10 ms·

It's pretty hopeless. I used to think we'd adjust in time, but that was when the decline looked more linear (or at least I thought it looked more linear). Of t

by latch 9y ago

It's pretty hopeless. I used to think we'd adjust in time, but that was when the decline looked more linear (or at least I thought it looked more linear). Of the many people who I know who are seriously concerned re climate change, I'd say 2 have taken truly meaningful steps . It's not the handful of climate change deniers that's the problem. It's the overwhelming number of people who want to say they're green, but still own two cars, never take public transport, eat meat daily, live in big houses, and buy buy buy. If you think climate change is a serious issue. If you're concerned that scientists are now talking about the low single-digit years we have to change. If you have kids. Why the *@#! aren't you taking drastic change?

dota_fanatic 9y ago
What kind of drastic change should one take? Not having kids, OK, drastic but doable. Cutting out meat, driving less, etc, OK. But what about the rest of the production chain that assumes you're the same as everyone else (whom continues to use and depend on that production chain), which is an ocean of waste compared to what any single person can do? We can individually push the needle very slightly, but it does nothing to push the needle on our behalf within the bigger economic machine. All those wasteful international processes are pushing forward faster than ever. It's like we're bleeding out and you just recommended dabbing the wound with a string of thread. What are some realistic things that an individual or group of individuals can do to prepare?
- throwanem 9y ago
  Move north, I suppose, ahead of the great land rush to come.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    Although there might be opportunities for beach-front surf shops on tropical Baffin Island, good luck getting customers when the rest of the world has gone to hell.
    - throwanem 9y ago
      Customers aren't often a concern for the subsistence farmer, although I suppose you might sell or barter any surplus - though you may be better advised to share it freely and so build goodwill.
- latch 9y ago
  Re kids: I was saying if you have kids, surely that's even more reason to act. I'm not a survivalist. No idea if you want to prepare? Move north and stock up on guns, ammo, seed, water and soil? But, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Well over 50% of Americans and Europeans view climate change as a threat. That's 500 million of the most affluent humans on the planet. The "economic machine", by which I assume you mean $3 bottled water, SUV, McMansions, beef, exists for them; not the other way around.
- cagenut 9y ago
  The energy consumption (and therefore carbon emissions) per capita in the west/US comes almost entirely from the feedback loop between single-family-detached housing and the car-or-two it takes to live in that kind of sprawled out lifestyle. Put another way, Transportation and Housing (heating & cooling) are the #1 and #2 sources of carbon emissions for suburban, exurban and rural dwellers. People who simply live in urban cores automatically cut their carbon emissions in half: http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps If you live in a 5+ unit building, do not own a car, rarely fly, sign up for your utilities low-carbon supply option, and cut out red meat, its possible to be a full order of magnitude below the american average. http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/American-carbon-footprint.gif http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Am... So the #1 thing an American can do to fight climate change is be "pro-city". Move there. Encourage building/density there. Help fix the schools. Use, vote for, and demand more and better public transit. People who insist on having a yard and several feet of air-gap between them and their neighbors are the real climate change deniers.
  - XaspR8d 9y ago
    Sadly, being "pro-city" is extremely political. Even if we could set aside people's personal preferences, I'm not sure how we start to overcome the ideological gap between urban and rural residents...
  - aeorgnoieang 9y ago
    > So the #1 thing an American can do to fight climate change is be "pro-city". Move there. Encourage building/density there. Help fix the schools. Use, vote for, and demand more and better public transit. This seems nearly as impossible as direct political action against climate change. Effectively, none of the current residents of cities want anyone else to move there, let alone allow more development, especially of greater density. Cities themselves seem to be pretty uniformly terrible at scaling-up to support larger populations. NYC's subways seem pretty close to crippling failure as-is. I don't prefer revolution, but some kind of significant 'shake-up' seems pretty inevitable given the ossification of all of the relevant 'systems'.
- jlebrech 9y ago
  just nuking each other when resources get sparse should do the trick, the planet will be fine either way. Unless we survive long enough to cause runaway greenhouse effect.
- EGreg 9y ago
  Realistically, you should make communities local and more self-sufficient, like they used to be. This idea that you have to commute 20 miles to work every day, in a personal car, is less than 100 years old. People used to grow up, live, work, and marry and raise families in their villages. Not many would travel all the time. Mozart was probably the most traveled of his time, and he probably didn't go half as many miles as the average worker today. Make it so people can work from home. Give them an unconditional basic income so they don't have to work. The problem is capitalism, as much as many people here don't like to hear it. Capitalism is great at what it does -- but it doesn't care about externalities. If a person runs out of food, capitalism doesn't care. If a species goes extinct, the world is turned into farms and monocultures, or the planet is polluted or resources are depleted, capitalism won't care until it's done.
  - pixl97 9y ago
    Self-sufficiency is rife with its own inefficiencies. For example, using Mozarts timeframe and attempting it place it on our current planet leads to a situation where no logical comparison can be made. He is from around 1800, there were around 900 million people at the time. You could grow enough locally to feed the population locally in most places. This is no longer true. Mass transportation of food, water, and resources for survival are currently necessary. The problem is not capitalism, the problem is people Pretty much every living creature goes through stages of increased resource availability -> growth -> overshooting population capacity or resource reduction -> population reduction. As we can see, overpopulation of raccoons, antelopes, and alligators isn't caused by capitalism, it is caused by the biological imperative to breed -> consume -> breed -> consume. Furthermore your willingness to blame capitalism blinds you to knowledge and an impartial view of what is occurring. Such as, most first world capitalistic countries are experiencing population stagnation. Japan, US, and western Europe all have decreasing population, until you take immigration into account. Also many non-capitalistic countries have terrible problems with pollution (Russia anyone?), thereby again rendering your premise that capitalism is the problem. Blaming the wrong thing never fixed the problem, whipping boys don't lead to solutions.
- yogthos 9y ago
  One drastic change would be to abandon capitalism and the idea of growth. Instead, we should be focusing on sustainability which is completely at odds with capitalism. We need to start making products that are designed to last a long time as opposed to them having been built for planned obsolescence. We need to start abandoning throw away things like plastic containers. For example, Coca-Cola produces a staggering 100 billion disposalbe plastic bottles http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/coca-cola-plastic-bottles-cant-be-recycled-greenpeace-statement-a7673246.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/coca-cola-pl... a year. We have to start moving heavy industry off fossils. We have to move away from combustion engines, and need to abandon cars in general. The reality of the situation is that most contribution to climate change comes from industrial sources and not individuals. A 100 companies are responsible for over 70% of all emissions. That's what would need to change, and that's just not going to happen in time. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10... What's going to happen is that majority of humanity will simply die off. If enough humans are left alive to carry on civilization, hopefully they will have learned something from that.
uptown 9y ago
The system has evolved to make change very difficult. One part of this post on ZeroHedge shows you the supply chain involved with just a ketchup. 52 transport and process stages. Fifty-two. "Just how energy inefficient the food system is can be seen in the crazy case of the Swedish tomato ketchup. Researchers at the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology analysed the production of tomato ketchup. The study considered the production of inputs to agriculture, tomato cultivation and conversion to tomato paste (in Italy), the processing and packaging of the paste and other ingredients into tomato ketchup in Sweden and the retail and storage of the final product. All this involved more than 52 transport and process stages. The aseptic bags used to package the tomato paste were produced in the Netherlands and transported to Italy to be filled, placed in steel barrels, and then moved to Sweden. The five layered, red bottles were either produced in the UK or Sweden with materials form Japan, Italy, Belgium, the USA and Denmark. The polypropylene (PP) screw-cap of the bottle and plug, made from low density polyethylene (LDPE), was produced in Denmark and transported to Sweden. Additionally, LDPE shrink-film and corrugated cardboard were used to distribute the final product. Labels, glue and ink were not included in the analysis." Source: http://www.321energy.com/editorials/church/church040205.html http://www.321energy.com/editorials/church/church040205.html How does an individual affect change when something as basic as a bottle of ketchup is clearly part of the world that'd built itself with disregard for its impact on the planet? ZeroHedge Post: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-24/why-next-recession-will-morph-decades-long-depressionary-event-or-worse http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-24/why-next-recession-...
- cbennett 9y ago
  I managed to find the original PDF : http://infohouse.p2ric.org/ref/37/36505.pdf http://infohouse.p2ric.org/ref/37/36505.pdf Re-optimizing said supply chains in an oil constrained, and eventually oil free world seems extremely non-trivial. I wonder if we will soon have to scale up the methods (both computationally, & in human/practical industrial re-organization terms) to plot new paths and then connect them, before the graph changes so much that the potential for profit disappears. In the near term,I could see human engineers using deep learning or other computational methods for multi-scale optimization to reduce costs and carbon footprint based on locality of original sources (food/biofuels/..) In the medium term, I would bet that AI agents will exist precisely to optimize these tasks. There's hundreds of billions to be (re)-made in (re)-wiring the economy properly.
hacknat 9y ago
> It's the overwhelming number of people who want to say they're green, but still own two cars, never take public transport, eat meat daily, live in big houses, and buy buy buy. The car and the "buy, buy, buy" are the only real problems. Cut those two out and the big houses and meat aren't a big deal (or are at least workeable). Probably the biggest thing you could do to help the environment is not buy any kind of mobile device and to run your computer into the ground.
- extra88 9y ago
  I don't know about all meat but the deforestation for cattle ranching and feed, methane produced by the beasts themselves, and other factors seem to be fairly significant. The much greater energy requirements to light, heat, and cool big houses should not be discounted so easily either.
  - gorkonsine 9y ago
    >The much greater energy requirements to light, heat, and cool big houses should not be discounted so easily either. Heat and cool, yes. Light, no, not any more. Lighting is really pretty insignificant now thanks to LEDs, and getting constantly better as the older incandescents get replaced.
- Daishiman 9y ago
  Home heating and meat consumption are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. The creation of the mobile device is peanuts in comparison.
  - gorkonsine 9y ago
    >Home heating and meat consumption are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. What? Citation needed. That's complete BS. See here: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... The #1 cause of greenhouse gases is electricity production. #2 is transportation (cars, trucks, planes, ships, trains). Commercial and residential (including home heating) is only 12%, and agriculture is only 9%. You're right about mobile devices being peanuts though.
EGreg 9y ago
Just thinking out loud here, but if the arctic somehow contains more carbon and methane than all we've released into the atmosphere (can someone explain why that is???) then can't we: 1) Coat the entire arctic with a more reflective compound, so it will not be as likely to melt under the same summer temperatures... the expense of this would be far less than the fallout later. This may interfere with some life in the arctic that depends on surface ice somehow. But considering the rest of the planet will have to adapt in the alternative scenario, I'd say this life would have to adapt. I doubt it has much effect on the rest of the world. 2) Do one of those sci-fi thingies where a compound is discovered which instantly causes a chain reaction to crystallize e.g. water at much higher temperatures than the current melting point. Salt can lower the melting point of water. Isn't there anything that can raise it? But obviously we wouldn't have enough of that compound to just inject into the ice. I've seen spontaneous crystallization of water into ice at room temperature when you hit a bottle. Maybe something like this can be done on a more permanent basis. 3) Release reflective material into the atmosphere (like in nuclear winter) to counteract the greenhouse gas effect and hope this doesn't somehow cause deadly pollution in some other way. After all, the Earth can only radiate energy into space, convection with the vacuum of space doesn't really transfer heat away much at all. But we can reflect the sun's radiation to the Earth, and limit the heating up that way. 4) Instead of reflective material, you can fly satellites into space where they cast a shadow on the Earth (assuming the sun is far enough, I haven't done the calculations, it might be possible that small satellites or gas clouds can cast a shadow on the Earth just like the moon's umbra will in August 19th this year). And in that case we can try to reflect a lot of the energy that way. Of course, they would have to be SUPER reflective and have a high surface area, or they'd heat up within a decade rendering them useless.
- averagewall 9y ago
  There are lots of good ideas for reducing or eliminating the harm of climate change. But they're sacrilegious because people worry they might lull others into not trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I'm pretty confident we'll do something like this to fix it when it comes.
- extra88 9y ago
  These are not very good gen-engineering ideas but we may be compelled to engage in gen-engineering of some kind. It will be risky, with side effects that we'll know but more worrying will be the unintended effects that we didn't predict. They more we can do to reduce our negative output, the less ham-fisted tinkering with the planet's systems we'll have to do.
NickM 9y ago
It's not the handful of climate change deniers that's the problem. It's the overwhelming number of people who want to say they're green, but still own two cars, never take public transport, eat meat daily, live in big houses, and buy buy buy. Well, suppose all the people who want to be green go ahead and cut back to one car, go vegetarian, live in a smaller house, etc. etc. Maybe if everyone is really dedicated, we could all cut our emissions in half. So then what? We're still all emitting way more CO2 than the planet can absorb; climate change would still happen, it'd just be happening a bit more slowly. We're not going to realistically solve this problem by all making personal sacrifices, because even in the best case, where everyone chips in, it's only enough to slow the bleeding. If we really want to truly solve this mess, we need to promote truly sustainable technologies that scale well and appeal to everyone. Don't put solar panels on your house out of a personal sense of guilt about your own emissions, put them on your house because it grows the market for solar, stimulates research into better panels, and helps push forward the economies of scale that are needed to make renewables cost competitive with fossil fuels. Don't buy an electric car because you want to pollute less, buy an electric car because you want to fund the continued technological improvements of electric cars in general. We're all focusing way too much on merely slowing down the death of the planet when we should be focusing on fixing the problem altogether. Don't aim for a slower death, aim for a faster transition to carbon-neutral. If we all feel that the planet is doomed anyway, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because it's a lot harder to motivate ourselves to try and fix a problem that feels unfixable.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  >>Don't put solar panels on your house out of a personal sense of guilt about your own emissions, put them on your house because it grows the market for solar, stimulates research into better panels, and helps push forward the economies of scale that are needed to make renewables cost competitive with fossil fuels Or don't live in a house in the suburbs. Opt for medium or high-density residential areas, which are far more efficient in terms of both land and utility use.
  - gorkonsine 9y ago
    They are, but they're also frequently far more expensive, and downright unaffordable to many people compared to much larger homes in more rural areas. In the big city near me, a little condo in a high-rise can easily cost $400k. But a couple hours away from the city I can buy a house for $50k or $75k. People who have no hope of earning enough money for a $400k condo (even though jobs in the city usually pay a little more) can frequently afford one of those rural properties.
tertius 9y ago
> If you're concerned that scientists are now talking about the low single-digit years we have to change. This type of alarmism does not help anyone. The "authorities" have been saying "single digit years" for decades, not "just now". The average person has seen very little change causing more denialism to spread. Please stop.
louprado 9y ago
> "It's not the handful of climate change deniers that's the problem. It's the overwhelming number of people who want to say they're green." We see time and time again that laws are required to achieve massive rapid change and reduce the economic impact of that change. In 1974 one could have spent thousands on a custom installed catalytic converter. That "green" person would have experienced a great financial burden and see no measurable impact on air quality. It would have been a foolish decision. That's why we need laws and that is why the handful of climate change deniers, that have a disproportionate influence on policy, are so dangerous. How one votes is what matters (mattered) most.
chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
This is why I'm so concerned about the trend that SUV sales are outpacing Sedan sales. Whereas sedans used to be the "default" car a decade ago, SUVs are now taking their place [0]. All things being equal, a smaller car (sedan) should get better MPG than a larger car (SUV) [1]. And yet it seems that people's efforts to reduce their environmental footprint is focused on recycling a plastic cup here and there [2]. A very general trend over the past few decades shows us that the price of gas / gallon has increased. So Americans' response to this is: I need to buy a bigger car? A pollution tax would certainly help but is far too big of a thing to accomplish in the short-term. I've been contemplating a sort of "big car" tax for a number of reasons, and increased gasoline consumption / environmental impact is a key item on that list. (Non-environmental items include (1) the danger they pose to other drivers in smaller vehicles, and (2) the race-to-the-bottom condition no. 1 imposes, since more and more people will want larger vehicles when they feel threatened by the presence of large vehicles on the road, leading to a positive reinforcement cycle) [0] http://www.driveprime.com/blog-suv-and-crossover-sales-outpace-sedans-in-2014/ http://www.driveprime.com/blog-suv-and-crossover-sales-outpa... [1] http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=37918&id=37670 http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=37918&i... [2] https://youtu.be/eNx9tvCrvv8?t=1m10s https://youtu.be/eNx9tvCrvv8?t=1m10s
- scottLobster 9y ago
  Granted some people buy gratuitously large vehicles, but for many there is a practical purpose: moving large amounts of stuff. Whether it's multiple bags of mulch, dorm room furniture, sports equipment, more than 3 kids, or just lots of luggage for a family road trip, there's definitely an advantage to a big car there. Not to mention better performance in snow depending on model. In any case, one we get non-luxury electric SUVs the point will largely be moot.
  - chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
    I think people delude themselves into thinking they're purchasing an SUV to transport a lot of stuff or to travel with kids, when in reality drivers nonetheless drive alone. Anecdotally, as I've said, SUVs have simply replaced Sedans as the "default" car on the road. And as you may know, the "default" car in America has a single driver. > In any case, one we get non-luxury electric SUVs the point will largely be moot. I disagree on the basis of the positive reinforcement cycle causing people to buy larger cars in the first place. From speaking to other drivers and listening to them as they think out their thought process when deciding what new car to buy, the #1 reason people want to drive an SUV is safety (which may include the point you made about performance in snow). Not that I have anything against safety itself, but you must see the arms race that can occur from seeking safety in a larger vehicle. When other people are driving larger vehicles around you, you may feel endangered and thus buy a larger car yourself. That causes other drivers to buy larger cars in turn. No one can have "the biggest car". They only keep getting bigger. So this notion that electric SUVs are going to save us is moot, I believe. People will still clamor for larger (now-electric) SUVs for their safety, reducing their eMPG (electric-equivalent MPG).
tonyedgecombe 9y ago
The big energy producers love this message because it results in nothing happening. The only way we will solve this problem is by attacking it at the source, by shifting taxes to carbon.
daxfohl 9y ago
The average person has a hard enough time with immediate issues: overeating, exercising, saving for retirement, substance dependencies. So, personal life changes as response to climate change is not something we should rely on.
mikeash 9y ago
I doubt those two people have actually taken truly meaningful steps, unless they're powerful politicians, business leaders, or high up in a relevant regulatory agency. This is the root of the problem: the actions of most individuals don't matter no matter what they are. Let's say I switch entirely to renewable energy, stop eating meat, buy local food, and do every other thing possible to reduce my footprint. Great, now I've added, what, an extra half a second to the time we have before catastrophe? It just doesn't matter. Everyone working together is what makes a difference, of course, but that's hard. It's not just a matter of convincing everyone to act individually.
- jerrycruncher 9y ago
  This lazy cynicism is far too commonplace, and easily countered: If a whole lot of people added their half-seconds together, it would matter a whole lot. You either care enough to change your behavior or you don't. Don't pass your lack of courage of conviction off onto nameless "...politicians, business leaders or [those] high up in a relevant regulatory agency."
  - mikeash 9y ago
    I already addressed that in the last paragraph of my comment. Yes, if a whole lot of people did it together, it would matter a lot. And if wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak. It takes a completely different approach to get a lot of people to take action than it does to take action myself. If I want other people to change their lives, I need to convince them to do it, or force them to do it, or come up with great new technology that allows them to do it while making their lives better, or something like that. If I want to change my own life, I need to buy different stuff, use different stuff, eat different stuff, etc. The two are essentially unrelated. You're right, I don't care enough to change my behavior. That's because the effort/reward ratio is completely busted. The reward is indistinguishable from zero, so I'd need to care an essentially infinite amount.
timothycrosley 9y ago
This is super interesting to me, because in the Seattle bubble I live in, I feel like everyone my age has at most 1 car, often 0. Usually a small car (I have a compact prius) and drives transit the vast majority of the time. We also are very good about recycling and composting within the city.
stcredzero 9y ago
It's not the handful of climate change deniers that's the problem. It's the overwhelming number of people who want to say they're green, but still own two cars, never take public transport, eat meat daily, live in big houses, and buy buy buy. Given the evidence of all of recorded history and archaeological evidence, how is the denial of economics any better than climate change denial? We have many, many examples of environmental changes combined with misaligned incentives bringing about the end of many civilizations. (Just one example, for which new media exists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkMP328eU5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkMP328eU5Q ) As another HN commenter on this post noted, you can't overturn people's incentives through moralizing about some abstract fear. Even when pursuing an obvious course of justice, Gandhi knew that you must align with people's day to day incentives. It does no one good to rail against the stupidity of the masses and the greed of corporations. We need to figure out how to align everyone's incentives.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  you can't, in the short term. There are no good long-term solutions that are not going to cause some acute pain in the short term. Deep down everyone knows this, and the increasing viciousness of politics is, under the surface debates, a fight over who is going to have to bear that pain and to what degree.
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    You can align market forces. It's going to be a hard sell working against entrenched interests, however. https://www.ted.com/talks/ted_halstead_a_climate_solution_where_all_sides_can_win?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/ted_halstead_a_climate_solution_wh...
eddieplan9 9y ago
If you look at the changes of carbon emission per country, the U.S. emission has decreased in the last 20 years. China's emission has tripled in the same period: https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20170708_EUC234.png https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/... The main reason is the growth of Chinese economy. So if you want to make real impact, help the next emerging economies to grow without incurring huge growth in emissions. For example, if you look at the per-capital carbon emission by country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... China's is half of that of US, while India's is 1/8. Imagine if the India's number grow 4 times to that of China's, any saving in the U.S. will be completely cancelled out and some. In fact, U.S. can cut its emission to 0, and India only needs to grow its number to 75% of that of China's to cancel out the U.S. improvement.
all_usernames 9y ago
I'd very much like my next employer to be one that is actively working toward climate solutions, and has a large leverage. Any suggestions? Obvious choices would be Tesla (any large automaker with a serious electric program), or a political organization with sane and pragmatic environmental goals.
- Caveman_Coder 9y ago
  If you're in the US, I'd check out some of the national laboratories: https://science.energy.gov/laboratories/ https://science.energy.gov/laboratories/
  - gorkonsine 9y ago
    US Government research jobs these days really don't get anything done. You'll spend a career there shuffling paper and accomplishing zero.
sbierwagen 9y ago
It's the overwhelming number of people who want to say they're green, but still own two cars, never take public transport, eat meat daily, live in big houses, and buy buy buy. This is the classic neoliberal "individual responsibility" framing, meant to cast global warming purely as a personal moral issue, and deflect attention from regulating corporations, which burn the majority of fossil fuels. Ending corn ethanol and oil industry subsidies will do far more than guilting people to buy electric cars.
ajmurmann 9y ago
It's a tragedy of the Commons problem. I'd vote in a heart beat to make meat consumption illegal, even completely burninh the usage of fossil fuels and even to attack countries that refuse to do the same. However, if only I stop eating meat and driving my car the only thing that will happen is that my quality of life gets lowered.

by latch 9y ago

dota_fanatic 9y ago

What kind of drastic change should one take? Not having kids, OK, drastic but doable. Cutting out meat, driving less, etc, OK. But what about the rest of the production chain that assumes you're the same as everyone else (whom continues to use and depend on that production chain), which is an ocean of waste compared to what any single person can do? We can individually push the needle very slightly, but it does nothing to push the needle on our behalf within the bigger economic machine. All those wasteful international processes are pushing forward faster than ever. It's like we're bleeding out and you just recommended dabbing the wound with a string of thread. What are some realistic things that an individual or group of individuals can do to prepare?

throwanem 9y ago
Move north, I suppose, ahead of the great land rush to come.
- astrodust 9y ago
  Although there might be opportunities for beach-front surf shops on tropical Baffin Island, good luck getting customers when the rest of the world has gone to hell.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    Customers aren't often a concern for the subsistence farmer, although I suppose you might sell or barter any surplus - though you may be better advised to share it freely and so build goodwill.
latch 9y ago
Re kids: I was saying if you have kids, surely that's even more reason to act. I'm not a survivalist. No idea if you want to prepare? Move north and stock up on guns, ammo, seed, water and soil? But, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Well over 50% of Americans and Europeans view climate change as a threat. That's 500 million of the most affluent humans on the planet. The "economic machine", by which I assume you mean $3 bottled water, SUV, McMansions, beef, exists for them; not the other way around.
cagenut 9y ago
The energy consumption (and therefore carbon emissions) per capita in the west/US comes almost entirely from the feedback loop between single-family-detached housing and the car-or-two it takes to live in that kind of sprawled out lifestyle. Put another way, Transportation and Housing (heating & cooling) are the #1 and #2 sources of carbon emissions for suburban, exurban and rural dwellers. People who simply live in urban cores automatically cut their carbon emissions in half: http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps If you live in a 5+ unit building, do not own a car, rarely fly, sign up for your utilities low-carbon supply option, and cut out red meat, its possible to be a full order of magnitude below the american average. http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/American-carbon-footprint.gif http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Am... So the #1 thing an American can do to fight climate change is be "pro-city". Move there. Encourage building/density there. Help fix the schools. Use, vote for, and demand more and better public transit. People who insist on having a yard and several feet of air-gap between them and their neighbors are the real climate change deniers.
- XaspR8d 9y ago
  Sadly, being "pro-city" is extremely political. Even if we could set aside people's personal preferences, I'm not sure how we start to overcome the ideological gap between urban and rural residents...
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago
  > So the #1 thing an American can do to fight climate change is be "pro-city". Move there. Encourage building/density there. Help fix the schools. Use, vote for, and demand more and better public transit. This seems nearly as impossible as direct political action against climate change. Effectively, none of the current residents of cities want anyone else to move there, let alone allow more development, especially of greater density. Cities themselves seem to be pretty uniformly terrible at scaling-up to support larger populations. NYC's subways seem pretty close to crippling failure as-is. I don't prefer revolution, but some kind of significant 'shake-up' seems pretty inevitable given the ossification of all of the relevant 'systems'.
jlebrech 9y ago
just nuking each other when resources get sparse should do the trick, the planet will be fine either way. Unless we survive long enough to cause runaway greenhouse effect.
EGreg 9y ago
Realistically, you should make communities local and more self-sufficient, like they used to be. This idea that you have to commute 20 miles to work every day, in a personal car, is less than 100 years old. People used to grow up, live, work, and marry and raise families in their villages. Not many would travel all the time. Mozart was probably the most traveled of his time, and he probably didn't go half as many miles as the average worker today. Make it so people can work from home. Give them an unconditional basic income so they don't have to work. The problem is capitalism, as much as many people here don't like to hear it. Capitalism is great at what it does -- but it doesn't care about externalities. If a person runs out of food, capitalism doesn't care. If a species goes extinct, the world is turned into farms and monocultures, or the planet is polluted or resources are depleted, capitalism won't care until it's done.
- pixl97 9y ago
  Self-sufficiency is rife with its own inefficiencies. For example, using Mozarts timeframe and attempting it place it on our current planet leads to a situation where no logical comparison can be made. He is from around 1800, there were around 900 million people at the time. You could grow enough locally to feed the population locally in most places. This is no longer true. Mass transportation of food, water, and resources for survival are currently necessary. The problem is not capitalism, the problem is people Pretty much every living creature goes through stages of increased resource availability -> growth -> overshooting population capacity or resource reduction -> population reduction. As we can see, overpopulation of raccoons, antelopes, and alligators isn't caused by capitalism, it is caused by the biological imperative to breed -> consume -> breed -> consume. Furthermore your willingness to blame capitalism blinds you to knowledge and an impartial view of what is occurring. Such as, most first world capitalistic countries are experiencing population stagnation. Japan, US, and western Europe all have decreasing population, until you take immigration into account. Also many non-capitalistic countries have terrible problems with pollution (Russia anyone?), thereby again rendering your premise that capitalism is the problem. Blaming the wrong thing never fixed the problem, whipping boys don't lead to solutions.
yogthos 9y ago
One drastic change would be to abandon capitalism and the idea of growth. Instead, we should be focusing on sustainability which is completely at odds with capitalism. We need to start making products that are designed to last a long time as opposed to them having been built for planned obsolescence. We need to start abandoning throw away things like plastic containers. For example, Coca-Cola produces a staggering 100 billion disposalbe plastic bottles http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/coca-cola-plastic-bottles-cant-be-recycled-greenpeace-statement-a7673246.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/coca-cola-pl... a year. We have to start moving heavy industry off fossils. We have to move away from combustion engines, and need to abandon cars in general. The reality of the situation is that most contribution to climate change comes from industrial sources and not individuals. A 100 companies are responsible for over 70% of all emissions. That's what would need to change, and that's just not going to happen in time. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10... What's going to happen is that majority of humanity will simply die off. If enough humans are left alive to carry on civilization, hopefully they will have learned something from that.

uptown 9y ago

The system has evolved to make change very difficult. One part of this post on ZeroHedge shows you the supply chain involved with just a ketchup. 52 transport and process stages. Fifty-two. "Just how energy inefficient the food system is can be seen in the crazy case of the Swedish tomato ketchup. Researchers at the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology analysed the production of tomato ketchup. The study considered the production of inputs to agriculture, tomato cultivation and conversion to tomato paste (in Italy), the processing and packaging of the paste and other ingredients into tomato ketchup in Sweden and the retail and storage of the final product. All this involved more than 52 transport and process stages. The aseptic bags used to package the tomato paste were produced in the Netherlands and transported to Italy to be filled, placed in steel barrels, and then moved to Sweden. The five layered, red bottles were either produced in the UK or Sweden with materials form Japan, Italy, Belgium, the USA and Denmark. The polypropylene (PP) screw-cap of the bottle and plug, made from low density polyethylene (LDPE), was produced in Denmark and transported to Sweden. Additionally, LDPE shrink-film and corrugated cardboard were used to distribute the final product. Labels, glue and ink were not included in the analysis." Source: http://www.321energy.com/editorials/church/church040205.html http://www.321energy.com/editorials/church/church040205.html How does an individual affect change when something as basic as a bottle of ketchup is clearly part of the world that'd built itself with disregard for its impact on the planet? ZeroHedge Post: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-24/why-next-recession-will-morph-decades-long-depressionary-event-or-worse http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-24/why-next-recession-...

cbennett 9y ago
I managed to find the original PDF : http://infohouse.p2ric.org/ref/37/36505.pdf http://infohouse.p2ric.org/ref/37/36505.pdf Re-optimizing said supply chains in an oil constrained, and eventually oil free world seems extremely non-trivial. I wonder if we will soon have to scale up the methods (both computationally, & in human/practical industrial re-organization terms) to plot new paths and then connect them, before the graph changes so much that the potential for profit disappears. In the near term,I could see human engineers using deep learning or other computational methods for multi-scale optimization to reduce costs and carbon footprint based on locality of original sources (food/biofuels/..) In the medium term, I would bet that AI agents will exist precisely to optimize these tasks. There's hundreds of billions to be (re)-made in (re)-wiring the economy properly.

hacknat 9y ago

> It's the overwhelming number of people who want to say they're green, but still own two cars, never take public transport, eat meat daily, live in big houses, and buy buy buy. The car and the "buy, buy, buy" are the only real problems. Cut those two out and the big houses and meat aren't a big deal (or are at least workeable). Probably the biggest thing you could do to help the environment is not buy any kind of mobile device and to run your computer into the ground.

extra88 9y ago
I don't know about all meat but the deforestation for cattle ranching and feed, methane produced by the beasts themselves, and other factors seem to be fairly significant. The much greater energy requirements to light, heat, and cool big houses should not be discounted so easily either.
- gorkonsine 9y ago
  >The much greater energy requirements to light, heat, and cool big houses should not be discounted so easily either. Heat and cool, yes. Light, no, not any more. Lighting is really pretty insignificant now thanks to LEDs, and getting constantly better as the older incandescents get replaced.
Daishiman 9y ago
Home heating and meat consumption are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. The creation of the mobile device is peanuts in comparison.
- gorkonsine 9y ago
  >Home heating and meat consumption are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. What? Citation needed. That's complete BS. See here: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... The #1 cause of greenhouse gases is electricity production. #2 is transportation (cars, trucks, planes, ships, trains). Commercial and residential (including home heating) is only 12%, and agriculture is only 9%. You're right about mobile devices being peanuts though.

EGreg 9y ago

Just thinking out loud here, but if the arctic somehow contains more carbon and methane than all we've released into the atmosphere (can someone explain why that is???) then can't we: 1) Coat the entire arctic with a more reflective compound, so it will not be as likely to melt under the same summer temperatures... the expense of this would be far less than the fallout later. This may interfere with some life in the arctic that depends on surface ice somehow. But considering the rest of the planet will have to adapt in the alternative scenario, I'd say this life would have to adapt. I doubt it has much effect on the rest of the world. 2) Do one of those sci-fi thingies where a compound is discovered which instantly causes a chain reaction to crystallize e.g. water at much higher temperatures than the current melting point. Salt can lower the melting point of water. Isn't there anything that can raise it? But obviously we wouldn't have enough of that compound to just inject into the ice. I've seen spontaneous crystallization of water into ice at room temperature when you hit a bottle. Maybe something like this can be done on a more permanent basis. 3) Release reflective material into the atmosphere (like in nuclear winter) to counteract the greenhouse gas effect and hope this doesn't somehow cause deadly pollution in some other way. After all, the Earth can only radiate energy into space, convection with the vacuum of space doesn't really transfer heat away much at all. But we can reflect the sun's radiation to the Earth, and limit the heating up that way. 4) Instead of reflective material, you can fly satellites into space where they cast a shadow on the Earth (assuming the sun is far enough, I haven't done the calculations, it might be possible that small satellites or gas clouds can cast a shadow on the Earth just like the moon's umbra will in August 19th this year). And in that case we can try to reflect a lot of the energy that way. Of course, they would have to be SUPER reflective and have a high surface area, or they'd heat up within a decade rendering them useless.

averagewall 9y ago
There are lots of good ideas for reducing or eliminating the harm of climate change. But they're sacrilegious because people worry they might lull others into not trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I'm pretty confident we'll do something like this to fix it when it comes.
extra88 9y ago
These are not very good gen-engineering ideas but we may be compelled to engage in gen-engineering of some kind. It will be risky, with side effects that we'll know but more worrying will be the unintended effects that we didn't predict. They more we can do to reduce our negative output, the less ham-fisted tinkering with the planet's systems we'll have to do.

NickM 9y ago

It's not the handful of climate change deniers that's the problem. It's the overwhelming number of people who want to say they're green, but still own two cars, never take public transport, eat meat daily, live in big houses, and buy buy buy. Well, suppose all the people who want to be green go ahead and cut back to one car, go vegetarian, live in a smaller house, etc. etc. Maybe if everyone is really dedicated, we could all cut our emissions in half. So then what? We're still all emitting way more CO2 than the planet can absorb; climate change would still happen, it'd just be happening a bit more slowly. We're not going to realistically solve this problem by all making personal sacrifices, because even in the best case, where everyone chips in, it's only enough to slow the bleeding. If we really want to truly solve this mess, we need to promote truly sustainable technologies that scale well and appeal to everyone. Don't put solar panels on your house out of a personal sense of guilt about your own emissions, put them on your house because it grows the market for solar, stimulates research into better panels, and helps push forward the economies of scale that are needed to make renewables cost competitive with fossil fuels. Don't buy an electric car because you want to pollute less, buy an electric car because you want to fund the continued technological improvements of electric cars in general. We're all focusing way too much on merely slowing down the death of the planet when we should be focusing on fixing the problem altogether. Don't aim for a slower death, aim for a faster transition to carbon-neutral. If we all feel that the planet is doomed anyway, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because it's a lot harder to motivate ourselves to try and fix a problem that feels unfixable.

enraged_camel 9y ago
>>Don't put solar panels on your house out of a personal sense of guilt about your own emissions, put them on your house because it grows the market for solar, stimulates research into better panels, and helps push forward the economies of scale that are needed to make renewables cost competitive with fossil fuels Or don't live in a house in the suburbs. Opt for medium or high-density residential areas, which are far more efficient in terms of both land and utility use.
- gorkonsine 9y ago
  They are, but they're also frequently far more expensive, and downright unaffordable to many people compared to much larger homes in more rural areas. In the big city near me, a little condo in a high-rise can easily cost $400k. But a couple hours away from the city I can buy a house for $50k or $75k. People who have no hope of earning enough money for a $400k condo (even though jobs in the city usually pay a little more) can frequently afford one of those rural properties.

tertius 9y ago

> If you're concerned that scientists are now talking about the low single-digit years we have to change. This type of alarmism does not help anyone. The "authorities" have been saying "single digit years" for decades, not "just now". The average person has seen very little change causing more denialism to spread. Please stop.

louprado 9y ago

> "It's not the handful of climate change deniers that's the problem. It's the overwhelming number of people who want to say they're green." We see time and time again that laws are required to achieve massive rapid change and reduce the economic impact of that change. In 1974 one could have spent thousands on a custom installed catalytic converter. That "green" person would have experienced a great financial burden and see no measurable impact on air quality. It would have been a foolish decision. That's why we need laws and that is why the handful of climate change deniers, that have a disproportionate influence on policy, are so dangerous. How one votes is what matters (mattered) most.

chiefofgxbxl 9y ago

This is why I'm so concerned about the trend that SUV sales are outpacing Sedan sales. Whereas sedans used to be the "default" car a decade ago, SUVs are now taking their place [0]. All things being equal, a smaller car (sedan) should get better MPG than a larger car (SUV) [1]. And yet it seems that people's efforts to reduce their environmental footprint is focused on recycling a plastic cup here and there [2]. A very general trend over the past few decades shows us that the price of gas / gallon has increased. So Americans' response to this is: I need to buy a bigger car? A pollution tax would certainly help but is far too big of a thing to accomplish in the short-term. I've been contemplating a sort of "big car" tax for a number of reasons, and increased gasoline consumption / environmental impact is a key item on that list. (Non-environmental items include (1) the danger they pose to other drivers in smaller vehicles, and (2) the race-to-the-bottom condition no. 1 imposes, since more and more people will want larger vehicles when they feel threatened by the presence of large vehicles on the road, leading to a positive reinforcement cycle) [0] http://www.driveprime.com/blog-suv-and-crossover-sales-outpace-sedans-in-2014/ http://www.driveprime.com/blog-suv-and-crossover-sales-outpa... [1] http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=37918&id=37670 http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=37918&i... [2] https://youtu.be/eNx9tvCrvv8?t=1m10s https://youtu.be/eNx9tvCrvv8?t=1m10s

scottLobster 9y ago
Granted some people buy gratuitously large vehicles, but for many there is a practical purpose: moving large amounts of stuff. Whether it's multiple bags of mulch, dorm room furniture, sports equipment, more than 3 kids, or just lots of luggage for a family road trip, there's definitely an advantage to a big car there. Not to mention better performance in snow depending on model. In any case, one we get non-luxury electric SUVs the point will largely be moot.
- chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
  I think people delude themselves into thinking they're purchasing an SUV to transport a lot of stuff or to travel with kids, when in reality drivers nonetheless drive alone. Anecdotally, as I've said, SUVs have simply replaced Sedans as the "default" car on the road. And as you may know, the "default" car in America has a single driver. > In any case, one we get non-luxury electric SUVs the point will largely be moot. I disagree on the basis of the positive reinforcement cycle causing people to buy larger cars in the first place. From speaking to other drivers and listening to them as they think out their thought process when deciding what new car to buy, the #1 reason people want to drive an SUV is safety (which may include the point you made about performance in snow). Not that I have anything against safety itself, but you must see the arms race that can occur from seeking safety in a larger vehicle. When other people are driving larger vehicles around you, you may feel endangered and thus buy a larger car yourself. That causes other drivers to buy larger cars in turn. No one can have "the biggest car". They only keep getting bigger. So this notion that electric SUVs are going to save us is moot, I believe. People will still clamor for larger (now-electric) SUVs for their safety, reducing their eMPG (electric-equivalent MPG).

tonyedgecombe 9y ago

The big energy producers love this message because it results in nothing happening. The only way we will solve this problem is by attacking it at the source, by shifting taxes to carbon.

daxfohl 9y ago

The average person has a hard enough time with immediate issues: overeating, exercising, saving for retirement, substance dependencies. So, personal life changes as response to climate change is not something we should rely on.

mikeash 9y ago

I doubt those two people have actually taken truly meaningful steps, unless they're powerful politicians, business leaders, or high up in a relevant regulatory agency. This is the root of the problem: the actions of most individuals don't matter no matter what they are. Let's say I switch entirely to renewable energy, stop eating meat, buy local food, and do every other thing possible to reduce my footprint. Great, now I've added, what, an extra half a second to the time we have before catastrophe? It just doesn't matter. Everyone working together is what makes a difference, of course, but that's hard. It's not just a matter of convincing everyone to act individually.

jerrycruncher 9y ago
This lazy cynicism is far too commonplace, and easily countered: If a whole lot of people added their half-seconds together, it would matter a whole lot. You either care enough to change your behavior or you don't. Don't pass your lack of courage of conviction off onto nameless "...politicians, business leaders or [those] high up in a relevant regulatory agency."
- mikeash 9y ago
  I already addressed that in the last paragraph of my comment. Yes, if a whole lot of people did it together, it would matter a lot. And if wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak. It takes a completely different approach to get a lot of people to take action than it does to take action myself. If I want other people to change their lives, I need to convince them to do it, or force them to do it, or come up with great new technology that allows them to do it while making their lives better, or something like that. If I want to change my own life, I need to buy different stuff, use different stuff, eat different stuff, etc. The two are essentially unrelated. You're right, I don't care enough to change my behavior. That's because the effort/reward ratio is completely busted. The reward is indistinguishable from zero, so I'd need to care an essentially infinite amount.

timothycrosley 9y ago

This is super interesting to me, because in the Seattle bubble I live in, I feel like everyone my age has at most 1 car, often 0. Usually a small car (I have a compact prius) and drives transit the vast majority of the time. We also are very good about recycling and composting within the city.

stcredzero 9y ago

It's not the handful of climate change deniers that's the problem. It's the overwhelming number of people who want to say they're green, but still own two cars, never take public transport, eat meat daily, live in big houses, and buy buy buy. Given the evidence of all of recorded history and archaeological evidence, how is the denial of economics any better than climate change denial? We have many, many examples of environmental changes combined with misaligned incentives bringing about the end of many civilizations. (Just one example, for which new media exists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkMP328eU5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkMP328eU5Q ) As another HN commenter on this post noted, you can't overturn people's incentives through moralizing about some abstract fear. Even when pursuing an obvious course of justice, Gandhi knew that you must align with people's day to day incentives. It does no one good to rail against the stupidity of the masses and the greed of corporations. We need to figure out how to align everyone's incentives.

anigbrowl 9y ago
you can't, in the short term. There are no good long-term solutions that are not going to cause some acute pain in the short term. Deep down everyone knows this, and the increasing viciousness of politics is, under the surface debates, a fight over who is going to have to bear that pain and to what degree.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  You can align market forces. It's going to be a hard sell working against entrenched interests, however. https://www.ted.com/talks/ted_halstead_a_climate_solution_where_all_sides_can_win?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/ted_halstead_a_climate_solution_wh...

eddieplan9 9y ago

If you look at the changes of carbon emission per country, the U.S. emission has decreased in the last 20 years. China's emission has tripled in the same period: https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20170708_EUC234.png https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/... The main reason is the growth of Chinese economy. So if you want to make real impact, help the next emerging economies to grow without incurring huge growth in emissions. For example, if you look at the per-capital carbon emission by country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... China's is half of that of US, while India's is 1/8. Imagine if the India's number grow 4 times to that of China's, any saving in the U.S. will be completely cancelled out and some. In fact, U.S. can cut its emission to 0, and India only needs to grow its number to 75% of that of China's to cancel out the U.S. improvement.

all_usernames 9y ago

I'd very much like my next employer to be one that is actively working toward climate solutions, and has a large leverage. Any suggestions? Obvious choices would be Tesla (any large automaker with a serious electric program), or a political organization with sane and pragmatic environmental goals.

Caveman_Coder 9y ago
If you're in the US, I'd check out some of the national laboratories: https://science.energy.gov/laboratories/ https://science.energy.gov/laboratories/
- gorkonsine 9y ago
  US Government research jobs these days really don't get anything done. You'll spend a career there shuffling paper and accomplishing zero.

sbierwagen 9y ago

It's the overwhelming number of people who want to say they're green, but still own two cars, never take public transport, eat meat daily, live in big houses, and buy buy buy. This is the classic neoliberal "individual responsibility" framing, meant to cast global warming purely as a personal moral issue, and deflect attention from regulating corporations, which burn the majority of fossil fuels. Ending corn ethanol and oil industry subsidies will do far more than guilting people to buy electric cars.

ajmurmann 9y ago

It's a tragedy of the Commons problem. I'd vote in a heart beat to make meat consumption illegal, even completely burninh the usage of fossil fuels and even to attack countries that refuse to do the same. However, if only I stop eating meat and driving my car the only thing that will happen is that my quality of life gets lowered.