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If I play devils advocate here for a moment: Why is it that everybody is so interested in “lifestyle” changes, and so uninterested in things like OP or Project

If I play devils advocate here for a moment: Why is it that everybody is so interested in “lifestyle” changes, and so uninterested in things like OP or Project Vesta [1]? I sometimes get the feeling that some people just see this whole climate thing as a good opportunity to force their (pre-existing) values/virtues on others... 1. https://projectvesta.org/ https://projectvesta.org/

dashundchen 7y ago
I wouldn't say people are uninterested, I would say we need to do more than hope for "silver bullet" technology solutions to address the problem after the fact. Especially when it involves geoengineering on a scale orders of magnitude larger than have ever been attempted, and doesn't address the reason we'd even geoengineer. Humans do not have a great track record of predicting the secondary effects of their actions on the earth. Meanwhile our society is incredibly wasteful of energy, and has a ton of low hanging fruit via reduction and efficiencies. The less emissions we produce now, the less we have to clean up with solutions like the linked above. I'll also repeat this again because it's a common accusation leveled on HN. Most people interested in addressing environmental issues are not doing it to "virtue signal" or impose arbitrary values but because they want a healthier environment and to make the world sustainable for future generations.
- bjornsing 7y ago
  Personally I don’t care one bit about the “virtue signaling”: people can signal their virtues all they want for all I care. But it seems to me it’s more than that: there’s also a lot of that age old instinct of trying to control others behavior... There’s a lot of talk about “we cannot keep...” and “the fallacy of never ending economic growth”. To me that just sounds simplistic and ideologically motivated. When the world turns away from science and innovation, towards dogma and social control, it rarely ends well...
  - dashundchen 7y ago
    > When the world turns away from science and innovation, towards dogma and social control, it rarely ends well... Great! Then you'll be happy to know the science modelling climate change due to human emissions has been well underway since the 1970s, and that science is also saying we need to reduce emissions AND sequester carbon already in the atmosphere to avoid catastrophic social and economic consequences (aka "lifestyle changes"). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21115669 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21115669 You should also be interested in the large amounts of innovation needed to address this - renewable energy sources storage, and delivery, innovative new ideas on how we can travel, grow our food and transform our economy into a more efficient and sustainable one. Since you're interested in carbon sequestration such as Project Vesta, I'm sure you'd agree it makes no sense numerically to only start capturing carbon without also reducing emissions which have been growing non-stop. How do you propose this happens?
    - bjornsing 7y ago
      > I'm sure you'd agree it makes no sense numerically to only start capturing carbon without also reducing emissions which have been growing non-stop. I know this is the accepted dogma, but I can’t say I see it as “numerically” self-evident. The OP seems to argue that %67 of all the CO2 emissions since the dawn of industrialization can be captured in a few decades, solely by planting trees. That sounds like a capture rate “numerically” comparable to the current emissions rate, no...? (I’m not saying there is a silver bullet, but why do people seem so hellbent on there not being one...?)
  - Stanish 7y ago
    The idea that technological futurism and capitalism don’t impose incredible amounts of social control, and that they aren’t ideological & dogmatic is nonsensical.
arbitrary_name 7y ago
1. They are not lifestyle changes, they are fundamental reductions in carbon footprint. 2. They are proven to reduce your impact at a level that most consider manageable 3. The other poster said AND - eat less meat AND get involved in other mechanisms for change I dont have any interest in virtue or signalling: i just want people to impact the planet less so we dont trigger any unwanted changes. Is that a valid enough reason to ask everyone to try their best or do we keep having to have philosophical arguments about how individual free choice (shaped often by the corporations themselves!) trumps any imperative to collectively sacrifice?
- scarejunba 7y ago
  I have an SUV, eat meat every day, and fly once a month. I am carbon negative through TerraPass. The solution doesn't need lifestyle change for those who can pay to offset. It needs lifestyle change from the rest.
  - megaremote 7y ago
    If you are driving a car you are destroying our planet.
    - scarejunba 7y ago
      Nah, you're doing worse than I am unless you're carbon negative too. My car is fully offset and all marginal stuff is offset too.
  - Legogris 7y ago
    So it's OK to crap in the street if you pick enough litter that you're now poo-negative? Carbon emissions is not the only major climate impact from the things you mention and it's not about "paying your dues" as an individual.
    - scarejunba 7y ago
      I'm not listening to some carbon positive individual lecture me. Fix your house first.
SamBam 7y ago
Exactly. People (not necessarily the parent comment) love to focus on the lifestyle choices because they allow them to paint those advocating change as hypocrites, and so dismiss the entire message. The vast majority (~80%, [1]) of the greenhouse gas emissions do not come from "lifestyle" choices such as eating meat, but from transportation, industrial use and electrical production. These require changes at the policy level that individuals can't create by themselves but only by calling for action by legislators. Planting more trees on a national scale can absolutely be one of the many policy changes that we call for to help balance the scales, because we will never get those three sectors down to zero. As for the specific question of meat, it would undoubtably help for everyone to eat less meat, but in fact if every single person in the US went vegetarian, it's estimated that it would only reduce the US's CO2 output by about 5%. [2] 1. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#transportation https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... 2. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/climate/what-if-we-all-ate-a-bit-less-meat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/climate/what-if-we-all-at...
- brokenawipicute 7y ago
  To some extent, it's not about reducing emissions as so far as voting with your wallet. If a large enough group unsupported the meat/airline/etc industry, they would go bankrupt.
  - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    I would like to vote with my wallet, but products don't come with 'CO2 emitted' labels. That's important because the exact same product could be produced I a variety of ways, some many times more polluting than others.
    - jorgemf 7y ago
      I don't think it is that complicated: - go by car or by public transport? - buy local vegetables vs eating a burger in a franchise? - turn on the heater vs use a bigger blanket? - go to work in a suit with a tie in summer with A/C at maximum power vs go in summer clothes with a normal A/C? That is voting with your wallet and your lifestyle. Please stop saying is others fault... it is our fault, of everybody, from politics to regular people. And we ALL have to do something.
jchook 7y ago
If I understand correctly, ecoforestry, biochar, reducing carbon emissions 50% each year, renewable energy sources, “green sand” beaches, etc together still don’t revert the damage already done in time to prevent a major ecological crisis.
1shooner 7y ago
I think it's because 'lifestyle' changes slow or reverse the origin deleterious behavior that is (perceived to be) causing the problem, while dumping 7 cubic miles of foreign material on beaches seems like a radical approach with a high likelihood of unintended ecological consequences.
kaybe 7y ago
Many climate control projects have hard-to-judge side effects and are currently either hard/expensive or impossible. It is cheaper to not burn the carbon in the first place. Carbon capture might be easier to control as a single entity (a definite benefit), but there is no money in it as of now, so research is slow. On the other hand, all current IPCC scenarios require both lifestyle changes and a staggering amount of carbon capture, starting from 2030 peaking with up to 20 Gt/CO2/year in 2050 for the worst scenario (which we are very much on track for) [0]. (Current emissions are around 40 Gt/CO2/year. [1]) Nobody knows how, and especially not how without side effects. That does not mean we should not try - we need to - but that means we have to pull all the stops, now. Look at those plots, this is a desperate situation, and the IPCC reports are actually optimistic. [2]/[3] [0] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3b-724x1024.png https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3... [1] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM1_figure-final-947x1024.png https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM1... [2] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/FigSPM-10.jpg https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/FigSPM-10.jp... [3] https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/graphics/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/graphics/
perfunctory 7y ago
There is an interesting angle to geoengineering. Once you start applying it (assuming we master the technology) you get into the argument of what is the "right" temperature for the Earth. Some countries (Russia) might prefer it a little warmer, some others (U.S., India) a little colder. Do we really want to get into a new Cold War? Some geoengineering solutions don't seem to be all that expensive (e.g. spraying sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere), and if things get really bad in some particularly hot places, somebody (India?) may decide to apply them unilaterally. Will we be happy about that?
- high_5 7y ago
  With great power comes responsibility that we mostly fail to bear.
- GVIrish 7y ago
  The bigger issue with geoengineering is that it may have massive unknown side effects. Stratospheric sulphur spraying may cool the climate, but we don't know how it will shift weather patterns or any other unknown effects. If things get bad enough we'll get forced into geo-engineering, but as you said, unilateral action could complicate things in unforeseen ways.
Lendal 7y ago
Here's another one: https://terrapower.com/ https://terrapower.com/ Read about TWR (Traveling Wave Reactor) designed by these guys, financed by Bill Gates. It runs on depleted uranium, not enriched uranium. It's amazing how it works. There's so many solutions being developed like this on so many fronts. But we're not doing any of them. I don't understand it. Government is not even being asked to finance this, but yet they won't approve it because of politics.
- beat 7y ago
  Is the problem that they won't approve it, or that the technology isn't yet mature enough for production-scale reactors? And if it's just a mature of (presumably political) regulatory resistance, is that also true in France, in Russia, in China, in India? That's the problem with all these "We'd have cheap safe nuclear power if it wasn't for those stupid treehuggers" arguments - if nobody is doing it, not even in countries that are pretty reckless and unregulated like China, maybe the problem isn't regulation.
api 7y ago
Or phasing out coal. See my other reply. Coal is such a huge contributor to the problem that you can almost say that climate change is a coal problem. Not quite, but you're not wrong. I am deeply puzzled by anyone discussing climate change who doesn't bring up coal first, yet I see tons of discussion where coal is not even mentioned.
- bjornsing 7y ago
  Yea, coal kills on the order of a million people per year [1], here and now. Is also a huge contributor to global warming. But a lot of people seem more concerned about their neighbors stake or vacation... It’s a paradox, I must say. 1. https://endcoal.org/health/ https://endcoal.org/health/
- lexpar 7y ago
  I'm interested in the justification for this. The following link says about 25% of US GHG emissions are from coal, but coal burning makes up the vast majority GHG emissions for electricity production. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=environment_where_ghg_come_from https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=environme...
  - api 7y ago
    You are only looking at US emissions, not world emissions. The US is not the only country on Earth and its use of coal has been falling for some time now.
    - lexpar 7y ago
      Oh, I was not aware the US is not the only country on Earth. Snark aside, here's a source that says globally coal power production accounts for 30% of global CO2 emissions. That's a lot, but not quite the whole problem. https://www.iea.org/geco/emissions/ https://www.iea.org/geco/emissions/ Actually I agree with you that getting upset over meat eating and plastic straws is a silly way to avoid tackling the much larger issues. Also, I was genuinely asking for more information, and am still interested.
8ytecoder 7y ago
Or that it results in a more sustainable world? I support a multitude of solutions but it’s also clear to me that unless we change our lifestyle to match the very long term future sustainability every solution is going to breakdown - just a matter of when. For example, we can plant as many trees as we want but if population grows even at the current rate we are gonna need another planet. So what’s wrong in saying we need to slow down our own expansion. Same for industrial scale agriculture. What I always find puzzling in all these conversations is the attachment people have to their lifestyle which probably evolved to where it is only in the last five decades - at most. Meat was never this readily available in history. Neither was energy. These are incredibly recent in our evolutionary period and yet they wreak havoc like nothing else.
- zaroth 7y ago
  > For example, we can plant as many trees as we want but if population grows even at the current rate we are gonna need another planet. In fact, population growth is slowing. [1] Claiming that we need population control is false and IMO extremely damaging to building consensus. [1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/worlds-population-is-projected-to-nearly-stop-growing-by-the-end-of-the-century/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/worlds-popu...
- kelnos 7y ago
  > So what’s wrong in saying we need to slow down our own expansion. China's former one-child policy, while reasonably successful, had its own unintended consequences (for one thing, too many people aging out of the workforce with too few to replace them). And even with their relative success, there was still a decent amount of dissent and people secretly working around the rules. And China had an authoritarian government to enforce all this. Do you really expect Western democracies to be able to push through any kind of population controls? Do you really expect, for example, the American public to get behind some kind of limits (even if just socially-enforced limits) on the number of kids they can have? That's just not going to happen.
numbsafari 7y ago
I would offer that a lot of proposals like Project Vesta sound great, but are massive-scale geo-engineering projects that could, themselves, have unintended consequences.
- wiz21c 7y ago
  From the web site : A volume of 7 cubic miles (11 km^3) of olivine, or around 30 Gigatons, is needed each year. This is less than half the volume of construction materials and less than that of fossil fuel equivalents mined yearly. That's gigantic, how can they sustain that 30 gigatons a year ?
chakalakasp 7y ago
I think it’s because most current futuretech solutions are pipe dreams at best. The scale of the problem is such that we need to learn how to essentially execute a planned terraform of a planet in the near term (as opposed to the current unintentional terraforming), using tech we don’t yet even have scribbled on a the back of a napkin to create massive effects on the planet using processes we don’t fully understand. It’s the equivalent of saying “to fix this we need to invent warp drive and genetically bioengineer human bodies to withstand prolonged periods of 100G acceleration and figure out how to extend human lifetimes to thousands of years, and we need to get it done in the next century.” It’s a fun fairy tale. The alternative, lifestyle changes, is better understood and the effects of which are easily predicted, but is only effective if done in a unified manner at a scale that current human nature will not allow. We can’t even figure out how to cure hunger and poverty in a world of plenty, good luck getting everyone to make the dramatic changes to even get us to stabilize at mostly broken planet. The real answer is that beyond a deus ex machina there is no answer and that the inevitable easily and indisputably modeled result of the current situation is dramatic near-term biosphere changes, ecosystems collapse and likely the end of most advanced human civilization within a couple centuries, conservatively. It must be a weird time to be a climate scientists, with the best computer models that have ever existed essentially returning a result that ends the world within a half dozen generations.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
fucking_tragedy 7y ago
> Why is it that everybody is so interested in “lifestyle” changes, and so uninterested in things like OP or Project Vesta [1]? Project Vesta hasn't proved efficacy or ability to scale. It's reminiscent of the "solar roadways" hype from earlier this decade. Most greenhouse gas emissions come from industry and transportation of goods. It's less politically expedient to blame entrenched powers for their hand in climate change than it is to blame Joe Nobody for driving instead of walking to work.
batmansmk 7y ago
For the example you shared, the paint is still fresh on project Vesta. Mining, crushing, transporting will have a non-neutral carbon impact which is not taken into account into their model afaik. Overall our atmospheric models are not yet mature, which make carbon-trapping mechanisms from the atmostphere hard to gauge. Easier if we reduce or trap carbon emissions before it is spread into the atmosphere. Please also consider we will eventually run out of fuel/oil/gas/coal; carbon dioxide savings is the long term strategy.
BrandonMarc 7y ago
Yep. The same reason they ignore Gen-4 nuclear, and sucking carbon out of the air. Politicians frankly don't want to solve global warming; they want more money and power. They want to pass laws telling the masses what they can and can't do (see how after the GND was published, AOC was spotted with a friend eating cheeseburgers), and they want an excuse to raise taxes on anybody they can get away with taxing more. But if you actually have something that will reduce emissions? Well that's a threat to their plan to get more money and power.
everdev 7y ago
Maybe because the initial spike in CO2 came from lifestyle choices. Industry keeps up with consumer demands. And trying to advocate for lifestyle changes respects the free market. I'm not saying it's the best or only way to address climate change but it does seem consistent with addressing how it started.
throwaway5752 7y ago
Geo-engineering is like chemo. It comes with a bunch of other problems and it's far better to take steps to avoid being in a place where you need it. Usually proponents for it here do not talk about the downsides of it.
lostcolony 7y ago
Didn't the parent project -JUST- say we need to stop talking "OR" and instead talk "AND"?
notfromhere 7y ago
Because what's driving climate change is industrial production and agricultural output via population growth.
wysifnwyg 7y ago
It allows them to feel like they've helped while not actually targeting the areas which are producing the highest amounts of GHGs (transportation & electricity production). Areas that would financially impact the wealthiest among us.
safgasCVS 7y ago
The problem is fundamentally caused by overconsumption and the solutions that don’t include reducing consumption will absolutely fail. If this were a school shooting you’re suggesting we be the hopes and prayers guy.
kelnos 7y ago
I absolutely agree with this. I (obviously?) want to see solutions to climate issues, but I also very much enjoy taking several plane trips per year, both for vacation and to visit family. I also enjoy the taste of meat. So yes, I am a part of the problem. But we've gotten into this mess with technology; why can't we use technology to get out of it? Part of the problem is that, in taking part in these activities that increase our carbon footprint, we're not actually paying for the true impact of our actions. I'd be fine with paying more for my plane tickets if I knew that extra money was going toward carbon capture, or other technologies that are in development to reduce the impact of these -- by now very common -- activities. I'm reminded of the checkbox memes; "You are attempting to apply an X solution to Y. Your idea will not work because:" -- one of my favorite checkboxes on those, was always "You are attempting to change the behavior of everyone, which does not work". I feel like this applies to most climate issues. Implementing worldwide population controls is a non-starter. Implementing restrictions on air travel is a non-starter. Outlawing meat consumption is a non-starter. I love that companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are trying to come up with more sustainable meat substitutes. I think they have a ways to go, but I'd be happy to switch over to them at some point. That's a great example of using technology to reduce carbon footprint, while still allowing people to have the same (or nearly the same) experiences. Can't we do more of this? At the end of the day, people are going to do what they're going to do, as long as they can (financially) afford it. Cultural/societal change on this level, in the time frame necessary, just isn't realistic.
sharx 7y ago
aren't you proving their point? You're tunnel visioning on a couple uncertain solutions instead of firing all ammo we have at the issue.
Legogris 7y ago
No small set of solutions will be enough. We're nowhere close to a "solution" and for the average individual who is not a policy-maker or wealthy investor, "lifestyle" changes and consumer choices is pretty much the only venue through we can impact.
vfc1 7y ago
That's just another oversimplification. So we can just keep overexploiting the natural resources of the planet, and solve everything by further environmental manipulation, like by creating a huge amount of green-sand beaches. We have no idea how that further manipulation would affect the environment, in a thousand unforeseen ways that would only be apparent decades down the line. Half of the earth habitable area is used for animal agriculture, so that should be the first part being reforested, meaning less cattle feed, meaning less meat. So we cover the surface of the earth with crop fields, plant a bunch of trees on the other and everything is going to be all right? Of course not, it's just not that simple. Scientists simply cannot predict how the ecosystem would respond, the models are too simple for something so complex as the Earth. We need to stop using so many resources, continuing to increase the rate of consumption while waiting for some miracle technical silver bullet solution is just suicidal as a species.

dashundchen 7y ago

I wouldn't say people are uninterested, I would say we need to do more than hope for "silver bullet" technology solutions to address the problem after the fact. Especially when it involves geoengineering on a scale orders of magnitude larger than have ever been attempted, and doesn't address the reason we'd even geoengineer. Humans do not have a great track record of predicting the secondary effects of their actions on the earth. Meanwhile our society is incredibly wasteful of energy, and has a ton of low hanging fruit via reduction and efficiencies. The less emissions we produce now, the less we have to clean up with solutions like the linked above. I'll also repeat this again because it's a common accusation leveled on HN. Most people interested in addressing environmental issues are not doing it to "virtue signal" or impose arbitrary values but because they want a healthier environment and to make the world sustainable for future generations.

bjornsing 7y ago
Personally I don’t care one bit about the “virtue signaling”: people can signal their virtues all they want for all I care. But it seems to me it’s more than that: there’s also a lot of that age old instinct of trying to control others behavior... There’s a lot of talk about “we cannot keep...” and “the fallacy of never ending economic growth”. To me that just sounds simplistic and ideologically motivated. When the world turns away from science and innovation, towards dogma and social control, it rarely ends well...
- dashundchen 7y ago
  > When the world turns away from science and innovation, towards dogma and social control, it rarely ends well... Great! Then you'll be happy to know the science modelling climate change due to human emissions has been well underway since the 1970s, and that science is also saying we need to reduce emissions AND sequester carbon already in the atmosphere to avoid catastrophic social and economic consequences (aka "lifestyle changes"). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21115669 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21115669 You should also be interested in the large amounts of innovation needed to address this - renewable energy sources storage, and delivery, innovative new ideas on how we can travel, grow our food and transform our economy into a more efficient and sustainable one. Since you're interested in carbon sequestration such as Project Vesta, I'm sure you'd agree it makes no sense numerically to only start capturing carbon without also reducing emissions which have been growing non-stop. How do you propose this happens?
  - bjornsing 7y ago
    > I'm sure you'd agree it makes no sense numerically to only start capturing carbon without also reducing emissions which have been growing non-stop. I know this is the accepted dogma, but I can’t say I see it as “numerically” self-evident. The OP seems to argue that %67 of all the CO2 emissions since the dawn of industrialization can be captured in a few decades, solely by planting trees. That sounds like a capture rate “numerically” comparable to the current emissions rate, no...? (I’m not saying there is a silver bullet, but why do people seem so hellbent on there not being one...?)
- Stanish 7y ago
  The idea that technological futurism and capitalism don’t impose incredible amounts of social control, and that they aren’t ideological & dogmatic is nonsensical.

arbitrary_name 7y ago

1. They are not lifestyle changes, they are fundamental reductions in carbon footprint. 2. They are proven to reduce your impact at a level that most consider manageable 3. The other poster said AND - eat less meat AND get involved in other mechanisms for change I dont have any interest in virtue or signalling: i just want people to impact the planet less so we dont trigger any unwanted changes. Is that a valid enough reason to ask everyone to try their best or do we keep having to have philosophical arguments about how individual free choice (shaped often by the corporations themselves!) trumps any imperative to collectively sacrifice?

scarejunba 7y ago
I have an SUV, eat meat every day, and fly once a month. I am carbon negative through TerraPass. The solution doesn't need lifestyle change for those who can pay to offset. It needs lifestyle change from the rest.
- megaremote 7y ago
  If you are driving a car you are destroying our planet.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    Nah, you're doing worse than I am unless you're carbon negative too. My car is fully offset and all marginal stuff is offset too.
- Legogris 7y ago
  So it's OK to crap in the street if you pick enough litter that you're now poo-negative? Carbon emissions is not the only major climate impact from the things you mention and it's not about "paying your dues" as an individual.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    I'm not listening to some carbon positive individual lecture me. Fix your house first.

SamBam 7y ago

Exactly. People (not necessarily the parent comment) love to focus on the lifestyle choices because they allow them to paint those advocating change as hypocrites, and so dismiss the entire message. The vast majority (~80%, [1]) of the greenhouse gas emissions do not come from "lifestyle" choices such as eating meat, but from transportation, industrial use and electrical production. These require changes at the policy level that individuals can't create by themselves but only by calling for action by legislators. Planting more trees on a national scale can absolutely be one of the many policy changes that we call for to help balance the scales, because we will never get those three sectors down to zero. As for the specific question of meat, it would undoubtably help for everyone to eat less meat, but in fact if every single person in the US went vegetarian, it's estimated that it would only reduce the US's CO2 output by about 5%. [2] 1. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#transportation https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... 2. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/climate/what-if-we-all-ate-a-bit-less-meat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/climate/what-if-we-all-at...

brokenawipicute 7y ago
To some extent, it's not about reducing emissions as so far as voting with your wallet. If a large enough group unsupported the meat/airline/etc industry, they would go bankrupt.
- ClumsyPilot 7y ago
  I would like to vote with my wallet, but products don't come with 'CO2 emitted' labels. That's important because the exact same product could be produced I a variety of ways, some many times more polluting than others.
  - jorgemf 7y ago
    I don't think it is that complicated: - go by car or by public transport? - buy local vegetables vs eating a burger in a franchise? - turn on the heater vs use a bigger blanket? - go to work in a suit with a tie in summer with A/C at maximum power vs go in summer clothes with a normal A/C? That is voting with your wallet and your lifestyle. Please stop saying is others fault... it is our fault, of everybody, from politics to regular people. And we ALL have to do something.

jchook 7y ago

If I understand correctly, ecoforestry, biochar, reducing carbon emissions 50% each year, renewable energy sources, “green sand” beaches, etc together still don’t revert the damage already done in time to prevent a major ecological crisis.

1shooner 7y ago

I think it's because 'lifestyle' changes slow or reverse the origin deleterious behavior that is (perceived to be) causing the problem, while dumping 7 cubic miles of foreign material on beaches seems like a radical approach with a high likelihood of unintended ecological consequences.

kaybe 7y ago

Many climate control projects have hard-to-judge side effects and are currently either hard/expensive or impossible. It is cheaper to not burn the carbon in the first place. Carbon capture might be easier to control as a single entity (a definite benefit), but there is no money in it as of now, so research is slow. On the other hand, all current IPCC scenarios require both lifestyle changes and a staggering amount of carbon capture, starting from 2030 peaking with up to 20 Gt/CO2/year in 2050 for the worst scenario (which we are very much on track for) [0]. (Current emissions are around 40 Gt/CO2/year. [1]) Nobody knows how, and especially not how without side effects. That does not mean we should not try - we need to - but that means we have to pull all the stops, now. Look at those plots, this is a desperate situation, and the IPCC reports are actually optimistic. [2]/[3] [0] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3b-724x1024.png https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3... [1] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM1_figure-final-947x1024.png https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM1... [2] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/FigSPM-10.jpg https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/FigSPM-10.jp... [3] https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/graphics/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/graphics/

perfunctory 7y ago

There is an interesting angle to geoengineering. Once you start applying it (assuming we master the technology) you get into the argument of what is the "right" temperature for the Earth. Some countries (Russia) might prefer it a little warmer, some others (U.S., India) a little colder. Do we really want to get into a new Cold War? Some geoengineering solutions don't seem to be all that expensive (e.g. spraying sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere), and if things get really bad in some particularly hot places, somebody (India?) may decide to apply them unilaterally. Will we be happy about that?

high_5 7y ago
With great power comes responsibility that we mostly fail to bear.
GVIrish 7y ago
The bigger issue with geoengineering is that it may have massive unknown side effects. Stratospheric sulphur spraying may cool the climate, but we don't know how it will shift weather patterns or any other unknown effects. If things get bad enough we'll get forced into geo-engineering, but as you said, unilateral action could complicate things in unforeseen ways.

Lendal 7y ago

Here's another one: https://terrapower.com/ https://terrapower.com/ Read about TWR (Traveling Wave Reactor) designed by these guys, financed by Bill Gates. It runs on depleted uranium, not enriched uranium. It's amazing how it works. There's so many solutions being developed like this on so many fronts. But we're not doing any of them. I don't understand it. Government is not even being asked to finance this, but yet they won't approve it because of politics.

beat 7y ago
Is the problem that they won't approve it, or that the technology isn't yet mature enough for production-scale reactors? And if it's just a mature of (presumably political) regulatory resistance, is that also true in France, in Russia, in China, in India? That's the problem with all these "We'd have cheap safe nuclear power if it wasn't for those stupid treehuggers" arguments - if nobody is doing it, not even in countries that are pretty reckless and unregulated like China, maybe the problem isn't regulation.

api 7y ago

Or phasing out coal. See my other reply. Coal is such a huge contributor to the problem that you can almost say that climate change is a coal problem. Not quite, but you're not wrong. I am deeply puzzled by anyone discussing climate change who doesn't bring up coal first, yet I see tons of discussion where coal is not even mentioned.

bjornsing 7y ago
Yea, coal kills on the order of a million people per year [1], here and now. Is also a huge contributor to global warming. But a lot of people seem more concerned about their neighbors stake or vacation... It’s a paradox, I must say. 1. https://endcoal.org/health/ https://endcoal.org/health/
lexpar 7y ago
I'm interested in the justification for this. The following link says about 25% of US GHG emissions are from coal, but coal burning makes up the vast majority GHG emissions for electricity production. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=environment_where_ghg_come_from https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=environme...
- api 7y ago
  You are only looking at US emissions, not world emissions. The US is not the only country on Earth and its use of coal has been falling for some time now.
  - lexpar 7y ago
    Oh, I was not aware the US is not the only country on Earth. Snark aside, here's a source that says globally coal power production accounts for 30% of global CO2 emissions. That's a lot, but not quite the whole problem. https://www.iea.org/geco/emissions/ https://www.iea.org/geco/emissions/ Actually I agree with you that getting upset over meat eating and plastic straws is a silly way to avoid tackling the much larger issues. Also, I was genuinely asking for more information, and am still interested.

8ytecoder 7y ago

Or that it results in a more sustainable world? I support a multitude of solutions but it’s also clear to me that unless we change our lifestyle to match the very long term future sustainability every solution is going to breakdown - just a matter of when. For example, we can plant as many trees as we want but if population grows even at the current rate we are gonna need another planet. So what’s wrong in saying we need to slow down our own expansion. Same for industrial scale agriculture. What I always find puzzling in all these conversations is the attachment people have to their lifestyle which probably evolved to where it is only in the last five decades - at most. Meat was never this readily available in history. Neither was energy. These are incredibly recent in our evolutionary period and yet they wreak havoc like nothing else.

zaroth 7y ago
> For example, we can plant as many trees as we want but if population grows even at the current rate we are gonna need another planet. In fact, population growth is slowing. [1] Claiming that we need population control is false and IMO extremely damaging to building consensus. [1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/worlds-population-is-projected-to-nearly-stop-growing-by-the-end-of-the-century/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/worlds-popu...
kelnos 7y ago
> So what’s wrong in saying we need to slow down our own expansion. China's former one-child policy, while reasonably successful, had its own unintended consequences (for one thing, too many people aging out of the workforce with too few to replace them). And even with their relative success, there was still a decent amount of dissent and people secretly working around the rules. And China had an authoritarian government to enforce all this. Do you really expect Western democracies to be able to push through any kind of population controls? Do you really expect, for example, the American public to get behind some kind of limits (even if just socially-enforced limits) on the number of kids they can have? That's just not going to happen.

numbsafari 7y ago

I would offer that a lot of proposals like Project Vesta sound great, but are massive-scale geo-engineering projects that could, themselves, have unintended consequences.

wiz21c 7y ago
From the web site : A volume of 7 cubic miles (11 km^3) of olivine, or around 30 Gigatons, is needed each year. This is less than half the volume of construction materials and less than that of fossil fuel equivalents mined yearly. That's gigantic, how can they sustain that 30 gigatons a year ?

chakalakasp 7y ago

I think it’s because most current futuretech solutions are pipe dreams at best. The scale of the problem is such that we need to learn how to essentially execute a planned terraform of a planet in the near term (as opposed to the current unintentional terraforming), using tech we don’t yet even have scribbled on a the back of a napkin to create massive effects on the planet using processes we don’t fully understand. It’s the equivalent of saying “to fix this we need to invent warp drive and genetically bioengineer human bodies to withstand prolonged periods of 100G acceleration and figure out how to extend human lifetimes to thousands of years, and we need to get it done in the next century.” It’s a fun fairy tale. The alternative, lifestyle changes, is better understood and the effects of which are easily predicted, but is only effective if done in a unified manner at a scale that current human nature will not allow. We can’t even figure out how to cure hunger and poverty in a world of plenty, good luck getting everyone to make the dramatic changes to even get us to stabilize at mostly broken planet. The real answer is that beyond a deus ex machina there is no answer and that the inevitable easily and indisputably modeled result of the current situation is dramatic near-term biosphere changes, ecosystems collapse and likely the end of most advanced human civilization within a couple centuries, conservatively. It must be a weird time to be a climate scientists, with the best computer models that have ever existed essentially returning a result that ends the world within a half dozen generations.

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fucking_tragedy 7y ago

> Why is it that everybody is so interested in “lifestyle” changes, and so uninterested in things like OP or Project Vesta [1]? Project Vesta hasn't proved efficacy or ability to scale. It's reminiscent of the "solar roadways" hype from earlier this decade. Most greenhouse gas emissions come from industry and transportation of goods. It's less politically expedient to blame entrenched powers for their hand in climate change than it is to blame Joe Nobody for driving instead of walking to work.

batmansmk 7y ago

For the example you shared, the paint is still fresh on project Vesta. Mining, crushing, transporting will have a non-neutral carbon impact which is not taken into account into their model afaik. Overall our atmospheric models are not yet mature, which make carbon-trapping mechanisms from the atmostphere hard to gauge. Easier if we reduce or trap carbon emissions before it is spread into the atmosphere. Please also consider we will eventually run out of fuel/oil/gas/coal; carbon dioxide savings is the long term strategy.

BrandonMarc 7y ago

Yep. The same reason they ignore Gen-4 nuclear, and sucking carbon out of the air. Politicians frankly don't want to solve global warming; they want more money and power. They want to pass laws telling the masses what they can and can't do (see how after the GND was published, AOC was spotted with a friend eating cheeseburgers), and they want an excuse to raise taxes on anybody they can get away with taxing more. But if you actually have something that will reduce emissions? Well that's a threat to their plan to get more money and power.

everdev 7y ago

Maybe because the initial spike in CO2 came from lifestyle choices. Industry keeps up with consumer demands. And trying to advocate for lifestyle changes respects the free market. I'm not saying it's the best or only way to address climate change but it does seem consistent with addressing how it started.

throwaway5752 7y ago

Geo-engineering is like chemo. It comes with a bunch of other problems and it's far better to take steps to avoid being in a place where you need it. Usually proponents for it here do not talk about the downsides of it.

lostcolony 7y ago

Didn't the parent project -JUST- say we need to stop talking "OR" and instead talk "AND"?

notfromhere 7y ago

Because what's driving climate change is industrial production and agricultural output via population growth.

wysifnwyg 7y ago

It allows them to feel like they've helped while not actually targeting the areas which are producing the highest amounts of GHGs (transportation & electricity production). Areas that would financially impact the wealthiest among us.

safgasCVS 7y ago

The problem is fundamentally caused by overconsumption and the solutions that don’t include reducing consumption will absolutely fail. If this were a school shooting you’re suggesting we be the hopes and prayers guy.

kelnos 7y ago

I absolutely agree with this. I (obviously?) want to see solutions to climate issues, but I also very much enjoy taking several plane trips per year, both for vacation and to visit family. I also enjoy the taste of meat. So yes, I am a part of the problem. But we've gotten into this mess with technology; why can't we use technology to get out of it? Part of the problem is that, in taking part in these activities that increase our carbon footprint, we're not actually paying for the true impact of our actions. I'd be fine with paying more for my plane tickets if I knew that extra money was going toward carbon capture, or other technologies that are in development to reduce the impact of these -- by now very common -- activities. I'm reminded of the checkbox memes; "You are attempting to apply an X solution to Y. Your idea will not work because:" -- one of my favorite checkboxes on those, was always "You are attempting to change the behavior of everyone, which does not work". I feel like this applies to most climate issues. Implementing worldwide population controls is a non-starter. Implementing restrictions on air travel is a non-starter. Outlawing meat consumption is a non-starter. I love that companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are trying to come up with more sustainable meat substitutes. I think they have a ways to go, but I'd be happy to switch over to them at some point. That's a great example of using technology to reduce carbon footprint, while still allowing people to have the same (or nearly the same) experiences. Can't we do more of this? At the end of the day, people are going to do what they're going to do, as long as they can (financially) afford it. Cultural/societal change on this level, in the time frame necessary, just isn't realistic.

sharx 7y ago

aren't you proving their point? You're tunnel visioning on a couple uncertain solutions instead of firing all ammo we have at the issue.

Legogris 7y ago

No small set of solutions will be enough. We're nowhere close to a "solution" and for the average individual who is not a policy-maker or wealthy investor, "lifestyle" changes and consumer choices is pretty much the only venue through we can impact.

vfc1 7y ago

That's just another oversimplification. So we can just keep overexploiting the natural resources of the planet, and solve everything by further environmental manipulation, like by creating a huge amount of green-sand beaches. We have no idea how that further manipulation would affect the environment, in a thousand unforeseen ways that would only be apparent decades down the line. Half of the earth habitable area is used for animal agriculture, so that should be the first part being reforested, meaning less cattle feed, meaning less meat. So we cover the surface of the earth with crop fields, plant a bunch of trees on the other and everything is going to be all right? Of course not, it's just not that simple. Scientists simply cannot predict how the ecosystem would respond, the models are too simple for something so complex as the Earth. We need to stop using so many resources, continuing to increase the rate of consumption while waiting for some miracle technical silver bullet solution is just suicidal as a species.