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> Rather than collapse into despair, getting real about 1.5°C should mean we are able to hold open a space of grounded, realistic optimism. So what does that r

> Rather than collapse into despair, getting real about 1.5°C should mean we are able to hold open a space of grounded, realistic optimism. So what does that realistic optimism look like? "We're never gonna make 1.5, we've already blown past it, hundreds of millions of people are going to suffer and die because of the choices of the wealthy. But, on the bright side..." I don't think many people, especially politicians, can honestly be realistic AND optimistic. You can't put optimism into this conversation until you've first had acceptance. And you can't have acceptance until you have at least understood the significance of the situation and probably gone through some kind of grieving process. We're way off from that. People are still booking international vacations and buying brand new full size SUVs to do groceries. And there's no need to collapse into despair either.

BbzzbB 4y ago
So we should stop international travel to properly grieve, and that is not despair?
- revscat 4y ago
  We should stop fossil-fuel driven emissions out of necessity.
  - throwaway5959 4y ago
    I’ll stop flying international when the rich give up their private jets. See: Davos.
mdorazio 4y ago
I think you're mischaracterizing the nature of the problem. Take a look at [1] for example - US total CO2 emissions and CO2 emissions per capita have been dropping for a while now. The same is true for the EU as a whole [2]. So where is the increase in CO2 emissions each year coming from then? The developing world that wants a western world standard of living. Take a look at India for example [3]. It's not sufficient to tell people in western countries that they shouldn't drive SUVs or take long flights, you have to tell people in poorer (populous) countries that they can't have a better standard of living because doing so means more GHG. Would you like to tell people that? By all means, we should be doing better in the west, but it's a lie to tell ourselves that driving an electric car and putting solar panels on the roof is going to solve the problem. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carbon-co2-emissions https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carb... [2] https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/greenhouse-gas-emission-trends-6/assessment-3 https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/greenhous... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/india https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/india
- 2143 4y ago
  Any suggestions about what [people of] India can do?
  - qart 4y ago
    Indians have other ecological problems on our hands. Unchecked pollution (air, water, soil), poorly designed cities, burning stubble, etc. On per-capita CO2/CH4, India is doing great.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    The same that everybody else can do: elect politicians who build renewable power instead of electing politician who build coal plants.
    - 2143 4y ago
      > The same that everybody else can First thing you need to understand about India — it's not the same as everybody else. The country is unique unlike any other country in the world. What works in other places might not work there. > elect politicians who build renewable power instead of electing politician who build coal plants. I think politicians across party lines want to switch to renewable. Please understand that this switch to renewables can't be done overnight. And there's a huge population who can't be kept in the dark during the transition period. Also, India is the 3rd largest producer of renewable energy (and 3rd largest consumer) in the world, behind USA and China [1]. They're making an effort. [1] https://www.ey.com/en_sg/recai https://www.ey.com/en_sg/recai
      - ben_w 4y ago
        > The country is unique unlike any other country in the world. What works in other places might not work there. That's been said about every nation. So, what exactly do you mean?
      - airbreather 4y ago
        Roughly 5 Billion people, or more, rely on the Haber process to turn hydrocarbons in nitrogen fertiliser so they can eat. Carrying capacity of the earth before this mass manufacture of artificial fertiliser was maxxed out at around 1.5B, maybe with better plant strains that could be edged up, but not by 500% you would think. We are still a fair way off from green steel, we are going to need metallurgical coal for some time, unless you like driving a wooden car pulled by a horse. And alumina and lithium are both gas heavy in refining at the front end, needing calcination at 1000 DegC, plus or minus. Then there is plastic, from lighter fractions of liquid hydrocarbons in many cases (condensate) - I can't believe you are still allowed to buy water in a plastic bottle or food in a plastic container that's a once use, that's crazy. Hydrocarbons aren't going to become non-existent parts of the industrial landscape if any kind of life as we know it is to continue - we just need to start by stopping stupid waste in transient use cases like once use water bottles and food containers, decorative wrapping, short lived non repairable consumer appliances and goods, and synthetic fabrics that are made into clothes that could last for years or even decades, but get disposed of after 10 or 20 wears because of "fashion" or poor manufacture renders them useless in this time. Growing up in New Zealand in the 70's, if someone had tried to warn that in the future you would be paying for drinking water (any water actually), by the half litre and more expensive than petrol in some cases, and you would get a free bottle that you immediately discarded when you finished drinking from it, you would have been ignored as a fringe lunatic at best, and may well have been taken in for some kind of assessment. And yet some decades later, here we are.
TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
> People are still booking international vacations and buying brand new full size SUVs to do groceries. And an awful lot of people are still acting as though "end users" can materially affect the situation with their personal choices, and implying that they are bad people for making them. I'm sure the American oligarchy and the leaders of China appreciate your efforts.
- tejohnso 4y ago
  > implying that they are bad people I don't know how you got the idea that I was implying people are "bad" for their lifestyle choices. I was talking about how far away we are from widespread acceptance and realistic acknowledgement of the problem. When I see people acting like nothing is wrong, doing things that contribute to the problem, I do think that indicates a lack of acceptance and realization. Now I may be wrong. It could be possible that people are fully aware of the problem and are YOLO'ing their way through it. Or they share your opinion that nothing they do can materially affect the situation anyway, so they just go full throttle on carbon emission. But I suspect that for most people, that's not the case. I think that most people are unaware of the severity of the situation, and that if they were aware, they probably wouldn't be doing those things. Again, I could be completely wrong about what people know and how they would choose to behave. But at no point was I implying that there are good people and bad people and that personal carbon footprint is a decent way to measure that.
  - jltsiren 4y ago
    People are generally aware that their actions contribute to climate change, unless they choose to deny it for ideological reasons. They are just unwilling to make lifestyle sacrifices because of it. Most people value their personal comfort and the comfort of their family above the (statistical) lives of strangers. You see exactly the same phenomenon every time a professional chooses to live in comfort instead of donating most of their income to charity. That's how people work, that's what they value, and that's why collective action is the only way of dealing with large-scale problems.
    - 4y ago
refurb 4y ago
I hope you include yourself in “choices of the wealthy”. It’s pretty much developed countries that got us here.
- tejohnso 4y ago
  I'm talking about the wealthy west. So I do include myself. I agree that developed countries got us here. I'm not sure an alternative could have been be very likely. We found a cheap, easily consumed polluting energy source that massively increased output. The negative effects are felt in decades or centuries, while the positive effects are felt almost immediately. This is a tough position to be in. Even though some people in the 19th century were well aware that this was a recipe for disaster, it would have taken an enormous amount of control and discipline to avoid the situation we're in now, if it were avoidable at all. Even today we haven't begun to reduce [global co2 emissions] and we have more awareness than ever. [global co2 emissions]: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/co2-emissions-from-energy-combustion-and-industrial-processes-1900-2021 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/co2-emissions...
- jimbokun 4y ago
  Making this a moral issue is completely counter productive. People inventing the internal combustion engine and the amazing improvements to the quality of human life enabled by fossil fuels, did not set out to bake the planet. Climate change is a technical problem in need of technical solutions, along with the economic insights and political will to make it happen. We are all in this together now. Figuring out who to blame accomplishes nothing.
  - cagenut 4y ago
    that would only be true if there weren't a group of people who firmly believe we are not in this together and are fighting those of us who do tooth and nail.
deepsun 4y ago
> because of the choices of the wealthy Problem, though, is that there might not be wealthy anymore, as global unrest may wipe them out.
fithisux 4y ago
Well said
macinjosh 4y ago
My dear brother of Climate, I am so glad you have you accepted Climate into your heart and have been born-again through your commitment to dedicate your life to leaving a lighter footprint. Continue to seek forgiveness for your sins against Climate, dear believer. One day we shall rejoice in the carbon-free heavens of Climate. Praise be to Climate, for it provides for all. Amen. /s
carapace 4y ago
> So what does that realistic optimism look like? I think it looks radical, literally: we have to expect, in a world that has well and truly tackled climate change, things like car travel becoming a thing of the past, replaced by bikes, cargo bikes, trains, and airships. (As an aside, "climate change" is just the beginning, we have entered the so-called Anthropocene Age, and that comes with vast responsibilities. E.g. what to do about "non-native invasive" species? Shall we garden the whole Earth? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene ) Expanding on the no-more-cars thing: EVs are a stop-gap, it doesn't make sense to put batteries in cars. But even if the whole fleet of ICE vehicles were to be converted to battery-powered EVs we still have to deal with the tire pollution! We can't have all that vulcanized rubber grinding against all those millions of kilometers of asphalt. It's one of the single largest sources of particulate pollution. Go check. It's fucked up. We're going to have to seriously re-imagine and reconfigure our economic systems over the whole globe. We might could have a resurgence in sail-powered cargo shipping: https://postcarbonlogistics.org/ https://postcarbonlogistics.org/ https://www.sailcargo.inc/ https://www.sailcargo.inc/ (As opposed to the current very cheap but very polluting system.) I believe we can live in harmony with nature (that is, increasing life rather than destroying it by applying ecological science), and that we can do it and maintain our populations (no genocide or mass starvation or any of that) and maintain a decent standard of living for the everybody. We just have to apply the technology and resources we already have efficiently. We will still be subject to the human condition, but at least we would have time to work out all our other problems, eh?

BbzzbB 4y ago

So we should stop international travel to properly grieve, and that is not despair?

revscat 4y ago
We should stop fossil-fuel driven emissions out of necessity.
- throwaway5959 4y ago
  I’ll stop flying international when the rich give up their private jets. See: Davos.

mdorazio 4y ago

I think you're mischaracterizing the nature of the problem. Take a look at [1] for example - US total CO2 emissions and CO2 emissions per capita have been dropping for a while now. The same is true for the EU as a whole [2]. So where is the increase in CO2 emissions each year coming from then? The developing world that wants a western world standard of living. Take a look at India for example [3]. It's not sufficient to tell people in western countries that they shouldn't drive SUVs or take long flights, you have to tell people in poorer (populous) countries that they can't have a better standard of living because doing so means more GHG. Would you like to tell people that? By all means, we should be doing better in the west, but it's a lie to tell ourselves that driving an electric car and putting solar panels on the roof is going to solve the problem. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carbon-co2-emissions https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carb... [2] https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/greenhouse-gas-emission-trends-6/assessment-3 https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/greenhous... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/india https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/india

2143 4y ago
Any suggestions about what [people of] India can do?
- qart 4y ago
  Indians have other ecological problems on our hands. Unchecked pollution (air, water, soil), poorly designed cities, burning stubble, etc. On per-capita CO2/CH4, India is doing great.
- adrianN 4y ago
  The same that everybody else can do: elect politicians who build renewable power instead of electing politician who build coal plants.
  - 2143 4y ago
    > The same that everybody else can First thing you need to understand about India — it's not the same as everybody else. The country is unique unlike any other country in the world. What works in other places might not work there. > elect politicians who build renewable power instead of electing politician who build coal plants. I think politicians across party lines want to switch to renewable. Please understand that this switch to renewables can't be done overnight. And there's a huge population who can't be kept in the dark during the transition period. Also, India is the 3rd largest producer of renewable energy (and 3rd largest consumer) in the world, behind USA and China [1]. They're making an effort. [1] https://www.ey.com/en_sg/recai https://www.ey.com/en_sg/recai
    - ben_w 4y ago
      > The country is unique unlike any other country in the world. What works in other places might not work there. That's been said about every nation. So, what exactly do you mean?
    - airbreather 4y ago
      Roughly 5 Billion people, or more, rely on the Haber process to turn hydrocarbons in nitrogen fertiliser so they can eat. Carrying capacity of the earth before this mass manufacture of artificial fertiliser was maxxed out at around 1.5B, maybe with better plant strains that could be edged up, but not by 500% you would think. We are still a fair way off from green steel, we are going to need metallurgical coal for some time, unless you like driving a wooden car pulled by a horse. And alumina and lithium are both gas heavy in refining at the front end, needing calcination at 1000 DegC, plus or minus. Then there is plastic, from lighter fractions of liquid hydrocarbons in many cases (condensate) - I can't believe you are still allowed to buy water in a plastic bottle or food in a plastic container that's a once use, that's crazy. Hydrocarbons aren't going to become non-existent parts of the industrial landscape if any kind of life as we know it is to continue - we just need to start by stopping stupid waste in transient use cases like once use water bottles and food containers, decorative wrapping, short lived non repairable consumer appliances and goods, and synthetic fabrics that are made into clothes that could last for years or even decades, but get disposed of after 10 or 20 wears because of "fashion" or poor manufacture renders them useless in this time. Growing up in New Zealand in the 70's, if someone had tried to warn that in the future you would be paying for drinking water (any water actually), by the half litre and more expensive than petrol in some cases, and you would get a free bottle that you immediately discarded when you finished drinking from it, you would have been ignored as a fringe lunatic at best, and may well have been taken in for some kind of assessment. And yet some decades later, here we are.

TheRealDunkirk 4y ago

> People are still booking international vacations and buying brand new full size SUVs to do groceries. And an awful lot of people are still acting as though "end users" can materially affect the situation with their personal choices, and implying that they are bad people for making them. I'm sure the American oligarchy and the leaders of China appreciate your efforts.

tejohnso 4y ago
> implying that they are bad people I don't know how you got the idea that I was implying people are "bad" for their lifestyle choices. I was talking about how far away we are from widespread acceptance and realistic acknowledgement of the problem. When I see people acting like nothing is wrong, doing things that contribute to the problem, I do think that indicates a lack of acceptance and realization. Now I may be wrong. It could be possible that people are fully aware of the problem and are YOLO'ing their way through it. Or they share your opinion that nothing they do can materially affect the situation anyway, so they just go full throttle on carbon emission. But I suspect that for most people, that's not the case. I think that most people are unaware of the severity of the situation, and that if they were aware, they probably wouldn't be doing those things. Again, I could be completely wrong about what people know and how they would choose to behave. But at no point was I implying that there are good people and bad people and that personal carbon footprint is a decent way to measure that.
- jltsiren 4y ago
  People are generally aware that their actions contribute to climate change, unless they choose to deny it for ideological reasons. They are just unwilling to make lifestyle sacrifices because of it. Most people value their personal comfort and the comfort of their family above the (statistical) lives of strangers. You see exactly the same phenomenon every time a professional chooses to live in comfort instead of donating most of their income to charity. That's how people work, that's what they value, and that's why collective action is the only way of dealing with large-scale problems.
  - 4y ago

refurb 4y ago

I hope you include yourself in “choices of the wealthy”. It’s pretty much developed countries that got us here.

tejohnso 4y ago
I'm talking about the wealthy west. So I do include myself. I agree that developed countries got us here. I'm not sure an alternative could have been be very likely. We found a cheap, easily consumed polluting energy source that massively increased output. The negative effects are felt in decades or centuries, while the positive effects are felt almost immediately. This is a tough position to be in. Even though some people in the 19th century were well aware that this was a recipe for disaster, it would have taken an enormous amount of control and discipline to avoid the situation we're in now, if it were avoidable at all. Even today we haven't begun to reduce [global co2 emissions] and we have more awareness than ever. [global co2 emissions]: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/co2-emissions-from-energy-combustion-and-industrial-processes-1900-2021 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/co2-emissions...
jimbokun 4y ago
Making this a moral issue is completely counter productive. People inventing the internal combustion engine and the amazing improvements to the quality of human life enabled by fossil fuels, did not set out to bake the planet. Climate change is a technical problem in need of technical solutions, along with the economic insights and political will to make it happen. We are all in this together now. Figuring out who to blame accomplishes nothing.
- cagenut 4y ago
  that would only be true if there weren't a group of people who firmly believe we are not in this together and are fighting those of us who do tooth and nail.

deepsun 4y ago

> because of the choices of the wealthy Problem, though, is that there might not be wealthy anymore, as global unrest may wipe them out.

fithisux 4y ago

Well said

macinjosh 4y ago

My dear brother of Climate, I am so glad you have you accepted Climate into your heart and have been born-again through your commitment to dedicate your life to leaving a lighter footprint. Continue to seek forgiveness for your sins against Climate, dear believer. One day we shall rejoice in the carbon-free heavens of Climate. Praise be to Climate, for it provides for all. Amen. /s

carapace 4y ago

> So what does that realistic optimism look like? I think it looks radical, literally: we have to expect, in a world that has well and truly tackled climate change, things like car travel becoming a thing of the past, replaced by bikes, cargo bikes, trains, and airships. (As an aside, "climate change" is just the beginning, we have entered the so-called Anthropocene Age, and that comes with vast responsibilities. E.g. what to do about "non-native invasive" species? Shall we garden the whole Earth? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene ) Expanding on the no-more-cars thing: EVs are a stop-gap, it doesn't make sense to put batteries in cars. But even if the whole fleet of ICE vehicles were to be converted to battery-powered EVs we still have to deal with the tire pollution! We can't have all that vulcanized rubber grinding against all those millions of kilometers of asphalt. It's one of the single largest sources of particulate pollution. Go check. It's fucked up. We're going to have to seriously re-imagine and reconfigure our economic systems over the whole globe. We might could have a resurgence in sail-powered cargo shipping: https://postcarbonlogistics.org/ https://postcarbonlogistics.org/ https://www.sailcargo.inc/ https://www.sailcargo.inc/ (As opposed to the current very cheap but very polluting system.) I believe we can live in harmony with nature (that is, increasing life rather than destroying it by applying ecological science), and that we can do it and maintain our populations (no genocide or mass starvation or any of that) and maintain a decent standard of living for the everybody. We just have to apply the technology and resources we already have efficiently. We will still be subject to the human condition, but at least we would have time to work out all our other problems, eh?