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American here. I took a bunch of earth science classes in college in 1999. I realized then, I would just plan ahead and aim for an urbanist lifestyle, because o

by scoofy 5y ago

American here. I took a bunch of earth science classes in college in 1999. I realized then, I would just plan ahead and aim for an urbanist lifestyle, because our country would have to change. I focused on transit alternatives as my primary advocacy, because it was the most obvious low-hanging fruit and paired with the public health. I never imagined this would happen, but as the years went on, I grew less astonished and more cynical. I honestly don't know how to deal with the level nihilism and genuine bitterness I feel toward my fellow man regarding climate change. This was never a political divide. The american culture was full of anti-scientific absurdity on the the right, and complete symbolism without substance on the left. We don't even have serious bicycle or transit prioritization in our major urban areas. We don't have any concern for reducing our meat consumption. We don't have any concern for alternatives to airlines. We're to the point where only geoengineering can help, which is honestly nuts. I just, I mean, I know where I'm planning on settling down literally based on real estate in relation to climate change. It's surreal.

eplanit 5y ago
We are the lifelong chain-smoker who, when diagnosed with lung cancer, chooses to keep smoking because of a misguided belief that "at least I'll die happy".
- ddingus 5y ago
  Or, they believe the point of no return has been passed, nothing to be done. I gave seen people evaluate the pain they perceive is a part of quitting exceed their perception of value. Literally, not worth it.
- tuatoru 5y ago
  Après moi, le déluge.[1] The attitude has been around since before tobacco and is commonly ascribed to Boomers. With justification. (Disclosure: I am one.) 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge
dmead 5y ago
You're asking people to suffering annoyances and spend lots of money when the average income has been going down for 40 years. I'm surprised you're surprised.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > average income has been going down for 40 years Not true [1]. This is true across economic strata, with real stagnation being the plague of our most destitute. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPI https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPI
- mastax 5y ago
  It hasn't? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
- scoofy 5y ago
  Living more efficiently obviously saves money. The absurdities of what's happening is literally the Sierra Club opposing density in San Francisco. The environmentalist are literally opposing density across California. Los Angeles, to San Francisco, to Marin County, under the banner of "preservation," we're going to destroy the climate. I just, i cannot believe this is happening. They same people who would hand wash a peanut butter jar, to recycle it, are the exact same people who are literally creating suburban cities designed for burning carbon.
  - nwiswell 5y ago
    > I just, i cannot believe this is happening. This isn't hard to understand. The Sierra Club is made up of legitimate environmentalists, but they also care about their organization and their livelihoods, and many of the major donors to the Sierra Club are property owners in San Francisco (or Marin, or LA). Property values are obviously negatively impacted by development / densification, and so to avoid alienating donors, for whom opposing development is the single most important economic issue, the Sierra Club is dutifully NIMBYist. I can assure you the Sierra Club would be fine with densification in Africa or whatever.
taf2 5y ago
I’ll try to help you feel less bitter it may not work. The problem is not your fellow man or the need to burn to keep warm and provide energy… the problem is simple, there are too many of us. I don’t view this as an impossible thing to over come rather I trust we will over come this - you will wake up tomorrow drive or not to work and continue on your merry way. The economy is shifting to more efficient energy sources. And tomorrow will be another day. Earth has the best atmosphere and gravity of any planet in the solar system. Whether we live in domes here or not it’s the best option until we break the light barrier and learn to live forever.
daxfohl 5y ago
There's a lot of concrete and steel in the urban lifestyle, which according to Gates are the biggest contributors to global warming. Not saying urban lifestyle is the worst, but there's a good chance it's just not enough. My guess is no matter what we do we're over the limit, a reduction in one thing leads to an increase in another, and probably population reduction is the only solution.
- scoofy 5y ago
  You don't need skyscapers. You need the density levels of Paris. Six-story walkups. The concrete can be put into 5/2 urban buildings, or it can be put in to driveways, pools, and sidewalks no one will ever use. Pretending that urbanism is somehow remotely equivalent is naive at best.
  - NumberWangMan 5y ago
    Exactly -- most "urban" areas in the USA are actually sprawling car-dependent suburbs that use far more resources of all kinds per capita than a true urban area. What's more, is that we've forgotten that you don't need to build suburbs around cars. You can have pleasant suburbs with offices, shops, schools, and other non-residential buildings mixed into the neighborhood. Where people actually walk and cycle because the streets feel like they were made for it. There's a massive gap between the population density of 60000 people per square mile you might find in an urban center, and the approximately 1,500 people per square mile you get in a typical suburb.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  “Population reduction” again? It might be the most politically expedient option, but the planet isn't overpopulated. We're just polluting way too much. If you model a back-of-the-envelope sustainable civilisation, you'll find we're nowhere near any sort of fundamental population limit. As a species, our median per-capita pollution is okay. It's the mean per-capita pollution that's the issue.
  - magnetic 5y ago
tkiolp4 5y ago
> It’s surreal. I would say it’s human nature. We, humans, learn by making mistakes. There may be small differences among countries in the way we address, let’s say, climate change (e.g., Amsterdam is full of people riding bikes while Madrid is not), but at the end we all behave the same, whether in NY, Athens, or Santiago: we, as a world-wide society, only care about our immediate future, about our needs right now. The future? Well, let’s talk about that tomorrow. Countless of civilizations have disappeared (or transformed) due to this very short-term thinking way of doing things. We may disappear (or transform) as well.
- bmitc 5y ago
  > We, humans, learn by making mistakes. I don’t think that’s true, although you address a similar point of mine later. We often make the same mistakes over and over again. There’s a reason why we say history repeats itself. What humans really do is react to mistakes and other events based on consequences of our actions. This reactiveness has gotten us into this mess. We often view intelligence as being able to predict things, but as a society and species, we’re absolutely awful at prevention and conservation. We’re excellent at consumption.
- qqtt 5y ago
  Climate change as a crisis is perfectly threading the needle between human apathy, inability to invest in long term changes, and happening too slowly to provoke a reactionary response. We build social infrastructure that is incredibly resistant to change by design to protect ourselves and provide stability - but climate change is demanding massive changes which we are ill equipped to deal with politically. Traditionally we solve these moments in history with revolution to demand change - but climate change is happening too slowly for complacent human mindsets to react that way at a scale that it requires as a crisis. It is quite horrifying watching it play out in slow motion. This will not end well.
RedditKon 5y ago
100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. This isn't a right/left problem - both parties have let corporations get away with runaway pollution for entirely too long.
- scoofy 5y ago
  Bullshit. 100 companies are responsible for extraction. They are selling us the carbon we are actively buying.
  - hak8or 5y ago
    Thank you, I could not agree more. These companies exist because their services and products are being bought by someone else, and in the end the consumers are either actual consumers or governments (who consumers vote for). I place minimal blame on companies, because clearly consumers don't care, and instead want to buy the cheapest products possible.
    - r00fus 5y ago
      That'd be great if they didn't BUY politicians to write laws that subsidize their extraction and hamper legislation to actually combat the externalities THEY produced. Consumers do care, but their choices are between bad and awful because the economics (structured by the extraction companies) stacks the deck against solutions.
      - scoofy 5y ago
        What are you talking about. The corporations, man, are not responsible for the zoning apocalypse American cities dealing with. You literally cannot live in a walkable high rise in most of Brooklyn, SF, LA, Austin, etc., not because of BIG AUTO, but because literally the neighbors there don't like tall buildings and want more free street-parking spaces for their cars.
  - mannerheim 5y ago
    Not to mention quite a few of those 'companies' are state-owned entities...
rightbyte 5y ago
The same people that can't do a accurate weather forecast more than 5 days into the future are telling you the world is gonna end due to climate change ... and you blame the common man for not freaking out? I mean put your self in peoples shoes.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  I can’t predict what my 4-year old will want to eat for dinner tonight or how much, but I can easily predict that he’ll be substantially bigger and heavier a year from now, and predict the change in height and weight within reasonable tolerance. If some laypeople have not received a basic high school education and have trouble understanding variance, uncertainty, and the difference between short-term fluctuations and long-term trends, that really isn’t the fault of climate scientists.
- scoofy 5y ago
  "Scientists are dumb, and their dumb scientific, totally rational consensus, backed up by tons of data, is dumb"
- smolder 5y ago
  They are not "the same people", though I suspect most meteorologists have a grasp of climate trends. Those are also two very different kinds of prediction. One is like trying to guess the outcome of an individual chess match, with predictions getting better as the time draws near, the other is like noticing that white has a slightly higher chance of winning over the course of very many games.
fallingknife 5y ago
> We don't even have serious bicycle or transit prioritization in our major urban areas. We don't have any concern for reducing our meat consumption. We don't have any concern for alternatives to airlines. Sorry, but this stuff is a joke. Population control and non carbon based energy sources are the only things that can really make an impact.
- scoofy 5y ago
  Cool, the low hanging fruit is a joke. Let's do nothing then, how about that.
  - ianai 5y ago
    I appreciate your perspective. I’ve always thought climate change should be a higher priority. The amount of resources for the meat industry alone should be enough to make some changes. But oil has insular forces making it a real curse to progress.
- Falling3 5y ago
  The richest 10% of the world population is responsible for almost half of all carbon emissions. The global median age is up and expected to continue rising. The global fertility rate is dropping. Population growth is projected to flatten in the next century. Why would we waste time on population control, much less prioritize it?
- MildlySerious 5y ago
  I see the population control argument made a lot, and while I don't want to throw this conversation out the window entirely, I personally don't think it's very constructive right now. What we need is a drastic reduction in emissions FAST. X0% less now buys a lot more time and has a much bigger effect than X0% in say 50 years when most of the damage is done. Any means of population control that is not straight up genocide will take decades if not generations to make a real impact. Long term planning should of course be a core part of our strategy, and whether population control is part of that or not is not my call to make. That being said, the next five to ten years are much, much more important, and my experience in these contexts has been that the population control argument tends to interfere with this more important conversation about actions to take right now. What would help most in a shorter time frame is economic incentives to move away from fossil fuels. Carbon taxes, and most importantly changing where subsidies go in the first place would go a long way. More funding for research in relevant areas would, as well. Before those and other things aren't well underway, there is really nothing to gain from bringing up population control every time the climate change comes up, in my opinion.
mrcwinn 5y ago
I hear you and I understand where you're coming from. And it's serious. Very serious. And while I do think habits both have to change and will be forced to change — I do think it's useful to accept that we have to build our world and our environment to our behavioral tendencies. It's easy to look back cynically and say, I wish we'd never done X, or Y, or Z. The reality now though is this massive economic engine, which has lifted people out of poverty and created opportunity -- polluting in its current form though it may be -- might be the thing that saves us and helps us escape velocity. Technology can help us adapt and solve this. I know it's easy to live the cynicism but I promise you, challenging though it may be, we need each other and to believe in possibility more than ever if we're going to pull this off.
- ddingus 5y ago
  Need each other. Well, yes! I agree. However, when I look around at the movers and shakers capable of the big decisions that lead to big efforts, I do not get the sense I am needed as much as I could potentially be used. It cost a ton to bootstrap us onto our current technology. It will cost a ton more to transition to other energy. For the most part, we have the tech we need. Better will come too, but big costs are not sexy, though the labor to accomplish these things would and could elevate many into a better life. Ordinary people, when presented with a plan, like build this stuff so we can live better this way, leave something livable for our kids... would be in. Large numbers of people need better jobs, and a future that one can look forward to. What I don't see is the kind of thinking that gets us there. That kicks off the work we could have been doing for years.
lacker 5y ago
To me, it is just the nature of large groups of human beings that sometimes there is an impending disaster, but people do not agree on what to do about it, and humanity stumbles into disaster. Look at Europe before WW1 or WW2, how many people predicted an imminent disastrous war, and how little agreement there was on how to fix it. Climate change is probably not as bad as impending WW3, but it shouldn't be surprising that we haven't had a mass changing of opinion to avoid disaster. That never really happens. The simplest answer is that we just need to prepare for a hotter world. This article points out that there will be "no safe place". Okay, we won't have a safe place. We will need to do the best we can to minimize natural disasters and at the same time try to figure out political and technological solutions to limiting climate change.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >Okay, we won't have a safe place There never was a safe place. Nothing much may be happening around Yellowstone, but people speculate it might some day pretty much trash the whole continent if not the world. People in the midwest don't worry about earthquakes much but New Madrid showed it is possible and could be really bad. In the northeast, we're a long way from where most tornadoes are, but it can happen here, I've seen evidence. Nobody's particularly worried about something like Fukushima in the US, but there are quite a few nuclear reactors all over the place. We tend to assume the Atlantic isn't going to have a tsunami, I guess. Is that certain? In Europe, they assume there's not going to be a devastating volcano eruption, but you know, there's the historical records of Pompeii and so on. Nobody saw Tunguska and Chelyabinsk coming, something like that could happen at any moment over a major city.
- belorn 5y ago
  I have seen in every movement that while people share the goal, they do not share the strategy. The strategy often involve trade offs and cultural values that is separated from the common goal, and the stronger people feel about the goal the more convinced they are about their own chosen strategy. The most bitter fights tend to be between people who strongly share the same goals. Preparing for a hotter world is nice, but what I am hoping is that nations (and the green movement) will realize that all strategies need to be deployed and it doesn't matter if one strategy feels like it is being counter productive to the values of an other. Some people can focus on replacing meat with vegetarian options, other on ecological meat, some on reducing factory farming in favor of local small scale production, and some on low carbon meat like shell fish. Let some build nuclear power plants, other renewable energy and battery. Focus on building bike infrastructure, rail system and electrify all parts of the transport system.
bko 5y ago
I don't know who you're referring to as 'we' but in the US, carbon emissions have actually peaked in the early 2000s and decreased in an absolute sense since then, despite growing population and industrialization. We're currently at 1986 emission levels. US has 15% of global emissions, while China has 28% and is growing in both per person and absolute. I don't think you're wrong to be cynical about tackling this problem but you should be honest about what reducing emissions means to billions of people that are just now coming into the industrial age. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide... [1] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emissions https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emi...
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > while China has 28% and is growing in both per person and absolute. I'm personally completely in favor of import tariffs on goods manufactured abroad with dirty energy and immigration quotas on nationals from countries that have decided not to control their emissions.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    What does immigration have to do with CO2?
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      Rich Chinese are obsessed with acquiring western passports. Making it harder will incentivize them to work harder at home to fix their country's horrible environmental record.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  Those stats are not fair because China is the world's factory. If China decides to stop exporting manufactured products to reduce it's emissions, the US would need to manufacture itself, increasing it's emissions.
Swizec 5y ago
A recent Freakonomics episode about America absolutely blew my mind and cemented this idea I've been trolling friends with that suburbia should be banned. Americans use 2 trillion gallons of water per year ... for lawns. Nice green lawns. In the desert, in the south, in the north, between highways, friggen' lawns everywhere. No consideration for grasses that naturally enjoy the local environment. Only a perfect British green lawn will do. Nature be damned! By comparison, America uses only 3 trillion gallons of water for all of agriculture. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-obsession-lawns/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-obsession-lawns/
- ddingus 5y ago
  Worse, quite a lot of people are required to do that and face fines should anything but grass grow in their yard, or nothing grows. A friend of mine did that sometime back. He just did a stone and ground cover, low maintenance yard. Was kind of awesome. City went full bat shit. Circle the yard that is different and excise the cancer! Needs to be grass, not a garden, not stones, just grass. It is crazy.
- jdkee 5y ago
  Two cubic miles of water. Lake Michigan has 1,180 cubic miles by comparison.
- kragen 5y ago
  Lake Superior receives about 1 meter of rain per year and covers 82000 sq km. So Lake Superior is using 82 billion cubic meters of water per year, or, in medieval units, 21 trillion gallons. You could catch 10% of the rainfall on Lake Superior in barges and supply the entire friggen lawn consumption you want to ban. The Mississippi River discharges 16800 cubic meters per second of water, which is 530 billion cubic meters per year. In medieval units, that's 140 trillion gallons of water per year. You're too easily impressed and have no sense of proportion, making it easy for dishonest people to manipulate your emotions. Humans are doing massive environmental damage, but human water use for lawns is insignificant. Now get the hell off my friggen lawn.
  - 5y ago
TigeriusKirk 5y ago
A solution that does not provide for greater energy consumption per capita over time is not a solution. It was never going to work out any other way. If you want to make a difference, clean energy is the path to follow. That, and carbon capture so we don't spend the rest of our lives in a worsening situation.
- scoofy 5y ago
  I've been actively waiting for vapor-ware to save us for a decade and a half. Thorium-candle nuclear plants, carbon-capture, clean coal. Cool... it's been 15 years... not a lot happening in the interim.
ianai 5y ago
Where do you have in mind? Just anywhere north enough?
belter 5y ago
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
blooalien 5y ago
It's as if a significant portion of humanity has committed themselves to slow mass suicide, and decided they wanna take everyone else with 'em. Totally 110% agree with your description of it as "surreal". I keep waiting to wake from the nightmare, but it's all turning out to be real.
bookofsand 5y ago
The numbers don't work out. Let's say in USA we cut meat consumption, car usage and air travel in half. That is quite a lot, congratulations to our eco-conscious citizens! Alas, let's not pat ourselves on the back just yet. USA accounts for 15% of global emissions. Agriculture and transportation make 14% and 24%, together 48%. Half of that is 24%. 24% of 15% is 3.6% of global emissions. On the flip side: * 96.4 of the emissions continue. * Global emissions increased 10% since 2010, 3x more than what we saved with great (relative) sacrifice. We may push the looming horizon a decade or two, but we won't stop the process, forget about reverting it. As the so called third world countries are moving out of poverty, aka undergoing a rapid industrialization process, emissions are bound to raise irrespective of what the so called first world countries do, due to sheer population mass. Consider the fundamental emissions equation: TotalEmissions = WorldArea * PopulationDensity * PerCapitaEmissions WorldArea is constant, while industrialization greatly increases both PopulationDensity and PerCapitaEmissions. The only way restore the balance is a voluntary return to the stone age. Unfortunately, that is a political impossibility. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... Edit: The estimated range for global emissions to maintain only a 1.5C growth has a range of 22-31 GtCO2e. Assuming emissions at the rate of France of about 5tCO2 / capita, the globally industrialized world of 2050 with 10B people will have global emissions of 50GtCO2, or 75GtCO2e. That is 3x more than Earth can sustain. Going down the list of emissions per capita by country, we find Albania, Morocco or Colombia. What we need to make the numbers is a 10x decrease in income/wealth of US residents, not minor lifestyle adjustments. https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/30798/EGR19ESEN.pdf https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/30798/... https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...
- e12e 5y ago
  Seems to be missing that the US can cut US emissions, but cannot cut other countries' emissions. So if you can drop (say) 5% global emissions and choose not to - that's just willful ignorance?
agumonkey 5y ago
Have faith, things can change rapidly in the right way too. loads of resources available loads of brains manpower when people realize and decide, you can flip a lot in few time it's just the usual society blur and inertia that made people like you unable to do more.. many people tried but you can't carry the world on your shoulder so most people resign get ready ps: in dense cities, whenever possible, use your bike; we should make viral vids for bike rallies or bike days, it's 100+ % benefits for everybody in a week

by scoofy 5y ago

eplanit 5y ago

We are the lifelong chain-smoker who, when diagnosed with lung cancer, chooses to keep smoking because of a misguided belief that "at least I'll die happy".

ddingus 5y ago
Or, they believe the point of no return has been passed, nothing to be done. I gave seen people evaluate the pain they perceive is a part of quitting exceed their perception of value. Literally, not worth it.
tuatoru 5y ago
Après moi, le déluge.[1] The attitude has been around since before tobacco and is commonly ascribed to Boomers. With justification. (Disclosure: I am one.) 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge

dmead 5y ago

You're asking people to suffering annoyances and spend lots of money when the average income has been going down for 40 years. I'm surprised you're surprised.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> average income has been going down for 40 years Not true [1]. This is true across economic strata, with real stagnation being the plague of our most destitute. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPI https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPI
mastax 5y ago
It hasn't? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
scoofy 5y ago
Living more efficiently obviously saves money. The absurdities of what's happening is literally the Sierra Club opposing density in San Francisco. The environmentalist are literally opposing density across California. Los Angeles, to San Francisco, to Marin County, under the banner of "preservation," we're going to destroy the climate. I just, i cannot believe this is happening. They same people who would hand wash a peanut butter jar, to recycle it, are the exact same people who are literally creating suburban cities designed for burning carbon.
- nwiswell 5y ago
  > I just, i cannot believe this is happening. This isn't hard to understand. The Sierra Club is made up of legitimate environmentalists, but they also care about their organization and their livelihoods, and many of the major donors to the Sierra Club are property owners in San Francisco (or Marin, or LA). Property values are obviously negatively impacted by development / densification, and so to avoid alienating donors, for whom opposing development is the single most important economic issue, the Sierra Club is dutifully NIMBYist. I can assure you the Sierra Club would be fine with densification in Africa or whatever.

taf2 5y ago

I’ll try to help you feel less bitter it may not work. The problem is not your fellow man or the need to burn to keep warm and provide energy… the problem is simple, there are too many of us. I don’t view this as an impossible thing to over come rather I trust we will over come this - you will wake up tomorrow drive or not to work and continue on your merry way. The economy is shifting to more efficient energy sources. And tomorrow will be another day. Earth has the best atmosphere and gravity of any planet in the solar system. Whether we live in domes here or not it’s the best option until we break the light barrier and learn to live forever.

daxfohl 5y ago

There's a lot of concrete and steel in the urban lifestyle, which according to Gates are the biggest contributors to global warming. Not saying urban lifestyle is the worst, but there's a good chance it's just not enough. My guess is no matter what we do we're over the limit, a reduction in one thing leads to an increase in another, and probably population reduction is the only solution.

scoofy 5y ago
You don't need skyscapers. You need the density levels of Paris. Six-story walkups. The concrete can be put into 5/2 urban buildings, or it can be put in to driveways, pools, and sidewalks no one will ever use. Pretending that urbanism is somehow remotely equivalent is naive at best.
- NumberWangMan 5y ago
  Exactly -- most "urban" areas in the USA are actually sprawling car-dependent suburbs that use far more resources of all kinds per capita than a true urban area. What's more, is that we've forgotten that you don't need to build suburbs around cars. You can have pleasant suburbs with offices, shops, schools, and other non-residential buildings mixed into the neighborhood. Where people actually walk and cycle because the streets feel like they were made for it. There's a massive gap between the population density of 60000 people per square mile you might find in an urban center, and the approximately 1,500 people per square mile you get in a typical suburb.
wizzwizz4 5y ago
“Population reduction” again? It might be the most politically expedient option, but the planet isn't overpopulated. We're just polluting way too much. If you model a back-of-the-envelope sustainable civilisation, you'll find we're nowhere near any sort of fundamental population limit. As a species, our median per-capita pollution is okay. It's the mean per-capita pollution that's the issue.
- magnetic 5y ago

tkiolp4 5y ago

> It’s surreal. I would say it’s human nature. We, humans, learn by making mistakes. There may be small differences among countries in the way we address, let’s say, climate change (e.g., Amsterdam is full of people riding bikes while Madrid is not), but at the end we all behave the same, whether in NY, Athens, or Santiago: we, as a world-wide society, only care about our immediate future, about our needs right now. The future? Well, let’s talk about that tomorrow. Countless of civilizations have disappeared (or transformed) due to this very short-term thinking way of doing things. We may disappear (or transform) as well.

bmitc 5y ago
> We, humans, learn by making mistakes. I don’t think that’s true, although you address a similar point of mine later. We often make the same mistakes over and over again. There’s a reason why we say history repeats itself. What humans really do is react to mistakes and other events based on consequences of our actions. This reactiveness has gotten us into this mess. We often view intelligence as being able to predict things, but as a society and species, we’re absolutely awful at prevention and conservation. We’re excellent at consumption.
qqtt 5y ago
Climate change as a crisis is perfectly threading the needle between human apathy, inability to invest in long term changes, and happening too slowly to provoke a reactionary response. We build social infrastructure that is incredibly resistant to change by design to protect ourselves and provide stability - but climate change is demanding massive changes which we are ill equipped to deal with politically. Traditionally we solve these moments in history with revolution to demand change - but climate change is happening too slowly for complacent human mindsets to react that way at a scale that it requires as a crisis. It is quite horrifying watching it play out in slow motion. This will not end well.

RedditKon 5y ago

100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. This isn't a right/left problem - both parties have let corporations get away with runaway pollution for entirely too long.

scoofy 5y ago
Bullshit. 100 companies are responsible for extraction. They are selling us the carbon we are actively buying.
- hak8or 5y ago
  Thank you, I could not agree more. These companies exist because their services and products are being bought by someone else, and in the end the consumers are either actual consumers or governments (who consumers vote for). I place minimal blame on companies, because clearly consumers don't care, and instead want to buy the cheapest products possible.
  - r00fus 5y ago
    That'd be great if they didn't BUY politicians to write laws that subsidize their extraction and hamper legislation to actually combat the externalities THEY produced. Consumers do care, but their choices are between bad and awful because the economics (structured by the extraction companies) stacks the deck against solutions.
    - scoofy 5y ago
      What are you talking about. The corporations, man, are not responsible for the zoning apocalypse American cities dealing with. You literally cannot live in a walkable high rise in most of Brooklyn, SF, LA, Austin, etc., not because of BIG AUTO, but because literally the neighbors there don't like tall buildings and want more free street-parking spaces for their cars.
- mannerheim 5y ago
  Not to mention quite a few of those 'companies' are state-owned entities...

rightbyte 5y ago

The same people that can't do a accurate weather forecast more than 5 days into the future are telling you the world is gonna end due to climate change ... and you blame the common man for not freaking out? I mean put your self in peoples shoes.

jacobolus 5y ago
I can’t predict what my 4-year old will want to eat for dinner tonight or how much, but I can easily predict that he’ll be substantially bigger and heavier a year from now, and predict the change in height and weight within reasonable tolerance. If some laypeople have not received a basic high school education and have trouble understanding variance, uncertainty, and the difference between short-term fluctuations and long-term trends, that really isn’t the fault of climate scientists.
scoofy 5y ago
"Scientists are dumb, and their dumb scientific, totally rational consensus, backed up by tons of data, is dumb"
smolder 5y ago
They are not "the same people", though I suspect most meteorologists have a grasp of climate trends. Those are also two very different kinds of prediction. One is like trying to guess the outcome of an individual chess match, with predictions getting better as the time draws near, the other is like noticing that white has a slightly higher chance of winning over the course of very many games.

fallingknife 5y ago

> We don't even have serious bicycle or transit prioritization in our major urban areas. We don't have any concern for reducing our meat consumption. We don't have any concern for alternatives to airlines. Sorry, but this stuff is a joke. Population control and non carbon based energy sources are the only things that can really make an impact.

scoofy 5y ago
Cool, the low hanging fruit is a joke. Let's do nothing then, how about that.
- ianai 5y ago
  I appreciate your perspective. I’ve always thought climate change should be a higher priority. The amount of resources for the meat industry alone should be enough to make some changes. But oil has insular forces making it a real curse to progress.
Falling3 5y ago
The richest 10% of the world population is responsible for almost half of all carbon emissions. The global median age is up and expected to continue rising. The global fertility rate is dropping. Population growth is projected to flatten in the next century. Why would we waste time on population control, much less prioritize it?
MildlySerious 5y ago
I see the population control argument made a lot, and while I don't want to throw this conversation out the window entirely, I personally don't think it's very constructive right now. What we need is a drastic reduction in emissions FAST. X0% less now buys a lot more time and has a much bigger effect than X0% in say 50 years when most of the damage is done. Any means of population control that is not straight up genocide will take decades if not generations to make a real impact. Long term planning should of course be a core part of our strategy, and whether population control is part of that or not is not my call to make. That being said, the next five to ten years are much, much more important, and my experience in these contexts has been that the population control argument tends to interfere with this more important conversation about actions to take right now. What would help most in a shorter time frame is economic incentives to move away from fossil fuels. Carbon taxes, and most importantly changing where subsidies go in the first place would go a long way. More funding for research in relevant areas would, as well. Before those and other things aren't well underway, there is really nothing to gain from bringing up population control every time the climate change comes up, in my opinion.

mrcwinn 5y ago

I hear you and I understand where you're coming from. And it's serious. Very serious. And while I do think habits both have to change and will be forced to change — I do think it's useful to accept that we have to build our world and our environment to our behavioral tendencies. It's easy to look back cynically and say, I wish we'd never done X, or Y, or Z. The reality now though is this massive economic engine, which has lifted people out of poverty and created opportunity -- polluting in its current form though it may be -- might be the thing that saves us and helps us escape velocity. Technology can help us adapt and solve this. I know it's easy to live the cynicism but I promise you, challenging though it may be, we need each other and to believe in possibility more than ever if we're going to pull this off.

ddingus 5y ago
Need each other. Well, yes! I agree. However, when I look around at the movers and shakers capable of the big decisions that lead to big efforts, I do not get the sense I am needed as much as I could potentially be used. It cost a ton to bootstrap us onto our current technology. It will cost a ton more to transition to other energy. For the most part, we have the tech we need. Better will come too, but big costs are not sexy, though the labor to accomplish these things would and could elevate many into a better life. Ordinary people, when presented with a plan, like build this stuff so we can live better this way, leave something livable for our kids... would be in. Large numbers of people need better jobs, and a future that one can look forward to. What I don't see is the kind of thinking that gets us there. That kicks off the work we could have been doing for years.

lacker 5y ago

To me, it is just the nature of large groups of human beings that sometimes there is an impending disaster, but people do not agree on what to do about it, and humanity stumbles into disaster. Look at Europe before WW1 or WW2, how many people predicted an imminent disastrous war, and how little agreement there was on how to fix it. Climate change is probably not as bad as impending WW3, but it shouldn't be surprising that we haven't had a mass changing of opinion to avoid disaster. That never really happens. The simplest answer is that we just need to prepare for a hotter world. This article points out that there will be "no safe place". Okay, we won't have a safe place. We will need to do the best we can to minimize natural disasters and at the same time try to figure out political and technological solutions to limiting climate change.

perl4ever 5y ago
>Okay, we won't have a safe place There never was a safe place. Nothing much may be happening around Yellowstone, but people speculate it might some day pretty much trash the whole continent if not the world. People in the midwest don't worry about earthquakes much but New Madrid showed it is possible and could be really bad. In the northeast, we're a long way from where most tornadoes are, but it can happen here, I've seen evidence. Nobody's particularly worried about something like Fukushima in the US, but there are quite a few nuclear reactors all over the place. We tend to assume the Atlantic isn't going to have a tsunami, I guess. Is that certain? In Europe, they assume there's not going to be a devastating volcano eruption, but you know, there's the historical records of Pompeii and so on. Nobody saw Tunguska and Chelyabinsk coming, something like that could happen at any moment over a major city.
belorn 5y ago
I have seen in every movement that while people share the goal, they do not share the strategy. The strategy often involve trade offs and cultural values that is separated from the common goal, and the stronger people feel about the goal the more convinced they are about their own chosen strategy. The most bitter fights tend to be between people who strongly share the same goals. Preparing for a hotter world is nice, but what I am hoping is that nations (and the green movement) will realize that all strategies need to be deployed and it doesn't matter if one strategy feels like it is being counter productive to the values of an other. Some people can focus on replacing meat with vegetarian options, other on ecological meat, some on reducing factory farming in favor of local small scale production, and some on low carbon meat like shell fish. Let some build nuclear power plants, other renewable energy and battery. Focus on building bike infrastructure, rail system and electrify all parts of the transport system.

bko 5y ago

I don't know who you're referring to as 'we' but in the US, carbon emissions have actually peaked in the early 2000s and decreased in an absolute sense since then, despite growing population and industrialization. We're currently at 1986 emission levels. US has 15% of global emissions, while China has 28% and is growing in both per person and absolute. I don't think you're wrong to be cynical about tackling this problem but you should be honest about what reducing emissions means to billions of people that are just now coming into the industrial age. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide... [1] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emissions https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emi...

908B64B197 5y ago
> while China has 28% and is growing in both per person and absolute. I'm personally completely in favor of import tariffs on goods manufactured abroad with dirty energy and immigration quotas on nationals from countries that have decided not to control their emissions.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  What does immigration have to do with CO2?
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    Rich Chinese are obsessed with acquiring western passports. Making it harder will incentivize them to work harder at home to fix their country's horrible environmental record.
quickthrower2 5y ago
Those stats are not fair because China is the world's factory. If China decides to stop exporting manufactured products to reduce it's emissions, the US would need to manufacture itself, increasing it's emissions.

Swizec 5y ago

A recent Freakonomics episode about America absolutely blew my mind and cemented this idea I've been trolling friends with that suburbia should be banned. Americans use 2 trillion gallons of water per year ... for lawns. Nice green lawns. In the desert, in the south, in the north, between highways, friggen' lawns everywhere. No consideration for grasses that naturally enjoy the local environment. Only a perfect British green lawn will do. Nature be damned! By comparison, America uses only 3 trillion gallons of water for all of agriculture. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-obsession-lawns/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-obsession-lawns/

ddingus 5y ago
Worse, quite a lot of people are required to do that and face fines should anything but grass grow in their yard, or nothing grows. A friend of mine did that sometime back. He just did a stone and ground cover, low maintenance yard. Was kind of awesome. City went full bat shit. Circle the yard that is different and excise the cancer! Needs to be grass, not a garden, not stones, just grass. It is crazy.
jdkee 5y ago
Two cubic miles of water. Lake Michigan has 1,180 cubic miles by comparison.
kragen 5y ago
Lake Superior receives about 1 meter of rain per year and covers 82000 sq km. So Lake Superior is using 82 billion cubic meters of water per year, or, in medieval units, 21 trillion gallons. You could catch 10% of the rainfall on Lake Superior in barges and supply the entire friggen lawn consumption you want to ban. The Mississippi River discharges 16800 cubic meters per second of water, which is 530 billion cubic meters per year. In medieval units, that's 140 trillion gallons of water per year. You're too easily impressed and have no sense of proportion, making it easy for dishonest people to manipulate your emotions. Humans are doing massive environmental damage, but human water use for lawns is insignificant. Now get the hell off my friggen lawn.
- 5y ago

TigeriusKirk 5y ago

A solution that does not provide for greater energy consumption per capita over time is not a solution. It was never going to work out any other way. If you want to make a difference, clean energy is the path to follow. That, and carbon capture so we don't spend the rest of our lives in a worsening situation.

scoofy 5y ago
I've been actively waiting for vapor-ware to save us for a decade and a half. Thorium-candle nuclear plants, carbon-capture, clean coal. Cool... it's been 15 years... not a lot happening in the interim.

ianai 5y ago

Where do you have in mind? Just anywhere north enough?

belter 5y ago

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

blooalien 5y ago

It's as if a significant portion of humanity has committed themselves to slow mass suicide, and decided they wanna take everyone else with 'em. Totally 110% agree with your description of it as "surreal". I keep waiting to wake from the nightmare, but it's all turning out to be real.

bookofsand 5y ago

The numbers don't work out. Let's say in USA we cut meat consumption, car usage and air travel in half. That is quite a lot, congratulations to our eco-conscious citizens! Alas, let's not pat ourselves on the back just yet. USA accounts for 15% of global emissions. Agriculture and transportation make 14% and 24%, together 48%. Half of that is 24%. 24% of 15% is 3.6% of global emissions. On the flip side: * 96.4 of the emissions continue. * Global emissions increased 10% since 2010, 3x more than what we saved with great (relative) sacrifice. We may push the looming horizon a decade or two, but we won't stop the process, forget about reverting it. As the so called third world countries are moving out of poverty, aka undergoing a rapid industrialization process, emissions are bound to raise irrespective of what the so called first world countries do, due to sheer population mass. Consider the fundamental emissions equation: TotalEmissions = WorldArea * PopulationDensity * PerCapitaEmissions WorldArea is constant, while industrialization greatly increases both PopulationDensity and PerCapitaEmissions. The only way restore the balance is a voluntary return to the stone age. Unfortunately, that is a political impossibility. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... Edit: The estimated range for global emissions to maintain only a 1.5C growth has a range of 22-31 GtCO2e. Assuming emissions at the rate of France of about 5tCO2 / capita, the globally industrialized world of 2050 with 10B people will have global emissions of 50GtCO2, or 75GtCO2e. That is 3x more than Earth can sustain. Going down the list of emissions per capita by country, we find Albania, Morocco or Colombia. What we need to make the numbers is a 10x decrease in income/wealth of US residents, not minor lifestyle adjustments. https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/30798/EGR19ESEN.pdf https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/30798/... https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...

e12e 5y ago
Seems to be missing that the US can cut US emissions, but cannot cut other countries' emissions. So if you can drop (say) 5% global emissions and choose not to - that's just willful ignorance?

agumonkey 5y ago

Have faith, things can change rapidly in the right way too. loads of resources available loads of brains manpower when people realize and decide, you can flip a lot in few time it's just the usual society blur and inertia that made people like you unable to do more.. many people tried but you can't carry the world on your shoulder so most people resign get ready ps: in dense cities, whenever possible, use your bike; we should make viral vids for bike rallies or bike days, it's 100+ % benefits for everybody in a week