19 ms·

Ship of Fools

134 points by gsky 3y ago

nocoiner 3y ago
He’s clearly wrong about one thing: > Moving to Mars is a pipedream for 99.9999% of the population. It’s actually a pipe dream for 100% of the population. Slightly more seriously, I think he’s too pessimistic about the impact of renewable energy generation (contra his observations, Florida installed more solar capacity last year than any other state) and carbon sequestration. But I’m not highly confident in that assessment - maybe we are fucked. But I do think it’s more likely than not that human ingenuity and, believe it or not, capitalism (with a healthy dose of subsidies and industrial policy) will ultimately avert the truly dire scenarios.
- monkaiju 3y ago
  I've only heard that carbon sequestration is essentially a waste of time. Also thinking systemically we need to do more than address just carbon. Carbon is currently the primary focus, probably because it can be financialized, but we need to take basically every system we have and ensure it has useable outputs like natural systems do.
  - regularfry 3y ago
    There are no practical carbon-capture storage technologies. I'm aware of at least one project by major engineering firms into actually implementing it - a serious attempt, by serious, experienced engineers, to make it work - that ended recently after years of effort with a final report that basically said "This doesn't work. Here's why..." It's useful to the energy firms to keep the promise of CCS alive, but even if you have perfect capture at the point of generation, the problem of actually keeping it sequestered at any useful scale is unsolved.
    - myshpa 3y ago
      The best CO2 sequestration technologies we have are soils, forests, plankton and seagrass. Unfortunately, all of them are being impacted by the effects of (mostly animal) agriculture and the fishing industry. Act accordingly. https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/04/improving-farming-soil-carbon-store-global-heating-target https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/04/improvin... Improving soil could keep world within 1.5C heating target, research suggests - better farming techniques across the world could lead to storage of 31 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide a year, data shows https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article/65/3/302/784343 https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article/65/3/302/784343 Effects of climate and overfishing on zooplankton dynamics and ecosystem structure: regime shifts, trophic cascade, and feedback loops in a simple ecosystem https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/seagrass-ocean-secret-weapon-climate-change-180976235/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/seagrass-ocean...
- mathewsanders 3y ago
  I flip-flop between optimism and pessimism on this and I’m in a pessimistic cycle at the moment. I can also imagine the machinery of capitalism maybe working (I like the idea of declaring a ‘war on emissions’ popping a war revenue act for the highest earners and creating a new industry focused on reducing emissions). But two things are fueling my pessimism: the first is that as a culture we’ve grown so used to a lifestyle (and economy) based on unsustainable use of our resources. I just can’t see a world where we take a step back from any of the modern conveniences we’ve gotten used to hanging. I guess related to that: The free market is the most effective model, but that comes at cost of no protections for workers and resources, and that rewards exploitation. I used to hope that I was wrong, now I mostly just hope that the worst results don’t happen in my own lifetime.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    I'm in a similar place and have come to more or less the same conclusions regarding basically just trying to live it up while that's possible (Jim Morrison would say "I just want to get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames"). The several sigma temperature anomalies this year certainly didn't make me any more optimistic. And I get the impression that the scientists really don't have much clue about how this all ends anymore. I used to feel jealous for children born after me because of all the things they'll get to see that I wont. These days I feel very much the opposite.
  - myshpa 3y ago
    > now I mostly just hope that the worst results don’t happen in my own lifetime I don't understand this point. It seems to me that the longer we wait for a collapse to happen, the worse it will be (as fewer resources will be left for rebuilding civilization). What's the benefit of it happening in our children's lifetimes instead of our own, except for the fact that we get to continue unsustainable consumption a bit longer, rather than trying to change things?
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      Not all of us have children.
- hermitcrab 3y ago
  Author here. I don't know where they installed those panels, because we drove 1800 miles through all sorts of areas and we hardly saw a single solar panel.
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
> Perhaps cyclists had tried, but they had all been run over. I'm an American cyclist, and I'm trying to do my part commuting to work by bike. But I got whacked in the elbow a few weeks ago by the mirror of a car who was offended by having to slow down briefly and go around me... I'd say that 75% of drivers are conscientious, crossing over when there's a gap in the opposite lane to give me more than the 5 feet of space required by local laws (3 feet required by state law). Another 20% don't have a clue what to do around a cyclist and either white-knuckle past me close by, with a shouted "sorry" with their wheel just on the centerline (and no one in the opposite lane) follow a car's length behind my wheel for a mile (at 15-20 mph on 35, 45, or 55mph roads, building a traffic jam of frustrated other motorists who are far more likely to drive aggressively). Some 5% are actively hostile. I've been whacked in the butt and shoulder by mirrors of people trying to run me off the road, had half-empty beer cans thrown at me, been enveloped many times in the black smoke off of one of many diesel mall-crawlers with the tuner kit that allows them to "roll coal" when they step on the throttle. Some shout "get off the road" as if my road bike would work in the ditch. I think it's what needs to be done, so I'm doing my part because I'm an able, healthy adult, but it's definitely an activist/enthusiast thing, not a reasonable solution for the vast majority of my state who use 5,000 lbs of steel to move 200 lbs of human to work and back. I will say that I'm happy to see more e-bikes on the handful of trails in the area (yes, even when driven by people who don't know proper etiquette and who are using throttle-only on trails that are supposed to be non-motorized), because it means you don't have to have a VO2 max of 50+ mL/kg/min or an FTP of 3 W/kg to get out of the car. I've been reading "The Ministry for the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's inspiring, but what strikes me the most is how unreasonable it is. Floridians and Americans and Europeans alike simply do not respond rationally to the reality of climate change. PS: > Moving to Mars is a pipedream for 99.9999% of the population. I think you're missing a few nines there, multiplying by 8 billion suggests that 8,000 humans could reasonably live on Mars. I'd love to see a manned mission of 2-5 astronauts (supported by a nation-state or international effort) get some science done on Mars within my lifetime, but the idea of an elites-only glass dome city being erected on Mars for billionaires to run away to while Earth wastes away is not even close to reasonable.
- civilitty 3y ago
  > the idea of an elites-only glass dome city being erected on Mars for billionaires to run away to while Earth wastes away is not even close to reasonable. Wait, I thought that was the plan to get rid of them? They can have their red wasteland and we can finally have peace on earth.
BWStearns 3y ago
Agree on most points, but the air conditioning thing misses a bit of nuance: it's so hot and humid here that if you left a room for a significant amount of time with no cooling, that room is likely to become uninhabitable from mold and mildew real quick. Before I moved down here I knew that in general hot == more living things (more energy -> more plants -> more food for the not plant stuff etc), but it's crazy how fast stuff grows. If someone leaves their house for the summer and doesn't have someone come by and trim the yard then nature will reclaim their house by the time they get back.
- itishappy 3y ago
  There's nuance there too. I'm don't think I've ever walked into a hotel in the US without immediately having to turn down the AC; 30°F below ambient temperatures is not needed for mildew prevention.
  - regularfry 3y ago
    Apparently the logic is that it's cheaper and uses less energy to maintain a low temperature than to let the temperature and humidity rise then have to pull it down again. I can believe that: dry air is a much better insulator than humid air, and if you want it as dry as possible, that means going as cold as possible.
- wmorgan 3y ago
  Yes. I read a tweet a while back -- which appears to check out -- that the biggest city in Florida in 1900 was Key West, population 17,000, and Key West is not even on the mainland. The alternative to air conditioning (not to mention modern mosquito suppression) is that people simply would not live in Florida. As you note, it's not an option to take it easy in the summer because otherwise the plants would cover everything and the roads would be impassable. Somebody has to mow it, and they need a place to cool off. For another example, the author notes that the fruits are wrapped in plastic, but I don't think he realizes how much faster food spoils in Florida than the UK where he's from. Every bad apple that has to be thrown away is another apple which needs to be trucked in.
Steltek 3y ago
Speaking as an American, for God's sake don't lump me in with Florida! Also, stop pointing out Florida's problems, it only encourages them to double down like an angry teenager (not actual advice, shame the idiots). Honestly trying to paint all Americans based on any one state is incredibly myopic. Practically every one of his anecdotes doesn't hold true in my home town: either there are policies encouraging/outlawing those things (e.g. plastic bags) or it's a cultural no-no.
- MajimasEyepatch 3y ago
  Also, much of the article is about waste in the hotel, which certainly seemed egregious but hotels are horrifyingly bad about that stuff in general. While we certainly use a lot of plastic (too much) in the US, I would not extrapolate from hotel waste to the rest of the country.
- louwrentius 3y ago
  The average American uses 3 times more energy than the average European so we just lump you right in. :-)
  - JackFr 3y ago
    Not true. US uses ~2 x as much as the average European per capita (but less than Canadians.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co... https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/energy-consumption-per-capita/country-comparison/ https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/energy-consumpt...
    - tetris11 3y ago
      Wish there were median statistics there, not to lump your common man with your super consumers.
    - hermitcrab 3y ago
      Why is Canada worse than the US? Is it heating in the cold winters or the fossil fuel mining?
xyzelement 3y ago
The dude sounds like a Karen alas. He flew his family over to the US, rented an SUV, but it's these "other fools" that are the problem. As a NYer who spent some of the COVID period in Miami, the thing that jumps out is that Floridians have a lower baseline level of anxiety. So if you are going to Florida and expect everyone to be as freaked out about anything as you are, you are going to just make yourself crazier.
- artimaeis 3y ago
  > Floridians have a lower baseline level of anxiety Florida politics seems antithetical to this sentiment. I can't think of a state in the country whose leaders evoke a more anxiety-ridden rhetoric.
  - xyzelement 3y ago
    I guess that's not the vibe I got there as a New Yorker...
- JackFr 3y ago
  > He flew his family over to the US, rented an SUV, but it's these "other fools" that are the problem. File under tired tropes of shallow European impressions of the US. I'm just sad he didn't bring up the metric system. I could have had bingo.
denton-scratch 3y ago
> If you are too poor to own a car, hard luck. I understand that a lot of Floridans live in gated golf communities, and get around them on golf-carts.
- 1-more 3y ago
  The denizens of The Villages are not too poor to own cars.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    Yeah; but they live there so they don't need to. I know of just one old couple from The Villages; they own a car (naturally, they're wealthy Americans), but the only time they use it is to pick up a visitor from the airport.
kristerj 3y ago
i too like to go to other countries and spend my time documenting how much better i am than them
- konfusinomicon 3y ago
  ya, what a misguided hit piece based off face value observations. there is a name for brits who like to trash the US, damn red coats, still salty about losing the revolutionary, err, American war. eating breakfast in a car?? simply preposterous!! however, I can see how enjoying a full English in the driver's seat would be a bit of a challenge.
- beej71 3y ago
  I think we all do. The last country I went to from the US, though, I had difficulty finding anything worse except higher taxes.
gdsdfe 3y ago
This is like going to the desert and complaining it was too sunny and too hot
hawkesnest 3y ago
It's funny how the author in the same paragraph notes that solar power isn't common in the "Sunshine State" of Florida, and then also points out the problem of hurricanes. Turns out, insurance companies won't compensate you for replacement cost of the panels, only cash value (which is constantly dropping). That is, if they cover them at all. Buying new panels every 7-10 years is not a worthwhile investment.
- 303uru 3y ago
  There are great, even preferable, options that aren't rooftop solar.
- nojvek 3y ago
  Insurance and solar is a real issue. If you put solar on roof, then insurance does not cover roof damage incase of hurricane. Also with solar subsidies come the scams. Most people are skeptical of solar in Florida. Florida is no longer a purple swing state. It is a solid red state with pockets of blue in major cities. Florida has enough cheap land to power all of their day-time energy use from solar though. I loved to see some small solar farms in Lakeland that locals built. There is hope.
  - hermitcrab 3y ago
    >If you put solar on roof, then insurance does not cover roof damage incase of hurricane. Do solar panels make a roof more suseptible to hurricane damage?
    - defrost 3y ago
      Yep. Unless they're mounted absolutely flush to the existing roof with no way for the ind to get underneath then a solar panel is large flat sailcloth that gets hurricane force winds underneath it and then exerts an upward pulling | tearing force on the anchor points. Depending on those, you can see some serious roof destroying damage (followed by a rain soaked interior). Or, extra effort (money, time, resources) needs to be expended from the outset making the setup cyclone proof (err, sorry, hurricane .. it's cyclones for us her in tropical Australia).
rodolphoarruda 3y ago
> You can even eat your breakfast in your car. What is most shocking to me in regards to "using your car for everything" is those people robbing shops and supermarkets using their own cars, with license plates on. And they are very good cars to my Latin American standards. Some of them are classified as luxury cars where I live. Around here, robbers don't have cars, so they have to steal one first and then use it to commit other crimes.
- mdgrech23 3y ago
  Did you read the article? We're talking about mass migration, major crop failure and death by the millions and your take away is petty thiefs?
- cityofdelusion 3y ago
  Vehicles in robberies are almost always stolen in America as well, usually abandoned to be found by the poor owner later.
deadletters 3y ago
Why would you go to Florida
- deadletters 3y ago
  It is legitimately unethical to spend money in Florida right now
  - zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
    Hahaha what?
- starkparker 3y ago
  Right?! > My 17 year old son is interested in rocketry and my wife is interested in wildlife So he took them to Fort Myers?!?
  - hermitcrab 3y ago
    Author here. We did a circuit from Tampa->Everglades->Cape Canaveral. It passed through Fort Myers.
sokoloff 3y ago
> Heaven forbid that you should have to wait 2 minutes for the air con to cool the room down. No one wants to sit in a damp, cool room, nor do they want the mold and mildew effects that would result from the overly quick removal of the sensible heat (temperature) without the accompanying removal of latent heat (humidity).
lowbloodsugar 3y ago
A friend was telling me about the problem an American had trying to find “grass fed” beef in a UK supermarket. The shop assistant was quite confused at the question “I can’t find any beef labeled grass fed. Do you have that?” Er, what else would it be fed on? (Only 4% of beef in the US is grass fed). It’s basically 100% everywhere else.
Kiro 3y ago
I don't see the problem with wrapping each individual fruit with plastic. It's the same reason they wrap cucumbers. It's one of those things that seems insane but actually leads to way less spoilage.
- vikingerik 3y ago
  I think the point is the disposable plastic waste is worse than the wasted fruit itself. Fruit is renewable, plastic isn't. (I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, just pointing out the argument.)
  - mattnewton 3y ago
    It depends on where the fruit is grown. If it’s local, sure, but many are trucked or flown from long distances burning a lot of fossil fuels. There could maybe be a distance the fruit comes from and an increased rate of spoilage in the humid air that makes plastic wrap at least neutral with letting it rot. But my random guess is no one is doing that calculation, they are just worried about keeping their hotel looking nice.
    - myshpa 3y ago
      You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10%, and it’s much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it’s 0.5%.
      - mattnewton 3y ago
        Sure, we’re talking in the context of fruits and veggies being shrink wrapped to avoid spoilage specifically, not produce vs meat though. In that article it correctly states that the cost of transportation is small across all food types including beef, but in the context of apples specifically it shows the cost of transportation is not only significant to the total cost of the apple, packaging costs aren’t even visible. So the idea that packaging it in shrink wrap to avoid spoilage and transport of more apples actually seems to make sense?
paxys 3y ago
Stuff like this annoys me even as an American. Their Florida example represents a large chunk (probably even a majority) of this country. People driving 5 ton pickup trucks to work and the grocery store. Hot humid climates cooled to frigid temperatures 24x7. Plastic wrapped in plastic wrapped in plastic. Dumping of sewage and pollutants into rivers and lakes on a daily basis. Plenty of states are now banning the inclusion of environmental science and talk about climate in school curriculums. Meanwhile I live in a state where we are taxed to the teeth for energy use. Plastic straws are banned. We have to sort trash in 5 or 6 different ways. People refuse to acknowledge that their conservation efforts for a year are undone by some guy in Texas in five minutes, and would rather make their (and everyone else's) lives more inconvenient to score brownie points.
- klodolph 3y ago
  I’m just personally frustrated by the disposable shopping bag ban, because every time I go to the store, I typically come back with a bunch of different food items in single-use, disposable plastic or glass packages. What is the point of banning bags, if I still buy mustard in a plastic squeeze bottle? And stores will happily sell me a cheap HDPE plastic bag, which happens because from time to time I forget to bring my own bag, and then I buy an extra package of LDPE garbage bags because I don’t have grocery bags I can use for small garbage cans any more. It just seems like this is not even a step forward, and there are big sources of plastic we just don’t even care to deal with because it involves too much money.
  - beej71 3y ago
    Plastic bags have a special place in our hearts because of their unique characteristics as litter. With a small effort we cut our plastic use so low that sometimes on trash night I find the garbage can is still empty. It's not that we don't buy single use plastic (good luck with potato chips), but we make an effort. Buying bulk and reusing plastic bags is key. If there's a glass option, buy that. And does the plastic garbage can need a plastic bag, really? Or can you use the same bag multiple times? But it doesn't matter if I do it. Or even if 10% of the people do it. Won't save the world. Large scale bans are the only answer, and good luck with that.
cliffy 3y ago
There's a 0% chance of a successful colony, by any definition of successful, on Mars in the next century. If we, as a species, cannot avoid destroying the climate that birthed us over millions of years we have exactly 0% chance of surviving one that is completely inhospitable to life.
- paxys 3y ago
  There's no chance of a colony of any kind. The bare minimum requirement would be to end dependence on shipping critical materials from Earth, and good luck with making that happen in the next century.
  - falcor84 3y ago
    I'm not following. Are you saying that a colony by definition has to be self-sustaining? Why? At this stage of globalization, what part of Earth is self-sustaining? How certain are you that if the US was suddenly blocked from importing any goods that it would not descend into chaos?
    - paxys 3y ago
      I'm not saying it has to be by definition, but the costs and complications in regularly transporting oxygen, water, food and everything else in cargo ships from Earth simply makes such a colony unrealistic even for a very small number of permanent settlers.
- falcor84 3y ago
  Not that I have a better estimate, but I'm curious about where you got that 0% from
  - trgn 3y ago
    It's an irradiated wasteland
  - sambapa 3y ago
    You can't learn rocket science if you are too retarded to wipe your ass. So that 0% came from this unwiped ass. Mars colony is impossible, humans are just less retarded monkeys.
bannedbybros 3y ago
[dead]
dzink 3y ago
Wait, do they know the US isn’t even on the map for biggest plastic polluters of the ocean: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-ocean-plastic-waste-pollution-by-country/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-ocean-plastic... If you want to make a dent, start there. Sustainability is absolutely necessary, but its label is instead distorted by money laundering efforts such as carbon credits (you’re paying people to plant logging-worthy species they will eventually log out and sell/burn). Virtue signaling in the EU is getting so bad, it’s opening the doors far and wide for Populist Totalitarians to take over your governments. All they have to say is “Look, you’re barely surviving in this inflation and the EU wants to take away your meat and ration your energy because it’s bad for the planet?” Green political parties have done so much damage to Europe they helped Putin sustain a war, and profit hugely from it (by just shutting down EU Nuclear power plants). If you want to objectively help, find who the worst polluters are and start to ask why and what replacements can be made. Fund plastic alternatives and designate carbon credits to go to efforts that can’t be undone. Think second and third order of consequences.
surfingdino 3y ago
The UK is no better. Heavy use of aircon, constantly increasing, parents driving their children to school in SUVs/4x4s; large tv screens replacing poster boards, buildings built for the whole purpose of tv advertising (see the two-storey screen walls on the inside and outside of the Outernet buildings near Tottenham Court Road). Lots of plastic use and one of the burger chains won the stupid award by removing drinking straws and offering a paid reusable metal drinking straw (painted) with a metal cleaning brush, sold in a cardboard box. No matter how small the item we order online it will arrive wrapped in lots of plastic and cardboard that goes immediately to the landfill.
- hermitcrab 3y ago
  We are far from perfect in the UK, for sure. But we do have a lot more solar, a lot more public transport and a lot less SUVs. And our Carbon footprint is about a third of the average American.
- fulafel 3y ago
  Florida seems to have about 2x per capita CO2 emissions [1][2] so there's a fair bit of difference. UK's climate sins in oil production might swing the judgement though. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1299198/co2-emissions-per-capita-united-kingdom/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1299198/co2-emissions-pe... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
w1nst0nsm1th 3y ago
There is a way well known by governments which can implement quickly and rapidly a change in behavior of all actors involved in economy : taxation. It's has been the case for centuries, if not thousand years. You give taxe incentive (subside or taxe reduction) for favoured behaviors, and higher taxation level to decourage unfavoured behavior. Meat taxation could be an interesting subject of study as it cover a large range of greenhouse gaz footprint according to the specie the meat come from and a majority of people considers it as an essential item. Cow meat is, by far, the worst offender by pound of meat produced. It is also the meat which requires the largest amount of vegetal protein in order to produce animal protein (1/10), which is by itself an obvious downside considering the challenge climate change will bring to crop production. On the lowest end of the scale, there is chicken, which is around a quarter of cow footprint by pound of meat produced. Banning meat altogether is a no-go inside any democracy as the party in power would be out of a job at the next election. But suppressing taxes on or subsidising consumption of chicken meat while taxing progressivelly cow meat out of existence could have a larger support from general population. The same mecanism of tax increase and tax incentive, according to ecological footprint, could be applied to every item category in the economy.

134 points by gsky 3y ago

He’s clearly wrong about one thing: > Moving to Mars is a pipedream for 99.9999% of the population. It’s actually a pipe dream for 100% of the population. Slightly more seriously, I think he’s too pessimistic about the impact of renewable energy generation (contra his observations, Florida installed more solar capacity last year than any other state) and carbon sequestration. But I’m not highly confident in that assessment - maybe we are fucked. But I do think it’s more likely than not that human ingenuity and, believe it or not, capitalism (with a healthy dose of subsidies and industrial policy) will ultimately avert the truly dire scenarios.

monkaiju 3y ago
I've only heard that carbon sequestration is essentially a waste of time. Also thinking systemically we need to do more than address just carbon. Carbon is currently the primary focus, probably because it can be financialized, but we need to take basically every system we have and ensure it has useable outputs like natural systems do.
- regularfry 3y ago
  There are no practical carbon-capture storage technologies. I'm aware of at least one project by major engineering firms into actually implementing it - a serious attempt, by serious, experienced engineers, to make it work - that ended recently after years of effort with a final report that basically said "This doesn't work. Here's why..." It's useful to the energy firms to keep the promise of CCS alive, but even if you have perfect capture at the point of generation, the problem of actually keeping it sequestered at any useful scale is unsolved.
  - myshpa 3y ago
    The best CO2 sequestration technologies we have are soils, forests, plankton and seagrass. Unfortunately, all of them are being impacted by the effects of (mostly animal) agriculture and the fishing industry. Act accordingly. https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/04/improving-farming-soil-carbon-store-global-heating-target https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/04/improvin... Improving soil could keep world within 1.5C heating target, research suggests - better farming techniques across the world could lead to storage of 31 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide a year, data shows https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article/65/3/302/784343 https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article/65/3/302/784343 Effects of climate and overfishing on zooplankton dynamics and ecosystem structure: regime shifts, trophic cascade, and feedback loops in a simple ecosystem https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/seagrass-ocean-secret-weapon-climate-change-180976235/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/seagrass-ocean...
mathewsanders 3y ago
I flip-flop between optimism and pessimism on this and I’m in a pessimistic cycle at the moment. I can also imagine the machinery of capitalism maybe working (I like the idea of declaring a ‘war on emissions’ popping a war revenue act for the highest earners and creating a new industry focused on reducing emissions). But two things are fueling my pessimism: the first is that as a culture we’ve grown so used to a lifestyle (and economy) based on unsustainable use of our resources. I just can’t see a world where we take a step back from any of the modern conveniences we’ve gotten used to hanging. I guess related to that: The free market is the most effective model, but that comes at cost of no protections for workers and resources, and that rewards exploitation. I used to hope that I was wrong, now I mostly just hope that the worst results don’t happen in my own lifetime.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  I'm in a similar place and have come to more or less the same conclusions regarding basically just trying to live it up while that's possible (Jim Morrison would say "I just want to get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames"). The several sigma temperature anomalies this year certainly didn't make me any more optimistic. And I get the impression that the scientists really don't have much clue about how this all ends anymore. I used to feel jealous for children born after me because of all the things they'll get to see that I wont. These days I feel very much the opposite.
- myshpa 3y ago
  > now I mostly just hope that the worst results don’t happen in my own lifetime I don't understand this point. It seems to me that the longer we wait for a collapse to happen, the worse it will be (as fewer resources will be left for rebuilding civilization). What's the benefit of it happening in our children's lifetimes instead of our own, except for the fact that we get to continue unsustainable consumption a bit longer, rather than trying to change things?
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    Not all of us have children.
hermitcrab 3y ago
Author here. I don't know where they installed those panels, because we drove 1800 miles through all sorts of areas and we hardly saw a single solar panel.

LeifCarrotson 3y ago

> Perhaps cyclists had tried, but they had all been run over. I'm an American cyclist, and I'm trying to do my part commuting to work by bike. But I got whacked in the elbow a few weeks ago by the mirror of a car who was offended by having to slow down briefly and go around me... I'd say that 75% of drivers are conscientious, crossing over when there's a gap in the opposite lane to give me more than the 5 feet of space required by local laws (3 feet required by state law). Another 20% don't have a clue what to do around a cyclist and either white-knuckle past me close by, with a shouted "sorry" with their wheel just on the centerline (and no one in the opposite lane) follow a car's length behind my wheel for a mile (at 15-20 mph on 35, 45, or 55mph roads, building a traffic jam of frustrated other motorists who are far more likely to drive aggressively). Some 5% are actively hostile. I've been whacked in the butt and shoulder by mirrors of people trying to run me off the road, had half-empty beer cans thrown at me, been enveloped many times in the black smoke off of one of many diesel mall-crawlers with the tuner kit that allows them to "roll coal" when they step on the throttle. Some shout "get off the road" as if my road bike would work in the ditch. I think it's what needs to be done, so I'm doing my part because I'm an able, healthy adult, but it's definitely an activist/enthusiast thing, not a reasonable solution for the vast majority of my state who use 5,000 lbs of steel to move 200 lbs of human to work and back. I will say that I'm happy to see more e-bikes on the handful of trails in the area (yes, even when driven by people who don't know proper etiquette and who are using throttle-only on trails that are supposed to be non-motorized), because it means you don't have to have a VO2 max of 50+ mL/kg/min or an FTP of 3 W/kg to get out of the car. I've been reading "The Ministry for the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's inspiring, but what strikes me the most is how unreasonable it is. Floridians and Americans and Europeans alike simply do not respond rationally to the reality of climate change. PS: > Moving to Mars is a pipedream for 99.9999% of the population. I think you're missing a few nines there, multiplying by 8 billion suggests that 8,000 humans could reasonably live on Mars. I'd love to see a manned mission of 2-5 astronauts (supported by a nation-state or international effort) get some science done on Mars within my lifetime, but the idea of an elites-only glass dome city being erected on Mars for billionaires to run away to while Earth wastes away is not even close to reasonable.

civilitty 3y ago
> the idea of an elites-only glass dome city being erected on Mars for billionaires to run away to while Earth wastes away is not even close to reasonable. Wait, I thought that was the plan to get rid of them? They can have their red wasteland and we can finally have peace on earth.

BWStearns 3y ago

Agree on most points, but the air conditioning thing misses a bit of nuance: it's so hot and humid here that if you left a room for a significant amount of time with no cooling, that room is likely to become uninhabitable from mold and mildew real quick. Before I moved down here I knew that in general hot == more living things (more energy -> more plants -> more food for the not plant stuff etc), but it's crazy how fast stuff grows. If someone leaves their house for the summer and doesn't have someone come by and trim the yard then nature will reclaim their house by the time they get back.

itishappy 3y ago
There's nuance there too. I'm don't think I've ever walked into a hotel in the US without immediately having to turn down the AC; 30°F below ambient temperatures is not needed for mildew prevention.
- regularfry 3y ago
  Apparently the logic is that it's cheaper and uses less energy to maintain a low temperature than to let the temperature and humidity rise then have to pull it down again. I can believe that: dry air is a much better insulator than humid air, and if you want it as dry as possible, that means going as cold as possible.
wmorgan 3y ago
Yes. I read a tweet a while back -- which appears to check out -- that the biggest city in Florida in 1900 was Key West, population 17,000, and Key West is not even on the mainland. The alternative to air conditioning (not to mention modern mosquito suppression) is that people simply would not live in Florida. As you note, it's not an option to take it easy in the summer because otherwise the plants would cover everything and the roads would be impassable. Somebody has to mow it, and they need a place to cool off. For another example, the author notes that the fruits are wrapped in plastic, but I don't think he realizes how much faster food spoils in Florida than the UK where he's from. Every bad apple that has to be thrown away is another apple which needs to be trucked in.

Steltek 3y ago

Speaking as an American, for God's sake don't lump me in with Florida! Also, stop pointing out Florida's problems, it only encourages them to double down like an angry teenager (not actual advice, shame the idiots). Honestly trying to paint all Americans based on any one state is incredibly myopic. Practically every one of his anecdotes doesn't hold true in my home town: either there are policies encouraging/outlawing those things (e.g. plastic bags) or it's a cultural no-no.

MajimasEyepatch 3y ago
Also, much of the article is about waste in the hotel, which certainly seemed egregious but hotels are horrifyingly bad about that stuff in general. While we certainly use a lot of plastic (too much) in the US, I would not extrapolate from hotel waste to the rest of the country.
louwrentius 3y ago
The average American uses 3 times more energy than the average European so we just lump you right in. :-)
- JackFr 3y ago
  Not true. US uses ~2 x as much as the average European per capita (but less than Canadians.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co... https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/energy-consumption-per-capita/country-comparison/ https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/energy-consumpt...
  - tetris11 3y ago
    Wish there were median statistics there, not to lump your common man with your super consumers.
  - hermitcrab 3y ago
    Why is Canada worse than the US? Is it heating in the cold winters or the fossil fuel mining?

xyzelement 3y ago

The dude sounds like a Karen alas. He flew his family over to the US, rented an SUV, but it's these "other fools" that are the problem. As a NYer who spent some of the COVID period in Miami, the thing that jumps out is that Floridians have a lower baseline level of anxiety. So if you are going to Florida and expect everyone to be as freaked out about anything as you are, you are going to just make yourself crazier.

artimaeis 3y ago
> Floridians have a lower baseline level of anxiety Florida politics seems antithetical to this sentiment. I can't think of a state in the country whose leaders evoke a more anxiety-ridden rhetoric.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  I guess that's not the vibe I got there as a New Yorker...
JackFr 3y ago
> He flew his family over to the US, rented an SUV, but it's these "other fools" that are the problem. File under tired tropes of shallow European impressions of the US. I'm just sad he didn't bring up the metric system. I could have had bingo.

denton-scratch 3y ago

> If you are too poor to own a car, hard luck. I understand that a lot of Floridans live in gated golf communities, and get around them on golf-carts.

1-more 3y ago
The denizens of The Villages are not too poor to own cars.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  Yeah; but they live there so they don't need to. I know of just one old couple from The Villages; they own a car (naturally, they're wealthy Americans), but the only time they use it is to pick up a visitor from the airport.

kristerj 3y ago

i too like to go to other countries and spend my time documenting how much better i am than them

konfusinomicon 3y ago
ya, what a misguided hit piece based off face value observations. there is a name for brits who like to trash the US, damn red coats, still salty about losing the revolutionary, err, American war. eating breakfast in a car?? simply preposterous!! however, I can see how enjoying a full English in the driver's seat would be a bit of a challenge.
beej71 3y ago
I think we all do. The last country I went to from the US, though, I had difficulty finding anything worse except higher taxes.

gdsdfe 3y ago

This is like going to the desert and complaining it was too sunny and too hot

hawkesnest 3y ago

It's funny how the author in the same paragraph notes that solar power isn't common in the "Sunshine State" of Florida, and then also points out the problem of hurricanes. Turns out, insurance companies won't compensate you for replacement cost of the panels, only cash value (which is constantly dropping). That is, if they cover them at all. Buying new panels every 7-10 years is not a worthwhile investment.

303uru 3y ago
There are great, even preferable, options that aren't rooftop solar.
nojvek 3y ago
Insurance and solar is a real issue. If you put solar on roof, then insurance does not cover roof damage incase of hurricane. Also with solar subsidies come the scams. Most people are skeptical of solar in Florida. Florida is no longer a purple swing state. It is a solid red state with pockets of blue in major cities. Florida has enough cheap land to power all of their day-time energy use from solar though. I loved to see some small solar farms in Lakeland that locals built. There is hope.
- hermitcrab 3y ago
  >If you put solar on roof, then insurance does not cover roof damage incase of hurricane. Do solar panels make a roof more suseptible to hurricane damage?
  - defrost 3y ago
    Yep. Unless they're mounted absolutely flush to the existing roof with no way for the ind to get underneath then a solar panel is large flat sailcloth that gets hurricane force winds underneath it and then exerts an upward pulling | tearing force on the anchor points. Depending on those, you can see some serious roof destroying damage (followed by a rain soaked interior). Or, extra effort (money, time, resources) needs to be expended from the outset making the setup cyclone proof (err, sorry, hurricane .. it's cyclones for us her in tropical Australia).

rodolphoarruda 3y ago

> You can even eat your breakfast in your car. What is most shocking to me in regards to "using your car for everything" is those people robbing shops and supermarkets using their own cars, with license plates on. And they are very good cars to my Latin American standards. Some of them are classified as luxury cars where I live. Around here, robbers don't have cars, so they have to steal one first and then use it to commit other crimes.

mdgrech23 3y ago
Did you read the article? We're talking about mass migration, major crop failure and death by the millions and your take away is petty thiefs?
cityofdelusion 3y ago
Vehicles in robberies are almost always stolen in America as well, usually abandoned to be found by the poor owner later.

deadletters 3y ago

Why would you go to Florida

deadletters 3y ago
It is legitimately unethical to spend money in Florida right now
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
  Hahaha what?
starkparker 3y ago
Right?! > My 17 year old son is interested in rocketry and my wife is interested in wildlife So he took them to Fort Myers?!?
- hermitcrab 3y ago
  Author here. We did a circuit from Tampa->Everglades->Cape Canaveral. It passed through Fort Myers.

sokoloff 3y ago

> Heaven forbid that you should have to wait 2 minutes for the air con to cool the room down. No one wants to sit in a damp, cool room, nor do they want the mold and mildew effects that would result from the overly quick removal of the sensible heat (temperature) without the accompanying removal of latent heat (humidity).

lowbloodsugar 3y ago

A friend was telling me about the problem an American had trying to find “grass fed” beef in a UK supermarket. The shop assistant was quite confused at the question “I can’t find any beef labeled grass fed. Do you have that?” Er, what else would it be fed on? (Only 4% of beef in the US is grass fed). It’s basically 100% everywhere else.

Kiro 3y ago

I don't see the problem with wrapping each individual fruit with plastic. It's the same reason they wrap cucumbers. It's one of those things that seems insane but actually leads to way less spoilage.

vikingerik 3y ago
I think the point is the disposable plastic waste is worse than the wasted fruit itself. Fruit is renewable, plastic isn't. (I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, just pointing out the argument.)
- mattnewton 3y ago
  It depends on where the fruit is grown. If it’s local, sure, but many are trucked or flown from long distances burning a lot of fossil fuels. There could maybe be a distance the fruit comes from and an increased rate of spoilage in the humid air that makes plastic wrap at least neutral with letting it rot. But my random guess is no one is doing that calculation, they are just worried about keeping their hotel looking nice.
  - myshpa 3y ago
    You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10%, and it’s much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it’s 0.5%.
    - mattnewton 3y ago
      Sure, we’re talking in the context of fruits and veggies being shrink wrapped to avoid spoilage specifically, not produce vs meat though. In that article it correctly states that the cost of transportation is small across all food types including beef, but in the context of apples specifically it shows the cost of transportation is not only significant to the total cost of the apple, packaging costs aren’t even visible. So the idea that packaging it in shrink wrap to avoid spoilage and transport of more apples actually seems to make sense?

paxys 3y ago

Stuff like this annoys me even as an American. Their Florida example represents a large chunk (probably even a majority) of this country. People driving 5 ton pickup trucks to work and the grocery store. Hot humid climates cooled to frigid temperatures 24x7. Plastic wrapped in plastic wrapped in plastic. Dumping of sewage and pollutants into rivers and lakes on a daily basis. Plenty of states are now banning the inclusion of environmental science and talk about climate in school curriculums. Meanwhile I live in a state where we are taxed to the teeth for energy use. Plastic straws are banned. We have to sort trash in 5 or 6 different ways. People refuse to acknowledge that their conservation efforts for a year are undone by some guy in Texas in five minutes, and would rather make their (and everyone else's) lives more inconvenient to score brownie points.

klodolph 3y ago
I’m just personally frustrated by the disposable shopping bag ban, because every time I go to the store, I typically come back with a bunch of different food items in single-use, disposable plastic or glass packages. What is the point of banning bags, if I still buy mustard in a plastic squeeze bottle? And stores will happily sell me a cheap HDPE plastic bag, which happens because from time to time I forget to bring my own bag, and then I buy an extra package of LDPE garbage bags because I don’t have grocery bags I can use for small garbage cans any more. It just seems like this is not even a step forward, and there are big sources of plastic we just don’t even care to deal with because it involves too much money.
- beej71 3y ago
  Plastic bags have a special place in our hearts because of their unique characteristics as litter. With a small effort we cut our plastic use so low that sometimes on trash night I find the garbage can is still empty. It's not that we don't buy single use plastic (good luck with potato chips), but we make an effort. Buying bulk and reusing plastic bags is key. If there's a glass option, buy that. And does the plastic garbage can need a plastic bag, really? Or can you use the same bag multiple times? But it doesn't matter if I do it. Or even if 10% of the people do it. Won't save the world. Large scale bans are the only answer, and good luck with that.

cliffy 3y ago

There's a 0% chance of a successful colony, by any definition of successful, on Mars in the next century. If we, as a species, cannot avoid destroying the climate that birthed us over millions of years we have exactly 0% chance of surviving one that is completely inhospitable to life.

paxys 3y ago
There's no chance of a colony of any kind. The bare minimum requirement would be to end dependence on shipping critical materials from Earth, and good luck with making that happen in the next century.
- falcor84 3y ago
  I'm not following. Are you saying that a colony by definition has to be self-sustaining? Why? At this stage of globalization, what part of Earth is self-sustaining? How certain are you that if the US was suddenly blocked from importing any goods that it would not descend into chaos?
  - paxys 3y ago
    I'm not saying it has to be by definition, but the costs and complications in regularly transporting oxygen, water, food and everything else in cargo ships from Earth simply makes such a colony unrealistic even for a very small number of permanent settlers.
falcor84 3y ago
Not that I have a better estimate, but I'm curious about where you got that 0% from
- trgn 3y ago
  It's an irradiated wasteland
- sambapa 3y ago
  You can't learn rocket science if you are too retarded to wipe your ass. So that 0% came from this unwiped ass. Mars colony is impossible, humans are just less retarded monkeys.

bannedbybros 3y ago

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dzink 3y ago

Wait, do they know the US isn’t even on the map for biggest plastic polluters of the ocean: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-ocean-plastic-waste-pollution-by-country/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-ocean-plastic... If you want to make a dent, start there. Sustainability is absolutely necessary, but its label is instead distorted by money laundering efforts such as carbon credits (you’re paying people to plant logging-worthy species they will eventually log out and sell/burn). Virtue signaling in the EU is getting so bad, it’s opening the doors far and wide for Populist Totalitarians to take over your governments. All they have to say is “Look, you’re barely surviving in this inflation and the EU wants to take away your meat and ration your energy because it’s bad for the planet?” Green political parties have done so much damage to Europe they helped Putin sustain a war, and profit hugely from it (by just shutting down EU Nuclear power plants). If you want to objectively help, find who the worst polluters are and start to ask why and what replacements can be made. Fund plastic alternatives and designate carbon credits to go to efforts that can’t be undone. Think second and third order of consequences.

surfingdino 3y ago

The UK is no better. Heavy use of aircon, constantly increasing, parents driving their children to school in SUVs/4x4s; large tv screens replacing poster boards, buildings built for the whole purpose of tv advertising (see the two-storey screen walls on the inside and outside of the Outernet buildings near Tottenham Court Road). Lots of plastic use and one of the burger chains won the stupid award by removing drinking straws and offering a paid reusable metal drinking straw (painted) with a metal cleaning brush, sold in a cardboard box. No matter how small the item we order online it will arrive wrapped in lots of plastic and cardboard that goes immediately to the landfill.

hermitcrab 3y ago
We are far from perfect in the UK, for sure. But we do have a lot more solar, a lot more public transport and a lot less SUVs. And our Carbon footprint is about a third of the average American.
fulafel 3y ago
Florida seems to have about 2x per capita CO2 emissions [1][2] so there's a fair bit of difference. UK's climate sins in oil production might swing the judgement though. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1299198/co2-emissions-per-capita-united-kingdom/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1299198/co2-emissions-pe... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

w1nst0nsm1th 3y ago

There is a way well known by governments which can implement quickly and rapidly a change in behavior of all actors involved in economy : taxation. It's has been the case for centuries, if not thousand years. You give taxe incentive (subside or taxe reduction) for favoured behaviors, and higher taxation level to decourage unfavoured behavior. Meat taxation could be an interesting subject of study as it cover a large range of greenhouse gaz footprint according to the specie the meat come from and a majority of people considers it as an essential item. Cow meat is, by far, the worst offender by pound of meat produced. It is also the meat which requires the largest amount of vegetal protein in order to produce animal protein (1/10), which is by itself an obvious downside considering the challenge climate change will bring to crop production. On the lowest end of the scale, there is chicken, which is around a quarter of cow footprint by pound of meat produced. Banning meat altogether is a no-go inside any democracy as the party in power would be out of a job at the next election. But suppressing taxes on or subsidising consumption of chicken meat while taxing progressivelly cow meat out of existence could have a larger support from general population. The same mecanism of tax increase and tax incentive, according to ecological footprint, could be applied to every item category in the economy.