I'm not replying because I have a solution, but I think what will have to happen at this point is something so catastrophic that we all have to take a collective step back and decide if greed-based economics is right. Lockdowns during Covid enabled us to step back and decide that commuting to a dungeon of an office isn't worth it anymore, and companies are fighting this change tooth and nail. And that's just one tiny aspect of how we live in the West.
For us to get off this mindless hamster wheel of greed, some sort of climate catastrophe has to happen. Something like The Day After Tomorrow will have to affect the world for people to finally sit up and say, wow we let greedy corporations destroy the world we live in. Let's not live like this anymore.
I hate how cynical this sounds but I agree with you - I don't see a positive way out of this anymore.
Our collective global response to climate change is going to be the same as our collective global response to COVID-19: wealthy people will help themselves and leave the rest of us to die in the lurch. I've lost hope in our species to solve global problems, we're just too selfish to survive.
I feel the same. The coronavirus pandemic pandemic felt like the final nail in the coffin of my optimism. Humanity’s collective response or lack thereof was on full display and if that was the best we could do when faced with an immediate and dire threat to our way of life then I’m in need of serious convincing that something like the climate crisis which is already here and quantifiably guaranteed [1] to occur in the future as we can’t simply reverse the process on a dime like we did with a vaccine when it came to the virus.
> That price — more vicious heat waves, longer wildfire seasons, rising sea levels — is now irretrievably baked in. Nations, including the United States, have dithered so long in cutting emissions that progressively more global warming is assured for decades to come, even if efforts to shift away from fossil fuels were accelerated tomorrow.
The only way to get out of this situation is a green dictatorship. It's the least painful solution. Democracy and freedom are great things, but consumerism abused them, and it's leading everyone to their own destruction. I'm tired to end discussions with "but you cannot confiscate things from people, it's against basic human rights". Ignorance and failure to listen to reason are very dangerous.
I want to hope people will adjust deliberately, but advertising has too much power over people. I cannot let myself gamble with the idea that humanity will be courageous enough to avoid destruction of this scale. The stakes are too high.
History always worked like this. It's a collection of new lessons that adjust the collective consciousness.
The future will progressively look like some Hollywood dystopia, until something will break politically, but it will be too late. Don't forget that the new deadline is the melting permafrost, which will snowball climate change into something that will make temperature rise much faster.
I completely agree with you; but it’s because this is what “the collapse” looks like. A long, slow decline into a world that most of us cannot afford. I honestly don’t think there’s much we can do to stop it at this point; it’s the result of 100 years of energy policy keeping prices artificially low by ignoring the externalities that causes.
I don’t think we’re ever going back to the pre-pandemic past. Climate change is simply becoming too disruptive to supply chain networks. This probably would have happened anyway, the pandemic just moved it up by 5-10 years.
I feel the hour is later we imagine. What we need is billionaires of the world to use their $ to drastically overthrow the major economies and stop CO2 production by any means. Its better the world goes into deep economic collapse than become unbearable for most life.
This paints a very bleak picture and as others have expressed, I see little hope that this will be addressed.
It's clear that the economy (companies) will not take action because they're completely disincentivized to do so... And even if a single company were to try, it'd get outcompeted on the market, and would eventually have to stop.
Academia clearly is aware of the issue, but lacks the connections, reach, or credibility to really turn attention to it.
Governments and politicians are concerned only with the current or next election cycle, and beyond that this would be an extremely unpopular topic to talk about: nobody wants to know or hear that their comforts have to be taken away for any reason, or that the world is going to end.
Further, none of the above would even be sufficient, as this would require global consensus and action to feasibly mitigate.
I used to think this way. Then I realized how many truly greedy and completely selfish people are living among us, and it's more than half. At that point, I gave up and joined the masses. The only way to fix it is to incentivize technology improvements and create government policy structure to assault climate change from the top down. And that won't get major until the problems become so evident that almost nobody can deny it. The future is bleak and it's hard to see where the good real estate of the future will be.
I feel like at this point it is a political and capitalism problem. We could start impacting global temperature within a week if we actually wanted to fix the issue[1], but a number of industries whose business models basically guarantee they will contribute to climate change won't permit that. Those same companies then lobby congress, etc.
If we had the scenario where we told world governments and corporations that the tipping point of no return is in one month, and if we don't do anything the planet is dead in 50 years, what could we do? If we said (just making these up): 1) limit flights to weekdays; 2) limit cruise ships [2]; 3) companies must allow remote work to reduce commutes. (I'm sure someone can and will come up with better examples). Can you imagine the blowback from airlines, etc? I imagine they will find some way to justify not participating, even though it literally means the death of the planet.
We have the technology and the know-how, it just isn't stronger than the pathological greed of corporations.
After seeing the global chaotic response to COVID I'm convinced that climate change will not receive a meaningful response until it is way too late. It apparently needs to hit the majority of the planet right in the gut (and then preferably the wealthy part) for people to get off their collective asses and do something about it.
I'm just about ready to pack it in and hope the next generation is smarter than this one because we sure messed it up. We'll go into the history books as the people that could have fixed it but didn't because we were too busy with our lifestyle.
You recognize the real problem. It's the incentives and time horizon that dooms us. It has never been the case that we don't have a solution. There is always a technical solution but it does not matter. We had several solutions decades ago, we have several solutions now, we have even more in the future.
Our incentive structure means that we can only modulate the intensity of hell for the future generations with our electric cars, next 30-50 years is already locked in.
We are not willing to invest enough. Economic analysis puts the current cost of timely and sufficient corrective action around 0.5 to 1 percent of global GDP. That would be a real cost and money out of other things. Even concerned voters don't want to hear that. They want to hear green jobs and green growth. You can't sell actions as a net cost and sacrifice.
When the effects really hit it's too late. The idea that people take an action when it really hurts does not apply to climate change. If the global GDP stats decrease and we are constantly in recession and conflicts survival values take precedence. Investments go to military, food security and welfare and climate actions get little or no attention. Many developed countries will be at least 'okayish'. If the price of wheat and rice increases 500% they still make it. It's the others who die. We could develop carbon capture and suck the CO2 out of air but nobody wants to invest trillions into something extra that has noticeable effect 30-40 years from now when there is constant downturn.
This phenomenon is curious, in a morbid sort of way. There is literally no way to stop it; we are, as Noam Chomsky fears, a lethal mutation. We developed the ability to create industrial and economic activity on such a scale, and with such sophistication, that we've overcome the planet's ability to cope, but we have no mechanism in place that seems remotely capable of remedying that situation without a global catastrophe of unimaginable scale.
There are no brakes. There's nothing you can say to any leader, politician, or pleb that can shock them into action. CO2 at 400+ ppm? Shrug. Global temperature rise nearing the acceptable limit for 100 years from now happening in much less than half that time? Shrug. Permafrost melting 70 years ahead of schedule? Yawn.
Not only is there no system in place that can fix this now, no system can arise that would have any hope of slowing it, or even slowing its acceleration. Get used to it. This isn't a movie. There are no heroes. You're all dead. And you have no idea.
I am not sure crashing the economy is a viable solution.
I say this because what I learned so far is that is people will start being cold and hungry then they will focus on immediate needs and that will make sure that no money will be spent on solving climate change. This is a natural instinct: you cannot think about the future if your current situation is suffering.
there's no way forward regarding global warming with the current US insitution of leadership, comprised of both major parties. they've got to be removed for the most optimal response to climate change, but doing so will be ghastly.
that's why i've started hunting for CCS solutions/companies to invest in/ways to start a company to leverage CCS for profit. we're going to need a massive mop to clean up the mess the baby boomers are still insisting on making worse.
Another perspective: humanity's biggest problem is our inability to understand the exponential function [1].
As for climate change, the only way that ends is after massive death and destruction or due to economics (specifically: carbon emission sources get replaced because they're cheaper). It's too large, expensive and long-term for people to care otherwise. The pandemic should've dispelled any notions you may have had about humanity not being staggeringly selfish.
The social and political disasters are more solvable. The world powers (and the US in particular) need to stop screwing with the rest of the world purely for their material gain.
The US loves to sanction, incite a revolution or just outright invade any country that even talks about (let alone actually) nationalizes natural resources [2]. Cuba and Venezuela spring to mind. In Ecuador after Chevron caused massive environmental damage and the government secured a $9.5 billion judgement, the US reacted by empowering an oil law firm to criminally prosecute the US lawyer (Steven Donziger) for fraud in the US [3].
And from what I’ve seen, people don’t mind being fucked tomorrow as long as they’re OK today. Even better if they can be OK-ish tomorrow as long as somebody else gets fucked worse.
Do you really truly believe that there’s going to be a magic climate change solution that allows the developed world to continue living the way it has?
The last 1.5 years has shown humans are just too tribal to come to a consensus on something as obvious as COVID. There is zero chance we are going to all agree on climate change. Most companies and politicians think in short term intervals because of the systems we have devised.
It seems to be that the most obvious solutions will be make amazing technology and make it as cheap or cheaper than the dirty competitors -- eventually, even the people that dont believe in climate change will be driving EVs, have solar panels on their roofs, and eating fake meat.
Also, we should all be hoping there are some breakthroughs in nuclear (cheaper + safer reactors that leads to less regulation and allow nuclear to be more ubiquitous )
Market-based solutions for the climate crisis have failed and are too slow to address the issue, all current oil reserves should be immediately valued at zero dollars. Many governments have been completely captured and are not working towards humanity’s long term survival.
State of emergency should be declared with full mobilization (ie total war economy) towards addressing the climate crisis, that’s the only way out while there’s still time.
To pay for it, the usual tools nation-states have employed at times of war: devaluing currency, high income taxes (90% bracket) and disappropriation of non-productive wealth, etc. Other similar crises have happened and solved in this way.
It is possible to do with democratic feedback so no one stays behind and we come out of it with a more just society.
Surely most here have seen and read enough dystopian sci-fi to understand how bad it can get before the wealthy & powerful feel the pain or are encouraged to do anything about it.
I don’t expect this situation to change until it’s more profitable to do the right thing. Capitalism + game theory all the way down. Unfortunately, the governments that can make a dent in this are heavily lobbied by the same industries they’d be changing the economics of, so what we get is misinformation campaigns (“cOnGReSs cReAtED DuSt bOwL” signs all down I5) and large-scale inaction + pleading with the public to just install lower-flow shower heads and only water plants 1x/week.
I grow food in my own backyard in pots and I’m going to keep those alive. Trying to turn the desert green in Central Valley CA just because some people moved there a few generations ago and took advantage of the infrastructure situation isn’t a tenable solution. There’s so much green open space out east that I really don’t buy the “but then where would food come from?” arguments either. People built up in the wrong place. Now it’s a crisis. It’ll take years / decades to build up supply chains and infra in other places; I get that, but if we just keep kicking the can down the road we’re just screwing our selves more and more each year. Time to rip the bandaid off and pass realistic prices down to industrial users and force a mass exodus of that industry to places where it makes a lot more sense to farm.
For us to get off this mindless hamster wheel of greed, some sort of climate catastrophe has to happen. Something like The Day After Tomorrow will have to affect the world for people to finally sit up and say, wow we let greedy corporations destroy the world we live in. Let's not live like this anymore.
I hate how cynical this sounds but I agree with you - I don't see a positive way out of this anymore.
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