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what technology is that, exactly? genuinely curious as the way you've framed the issue is that the only thing holding us back is unleash the war machine type se

what technology is that, exactly? genuinely curious as the way you've framed the issue is that the only thing holding us back is unleash the war machine type setup where we have tons of e.g. solar panels and batteries at the ready, just waiting to be deployed. assuming it's not ready in the necessary quantities, the amount of carbon needed to produce and deploy it means that there's /necessarily/ an increase in carbon output required to produce and deploy said tech, not to mention environmental ruin e.g. mass cobalt/lithium/etc. production. the only real alternative that i see is decimating current consumption levels. there doesn't seem to be any real willingness to talk about the necessary uncomfortableness people will have to go through in order to do that yet, though - people's mindsets seem to be stuck on growing or teching our way out.

andromeduck 7y ago
Nuclear and some Geo engineering presumably.
notabee 7y ago
It's quite possible that we have already passed the threshold for triggering feedbacks that make cutting consumption insufficient to ward off cataclysm. The permafrost is one, among many others that we're still discovering. Even if industrial civilization stopped on a dime today, it's quite possible that we've already initiated a runaway hothouse scenario. That only becomes more likely the more we emit. Technology will be necessary to mitigate and adapt, and so switching our energy systems to carbon neutral is the first of many steps. Consumption will also have to come down, but I don't imagine many places will manage to do it voluntarily. Perhaps some more pro-social, community oriented countries will do so, but the more hyper-capitalist, individualist countries will likely fight tooth and nail to continue consuming until nature forces an end to it. Classic tragedy of the commons, except the commons is our only known habitable biosphere.

andromeduck 7y ago

Nuclear and some Geo engineering presumably.

notabee 7y ago

It's quite possible that we have already passed the threshold for triggering feedbacks that make cutting consumption insufficient to ward off cataclysm. The permafrost is one, among many others that we're still discovering. Even if industrial civilization stopped on a dime today, it's quite possible that we've already initiated a runaway hothouse scenario. That only becomes more likely the more we emit. Technology will be necessary to mitigate and adapt, and so switching our energy systems to carbon neutral is the first of many steps. Consumption will also have to come down, but I don't imagine many places will manage to do it voluntarily. Perhaps some more pro-social, community oriented countries will do so, but the more hyper-capitalist, individualist countries will likely fight tooth and nail to continue consuming until nature forces an end to it. Classic tragedy of the commons, except the commons is our only known habitable biosphere.