and make the problem even worse. lol. There's only one actual solution to this problem but no one wants to talk about it :)
As for the merits of the article and author I'm not so sure, but I like to disagree widely.
I have said this thousands of times. Now in a different way. Collectively, people born in rich countries between 1930 and 1980 could have done something.
When the oil crisis hit in the early 70s, governments could have decided it was time to get out of fossil fuels. I was there on the cusp of adulthood. There was lots of talk, but the extreme rich and the oil barons started a huge propaganda campaign. People in gov. at the time were not stupid, they saw through it. But instead wanted to keep their jobs and the status quo. So here we are.
What could we have done ? Instead of crying about gas prices in the 70s, waiting hours in gas lines*, people could have started using other forms of transportation and kept at it. Back then public transportation worked fine in many places and bicycling was booming. Also many people lived relatively close to their work place. Instead we cried and cried about gas prices and continued to drive 2 or 3 or 5 miles to our work place daily. Same goes for shopping. Most shops were also rather close to were people lived.
So here we are, handing our grandchildren a life probably worse than what people experienced in the late 1800s to early 1900s. This way we avoided a bit of inconvenience in our life style.
Hope we are all happy as we age out.
* in many cases people waited hours with their cars running, some even ran out of gas waiting in lines. Others drove around for hours looking for a gas station with the lowest price. How stupid was that!
We're particularly indebted to Germany and Denmark and a few others. In the 90's and 00's they installed a lot of wind and solar power at particularly ridiculous prices. They were the ones that really bootstrapped the production curve that has lowered the prices so much that today solar and wind power are cheaper than any fossil fuel source.
Today the world is spending over $2T a year on clean energy and electric vehicles.
It's far from enough, but it's likely the difference between 4-5 degrees of climate change instead of the 6-8 we could have ended up with. That's a massive difference.
From what I remember, they let their gas prices raise, keep public transportation viable and some countries even supported bicycling as an alternative.
But it was not enough, especially with a giant at the time spewing CO2 into the air at ever increasing rates. I remember the manufacturing smoke stacks pumping it into the air. Only in the 80s did I start seeing the smoke lessen. By the late 80s, most manufacturing left my area.
In the US, I would narrow that a bit and place the blame squarely on the boomer (or "me") generation. Slightly less than a majority of congresspersons (both house and senate) are boomers, with many of them having served for decades. Similarly, Clinton, Bush, and Trump were all born in 1946, with Biden barely predating them in 1942. Obama technically fits the bill as well, having been born in 1961, which is the tail end of the generation.
The generation is marked by enacting policies that rob from future generations to enrich themselves and continue pushing fossil fuels to this day despite overwhelming, irrefutable evidence that they not only contribute to climate change but also no longer make economic sense, again screwing later generations for their own gains.
But what actionable steps can an individual take that will actually affect the “it’ll be worse tomorrow” outcome?
I feel like there’s more resources put towards marketing that there’s a problem rather than coming up with practical steps people can do. And not picking on vegans but “turning vegan” isn’t really an acceptable answer for a industrial society.
Installing solar panels is something that I view as actionable by almost anyone. Battery is a bit out of reach. There’s questions to be asked about how sustainable that all is but in terms of getting people onboard, lower outgoings is a mighty big pull compared to endless impending doom articles.
Write and call your local leadership. You cannot do much as an individual. But if you convince your local leadership (city, county, state, etc.) to consider nuclear, geothermal, solar, and wind where possible, you can be part of an enormous tidal wave of good.
edit: If you're hoping for a "what can I do TODAY" type of thing, write or call. They hardly ever get anything but emails and internet comments. Hell, go downtown for a visit. This is one of the best ways for a politician to know what their constituents care about. If people start showing up to your door with the same complaint, you'll fix it knowing it'll make happy all of those highly enthusiastic people (probably enthusiastic enough to vote in my reelection campaign!), things move much faster.
There's a global war on, we're not going to be burning less Jet A or Diesel any time soon... The left will not be able to disengage from Iran no matter how much they want to now because of the ramifications of the IRGC controlling the global oil supply. Along with that, because prices are high companies and nation states are hyper incentivized to drill more to try to get as much oil as they can since it is scarce, so it's not like we're going to stop exploration now.
The high prices might deter some use, but probably not as much as we'd need. But yeah, the day Russia invaded Ukraine most of my dreams of decarbonization evaporated. You can't fight a war with one hand tied behind your back - and it's only gotten worse since then.
Now, electing the Dems might staunch the bleeding some, but this is going to get much much worse before it gets better. Bear in mind that a ton of people are likely going to starve as a result of the increased gas prices? So there's that too... The whole thing is a mess.
Now, what to do about it? I don't know, I live in Alaska, my state will probably come out better from this whole mess on a 30 year time horizon? But I expect the salmon runs to be much smaller and the forest fire season to be much worse year after year. On the bright side, we might end up solving a lot of chemistry and health issues with the open fold stuff, and we might get cheap access to space, which could change things a lot? But things are going to be quite weird.
People in America aren't nearly as likely to starve because of gas prices. If you live in the middle of nowhere, you've got land for growing and/or hunting if legal. If you live in a city, there's food everywhere (even if much of it is unhealthy).
We're going through a rough period whether we like it or not. The milk is on the floor. What we can do is work to limit how bad it will get. There's nothing you personally can do beyond getting the right people in the right seats. We need regulations and investments.
Edit: It's also super weird how many people are like, actively downplaying the most powerful right almost any standard citizen anywhere holds. Is this what the kids are thinking these days? I certainly hope not.
Oh I agree with that, but the NIMBYs aren't going to get out of the way of any of those technologies likely in the next decade or 2... while I'm genuinely optimistic for the world, I expect things to get a lot worse before they get better at least environmentally.
> People in America aren't nearly as likely to starve because of gas prices. If you live in the middle of nowhere, you've got land for growing and/or hunting if legal. If you live in a city, there's food everywhere (even if much of it is unhealthy).
America will be fine, but there's going to be people in the global south die from this war that couldn't find Hormuz on a map if their life depended on it. It's an unmitigated tragedy, but I suppose war always is.
> We're going through a rough period whether we like it or not. The milk is on the floor. What we can do is work to limit how bad it will get. There's nothing you personally can do beyond getting the right people in the right seats. We need regulations and investments.
And I'm saying, "sure" you can vote blue or whatever, and I plan on it. The both sides thing is a farce, clearly one side is objectively worse... however I think nothing will likely change materially regardless of who wins this fall.
> Edit: It's also super weird how many people are like, actively downplaying the most powerful right almost any standard citizen anywhere holds. Is this what the kids are thinking these days? I certainly hope not.
This certainly isn't your most powerful "right" (if there are such things). But I probably can't really delineate what the "most powerful rights" are without getting into trouble on this forum.
I'm putting together an event next Wednesday, We should have climate scientist Zeke Hausfather there to weigh in: https://luma.com/tu0uvbx1
In terms of having a longer cooling period with volcanoes, what happened historically was you had several volcanic eruptions in a row that caused something else to happen entirely -- sea ice restoration which caused a feedback loop. Generally, more sea ice begets more sea ice (Effectively, you're trading black ocean surface that absorbs light/heat for white ice that reflects light/heat. And so you get this feedback loop, more ice, cooler temps, even more ice) Anyway, The More You Know Star about some climate history stuff. (One issue with global warming is we're nearing the opposite end of that feedback loop, where less sea ice begets less sea ice and everything melts super fast. For shorthand, you can say that the temperature of Earth is likely rising as slowly as it will during the rest of our lifetimes. The ice is melting as slowly as it will for the rest of our lifetime. The sea level is rising as slowly as it will for the rest of our lifetime. etc)
The other thing to point out here is that volcanic emissions just mask warming caused by greenhouse gasses (ignoring the ability to start feedback loops). At the extreme end, for example, human IQ starts to suffer around 1,000 parts per million of carbon dioxide, so no matter what the temperature is in that scenario it's likely a decent idea to deal with carbon dioxide.
Volcanic winters only last a few years. The largest ones are estimated to only have a few degrees effect on global temperatures, so we could temporarily be in 1980s climate before returning after 3-5 years to an even hotter one than ever.
The climb would probably accelerated by the inevitable policy reversals by climate change deniers who would take hold of the temporary rapid reversal of global warming to burn as much fossil fuels while they have the chance
Pointing out that were in an iceage and the planet used to be warmer or the role of volcanos isn't playing ball with the narrative.
The timing is still being finalized but we should have climate scientist Zeke Hausfather there to give his take, and then we can talk about actions to avoid the worst impacts of El Niño this cycle, what innovators can build etc. I heard one idea of building modular battery powered Starlink systems that activate when the cell system gets knocked out.
But yeah, if nothing changes El Niño this year will likely be fucked.
I'm disappointed in the climate change deniers on HN.
Unflag this.
I don't deny climate change. I do doubt that people can stop what amounts to civilization with possibly may be massive geo engineering on an unprecedented scale.