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I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but the answer to your question depends on your analysis of the problem. If you're an ecomodernist, who believes we

• shaburn 4y ago
  ..."almost exclusively means working to bring about a big political change"...!
• nanna 4y ago
  >"working for climate" almost exclusively means working to bring about a big political change. This. System change not climate change.
  • felixmeziere 4y ago
    YES.
  • mantas 4y ago
    Result: Change the system and let climate issues stay...
• dr_dshiv 4y ago
  What does meaningful system change mean to you? 1. Trillions of dollars of investment in the transition to solar? 2. Carbon tax (and other taxes on externalities?) 3. Abandoning combustion engines and switching to electric? 4. Moral persuasion to convince people to that humans are a cancer upon the earth? 1,2,3 have huge potential for climate and economic value. 4 is a straw man that obviously does nothing. But what do you propose exactly?
  • carschno 4y ago
    > What does meaningful system change mean to you? I would also like to have something more concrete here, but I think the GP hinted at why there is no single elevator pitch-like answer to real-world problems like climate change: >> [...] have a grasp on all of the different ways the environment is being destroyed (not just "climate")
  • almost_usual 4y ago
    If I had to guess it’s ending consumerism and growth at all costs.
  • badpun 4y ago
    Probably heavy taxation of consumption and lowering the average standard of living across the globe. Too bad it's a pipe dream, people will never vote for it and an dictator that tries to impose it will be overthrown.
    • bjourne 4y ago
      Let's redefine "standard of living" from owning a SUV to feel "safe" to owning a guitar and having time to learn how to play it.
    • Scarblac 4y ago
      Not across the globe. Only in rich countries where the current standard of living is unsustainable.
      • badpun 4y ago
        I'd be shocked if even one country does it in a meaningful way. It's just so contrary to human nature. I think the only thing that can save us short-term is technology. Inventing and implementing new gizmos is something we're actually good at. Long-term we're probably screwed anyway, because we'll eventually disturb the biological systems on the Earth too much (either via pollution, ocean acidification, killing biodiversity, soil depletion etc.), and they're way too immense and complex for us to fix. People forget that we're part of Earth's ecosystem, but if we disturb it too much we'll be reminded of it either via plagues (we got a taste of it already) and/or famines.
• bluena 4y ago
  Let me know if you want to be put in contact with a partner working at one of the key consultancies advising EU countries' governments (+EU itself and some other countries) to help them evaluate their impact on climate and strategies to reduce them.
  • ttiurani 4y ago
    Thanks, sent you an email!
  • bluena 4y ago
    Actually I will forward all mails/CV received to him. (Not just the one of the orignal poster.)
• polycaster 4y ago
  > ...working to bring about a big political change Can we start a quick brainstorming what promising organizations exist that support this goals and in turn joining/supporting them would be a viable option for individuals to have an actual impact towards political change? I'll start with the usual suspect Greenpeace.
  • polycaster 4y ago
    Also https://www.climateemergencyfund.org/ https://www.climateemergencyfund.org/
  • rmchugh 4y ago
    350.org
  • vaughandroid 4y ago
    I'm a big fan of ClientEarth - they essentially take governments and organisations to court to try to force them to meet local and international environmental laws. It's one thing having the laws in place, but if they aren't enforced they aren't worth anything. https://www.clientearth.org/ https://www.clientearth.org/
    • tremon 4y ago
      What a horrible landing page mechanism. Just show me the site, not a ten-second splash screen drip-feeding me words just because you think it looks cool.
      • paledot 4y ago
        Followed by a cookie prompt that takes up most of the screen on my phone.
    • AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
  • ZeroGravitas 4y ago
• Scarblac 4y ago
  What is your opinion on the current post-truth politics backed by ubiquitous social media? I am at a loss when figuring out how to even work towards meaningful change in an environment where that messages are viewed / liked / shared is the only important thing, and the relation of that message to physical reality is completely irrelevant. And I have the feeling that in general, software is part of the problem, not the solution :-(
• felixmeziere 4y ago
  Preach.
• perlgeek 4y ago
  I think you can do all these things: * believe that significant systemic change is necessary * believe that oneself isn't well-suited (or wouldn't be happy) in a role advocating for that systemic change * realize that even with a big systemic change, we'll still need better technologies and infrastructures and work on them
• automatic6131 4y ago
  Amazing, really. You are facing a massive - nearly unpredictable problem - changing the climate. Faced with a problem of such magnitude, you decide the best solution is... A second, massive and even more unpredictable problem. Achieving widespread, totalizing political and economic change that not only has to succeed, has to be better than the system we have now also has to solve the first problem. To say this is difficult is an understatement. I'd argue it's also impossible and the result would be widespread suffering and a failure to solve climate change due to the distraction. Luckily you're not going to succeed, because like I said, it's really difficult. I'm familiar with the line of reasoning. It's common among particularly left wing people and comes directly from their thinkers and philosophers. I think it was Gramsci who first said that the 'good' society 'cannot even be imagined' under the current system. This is a cop out for all those who believe they could make the utopia, they don't know how but they're sure the first step is total political change, and step 2 will make itself known then. It shouldn't have to be explained why this is a stupid idea, and how dangerous and harmful it would be.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • starkd 4y ago
    Indeed. It takes a tremendous amount of hubris, doesn't it?
  • drekipus 4y ago
    > they don't know how but they're sure the first step is total political change, and step 2 will make itself known then. This is entirely the issue with green types, (myself being married to one, and leaning green-er myself) The "ecomoderates" are actually the ones pushing for sensible change. We can not cause a giant upheaval of society and then figure out what works (unless you think other humans are the problem and should be eradicated - inwhich societal disruption is one stone for two birds). Figure it out now. Part of figuring it out is actually figuring out what is to be solved. Sri Lanka thinks that it was to do with fertilizer, and caused a catastrophe for themselves. Plastic waste pollution/landfill is often something that is said needs to be solved, - A few months ago scientists found/grew an algae that eats plastic. I was thinking that it's amazing because that can really help clean up the place and deal with landfill. The overwhelming response was "No we can't have that, that's carbon released in the air from bug farts, it's best to leave the plastic in the ground". The only way forward is progressively and piecemeal until viable solutions are found. If you want faster actions, then contribute more viable solutions that don't involve killing your neighbour. The fact is that things are getting better, and they are continuing to get better. You need to be patient in figuring out your ideas. I'm currently building a house or of hemp-crete which will absorb carbon out of the atmosphere as it dries, and I'm figuring out the problems with it (mainly labour intensive, a mushier organic concrete) and so trying to find solutions to make it more widely used.
• Aachen 4y ago
  I don't understand like half of these words. Ecomodernist I new to me, decoupling rates, some paradox, rebound effect... is this a riddle? What here needed prefixing with an anti-downvote spell, the claim that we need systematic change to fix systematic problems?
  • ttiurani 4y ago
    I wrote this very quickly as just one comment among dozens of very different comments, so I really didn't expect to get the attention. It's much harder to write with plain words about these topics, so that's the reason for all the jargon. As for the anti-downvote spell, I knew from previous experience that I get downvotes every time I question the importance of technology. And I did notice many downvotes this time too (from karma fluctuations), but just got a lot more upvotes.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• CalRobert 4y ago
  I'm trying to make it easier to find homes where you can walk, bike, and take public transport to your daily needs (and have great broadband so you can work from home where taht suits). Does that count as system change?
  • aradox66 4y ago
    No, changing zoning laws so that cities are built in a way that makes this possible for a bigger portion of the population would count as system change.
  • threefour 4y ago
    Have you seen https://www.walkscore.com/ https://www.walkscore.com/ ?
    • CalRobert 4y ago
      Yes, it's great! I also follow https://culdesac.com/ https://culdesac.com/ closely (but I never want to live in Arizona)
• dogcomplex 4y ago
  While I agree that political change is necessary for a host of reasons, and that the current global system (more specifically the late-stage-capitalist US-hegemony financial world order with almost no democratic controls left) is pretty ill-suited to the task of fixing climate change... I think it's probably all we've got for this one in the timespan necessary. Either the pain will reach deep enough into the system to affect the pride of the few remaining people who still have levers of control which can amount to more than "money go up", or the very mechanisms of capital will be affected "money not going up anymore. guess we gotta fix the planet", or it will all fail spectacularly and those in power will use the new climate conditions as a perpetual planned obsolescence to profit off increased costs of living worldwide for however long that lasts before a war breaks out and ends it all. Either way, these decisions are probably out of the hands of the vast majority of people, ourselves included (unless you have a staggeringly rich uncle). The mechanisms I see we have available, in this obscure niche forum for engineers, are to reduce the pricetag of climate action to levels where it makes capital sense. At $100/ton it's a ceiling of $3 Trillion to suck up 100% of the world's CO2 each year. Adjust to more reasonable targets as needed. Now... comparing that to bailouts of the past and considering we can likely get that pricepoint much lower at scale (or even profitable, with e.g. a self-perpetuating kelp farm harvested for fuel/plastic) that really doesn't seem like that much. The mass manufacturing and/or geoengineering to actually implement such projects seems daunting and risky in new ways, but the financials aren't all that bad. Someone just has to pony up. And imo the current situation is simply a political/financial game of hot potato where every faction wants to push the problem down the line for someone else to handle until the absolute last minute - even as solar and tech improvements are making potential solutions that much more achievable (which again motivates the delays). Even now, with just current solar panel technology, the sheer investment value in just buying some panels and having them pay for themselves in a couple years is going to motivate most of the change needed. Obviously there are still a lot of industries that cant use that immediately, and a lot who are motivated to protect their sunk cost investments (anyone with an oil portfolio - aka most of the decision makers) - but still, capital is gonna react to this all. Just likely too slowly... The most likely scenario I see where climate change gets solved by the current system (of the shrinking set of scenarios where it's solved at all) is where governments (and their financial backers) consort to fund some mega projects for mass CO2 drawdown. This results in a lot of money somehow flowing to oil and gas people (buyouts to pay them not to interfere), and increased power concentration in the US hegemonic global state - though possibly with a new negotiated balance between its participants. They implement these projects using some wartime-style measures of mass manufacturing and pseudo-command-economies to start up the project (WWII production would be easily capable of this - govs can do quite a lot when they actually try, and print debt/money to fund it). Once it's mostly built and derisked, sucking down CO2 successfully, the project will probably be privatized to some megacorp which charges a perpetual fee to taxpayers and is owned by the backroom financiers/political authors of this project. It will become a hated entity in the future like Nestle or Facebook, but it will also at least mostly mitigate extreme climate problems - probably artificially keeping things at a soft boil perpetually to ensure it gets paid. The profits of such a corp will not flow to the people whatsoever though, naturally. It will cause new "unforseen" environmental and social problems probably, but these will be debated ad-nauseum on talk shows whether they're worse than climate change. The project's true cost and effectiveness will be heavily distorted by the sheer amount of greased hands in its overall construction and operation. Though its creators will at least have had the prescience to make sure it sucks down enough carbon to reduce global measurements by a reasonable amount each year - or they'll monopolize the measuring agencies.
• PhantomBKB 4y ago
  Correct. It is due to the politics and incessant greed of human nature that our ecological problems are difficult to reverse. From the politics POV, they must impose a limit on how much factories should produce, because ultimately the climate problem has been caused due to our exploitation of resources and their eventual disposal as waste. Less production = less waste = better ecology But if you remember what happened with the toilet papers during covid, I don't have to remind you what's going to happen when production of most goods is unanimously reduced. There will be those who panic buy, and those who intentionally hoard, and a basic shortage of everything which I'm sure humanity in general is not willing to cope with for the sake of our environment. Hence, reversing the damage cannot be possible. However, those who want to try, I wish you all the best in your endeavours.