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2. Climate change demands a radical transformation of modern lifestyles. A bit off-topic, but I'm sad that this was politicized, as that's exactly what's requi

2. Climate change demands a radical transformation of modern lifestyles. A bit off-topic, but I'm sad that this was politicized, as that's exactly what's required to stop global climate change. There are too many geopolitical forces standing in the way of concerted efforts to stop it. And even if we could summon a multilateral front, the process is probably too far along to be stopped via centralized brute force anyway. As we've passed the inflection point, the next 20 years may bring 1.5 to 2 times the warming we've already had since 2000, tipping into a runaway positive feedback loop. Somehow everyone's got to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and go solar, drive electric cars, buy local, etc. We're probably conservatively talking $10,000-100,000 USD per household, or about $40,000 if we use the logarithmic mean. Times 2 billion households, perhaps $80 trillion USD to a first-order approximation to go sustainable tomorrow. But that financial burden alone would disrupt lifestyles in the short term.. Now that's what's needed, but of course we probably won't do that. We'll just double down on our current lifestyles as developing nations join the industrialized world and fire up a bunch of nuclear plants and start scrubbing CO2, then add fusion sometime in the 2030s. Maybe put sunshades in orbit at L1, pollute the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight, seed algae blooms with iron to suck CO2, do all of the other things as we continue to deforest and desertify the planet as we finish out the 6th mass extinction of the holocene. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction But hey, that's just an externality, who cares. IMHO a distributed approach at the individual level is the only one that has a hope of succeeding. We could all choose to conserve and grow victory gardens as our patriotic duty like in WWI. But no matter how much proof is presented, people believe what they want to believe, for no other reason than to disagree with the environmentalists and academic community. Even here on this very site with some of the smartest people in the world, I suspect the opinion on this is split 50/50. For all of those reasons, I think it's irresponsible for the article to call something like climate change a game. A nuisance we'll simply ignore to our detriment sure. But not a game.

CobrastanJorji 4y ago
I agree with your reasoning, but I don't see how individual level effort can solve the problem. Ignoring the fact that it's impossible (the average household simply can't spend $40,000 on anything, let alone the environment), individuals are only involved in maybe a quarter of emissions. Unless the giant corporations also change, every single human going carbon neutral wouldn't be nearly enough. It'd certainly be a big help, but it wouldn't solve the problem.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Tarsul 4y ago
  As little as I like it but war is probably an apt metapher: only once the stakes are as clear cut and direct (as in war) are people willing to change. But maybe not even then: There are countless of weather (read: climate) desasters that only lead to a rebuild, even in "intelligent" countries. The biggest problem is that the younger generations seem more and more to grasp it but it's the old who are in power to change things. And we actually don't have the time to wait until the old die. As I'm not a radical (although I appreciate climate radicals and wish them all the best), I do my little part but have resigned to the fact that there will be a lot of pain and runaway effects for generations to come that are already foreseen and could be prevented but simply won't. (but as I said: This doesn't mean to simply yolo. As every ton counts and I have a conscience - and will still in 30 years.)
- gamegoblin 4y ago
  I've never really understood the "giant corporations" talking point. Even if the numbers are accurate, giant corporations don't just create emissions for fun -- they do it to create a product that will be purchased by consumers, i.e. individuals. If an individual buys a plastic toy, and the production of that toy caused a corporation to emit 10kg of carbon, in my mind that individual is responsible for that carbon, even if it was a Hasbro factory in China who emitted it. Similarly, I don't understand the talking point "even if the US goes carbon neutral, China is an even bigger problem, US is only 15% of emissions". A big part of that is because the West outsourced their manufacturing (and thus emissions) to China! If the West buys carbon-intensive products from China, the West is responsible for that carbon. China isn't making container ships full of plastic toys for fun. Obviously, China has a large domestic population with its own emissions issues with coal power plants, but non-trivial amounts of Chinese emissions are just off-shored Western emissions. Is there something I am missing here?
sleepymoose 4y ago
>We're probably conservatively talking $10,000-100,000 USD per household Considering how many people are struggling to pay the rent and keep the lights on (myself included), this feels impossible.
olalonde 4y ago
> But no matter how much proof is presented, people believe what they want to believe, for no other reason than to disagree with the environmentalists and academic community. I think you are wrong about that. Many rational people do the cost–benefit analysis of fixing global warming and arrive to the conclusion that it isn't worth it. Those people believe that the negative consequences simply aren't that bad and that they can be overcome through progressive adaptation and technological progress. Those people will maybe accept small costs like switching to reasonably priced EV car.
- zackmorris 4y ago
  I hesitate to say it, but you're probably right. I'm a problem solver, I do a lot of root cause analysis. But as a whole, humanity isn't really driven by logic, it's driven by the survival instinct. So the health of the planet will always fall second to the health of one's children. Which is arguably as it should be. TBH, I believe we entered the endgame with Bush v. Gore in 2000. All of this (whatever it is, hoopla, chaos) around climate change denial is a natural outcome of people's fear. We know deep down that we can't stop the devastation, so we play shell games to distract and deny. I see that as owning the libs, but that's my impression, through my filter. So, if we're in the endgame, we should probably be thinking about outside-the-box solutions. If this is the Kobayashi Maru, then there simply isn't a logical way out of this, given our current understanding. Maybe deniers are correct to grok that and internalize the fact that no amount of personal sacrifice can save the climate now. The kicker though is that we could have stopped it if we started half a century ago. But we chose Reagan over Carter for reasons similar to those outlined above. I feel tremendous resentment around all of that, but that doesn't help us now. Blaming deniers today doesn't solve the problem, so again, it's probably a waste of time. So, what do we do? What will the solution be, if there is one? Well, based on everything I just said, the closest thing we have to a solution outside the box of human understanding is AI. It's self-evident now that AI can solve really hard optimization problems like the ones needed for over-unity fusion. That's why I am certain that we'll have fusion power plants before the singularity arrives around 2040 (see Kurzweil for where that prediction comes from). Also, compared to something like stable diffusion, self-replicating robots are a much more tractable problem. We could have them today for a trifling of money, perhaps $10-100 million for a small team. I think probably that self-replicating drones made of basic materials like wood and salt will re-seed forests. What I'm saying is that stopping climate change is just under the order of magnitude effort required to terraform a planet. Maybe 1% of that. Granola solutions aren't enough. We need something on the scale of at least industrial agriculture. And as we're all basically just surviving due to wealth inequality, solutions need to be self-funding and self-scaling. AI FTW. The reason I hesitate to say all of this is that it gives us a false sense of security. "The AI will solve it" will be our mantra for at least the first half of this century. Until the downsides become impossible to ignore. We might go too far and create a prison planet like in Highlander II and The Matrix movies. Then we're grappling with threats even larger than climate change. In the face of anxiety around those looming threats, I've chosen to turn towards faith-based approaches like meditation and manifestation in my own life. I try to crystalize and evangelize my thoughts in the hopes that all of us working together can figure this stuff out. That can feel defeatist sometimes, so I'm also trying to solve prerequisite problems like how to fund UBI. For example, looks at SpaceX. Why would they go to all the trouble of building retro rockets running on methane? Because that's what you use to land on Mars and run on the fuel available there. They're breaking down seemingly intractable problems into a series of small steps that can be overcome. That's what we need to do for climate change. After writing this out, I still believe that this begins with all of us picking ourselves up by our bootstraps on a personal level. But I'm open to the idea that a change in lifestyle isn't enough. We should look beyond that, not just at somehow coming up with the $40,000 to go sustainable, but how to accomplish that without money, through a fundamental change in economies and culture, maybe with something like UBI. A sustainable economy could actually be more attractive than the ones we have now, if it meant a reduction in unfulfilling labor and more passive income for everyone. Then there would be an incentive for change, and it would happen automagically. When we look at the players currently benefiting and profiting from the status quo, it's easy to see why they prevent such unity and sew division through divisive politics. If there's a root cause in all of this, that's the one I see. It's all connected. The other comments are great too, but I'll have to pass on responding in the interest of time.
projektfu 4y ago
I have become pessimistic in the "Planet of the Humans" sense. Part of this is because we are able to take every piece of the problem and minimize it individually. This is what the movie showed. If you question the mining of lithium, you're pointed to the planting of trees. If you question the effectiveness of reforestation projects, you're shown the solar panels. If you ask about storage, you're shown the battery factories. And now we're back to the lithium. Did you see that we're planting trees? You put up solar panels. You destroy the ecosystem underneath. You dam a river for hydroelectric. You destroy the upstream forest that depended on the undammed river. You switch to electric cars, you still have to produce batteries and cars. You get everyone eating more calories, you get more people demanding more from more desirable sources. As the planet heats up, we install more air conditioning that creates waste heat to move it out of the living space, and eventually leaks high-GWP refrigerant. But don't worry, those air conditioners will be replaced by other ones that use lower-GWP refrigerant...after they have leaked it. Everything we are doing burns carbon. It's not just too much fossil fuel. It's too much activity. And then, the shell game. We need to show we're not using carbon. So, we burn forests instead because forests are carbon-neutral if they grow back. But we are mortgaging today's energy carbon over 30 years of forest carbon-capture, which I imagine will just be burned again, along with all of the fossil fuels available in the ground, because alternatives make the fossil fuels cheaper. Meanwhile, the environmentalists, as represented by the Sierra Club and various green-tech interests, are attacking anyone who says that we have too many people, who travel too much, and eat too much, who live too comfortably, by destroying ecosystems. And they're quiet when confronted by the people you mention, who want to keep the merry-go-round running at any cost, lest the hard times come in their lifetime. I also think the academic community and environmentalists you refer to are rarely willing to grapple with the actual implications of the data. We really need population decline. We will need new ways of reallocating resources than endless growth. We need to figure out how to make less waste of carbon sources, especially by reducing travel and waste heat generation. And in doing so we need to strictly limit the production of fossil carbon. -- Although you didn't mention the film, it causes strong reactions in people. I have dutifully read the criticism of the film and looked into both sides' claims and my working conclusion is: 1. Jeff Gibbs had some factual inaccuracies, overstatements, and out-of-date imagery. 2. There was no reason to be singling out one person like Bill McKibben and it made the film seem like an attack on him rather than an indictment of the whole green-tech enterprise. 3. His critics are hoping you focus on the above points so that you go back to believing in the bankrupt electric-car, electric-plane, one-billion-Americans, 12-billion-humans, vegan Zymo-veal Soylent vision of individual responsibility and careful technical management that will "maintain our way of life". The fear of the message of the film is very telling.

CobrastanJorji 4y ago

I agree with your reasoning, but I don't see how individual level effort can solve the problem. Ignoring the fact that it's impossible (the average household simply can't spend $40,000 on anything, let alone the environment), individuals are only involved in maybe a quarter of emissions. Unless the giant corporations also change, every single human going carbon neutral wouldn't be nearly enough. It'd certainly be a big help, but it wouldn't solve the problem.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Tarsul 4y ago
As little as I like it but war is probably an apt metapher: only once the stakes are as clear cut and direct (as in war) are people willing to change. But maybe not even then: There are countless of weather (read: climate) desasters that only lead to a rebuild, even in "intelligent" countries. The biggest problem is that the younger generations seem more and more to grasp it but it's the old who are in power to change things. And we actually don't have the time to wait until the old die. As I'm not a radical (although I appreciate climate radicals and wish them all the best), I do my little part but have resigned to the fact that there will be a lot of pain and runaway effects for generations to come that are already foreseen and could be prevented but simply won't. (but as I said: This doesn't mean to simply yolo. As every ton counts and I have a conscience - and will still in 30 years.)
gamegoblin 4y ago
I've never really understood the "giant corporations" talking point. Even if the numbers are accurate, giant corporations don't just create emissions for fun -- they do it to create a product that will be purchased by consumers, i.e. individuals. If an individual buys a plastic toy, and the production of that toy caused a corporation to emit 10kg of carbon, in my mind that individual is responsible for that carbon, even if it was a Hasbro factory in China who emitted it. Similarly, I don't understand the talking point "even if the US goes carbon neutral, China is an even bigger problem, US is only 15% of emissions". A big part of that is because the West outsourced their manufacturing (and thus emissions) to China! If the West buys carbon-intensive products from China, the West is responsible for that carbon. China isn't making container ships full of plastic toys for fun. Obviously, China has a large domestic population with its own emissions issues with coal power plants, but non-trivial amounts of Chinese emissions are just off-shored Western emissions. Is there something I am missing here?

sleepymoose 4y ago

>We're probably conservatively talking $10,000-100,000 USD per household Considering how many people are struggling to pay the rent and keep the lights on (myself included), this feels impossible.

olalonde 4y ago

> But no matter how much proof is presented, people believe what they want to believe, for no other reason than to disagree with the environmentalists and academic community. I think you are wrong about that. Many rational people do the cost–benefit analysis of fixing global warming and arrive to the conclusion that it isn't worth it. Those people believe that the negative consequences simply aren't that bad and that they can be overcome through progressive adaptation and technological progress. Those people will maybe accept small costs like switching to reasonably priced EV car.

zackmorris 4y ago
I hesitate to say it, but you're probably right. I'm a problem solver, I do a lot of root cause analysis. But as a whole, humanity isn't really driven by logic, it's driven by the survival instinct. So the health of the planet will always fall second to the health of one's children. Which is arguably as it should be. TBH, I believe we entered the endgame with Bush v. Gore in 2000. All of this (whatever it is, hoopla, chaos) around climate change denial is a natural outcome of people's fear. We know deep down that we can't stop the devastation, so we play shell games to distract and deny. I see that as owning the libs, but that's my impression, through my filter. So, if we're in the endgame, we should probably be thinking about outside-the-box solutions. If this is the Kobayashi Maru, then there simply isn't a logical way out of this, given our current understanding. Maybe deniers are correct to grok that and internalize the fact that no amount of personal sacrifice can save the climate now. The kicker though is that we could have stopped it if we started half a century ago. But we chose Reagan over Carter for reasons similar to those outlined above. I feel tremendous resentment around all of that, but that doesn't help us now. Blaming deniers today doesn't solve the problem, so again, it's probably a waste of time. So, what do we do? What will the solution be, if there is one? Well, based on everything I just said, the closest thing we have to a solution outside the box of human understanding is AI. It's self-evident now that AI can solve really hard optimization problems like the ones needed for over-unity fusion. That's why I am certain that we'll have fusion power plants before the singularity arrives around 2040 (see Kurzweil for where that prediction comes from). Also, compared to something like stable diffusion, self-replicating robots are a much more tractable problem. We could have them today for a trifling of money, perhaps $10-100 million for a small team. I think probably that self-replicating drones made of basic materials like wood and salt will re-seed forests. What I'm saying is that stopping climate change is just under the order of magnitude effort required to terraform a planet. Maybe 1% of that. Granola solutions aren't enough. We need something on the scale of at least industrial agriculture. And as we're all basically just surviving due to wealth inequality, solutions need to be self-funding and self-scaling. AI FTW. The reason I hesitate to say all of this is that it gives us a false sense of security. "The AI will solve it" will be our mantra for at least the first half of this century. Until the downsides become impossible to ignore. We might go too far and create a prison planet like in Highlander II and The Matrix movies. Then we're grappling with threats even larger than climate change. In the face of anxiety around those looming threats, I've chosen to turn towards faith-based approaches like meditation and manifestation in my own life. I try to crystalize and evangelize my thoughts in the hopes that all of us working together can figure this stuff out. That can feel defeatist sometimes, so I'm also trying to solve prerequisite problems like how to fund UBI. For example, looks at SpaceX. Why would they go to all the trouble of building retro rockets running on methane? Because that's what you use to land on Mars and run on the fuel available there. They're breaking down seemingly intractable problems into a series of small steps that can be overcome. That's what we need to do for climate change. After writing this out, I still believe that this begins with all of us picking ourselves up by our bootstraps on a personal level. But I'm open to the idea that a change in lifestyle isn't enough. We should look beyond that, not just at somehow coming up with the $40,000 to go sustainable, but how to accomplish that without money, through a fundamental change in economies and culture, maybe with something like UBI. A sustainable economy could actually be more attractive than the ones we have now, if it meant a reduction in unfulfilling labor and more passive income for everyone. Then there would be an incentive for change, and it would happen automagically. When we look at the players currently benefiting and profiting from the status quo, it's easy to see why they prevent such unity and sew division through divisive politics. If there's a root cause in all of this, that's the one I see. It's all connected. The other comments are great too, but I'll have to pass on responding in the interest of time.

projektfu 4y ago

I have become pessimistic in the "Planet of the Humans" sense. Part of this is because we are able to take every piece of the problem and minimize it individually. This is what the movie showed. If you question the mining of lithium, you're pointed to the planting of trees. If you question the effectiveness of reforestation projects, you're shown the solar panels. If you ask about storage, you're shown the battery factories. And now we're back to the lithium. Did you see that we're planting trees? You put up solar panels. You destroy the ecosystem underneath. You dam a river for hydroelectric. You destroy the upstream forest that depended on the undammed river. You switch to electric cars, you still have to produce batteries and cars. You get everyone eating more calories, you get more people demanding more from more desirable sources. As the planet heats up, we install more air conditioning that creates waste heat to move it out of the living space, and eventually leaks high-GWP refrigerant. But don't worry, those air conditioners will be replaced by other ones that use lower-GWP refrigerant...after they have leaked it. Everything we are doing burns carbon. It's not just too much fossil fuel. It's too much activity. And then, the shell game. We need to show we're not using carbon. So, we burn forests instead because forests are carbon-neutral if they grow back. But we are mortgaging today's energy carbon over 30 years of forest carbon-capture, which I imagine will just be burned again, along with all of the fossil fuels available in the ground, because alternatives make the fossil fuels cheaper. Meanwhile, the environmentalists, as represented by the Sierra Club and various green-tech interests, are attacking anyone who says that we have too many people, who travel too much, and eat too much, who live too comfortably, by destroying ecosystems. And they're quiet when confronted by the people you mention, who want to keep the merry-go-round running at any cost, lest the hard times come in their lifetime. I also think the academic community and environmentalists you refer to are rarely willing to grapple with the actual implications of the data. We really need population decline. We will need new ways of reallocating resources than endless growth. We need to figure out how to make less waste of carbon sources, especially by reducing travel and waste heat generation. And in doing so we need to strictly limit the production of fossil carbon. -- Although you didn't mention the film, it causes strong reactions in people. I have dutifully read the criticism of the film and looked into both sides' claims and my working conclusion is: 1. Jeff Gibbs had some factual inaccuracies, overstatements, and out-of-date imagery. 2. There was no reason to be singling out one person like Bill McKibben and it made the film seem like an attack on him rather than an indictment of the whole green-tech enterprise. 3. His critics are hoping you focus on the above points so that you go back to believing in the bankrupt electric-car, electric-plane, one-billion-Americans, 12-billion-humans, vegan Zymo-veal Soylent vision of individual responsibility and careful technical management that will "maintain our way of life". The fear of the message of the film is very telling.