6 ms·

There is unfortunately no stopping this as there is no or very little political will.

shard972 7y ago
People won't even have a conversation about Geo-engineering so i don't see why politics is to blame solely.
lapink 7y ago
Maybe Americans could start changing their way of life rather than waiting for « political will » or a never coming technological revolution. UE has started reducing CO2 emissions will keeping a very reasonable and increasing level of life.
- donkeyd 7y ago
  I assume you mean EU. However, while EU countries have made a lot of promises and plans, they're not actually keeping them either and people are complaining about impact on their daily lives. At least the US is transparent in not wanting to change (their President is).
- brozaman 7y ago
  USA is certainly a problem, but the elephants in the room are China and India.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    Current emissions have the US at 2x India and current emissions are obviously irrelevant since it’s total cumulative emissions that matter, where the US runs away with it.
donkeyd 7y ago
It's easy to blame politics, but voters really do have an effect on this and there's hardly any will there either. The fastest growing party in the Netherlands is huge on climate denial and stopping or rolling back anything done against climate change. Their voters are adamant that there's no real issue with climate change, that everything is exaggerated and that it's all a left-wing conspiracy. Most people want to remain at the same level of comfort and luxury, and that's not possible if we want to effectively combat climate change. We'd need to fly less, drive less and consume less and that's the opposite of what's happening in the world.
- crispinb 7y ago
  Quite. It's really very boring to hear people endlessly whinging about politicians, then refusing to vote for those offering anything different from BAU. There are no perfect democracies, but citizens surely must accept some responsibility for their voting decisions.
crispinb 7y ago
It's worse than that. There is very determined political will, across much of the globe, to stoke global heating further for short-term benefit. In my country (Australia) we had a federal election last year. The climate issues were very clearly laid out, and most citizens here accept the science, and have some understanding of the severity of the issue. Yet they voted very decisively against any further action to reduce emissions. Most of the electorate here simply will not countenance changes from business as usual. Of the world's more significant population centres, Europe is the most realistically ambitious but is too fractious & bureaucratic to rapidly make the necessary big decisions, the US is weighed down with a sclerotic political system and a huge proportion of the population with dogmatically anti-scientific attitudes, China is backpedalling due to economic worries, and India has enough troubles of its own. We're toast - this must be clear to everyone at this stage.
- clarry 7y ago
  > Europe is the most realistically ambitious but is too fractious & bureaucratic to rapidly make the necessary big decisions I think EU is the only significant region to have actually decreased CO2 emissions over the past few decades: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fossil_carbon_dioxide_emissions_six_top_countries_and_confederations.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fo... That's not to say they couldn't have done more, but it's kinda sad that everyone else is drawing a flat line or going up. EU alone is not going to save the planet, even if they somehow stopped emissions altogether.
  - crispinb 7y ago
    Agree the EU is in better shape than much of the world. There's a lot of technical arguments about how well it's doing in practise. But even the fact that it's at issue shows that at least it has some chance of meeting its 40%-cut-by-2030 Paris target. And it has a fairly solid consensus about the dimensions of the problem, lacking the fake polarisation corruptly injected by the fossil fuel industry into the US and Australia's political systems.
- titzer 7y ago

People won't even have a conversation about Geo-engineering so i don't see why politics is to blame solely.

Maybe Americans could start changing their way of life rather than waiting for « political will » or a never coming technological revolution. UE has started reducing CO2 emissions will keeping a very reasonable and increasing level of life.

donkeyd 7y ago
I assume you mean EU. However, while EU countries have made a lot of promises and plans, they're not actually keeping them either and people are complaining about impact on their daily lives. At least the US is transparent in not wanting to change (their President is).
brozaman 7y ago
USA is certainly a problem, but the elephants in the room are China and India.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  Current emissions have the US at 2x India and current emissions are obviously irrelevant since it’s total cumulative emissions that matter, where the US runs away with it.

donkeyd 7y ago

It's easy to blame politics, but voters really do have an effect on this and there's hardly any will there either. The fastest growing party in the Netherlands is huge on climate denial and stopping or rolling back anything done against climate change. Their voters are adamant that there's no real issue with climate change, that everything is exaggerated and that it's all a left-wing conspiracy. Most people want to remain at the same level of comfort and luxury, and that's not possible if we want to effectively combat climate change. We'd need to fly less, drive less and consume less and that's the opposite of what's happening in the world.

crispinb 7y ago
Quite. It's really very boring to hear people endlessly whinging about politicians, then refusing to vote for those offering anything different from BAU. There are no perfect democracies, but citizens surely must accept some responsibility for their voting decisions.

crispinb 7y ago

It's worse than that. There is very determined political will, across much of the globe, to stoke global heating further for short-term benefit. In my country (Australia) we had a federal election last year. The climate issues were very clearly laid out, and most citizens here accept the science, and have some understanding of the severity of the issue. Yet they voted very decisively against any further action to reduce emissions. Most of the electorate here simply will not countenance changes from business as usual. Of the world's more significant population centres, Europe is the most realistically ambitious but is too fractious & bureaucratic to rapidly make the necessary big decisions, the US is weighed down with a sclerotic political system and a huge proportion of the population with dogmatically anti-scientific attitudes, China is backpedalling due to economic worries, and India has enough troubles of its own. We're toast - this must be clear to everyone at this stage.

clarry 7y ago
> Europe is the most realistically ambitious but is too fractious & bureaucratic to rapidly make the necessary big decisions I think EU is the only significant region to have actually decreased CO2 emissions over the past few decades: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fossil_carbon_dioxide_emissions_six_top_countries_and_confederations.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/World_fo... That's not to say they couldn't have done more, but it's kinda sad that everyone else is drawing a flat line or going up. EU alone is not going to save the planet, even if they somehow stopped emissions altogether.
- crispinb 7y ago
  Agree the EU is in better shape than much of the world. There's a lot of technical arguments about how well it's doing in practise. But even the fact that it's at issue shows that at least it has some chance of meeting its 40%-cut-by-2030 Paris target. And it has a fairly solid consensus about the dimensions of the problem, lacking the fake polarisation corruptly injected by the fossil fuel industry into the US and Australia's political systems.
titzer 7y ago