incentives to go towards that and maintain it at all times. The CO2 tax should also be eliminated without compensation. And there also has to be more realism - it makes no sense to cut down an economy, producing more unemployment in the process. It has to be a cohesive unit.
This is not hyperbole. If nothing changes that's a completely realistic outcome within 50 - 100 years.
That does sound hyperbolic, FWIW.
Common people want to go to work and know that they have a working transport system, that they can walk in between a few streets and feel safe, that they can have enough money for a mortgage and to feed themselves and their families.
None of these things are exactly addressed by putting solar panels, and wind farms all around, especially when the cost of fuel keep rising. When the security of the grid on a once thought-of super-power like UK is constantly put in question.
The common people doesnt care much about these topics and explanations because they don’t have time for it, because they do still need to get on with life. It’s generally youth and retirees the ones gluing themselves to the pavement, have you noticed? whats in common in these two groups is they can both still afford to be idealists.
Then you turn on the TV and see how much damage is being done to the environment in other regions, and so, why do I need to suck it up in my jumper all winter then? Why am I the one using paper straws that break before I finish my drink?
This whole thing was always a tough sale, but it’s gotten even harder in the current political climate.
Even in America and among Republicans there's support for using less plastic straws and unless there's some extremely unexpected overlaps in opinion it basically means the only people who think it's a bad move also don't care about climate change seperate from the straw issue.
This problem starts and ends with corporations and government regulations. It’s barely worth it to talk to people about it right now. Maybe in 10 years when things are a bit more on fire and people are more willing to listen.
That's what we have been relying on for the last forty years and we still have an issue.
Corporations respond to demand. If someone is willing to buy a barrel of oil to burn then you can be sure you will find someone else to pull it out of the ground for them.
Of course companies respond to demand. That’s why we need governments with militaries to give them a second consideration to respond to.
This is on corporations. They use millions upon millions of gallons of water, they use entire cities-worth of electricity, and they break environmental regulations with wanton disregard.
This idea that personal responsibility is standing between us and a clean planet is also, by the way, a primary strategy of these criminals.
On the contrary in fact, I think a lot of people have decided to do something that will have a tremendously positive impact on the climate in the future: they've chosen not to have children. There will be downsides to that decision, but as far as climate goes it's by far the most impactful thing anyone can do.
But yeah without her, definitely.
That's not what I said. People are choosing not to have children for lots of reasons. One of the benefits is that they end up having much less impact on the climate; that's not saying it's the reason they're doing it.
If humans were not here there won’t be a concept of climate to even care about.
We only do it for ourselves. Not for the plants or animals.
Likewise, the climate crisis is far more likely to be solved by WW3 reducing the population down to ~1B than by individual per capita reductions.
The question is each of us needs to answer around having kids is firstly about whether or not you want to raise them in the world we live in, and secondly about whether you want (or care) that your children live in a world where the climate is broken, and having to deal with the resource issues, heat, wars over liveable land, etc. Heck, I'm sure plenty of people on HN are under 30 - there's every chance that they'll be around to see these problems first hand.
People who do want to have children are arguably very fortunate that there are lots of people who don't. The children who are born with have to deal with less contention for resources. That said though, they're still in for a pretty bad time by all accounts. Even if technology magically fixes everything, you still have to wonder if your kids will be in the part of society that can afford it.
The only judgement I make is people who have children and have no regard for the environment. I think those people are risking their children's long term welfare. That's a dick move. If you have kids you have a moral obligation to try to make sure the planet they live on in adulthood isn't fucked.
It is more likely that children are inconvenient to the lifestyles people want to lead. That is more consistent with how bad people are at long-term planning.
Don't want to nitpick but this touches on a topic I think worth discussing. I feel that for many people, investments in green energy are a needless sacrifice we do for the sake of the environment (and a naive sacrifice at that since other countries can just keep on emitting their greenhouse gases anyway). It follows, since we invest in green this must have its costs elsewhere like in higher gas prices and obviously then people ask -- why should we keep doing this when we are hit with economic downturn?
But really green energy is all about the unaccounted for future costs. We can burn fossil fuels now but we are going to be in a whole lot of trouble when they become more expensive and dealing with their side effects (climate change) will become expensive as well. Green energy is a solution - you don't need to care about high fuel prices and what happens in Middle East if you can get all energy from the sun and wind.
For many/most countries, investing in renewables is the best, cheapest and fastest way to move in that direction.
I don't know why should a childless person give a damn about the future beyond their own lifespan. I think most of them don't, in their heart of hearts, and that's the only logical stance.
Pretty wild thing to say. I assure you that almost every childless person cares about someone or something, and would like to protect it.
how much do they care about the hardships of currently existing strangers, beyond sending thoughts and prayers on reddit?
Regarding children and selfishness: some of the most selfish people I know have kids. They're selfish in the sense that they only care about their family, even to the detriment of everyone else.
Because some people said that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is bad, and that our political leaders should support Ukraine?
Might be time to turn off your devices and go touch some grass. It doesn't seem like you're in a good head space to be worrying about global politics right now.
but I'm talking about living without heating or cooling, subsisting on gruel, owning nothing und being happy, and all the other thing the young global leaders insist we must do to save the planet. and I don't think it's fair to ask that of people who have no reason to care what happens in 100 years.
The red herring, paper straws, why mention that? It is just some shit that is created to keep ”common people” distracted from the real problem.
And while others have pointed out that plastic straw bans are not about climate change, I suspect many people think they are, lumping together “climate change”, “the environment”, and “pollution” into a monolithic thing. “I’m doing my part” with a plastic straw then as they eat beef, drive an SUV, and fly to vacation (disclaimer I do some of those things).
[0] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/just-bury-your-trash
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licensing
Is China going woke and then broke on recycling? Or like renewables and EVs did they put engineers in charge and not Libertarians who irrationally hate all government programs?
https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/articles/chinas-cir...
But I agree that typical plastic recycling is inefficient.
As you say it's not really about climate change as such, the problem is climate change becomes an omni-cause grouping pollution, waste management, biodiversity loss, etc. We end up being tarred with the same brush. A reasonable person should feel free to disavow the straw ban since it doesn't achieve its aims and is a distraction from real problems.
The campaign was started by a 9 year old[1] using an estimate that was roughly 2-3 times too high and fed by an unsourced claim[2] around the amount of plastic straws on beaches. As you say it becomes a cultural signifier of effort while achieving basically nothing. And this takes away so much energy around the broader issue of single-use plastics and ocean plastic pollution. Both of these are better served by advocating for domestic landfills rather than the current practice of dumping the plastic waste on 3rd countries.
[0]: yes some disabled people need to use straws as adults
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/22/631254978/one-childs-outsized...
[2]: https://apnews.com/article/c1b6f8666138441d9af6054d8c096086
Less than like 7% of plastics get recycled and basically all of that comes from industrial sources, not our homes.
The best thing you can do with plastic is use less of it and throw it in the trash. This tells you it is garbage and not going off to some magical facility to get recycled.
Also, keeping plastic in the environment by using it in building materials/fake grasses is a microplastics nightmare. We need to be removing plastic from the environment, not putting more out there.
If resources are scarce, people automatically start rationing. I lived in third world developing county for 30 years. There were many times when I had running water available for 1 hour a day and electricity available for 12 hours a day. So I did what I had to do and saved the climate.
In the West obviously you can't cut off water and electricity. So they impose taxes and such to create artificial scarcity. Like $1.5 gas tax is California forces people to go electric or take public transportation (not).
The problem is some "people" with more money, resources and influence game the system and do multiplicatively more damage. These are called corporations.
I'm not entirely sure what definition of "common folk" we're using here but it's my experience that most people can understand climate change but that it's difficult to do anything while there are billions of dollars moving in favour of fossil fuels, unregulated shipping, the meat industry etc. Some of these comments are really surprising. There's a lot of criticism here for "environmentalists" and paper straws, but very little criticism for the groups that actively maintain the status quo.
Hilarious compared to what exactly lmao? The US? China? Russia? TYhE GlObAl SoUtH? OPEC?
The world is a giant school playground where the bullies in charge are competing for #1 position on the goober eating contest while the school is burning
That does not make climate change any less of an emergency, but it limits politically feasible countermeasures a lot.
But if it is a real emergency, surely we would just want any EVs we can get, to encourage building out the infrastructure for them.
You want to destroy the automotive industry in Europe so we can increase dependance on Chinese EVs?
Europe's car manufacturers need to get their shit together, but not being able to buy any car whatsoever the moment China gets their own Donald Trump is worse than cars being slightly worse and a bit more expensive for a while.
The problem is China burns coal for power on crazy scale, destroying the planet in the process.
You don't think that might account for some of their low cost of production?
China subsidizes residential power, whereas the U.S. discounts industrial power.
Industrial rates
-----------------------------------
Electricity prices for businesses amounted to 11.6 cents per kilowatt-hour on the U.S. dollar in China in April 2026.
The national average retail electricity price for the U.S. industrial sector is 9.77 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) as of July 2026
------------------------------------
Consumer rates
------------------------------------
Average consumer electricity rates in China stand at approximately 0.52 to 0.55 CNY per kWh (around $0.078 to $0.080 USD per kWh)
The average U.S. residential electricity rate is approximately 19.6 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) as of mid-to-late 2026
-------------------------------------
China's EV's are cheaper because of vertical integration, dark factories, and razor thin profit margins
Yes chinese factories are a LOT more automated than Tesla
Elon Musk :excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake... humans are underrated
None of Tesla's production lines can compare to the below video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGF1Zwa7324
And attacking them for burning coal is dumb, China burns coal because they have nothing else.
The US burns gas, because the US produces massive amounts of it as a byproduct of oil, there are a limited number of NG pipelines and LNG tankers and they cannot export all the gaas produced from oil drilling. SO they dump this natural gas into regional pipelines sometimes for near zero prices.
A business building EV's in the US would pay less for electricity than a business in China
What is bad, is a the lack of a coherent and realistic green programs and climate forecasts in EU as a whole. There are no incentive programs to switch to expensive one time EV purchases and charger installations (I tried to research what what would it cost to install a personal charger in my freshly constructed 2024 apartment building parking in a big city, the AI app called me a fool, well almost(1)). There are no coherent plans to expand charging networks at a state or union levels.
There solar panels, V2G, B2G, multizone electricity meters, dynamic tariffs, incentives, all are either non-existent or very spotty and organized at local levels.
There are no union wide help to transition from coal, oil, gas to relatively greener energy.
No re-foresation incentives and little to no marine protection.
No preparation for a real 3C temperature hike by the year 2100, instead the fantasy 1.5C or 2C numbers are reiterated and the populace is lulled into thinking all will be well for their kids.
I can continue the list, but the picture is of incompetence and apathy really. A few token and inconsequential efforts are done, just enough for re-elections, and that's it.
1: "This is the classic "pioneer dilemma" discussed on Polish forums. If you pay the 3,000 PLN because you are the first, and next year Neighbor B and Neighbor C get EVs, it is deeply unfair for you to keep subsidizing the overall risk profile. To protect yourself, you must not sign a contract that binds you to a flat fee indefinitely." (c) generated by AI
So yes, I do currently think that the reality of life is that certain whole societies are in the given moment (now) more progressive than others. Or do you believe that some BRICS pseudo-union would collectively push for more green tech than EU is doing now (even though EU foreign policy actions are mostly impotent)?
Sure, maybe China will eventually take a lead in green tech policies, or maybe it even already did, though I'm not convinced so far. As soon as that happens visibly,I would gladly change my opinion and would advocate that now EU should follow more progressive lead (as long as Xi don't start WW3 for some "dvizhukha" like other demented autocrats did).
PS: and don't attribute to me stuff I didn't say, like this "we can export our Lovely Eco Friendly Culture more, the more we power it with coal and oil and gas."(c)
Even the Greens party in Australia is more interested in social issues than environment.
One difficulty you will encounter when looking into the effects of climate change is that you can't generally attribute individual events to it (or very rarely at least). Its effects are only really visible in more general (abstract) statistical measures (Just like me losing a coin flip doesn't mean the coin is weighted, but when i lose 8 out of 10 flips i will start getting suspicious)
Compare it to https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-use-per-person-vs-... where there is strong evidence that using more energy directly leads to more prosperity. We've got much better chances to do well if we stick to using the cheapest available energy. Then people can just build over the top of any disasters that strike.
Pacific islands failed to sink. Hurricanes failed to become more frequent. Fewer people died due to cold temperatures (which kill far more people than hot temperatures).
> The planet is greener, even the Sahara is shrinking
The UK was baked brown in the heat and it was so bad it was visible by satellite, we had uncharacteristic wildfires all summer. Google has literally no idea what you're talking about by claiming the Sahara is shrinking, the best I can find is "maybe the expansion is slowing?"
> The Great Coral Reef has just had its best 5 years ever.
Apparently it had its most devastating coral bleaching event just 2 years ago, so I'm not sure this is true?
> On average, crops produce more due to higher CO2 levels.
I mean, yeah if you are into the average crop? People tend to like stuff like corn and coffee which are threatened by raised heat levels. With current heat levels we're projected to lose upwards of 1/5th the corn harvest by 2030.
> Pacific islands failed to sink.
I mean some of them did, like a decade ago, just none of the ones you care about.
> Hurricanes failed to become more frequent
Same frequency but wind force increases by water temperature, so a cat 1 hurricane like Rafael ends up a cat 3 hurricane due to climate change. I am seeing a pattern with your selective presentation of the facts.
> Fewer people died due to cold temperatures
Is that not because a large share of the world's old were taken out by COVID within the last 6 years? That is the group most likely to die to cold.
And it's largely recovered [1]
> With current heat levels we're projected to lose upwards of 1/5th the corn harvest by 2030.
Who is projecting that? Globally we're producing 8% more corn YoY [2]. Do you expect all of the sudden in the next 5 years for 20% of that to vanish?
> I mean some of them did, like a decade ago
Which ones specifically? The Maldives, Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands all still exist, and some have experienced growth [3]
> That is the group most likely to die to cold.
I think you're arguing against yourself here. Fewer people died from extreme cold because of climate change and higher average temperatures.
[1] https://www.aims.gov.au/monitoring-great-barrier-reef/gbr-co... [2] https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/production/0440000 [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02954-1
It looks like you've done exactly what the other commenter did, googled some keywords and then posted links you didn't read.
> Which ones specifically? The Maldives, Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands all still exist, and some have experienced growth [3]
Solomon Islands, have fun learning.
I encourage you to take your own advice and actually read the links to get a full picture of the available science and data. Climate change is real and a serious problem, but not every single thing you are fed by your algorithms is the ground truth. Nitpicking one example and ignoring the entire body of science is just as dishonest as folks who deny climate change.
Here's a paper you can read and not just dismiss as something that I didn't read [1]. Some islands will vanish, some will grow, it's not as simple as everything is doomed everywhere. Have fun reading :)
> This record comprises 568 islands from 42 atolls spanning the western to the central Pacific Ocean from the Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Kiribati and Tuvalu, and is one of the first robust attempts to statistically attribute the drivers of observed island changes within the past half-century. Our analyses demonstrate that island change and a range of its potential controls, including oceanographic, climatic and local-scale morphometric characteristics of reefs and islands, are not correlated, underscoring that no single variable could predict a uniform response across the study islands. The lack of association between sea-level rise and shoreline change on this large sample of islands addresses the common notion of a linear relationship between rising sea levels and magnitude of erosion in reef island systems.
> Analysis of 568 islands across the Pacific indicates that most islands have exhibited significant morphological changes over the timescale of analysis (1944–2018). Accretion was observed on 39% of transects, while 27% of transects showed erosion. Aggregated at the island scale, the balance of erosional and accretionary changes indicates a predominance of accretion on islands, with an average shoreline change of 0.51 m/decade resulting in a net expansion of 444.63 ha (~ 2.25%) of land area.
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10113-023-02103-5
That may well kill more people than climate change. Hard to tell as both have the potential to spiral out into a variety of intertwining tragedies.
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/19/unpreced...
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1...
For example.
Technically most of everything else is weather, not climate, do you want a list of bad weather events?
In Belgium alone 665 people died in June's extreme heatwave that would otherwise still be alive. This is not even just old people. Other European countries have similar numbers.
Europe's inland waterways have extremely low water levels because of climate change related drought. Mainly the Rhine, which is a very important transport route. Ships can't load as much, meaning goods can be delivered at a slower pace. This causes enormous economic damage.
Not only droughts are a problem, but floods as well. In the past few years we've already seen large scale floods necessitating people to flee their homes
For the argument to work it must be that climate change causes more extremes on both sides. It's difficult to look at the evidence through an objective lens, but whenever I've looked it seems like warming the earth by a few degrees is most likely to save lives overall. There are of course other unknowns and it it's a very risky experiment to run.
And full report: https://wedocs.unep.org/rest/api/core/bitstreams/8819b586-8d...
And, yes, technologyy may "save us", but there are many different definitions of what that will look that ... some may be horrendous for the majority, but none of them will inconvenience those making the most significant decisions.
Personally, I think it's time for some metaphorical guillotines to change our current directon.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/best-source-protein-tofu
The original source https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-system... links betterproteininstitute.com which then links https://www.betterproteininstitute.com/_files/ugd/7be592_a59...
The emissions for lamb/pork/beef are terrible, beef looks an order of magnitude worse than the rest. The top 10 or so are fairly similar in comparison. Chicken isn't bad comparatively, but tofu still looks a decent bit better.
Anecdotally, my sister in law has been vegetarian for over a decade and just recently been diagnosed with anemia.
Also your sister in law hasn't been well informed - it's a known fact that vegetarian diets have less iron in them, and women especially should take an iron supplement because of menstruation combined with the diet. But it's just one pill.
Plant provide, but less efficiently: iron, zinc, choline, calcium (some tofu provides, but depends on coagulant used), iodine.
On the flip side, plants provide fiber and numerous phytochemicals that meat, fish, and eggs lack.
Irrelevant amounts come from diet, adequate amounts come from sun exposure. Everyone should be supplementing this.
>Taurine, creatine, Carnosine
Irrelevant, synthesized by the human body.
>Retinol
Best consumed from carrots, sweet potatoes, etc. Only relevant animal source is organ meat (liver), which most people aren't consuming.
>B12
Even meat lovers get deficient on this, dietary intakes are usually inadequate. My mother and sister are rabid meat eaters and supplement it, everyone who has the means to should.
If you're honest to yourself, you'll notice that plant-based nutrition is not a sustainable way to feed billions of humans on this planet, because those billions of people would rather destroy the world than have some vegans enforce their morality on them while enjoying a lifestyle that consumes orders of magnitude more energy than some third world subsistence farmer's chickens.
Growing soy crop to feed the animals that are then fed to humans is simply unoptimized, you can just grow soy crop for humans to eat and get rid of magnitudes of pollution. That is a fact.
But this is ignoring my point: if you go to the billions of people in the developing world and tell them they're going to have to switch their diets to soylent green because we, the first world, emitted too much CO2", they will rightfully tell you to fuck off.
Your other point is likely true, but I never said anything to that extent, and most importantly the point does not validate the claims "Humans are designed to eat meat." and "Soy crop is shit for humans." that CrimsonRain made. So, no studies?
I’m not even vegan but why drag any morality into it? Plant-based food is less co2 intensive to produce. It’s not a controversial statement. Planet is heating up, also a fact. I get it that it feels bad but lashing out at vegans is not productive. Meat eaters (like me) should have the decency to at least shut up. Own your choices.
I once had to work on a project where my employer signed a contract with a client to have *no bugs* in the delivered software. The massive burnout that resulted in trying to accomplish that ideal taught me to prioritize practicality over idealism.
Don't forget that the developed world is falling over itself to bring in never-ending waves of people who normally would have far smaller carbon footprints if they just stayed where they were. It's hard for me to take serious any climate proposal that doesn't at least acknowledge this basic fact.
"But we need them, what about population decline in developed countries?" Yes, what about it? That also lowers carbon emissions.
Instead the pitch seems to be "look, we need infinity third worlders, you're just gonna have to do your part and stop eating beef or driving a car. And pay carbon taxes." Gee, why are people so up in arms over all this climate stuff?
LOL, yeah that's gone over real well in the US.
> is a policy decision pushed by climate activists?
No, but there is a significant overlap between climate activists and "we need more immigrants, and definitely leave those illegal ones alone" activists. And more to your point, have there BEEN any climate activists sounding the alarm over mass migration?
It has, actually. You don't need to really deport them, if they're in a position where you can threaten them it's enough:
https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research-and-impact/news/protect-u...
https://www.oig.dol.gov/public/Press%20Releases/Owner%20of%2...
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/two-cartersville-men-an...
>And more to your point, have there BEEN any climate activists sounding the alarm over mass migration?
What's "my point" here? That a rightoid moral panic bait topic is less important than the rapid poisoning of the atmosphere that's pushing the planet into unlivable conditions?
My point was actually just pointing out that your scenario where the birth rate goes down and the population "just shrinks" is not interesting to your ruling class, which is why it doesn't happen. Its also why it pushes tradwife psyops and other birth rate and "race replacement" panic bullshit.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221214-what-is-the-lowe...
Compared to chicken breast it's about 2.87x less impactful, but the real offender is beef, which has 25x the footprint of tofu.
Overall we really just need to get rid of beef. On an annual basis the carbon footprint of the respective protein sources is:
-tofu - less than 500kg
-chicken - less than 1250kg
-beef - over 10 tonnes
Mix one part peas with two parts chicken and you're around a tonne - a reasonable amount without having to even touch tofu.
you don't even have to get rid of it, even consuming less beef has significant impacts.
Your numbers for chickens only work if we keep them in the absolute worst conditions for life, jamming them into tight spaces so their carbon footprint is similar to tofu.
JUST EAT THE FUCKING TOFU.
The people doing it don't care that the HOA (so us) pays a fine for each item and that we were already warned that there will be a doubling or quadrupling of the waste disposal fees. I can ask politely and sometimes it works, but ultimately I can't tell them what to do.
I don't really like tofu and I don't share your values, so I think I'll continue eating chicken breast - just sourced from a place that meets certain standards, as usual.
I don't believe in individual action and regarding eating animals I draw the line at those which don't readily breed in captivity - octopuses for instance.
Realistically the only thing we'd be able to convince people to do is to eat less beef, but you're never going to be able to convince the population to switch over to tofu
Buuuut people are different, and I could be an outlier. I just think there's more propaganda to it than people realize, especially currently with fitness influencers boosting meat consumption.
Or our annual choices - a transatlantic flight is 1000kg vs a steak which looks to be more like 20kg (depending on your source).
A hundred axes we can spin on
I know people that do like 4 transatlantic trips per year and eat meat for every single dish.
Convincing them to reduce their impact would have waaaay more effect than lecturing someone that already travels by bike/train and eats vegetarian diet.