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You could just as easily say the opposite though? It's a pattern I've been noticing a lot lately. It is very tempting for a person who sees a problem to assume
by kanzure 5y ago
You could just as easily say the opposite though?
It's a pattern I've been noticing a lot lately. It is very tempting for a person who sees a problem to assume it is a political problem, because then it has a political solution. Unfortunately most of the biggest problems are not political problems, they are engineering problems for which there are only engineering solutions.
Geoengineering is not off the table. Reducing or blocking total sunlight by 1% can have dramatic changes to any global warming. Other techniques also exist.
I think people seriously underestimate what engineering can accomplish. They also over-estimate what politics can accomplish.... The climate change deals we were talking about were hundreds of billions of dollars, which can buy quite a lot of R&D.
Besides, if we have any chance of surviving as a multi-planetary species for billions of years, we need to know how to do terraforming.
- tcmart14 5y agoI agree. Ill extend this. Climate change is an engineering problem, especially when time constraints are not considered. However, if we want to work at a fast rate to reduce climate change, it is certainly a political problem. That is just because the wheels of invention and innovation take time. It is an engineering problem, but because of quick demand for reducing carbon emissions, it is a political problem.
- thescriptkiddie 5y agoI think that the problem is not that people over-estimate what politics can accomplish, the problem is that people (correctly) believe that they have approximately zero influence on politics, and therefore try to look for alternative solutions.