6 ms·
I'm in my thirties. I don't have kids, but want them. I don't want to admit to them that I did nothing about global warming when it counted. The thing is that I
by logjammin 8y ago
I'm in my thirties. I don't have kids, but want them. I don't want to admit to them that I did nothing about global warming when it counted. The thing is that I don't know what I should do; it seems so big, so intractable.
Articles like these stir me to action, but what action? Where's the mass movement on this? Where's the group, the party, the leadership?
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoExtinction Rebellion seems the best chance of a movement that may actually achieve something. If they get critical mass. Early signs are promising (They only started this year). UK: https://rebellion.earth/ https://rebellion.earth/ Globally: https://xrebellion.org/ https://xrebellion.org/
- claydavisss 8y agoso just be angry?
- nostromo 8y agoSince you mention it, the best thing you can do for future generations is not have kids. The evidence is crystal clear in that regard.
- Voloskaya 8y agoBut then how do you tell your kids what you did to combat climate change, since that was the question?
- francisofascii 8y agoIt is possible to live net carbon negative. Or at least close to carbon neutral. https://www.ecowatch.com/this-country-isnt-just-carbon-neutral-its-carbon-negative-1882195367.html https://www.ecowatch.com/this-country-isnt-just-carbon-neutr...
- nostromo 8y ago... in Bhutan.
- strainer 8y agoDon't be so cynical, any kid could be the next great innovator of progress, re-mediation, solution. And you don't know what the "average" kid of this generation will achieve.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cagenut 8y agoFirst of all, since this is a community in which many fancy themselves engineers, ground yourself in the numbers. The main ones being: - number of gigatons emitted to date - rate of ongoing emissions - change in the rate of ongoing emissions - what total emissions numbers correspond to what PPM in the atmosphere - what ppm in the atmosphere correspond to what degrees of C warming (in various timeframes) here is a nice infographic from the latest ipcc report that shows some of them: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2018/10/SPM1_figure-final-e1541758557589-947x1024.png https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2018/10/SPM1... pay particularly close attention to the one in the bottom left. - what degrees C warming correspond to drought, desertification and crop failures in what areas/river-valleys (note: sea level rise won't actually be a problem until after the famines, focus on the famines) Once you get a feel for the numbers the "what to do" becomes a fairly obvious "everything/panic/get-super-duper-radical". But I can't elaborate on that more here because it ranges from "borderline communist levels of leftism" to "out and out eco-sabotage". DO NOT fall for the false framing that a rump dumbass 20-30% of the population doesn't "believe" in global warming. That is smug nonsense that people use to justify a false-framing of some kind of stalemate. No society ever convinced everybody of the way forward. The real problem is the litany of excuses and magical thinking that the so called "believers" will come up with to do nothing. Such as: - there's nothing we can do, give up, its too late - magically innovative technology will save us just hold your breath till it comes along - teh markat will provide! if we can just do this spreadsheet game with tax credits or something - i can't do that thing i should do because even though I'm one of the richest humans on earth and that ever lived I've cast myself as a victim of the current economic order and cannot afford to do anything. Now, all that said as context, here are the top 5 things, IN ORDER (assuming you're a middle class american), you can do to curtail your and your families carbon footprint: 1.) have a negative-population-growth number of children. that means somewhere in the <2.1 range (stupid joke about cutting parts of babies goes here). 2.) do not use a car on a daily basis. ideally don't even own one. if you must own one make it electric. 3.) live in a 5+ unit building. this cuts your heating/cooling/lighting footprint roughly in half, and ties into the car thing above (mid rise apts correlate strongly to walkable areas). no amount of solar panels and electric cars will make suburban-sprawl a sustainable land use or energy consumption model in your or your childs lifetime. this is the absolute hardest part for americans to swallow, they will pitch a temper tantrum fit and write off the messenger rather than grasp this one. 4.) fly (round trip) less than once a year 5.) don't eat red meat, or at least cows. even if you're not ready to give it up, you could deliberately replace red meat meals with chicken fish or vegitable alternatives more often. However, I want to stress that viewing things through the lens of individualized personal consumption levels is a TERRIBLE focus. This is the the most universal problem humanity has ever faced. You want to do the 5 things above not because it will cut your footprint 10 - 20 tons per year (~50 - 80%, which it will), but because you will be contributing to building a society in which everyones footprint is cut. You want to normalize apartment dwelling, walking, public transit, avoiding unecessary flights, and avoiding red meat. That is how you contribute to building a sustainable future society. You need to walk the walk not for a few tons, but to show your children and neighbors the way forward.
- skosch 8y agoIgnore the doom-and-gloom headlines. Climate change is still a solvable problem. We have all the tools we need. 1. Learn about the best ways to get carbon out of the atmosphere [0] 2. Help build the political will for carbon pricing, ideally via Fee & Dividend. The vast majority of economists agree that once GHG pollution costs are internalized, the problem will solve itself quickly. The most effective organization in this regard is Citizens' Climate Lobby [1] – I highly recommend getting in touch with a local chapter. We all tend to be much more cynical about politics than is warranted; I was surprised how rewarding it feels to participate in the political sausage-making. 3. (Optional) Learn about/work on/invest in future carbon removal technologies [2] [0] Rank list of the Top 100 carbon removal strategies: https://www.drawdown.org https://www.drawdown.org [1] Citizens' Climate Lobby: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/ [2] http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ http://carbon.ycombinator.com/
- jimjansen1 8y agoThis is incredibly misleading. Even if we stopped all CO2 Emissions tomorrow the amount currently in the air would cause significant warming and acidification to the ocean. Without Carbon Sequestration on a massive scale we are in for serious problems worldwide. In fact the link you yourself added lays this out quite clearly: "A report by United Nations' scientific panel on climate change released this month expects the atmosphere-on our current trajectory-to warm up by 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2040. Even the effects of a 0.5 degrees increase will have far-reaching consequences. This research indicates that we are already past the tipping point; even if we significantly reduced emissions, climate change would continue (Source IPCC summary C3 section)." ""Phase 1" of climate change is reversible by reducing emissions, but we are no longer in "Phase 1." We're now in "Phase 2" and stopping climate change requires both emission reduction and removing CO2 from the atmosphere. "Phase 2" is occurring faster and hotter than we thought. If we don't act soon, we'll end up in "Phase 3" and be too late for both of these strategies to work." http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ Not only that but we clearly don't "have all the tools we need." Carbon Sequestration technology is in it's infancy at best.
- Voloskaya 8y agoI also found this one extremely interesting: What can a technologist do about climate change? By Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/
- vages 8y agoThe mass movement is getting there. I just came home from a rally for a more climate friendly state budget in my home country of Norway. I'm energized and glad to find that there are many like-minded people in the world. I think I'll be volunteering for an environmental organization soon; turning my thoughts into action today felt good. I've been worried and waiting for change to happen. And now I've finally found somewhere to place my energy.
- marssaxman 8y agoDon't worry about it too much. I did as much about global warming as I could find to do back when it counted, but I accomplished nothing. The planet is fucked, and there's nothing we can do about it now. The good news is that your kids won't know any better. They'll grow up in the desolate, unhealthy, ruined world we are leaving them, and they are going to love it - it'll be the only world they know, after all, and they'll grow up ready to find the beauty in it, just like kids have always done. > Where's the group, the party, the leadership? Humanity's failure to respond to the climate change crisis shows that groups, parties, and leadership are inadequate; we need some new way of organizing ourselves. Perhaps the kids will figure it out.
- jimjimjim 8y agoso you're saying: "why bother trying to fix it. party on and let the next generation fix our problems"??? disgusting.
- jibal 8y agoNo that's not what s/he is saying, or anything like it.
- Symmetry 8y agoWhen it counted? Each degree the climate changes is worse than the last. The first .5 degree of climate warming was probably actually a good thing but going from 1.0 to 1.5 isn't and 2.0 to 2.5 is much worse than that. We don't know if low lying Pacific islands are doomed and if we'll have to be accepting a bunch of refugees but it's possible we can save them. What we almost certainly still have the power to prevent is tens of millions of people in India from dying in heatwaves where the dew point exceeds survivable temperatures without air conditioning. We don't actually know where runaway positive feedback loops might be.
- hirundo 8y agoYou could contribute and earn a living at the same time via capitalism, e.g. start a solar product sales / installation business. From an investment perspective it's a steadily growing industry with widespread unmet demand, rapidly decreasing prices and increasing efficiency, but still requires expertise even if the product costs nothing. From an ecological point of view such a business speeds up the displacement of carbon emitting tech. Politically it decentralizes the grid, redirecting political power from the energy industry toward your customers. And running a business that's a significant part of your income creates an incentive to keep at it religiously and relentlessly. That incentive is weaker without the profit motive, when it's about making an uncertain contribution to other people over decades.
- 40acres 8y agoThe most powerful thing you could probably do is vote for politicians who have made it a goal to fight climate change.
- agumonkey 8y agoThat's my main question. There are many many people. But no larger scale influence so far. In Europe there's the shift project, and shifters (associations related to that project) who tries hard to review regulations and educate people on weekends.
- jimjansen1 8y agoWhen half the leaders of the US don't think this is even a problem what do you expect to happen? Let's not even get started on China and India or the countless developing countries that simply cannot afford clean energy when their people are desperate for power. Europe has been the leader but with the fuel riots in France it seems that even there there is no appetite for lessening living standards to fight the problem. Buy property in NZ and hope for the best because it is going to get very bad.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- doctorpangloss 8y agoBuy emissions credits today, while they're cheap, and simply don't use them.
- logjammin 8y agoReading thru replies. Thanks for taking the time. I hasten to add that what I meant is more "what can I do with other people, perhaps collectively?" The focus on our individual behavior is all well and good as far as it goes, but I agree with a commenter below that it can't be the only thing each of us does. I don't own a car, I live in an apartment building, I eat very little red meat, etc. But the hour is getting late, clearly, and it can't just be "let's make sure everyone recycles". Power is real: a small number of people in this world wield vast amounts of it, and they're dead-set on staying the course. My not eating beef will not make a dent in those peoples' behavior, so it's times like these when our/my American focus on "what we can do as individuals" feels maddeningly myopic. I want something more. I guess the good news is a lot of you feel the same way, maybe?
- mushufasa 8y agoIf you own stocks in companies or funds, you can take action as a shareowner. I recently built a site to empower you to take action to Ask them to improve. See here: https://www.yourstake.org/ask/vanguard-vanguard-tell-companies-to-have-climate-plan https://www.yourstake.org/ask/vanguard-vanguard-tell-compani...
- ams6110 8y agoYou can't do anything individually, other than vote for people who represent your point of view. The sorts of things that would make a difference, such as international agreements on CO2, can only be enacted by governments. You can drive an EV, or stop eating beef, or pay the renewable-energy rate on your electric bill, and feel good about it if you want, but it won't make a bit of difference on a global scale.
- yters 8y agoBuy up the cheap land that will become the next water front property.
- yters 8y agoI'm serious. If businessmen really are taking climate change seriously, we'd see them speak with their pocketbook, as there are numerous ways they can profit by being able to predict future massive global change. The fact we do not see such a buy up of future water front property means they either don't think the evidence is there, or they are extremely optimistic about our ability to reverse climate change, or extremely pessimistic about the future such that humankind will be wiped out or something.
- YetAnotherNick 8y agoI think many people signal that they are against global warming, but very few are ready to give up any thing. Many people I know just think not using polyethylene is the only required thing(which emits less CO2 than reusable bag, even counting reusing), or at most using bicycles for intracity travel. I think here is few of the (hard)things you can do which actually does effect according to my research: - Don't travel on planes(And definitely don't be like Leonardo Dicaprio using private planes after giving speech on climate change) - Don't eat beef/pork - Don't use AC or use it minimally - Same with hot water - Don't have lawn in your house
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoIIRC something like 70%-80% of CO2 emissions are industrial, not personal. By all means do whatever you can, but the idea that global warming is all about our individual habits is essentially a smokescreen. If we want to fix this, the most important thing is to force corporations and governments to take action.
- YetAnotherNick 8y agoSource? Edit: One reason I doubt this is, China emits half of US per capita emissions while manufacturing more(steel, concrete, most high volume products) per capita.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cagenut 8y agothis is a false dichotomy people use as an excuse to do nothing. individual action and forcing corporations and governments to change are not in opposition, they are a feedback loop.