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I try to remain positive, but climate change is the one area where I have pretty much lost hope. People (and I include myself) are simply unwilling to accept th

I try to remain positive, but climate change is the one area where I have pretty much lost hope. People (and I include myself) are simply unwilling to accept that their lives have to change. Barring some of unforeseen technical miracle the next 20-30 years are going to get increasingly grim.

morgengold 3y ago
There is only one thing that will work: we need a price for CO2 emissions and we need a collective of economically powerful nations that push that through at the same time. Other nations who refuse to take part need to pay for market access.
gregwebs 3y ago
You are always going to be unhappy if your goal is to change the rest of the world. If you focus on yourself you will accomplish more and likely be happier. Start adapting now and know that the rest of the world will adapt eventually. Figure out how to reduce your own impact. I moved to a location that is not going to see negatives from climate change. Even if your location isn't great, just work on what you can do. Stop consuming junk on Amazon and start freecycling in your neighborhood. Spend more money to buy goods that have a lower environmental impact. If you own a home, there's a lot you can do to improve the environment. Compost, install rain barrels, maybe solar panels, use native landscaping, plant more trees that will provide shade.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  My thoughts exactly. Best one can do is plan for the worst. I bought a property at an altitude high enough so that if sea levels rise won't affect me (I am likely going to stay here that long anyway, but my goal is to develop habits), I de amazoned where possible and gave up habbits alltogether where not possible but can cope without, rain barrels and solar panels on their way and so on, playing around with microgreens, learning about plant seeds (I don't think i'll ever pick up farming but it's a good skill to have).
steve_adams_86 3y ago
The main thing I struggle to downsize or make sustainable is my work. As a programmer, I depend on an immense infrastructure of earth-harming systems to get my equipment (both in my possession or leased in the cloud). My employers use a lot of energy. In the scheme of things we aren’t the worst polluters, but it’s undeniably bad. I’ve dramatically reduced my personal energy usage, I don’t eat animal products, my family has found ways to generate remarkably little garbage, and other “nice” things, but it’s pretty much meaningless. It’s all theatre compared to the damage we do with our car, jobs, community and provincial infrastructure we depend on, etc. I feel like I’m willing to change my life, and I have already I guess. I’m just not willing to give up my livelihood when it means so little in the bigger picture. I’m no different from someone working on an oil rig or forestry or whatever. What I do looks nicer, but my rationale is no different.
- Scea91 3y ago
  What percentage of global emmissions is spent on computing infrastructure? Last time I saw the numbers it was practically negligible if we exclude cryptocurrencies.
  - steve_adams_86 3y ago
    As I recall it's about 2%, but I'd need to dive much deeper to get numbers I can trust. Computing infrastructure is one thing, but then there's also the enormous waste footprint of electronics in general. So many billions of people are now cycling through devices, and our recycling story is disturbingly poor. My job is quite close to this problem, whether it directly supports it or not. My livelihood more or less depends on humanity using connected devices, so this problem works in my favour (so to speak).
  - corethree 3y ago
    This is the tragedy of the commons. Every industry contributes a negligible amount. It is logical and rational to maximize your own benefites by contributing negligible damage to the environment. The tragedy arises in aggregate. When every industry contributes negligible amounts at the same time the aggregate contribution is no longer negligible. Rational individual action leads to total destruction. Yeah we are all guilty. Even when we contribute negligible amounts.
Simorgh 3y ago
There is that classic western maxim that evil triumphs when ‘good men do nothing’, but I no longer think this is true. Evil triumphs when ‘good men’s’ efforts fail. Climate change represents an inherent risk to humanity, but some climate change mitigation strategies represent a risk to short-term profit incentives. We are starting to see economic agitation globally as institutions everywhere begin to question the logic of our systems. This and other factors has led us to a multi-polar world, which is itself creating new problems that inhibit global synchronisation on this issue. It is a planetary scale problem. It needs a planetary scale solution.
fulafel 3y ago
COVID showed I think that people and institutions are quite willing and capable of concerted action if they understand there's real threat to human welfare. Imperfecly, sure, but far from hopeless.
digitalsushi 3y ago
I would rather die than be slightly uncomfortable. The above is my mockery of how I expect we will in 40 years
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- corethree 3y ago
  If I'm going to die anyway why not be comfortable before I die? If I change my own behavior but everyone doesn't then my actions are negligible. Rationally my best course of action is to not change. Remember it is each individual acting extremely rationally and logically that in the end contributes to global warming in aggregate. That is why it's so hard to reverse this. The tragedy of the commons.
akamaka 3y ago
If you embrace hopelessness and do nothing to make the transition away from fossil fuels, it’s your own life that will be grim as carbon is more heavily taxed and life becomes increasingly unaffordable. I’m personally quite optimistic, because I’ve already made most of the necessary adjustments, and it wasn’t very hard at all.
- corethree 3y ago
  If you embrace logic the trend lines point to an obvious future regardless of optimism or pessimism. Unfortunately this future is inline with the the pessimistic viewpoint. It's not about pessimism or optimism in the end. It's about logic. He's right. It's done. Likely the worst case scenario for global warming will play out. We already crossed the permanent threshold.
  - akamaka 3y ago
    The trend line to look at is that renewable energy is growing exponentially, while world fossil fuel usage has peaked (and is declining in developed countries).
    - unlikelymordant 3y ago
      The next trend line to look at is that without pulling co2 out of atmosphere, just quitting fossil fuels still gets us to 3.2 degrees of warming (this is IPCC modelling). This is climate armageddon. So the growth in renewable energy means nothing if we dont get real good at offseting emissions.
konschubert 3y ago
You are right. People won’t change. But solar is cheap, storage is getting cheaper and nuclear is always an option too. So we don’t have to change we live, we just have to change the way we generate our energy.
danans 3y ago
> People (and I include myself) are simply unwilling to accept that their lives have to change The real tragedy is that a fair amount of this change would make people's lives better. For example, more walkable human scale communities, less combustion in vehicles and homes, more comfortable, healthier, and cheaper to operate homes, reduced air pollution for communities in the vicinity of power plants and industrial facilities. But on the other hand, yes smaller houses and cars, less meat, etc are hard to adjust to. > Barring some of unforeseen technical miracle the next 20-30 years are going to get increasingly grim. Disagree on that. The technologies we need are all pretty ready or close. It's about bending cost curves and the rate of deployment.
manoDev 3y ago
"It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."

morgengold 3y ago

There is only one thing that will work: we need a price for CO2 emissions and we need a collective of economically powerful nations that push that through at the same time. Other nations who refuse to take part need to pay for market access.

gregwebs 3y ago

You are always going to be unhappy if your goal is to change the rest of the world. If you focus on yourself you will accomplish more and likely be happier. Start adapting now and know that the rest of the world will adapt eventually. Figure out how to reduce your own impact. I moved to a location that is not going to see negatives from climate change. Even if your location isn't great, just work on what you can do. Stop consuming junk on Amazon and start freecycling in your neighborhood. Spend more money to buy goods that have a lower environmental impact. If you own a home, there's a lot you can do to improve the environment. Compost, install rain barrels, maybe solar panels, use native landscaping, plant more trees that will provide shade.

gumballindie 3y ago
My thoughts exactly. Best one can do is plan for the worst. I bought a property at an altitude high enough so that if sea levels rise won't affect me (I am likely going to stay here that long anyway, but my goal is to develop habits), I de amazoned where possible and gave up habbits alltogether where not possible but can cope without, rain barrels and solar panels on their way and so on, playing around with microgreens, learning about plant seeds (I don't think i'll ever pick up farming but it's a good skill to have).

steve_adams_86 3y ago

The main thing I struggle to downsize or make sustainable is my work. As a programmer, I depend on an immense infrastructure of earth-harming systems to get my equipment (both in my possession or leased in the cloud). My employers use a lot of energy. In the scheme of things we aren’t the worst polluters, but it’s undeniably bad. I’ve dramatically reduced my personal energy usage, I don’t eat animal products, my family has found ways to generate remarkably little garbage, and other “nice” things, but it’s pretty much meaningless. It’s all theatre compared to the damage we do with our car, jobs, community and provincial infrastructure we depend on, etc. I feel like I’m willing to change my life, and I have already I guess. I’m just not willing to give up my livelihood when it means so little in the bigger picture. I’m no different from someone working on an oil rig or forestry or whatever. What I do looks nicer, but my rationale is no different.

Scea91 3y ago
What percentage of global emmissions is spent on computing infrastructure? Last time I saw the numbers it was practically negligible if we exclude cryptocurrencies.
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  As I recall it's about 2%, but I'd need to dive much deeper to get numbers I can trust. Computing infrastructure is one thing, but then there's also the enormous waste footprint of electronics in general. So many billions of people are now cycling through devices, and our recycling story is disturbingly poor. My job is quite close to this problem, whether it directly supports it or not. My livelihood more or less depends on humanity using connected devices, so this problem works in my favour (so to speak).
- corethree 3y ago
  This is the tragedy of the commons. Every industry contributes a negligible amount. It is logical and rational to maximize your own benefites by contributing negligible damage to the environment. The tragedy arises in aggregate. When every industry contributes negligible amounts at the same time the aggregate contribution is no longer negligible. Rational individual action leads to total destruction. Yeah we are all guilty. Even when we contribute negligible amounts.

Simorgh 3y ago

There is that classic western maxim that evil triumphs when ‘good men do nothing’, but I no longer think this is true. Evil triumphs when ‘good men’s’ efforts fail. Climate change represents an inherent risk to humanity, but some climate change mitigation strategies represent a risk to short-term profit incentives. We are starting to see economic agitation globally as institutions everywhere begin to question the logic of our systems. This and other factors has led us to a multi-polar world, which is itself creating new problems that inhibit global synchronisation on this issue. It is a planetary scale problem. It needs a planetary scale solution.

fulafel 3y ago

COVID showed I think that people and institutions are quite willing and capable of concerted action if they understand there's real threat to human welfare. Imperfecly, sure, but far from hopeless.

digitalsushi 3y ago

I would rather die than be slightly uncomfortable. The above is my mockery of how I expect we will in 40 years

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
corethree 3y ago
If I'm going to die anyway why not be comfortable before I die? If I change my own behavior but everyone doesn't then my actions are negligible. Rationally my best course of action is to not change. Remember it is each individual acting extremely rationally and logically that in the end contributes to global warming in aggregate. That is why it's so hard to reverse this. The tragedy of the commons.

akamaka 3y ago

If you embrace hopelessness and do nothing to make the transition away from fossil fuels, it’s your own life that will be grim as carbon is more heavily taxed and life becomes increasingly unaffordable. I’m personally quite optimistic, because I’ve already made most of the necessary adjustments, and it wasn’t very hard at all.

corethree 3y ago
If you embrace logic the trend lines point to an obvious future regardless of optimism or pessimism. Unfortunately this future is inline with the the pessimistic viewpoint. It's not about pessimism or optimism in the end. It's about logic. He's right. It's done. Likely the worst case scenario for global warming will play out. We already crossed the permanent threshold.
- akamaka 3y ago
  The trend line to look at is that renewable energy is growing exponentially, while world fossil fuel usage has peaked (and is declining in developed countries).
  - unlikelymordant 3y ago
    The next trend line to look at is that without pulling co2 out of atmosphere, just quitting fossil fuels still gets us to 3.2 degrees of warming (this is IPCC modelling). This is climate armageddon. So the growth in renewable energy means nothing if we dont get real good at offseting emissions.

konschubert 3y ago

You are right. People won’t change. But solar is cheap, storage is getting cheaper and nuclear is always an option too. So we don’t have to change we live, we just have to change the way we generate our energy.

danans 3y ago

> People (and I include myself) are simply unwilling to accept that their lives have to change The real tragedy is that a fair amount of this change would make people's lives better. For example, more walkable human scale communities, less combustion in vehicles and homes, more comfortable, healthier, and cheaper to operate homes, reduced air pollution for communities in the vicinity of power plants and industrial facilities. But on the other hand, yes smaller houses and cars, less meat, etc are hard to adjust to. > Barring some of unforeseen technical miracle the next 20-30 years are going to get increasingly grim. Disagree on that. The technologies we need are all pretty ready or close. It's about bending cost curves and the rate of deployment.

manoDev 3y ago

"It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."