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We will do almost anything to save the planet except what needs to be done: less electricity, less meat, less travel and fewer people. There's one sure strategy
by adamwong246 3y ago
We will do almost anything to save the planet except what needs to be done: less electricity, less meat, less travel and fewer people. There's one sure strategy for beating climate change and no one dares speak it out loud.
- deelowe 3y agoFamine. What you're asking for is famine and war.
- empyrrhicist 3y agoExcept... It's way easier and more efficient to produce plant based calories.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deelowe 3y agoThat alone won't fix the issue. Also, what about fertilizer?
- empyrrhicist 3y ago... Obviously? We're facing a threat to global civilization, so parden me if "that one thing that would help isn't sufficient" doesn't strike me as a particularly insightful or useful comment. Obviously we need to do lots of things. And also, what about fertilizer? Right now we're using it to grow too much corn to feed to cows and burn in cars. I'm saying we should do less of that.
- jwestbury 3y agoFertiliser is a complicated topic, and at industrial scale probably does require inputs from the livestock industry; however, there are also many options for producing large amounts of biomass without livestock, they're just more costly, and probably don't work as well with large-scale, monoculture agriculture.
- deelowe 3y agoFertilizer is largely produced from oil.
- lm28469 3y agoEither you chose it or you're forced through it, there are no scenarios in which we can continue business as usual
- rsyring 3y agoPlenty of people speak it out loud. But getting billions of people across numerous cultures to collectively give up what they consider basic comforts is not going to happen. It goes against basic human nature. You can try to fight that, but you will lose. The planet will die off first. In light of that, it seems wise to me to try and get other plans in place to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
- vlowther 3y ago> The planet will die off first. Definitely not. It may go through a bottleneck in which humanity has to adapt or die (not for the first time, I might add), but (if anything) after the climate has stabilized and life has adapted it will be more fecund than anything -- all those new shallow seas will be totally awesome biomes.
- moufestaphio 3y agoAs George Carlin once said: "The planet is fine, the people are fucked"
- titzer 3y agoYep. Just like your face will be hairier if you were to pluck every single one of your eyebrow follicles but stop shaving your beard. It will take millions of years to recover from the biodiversity loss we've already put into motion. Hundreds of thousands, millions of species that just don't exist anymore. The intricate relationships from parasitism to symbiosis and everything in between, a vastly complex machine we just stomp on, cut up, blow holes in. Yep. That machine will be fine, shame about those eyebrows though.
- rcme 3y agoYou’re free to give up modern conveniences. You’re even free to stop living if you truly feel there are too many people. Or we can keep living, keep enjoying our advancements, and find a way to make it work in a way that keeps the climate stable. Like I don’t want to live in a world where I can’t leave my immediate geographic area. I don’t want to live in a world where I can’t have kids. I would rather have kids with the potential that they inherit a destroyed Earth. At least in this case there is hope they inherit something other than a peasant’s lifestyle.
- empyrrhicist 3y ago> Or we can keep living, keep enjoying our advancements, and find a way to make it work in a way that keeps the climate stable. Press X to doubt. The level of technological hubris in this statement is astonishing - we don't know that we'll be able to do this, and we can estimate that the cost of mitigation will be higher than prevention. Very few are advocating living like acetic monks, but we absolutely need to work on including externalities into our pricing system.
- mrguyorama 3y agoIt's exhausting how people think tech is magic, that you can just "innovate" away any inconvenient reality.
- empyrrhicist 3y agoI think part of it is the truly staggering disconnect most people have from the natural world. Start learning about it in earnest and you will see the slow rolling apocalypse everywhere.
- jdiff 3y agoThere's no reason to believe we can successfully run away from all the problem's technology's caused with more technology, specifically tech that doesn't even exist yet and that, more importantly, is not profitable. Even green energy just is not profitable even though it's increasingly affordable. In a weakly regulated capitalist society, that's a death sentence for it. Nobody's saying abandon the cities and go back to the dark ages. But we need to be much more judicious in our production and use of technology.
- DennisP 3y agoWe could stop all emissions tomorrow and it wouldn't be enough, because the CO2 level is already too high.
- sp332 3y agoWe've locked in 1.5C, but we can still avoid worse changes. It's not pass/fail.
- c00lio 3y agoIt'll be fine even at 3.0C. The IPCC report has scenarios up to 5.0C, and if you carefully read those and compare the population adversely affected to the overall population of the planet, you'll see that mankind will not end from climate change. Not even remotely.
- DennisP 3y agoOf course, but even the best case isn't great. If we can draw down a large amount of CO2, the best case can be significantly better. The potential for serious positive feedbacks makes this even more important.
- Euphorbium 3y agoNone of that, just less oil and billionaires.
- bertil 3y agoI really agree with your sentiment, although maybe not the details. All those efforts are gargantuan YC-scale world-changing efforts that can compensate… a small fraction of people not driving 50 miles to work daily. Or, at least, drive an EV. Or even, have people eat pasta rather than beef once a week. It’s very sad that it’s so hard to ask people to make such a small effort. I suspect that if we electrify transport, there will be more electricity, and we could have more travel overall with night trains, etc. So I’m not sure it has to be less consumption overall. Eating like a pig (which I wouldn’t recommend), but vegan food has less carbon footprint, for example. So “less electricity, less meat, less travel and fewer people” makes sense, but I’m hoping it won’t be necessary. That and much more will be soon if we don’t change many things fast, but so many of those things are as simple as teaching people to cook dahl (it’s so simple, even I can do it). Those are miracles that good advertisers pull off every week, but so far, they are focused on getting more giant trucks on the road and pretending hybrid engines are good enough. They are fighting for milk and beef and airlines, while alternatives use amateurs who keep making blatant mistakes.
- downrightmike 3y agoAs we saw in 2020, just killing the cruise lines saves more carbon from entering the atmosphere than all cars in the USA produce. We should take these low hanging fruits. Do what's easy. Manufacturing from China is moving to Mexico because of the FTA, we should fully support that. Less transport == less fossil fuels
- scythe 3y agoElectricity + meat + (long-distance) travel comes to less than half of emissions in developed countries. Expand that to all transportation and you're just over half. Furthermore, electricity is probably the easiest sector to decarbonize (construction might be the hardest).
- MildlySerious 3y agoHalving the emissions of the wealthiest 1% would have the same effect as eliminating the emissions from the poorest 50% of the population[1]. It's not a population problem. It's a consumption problem. The number of people consuming is only one variable of the equation, and it is neither the easiest, fastest, most attainable nor the most ethical one to adjust. There are a lot of low hanging fruit we could tackle with willing policymakers, before depopulation has to be even considered. [1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-ric...
- HPsquared 3y agoThe median 50% US citizen is probably still in the top 1% of global population in terms of emissions. (same goes for most First-Worlders)
- mistrial9 3y agoit is not the person, it is a system of systems
- throwawaytemp29 3y agoGiven US has around 4% of the worlds population, this is not possible.
- lm28469 3y agoThe plot twist is that if you live in a large western city, own a car and take the plane a few times a year you already are part of the problem > In 2015, around half the emissions of the richest 10 percent - people with net income over $38,000 - are linked to citizens in the US and the EU
- melagonster 3y agoyes, this is why we need claim participation of American people.
- 3y ago
- ptsneves 3y agoInteresting that it is already not about fossil fuels but about electricity as if it can only be generated with CO2 emissions. > There's one sure strategy for beating climate change and no one dares speak it out loud. You also did not dare but I can do it for you, birth rate limitation and perhaps suicide. There is a reason people don’t dare say it.
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoBirth rate limitation won't work. Even if no more humans are born from today, we still have like 4 billion under the age of 21 that are going to be around for a while and plenty above that age who intend to stick around for many decades.
- tastyfreeze 3y agoIf part of your solution is less people it is a non-starter. The only solutions for less people are imposed child restrictions, war, or genocide. If you force less electricity and less meat you will get less people by starvation and death from the elements. How about solutions that dont kill people.
- empyrrhicist 3y ago> The only solutions for less people are imposed child restrictions, war, or genocide. That is complete and utter nonsense. Education and access to family planning are none of these things.
- lm28469 3y ago??? most of developed countries are bellow replacement rate (aka less people)
- mikewarot 3y agoRegenerative agriculture is a great carbon sink. It's more hands on and management intensive, something hard to scale, though, so big Ag isn't interested.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoThere was a good Ask Reddit question recently that really drove home how the "use less electricity, travel less, eat less meat" solution is completely unrealistic when it comes to what is needed to arrest climate change. The question asked why, during 2020, when there were huge lockdowns around the world, with gargantuan portions of traffic completely eliminated, that overall CO2 emissions only fell 6% Think about that. To arrest climate change we really need to bring CO2 emissions down nearly 100%, and the greatest worldwide economic pause in living memory only brought it down 6%. The only thing that can possibly solve this problem is improved technology.
- vorpalhex 3y agoHuman transportation is less than 35% of transportation pollution - most of it is moving _stuff_, usually cheap junk between factories. Not food or even finished products. Your electricity usage doesn't go to people. Residential electricity use is ~20%. It's not your air conditioner. Meat doesn't even enter into calculations. While it consumes biomass, changes to feed easily offset it's greenhouse gas output. And, as the above shows, it's not people living their lives that causes global warming. It's not people in their homes or going on vacation or even leaving the tap running or the AC on a bit much. You could, as a person, do all of the things and convince your neighbors to do them to.. and you would change almost nothing. Stop buying junk, buy less, and push the commercial and office sectors to fix their behavior. Stop sending entire planes to move a 2 or 3 people.
- axus 3y agoIt sounds like a motto for people who want those outcomes, even if technology somehow let us have more electricity, more people, more meat, and more travel. There's only one bottom line, CO2 and methane in the atmosphere must decrease. That means real carbon storage that outweighs the oil that's pumped. Preferably with less human and animal suffering.
- chmod600 3y agoThere's a fine line between solving a problem and giving up. Your answer seems to cross into "giving up" territory.
- WastingMyTime89 3y agoFewer people is already on the way. We just need to pass the bump and things will be good. Demographic lag is a real pain. Electricity is shifting massively towards renewable production so there really is no need to consume less of it (and we need more anyway - electrifying the part of the planet without electricity is a very significant gain in quality of life). Less meat is also significantly engaged. Consumption is rising because the population is rising. Meanwhile, we need effective solution now not in thirty years so any things which reduce the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere is good to take. > There's one sure strategy for beating climate change and no one dares speak it out loud. No idea of what you are talking about. What you are pushing is sadly the only thing we hear about as most environmentalists in the west are actually looking to force people to change lifestyle because of what they believe to be morally right rather than solve our actual issues. I wish we had more people working on solutions and less people proselytizing their new religion but well, that's how it is.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoThat "sure strategy" won't work. Anything less than net-zero carbon will cause catastrophe. So unless you want to reduce to 0, your strategy won't work. OTOH, net zero is possible with other strategies. For example, switch to zero-carbon electricity generation, switch from fossil fuels to electricity for 98% of the carbon sources and use carbon capture to offset the remaining 2%.
- cameldrv 3y agoPeople like electricity, meat, and travel a lot. Just because it’s a strategy that would work doesn’t mean it needs to be done that way.