I've already suggested in another thread that any 'solution' to global warming that doesn't involve mass genocide will be too slow to have any effect.
Even sterilization might not be quick enough.
Obviously, neither is acceptable from a humanist perspective.
Actually, now that I've read your comment closer, I noticed you mentioned serialization. Do you mean digitizing people's minds and killing them afterwards?
It is only solved if you are lucky enough to have suitable geography and a stable and wealthy enough government to support it, and are willing to irrevocably damage large ecological areas to build it. That solution isn't good enough to convert the entire world.
You're much more likely to see famine, mass migration, and global war than any of those things. The only engineering problem currently worthy of a moonshot-level effort is putting all the carbon back into the ground. If we don't do that, none of those other things you mentioned are going to happen.
The bigger trouble is going to be convincing people who want to deliberately accelerate climate change, either because it will hurt the people they hate, or can be used as casus belli for the next resource war. "The problem is too many people, luckily we have a solution!" and other horrifying shit like that.
A bunch of people here are getting into the technological solutions to this problem, but I really think the even bigger challenge is the social/cultural barriers to implementing even a proven technology.
The most effective way to attenuate global warming and a number of other problems would be rapid global population reduction. Obviously this solution is not morally or politically practical.
‘Overshoot’ occurs when humanity consumes bio-resources faster than ecosystems can regenerate and waste production exceeds nature’s assimilative capacity. Overshoot is a meta-problem: climate change; plunging biodiversity; pollution of land, air and waters; tropical deforestation; soil/land degradation etc., etc., are all co-symptoms of overshoot. Climate change is an excess waste problem — CO2 is the greatest waste by weight of modern techno-industrial economies. We cannot solve any major symptom of overshoot in isolation. Indeed, the mainstream approach to emissions reductions will not only fail to subdue climate change but, by promoting material growth, will exacerbate overshoot (https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-10-29/cop-26-stoppin...).
Almost everything we undertake follows a pattern resembling a hockey stick (https://futureearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/great_acc...), growing exponentially long after we've already surpassed safe boundaries. This has been happening for several decades now, at least since 1970. The carrying capacity of our environment has been deteriorating for decades, and recently, the rate of its decline has escalated. It is on the verge of entering free fall, if it hasn't already (nicely explained here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPb_0JZ6-Rc ).
We should have stopped using fossil fuels yesterday and started changing our diets, reforming agriculture, reforesting, restoring habitats and biodiversity, reforming financial systems, promoting degrowth and implementing UBI to address inequality, etc., etc. Many things need to be done urgently to halt the environmental crisis. Unfortunately, we are not even making significant progress on the changes we have announced.
We are acting too late, our efforts are insufficient. Nobody's truly in charge. COP is a farce, the IPCC has been bought by interest groups. Politicians are not taking decisive action, economic growth remains an obsession.
We are driving towards the cliff at full speed, with nobody at the brakes.
Taking care of all of the causes is not enough to fix the problem of climate change. If we hit net zero today, it would still continue to warm for decades, which means more deforestation and desertification through fires. Your proposal is far too conservative to avert disaster.
Mass suicides or nuking half the world's population would probably slow climate change too, but for some reason none of those is considered a reasonable solution.
Well, yeah, there is also the chance that we don't solve it at all. I just don't think you can design a political solution to this. Other than mass killings and I'm not for that at all.
We have to develop technologies that improve our efficiencies and reduce our emissions.
There could really come a point when the US and other countries truly makes this their primary global policy priority, and both make the sacrifices themselves and applies what pressure they have on others to make this happen.
My "nuclear attack" option is a caricatured and unrealistic version of this, but a humbler version can certainly happen.
Though the problem with these things is that we're talking about a Public Good. In the strict economic sense: I should do something that's bad for me, but good for everybody. These things strongly tend not to get done unless someone is forcing it done.
Which leads us to a world government. Which actually scares me a lot more than global warming!
We could stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow and it would already be a continuing problem. The only savior here is both transitioning to green energy and geoengineering.
Taking off my devil's advocate hat (horns?)... I agree. Even if we use that logic to punt some problems to AGI -- e.g. solve near-light speed travel, or space-based solar power -- we cannot afford to sit idly by while climate change destroys the planet.
It's a lot bigger of an issue than merely the climate crisis. Regarding trying to prevent it (and related issues), we would not only needed to have started 50+ years ago (when it was already clear what was happening), but the incentives in our economic system just do not work in such a way to allow for all the capitalist decision makers to all collectively stop turning a profit. The system is somewhat like rolling a boulder up a hill, it must continuously push it up, or the boulder will roll back down, a little, or all the way. Once growth becomes imposssible/infeasible due to resource limitations, this will happen eventually anyway. But if the machine stops churning, it will simply happen sooner.
Regarding the various aspects of the unsustainability of our society and how it is reaching its limits, this wiki subsection is a very good read (and the rest of the wiki page as well, separated into concrete sections, and links to lots of source materials):
The only way to stop this catastrophe is global population reduction and consumption limitations.
Nothing so far. No effort by anyone has flattened the curve. CO2, CH4, SF6, and N20 are all consistently growing linearly with human consumption.
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
We have to do everything possible to flatten the curve and that will take sacrifice and changes today.
Problem I see is not climate change really. Real problem is not that we have problems, but the fact that we create problems. Unless human society transform into a more reactive structure, we will generate new problems or stand short in reacting naturally generated ones.
And one of those problems will see the end of us if not climate change. It is much like playing Russian roulette in the risk of extinction. We just may avert the climate change but some next problem will be our bullet.
The primary problem is that even attempting it would bring on global catastrophe just that much faster.
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