3 ms·
There are challenges to overcome but thinking of the future as dystopia can be counterproductive.
by RandomLensman 3y ago
There are challenges to overcome but thinking of the future as dystopia can be counterproductive.
- Fricken 3y agoKind of an irrelevant point to make. We're setting new emissions records, so nothing so far has been productive.
- MrOwnPut 3y agoWho is "we"? The US has reduced emissions records while increasing energy output for a number of years now. Europe has increased both, regardless of their rhetoric. China of course has increased both as well with more coal plants being built. Most of the reduction in the US is thanks to fracking/nat.gas displacing coal. Which a lot of people are against. Focusing on nuclear could get us a lot farther in displacing fossil fuels with nuclear as the baseline energy source. Unfortunately most people just want to nag each other or cat-o’-nine-tails themselves or yell doomsday on loop instead of pushing for things that actually matter.
- olddustytrail 3y ago> Europe has increased both, regardless of their rhetoric. Meanwhile, back in the real world: https://ip-quarterly.com/sites/default/files/styles/dgap_teaser_large/public/IPQ-1-2023_Graphic_WhatEuropeThinks_v3.jpg?itok=XX25DK0m https://ip-quarterly.com/sites/default/files/styles/dgap_tea...
- MrOwnPut 3y agoThat does not include energy outsourced.
- olddustytrail 3y agoNor do your US figures. Not least because you failed to present any. But include them if you can. The graphs look the same.
- RandomLensman 3y agoWhat has not worked either so far is ever stronger talk about impending doom. We might have to contemplate things like geoengineering or whatever but thinking the future is bad is not enough. There has to be a positive vision, too.
- ajmurmann 3y agoThere are plenty of ideas like carbon tax, or more clumsy ones like higher gasoline tax, banning gasoline cars, etc. But no country has sufficient buy-in to do anything that even just is a little inconvenient.
- RandomLensman 3y agoAgain, not a positive vision there: initially increasing costs with a very long payoff period (and also having to live through the change already backed into the climate for quite some time)? That cannot the best we can do - there has to be more we can get out of an energy transition. For example, could have an explicit policy of wanting lower energy costs in high cost places.
- callalex 3y agoI must be misunderstanding what you are looking for, because my understanding of your wish for “lower energy costs in high cost places” sounds the same to me as wishing for everyone to be rich, nobody to be hungry, or for every child to have a pony.
- RandomLensman 3y agoPonies aside, directionally the right way, I'd say. Pushing down energy costs is certainly possible when switching energy sources (and also quite visible in data on effective costs per MWh for different technologies), however, it is rarely made an explicit target.
- Brusco_RF 3y agoIt's exceptionally relevant. Excuse my French, but this constant doomerism is really fucking up the kids. >"More than half of the 16- to 25-year-olds in the Lancet survey said they believe humanity is doomed. And close to 40 percent said that fears about the future have made them reluctant to have children of their own." [1] We gave an entire generation anxiety and depression, and it's going to wreak havoc on the fertility rate in a decade or so. [1] https://e360.yale.edu/features/for-gen-z-climate-change-is-a-heavy-emotional-burden https://e360.yale.edu/features/for-gen-z-climate-change-is-a...
- simbolit 3y agoNot doing shit is fucking up the kids.
- RandomLensman 3y agoYou need to believe in a very narrow solution corridor for that.
- callalex 3y agoHaving a realistic picture of the future is important for long-term life planning. It is not the reporting of the facts that’s fuckin’ up the kids, it’s the facts themselves. Burying your head in the sand is not a valid technique when addressing anxieties, it only makes the inevitable emotional breakdown worse when things come to a head.
- Brusco_RF 3y agoIt is not a "fact" that climate change will cause our extinction. Point me to one serious report that says that. Your nonstop doomerism has half the kids believing that absolute lie.
- masfuerte 3y agoYou're right. Severe climate change might destroy modern civilisation but it's unlikely to completely wipe out homo sapiens.
- pstuart 3y agoOnly if it crushes our spirit. A hopeful counterpoint would be it incentives us to push back (of course easier said than done).
- ddq 3y agoBy contrast, acknowledging the dystopian elements of the present is productive and important. They are real and should be addressed for the betterment of mankind.
- RandomLensman 3y agoI just don't think that approach has worked well so far because there often isn't a near term positive vision to go alongside.
- ddq 3y agoIt's not an approach, it's step one. To develop answers you must first figure out the questions. I agree merely acknowledging the status quo as bad is not enough, but I fail to see how one would intentionally address issues without first understanding them.
- RandomLensman 3y agoFor me, painting a picture of a dystopian world mixes socio-economic and physical predictions of very different forecast quality.