Yep this. There’s zero reason to subsidize a highly profitable industry like oil and gas.
Also a carbon tax that’s on literally everything so we can make informed decisions on what we consume based on carbon footprint, with the revenue of that tax going back to the general population. The net result being you benefit greatly if you’re more eco-conscious and you get penalized if you’re a heavy carbon user.
I can think of plenty of reasons: to ensure continued campaign/donor funding, increased chance of post-politics quid pro quo job, national security (keep the food/gas supply self reliant), race to the bottom re taxation (I.e. jobs), and I’m sure many more
I'd say there is a good reason. And that is energy independence. Look at Europe scrambling at buying LNG from anyone who's willing to provide it.
Now, I will say that instead of fossil fuels a similar amount of subsidies could go into a cohesive strategy for nuclear energy. This would phase off a lot of the emissions and give us to time develop and fine tune the grid for renewable energy.
Carbon tax will just be spent by someone, and it won't actually affect carbon. The carbon will still be used and companies will consider it cost of doing business - pretty sure carbon is price inflexible. Not going to work.
It’s not the only thing we should do but it’s an effective thing. Don’t think it will have an effect? Charge more tax, there’s a price for everything where it becomes unreasonable.
Also as I mentioned, it also incentivizes with rebates and, as a side effect, redistributes wealth inequality. It absolutely does work and in the least is certainly worth a go.
All of this cost will actually be passed to you. Your taxes will fund things like carbon capture that will give these companies their carbon credits and politicians pockets will be lined and round and round we go.
You do realize they can regulate it so that doesn’t happen but also it reinforces the point; if a carbon intensive activity is just having the costs added on to me, it makes that activity less enticing, which means it’s working.
This seems to be the only way and this will never happen if Trump gets in office and Project 2025 takes over. They want to get rid of the EPA. Good luck taxing companies lol
Or/and sue for recompense.
The hydrogen industry could replace a lot of oil and gas dependence and be run from renewables instead.
The "cost" is just a contrived meaning to give people a feeling of superiority (class system based on money). The loss of entire ecosystems and the subsequential end of life as we know it is going to happen with or without our help now.
Switching how we live is a choice to make now, before its made for everyone in a much less friendly and more cataclysmic way. 🤔
The real issue there is that we the customer would carry that burden in the form of higher prices. There's no way big oil is going to cut their own bonuses. I think the real answer is to nationalise the oil industry and control it for our own benefit. But the political will doesn't exist.
Don't overlook that low/no-emissions alternatives would then become much more attractive in comparison, causing customers to peel away, and increased production of renewable technologies would reduce costs further and spur more adoption. Already happening with solar energy and electric vehicles. Oil could easily recede as a necessity, which is why they're fighting so hard.
They're trying to milk as much out of us as possible before the industry dies. That's been my view for years. And lately with prices at the pump not reflecting barrel price, it's a lot mote obvious
Bonus points, gold star stickers, and pizza party if we actually sued and criminalized them for deliberately lying to the public about their industries’ impact on the planet so they could continue making profits knowing they were destroying our futures.
If we end subsidies on those we should also end subsidies on the equivalent non-fossil fuel energy and non-animal agriculture. Likewise we could tax the whole energy sector equally, the same goes for the agricultural sector.
One reason why hydrocarbons are cheap is because people are dumping the packaging (emissions molecules aka GHG gases) on everyone else's lawn (our common atmosphere). Accounting for their full cost (carbon pricing, carbon capture, carbon storage) would help.
Another reason why hydrocarbons are cheap is because O&G producer keep increasing production, but that can only last for so long. By making it cheap today, it's bound to become rare and unaffordable at some point in the future.
So from the above, the other options I will suggest today in this post are: carbon pricing and decreasing production.
I think if all office workers could go back to remote WFH work that would help reduce a lot of air pollution. Remember when we were all on lockdown and no one was driving around? Remember how all the smog disappeared and all the wildlife came out? Lockdown was a pretty short period of time but it almost immediately had a major positive impact on air quality and noise pollution too. Most workers prefer working remotely for many different reasons, but IMHO the environmental impact was the biggest benefit for all living things all around the world. Unfortunately our corporate and government leaders don't give a damn and learned nothing during that time. All back office non customer facing roles can be done remotely. A really progressive government would offer tax incentives to companies that had at least half of its workforce working remotely.
I really miss this tbh the air was clear in la and yea cars are a huge emitter, if we could reduce it to only necessary car transit like trucks, it would make people more in shape and also help reduce pollution
Wind and solar are the largest type of power coming online. Coal is decreasing. We are making major progress. So I don’t go for the doom and gloom outlook. That said we have a long way to go and it will involve many different technologies and life style adjustments.
There is no silver bullet. We can produce cement and steal with less carbon dioxide emissions. We can start to alter agricultural practices to lower emissions as well.
Progress is progress, but calling it major is harmful to the cause.
Nothing about what we've been doing is "major". We've had zero impact on rising CO2 levels. Sure it would have been worse without our "progress" for sure, but at the end of the day, we are still on a train going full speed towards a cliff, with no brakes.
Globally $1.7 trillion was invested in clean energy last year. $2 trillion is expected this year. It’s growing exponentially as the LCOE (Levelized Cost of Energy) for wind and solar is below coal and at parity with natural gas. Manufacturing costs have not stopped falling either. If that isn’t major I don’t know what is.
massive, global overhaul of how government, industry and daily life for citizens is thought of. We cannot let monetary profit drive every single decision and expect any outcome that runs counter to that. huge international cooperative efforts to drive environment-forward projects and punish entities that damage the environment
im talking huge, groundswell change along the lines of revolution. every board member of every fossil fuel company along with any government official who took money from and ran cover for them put in prison for life, or worse.
so, nothing that will ever realistically happen.
I wish I had some land to do this. Even if it was just a drop in the bucket. I have all sorts of ideas and different trees that I would love to have.
I know there are other ways you can support tree planting efforts, but ideally, I would take some farmland around here and convert it and plant a ton of trees.
This.
I am sorry I can only upvote once.
There is no such thing as a truly green source of energy. Check out “Planet of the Humans”. While the movie is rather one sided, it drives through the point that the supposed “green “ solutions are problematic in their own ways. Yeah I have solar panels, but they are not a perfect solution.
These days cryptocurrencies and to a rising degree AI take up tons of energy. A number of nations consume less energy than what is consumed by cryptocurrencies.
That movie is indeed incredibly biased. It tries to elicit an emotional reaction for example by showing a wind farm in a forest. But it doesn't tell that even in a fully wind powered world, only less than 1% of forests would need to be cut for wind farms. There's many more things like that there.
It’s insane how much misinformation is spread in the comment section of this sub.
That movie is not even close to informative. See [here](https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/05/michael-moores-planet-of-the-humans-documentary-peddles-dangerous-climate-denial/) for more.
Support solar, wind, nuclear, and all other sources of green energy. There are rarely perfect solutions for difficult problems. That is not a reason for inaction or advocating for policies that are impossible to implement.
“This new diet of mine is quite a bit healthier than my old one, but I still eat a bit too much sugar. Ah well, might as well go back to the old one of daily fried fast food and desert binges at night!”
I admit I'm very ignorant about crypto. I always thought it was just a digital form of money. How does that require high energy usage? Please explain as if I'm 10 years old. Thanks
Anything that requires individuals to make the right choice just because they should, will never work. Policy needs to reinforce correct decisions. Tax carbon emissions so that economics drive decisions.
Activism, talking to people, educating, raising awareness, I would argue, can be far more impactful. Depending on how convincing you are, how charismatic you are, or how capable you are in harnessing technology, media, etc.
Everyone will exist with reduced energy consumption. Corporate reduction will not give individuals a pass to continue to consume at current levels. You’ll want to reduce sufficiently so that borrowing the community EV to bring groceries to your house once a month is within your energy budget.
If every individual consumed energy at current levels , and corporations energy consumption was actually managed, we absolutely would be where we need to be.
You should try to become sustainable at a pace that you’re comfortable with because it makes sense and is the right thing to do, not because it will make a difference, because it will make no difference whatsoever.
Nothing. Get ready to be resilient and change. The cat is out of the bag. This will be the great era when the world came together... Or the eyes of the great world wars
Most Chinese power plants that create such high emissions and massive pollution use no flue gas treatments. This has to change for the earth to stand a chance.
Uncontrolled flue gas emissions is very polluting to the environment, but US plants aren't capturing GHGs either. In terms of climate change, there isn't a large difference.
China's heavy reliance on coal is a problem, but they are currently building tons of wind, solar, nuclear, and energy storage. They produce most the worlds batteries and sales of EVs in china are leading the world. Grid level changes are going slower than is desired, but the do have policy in place to make progress. Pointing at China as a reason to not do anything is disingenuous.
Lame excuse. We could all do better, not just China. And historically the United States has far, far, far, far, far, far more blood on its hands with climate change than China does.
I’m just basing my analysis on science and critical independent data and to ignore the massive amount of emissions China is producing now, a third of the world’s pollution, is ignorant at best.
Explain why you choose to pick on China when historically the United States is by far the worst offender?
Explain why you choose to pick on China when they are creating more renewable energy than any other nation on earth?
Explain why you've posted about China specifically multiple times on this thread, but not about any other specific country in the entire world?
China is no angel. They're a big part of the problem too. But that doesn't explain anything about what you're saying here today. There are way bigger problems than China.
please elaborate? the US has implemented far more environmental programs, that worked, than anyone else. Take the L.A basin for example, it used to be a wall of smog, yet now most days its clear. I think you just need to hate the US and are really just dismissing concerns of unregulated emmisions and overconsumption of coal going on in China. Are you being paid by the CCP for damage control?
I'm French, and can only agree 👍
65% of electricity production comes from nuclear:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1263322/electrical-production-by-sector-france/
More importantly, the carbon rips the oxygen off the iron.
But there is an attempt to use hydrogen for that job, or just direct electrolysis where the oxygen would bubble up from the molten iron ore. Steel needs carbon, yes, but if that's from biochar or direct air capture somehow, you could make carbon negative steel.
Nuclear has always been the best option twenty years from now. The nuclear power that was twenty years away in the sixties would’ve solved all of our problems. Fortunately, we’ve made improvements to what they did in the sixties and now we’re only twenty years away from a true nuclear revolution. Twenty years from now, I think we’ll have made sufficient advances that a true nuclear revolution will be possible within the following twenty years.
Just gotta rely on fossil fuels and remember that nuclear salvation will always be just around the corner the corner
I think we will never 100% remove ourselves from carbon, but we can reserve it for only necessary uses. Since using for energy is not necessary with the available technologies today, aside from the time it takes to convert, we can reduce its usage very, very significantly and still be able to use it for medication manufacturing and things like steel production.
Read about Project Drawdown solutions, pick a solution, and start working on it.
[https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions](https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions)
How about asking people or even requiring people to work from home when at all possible???? We did it successfully before. Why can't we do it again now? No one enjoys commuting to work regardless of the mode of transportation being used.
(Another side benefit: all that unused office space can be converted into apartments for all the people to live in.)
Any ways we can make our lives better and reduce emissions is pretty good. And I think if you look at say the 20% easiest sacrifices, they don't necessarily cut back our standard of living too much. For the global middle class, at least.
Population contraction.
We currently add around 73 million net new people per year. That's ~200,000 *per day*.
All of those people have a baseline inescapable level of consumption. Put aside inequalities for a minute. Every person requires food, shelter, clothing, transportation, recreation, medical care, personal possessions...
Until we reckon with population, which is the fundamental underlying root cause, the rest is just performative. We've gone from <1 billion to >8 billion in around 200 years. Anybody who fails to understand why that is eggregiously unsustainable is simply in deep denial.
What are you doing personally? I’ve been vegetarian for 10 years, I drive a small car for big trips and a smaller electric motorcycle to commute, I have an electric house and I don’t mindlessly consume clothes and consumer goods. If we all made more choices like this the world would change very quickly. Policy changes are now required because people understate their personal impact and refuse to change anything about their behaviour.
Change is coming, by design or by disaster.
Get organized!!!! Join an organization that’s being confrontational with every aspect of our current society. A lot of people are telling you what needs to happen and not how to make it happen.
Join an organization! Get organized! Start an organization.
There are unions, mutual aid networks, political organizations, etc all fighting to change the world. Join one!
Individual actions at home will never amount to anything. We cannot choose what is produced and therefore have limited control over what we must choose to live. We must act collectively.
Literally, get organized!!!!!!! GET ORGANIZED!!!!! This is the answer to this question every time! Get organized and struggle together!
I am part of Democratic Socialists of America and we are doing great work confronting the status quo and trying to create a pathway through climate change.
Join DSA: https://act.dsausa.org/donate/membership/
Well, it's a wild idea, but producing useful work from temperatures at or around 80F would do it, I'm pretty sure.
Typically, superheated steam is the method by which most electricity is generated. It's run through a turbine and the turbine turns a workshaft, which turns a generator.
The trick is finding a method by which steam can be produced at a much lower temp. If we look at nature, we can see similar rotational expenditure of enthalpy en mass in the form of cyclonic weather events. These events produce massive rotational force and expend enthalpy. They leverage enthalpy and large scale vacuum pressure to sustain the process.
If we could do this, but sustain the process and center a work shaft on the rotational field, we could expend enthalpy (mass amounts of heat) whilst also producing useful electric current. Thus achieving two goals with one engineering feat.
We move enthalpy in a similar fashion already, using heat pumps. When it is understood how to make this process produce electricity, rather than consume it, we will have solved the current crisis.
Once we figure out the process to extract useful work out of said temperatures, we would sink a dozen or so heat exchangers at or around the equator. Preferably in places that would sustain and reinforce the failing AMOC. By reinforcing the AMOC, we'd further reduce the global warming trend, and support the recovery of natural ocean currents.
Alls I need to get this started is a pile of cash
Edit: and a team of engineers, maybe a couple climate scientists too.
>The trick is finding a method by which steam can be produced at a much lower temp
>Alls I need to get this started is a pile of cash
All the money in the world won't get you around thermodynamics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot%27s_theorem_(thermodynamics)
Using the enthalpy in a mass of air to produce rotational force is not creating or destroying energy, and does not violate any law of thermodynamics. If you want proof, come to iowa and yell at a tornado and see if it stops doing tornado things.
The atmosphere is very inefficient at converting sunlight to mechanical energy (rotating mass of air), but it does not need to be very efficient since the earth receives 175 PW of power at the top of the atmosphere. The total amount of wind power in the atmosphere is on the order of 1 PW.
Lol as a matter of fact, the very idea I just explained is listed at the bottom of that page under "Carnot Battery". Ironically, Carnot actually came to this conclusion while studying steam turbines in an effort to extract increased efficiency.
The Carnot battery is fine at high temperatures, and they are being used, with sand at over 500C. They lose efficiency as temperature decreases.
https://polarnightenergy.fi/sand-battery
Yeah what I'm saying is that you don't need a mass at 500C to produce useful work.
I'm pointing out that what I'm proposing is not a violation of thermodynamic law and is already in practice, for a different use case. As outlined by the wiki page that you for some reason thought proved what I'm saying to be some mystical woo woo perpetual motion shenanigans.
All solutions are realistic. I think what you mean is realistic in a political and economic sense.
Ban all non-biodegradable plastics immediately.
Clean up the garbage in the ocean.
Stop allowing dumping of waste, period.
Quicken the transition away from fossil fuels towards electric and hydrogen, and other sustainable, non-polluting fuels.
They need to incentivize the mining of plastic from landfills. Iron is recycled all day every day. Why not plastic? We need to build more plastic recycling centers. We gotta find a use for all this plastic too. Do our houses need any more insulation? Isn’t 3d printing all recycled plastic?
Due to feedback effects which have already begun, it will be difficult to bring greenhouse gas levels down in a reasonable timeframe.
Therefore the most effective solution will be a space based solar shield, to reflect sunlight and stop it hitting earth. The creation of the so called “planetary thermostat”.
my pie in the sky stoner vision is AI drives Fission because it needs more power than anything in our human history of electricity. the energy revolution that nuclear was supposed to bring about it still fundamentally stalled in my opinion.
I think you have to take down Big Oil, which includes not only company executives but various nation leaders.
So yeah. Prob not gonna happen. The opposite is happening, in fact. People in positions of power, including politicians as well as media owners, are tripling down on the idea that climate change is not real, even though we are seeing it happen right in front of us.
They are going to get every last penny from oil and petroleum-related products, and they do not care that they are killing the planet and therefore many life forms. It is starting to affect humans too, but they don’t care. They want their power and money. They are pathological people to not care about literally the entire planet and all the life forms it hosts.
Freeze CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it in Antarctica.
[https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/apme/52/2/jamc-d-12-0110.1.xml](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/apme/52/2/jamc-d-12-0110.1.xml)
Government change their laws, pension funds change their investment strategy, blackrock, ishares, etc force companies they invest in to change their strategy while allocating away from climate impacting industries.
This to say, it’s nothing you and me can do and don’t think that a hide number of people will. Read about the BlackRock outlook and see for yourself how much they care about public opinion.
> insanity noun : extreme folly or unreasonableness
your mind is vapor locked on the ideas presented to you all your life.
kind of like, nobody alive knows exacly what nature looked, sounded, smelled like prior to the industrial revolution. when things were **balanced**.
a fiddling of some technological marvel parameters for the sole benefit of the short term pr gained to bolster some stock is foolishness. this is what the poster proposes. like the pr firm is posting in reddit right now looking to create some fake discourse in solving a credable problem. could you suspect that any system currently in action is
not the way forward.
take for instance this analysis on [iron](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2024/03/how-to-escape-from-the-iron-age/)
> The continuous growth of the steel output – the increasing steel intensity of human society – makes sustainable steel production impossible. No technology can change that because it’s not a technological problem. Like forestry can only be sustainable if the wood demand does not exceed the wood supply, steel is sustainable or not depending on the balance between (scrap) supply and (steel) demand. We may not be able to escape the Iron Age, but we have an option to escape the catch-22 that inextricably links steel production with fossil fuels.49
it proposed a dramatic reduction in steel consumption. extreme recycling to the point where we raise the bizmark to make a few more tuna cans. which is no less the same conclusion take on the consumption of plastics.
> if your theory is not true to the nature of humanness, you will end up beating humans beings on the anvil of ideology. --tm
A useful comparison in describing the present situation is to visualize a speeding freight train. The train gets a signal to stop; the brakes are applied but it doesn't stop on a dime; it takes many miles for the train to come to a full stop and anything in its path while it brakes is toast. That is the climate crisis. Dr. James Hansen has posted studies and papers which state that CO2 created today will take 10 years to mature in the atmosphere. Methane is a much more powerful insulator but doesn't last as long in the atmosphere as CO2. There are other greenhouse gases to deal with also. New satellite measuring equipment from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory revealed that the melting rate of the Greenland ice sheet is 30 million tons of ice per hour. This is 20% higher rate than thought and cannot be halted overnight despite the good intentions of concerned citizens acting in a responsible manner. The AMOC has slowed 15% and will slow even more. We need leadership to coordinate and enforce world-wide action.
Trying to realize this myself has led me to follow the sub "collapse". I really don't think we come back from where we are.
Edited to add the last thing I read, record highs in all the worst ways: https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
Well, not much. We’d have to tackle/tax every billionaire and billionaire company, since they are by far the biggest emitters. But they are so big and scary, idk if we can even touch them lol.
Spraying moondust towards the Lagrange point between the sun and earth, blocking a few percent of light hitting the earth. It would linger there for some time, but would eventually disperse. It's not permanent (which is good), cost-effective and gives us some extra time to make the transition to clean energy. It's a bold endeavour, but one of the only geo-engineering projects I could endorse.
Methane and nitrates are major contributors.
You can lab test how much light is absorbed by a gas at various frequencies. Visible light passes through co2 but infrared heat gets blocked
Religious belief has people believing it's all God's plan and thus makes inaction easy. Religious nations have the highest birthrates, and globalization is bringing the developing world into higher per capita co2 emissions. If we can't start being critical of places like Nigeria that are exploding in population, then we're hopeless to achieve anything in time. Looking to the United States, religious justification is stunting progress in many observable ways. The world is suffering from faith when we need action.
Re:ev cars, spot on. They are only picking on cars because us little guys can't fight back. How about this for a change? How about giant factories, especially those with expansive roofs and more especially those who get millions from the gov. to green up, install solar panels? How about they pick up the slack? Heading into the heat, Ontario will have to import electricity. How you gonna charge your car then? You should see some of the industrial builds in UK with some of them you can hardly see the roof for the panels. Oh, and make the company pay for them, don't hand them over at my expense. As far as greening up, it's all bullshit. Today, freelander declared they'd be discussing for 30 days what to do about the affordable evs from China. Like the rest of the world, we'll be putting tarriffs on them at insane levels, to protect jobs. Ummm, if you want to green us up as soon as possible, let them in. Nope, I have to pay 2 to 3 times much for one "made here". But it's ok if my tv, desk, funiture, clothing........and so much more, is made in a country with poor labour standards and environmental track record. All bullshit. Good luck greening the world, it's all about money and who's going to make the most out of it. I know what I'm going to get, too sore to sit and the bill.
Subsidize nuclear energy plants and research into nuclear fusion.
AKA move to clean energy as fast as possible world wide.
Why?
Because no matter what we do, the third world and much of the first world wants to eat and live a comfortable life, more than they wany to reduce green house gases.
The only answer is cheap, clean energy worldwide. So they can live a comfortable life without fossil fuels.
The only thing on the horizon capable of doing that is nuclear power plants.
You say "no stopping it now" - this misses the point, both that it's already been happening for a century to an increasingly noticeable degree, and that the upper limit is wherever we manage to stop it, so every bit counts, especially if it avoids crossing a tipping point unleashing more carbon or effects beyond our control.
The plan is this:
1) convert everything to electricity to abstract the real energy source
2) make the electric sources clean
3) stop new carbon entering the system (stop releasing fossil carbon into the active environment)
It is an incredibly intractable problem but we have all the solutions, we just lack the will or courage.
Ride your bike, install a heat pump, write your local politician, vote...
Outside of quickly phasing out fossil fuels and other fuels that require fossil fuel use in order to be harvested… Rethinking suburban car based infrastructure, economic models based on endless growth, and unfettered consumerism as a whole. Big picture stuff.
Strict population control to reduce the world's total population. More population is just more pollution and destruction to the environment, animal and sea life. No other means of recycling trying to cut some emissions matter if we just keep popping out babies. But you know let's all be concerned with switching to paper straws from plastic..... Problem solved world..... Problem solved
Yes! The Japanese have designed and built a prototype of a small modular nuclear reactor that is nearly impossible to melt down. Unfortunately the political and business elites can not become wealthier by using it, so...
The eventual collapse of modern civilization due to mass migration, starvation, resource wars, all with a backdrop of devastating multi-billion dollar natural disasters might slow down the growth.
Geo engineering is probably the only solution at this point. We won’t reduce carbon emissions anytime soon. There is zero political will to do so, and wont be until things get so bad that we won’t have any other choice
You said it yourself.
Start getting accustomed to give up some comforts and inexpensive alternatives in favor of options with lower impact.
Ultimately, we need systemic change that takes time even under the best circumstances, but while we support that, in the meantime as individuals the thing we can do is adapt our lives to prepare. Exactly how we do that is going to vary depending on our circumstances.
One thing I've done is that I have essentially managed to give up air conditioning, and I live in central Spain where it gets to 40º in the summer. It is however, very dry, so I've migrated primary cooling completely to portable evaporative coolers, which use a fraction of the energy of AC. It doesn't cool a whole room down and I need to do a lot more regular manual maintenance with water filling and cleaning, but I'm only using 120w peak per unit instead of over a thousand watts for one AC unit. My family has completely adapted to this so we're using thousands of kilowatt hours less per summer, reducing our burden on the grid and contributing much less to the urban heat island.
At some point we will shade the earth. I think that's inevitable. Then we will decarbonize the oceans and atmosphere.
At some point future generations will simply want to live more than they will want anything else.
Stop having kids. Less carbon footprints. Humans are the root of the problem.
Tax incentives to NOT have kids.
Mother Nature is trying her best: e.g. Hajj
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/06/23/hajj-deaths-mecca-pilgrimage/74186340007/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/06/23/hajj-deaths-mecca-pilgrimage/74186340007/)
I’m with you. I’m down to mitigate things but not enough people are going to be willing to regress in their comfort.
All the people that come scream about the climate on social media wouldn’t give up social media to save the planet.
UTTER TRipe. Millions of years of human evolution sans electricity. We waste so much energy, per capita we could have the exact product services with half the energy.
Increasing the amount of Nuclear power generation and stopping use of coal and natural gas would do a huge amount for slowing down climate change. Next is changing international shipping over to nuclear power, or lowering the amount of international shipping that occurs. The emissions from international shipping are greater than most countries.
On the level of a single person- VOTE. It's far more important that most people think it is.
Ending subsides on the industries driving the crisis: fossil fuels and animal agriculture. Bonus points if we actually taxed them instead.
Yep this. There’s zero reason to subsidize a highly profitable industry like oil and gas. Also a carbon tax that’s on literally everything so we can make informed decisions on what we consume based on carbon footprint, with the revenue of that tax going back to the general population. The net result being you benefit greatly if you’re more eco-conscious and you get penalized if you’re a heavy carbon user.
I can think of plenty of reasons: to ensure continued campaign/donor funding, increased chance of post-politics quid pro quo job, national security (keep the food/gas supply self reliant), race to the bottom re taxation (I.e. jobs), and I’m sure many more
I'd say there is a good reason. And that is energy independence. Look at Europe scrambling at buying LNG from anyone who's willing to provide it. Now, I will say that instead of fossil fuels a similar amount of subsidies could go into a cohesive strategy for nuclear energy. This would phase off a lot of the emissions and give us to time develop and fine tune the grid for renewable energy.
Yes, but nuclear reactors take a long time to build. We can't wait a decade to do something.
Carbon tax will just be spent by someone, and it won't actually affect carbon. The carbon will still be used and companies will consider it cost of doing business - pretty sure carbon is price inflexible. Not going to work.
It’s not the only thing we should do but it’s an effective thing. Don’t think it will have an effect? Charge more tax, there’s a price for everything where it becomes unreasonable. Also as I mentioned, it also incentivizes with rebates and, as a side effect, redistributes wealth inequality. It absolutely does work and in the least is certainly worth a go.
All of this cost will actually be passed to you. Your taxes will fund things like carbon capture that will give these companies their carbon credits and politicians pockets will be lined and round and round we go.
You do realize they can regulate it so that doesn’t happen but also it reinforces the point; if a carbon intensive activity is just having the costs added on to me, it makes that activity less enticing, which means it’s working.
[удалено]
Take the subsidies and push them somewhere else
This seems to be the only way and this will never happen if Trump gets in office and Project 2025 takes over. They want to get rid of the EPA. Good luck taxing companies lol
Monocrop agriculture is just.. innocent?
I say that where? Also, want to take a stab at what is being fed to livestock?
Or/and sue for recompense. The hydrogen industry could replace a lot of oil and gas dependence and be run from renewables instead. The "cost" is just a contrived meaning to give people a feeling of superiority (class system based on money). The loss of entire ecosystems and the subsequential end of life as we know it is going to happen with or without our help now. Switching how we live is a choice to make now, before its made for everyone in a much less friendly and more cataclysmic way. 🤔
The real issue there is that we the customer would carry that burden in the form of higher prices. There's no way big oil is going to cut their own bonuses. I think the real answer is to nationalise the oil industry and control it for our own benefit. But the political will doesn't exist.
Don't overlook that low/no-emissions alternatives would then become much more attractive in comparison, causing customers to peel away, and increased production of renewable technologies would reduce costs further and spur more adoption. Already happening with solar energy and electric vehicles. Oil could easily recede as a necessity, which is why they're fighting so hard.
They're trying to milk as much out of us as possible before the industry dies. That's been my view for years. And lately with prices at the pump not reflecting barrel price, it's a lot mote obvious
Bonus points, gold star stickers, and pizza party if we actually sued and criminalized them for deliberately lying to the public about their industries’ impact on the planet so they could continue making profits knowing they were destroying our futures.
end subsidies that make this stuff cheap a d give the money primarily to the lowest income people who would be affected by higher prices
Animal agriculture is a blindspot for so many.
How about thinning out the human herd.
How about no, considering a world's minority is responsible for the climate crisis.
And stop buying SUV, that's ridiculous.
The polycrisis
If we end subsidies on those we should also end subsidies on the equivalent non-fossil fuel energy and non-animal agriculture. Likewise we could tax the whole energy sector equally, the same goes for the agricultural sector.
One reason why hydrocarbons are cheap is because people are dumping the packaging (emissions molecules aka GHG gases) on everyone else's lawn (our common atmosphere). Accounting for their full cost (carbon pricing, carbon capture, carbon storage) would help. Another reason why hydrocarbons are cheap is because O&G producer keep increasing production, but that can only last for so long. By making it cheap today, it's bound to become rare and unaffordable at some point in the future. So from the above, the other options I will suggest today in this post are: carbon pricing and decreasing production.
I read an article that Saudi Arabia is actually cutting back on production to prop up the price on oil. Is that true?
I think if all office workers could go back to remote WFH work that would help reduce a lot of air pollution. Remember when we were all on lockdown and no one was driving around? Remember how all the smog disappeared and all the wildlife came out? Lockdown was a pretty short period of time but it almost immediately had a major positive impact on air quality and noise pollution too. Most workers prefer working remotely for many different reasons, but IMHO the environmental impact was the biggest benefit for all living things all around the world. Unfortunately our corporate and government leaders don't give a damn and learned nothing during that time. All back office non customer facing roles can be done remotely. A really progressive government would offer tax incentives to companies that had at least half of its workforce working remotely.
I really miss this tbh the air was clear in la and yea cars are a huge emitter, if we could reduce it to only necessary car transit like trucks, it would make people more in shape and also help reduce pollution
Wind and solar are the largest type of power coming online. Coal is decreasing. We are making major progress. So I don’t go for the doom and gloom outlook. That said we have a long way to go and it will involve many different technologies and life style adjustments. There is no silver bullet. We can produce cement and steal with less carbon dioxide emissions. We can start to alter agricultural practices to lower emissions as well.
Progress is progress, but calling it major is harmful to the cause. Nothing about what we've been doing is "major". We've had zero impact on rising CO2 levels. Sure it would have been worse without our "progress" for sure, but at the end of the day, we are still on a train going full speed towards a cliff, with no brakes.
Globally $1.7 trillion was invested in clean energy last year. $2 trillion is expected this year. It’s growing exponentially as the LCOE (Levelized Cost of Energy) for wind and solar is below coal and at parity with natural gas. Manufacturing costs have not stopped falling either. If that isn’t major I don’t know what is.
No it is pretty major honestly. It's later than it could have been but still major.
massive, global overhaul of how government, industry and daily life for citizens is thought of. We cannot let monetary profit drive every single decision and expect any outcome that runs counter to that. huge international cooperative efforts to drive environment-forward projects and punish entities that damage the environment im talking huge, groundswell change along the lines of revolution. every board member of every fossil fuel company along with any government official who took money from and ran cover for them put in prison for life, or worse. so, nothing that will ever realistically happen.
Consume less energy in every choice you make. Only reducing energy consumption will have any impact.
Plant trees as if your life depended on it.
I wish I had some land to do this. Even if it was just a drop in the bucket. I have all sorts of ideas and different trees that I would love to have. I know there are other ways you can support tree planting efforts, but ideally, I would take some farmland around here and convert it and plant a ton of trees.
This. I am sorry I can only upvote once. There is no such thing as a truly green source of energy. Check out “Planet of the Humans”. While the movie is rather one sided, it drives through the point that the supposed “green “ solutions are problematic in their own ways. Yeah I have solar panels, but they are not a perfect solution. These days cryptocurrencies and to a rising degree AI take up tons of energy. A number of nations consume less energy than what is consumed by cryptocurrencies.
That movie is indeed incredibly biased. It tries to elicit an emotional reaction for example by showing a wind farm in a forest. But it doesn't tell that even in a fully wind powered world, only less than 1% of forests would need to be cut for wind farms. There's many more things like that there.
It’s insane how much misinformation is spread in the comment section of this sub. That movie is not even close to informative. See [here](https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/05/michael-moores-planet-of-the-humans-documentary-peddles-dangerous-climate-denial/) for more. Support solar, wind, nuclear, and all other sources of green energy. There are rarely perfect solutions for difficult problems. That is not a reason for inaction or advocating for policies that are impossible to implement. “This new diet of mine is quite a bit healthier than my old one, but I still eat a bit too much sugar. Ah well, might as well go back to the old one of daily fried fast food and desert binges at night!”
If we also wanted to really slow it down we would stop using LLMs and bitcoin (crypto) they are the largest area of growth in energy usage.
Yes that would be reduced energy consumption
I admit I'm very ignorant about crypto. I always thought it was just a digital form of money. How does that require high energy usage? Please explain as if I'm 10 years old. Thanks
It's the computers that run the backend and are used to "mine" it. So that's millions of computers running likely all the time
Anything that requires individuals to make the right choice just because they should, will never work. Policy needs to reinforce correct decisions. Tax carbon emissions so that economics drive decisions.
Tax carbon emissions at the well head and subsidize the alternatives
Activism, talking to people, educating, raising awareness, I would argue, can be far more impactful. Depending on how convincing you are, how charismatic you are, or how capable you are in harnessing technology, media, etc.
Yes as long as your activity results in reduced energy consumption
But it has to happen at the macro level
Individual energy consumption will have no impact. Corporate energy consumption is what matters.
Everyone will exist with reduced energy consumption. Corporate reduction will not give individuals a pass to continue to consume at current levels. You’ll want to reduce sufficiently so that borrowing the community EV to bring groceries to your house once a month is within your energy budget.
If every individual consumed energy at current levels , and corporations energy consumption was actually managed, we absolutely would be where we need to be. You should try to become sustainable at a pace that you’re comfortable with because it makes sense and is the right thing to do, not because it will make a difference, because it will make no difference whatsoever.
Nothing. Get ready to be resilient and change. The cat is out of the bag. This will be the great era when the world came together... Or the eyes of the great world wars
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Correct, well said.
Most Chinese power plants that create such high emissions and massive pollution use no flue gas treatments. This has to change for the earth to stand a chance.
Uncontrolled flue gas emissions is very polluting to the environment, but US plants aren't capturing GHGs either. In terms of climate change, there isn't a large difference. China's heavy reliance on coal is a problem, but they are currently building tons of wind, solar, nuclear, and energy storage. They produce most the worlds batteries and sales of EVs in china are leading the world. Grid level changes are going slower than is desired, but the do have policy in place to make progress. Pointing at China as a reason to not do anything is disingenuous.
Lame excuse. We could all do better, not just China. And historically the United States has far, far, far, far, far, far more blood on its hands with climate change than China does.
I’m just basing my analysis on science and critical independent data and to ignore the massive amount of emissions China is producing now, a third of the world’s pollution, is ignorant at best.
You're a bigot with an agenda. Go away.
A bigot? I love this planet and care about leaving it healthy for future generations. Wish more people around the world did.
Explain why you choose to pick on China when historically the United States is by far the worst offender? Explain why you choose to pick on China when they are creating more renewable energy than any other nation on earth? Explain why you've posted about China specifically multiple times on this thread, but not about any other specific country in the entire world? China is no angel. They're a big part of the problem too. But that doesn't explain anything about what you're saying here today. There are way bigger problems than China.
please elaborate? the US has implemented far more environmental programs, that worked, than anyone else. Take the L.A basin for example, it used to be a wall of smog, yet now most days its clear. I think you just need to hate the US and are really just dismissing concerns of unregulated emmisions and overconsumption of coal going on in China. Are you being paid by the CCP for damage control?
Build more nuclear power stations. It will be expensive but worth it.
I'm French, and can only agree 👍 65% of electricity production comes from nuclear: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1263322/electrical-production-by-sector-france/
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More importantly, the carbon rips the oxygen off the iron. But there is an attempt to use hydrogen for that job, or just direct electrolysis where the oxygen would bubble up from the molten iron ore. Steel needs carbon, yes, but if that's from biochar or direct air capture somehow, you could make carbon negative steel.
Nuclear has always been the best option twenty years from now. The nuclear power that was twenty years away in the sixties would’ve solved all of our problems. Fortunately, we’ve made improvements to what they did in the sixties and now we’re only twenty years away from a true nuclear revolution. Twenty years from now, I think we’ll have made sufficient advances that a true nuclear revolution will be possible within the following twenty years. Just gotta rely on fossil fuels and remember that nuclear salvation will always be just around the corner the corner
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I think we will never 100% remove ourselves from carbon, but we can reserve it for only necessary uses. Since using for energy is not necessary with the available technologies today, aside from the time it takes to convert, we can reduce its usage very, very significantly and still be able to use it for medication manufacturing and things like steel production.
Read about Project Drawdown solutions, pick a solution, and start working on it. [https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions](https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions)
Ya, asking people to bike to work or carpool is really way too much to ask to save the world.
How about asking people or even requiring people to work from home when at all possible???? We did it successfully before. Why can't we do it again now? No one enjoys commuting to work regardless of the mode of transportation being used. (Another side benefit: all that unused office space can be converted into apartments for all the people to live in.)
Any ways we can make our lives better and reduce emissions is pretty good. And I think if you look at say the 20% easiest sacrifices, they don't necessarily cut back our standard of living too much. For the global middle class, at least.
geothermal energy has a big potential and it provides jobs for oil drilling rigs and their crews, and makes better use of that industry!
Population contraction. We currently add around 73 million net new people per year. That's ~200,000 *per day*. All of those people have a baseline inescapable level of consumption. Put aside inequalities for a minute. Every person requires food, shelter, clothing, transportation, recreation, medical care, personal possessions... Until we reckon with population, which is the fundamental underlying root cause, the rest is just performative. We've gone from <1 billion to >8 billion in around 200 years. Anybody who fails to understand why that is eggregiously unsustainable is simply in deep denial.
What are you doing personally? I’ve been vegetarian for 10 years, I drive a small car for big trips and a smaller electric motorcycle to commute, I have an electric house and I don’t mindlessly consume clothes and consumer goods. If we all made more choices like this the world would change very quickly. Policy changes are now required because people understate their personal impact and refuse to change anything about their behaviour. Change is coming, by design or by disaster.
Get organized!!!! Join an organization that’s being confrontational with every aspect of our current society. A lot of people are telling you what needs to happen and not how to make it happen. Join an organization! Get organized! Start an organization. There are unions, mutual aid networks, political organizations, etc all fighting to change the world. Join one! Individual actions at home will never amount to anything. We cannot choose what is produced and therefore have limited control over what we must choose to live. We must act collectively. Literally, get organized!!!!!!! GET ORGANIZED!!!!! This is the answer to this question every time! Get organized and struggle together! I am part of Democratic Socialists of America and we are doing great work confronting the status quo and trying to create a pathway through climate change. Join DSA: https://act.dsausa.org/donate/membership/
Well, it's a wild idea, but producing useful work from temperatures at or around 80F would do it, I'm pretty sure. Typically, superheated steam is the method by which most electricity is generated. It's run through a turbine and the turbine turns a workshaft, which turns a generator. The trick is finding a method by which steam can be produced at a much lower temp. If we look at nature, we can see similar rotational expenditure of enthalpy en mass in the form of cyclonic weather events. These events produce massive rotational force and expend enthalpy. They leverage enthalpy and large scale vacuum pressure to sustain the process. If we could do this, but sustain the process and center a work shaft on the rotational field, we could expend enthalpy (mass amounts of heat) whilst also producing useful electric current. Thus achieving two goals with one engineering feat. We move enthalpy in a similar fashion already, using heat pumps. When it is understood how to make this process produce electricity, rather than consume it, we will have solved the current crisis. Once we figure out the process to extract useful work out of said temperatures, we would sink a dozen or so heat exchangers at or around the equator. Preferably in places that would sustain and reinforce the failing AMOC. By reinforcing the AMOC, we'd further reduce the global warming trend, and support the recovery of natural ocean currents. Alls I need to get this started is a pile of cash Edit: and a team of engineers, maybe a couple climate scientists too.
>The trick is finding a method by which steam can be produced at a much lower temp >Alls I need to get this started is a pile of cash All the money in the world won't get you around thermodynamics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot%27s_theorem_(thermodynamics)
Using the enthalpy in a mass of air to produce rotational force is not creating or destroying energy, and does not violate any law of thermodynamics. If you want proof, come to iowa and yell at a tornado and see if it stops doing tornado things.
The atmosphere is very inefficient at converting sunlight to mechanical energy (rotating mass of air), but it does not need to be very efficient since the earth receives 175 PW of power at the top of the atmosphere. The total amount of wind power in the atmosphere is on the order of 1 PW.
Lol as a matter of fact, the very idea I just explained is listed at the bottom of that page under "Carnot Battery". Ironically, Carnot actually came to this conclusion while studying steam turbines in an effort to extract increased efficiency.
The Carnot battery is fine at high temperatures, and they are being used, with sand at over 500C. They lose efficiency as temperature decreases. https://polarnightenergy.fi/sand-battery
Yeah what I'm saying is that you don't need a mass at 500C to produce useful work. I'm pointing out that what I'm proposing is not a violation of thermodynamic law and is already in practice, for a different use case. As outlined by the wiki page that you for some reason thought proved what I'm saying to be some mystical woo woo perpetual motion shenanigans.
Stop reproducing.
Help developing nations "get off coal"
All solutions are realistic. I think what you mean is realistic in a political and economic sense. Ban all non-biodegradable plastics immediately. Clean up the garbage in the ocean. Stop allowing dumping of waste, period. Quicken the transition away from fossil fuels towards electric and hydrogen, and other sustainable, non-polluting fuels.
They need to incentivize the mining of plastic from landfills. Iron is recycled all day every day. Why not plastic? We need to build more plastic recycling centers. We gotta find a use for all this plastic too. Do our houses need any more insulation? Isn’t 3d printing all recycled plastic?
Due to feedback effects which have already begun, it will be difficult to bring greenhouse gas levels down in a reasonable timeframe. Therefore the most effective solution will be a space based solar shield, to reflect sunlight and stop it hitting earth. The creation of the so called “planetary thermostat”.
my pie in the sky stoner vision is AI drives Fission because it needs more power than anything in our human history of electricity. the energy revolution that nuclear was supposed to bring about it still fundamentally stalled in my opinion.
White rooves....more trees inside cities
ban large scale cattle grazing/ sue fossil fuel companies
I thought feedlot cattle was worse?
No one wants to hear this but degrowth
True, it is happening but far too slowly
Not sure no one wants to hear it
Humans going extinct would be a great start
I think you have to take down Big Oil, which includes not only company executives but various nation leaders. So yeah. Prob not gonna happen. The opposite is happening, in fact. People in positions of power, including politicians as well as media owners, are tripling down on the idea that climate change is not real, even though we are seeing it happen right in front of us. They are going to get every last penny from oil and petroleum-related products, and they do not care that they are killing the planet and therefore many life forms. It is starting to affect humans too, but they don’t care. They want their power and money. They are pathological people to not care about literally the entire planet and all the life forms it hosts.
Freeze CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it in Antarctica. [https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/apme/52/2/jamc-d-12-0110.1.xml](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/apme/52/2/jamc-d-12-0110.1.xml)
Government change their laws, pension funds change their investment strategy, blackrock, ishares, etc force companies they invest in to change their strategy while allocating away from climate impacting industries. This to say, it’s nothing you and me can do and don’t think that a hide number of people will. Read about the BlackRock outlook and see for yourself how much they care about public opinion.
> insanity noun : extreme folly or unreasonableness your mind is vapor locked on the ideas presented to you all your life. kind of like, nobody alive knows exacly what nature looked, sounded, smelled like prior to the industrial revolution. when things were **balanced**. a fiddling of some technological marvel parameters for the sole benefit of the short term pr gained to bolster some stock is foolishness. this is what the poster proposes. like the pr firm is posting in reddit right now looking to create some fake discourse in solving a credable problem. could you suspect that any system currently in action is not the way forward. take for instance this analysis on [iron](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2024/03/how-to-escape-from-the-iron-age/) > The continuous growth of the steel output – the increasing steel intensity of human society – makes sustainable steel production impossible. No technology can change that because it’s not a technological problem. Like forestry can only be sustainable if the wood demand does not exceed the wood supply, steel is sustainable or not depending on the balance between (scrap) supply and (steel) demand. We may not be able to escape the Iron Age, but we have an option to escape the catch-22 that inextricably links steel production with fossil fuels.49 it proposed a dramatic reduction in steel consumption. extreme recycling to the point where we raise the bizmark to make a few more tuna cans. which is no less the same conclusion take on the consumption of plastics. > if your theory is not true to the nature of humanness, you will end up beating humans beings on the anvil of ideology. --tm
I’ve heard it said that adding tiny iron filings to the sea will greatly multiply algae, etc!
Why bother?
A useful comparison in describing the present situation is to visualize a speeding freight train. The train gets a signal to stop; the brakes are applied but it doesn't stop on a dime; it takes many miles for the train to come to a full stop and anything in its path while it brakes is toast. That is the climate crisis. Dr. James Hansen has posted studies and papers which state that CO2 created today will take 10 years to mature in the atmosphere. Methane is a much more powerful insulator but doesn't last as long in the atmosphere as CO2. There are other greenhouse gases to deal with also. New satellite measuring equipment from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory revealed that the melting rate of the Greenland ice sheet is 30 million tons of ice per hour. This is 20% higher rate than thought and cannot be halted overnight despite the good intentions of concerned citizens acting in a responsible manner. The AMOC has slowed 15% and will slow even more. We need leadership to coordinate and enforce world-wide action.
A Carbon tax.
Trying to realize this myself has led me to follow the sub "collapse". I really don't think we come back from where we are. Edited to add the last thing I read, record highs in all the worst ways: https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
We need sane politicians. No more Putin, Trump, Nethanyahu, Xi, Kim, Kahmenei, etc. Vote!
Do you remember when the plague was on when hardly anyone went to work and didn’t drive? Yeah, so like that.
Well republicanss wants to get rid of the NOAA so probably not much.
Well, not much. We’d have to tackle/tax every billionaire and billionaire company, since they are by far the biggest emitters. But they are so big and scary, idk if we can even touch them lol.
Lots can be done. Most of it won’t be done. We are fucked
Spraying moondust towards the Lagrange point between the sun and earth, blocking a few percent of light hitting the earth. It would linger there for some time, but would eventually disperse. It's not permanent (which is good), cost-effective and gives us some extra time to make the transition to clean energy. It's a bold endeavour, but one of the only geo-engineering projects I could endorse.
It’s simple. Just don’t exhale. All that CO2 savings will allow the rest of us to get on with life . No hysterics about climate change.
Nothing. Maybe 50 years ago if we had taken action then, when we learned of the problem, maybe. But perhaps, even then, it would have been too late.
Realisticaly the climate had been changing ever since we have had one. It's huberis to think we can alter the climate of the entire world.
Plant More Trees and [https://kisstheground.com/](https://kisstheground.com/)
How do we know for certain that it's the c02 causing the climate to change?
Methane and nitrates are major contributors. You can lab test how much light is absorbed by a gas at various frequencies. Visible light passes through co2 but infrared heat gets blocked
Religious belief has people believing it's all God's plan and thus makes inaction easy. Religious nations have the highest birthrates, and globalization is bringing the developing world into higher per capita co2 emissions. If we can't start being critical of places like Nigeria that are exploding in population, then we're hopeless to achieve anything in time. Looking to the United States, religious justification is stunting progress in many observable ways. The world is suffering from faith when we need action.
Re:ev cars, spot on. They are only picking on cars because us little guys can't fight back. How about this for a change? How about giant factories, especially those with expansive roofs and more especially those who get millions from the gov. to green up, install solar panels? How about they pick up the slack? Heading into the heat, Ontario will have to import electricity. How you gonna charge your car then? You should see some of the industrial builds in UK with some of them you can hardly see the roof for the panels. Oh, and make the company pay for them, don't hand them over at my expense. As far as greening up, it's all bullshit. Today, freelander declared they'd be discussing for 30 days what to do about the affordable evs from China. Like the rest of the world, we'll be putting tarriffs on them at insane levels, to protect jobs. Ummm, if you want to green us up as soon as possible, let them in. Nope, I have to pay 2 to 3 times much for one "made here". But it's ok if my tv, desk, funiture, clothing........and so much more, is made in a country with poor labour standards and environmental track record. All bullshit. Good luck greening the world, it's all about money and who's going to make the most out of it. I know what I'm going to get, too sore to sit and the bill.
Reduce speed limit nationally to 45. Then, phase in no drive days and encourage microcars, work from home and limit jet plane use.
Subsidize nuclear energy plants and research into nuclear fusion. AKA move to clean energy as fast as possible world wide. Why? Because no matter what we do, the third world and much of the first world wants to eat and live a comfortable life, more than they wany to reduce green house gases. The only answer is cheap, clean energy worldwide. So they can live a comfortable life without fossil fuels. The only thing on the horizon capable of doing that is nuclear power plants.
Boycott all goods from China and India. Unregulated mass polluters.
https://youtu.be/uypw-f-kxBA
Nothing we do is causing it. There’s nothing we can do, refrain from doing, or tax that can “slow it down”.
Do something about China and India.
inject everyone with poison, and to reduce the population.
You say "no stopping it now" - this misses the point, both that it's already been happening for a century to an increasingly noticeable degree, and that the upper limit is wherever we manage to stop it, so every bit counts, especially if it avoids crossing a tipping point unleashing more carbon or effects beyond our control. The plan is this: 1) convert everything to electricity to abstract the real energy source 2) make the electric sources clean 3) stop new carbon entering the system (stop releasing fossil carbon into the active environment) It is an incredibly intractable problem but we have all the solutions, we just lack the will or courage. Ride your bike, install a heat pump, write your local politician, vote...
Look up Project Drawdown
Outside of quickly phasing out fossil fuels and other fuels that require fossil fuel use in order to be harvested… Rethinking suburban car based infrastructure, economic models based on endless growth, and unfettered consumerism as a whole. Big picture stuff.
Strict population control to reduce the world's total population. More population is just more pollution and destruction to the environment, animal and sea life. No other means of recycling trying to cut some emissions matter if we just keep popping out babies. But you know let's all be concerned with switching to paper straws from plastic..... Problem solved world..... Problem solved
Hey, I've heard there is no club
Iron fertilization of the oceans to create massive algae blooms, trapping huge amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere.
use wood for everything
Yes! The Japanese have designed and built a prototype of a small modular nuclear reactor that is nearly impossible to melt down. Unfortunately the political and business elites can not become wealthier by using it, so...
Cold fusion.
Cold fusion would just boil water. You still need a turbine and generator. Those will still cost more than photovoltaic cells.
The eventual collapse of modern civilization due to mass migration, starvation, resource wars, all with a backdrop of devastating multi-billion dollar natural disasters might slow down the growth.
Geo engineering is probably the only solution at this point. We won’t reduce carbon emissions anytime soon. There is zero political will to do so, and wont be until things get so bad that we won’t have any other choice
You said it yourself. Start getting accustomed to give up some comforts and inexpensive alternatives in favor of options with lower impact. Ultimately, we need systemic change that takes time even under the best circumstances, but while we support that, in the meantime as individuals the thing we can do is adapt our lives to prepare. Exactly how we do that is going to vary depending on our circumstances. One thing I've done is that I have essentially managed to give up air conditioning, and I live in central Spain where it gets to 40º in the summer. It is however, very dry, so I've migrated primary cooling completely to portable evaporative coolers, which use a fraction of the energy of AC. It doesn't cool a whole room down and I need to do a lot more regular manual maintenance with water filling and cleaning, but I'm only using 120w peak per unit instead of over a thousand watts for one AC unit. My family has completely adapted to this so we're using thousands of kilowatt hours less per summer, reducing our burden on the grid and contributing much less to the urban heat island.
At some point we will shade the earth. I think that's inevitable. Then we will decarbonize the oceans and atmosphere. At some point future generations will simply want to live more than they will want anything else.
https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions
Economy is population-driven. Think of it what you will.
We should find fossil fuel executives and lobbyists in real life and give them a firm handshake to let them know they’re doing a great job
Degrowth
Stop having kids. Less carbon footprints. Humans are the root of the problem. Tax incentives to NOT have kids. Mother Nature is trying her best: e.g. Hajj [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/06/23/hajj-deaths-mecca-pilgrimage/74186340007/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/06/23/hajj-deaths-mecca-pilgrimage/74186340007/)
I’m with you. I’m down to mitigate things but not enough people are going to be willing to regress in their comfort. All the people that come scream about the climate on social media wouldn’t give up social media to save the planet.
Live your life, do what you can, be happy.
UTTER TRipe. Millions of years of human evolution sans electricity. We waste so much energy, per capita we could have the exact product services with half the energy.
Stop burning fossil fuel. 20 years ago.
Increasing the amount of Nuclear power generation and stopping use of coal and natural gas would do a huge amount for slowing down climate change. Next is changing international shipping over to nuclear power, or lowering the amount of international shipping that occurs. The emissions from international shipping are greater than most countries. On the level of a single person- VOTE. It's far more important that most people think it is.
Vote Maga tf out
We need to set up big fans - really big fans - and blow all that mean ole CO2 to outer space!! That’ll do it!!