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> Nobody seems to discuss how we collectively work towards being happy with traveling less and eating more substainably. Because of pragmatism. Ask someone to

by lagadu 7y ago

> Nobody seems to discuss how we collectively work towards being happy with traveling less and eating more substainably. Because of pragmatism. Ask someone to make a significant sacrifice and they'll tell you to piss off. Hell, I'll use myself as an example: try telling my SO and I that we can no longer fly a few times a year to the alps for winter sports and I'll just be rude and laugh at you. Sure, people were happy before they had good meat available, they were also happy before polio was eradicated but now we're happier and nobody's going to sacrifice that. It's suggestions like these "oh, people should give up a lot of things that they enjoy" that makes me look pretty unfavorably towards modern environmentalism: it's not going to happen, we need pragmatic solutions that will actually work in the real world. This is where environmental engineering comes in but God forbid someone suggest us actually making intended changes to our climate to fix problems to the current breed of environmentalists without them foaming at the mouth. Thankfully I rest easy in knowing that eventually this will be an inevitability, as soon as it becomes obvious that the idealistic path is a dead-end.

graeme 7y ago
>This is where environmental engineering comes in but God forbid someone suggest us actually making intended changes to our climate to fix problems to the current breed of environmentalists The only environmental engineering that can bring back the world our civilization is used to is sucking carbon from the air or water and sequestering it. All the rest have rather large tradeoffs. Sunshades/aerosols? Still leaves the oceans to acidify. As well as any other negative effects of CO2 (there are some preliminary studies showing cognitive effects). Not to mention any unforeseen side effects, and also then that our survival depends in continual geoengineering with bo interruption due to war etc. The parent you're replying to is also wrong though. We can't just "use less" for two reasons. 1. We're already past some tipping points. We basically need to use zero 2. Keeping the current population alive depends on carbon use at present We probably will geoengineer if we fail to figure out negative emissions, but I think you're far too blasé about the consequences.
skriticos2 7y ago
I concur. Also in feudal times people lived 30 years on average and had horrible quality of life, spending most of the time with back breaking work. Death was common before, during and after birth. We just like to romanticize it. I like fantasy too, but that does hardly reflect history. We as a spices have one advantage that have brought us where we are: the advent of tool usage. And that will be the solution too. On a time frame of 100-200 years we will solve energy scarcity through various means (fusion, focused space solar arrays, rentables, etc.). Then we can build the tools to maintain our current and future lifestyle. We can produce synthetic meat / plant meat. We can start stacked farming with in-door illumination. We can capture methane in in-door stables with advanced air management techniques. We can create terraforming towers mega-structures that remove all the carbon dioxide we blew into the atmosphere and put it back into the ground or into hydrocarbon fuel tanks or something. We are really good at these kind of things, but only once it starts to really hurt. So far it doesn't. There is the specter of hurt to come and a few early warning signs, but in aggregate we don't give a damn about it so far. When we start to burn, our plains become barren and our population is collapsing, then we will start address the actual problems and do something about them. Maybe, the optimistic version. We have the potential to do it. Alternatively we can just bitch about it until the population is decimated and then have the remaining few survivors start a new civilization a few hundred years down the line. Or we just annihilate ourselves because of pent up aggression about the miserable state of affair we brought ourself into. We can be very vengeful if we are cornered. Whatever it will be, it probably will be interesting (for an outside observer).
- badestrand 7y ago
  > We have the potential to do it. I absolutely agree! Humankind is innovative and can move mountains when working together. It seems to take some time to make everyone aware but ultimately a lot of resources will flow into solving the climate crisis. > Also in feudal times people lived 30 years on average and had horrible quality of life, spending most of the time with back breaking work I don't think so.. Look for example at indigenous tribes, they don't work back-breaking 14-hour days, as far as I know. And if you consider that back in the day half of the children died before the age of 5, that leaves a comfortable live expectation of 60 years for anyone surviving childhood!
bonaldi 7y ago
You and your SO might want to look at the state of the glaciers and realise that you might not get much more skiing if things continue as they are. And saying “don’t fly, knuckleheads” isn’t the same as saying “don’t ski”. The snow trains are arguably a better way to do it: you don’t have to get a stupidly early flight and you don’t face a 2+ hr coach ride to the resort. In some resorts the train leaves you ten minutes from the slopes. That’s how we help in small ways with this, not short-sighted stubbornness but with better solutions. Fewer skiers flying might change the economics of Nightstar too: a proper luxury sleeper train from London to the slopes. I’d genuinely prefer that to ever getting a coach again.
- bronco21016 7y ago
  Ok so you solved getting to the alps from Europe. Now how does the rest of the world get there?
  - bronco21016 7y ago
    Suppose I’m being downvoted by the environmentalists. The grand parent poster highlighted how pragmatic solutions are more important than asking people to full stop degrade their quality of life. The parent post then argues a ‘pragmatic’ solution is taking the train to the alps while completely ignoring that a large percentage of people visiting that particular location likely does not have access solely by train. I believe trains for regional or even continental transportation are an excellent goal. However, the train as the key to solving transportation emissions completely misses the point that we are an intercontinental species at this point. Flying is the only practical method of moving people across the seas and likely will be for the foreseeable future. Solving emissions for flying vehicles seems a far more likely scenario than getting the world, and the people spread all over it, to stop flying. Trains can only solve a portion of the equation.
- yrro 7y ago
  Winter sports is fucking up the ecosystem of the Alps anyway. This is made worse by artificial snow which ensures that more ground is covered by more snow for a longer season. https://youtu.be/K9MaGf-Su9I https://youtu.be/K9MaGf-Su9I

by lagadu 7y ago

graeme 7y ago

>This is where environmental engineering comes in but God forbid someone suggest us actually making intended changes to our climate to fix problems to the current breed of environmentalists The only environmental engineering that can bring back the world our civilization is used to is sucking carbon from the air or water and sequestering it. All the rest have rather large tradeoffs. Sunshades/aerosols? Still leaves the oceans to acidify. As well as any other negative effects of CO2 (there are some preliminary studies showing cognitive effects). Not to mention any unforeseen side effects, and also then that our survival depends in continual geoengineering with bo interruption due to war etc. The parent you're replying to is also wrong though. We can't just "use less" for two reasons. 1. We're already past some tipping points. We basically need to use zero 2. Keeping the current population alive depends on carbon use at present We probably will geoengineer if we fail to figure out negative emissions, but I think you're far too blasé about the consequences.

skriticos2 7y ago

I concur. Also in feudal times people lived 30 years on average and had horrible quality of life, spending most of the time with back breaking work. Death was common before, during and after birth. We just like to romanticize it. I like fantasy too, but that does hardly reflect history. We as a spices have one advantage that have brought us where we are: the advent of tool usage. And that will be the solution too. On a time frame of 100-200 years we will solve energy scarcity through various means (fusion, focused space solar arrays, rentables, etc.). Then we can build the tools to maintain our current and future lifestyle. We can produce synthetic meat / plant meat. We can start stacked farming with in-door illumination. We can capture methane in in-door stables with advanced air management techniques. We can create terraforming towers mega-structures that remove all the carbon dioxide we blew into the atmosphere and put it back into the ground or into hydrocarbon fuel tanks or something. We are really good at these kind of things, but only once it starts to really hurt. So far it doesn't. There is the specter of hurt to come and a few early warning signs, but in aggregate we don't give a damn about it so far. When we start to burn, our plains become barren and our population is collapsing, then we will start address the actual problems and do something about them. Maybe, the optimistic version. We have the potential to do it. Alternatively we can just bitch about it until the population is decimated and then have the remaining few survivors start a new civilization a few hundred years down the line. Or we just annihilate ourselves because of pent up aggression about the miserable state of affair we brought ourself into. We can be very vengeful if we are cornered. Whatever it will be, it probably will be interesting (for an outside observer).

badestrand 7y ago
> We have the potential to do it. I absolutely agree! Humankind is innovative and can move mountains when working together. It seems to take some time to make everyone aware but ultimately a lot of resources will flow into solving the climate crisis. > Also in feudal times people lived 30 years on average and had horrible quality of life, spending most of the time with back breaking work I don't think so.. Look for example at indigenous tribes, they don't work back-breaking 14-hour days, as far as I know. And if you consider that back in the day half of the children died before the age of 5, that leaves a comfortable live expectation of 60 years for anyone surviving childhood!

bonaldi 7y ago

You and your SO might want to look at the state of the glaciers and realise that you might not get much more skiing if things continue as they are. And saying “don’t fly, knuckleheads” isn’t the same as saying “don’t ski”. The snow trains are arguably a better way to do it: you don’t have to get a stupidly early flight and you don’t face a 2+ hr coach ride to the resort. In some resorts the train leaves you ten minutes from the slopes. That’s how we help in small ways with this, not short-sighted stubbornness but with better solutions. Fewer skiers flying might change the economics of Nightstar too: a proper luxury sleeper train from London to the slopes. I’d genuinely prefer that to ever getting a coach again.

bronco21016 7y ago
Ok so you solved getting to the alps from Europe. Now how does the rest of the world get there?
- bronco21016 7y ago
  Suppose I’m being downvoted by the environmentalists. The grand parent poster highlighted how pragmatic solutions are more important than asking people to full stop degrade their quality of life. The parent post then argues a ‘pragmatic’ solution is taking the train to the alps while completely ignoring that a large percentage of people visiting that particular location likely does not have access solely by train. I believe trains for regional or even continental transportation are an excellent goal. However, the train as the key to solving transportation emissions completely misses the point that we are an intercontinental species at this point. Flying is the only practical method of moving people across the seas and likely will be for the foreseeable future. Solving emissions for flying vehicles seems a far more likely scenario than getting the world, and the people spread all over it, to stop flying. Trains can only solve a portion of the equation.
yrro 7y ago
Winter sports is fucking up the ecosystem of the Alps anyway. This is made worse by artificial snow which ensures that more ground is covered by more snow for a longer season. https://youtu.be/K9MaGf-Su9I https://youtu.be/K9MaGf-Su9I