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The debate over exact causes has always felt misguided to me. The planet is extremely complex, human impact on the planet is largely based on estimates and mode

• gjulianm 3y ago
  > There are such obvious first steps we could take without a complete understanding of cause if we really cared. That's the issue, a lot of people just don't care or refuse to believe it. Questions like the one in the parent comment are starting to seriously annoy me because they're demanding an unachievable level of evidence before doing anything, a level that's never asked for in any other kind of intervention (for example, interest rate hikes).
  • nsxwolf 3y ago
    Everyone leaves out a large cohort - people that believe it, but don't want the solutions you're selling. We typically put forth constructive solutions like nuclear, which get shouted down / laughed out of the room instantly.
    • xorcist 3y ago
      Without going to specifics, a large reason for that may be that among those who say this are a large number who loudly push for unrealistic ideas masquerading them as constructive. Some may be honestly ignorant about it, but it is also unfortunately quite an effective way to derail any discussion and delay progress. See for example any suggestion about real world hyperloops.
    • ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      Unfortunately it's hard to tell the difference between people suggesting expensive and slow solutions because they're ill informed about the alternatives and the people suggesting expensive and slow solutions because they don't want to solve the problem. And practically there's little difference, especially if the former are getting their information from the latter.
      • candiodari 3y ago
        I think people are fine about solving the problem, positive even (right wingers love solar panels, after all). They're just not fine about being forced to sacrifice to solve the problem.
    • flagrant_taco 3y ago
      An easier first step before nuclear is reducing our power requirements. This one gets laughed out of the room both because we don't think purple will accept it and because there's a direct correlation between GDP growth and energy consumption, we don't care enough about energy use to give up GDP.
      • candiodari 3y ago
        This will achieve the opposite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox If you make something less critical, cheaper, it will be used for more and more ridiculous things.
        • 3y ago
• nemo44x 3y ago
  Asking people to have less, experience less, and do less isn’t an argument that can ever win. The winning argument is to show how you can consume more energy for less money by using sustainable technology. Cramped trains will rarely win politically but electric cars that go fast and look cool do win. In essence I believe the only politically viable way to reduce carbon is to engineer and tech our way to systems that reliably do more for less and increase the amount of energy people can consume.
  • hughw 3y ago
    You're probably right but I fear the end of that road is a completely "re-terraformed" Earth we create to adapt to support our industrial society.
    • generalizations 3y ago
      So we take the notion of national parks to the extreme, and carve out parts of the planet dedicated to preservation, and dedicate other parts to supporting humans and their needs, and we learn the science we need to artificially protect against ecological collapse. Maybe the solution to our expanding technology is technological.
      • mrguyorama 3y ago
        So because the fix is mildly inconvenient, better to just do nothing, keep making the problem worse, keep letting people die, and just hope that magic fixes everything? Tech can't undo the physics of the greenhouse effect. You want a cooler earth, you have to reduce the radiation we receive or increase the radiation that leaves through the atmosphere. For hundreds of years we have been participating in a geoengineering experiment.
        • generalizations 3y ago
          > mildly inconvenient Wildly disruptive.
• avgcorrection 3y ago
  > We could easily cut our use of fossil fuels if we weren't trying to balance that with an arbitrary GDP growth target. We could stop incentivizing people and companies to consume disposable products. We could stop subsidizing massive industrial farms and instead focus on eating locally and growing some of your own food. Then it's the small task of changing the economic model of the entire developed (and less developed, and exploited) world. The model that all of the richest and most powerful people depend on.
  • flagrant_taco 3y ago
    The economic model is going to change one way or another. A model designed around perpetual growth will always fail, and there are already plenty of cracks showing. A major economic change sounds impossible, but we've done it in the US at least three times in the last century.
    • quonn 3y ago
      That was true 200 years ago and maybe even 200.000 years ago. Some day there will be no more growth - but it could be another 200.000 years.
    • xkcd-sucks 3y ago
      That's the value of space colonization, or the hope and promise of space colonization -- Preservation on of the economy
    • avgcorrection 3y ago
      > A major economic change sounds impossible, but we've done it in the US at least three times in the last century. No.
      • flagrant_taco 3y ago
        Creating the Federal Reserve was a fundamental change. Confiscating gold then pegging the US dollar to a gold-backed value was a fundamental change. Getting rid of the gold standard and going full fiat sad a fundamental change. The economic model, monetary policy, and incentives of each system were completely different. We may not have renamed the currency or the country, but that doesn't change the fact that those were major economic shifts.
• ChatGTP 3y ago
  The planet is complex but not complex at the same time. It's easy enough to break the natural environment by very primitive means. So I agree with your point, it's just not that complex that we can't totally ruin it quite easily.
  • flagrant_taco 3y ago
    That opens up a whole apndoras box of whether a reduction is approach can lead to a complete understanding of complex systems. I'll leave that for another thread, that's a deep rabbit whole full of mostly theoretical debate (though an interesting one IMO!)
• deleted 3y ago
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• nradov 3y ago
  Some of your proposed first steps are hardly obvious. Food transport is highly efficient and constitutes only a tiny fraction of CO2 emissions. Eating locally isn't going to help; it might even have the opposite effect in some places. Same for clothing. In urban or suburban housing people don't have enough space or direct sunlight to grow a useful amount of food.
• Aunche 3y ago
  > We could easily cut our use of fossil fuels if we weren't trying to balance that with an arbitrary GDP growth target Believe it or not, only a handful of people genuinely care about "GDP growth targets" and they have very little influence on environmental policy. The reason why politicians oppose sweeping regulation to stop climate change is because they'd lose their jobs if they intentionally caused gas prices to rise or cause a recession.
  • dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Believe it or not, only a handful of people genuinely care about “GDP growth targets” and they have very little influence on environmental policy A large number of people with vast influence on all government policy care about the returns of their investments in existing incumbent industries, which in aggregate correlate very strongly with GDP growth, though.
  • takinola 3y ago
    I would argue most people care about GDP growth targets but they just don't understand them that way. GDP growth is what leads to improvements in real human quality of life. It is your ability to get healthcare, housing, food and all the other things that make life a lot less painful. I would rather live in a society with a higher GDP than less (all things considered) and so would most people (as evidenced by population shifts across the world). If the GDP does not grow to at least match the population changes, the society would be poorer and have worse outcomes overall.
    • holbrad 3y ago
      No idea why your getting downvoted for such an obvious statement, there is very strong (But not perfect) correlation between GDP and standard of living.
  • gls2ro 3y ago
    almost everybody living in a democratic capitalist economy is influence by and takes decisions that have as the foundation the GDP growth. that is the foundation of the way economy works. It propagates down to interests and credits and investments and jobs. Obviously IMO.
• noknownsender 3y ago
  I think the second half of your comment argues against the first. You're right that people are unwilling to make the basic changes that are obviously needed. But we only know precisely that those changes would work to fight against climate change because we are able to say with certainty that those behaviors are contributing factors. Any suggested actions have to have some level of scientific credibility to be taken seriously. Without it, they are easily dismissed by claiming that the planet is too complex to know if our actions will make a difference. That, purely by coincidence, I'm sure, has been the exact argument used against making any changes, and against the fact that warming was happening in the first place, and against tobaccos cancer risk, and any other public policy proposal that goes against the interest of those profiting from the status quo.
  • nsxwolf 3y ago
    If the "basic changes" are more extreme than the COVID lockdowns, which made the entire world miserable, brought unprecedented economic destruction we'll be dealing with forever, and which also didn't cool the planet at all despite massive decreases in CO2 emissions... no thanks. I'll keep voting against anything that makes me poorer and more miserable.
    • NoGravitas 3y ago
      Well, you'll end up even poorer and more miserable in the end if you have it your way. But at least you get your treats for a few more years.
    • flagrant_taco 3y ago
      I sincerely hope that we aren't at a point where most people's guiding principles are minimizing their own poorness or misery. Those should be a given and self interest is backed into us, but we're in for a world of hurt if those are the only deciding factors take into account. Some things are in fact worth dying for.
      • southernplaces7 3y ago
        Bullshit. Nobody can factually, concretely state that climate change will go a specific, certain way to cause a specific certain amount of misery over the next century. There are too many technological, social, economic, and extremely complex climate variables at play for that to be a concrete assertion. This isn't to say that measures to reduce carbon emissions can't or shouldn't be taken, they can and they should, but with a mind towards exactly what you deride, preventing as many people as possible from falling into draconian economic and social misery. That at least is something we concretely know to be possible if governments adopt the wrong control measures in a heavy handed way. The pandemic showed it clearly and concretely in many forms. We're not talking here about the impending, concrete impact of a large asteroid, or a super volcano eruption that's definitely imminent, where mass economic sacrifice for the sake of saving humanity would be understandable. Climate change is, despite all the political fanfare, something that has too many variables to clearly define as a cataclysm. Given that, there is nothing selfish about wanting to avoid misery and "dying" for yourself and your children in the face of ambiguous predictions about future events. If you're so convinced that "some things are worth dying for", what stops you from applying your own advice instead of preaching sanctimoniously to others?
• rafaelero 3y ago
  > There are such obvious first steps we could take without a complete understanding of cause if we really cared. Have you tried arguing people against eating meat? If we can't even talk them out of the main individual contributor to climate change, I don't think we have a good chance to make a positive impact on other areas that depend on conscious effort.
  • kurthr 3y ago
    This doesn't seem to match the data I've seen. Yes, food is a significant portion of energy consumption, but typical transportation and housing (including heat/cool) easily dominate. Going from a daily mixed meat (chicken/fish/beef/eggs) eating diet to a vegan diet saves ~1 ton CO2 per year. Average is about 4-5 tons per year for a person living in a small apartment in temperate climate, who only uses public transportation, doesn't go on vacation, or buy any unnecessary consumer items. A more typical westerner who can afford meat every meal is about 10-20 tons per year. Now, if you're eating 150g of beef every meal 3x every day, you could double your footprint (+20tons CO2). Eating only chicken, fish, and eggs gets you below 1ton/year for meat in meals. Vegan is about a third of that. https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/carbon-ecological-footprint-calculators/ https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/carbon-ecol...
    • rafaelero 3y ago
      Food corresponds to 10~30% of individual carbon footprint. Dairy + meat amount to 3/4 of total emissions from food production. So going vegan should theoretically reduce from 7.5% to 22.5% total individual emissions[1]. It may not be the largest factor in every situation, but it is still a very important one. [1]https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/sustainability-indicators/carbon-footprint-factsheet https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/sustainability...
• lo_zamoyski 3y ago
  > We could easily cut our use of fossil fuels Given our economic dependence, the economic efficiency, and interested resistance, what concrete course of action would achieve this transition? > We could stop incentivizing people and companies to consume disposable products. How? Concretely.
• ravishi 3y ago
  It's basically impossible to convince someone to do all those things when they're fighting to stay alive, working terrible conditions and generally being fucked by society as a whole. Fixing economic inequalities and improving overall quality of life for everyone in the planet should be top of that list. Telling rich people to grow their own food won't make any difference.
  • flagrant_taco 3y ago
    I'd argue that an economy and society built on the framework of terrible economic inequality is fundamentally unable to fix said problems. I expect we would have a lot of agreement related to fixing that system to better serve the average person. Even if we have different opinions on exact details, that core principle can go very, very far.
• deleted 3y ago
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• stjohnswarts 3y ago
  I always figured that if more liberal politicians enact all at once the grueling regime required for current climate deadlines that it might work for a while but then the citizenry will then just revolt and vote right wing and it will set back all progress that has been made the past couple of decades. I already see it in American politics.
• gspencley 3y ago
  > The list goes on, but having spent decades watching people debate passionately over why the planet is warming all while going further down the same path my only conclusion is that we just don't give a damn. When push comes to shove we would rather buy new cloths imported from the other side of the world, throw resources at new construction and gut job renovations, and will happily fly around the world on vacation rather than stay home and enjoy the world around us. Yes exactly. You hit on something that I often say, though we come at "solutioning" from opposite angles and, from the sounds of your comment, will find little agreement. What we agree on is that understanding anthropogenic global warming and its causes is important and can inform solutions, but it does not tell us what the "right" solutions are since we have other complicating factors to consider. Such as things like human rights, standards of living, morality and the role+purpose and limitations of government. For some of us the debate is not over whether AGW is a scientifically understood phenomenon that represents a problem (even a critical problem at that). The debate is over what the solutions ought to be, what tools are the right tools for the job and what course corrections are considerable given factors that we must also contend with that lie outside of our scientific understanding of the problem.
  • paulmd 3y ago
    > Such as things like human rights, standards of living, morality and the role+purpose and limitations of government. Unfortunately, the dustbins of history are full of civilizations that took disruptive events carefully and with grave dignity and solemnity and respected the rights of powerful stake-holders within their society. That the people who make such arguments generally live in the places best positioned to weather out the situation, is also unfortunate. While people in well-pr tut about whether it's really proper for a government to take action to avoid calamity from befalling its citizens, other people will be literally dying. It's a rather crass and callous/indifferent position you've staked out, you're kind of not coming off like a very good person here. Like it's literally "I guess you'll have to die, then, not like we're going to unwind the economy just for you" once again. It is, as someone notes upthread, basically the same as masks during COVID. Some people will stroke their chin and pontificate about utilitarianism and the greater good, but that's not really comfort to anyone whose loved one dies from excess pollution or a transmissible disease. And of course the people taking this position are usually the most protected themselves - we all can WFH here if circumstances dictate, it's different if it's your wife stocking a grocery store, they care a lot less about the GDP impact and more about the direct personal impact than you do. And the existence of this subgroup - such as yourself - fundamentally forestalls the ability of the other 70% of the society from being able to protect itself. Kind of a problem in general - the american system (and the EU and UN as well, but particularly the US) provides too many brakes on action and biases to inaction (via checks-and-balances) such that even supermajority level political control often is not enough unless it is single-party control of every single branch of government and lever of power. You don't just need 50%, you don't just need 70%, you need 70% across every possible dimensionality that the US distributes political power over - essentially single-party control is the only way to rule if the minority does not consent, and we are talking about people who openly state that they will never consent. It'll end in deaths sooner or later, whether that's from inaction, or from those whose deaths would be caused by inaction taking action themselves (which is why almost everyone is forecasting conflict and political instability from climate change to kick up majorly in the second half of the century). Again, the only disappointing part is that this too will be visited on the least-fortunate instead of the responsible parties (who will largely be fine, and we will probably even bail out florida and other affected areas anyway). What happens when the unstoppable force of climate change meets the immovable object of modern political system's bias-to-inaction? Fireworks, basically - because unlike HN you can't just tone-police the discussion away in the real world, people won't just take "I guess you'll have to die so I can have the new xbox this year" lying down.
• zosima 3y ago
  There is a lot of things that seems easy, but in fact are impossible. Sure, we could just stop using fossil fuels. But something like 50% of the global population would then be starving. The cure that so often is prescribed is worse than the disease. And people don't seem to realize.
  • flagrant_taco 3y ago
    There's a big gap between the amount of oilwwe use today and zero oil, we can reduce without stopping. I think your point leads down the path of arguing that we have too many people on the planet though. If we can sustainably feed everyone without causing unknown amounts of damage to the environment, we will eventually hit a wall and run out of ways to dodge that fact.
• majesticglue 3y ago
  well there are easier solutions than "blaming consumers". stop it at the supply. Enforce regulations and demands of the companies importing those "new cloths" and make them responsible for the damage caused. America loves to gaslit consumers but companies never EVER get the blame, even worse is the CEOs of the companies who make these decisions always get scot free.
  • flagrant_taco 3y ago
    Oh companies are absolutely to blame, but so are the politicians we'd need to actually regulate them. Enforcing regulations requires quite a few steps first, from defining the scope and likely granting new authority to regulators to actually drafting regulations that are complete and not full of loop holes. Your argument is also based on the premise that consumers aren't able to make the best choices for themselves and must be forced into it by regulators. I simply refuse to believe this, what are we even doing here if we think real reform can only come from all powerful authorities forcing it upon us?