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Everybody needs to cut their carbon footprint by 100% if we want to stop global warming. The rich probably should go first, but in the end everybody has to.
by adrianN 6y ago
Everybody needs to cut their carbon footprint by 100% if we want to stop global warming. The rich probably should go first, but in the end everybody has to.
- ttt0 6y agoSo what you're saying is that it's impossible to stop global warming. Wouldn't it be more productive to just give up and start thinking about how to survive in the apocalypse you've been predicting?
- adrianN 6y agoWhy do you think it's impossible to stop burning fossil fuels? We already have the necessary technology, we just don't want to spend the money to build enough of it.
- tunesmith 6y agoJust go buy carbon offsets to be carbon neutral.
- ben_w 6y agoThat only works for the world as a whole when someone has negative absolute emissions.
- kazinator 6y agoMore importantly, it can only work as far as reducing all carbon emissions to zero in a world in which there are enough carbon removers to offset all the producers, so that every producer can buy enough carbon offsets (which basically means: every emitter of carbon can find someone whom they can pay to remove an equal amount of carbon).
- tunesmith 6y agoIn the long run we're all dead. Yes, it's also true that as buying carbon offsets becomes more popular, the opportunities will become more scarce and they will be come more expensive. But that would be a very good problem to have, because we're nowhere near that point currently. Right now they are cheap and widely available. We bought ours from cooleffects, and we are doing it while simultaneously working to reduce our emissions. Plus, buying carbon offsets also spurs investment in finding more carbon offset opportunities.
- kazinator 6y agoWhen you hand over money for a carbon offset, what are you actually getting? Based on what evidence do you know?
- tunesmith 6y agoFor example, from the cooleffect.org FAQ: "All carbon credits on the Cool Effect platform are from carbon projects that have been certified by one of the major international carbon credit standards, such as The Gold Standard, Verra or the Climate Action Reserve." Ultimately you have to trust an external organization like that.
- ASalazarMX 6y agoCarbon neutral in paper, it depends on how efficiently these offsets are used to capture carbon, otherwise the net emissions remain the same. The goal is reducing emissions, not paying to emit them.
- tunesmith 6y agoNot sure why you're downvoted, that's what the math says. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere needs to go down, not "up but at a slower rate".
- standardUser 6y agoThat's a false premise, not to mention incredibly de-motivating and unhelpful. We can slow current trends and dramatically delay the negative impacts of climate change without having to eradicate every last ICE on the planet (to name just one hopelessly radical and unrealistic part of a fantasy world with literally zero carbon emission). And slowing the current trends should be the goal, both because it is sufficient and, perhaps more importantly, because it is plausible.
- adrianN 6y agoI of course mean net emissions. We can tolerate a sizeable chunk of carbon emissions if we also sequester the carbon back.
- standardUser 6y agoThat's an important point, and I think those points should be included more when we communicate about these ideas, because it's very easy to turn people off when we imply that we need to decommission all classic cars or ban camp fires or end air travel.
- ben_w 6y agoNot necessarily 100% — more CO2 in the air does boost plant growth rate, so a small non-zero net CO2 emission rate may be compatible with an equilibrium between the pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 concentration and today’s atmospheric CO2 concentration. 97% reduction might be enough? Dunno, but I can believe it.
- gremlinsinc 6y ago1 Whale is the equivalent of planting thousands of trees. We just need more Whales... Star Trek IV was prescient. Whales could save the world!