The only thing this narrative will accomplish is failure. Nobody will support significant sacrifice to combat climate change. Luckily they don't have to.
Of course we won't be able to capture and store 37 gigatonnes of carbon annually. That's ludicrous.
The path is straightforward: electrify everything, and make the grid green. There are only three major industries that are difficult to electrify: cement, steel and air travel. Steel & air travel can use hydrogen. For cement, you use low carbon processes to get carbon emissions down to about 10% of previous, and then store the rest. That's just a hundreds of megatonnes, and that is feasible.
Electrifying (almost) everything will cost a lot of money up front, but will save a ton of money in the long run. And renewable energy is a lot cheaper. And will provide a ton of jobs. So consumption is going to go up, not down.
I think we’re going to see a lot of shrinking consumption, but not directly because of climate change, but because of pure economic costs (some of which will be due in part to climate change).
Everything is getting more expensive. More and more people (especially youth) can’t afford a house etc. Some of them will choose to consume less, some will be forced to.
Costs of goods is a real behaviour changer. As externalities like climate change affect costs, behaviour will change. Will it be too late though?
> Nobody will support significant sacrifice to combat climate change
I do. Among other reasons, because the damages will far outweigh the sacrifices, if we don't prevent the worst consequences of climate change. But what we also need is a shift in mindset: Optimize for happiness and not for economic growth.
> The path is straightforward: electrify everything, and make the grid green. There are only three major industries that are difficult to electrify: cement, steel and air travel. Steel & air travel can use hydrogen. For cement, you use low carbon processes to get carbon emissions down to about 10% of previous, and then store the rest. That's just a hundreds of megatonnes, and that is feasible.
Did you read the part about hydrogen in the article?
Totally agree, Carbon taxes will push free economy faster. Reducing consumption will never solve 100% the problem. It will only postpone bad things for few years.
Exponential growth is coming to an end, one way or another. Our consumption of the biosphere and drastic impact on the carrying capacity of this planet cannot be fixed by simply changing energy sources. Problems are way deeper than that.
Steel I wouldn't even consider particularly hard to electrify. Most steel, at least in the US, is from scrap metal sources melted in an electric arc furnace, and all of the iron ore smelting furnaces built in the last few decades actually use a mix of hydrogen (and carbon monoxide) already, usually with natural gas as the feedstock. The same technique works well even with >90% hydrogen (steel only contains a small amount of carbon).
And I'd say most airline travel could also be electrified directly, although it'll take cleansheet designs. Cement might be the hardest because it will produce CO2 even if you produce the clinker electrically with clean electricity.
The really interesting thing about electrification is that it’s going to lead to more choice and economic freedom for people, which ironically goes against political narratives on climate change. To make the grid renewable will require early retirement of stranded fossil fuel generating assets. This will be resisted by utilities because they’ve already financed these assets and are paying off loans based on them. The key to accomplishing more renewables is to open up generation to more market competition. Because photovoltaics are now the cheapest way to generate electricity, and storage costs are dropping at a rate similar to solar ten years ago, most new generation will be renewable. We see this with states that allow municipalities to directly purchase electricity. For example, Marin county CA allows residents to purchase 60% renewable energy at competitive rates, or 100% for $0.01 more per kWh, or residents can opt-out and buy power from PG&E. The more we can decouple utilities from generation, the faster we’ll see grid scale renewables, and the more electrification will make sense.
To your point about "Electrifying everything will cost a lot of money ...", solar cells are at about $0.30 / W (used) and it's either possible or will be possible soon to get LiFePO4 batteries at $0.05 / Wh.
For a 30KWh home (the US average), that system will cost the consumer under $3k (assuming 8 hour days of sun, just in hardware, neglecting incidentals and labor, etc.). The average consumer in the US spends about $1-$1.5k per year on electricity. So building a solar battery system, in theory, would make its money back in 2-3 years.
There might be more savings depending on the area and incentives.
> The only thing this narrative will accomplish is failure. Nobody will support significant sacrifice to combat climate change. Luckily they don't have to.
This gets even more true when you start talking about the developing world. I'm sure Africans are going to stay poor to help deal with a problem largely created by the Europeans and Americans that have been abusing that continent for centuries. There is not a "fuck you" big enough.
I call the approach in this article "abstinence-based environmental solutions" by analogy with "abstinence-based" sex education, and it will be about as successful as trying to shame teenagers into not having sex.
This approach to sex education results teens hiding their sexuality, not using condoms or birth control, and getting more STDs and teen pregnancies. The analogous approach to fixing environmental problems will get us a lot of fake "greenwashing" and a continuation of the current CO2 growth trajectory.
Attempting to force austerity on us will result in a massive populist backlash and the election (or installation) of explicitly anti-environmental quasi-fascist or economic libertarian leaders.
In my understanding, greening grids undergo multiple transitions simultaneously
* from centralized to decentralized
* from stable base load to hard-to-predict intermittent generation
* from unidirectional to bi-directional (prosumers)
Instead of having big nuclear (1.5GW+) or coal plants that produce 90% of the time, we'll have countless small renewable generation sites - a solar park with 200MW capacity already takes up a massive amount of space - but on average only produces 25% of the time, some biogas, a 300 MW windfarm, lots of batteries. Consumers and some businesses will produce electricity themselves using solar and might want to sell excess power back to the grid. Building out the physical infrastructure, software and financial system that make such a system run smoothly is an absolutely astounding challenge. We are simultaneously ripping out base load (in the coastal US and in western Europe nuclear is under threat, coal is being fought everywhere) while also demanding much more from the grid by switching all street mobility to electricity.
In the end, the goal is to have a cleaner and more reliable system that provides power at competitive prices - this is an absolutely massive and extremely complex undertaking with technical challenges, political backlash ("don't build wind farms in my backyard!") and geopolitical problems (where do all the solar panels come from? How do ye compete with countries that use cheaper power?) along the way.
I'm not buying that renewable electricity is necessarily cheaper (just looking at solar panels during sunny summer days does not count, we care about edge cases) and I think what you are proposing is very hard.
One thing always bothered me: how can something be cheap (after initial investments) and create lots of jobs in the long run at the same time? I mean what is the money for fossil energy spent on, if not either raw materials or people part of the supply chain?
There's certain things in life, that it makes sense to 'consume' or 'own' outright... cellphones, tv, computers.
Then there's things that dumbfound me why we 'own' them... Power drills, tools, and a plethora of other things that take up space in our homes.
Imagine if every street in America had a warehouse w/ an employeed caretaker in charge of basically renting out power tools, ATVs, Jetski's, camping supplies, and they were networked w/ other warehouses to find items that are needed when they're out of stock locally.
Houses could be built smaller because you don't need to store so much wasteful shit.
i'd like to build this myself on a homestead-like intentional community/eco-village near Zion National Park someday when have the $$ for the land. (if anyone wants to donate - emails' in profile).
We definitely can tackle some consumerism, a lot we can't. People are greedy, not everyone is gonna sacrifice - making it easier TO sacrifice though can definitely help. Easier to share, recycle, etc...
Think of all the things in storage facilities across America that are things that people use infrequently that could be rented out, or loaned out, and actually utilized so somebody else doesn't need to buy it and require additional manufacturing of a product thus wasting resources...
> The path is straightforward: electrify everything, and make the grid green.
Do solutions to deal with solar panels and wind turbine blades after they've reached their lifetime? Otherwise it feels like we're solving one problem by creating another, to me.
Making hydrogen work for intercontinental air travel is an absolutely massive engineering challenge with (as of now) horrible economics. Pure hydrogen is hard to store as it corrodes metal, bringing enough of it on a plane to be able to cross the Pacific in a reliable and cost effective manner stretches the limits of physics. Making the unit economics work with green hydrogen is again several times more difficult. We should not be handwavy about replacing global-scale, cheap and reliable systems like long-distance air travel. This is a multi-decade undertaking if we are pushing hard and get lucky.
> The only thing this narrative will accomplish is failure. Nobody will support significant sacrifice to combat climate change. Luckily they don't have to.
What makes you so sure about that? The Covid pandemic indicates to me that people will indeed accept significant sacrifices if the goal is seen as worthwhile. In fact, thinking about it makes me angry. The younger generations have dutifully gotten vaccinated and suffered through closures to the benefit of the older generations who are the ones most at risk of getting sick or dying from Covid. Yet the older generations, to which most politicians belong, won't lift a finger to help avert the ongoing climate change disaster. In many countries today, you are a Bad Person (TM) for being in public without wearing a face mask. Why can't the same be true for being seen driving SUVs? Surely, if we can fine people for not wearing masks, we can fine them for driving ridiculously large vehicles too.
I don’t think those pushing this line are asking for our voluntary sacrifice. They’re just preparing us to swallow what’s going to be done to us – If they can’t maintain high growth anymore, they’ll settle for lower growth and compensate by taking more from everyone else.
The people holding most of the wealth control all the levers needed to make this happen. They don’t need permission, just submission.
Carbon austerity is a political and human-nature non-starter. Kelp forests and phytoplankton blooms across expanses of the ocean are the only viable alternative to capture and sequester (by sinking) enormous quantities of carbon to get us to net carbon negative faster than anything else. This will require robots to help us seed and farm huge areas of the ocean.
It is true electryifying everything and going green on the grid is important, but do you think that when there’s oil available, no one’s going to use it? You can put laws in the big countries but what about the shady ones?
And work remotely to reduce oil consumption, and reduce the power requirements for lighting and computing, and increase population density for greater efficiency.
There is no other choice beyond tech of some form or another.
People won't wear a mask in stores and restaurants to prevent the spread of disease. This pandemic tested the level of shared sacrifice acceptable in a mere short term crisis. It was not high at all.
Basically, sacrifice, except if it is of other people, cannot be part of the equation.
Current price inflation caused by loads of extra money for spending and supply chain disruption is already politically devastating.
Tech either stops environmental harm, gives us a way out of environmental harm, or lets us fight to have what remains.
The solution will be one of:
- Solar panels/electrification -- mitigate
- Carbon capture/body cooling suits/fake trees -- adapt
The more interesting solutions oriented stuff is in the second part of the article.
> A sensible society, he argues, would have taxed the hell out of big cars, big homes and frequent travellers decades ago, but there is a shortage of common sense and yes, it has something to do with supply chains.
The dull solution is that inefficient, heavily CO2 emitting stuff should be carbon taxed, and carbon tariffed. (read: big inefficient homes and cars)
The solutions have been with us this whole time. If we went back to 19th century urban planning and transportation solutions, compact cities, apartments, bicycles and trains, we'd massively cut our CO2 emissions while having no real negative impact on our standard of living.
Shrinking consumption would mean either that developing countries would need to stay in poverty forever, or to somehow find a way to greatly impoverish people in the developed nations that would not lead to widespread rioting.
So shrinking consumption in developed countries would be far from enough. We'd need to find a way to make China, for instance, accept that they should accept a vast diminution in their living standards in order to satisfy mostly Western activists.
Solutions to climate change based on shrinking consumption or reducing growth in general are political and technical nonstarters. We need to focus on decoupling growth and consumption from resource usage and emissions. Only by developing the technology to do so do we have any hope to mitigate the effects of climate change.
> the bulk of world emissions currently comes from developing countries
And the bulk of emissions in developed countries comes from corporations. I don't know offhand, but I'd be shocked if the same bulk for developing countries isn't produced by corporations as well, and not shocked but wildly surprised if it's not the exact same corporations.
Extracting fewer resources from the planet doesn't have to mean shrinking consumption. We can have both economic growth and less extractive consumption.
Or, as a currently-dead comment puts it, "Buy more videogames and digital movies". I might add books and music, but you get the point.
Consumption by itself is not an issue, it's just a question of what we consume.
For example, if all energy was generated from not-fossil-fuel, than (insofar as anthropogenic climate change is concerned) we have no climate-change problem at all.
Pollution of any kind can be addressed in this way. Don't like electronic waste? Build electronics in ways that facilitate perfect recyclability. Don't like tire graveyards? Design tires that biodegrade, or are otherwise reusable.
It's not that we need new technology to save ourselves. It's simply that we need to allocate resources towards moving our existing technologies in a more sustainable direction.
The link at the bottom of the page to Part Two (where he suggests solutions) is fairly easy to miss. Quoting some of it:
[H]ere is what our leaders should be saying:
We are eight billion people competing for finite resources and consuming energy at unprecedented levels. Economic growth is destroying the Earth and the atmosphere. It has degraded our humanity, and divorced us from the values of our ancestors.
Growth is a ponzi scheme. Increased prosperity depends on making more people because more people consume more goods.
If we don’t prioritize the health of the planet over our short-term economic interests the oceans will sicken with acid, the forests will die, and the fisheries will disappear. Nature will reduce our numbers if we do not scale down our appetites and ambitions.
The technospshere threatens our physical and spiritual existence. It must be scaled back and reoriented to serve people. Now it actively mines data from people while altering our brain functions to serve the growth of the technosphere.
We have exploited the richest of our fossil fuels, and renewables can’t offer the same energy density and quality. That is why energy conservation is the only way forward. Our energy use must consistently drop by three or four per cent a year over the next decade.
...
Ignore those alarmists that say contraction means you and I must live in cold caves. An economic retreat does not mean returning to the Dark Ages. As Hagens has observed, a 30-per-cent GDP drop in the United States would bring that nation back to a 1990s level of energy spending. A 50 per cent drop in GDP would bring the U.S. back to a 1973 level. Were those times so bad?
For the benefit of the non-Canadians: The Tyee is a progressive fringe publication -- increasingly fringe in recent years as it raises its revenue from donations and it needs clickbait and outrage-porn to attract that funding.
Sometimes they make decent points, but they also spew a lot of utter nonsense.
Shrinking consumption (ie economic deflation, a decrease in GDP) would absolutely destroy the USA. That's not a moral statement. I personally absolutely aim to reduce my consumption. But we live in a financialized debt based economy. It's about one nuance a way from an actual pyramid scheme except instead of recruiting people what it needs is GDP growth. The whole gig explodes when growth stops. Luckily the US could hypothetically keep growing for a VERY long time where as some other countries (China, Japan) are not going to fare as well (on the time frame of their own demographics curves).
Neal Stephenson's new novel Termination Shock addresses this. Without spoiling too much: Its characters view political obstacles to mitigating climate change as important as technological ones. They see the urgent need to act, and try to do so with politics in mind. It's sci-fi that keeps the human element center-stage.
Most greenhouse emissions are already from non-western countries. That will be much more true in the decades to come. Even if western countries were to stop all emissions today, the net impact in 2100 won't be more than about 0.5 degC.
Are we really going to ask the non-rich world to cut back on their consumption and shrink their economies?
In 2000 I lived in Los Angeles in an air conditioned house (power bill >$100/month), drove to work every day consuming at least three gallons of gas, the computers I worked on consumed ~100-200 watts, and all my lights were incandescent.
In 2019 I lived in Bangkok in a (very-lightly) air conditioned apartment (power bill $15/month), walked to work, the computer I worked on consumed maybe 60 watts, and all my lights were LED.
I've since moved to Seattle and the power bill has gone back up, but I'm working remotely on another ~60 watt computer, and the next will be ~20 watts. The trend is in the right direction.
No one is going to reduce consumption. To even suggest such a thing as a solution to any issue at any meaningful scale betrays a complete misunderstanding of the world by the author..
There’s a continuous tension between capacity and load. We’ve been fortunate that technology (and untapped resources) have largely placed capacity above load for much of our lifetimes. Spare capacity tends to be followed by an increase in load. Remains to be seen if technology advances can keep capacity above load. If not, load will decrease, either gradually or drastically, one way or another.
It’s really a restatement of supply and demand. Prices that are free to respond to an imbalance between the two keep the two in balance. Prices have been low for a long time because capacity has been high / load has been low. As load increases faster than capacity, expect prices to increase,
“Shrinking consumption” is just code for a transfer of wealth & income from consumers to asset holders. Meanwhile technology could potentially provide the opposite with the right approach. As others have mentioned, green energy as an example is more labor intensive and less capital intensive, and the end result is a lot more individuals and communities owning the means to generate and store the energy they need instead of having to pay a form of rent to energy corps forever.
The powers that be might see climate change as a threat but they do not want that kind of economic shift. They want a larger % of lifelong renters and a larger share of wealth for themselves.
We can use technology to shrink our consumption. It seems like the author's actual evidence is the weakest areas of the green tech, they don't take on the strengths of wind and solar or the innovations on batteries and EVs and electric bikes and busses. Instead the author takes on pie on the sky futuristic tech which is still nascent and may not pan out in the long run. Obviously green tech looks bad if you're only looking at hydrogen, CCS, direct air capture, those aren't even 1% of the development of one of the above mentioned domains.
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|4 years ago|reply
Of course we won't be able to capture and store 37 gigatonnes of carbon annually. That's ludicrous.
The path is straightforward: electrify everything, and make the grid green. There are only three major industries that are difficult to electrify: cement, steel and air travel. Steel & air travel can use hydrogen. For cement, you use low carbon processes to get carbon emissions down to about 10% of previous, and then store the rest. That's just a hundreds of megatonnes, and that is feasible.
Electrifying (almost) everything will cost a lot of money up front, but will save a ton of money in the long run. And renewable energy is a lot cheaper. And will provide a ton of jobs. So consumption is going to go up, not down.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify
[+] [-] rapind|4 years ago|reply
Everything is getting more expensive. More and more people (especially youth) can’t afford a house etc. Some of them will choose to consume less, some will be forced to.
Costs of goods is a real behaviour changer. As externalities like climate change affect costs, behaviour will change. Will it be too late though?
[+] [-] vaylian|4 years ago|reply
I do. Among other reasons, because the damages will far outweigh the sacrifices, if we don't prevent the worst consequences of climate change. But what we also need is a shift in mindset: Optimize for happiness and not for economic growth.
> The path is straightforward: electrify everything, and make the grid green. There are only three major industries that are difficult to electrify: cement, steel and air travel. Steel & air travel can use hydrogen. For cement, you use low carbon processes to get carbon emissions down to about 10% of previous, and then store the rest. That's just a hundreds of megatonnes, and that is feasible.
Did you read the part about hydrogen in the article?
[+] [-] maxdo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] titzer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Robotbeat|4 years ago|reply
And I'd say most airline travel could also be electrified directly, although it'll take cleansheet designs. Cement might be the hardest because it will produce CO2 even if you produce the clinker electrically with clean electricity.
[+] [-] vegetablepotpie|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acchow|4 years ago|reply
A lot of current figures across many industries would have seemed ludicrous 100 years ago. I’m not sure anything is impossible anymore.
[+] [-] abetusk|4 years ago|reply
For a 30KWh home (the US average), that system will cost the consumer under $3k (assuming 8 hour days of sun, just in hardware, neglecting incidentals and labor, etc.). The average consumer in the US spends about $1-$1.5k per year on electricity. So building a solar battery system, in theory, would make its money back in 2-3 years.
There might be more savings depending on the area and incentives.
[+] [-] api|4 years ago|reply
This gets even more true when you start talking about the developing world. I'm sure Africans are going to stay poor to help deal with a problem largely created by the Europeans and Americans that have been abusing that continent for centuries. There is not a "fuck you" big enough.
I call the approach in this article "abstinence-based environmental solutions" by analogy with "abstinence-based" sex education, and it will be about as successful as trying to shame teenagers into not having sex.
This approach to sex education results teens hiding their sexuality, not using condoms or birth control, and getting more STDs and teen pregnancies. The analogous approach to fixing environmental problems will get us a lot of fake "greenwashing" and a continuation of the current CO2 growth trajectory.
Attempting to force austerity on us will result in a massive populist backlash and the election (or installation) of explicitly anti-environmental quasi-fascist or economic libertarian leaders.
[+] [-] mxschumacher|4 years ago|reply
In my understanding, greening grids undergo multiple transitions simultaneously
* from centralized to decentralized
* from stable base load to hard-to-predict intermittent generation
* from unidirectional to bi-directional (prosumers)
Instead of having big nuclear (1.5GW+) or coal plants that produce 90% of the time, we'll have countless small renewable generation sites - a solar park with 200MW capacity already takes up a massive amount of space - but on average only produces 25% of the time, some biogas, a 300 MW windfarm, lots of batteries. Consumers and some businesses will produce electricity themselves using solar and might want to sell excess power back to the grid. Building out the physical infrastructure, software and financial system that make such a system run smoothly is an absolutely astounding challenge. We are simultaneously ripping out base load (in the coastal US and in western Europe nuclear is under threat, coal is being fought everywhere) while also demanding much more from the grid by switching all street mobility to electricity.
In the end, the goal is to have a cleaner and more reliable system that provides power at competitive prices - this is an absolutely massive and extremely complex undertaking with technical challenges, political backlash ("don't build wind farms in my backyard!") and geopolitical problems (where do all the solar panels come from? How do ye compete with countries that use cheaper power?) along the way.
I'm not buying that renewable electricity is necessarily cheaper (just looking at solar panels during sunny summer days does not count, we care about edge cases) and I think what you are proposing is very hard.
Here's an excellent talk about grid-scale storage and a comparison between conventional batteries and Hydrogen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ykv_0N-bRc
[+] [-] stkdump|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gremlinsinc|4 years ago|reply
Then there's things that dumbfound me why we 'own' them... Power drills, tools, and a plethora of other things that take up space in our homes.
Imagine if every street in America had a warehouse w/ an employeed caretaker in charge of basically renting out power tools, ATVs, Jetski's, camping supplies, and they were networked w/ other warehouses to find items that are needed when they're out of stock locally.
Houses could be built smaller because you don't need to store so much wasteful shit.
i'd like to build this myself on a homestead-like intentional community/eco-village near Zion National Park someday when have the $$ for the land. (if anyone wants to donate - emails' in profile).
We definitely can tackle some consumerism, a lot we can't. People are greedy, not everyone is gonna sacrifice - making it easier TO sacrifice though can definitely help. Easier to share, recycle, etc...
Think of all the things in storage facilities across America that are things that people use infrequently that could be rented out, or loaned out, and actually utilized so somebody else doesn't need to buy it and require additional manufacturing of a product thus wasting resources...
[+] [-] roeles|4 years ago|reply
Do solutions to deal with solar panels and wind turbine blades after they've reached their lifetime? Otherwise it feels like we're solving one problem by creating another, to me.
[+] [-] mxschumacher|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjourne|4 years ago|reply
What makes you so sure about that? The Covid pandemic indicates to me that people will indeed accept significant sacrifices if the goal is seen as worthwhile. In fact, thinking about it makes me angry. The younger generations have dutifully gotten vaccinated and suffered through closures to the benefit of the older generations who are the ones most at risk of getting sick or dying from Covid. Yet the older generations, to which most politicians belong, won't lift a finger to help avert the ongoing climate change disaster. In many countries today, you are a Bad Person (TM) for being in public without wearing a face mask. Why can't the same be true for being seen driving SUVs? Surely, if we can fine people for not wearing masks, we can fine them for driving ridiculously large vehicles too.
[+] [-] jrsj|4 years ago|reply
The people holding most of the wealth control all the levers needed to make this happen. They don’t need permission, just submission.
[+] [-] errcorrectcode|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickysielicki|4 years ago|reply
Why isn’t agriculture difficult to electrify?
[+] [-] ramraj07|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|4 years ago|reply
Add nuclear to the mix and you will get a lot more people onboard. "Renewables" consume a ridiculous amount of land with poor energy density.
[+] [-] gcanyon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devmunchies|4 years ago|reply
Would electric train be feasible? Could even have entire train cars dedicated to solar panels and batteries.
[+] [-] Natsu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MattGaiser|4 years ago|reply
People won't wear a mask in stores and restaurants to prevent the spread of disease. This pandemic tested the level of shared sacrifice acceptable in a mere short term crisis. It was not high at all.
Basically, sacrifice, except if it is of other people, cannot be part of the equation.
Current price inflation caused by loads of extra money for spending and supply chain disruption is already politically devastating.
Tech either stops environmental harm, gives us a way out of environmental harm, or lets us fight to have what remains.
The solution will be one of:
- Solar panels/electrification -- mitigate
- Carbon capture/body cooling suits/fake trees -- adapt
- Bombs and guns -- win
[+] [-] c0nducktr|4 years ago|reply
Hopefully the biosphere isn't too terribly damaged by the time we reach it.
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|4 years ago|reply
> A sensible society, he argues, would have taxed the hell out of big cars, big homes and frequent travellers decades ago, but there is a shortage of common sense and yes, it has something to do with supply chains.
The dull solution is that inefficient, heavily CO2 emitting stuff should be carbon taxed, and carbon tariffed. (read: big inefficient homes and cars)
The solutions have been with us this whole time. If we went back to 19th century urban planning and transportation solutions, compact cities, apartments, bicycles and trains, we'd massively cut our CO2 emissions while having no real negative impact on our standard of living.
[+] [-] pcstl|4 years ago|reply
Additionally, the bulk of world emissions currently comes from developing countries: https://www.cgdev.org/media/developing-countries-are-respons...
So shrinking consumption in developed countries would be far from enough. We'd need to find a way to make China, for instance, accept that they should accept a vast diminution in their living standards in order to satisfy mostly Western activists.
Solutions to climate change based on shrinking consumption or reducing growth in general are political and technical nonstarters. We need to focus on decoupling growth and consumption from resource usage and emissions. Only by developing the technology to do so do we have any hope to mitigate the effects of climate change.
[+] [-] eyelidlessness|4 years ago|reply
And the bulk of emissions in developed countries comes from corporations. I don't know offhand, but I'd be shocked if the same bulk for developing countries isn't produced by corporations as well, and not shocked but wildly surprised if it's not the exact same corporations.
[+] [-] throwawaygh|4 years ago|reply
Or, as a currently-dead comment puts it, "Buy more videogames and digital movies". I might add books and music, but you get the point.
[+] [-] agumonkey|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] danny_codes|4 years ago|reply
Consumption by itself is not an issue, it's just a question of what we consume. For example, if all energy was generated from not-fossil-fuel, than (insofar as anthropogenic climate change is concerned) we have no climate-change problem at all.
Pollution of any kind can be addressed in this way. Don't like electronic waste? Build electronics in ways that facilitate perfect recyclability. Don't like tire graveyards? Design tires that biodegrade, or are otherwise reusable.
It's not that we need new technology to save ourselves. It's simply that we need to allocate resources towards moving our existing technologies in a more sustainable direction.
[+] [-] nkurz|4 years ago|reply
[H]ere is what our leaders should be saying:
We are eight billion people competing for finite resources and consuming energy at unprecedented levels. Economic growth is destroying the Earth and the atmosphere. It has degraded our humanity, and divorced us from the values of our ancestors.
Growth is a ponzi scheme. Increased prosperity depends on making more people because more people consume more goods.
If we don’t prioritize the health of the planet over our short-term economic interests the oceans will sicken with acid, the forests will die, and the fisheries will disappear. Nature will reduce our numbers if we do not scale down our appetites and ambitions.
The technospshere threatens our physical and spiritual existence. It must be scaled back and reoriented to serve people. Now it actively mines data from people while altering our brain functions to serve the growth of the technosphere.
We have exploited the richest of our fossil fuels, and renewables can’t offer the same energy density and quality. That is why energy conservation is the only way forward. Our energy use must consistently drop by three or four per cent a year over the next decade.
...
Ignore those alarmists that say contraction means you and I must live in cold caves. An economic retreat does not mean returning to the Dark Ages. As Hagens has observed, a 30-per-cent GDP drop in the United States would bring that nation back to a 1990s level of energy spending. A 50 per cent drop in GDP would bring the U.S. back to a 1973 level. Were those times so bad?
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/11/04/Returning-1970s-Econo...
[+] [-] cperciva|4 years ago|reply
Sometimes they make decent points, but they also spew a lot of utter nonsense.
[+] [-] agumonkey|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TrispusAttucks|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anm89|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the__alchemist|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grecy|4 years ago|reply
REDUCE. Then Reuse, then recycle.
Reducing consumption is the first step.
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chanakya|4 years ago|reply
Are we really going to ask the non-rich world to cut back on their consumption and shrink their economies?
[+] [-] gcanyon|4 years ago|reply
In 2019 I lived in Bangkok in a (very-lightly) air conditioned apartment (power bill $15/month), walked to work, the computer I worked on consumed maybe 60 watts, and all my lights were LED.
I've since moved to Seattle and the power bill has gone back up, but I'm working remotely on another ~60 watt computer, and the next will be ~20 watts. The trend is in the right direction.
[+] [-] volkse|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjtheblunt|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_population_growth
[+] [-] thinkski|4 years ago|reply
It’s really a restatement of supply and demand. Prices that are free to respond to an imbalance between the two keep the two in balance. Prices have been low for a long time because capacity has been high / load has been low. As load increases faster than capacity, expect prices to increase,
[+] [-] jrsj|4 years ago|reply
The powers that be might see climate change as a threat but they do not want that kind of economic shift. They want a larger % of lifelong renters and a larger share of wealth for themselves.
[+] [-] jollybean|4 years ago|reply
Over the course of only 10 years, France made 80% of their electricity Nuclear.
Have we become so much less competent that we, every modern nation, couldn't do it again?
Even faster/cheaper/safely?
Of course we could, if we really wanted to.
One of the primary issues with getting nuclear going is ... the Greens.
The Greens are a giant obstacle to Nuclear, an energy source which could, if applied appropriately and assertively, wipe out the C02 crisis.
The math is already there, we're literally ignoring it in our discussions.
"The World Is On Fire" but nobody is really talking about it?
Is this a giant existential crisis then 'manufactured' in a kind of systematic way?
[+] [-] Dumblydorr|4 years ago|reply