How would you propose we actually combat climate change?
9mon 24d ago by sh.itjust.works/u/bridgeenjoyer in asklemmyId like lemmings take on how they would actually reduce emissions on a level that actually makes a difference (assuming we can still stop it, which is likely false by now, but let's ignore that)
I dont think its as simple as "tax billionaires out of existence and ban jets, airplanes, and cars" because thats not realistic.
Bonus points if you can think of any solutions that dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life.
I know yall will have fun with this!
solutions that dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life
This is not possible. Barring some miracle technologies being developed, we would have to radically change our standards of living and give up our modern convenient lives to make meaningful changes.
Our standards of living should not include planned obsolescence where you gotta buy or exchange a new phone every year, stuff should be designed to last at least 10 years, if not longer...
Renewable electricity seems like it gets us most of the way there.
The remaining problems I can think of are concrete and fuel for air travel. We could probably go without concrete, although it would suck, and otherwise we just have to recapture the CO2 from the atmosphere. Direct capture and storage has proven trucky because the kilns are large, hot, and rotating, making them difficult to seal. E-fuel or biofuel would have to be the solution for air travel. Maybe airships are close enough to qualify as non-disruptive, I guess.
attack the capitalist system.
Wow thanks for this insightful answer
And the free market value system, because it doesn't value externalities.
With combat.
Stop burning fossil fuels. There is no way that doesn't include that.
How we gonna melt steel, copper, titanium, tungsten, etc?
Sadly, fossil fuels aren't going away anytime soon. ☹️
There are ways to melt those without burning fossil fuels. Whether the alternatives are easy, affordable, or can run at a useful rate is debatable
Iceland refines a lot of metal and I think they're close, or at, 100% renewable.
Yup, Iceland has such cheap geothermal and hydro energy that they just use electric furnaces to smelt aluminum.
Arc furnaces are standard already.
The thing you really need a reducing agent for is smelting, and for that hydrogen is already used at smaller scales.
Vote.
Edit: to be clear, vote in every election you have access to. Local voting and primaries are just important. Voting even if you don’t like any of the options is still important.
If you don’t vote then you’re part of the problem.
Depends on where you live.
In some places, voting is extremely important and can affect things majorly.
In some places, voting is completely useless because the voter has legitimately no power in a rigged system.
If a rigged vote gets 100 votes to person A and 0 votes for person B then you will think person B’s ideas aren’t valid.
If a rigged vote gets 100 for person A and 35 for person B, well person B’s ideas shouldn’t be ignored. It also shows the 90 people that didn’t vote that maybe they should vote next time.
In a rigged election, you’re not going to be delivered legitimate vote totals.
But it's time to disrupt 99% of life.
Survey humanity, produce an agreed on level of technology and lifestyle.
We probably need to limit ourselves to housing, food, internet, and safety/defense for everyone and not much else - then slow all industries based on HOW people want to live.
So getting rid of things like, plastic toys, gizmos, extravagances. Phones wouldn't be updated as often. People would only be able to update their tech if they could meaningfully show it was necessary.
Lots of technology companies would be folded. Lots of industries would be nationalised and folded. International tourism would be greatly restricted. All the stuff we don't need basically.
People would be mostly employed in the basics: Housing, food, internet. Too far beyond that and you'd have to rely on local people/groups/makers/repair companies.
So massive degrowth, nationalization, and restrictions/regulations to the market.
Most of all, corporations would no longer count as people. In fact society should have to rely on person to person contracting. I don't really think corporations should exist becuase they become Zombies/Golems that do a lot of destructive things.
Basically degrowth, and restructuring society around degrowth.
This is the one post I've seen here that actually tackles the main problems. Climate change can't be stopped without degrowth, which means putting a stop to capitalism.
I'd like to add: while there would be a lot we'd have to give up, life under a degrowth economy would be good. Way better than what we have now. We'd all have more leisure time to focus on stuff that matters. Sure, we'd have fewer gadgets and toys, but we'd be able to spend more time with loved ones and engaging in creative and fulfilling hobbies.
I agree but you should emphasize the positives of degrowth otherwise everyone either gets scared or dismisses it as a non-serious solution politically. The main one being more leisure and less work.
Yeah, but that's a fantasy, people will not do that. OP is specifically asking for something more realistic.
All other "solutions" in this thread are so funny to me. People thinking more efficient/more sustainable stuff will change anything. Solar panels and whatever still need to be produced, causing emissions. If you continue growing infinitely, you're going to cause infinite emissions with that.
Security would go a long way. Not national security but life security. For example I own a bunch of tools and I sorta wish I did not. If I was guaranteed access to something like a tool library that had everything I might need to buy from home depot of such I would not carry any. Heck it could be home depot where when you buy the paint you get the rollers and brushes and equipment to clean it up with your purchase and you return it when your done. Heck could return the leftover paint. Also internet replaces a lot of things. My wife and I are committed to not buying physical things so we using streaming services and buy digital copies of stuff. We get books in pdf now and use games and such to get away from toys and such.
Ban planned obsolescence and make a rigorous standard that any new device is designed repairable, reliable and long lasting enough to last at least 10 years if treated right, 20+ years for vehicles and machinery..
This whole 'you gotta get a new thing every year' era causes sooo much unnecessary waste and pollution ☹️
This would have almost 0 impact on climate change. It wouldn't stop new stuff being produced and bought, people still want shinier things than they had yesterday, long lasting or not. It'd be a positive change, but not for climate change.
Make less shit, factories would slow down, less resources used, less pollution emitted, less energy used, and as a result, there would be at least some positive impact on climate change.
Granted it might be minimal, even negligible, but it would make some difference.
Many many would not get the new shiny. In my lifetime my vehicles have had few appreciable improvements. Mostly around safety like air bags and view cameras. I could care less about the radio and if I did its easy enough to upgrade that part.
The idea of personal action vs. corporate/government action is a false choice. The government can force the corpos to stop burning the planet, but that will mean significant lifestyle changes for everybody.
It also means getting our shit together about immigration/ migration/ refugees. And not just in the US, but globally. A humanitarian catastrophe is assured otherwise.
I'm not optimistic.
Genuinely there needs to be a fee that companies must pay for the pollution they create, with it written into law that they can't palm the cost off on their customers.
We need to move shipping away from the 'barely more refined than crude oil' fuels they use
We need to ensure protection of the oceans by making it so that outflowing waste from industry never reaches the watercourse in the first place.
Single use plastics need to be removed from the supply chain (alternatively changed at the production level so they're made from plant cellulose or a material that doesn't break down into PFOAS or microplastics)
We also need to block petrochemical companies from lobbying or interfering with politics, and prevent them from funding smear campaigns against renewable energy sources
dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life.
This is ridiculous, because the problem inherently requires cooperative change, and as we've seen people will throw shitfits over things as small as plastic straws.
A big thing would be to start switching from ever expanding auto infrastructure to public transit systems where possible.
- Fewer vehicles that transport more people
- Can use the space that is currently occupied for parking cars better
Another big thing requires changing our diets. Some types of food are more resource intensive than others, but also we ship food all over the planet and the resources for transport also contributes. Eating food that is in season on your continent would make a big difference.
The last thing is maybe the least obvious to regular people, but maybe we don't need to build that data center yet if we can't power it without fossil fuel. We need to entirely stop expanding energy usage until we've switched over entirely to sustainables.
In summary, basically everything that needs to happen is going to affect regular people, and they're going to have to get over it, or we're going to make the planet completely unlivable.
and as we’ve seen people will throw shitfits over things as small as plastic straws.
That's still depressing as hell, on both sides. One because they're freaking out over slightly different straws, the other because it's such a token gesture to plastics pollution that solves nothing.
Yup. ALL single use plastics except maybe for medical need to go. I take my own containers to restaurants for leftovers and people act like I have 2 heads
My jurisdiction has EPR now. I'm pretty curious to see how that goes.
Agree with you here, life needs to change. For OP I'd say - define change.
I've gone almost completely carbon neutral (I mean, outside of groceries and things I literally need to survive), but for my house and my daily routine, I'm happy. I'd say my life has been changed - but not much. Now if you asked my conservative family if my life changed they'd be clutching their pearls and fainting.
I have:
- Went from a 2-car household to a 1-car household, replacing the aging vehicle with an EV with an in-home charger
- My spouse can only drive to work (US based), but I now take the bus
- I currently use Lime and am getting an e-bike soon for local travel
- I've switched our HVAC system from gas furnace to a heat pump. I still have gas if it gets insanely cold, but last year it only turned on twice, so my usage is down about 95% from where it was before
- My water heater is still gas, but within the next year I'll be converting it
- My electricity is 100% renewable in my area, but even if it wasn't all of this would still be more efficient, and even then solar and batteries are still on the table.
For me these have been relatively easy changes, minor impacts to my life. If I even mention that we went down to be a one car house my conservative family freaks out - unable to even imagine it. So for them yeah life would be pretty different - but as a whole it'd be better for us.
It's easy to blame the corporations, but we buy their products. Yes the oil and gas are the worst. You know what would change those companies though? If we all stopped buying so much oil and gas. "But what about airlines or other industries". Again, we're the ones who buy them. We don't have much rail where we are but I vote with my wallet and take rail whenever I can. I avoid flying unless it's the only option. If everyone tried to do even some of these things we'd be having a noticeable impact. (Force the corps too, they don't get off scot-free, but damnit neither do we. We can do both)
Tax billionaires out of existence, ban fossil fuels, invest in carbon capture, ban corporate greed, switch all solutions to the slightly more expensive, green alternative
Eat the rich. I remember when the Twitter account that posted where Musk's private jet is all the time and holy shit, he travelled a lot.
Like, multiple times a week where this machine that fucks up the environment is used to transport a single person.
Or the disgusting mega yacht that Zuckerberg uses.
During my whole life I'm not gonna destroy the environment like every single one of leeches on society does in a month.
Engineer a virus to send back in time to slow down CO2 emissions
wait a minute...
andromeda strain
Passed it a while ago. That doesn't mean we can't slow down.
Humanity will evolve to deal with the changes, maybe. Maybe not.
Honestly, if capitalism stopped tomorrow, and we all did community planting. Were restricted on car usage, and did carbon capture techniques that were proven to work.... All en mass, globally, I suspect we could change things.
The problem is Capitalism and freemarket "progress". The endless carbon fuelled march to no where (in the name of money). A lot could be done without that humming away like nothing is wrong, but politicians want to protect Free Market Capitalism and aren't laying down reasonable restrictions.
There are no carbon capture and storage technologies proven to work at a meaningful scale.
Geoengineering is probably the only way to counteract things now.
But that involves fucking around with the bottom of our food chain in the oceans so there's obviously a good deal of reluctance to start down that path.
It's not an on/off switch. Everything we can do will lessen the impact even if it can't be stopped.
But as others mention, real impact comes from governments and international cooperation, not individual actions. Hence why voting is so important.
There's always damage control that can be done
This is extremely important: we are not at the point of no return.
Climate change can be stopped, even now. It will take lots of work, but it's possible.
ClimateAdam, who has a PhD in climate science from Oxford, made a video about this. It's 5 years old, but he's still making videos with similar points today. It's my understanding this is still the predominant view amongst climate scientists. The main reason I think this is that there aren't many calling for geoengineering, which if we were at the point of no return would be something we'd have to explore.
The reason this is so important is because as climate change denial becomes more and more infeasible, it will get replaced primarily with climate change defeatism. The sooner we start pushing back on this, the better.
"Point of no return" is a simplistic concept. It depends on the your threshold for how bad it gets. Most climate scientists would agree that we're just at or about to pass the 1.5°C target. But they would also agree that ever extra fraction of a degree matters. It's not a question of "when are we fucked?" Its a question of "how quickly can we act to minimise severity of change?"
Source: am climate scientist, have been to a major climate conference in the last few months, and talk to other climate scientists regularly.
I am not a climate scientist and have not been to conferences but im a reasonably intelligent human who has five decades of experience on this planet and I can see we are already fucked in that things have changed in how the planet works. I see the storms (not just the news making ones but how unoften light rain has become around me and how often general storms have become), I see the flooding, I see the change in the seasons, etc. To me its now when are we fucked because again we already see that we are. To me its how roughly we want the fucking to be ultimately and can we bring it back down to a more tender and loving level.
To me its how roughly we want the fucking to be ultimately and can we bring it back down to a more tender and loving level.
More or less, yeah
No reasonable scientist is going to call for geoengineering unless they could be sure they are not making it worse. We are certainly in a point of no return in that we will not get back to 0 but until we are actually falling apart we won't know for sure if we can't survive at +3 or +5.
In my opinion it is not possible to fight climate change while maintaining the same standards of life that we have now. Even if we are going to try, this will probably not be followed by many states with big population, so probably its not gonna work. From what I see, everyone is fighting climate change today by posting stuff on their social medias but when it comes to change habits, its another story.
Anyway, my idea is that we don't have to ban things like cars and airplanes but we can use them more efficiently. We can repair more and buy less. Do we really need to change a car after 100.000 km? In my country, If you live in a big city you can use public transport most of the time, so why we don't start to connect well also the small places?
Do we really need to buy fruits and vegetables that comes from other continents and needs to be chemically treated, transported, stocked and consequently generates pollution?
In the consumer technology Sector people usually changes their computers and phones every 3-5 years even if the hardware is still working well. The software is usually becoming more heavier over the years without adding real features (See Meta's apps). We must accept that this is not compatible with fighting climate change because we are producing too much waste that is avoidable together with massive exploitation of resources. The majority of users are not educated to understand how our technology works at its most basic level, I think that we may start from here.
Maybe we cannot erase billionaires but we can stop adulating or hating them and giving them unnecessary notoriety.
It's not everything obviously, but mandate that all people who can do their job from home must do their job from home. This will take a bite out of cars and improve general human morale.
Eliminate carbon trading programs and just set hard limits. Went over your allocation of carbon? Guess you're done for the quarter.
Eliminate LLCs. Bring on the accountability.
Proviso of this is that, globally, politicians grow a spine, along with a sense of morality, and long term planning. It would also require them to deal with the money hoarding issues with the hyper rich.
-
The first step is a massive push for renewables. They should be representing 200-500% of grid demand regularly. If nuclear can get up to speed and be part of this, great, but we can't wait on it.
-
That excess power should be soaked up by large scale, portable, energy storage. Green hydrogen is the current best option, but synthetic fossil fuels could also take up the slack. Depending on the area, desalination could also be combined into this.
-
We seriously decarbonise the transport networks. For vans and smaller, electric vehicles win. BYD have demonstrated that low cost electric cars are viable. For larger vehicles, where electric becomes inefficient, hydrogen is viable. This is where a lot of the excess hydrogen will be going.
-
Carbon credits with teeth. Rather than relying on a planned economy mindset, we can make capitalism work for us. We need a global fixed carbon emission limit. This limit should trend towards net zero on a preset timetable. Credits are bid on, akin to stock market trades. Companies must have credits by the end of the year/period. The fine for not having credits should be a multiple of the closing credits price (10x?). The fine for falsification should be multiples of that, erring towards corporate execution levels.
This will force easy savings out of the market quickly. It will then force compulsory emitters to factor in Carbon costs.
- Combined with the carbon credits will be negative credits. If a group takes a ton of CO² out of the air, long term, they gain a new credit. They can sell this to emitters. This will provide the CO² emissions industry requires, while meeting net zero.
An example of this might be large scale bio capture on the open ocean. Grow seaweed etc on pontoons, and turn it into a solid. This can then be locked up (old coal mines?) taking carbon out permanently.
- Geo engineering. There are multiple methods of reducing incident sunlight on the earth. Everything from powders in the upper atmosphere, to mylar solar shades at the Lagrange point. They will be short term fixes, but will buy us time.
None of these require massive reductions in quality of life. They do require changes in how we do things. It's also worth noting that I've not covered the numerous problems to be solved e.g. power grid upgrades to account for renewables. None of these should be insurmountable however, just engineering, or political/policing challenges.
An no, I've no fucking idea how to get politicians to grow a spine and do what's required for our long term comfort/survival. Fixing the planet? That's just a (really big) engineering problem. Fixing human nature? ...Fuck knows.
You are asking two how to questions "combat climate change" and "reduce emissions"
To realistically combat climate change:
- Admit that we need to try geoengineering (we are already doing this with all the CO2 and CH4 going into the atmosphere)
- Weather it is SO2 injection or cloud seeding to artificially increase the albido; we need to reduce incident solar radiation to give us a few more decades to actually reduce emissions
To reduce emissions:
- Tackle the biggest emissions first.
- Electrification of the passenger fleet; that means batteries. Keep fuel cells for heavy transport (maybe)
- Encourage electric biking. And other micro-mobility. Along with better public transport.
- Normalise a historical style diet, meat is a treat only once or twice a week.
- Reduce concrete construction; keep it for the important things like the foundations.
- Reduce the practice of packaging everything in plastic; again keep it for the important things only like electrical insulation.
- Massive ramp up of solar and wind around the world.
- Where we use fossil fuels, ask is this important enough to use FF here?
Carbon taxes:
- Tax CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) at a reasonable rate to encourage all of the reduction measures.
- At less than $65NZD/T the cost is too low to encourage significant movement on the issues.
- Have a ratcheting scheme in the CO2 market, i.e. add $5-8/yr/T for CO2e; in 10 years the price will be between $110-140/T. At the 10yr mark, make the ratchet $10-15/yr/T.
- Add a carbon tariff; basically make it more expensive to buy from countries that are not pulling their weight.
- Be careful not to double tax, this is important for buy in from the public. i.e. the carbon tax on fuel should be exempt from sales tax, taxing a tax is a great way to alienate people.
increase the albido
My brain saw this as 'libido' for a second. I was like, you want us to fuck our way to carbon neutrality?
I was about to suggest cross-posting to imgur when I realized I merely misread the word :\
Well it is a hypothesis that needs testing...
Quagmire, is that you?
In your defense, it’s actually spelled “albedo”.
Exactly, I think that's a lot of what threw me.
Major corporations caused this, only major corporations can solve it. Laws would have to be passed requiring them to offset the damage from everything they do. Coops would need to be set up wherever possible for one industry to reuse waste from another. Subsidies would need to be ethically set up to encourage industry involved with cleaning the environment. Cooperation between nations to combat global issues would be needed. Actual consequences for industries it nations that violate. Education!! And most importantly convince half the world's population to give a shit or even believe the problem exists. I've probably missed some.
The alternative would be magic.
Yeah, between the two, I think magic is probably more realistic. Let's go with that.
Geoengineering: Whether through launching solar shades into space to block sunlight and cool the planet down, pump aerosols into the atmosphere, cloud seeding, or anything else. I think this is where our research should be going. I think it's too late to avoid the worst-case-scenarios of climate change from merely cutting emissions, so more drastic measures to alleviate or even reverse the effects may be necessary. Plus it'll help us with any future colonizing and terraforming of worlds outside of Earth.
Public transport infrastructure to reduce our reliance on cars & planes: While I don't think hyperloops or a transatlantic tunnel are feasible, building tens of thousands of kilometres worth of overground and underground railway routes to interconnect towns and cities with high speed maglev trains is. China have the right idea.
Right to work from home: Remote working reduces our dependency on cars and frees up real estate to address the various housing crises we have.
Right to repair and outlawing planned obsolescence: Should we have to buy a new smartphone every 3 or so years because Apple or Samsung want to maximize profits? Do we care at all about the amount of electronic waste we're producing?
Accelerate our efforts to reverse desertification and plant trillions more trees: If we can turn parts of the Sahel, Gobi Desert and the Australian outback green, that could have a very beneficial effect on the environment.
Oh hell no. Lets not fuck with nature even more. We must not play god! Geoengineering might cause more problems than its use!
It's the only viable option given how much we've fucked the planet up.
Stopping (not reducing) emissions won't stop already ongoing feedback loops, it'll just prevent going full Venus.
If human civilization simply ceased to exist it'd still take millions of years for temperatures to go back to pre-human levels.
Sequestering enough carbon or increasing albedo don't seem like feasible options.
We need to put a shade between Earth and the Sun, it's the only option that seems possible before we collapse, and it would achieve immediate results (of course it'd also give companies an excuse to keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere, since the problem would be “solved”, so we'd be back on track for Venus style runaway greenhouse effect in one or two decades).
We're 100% fucked.
I agree and it concerns me how much geoengineering bro talk there is and responding to descent with luddites and your concerns are overdone its all good.
I'm not a doomer, in large part because I think that economic forces will reduce greenhouse emissions significantly on their own, and despite hitting recent setbacks in policymaking that would push those reductions to happen more more quickly or with deeper cuts, that decarbonization back down to 1990 levels is still going to happen in our lifetimes.
Here's how I think we'll get there:
- Phasing out fossil fuel electricity generation. Solar power is just ridiculously cheap compared to any other method of generation. As we deploy grid scale storage, demand-shifting technology and pricing structures, develop redundancy with wind and advanced geothermal (and possibly fusion in the coming decades), we're going to make fossil fuel electricity generation uncompetitive on price. Maybe ratepayers and governments don't want to subsidize carbon-free energy, but why would they want to subsidize carbon emitting energy when those are no longer competitive?
- Electrification of transportation (electric vehicles, including big stuff like trains and buses and small stuff like bikes and scooters).
- Electrification of heat, both for indoor climate control and furnaces/boilers for water and industrial applications. Heat pumps are already cost effective for new construction in most climates, and even retrofits are approaching cost competitiveness with fossil fuel powered heaters.
- Carbon capture as a feedstock into chemical production, including alternative fuels like sustainable aviation fuel. Once electricity is cheap enough, even only at certain times of day, energy-intensive chemical production can hit flexible output targets to absorb surplus energy supply from overproduction of solar, to store that energy for later or otherwise remove carbon from the atmosphere.
To borrow from a Taoist concept, we shouldn't expend effort fighting the current of a river when the current itself can be utilized to accomplish our goals. In this case, the capitalist incentive structure of wanting to do stuff that makes money is now being turned towards decarbonization for cost savings or outright profit.
I miss being this optimistic. No hate, I just don’t have that hope in me.
US carbon emissions peaked in 2007 and have been coming down since. US capita carbon emissions peaked in the 1970s and have been coming down since.
The concern has always been with the much, much larger developing world, if they would one day become rich enough to emit carbon like North America. And as it turns out, China's push for low cost solar and low cost EVs have revolutionized the energy world for development economics. Now if you're a poor agrarian country looking to industrialize, the cheapest energy available just happens to be clean.
It's like how the developing world mostly skipped landline infrastructure in the 2000's because cell phones became easier and cheaper to build. We're seeing the same thing play out with fossil fuel electricity generation, where most new capacity coming online, even in the third world, is solar.
Yes. OP can't solve it. Lemmy can't solve it. But even not solving it will be okay unless you're a coral reef, because we got lucky and technology is bailing out our asses. The few token political initiatives will help a bit.
If we end ourselves it will be in a different way.
We grow ~all our own food, and pollinate with our own bees and artificial methods. Somewhere will stay suitable for that even if we're going all the way back to the dinosaur times hothouse Earth. That right there is enough for mere survival and basic industry.
Maybe it could feed into the reasons for a nuclear war, or something, ooor maybe it's bound to happen without. Or maybe humanity will go on indefinitely.
Adopt. Don't make new people. Take in people who have been abandoned. My father had the same idea in the 1970s — I suppose I should be fortunate my mother overruled him on that one. But he had the idea almost 50 years ago, for similar reasons.
And apply a similar philosophy to the rest of your life. We all know the word recycle. And I have been a proponent of recycling for over 30 years. I've heard it doesn't help. I've heard some municipalities take it all to the same place. I don't care. I still do it. But I also remember when there were three words. The original slogan went "Reduce. Reuse. Recycle." Many people forgot the first two. You can reuse and repurpose a lot of things. But you should also reduce consumption as well. Eat less processed food. Stick to protein — plant and animal (unless you're a vegetarian/vegan obviously). Stick to the outside of the grocery store (produce, dairy, deli, meat). Bakery is nice for an occasional treat, but find out what they make in-house and not ship in frozen.
I don't think I'm doing enough on my own. I also don't have illusions I'll convince many others. I'm not really trying to. I'm not trying to save the world, just survive it.
Why do you say stick to protein? I understand for health reasons but emissions wise starches like wheat and maize are some of the most efficient per calorie, especially when compared to animal protein..
I guess you could argue there less filling so you'll eat more but you'd need to eat a ton of potato chips to get to the same amount of emmisions as a steak.
Oh — I meant strictly for health reasons. Guess I got a bit off-topic there.
But yeah, starch breaks down to sugar and we don't need more of that. I do love my corn (maize) tortillas for wrapping up meat and vegetables though!
that poore-nemecek paper is dubious.
Biggest problem is that only about 20% of the population of our planet is trying to make a difference and the rest are too poor to care and the 1% are busy building bunkers with the money they stole from the once middle class that are now too poor to do anything.
My answer isn't to tax the rich, it's to get rid of them and invest all that money into green tech, funding reforestation, improving EVs, that's just of the top of my head.
That 80% may care, especially since climate change will hit them the hardest, but there's a lot less they can do to lower emmisions. Ask them to:
-
stop flying
-
stop driving
-
stop buying cheap plastic clothes, toys etc.
-
eat less meat
-
don't use as much AC
They'll just reply OK, already doing all that...
The richest 10% globally (~$50,000) account for half of carbon emmisions while the poorest half only account for 10%. The problem isn't that the top 20% are the only ones who care, the problem is there lifestyle is disproportionately causing this.
Yeet billionaires into space is a decent start.
Compost the rich
I don't think there's any hope of addressing climate change as long as Europe and the USA adhere to a capitalist economic system.
Soo by realistic do you mean something you and me could actually do? Then almost nothing. It will stop when it stops, because the other 8 billion people have a say. I do political activism on the off chance it will indirectly affect something somehow, but I don't think it has, to date.
If you just mean non-disruptive per the 99% comment, a carbon tax is often thought to be the way to go. It makes greener things cheaper and so more favoured by buyers in a really balanced, fair way.
We had a small one in Canada, and a massive political movement for cheap gas started and crushed it. :(
Buy less crap. That’s it. It sounds like a sacrifice, but stuff doesn’t make you happy (provided your basic needs are met). If you are working longer hours to pay for your cars and tvs and fast fashion, your life might improve.
Playing with a cellphone is kinda fun. Know what’s really fun? Friends.
If you’re under 60, buying less crap is going to disrupt your life less than climate change will, so i think i am entitled to the aforementioned bonus points.
I think the first step is to get a good spotter and then exhale on the pull.
I'm vegan, have no intention of ever buying a car and plan on never having children. That's probably as much individual action as anyone can ask for. Anything after that is up to corporations and governments, so we should make sure they are incentivized to do the right thing 👍
Throw in no plane travel also
companies and countries have largely abandoned it already, the most polluting ones dint do anything to reduce it at all. consumers are the smaller emitters of it.
these companies have actively funded groups to dissuade "carbon usage" so they dont have to reduce thier own emissions.
I'm going off the top of my head here:
Okay so you know the concept of evaporative cooling for the new AI data centres? It's hugely wasteful, and definitely not the only way to accomplish the goal, but it's cheaper. I feel like if we actually figured out all the bullshit of that calibre and just outlawed it, we'd make a significant start towards improvement and only marginally impact the bank statements of a few ultra rich billionaires.
Stop allowing people to dump exhaust and waste untreated into the air and otherwise in the environment, full stop. Full illegal, if you violate it the entire company is dissolved. That'll suck for shipping, manufacturing, fuck it. We need to actually stop this to achieve some kind of meaningful change. Go back to sails and windmills if we need to, we achieved global industry and shipping before the internal combustion engine existed, we can do it again.
Phase out fossil fuels. It'll suck a bit, fuck it. Increase reliance on public transport and population density. Make it so you don't need individual transport to accomplish basic necessities for the vast majority of people.
Ramp up public collaborative research into batteries, power storage, carbon capture, climate science. At this point we're playing catch up, we need everything we can to try to rectify this shit storm like yesterday.
Starting about 2 years ago, we in the US had a plan and investments. Building out renewables and grid storage like gangbusters. Incentives to weatherize and update hvac. EV incentives and a program to build out charging infrastructure. Finally some investment in intercity rail. No new ice cars after 2035, and a mandate for EV trucks. Huge promises of EV delivery trucks from usps, ups, amazon. It was a good start.
So much for that idea
Call a halt to this AI bullshit for a start. I've just received a (UK) government questionnaire about my personal energy usage and how I might reduce it. Meanwhile, I learn said government has mooted giving everyone in the country ChatGPT Plus for free!
There are innumerable ways businesses and governments can reduce their energy footprint etc and make a difference.
Sorry, not sorry, but the
I dont think its as simple as "tax billionaires out of existence and ban jets, airplanes, and cars" because thats not realistic.
is not something we can skip as ducking billionaires and private jers are a large part of the reason we're here in the first place.
Ban private jets, all of them. Maybe exceptions for medical flights only. There is no reason for their existence, there is no human right that says "well humans must be able to own their own airplane!"
Ban super yachts, there is no reason why they should exist beyond showing off what an abusive hoarding asshole the owner is.
Make cities for humans, not for cars. That doesn't mean ban cars outright but do make cities like in the Netherlands and more. Cars should be kept out of cities asuch as possible. Pedestrians and bicycles first (and in many places, only) and replace the vast majority of cars with electrified public transport. Make neighborhoods mixed buildings with homes, stores and bars and restaurants. All industrial stuff in industrial parks.
This will change the urban design of cities. You'll get many more smaller stores all around, people don't need a car to go yo Walmart, they walk to their neighborhood store. This will make all countries as nice as "oh my god the Netherlands is so nice, it's so nice with the small streets and the bicycle allowing you to go everywhere". It'll also lower CO2 by a shit load. In the Netherlands, a huge amount of the population doesn't have a car because they don't want a car. It's expensive and they no longer actually NEED one. Cars that are left should all be electrified.
Tax the rich, and not just a little bit. The 1% and 0.1% are extreme polluters and take and waste beyond anything that can be construed as normal. There is no inherent human right to be a billionaire. Tax the rich and prohibit anyone from having a networth over 10 million dollars (example figure, but something around that) by taxation. Any income after you reach that is 100 % taxed. Of course there will be tax brackets, starting at zero for the poorest, going up and up to that 100%.
Limit company sizes to 1 billion dollars networth and or 1000 employees. After that billion, revenue taxes go to 100% equally. No company should be too big. If the company is worth that, btw, you'd need loads of shareholders as each individual can only have a networth of 10 million, remember?
Teach our children that being super rich is something shameful. You've been abusive, you've been hoarding, it's abusive and you should be ashamed, and (as said above) prohibited
Require all product producers that all their products are recyclable, repairable, built with sustainable materials from sustainable sources. If it's not sustainable, don't sell it.
Same for packaging, bit also require all packaging to have only one packaging, not twenty, and all packaging material must be paper
Require stores to also sell used versions of their products. This requires that they also buy used products from their customers. This of course doesnt apply to food and such :)
Prohibit stores from dumping unsold items. If something doesn't sell, they can give it to the government for distribution
Ban plastics where possible. No plastic in packaging, for example. No plastic bottles, go back to glass. Standardize certain bottle sizes and colors for easier reuse.
Teach kids hat he basics of Capitalism is okay, but that it can become an evil beast if not controlled well. Consumerism is not okay, you don't need half the crap people have in their homes these days
With that said, prohibited ALL advertising. If I'd have to see another single lie from a company about how their product really is the best, it'd be too much
Stop inheritance. You should be able to inherit some memorabilia from your loved ones, not that castle they owned
Make all enormous homes with 50 rooms into nice spa hotels. Nobody has the right to have a home that is crazily oversized.
Tax meat heavily. It's still okay (for now) as it's such a staple of everyone's diets, but seriously, you don't need a two pound steak. Limit the amount of meat allowed in single servings. Push for laboratory meat.
Require farms to have all livestock to be able to roam free, have good food, etc.
Those are a few rules to staet with a generally healthier and better world for everyone. I'm sure some rules are incomplete, need more detail, need exceptions or slight modifications, but the basics are there.
Nothing not what we have today HAS to be the way it is, it is the way it is because we all allow it. Changing economic systems is usually disastrous, so let's keep capitalism, it's the best system to make capital. But with these basic limits, nobody gets too rich. The government gets loads of money that it can use for social systems like free healthcare, free education, free food and housing, universal basic income, etc.
Sounds pretty neat in my head, I'll start refining and adding to this list.
But how?
Sounds great what you're proposing - sounds also like magical thinking.
What's a realistic way to achieve all the changes you're suggesting? That's the question we actually have to answer. Right now you're just daydreaming which systemic changes would change the system for the best outcome.
First, people need to accept that we exist within a culture of overconsumption that directly contributes to climate change. Sacrifices to common conveniences will need to be made before we can make any meaningful change.
I'm not saying this is all on the individual. Corporations contribute tremendous waste. But they do so in service to society's demand for convenience and instant gratification. We all need to learn to live with less.
And to add: Corporations won't adjust without being forced politically or economically, and both of those options depend entirely on individual action - either at the voting booth or with our purchases.
If they won't shut down their CO²-spewing factories and plants, then we will have to.
Redistribute all excess wealth perpetually.
Seize control of the corporations that control most of the polution due to global shipping, shut all non-essential services down until our fleet of vehicles are upgraded to carbon neutral.
Reroute military funding to public infrastructure, take away everyone's gas cars and drivers licenses and force the public to use public transport.
Force the meat industry to cull 99%of cows on earth
Reinvest into the satellite tracking for carbon emissions and stamp out the random offenders.
You missed a step: "Force States to invest in public transportation."
In America, There are so many states that have absolutely unbearable public transportation because they are significantly underfunded
I consider public transportation part of infrastructure
Encourage decentralisation and self-sufficiency. Produce and consume more locally. I think residential solar is a good start, as it may lead to reduction in overseas shipping for LNG, oil and coal. Small farms and workshops for daily necessities or repairs will further reduce need for commercial transportation. Work from home or encouraging local offices instead of corporate campuses will spread the population, make local businesses more viable, and reduce personal transportation.
All these encouragements should be done via tax credits or subsidies, so vote for parties who'd deliver those.
Decentralization in general is less efficient and therefore requires more resources. For example small scale farming has less yield per acre compared to large scale farming, thus you have to use more acres to produce the same yield leading to more environmental destruction. Or with the small local workshops, each of those workshops will require a vast array of machines and tools to handle every situation, some that may be rarely used if at all, so you need to produce thousands of copies of these tools for every shop that may not be used, using more resources, as opposed to having to only create one copy for a central repair facility.
The cost, including the environmental cost, of transport rarely exceeds the gains in efficiency from centralization. Working at an office for a computer job is the exception as theres very little gain. But working from home in a job where you cant send your work over a wire to the next worker would obviously lose a lot of efficiency from work from home.
We don't want to spread people out, the more spread out they are the longer it will take to get places and the more likely they will use a car. We need people in dense centralized places because that's where we get these efficiencies of scale. Public transportation becomes better with density, distribution of goods becomes easier, heating and cooling large complexes is more efficient than individual homes.
There's now no way to stop or reverse the inevitable collapse of the comfortable way of life we have right now. This isn't a fight for survival or for the planet, it's to perpetuate the system we enjoy at the moment.
The only way remaining to minimise the damage to our way of life is with some huge geo-engineering projects. Like scattering reflective particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect some sunlight away or releasing some novel chemical into the oceans to fix carbon dioxide and lock it away.
The risks of experimenting like this has always outweighed the benefits (like the guys who thought they could kill a hurricane and instead magnified it and sent it back inland resulting in the deaths of multiple people). But now it's too late to worry about things like that because the inevitable impacts of climate change including wild fires, habitat destruction, biodiversity collapse, extreme weather events are all here now while most of the world is still arguing about whether it even exists or not.
No plastics but natural materials, wood, leather stuff like that Renewable energies, reduce consumption, public transport everywhere instead of cars. Higher density of living together.
PUNISH THE COMPANYS! NO PRIVAT JETS OR IN LAND FLYING!
Go vegan/vegitarian. Not just for the enviorment but personal health! And when meat then not mass produced meat. Butcherm if you cant afford it then maybe dont. Its not neccissary
This response is focused on the US since that's the place I already have a very good idea of the current laws and challenges affecting climate action. I'd start by passing the following legislation immediately:
- Mandate remote work options for all positions that can be performed remotely. We saw during the pandemic how much commuting to the office negatively impacts the environment as well as people's lives.
- Carbon tax with a gradual but short (say 4 year) implementation period where it rachets up to the full tax value for carbon emissions directly created by the industry. The carbon tax is intended to make polluting and wasteful choices far more expensive than cleaner alternatives as well as raise tax dollars for significant infrastructure redevelopment
- Create new taxes and tax breaks plus subsidies for rental properties with poor insulation to encourage updating all rental properties to have modern insulation (and similar tax breaks and subsidies for homeowners to upgrade their insulation)
- Federally allow the construction of ADUs in all residential zone types (likely also creating a more relaxed permitting process and building code for ADUs to reduce cost and encourage their construction)
- Federally allow 2 family housing in all single family zoning (meaning a single family zoned lot can now have the main dwelling converted into a duplex plus an ADU constructed, tripling the permitted density)
- Federal tax break and subsidy for the purchase, maintenance and use of bicycles including ebikes and bike trailers (many places are bikable but people just don't choose to bike. For example, every small town is mostly bikable within town save for any highways that cut through them, and residential streets are very safe places to bike even if they don't contain dedicated bike infrastructure)
- Gradually but significantly increase annual vehicle registration fees, racheting them from the current ~$120 per year to ultimately cost several thousand dollars per year, with some discounts available to those who do not live in an incorporated community, NEVs and classic cars, thereby greatly discouraging vehicle ownership and car commuting. Also instituting significantly higher registration fees for heavier vehicles
In the longer term I'd also take the following steps:
- Use carbon taxes to fund a massive transit shift away from private cars to build more railroads and better bike infrastructure
- Nationalize the north American freight rail network and turn all railroads into rail operators, and either an existing federal agency or a new agency takes over maintainance, dispatching and expansion of the rail network, significantly lowering the bar for new railroad services and companies to be created
- Massively expand Amtrak services with many new routes and expanded service on existing routes
And for an even longer term cultural shift to encourage slower growth I'd pass the following legislation:
- Impliment UBI as an eventual replacement for all social safetynet programs. Probably a value of around $1k/month per adult and $3k/month per retiree/disabled adult would make it enough that creative individuals could live entirely off of the UBI but low enough to still encourage working. Most importantly this UBI would be decoupled from the stock market so stock market crashes would not affect people's ability to retire. This fits into climate legislation as it removes one of the primary incentives for infinite economic growth (saving for retirement)
- Strong right to repair legislation combined with minimum warranty terms of 5-10 years (plus minimum expectations for warranties such as limiting how long a repair/replacement may take to receive) for products to ensure higher quality construction
- Greatly expand the EPA's powers so that a nimble agency can forcibly stop companies from finding new ways to legally pollute our world, as well as providing a second mandate to the EPA to help consumers live more sustainably (this could come in the form of EPA-funded repair workshops and tool libraries for example, probably also EPA-funded vehicle rentals including ebike and ebike trailer rentals so that people can more easily go car-free)
And that's what I have off the top of my head. Start with the changes that will make a big impact without requiring individual lifestyle change, and in the longer term financially encourage a more sustainable lifestyle. Removing the financial forces that encourage wasteful resource consumption can be all of the incentive needed for people to live much more sustainably and can be enough to put the world's climate goals within reach
None of this is realistic though. What you're asking for is akin to an absolute miracle. Where would the political forces come from that do that? How could a majority be motivated to vote them into office? How could we get a whole capitalist machinery on board not to counteract and sabotage this?
They're good ideas, but realistically speaking we have to start somewhere else.
Oh absolutely not realistic as a whole (at least not currently, maybe after another decade or two of increasingly destructive hurricanes, wildfires and floods there will be the political appetite), but I do think some of the individual pieces of legislation have a chance.
The remote work one would be the easiest single piece of legislation on my list since the only people hurt by it are commercial property investors
The railroad nationalization almost happened once already following the second largest bankruptcy in US history and the railroad industry is far more consolidated now than it was in the Penn Central and Conrail days (there's literally 5 major railroads: Canadian National, CPKC, Union Pacific, BNSF and Norfolk Southern. And to top it off UP and NS have announced their merger which is pending government approval) so if one of these major railroads goes bankrupt we could very well be looking at nationalization again
Carbon taxes have been tossed around as an idea for quite a while, and it's been partially implemented in some areas (usually in conjunction with a carbon credit marketplace so polluting industries and buy carbon credits from negative carbon industries, similar to how automakers currently buy CAFE credits from Tesla to avoid paying extra penalties for their gas guzzling trucks and SUVs)
Easier ADU permits and easier multifamily zoning have been passing piecemeal city by city and state by state across the country, so that's already a thing in many places
Right to repair legislation has been gaining steam and several states have already passed right to repair legislation
Many cities have been creating ebike rebates because the more people who bike the less the city has to spend repairing roads (road wear grows exponentially based on the weight and number of wheels on a vehicle. A single small car making a trip down a road does a much wear as thousands of bicycle trips, and a single semi truck trip does a much wear as thousands of large SUV trips, so there's real maintenance cost savings for cities in decreasing car trips, not to mention how reducing car trips reduces traffic thereby saving the city on costly road reconfiguration)
The EPA was created under Nixon because air quality had gotten so bad that whoever was in power at that point would've done something. It's honestly foreseeable that the state of the climate will get bad enough to force even the most reluctant government to change. China for example created huge subsidies for electric vehicle and solar panel production because the air quality in Bejing and other major cities became so terrible
The current Amtrak Connects Us plan is a much smaller but still ambitious expansion plan, and the subsidies that were created for it give it a solid chance of surviving Republican legislature (it's dolled out as grants to meet specific milestones, so by the time any government starts trying to claw back money they already have studies into the viability of the given rail line so it's already known just how much demand exists) additionally the first couple of services are already in place and have been greatly exceeding ridership projections so there's absolutely appetite for more passenger rail options
So in short, yeah my policy vision isn't likely as a single unified vision, but many of the policies are already showing promise and being implemented on a smaller scale, so there's a solid chance of some of these policies becoming reality for more of the country
Die off.
The simple fact is, we buy what's available on the market. If we want to phase out fossil fuels...the government needs to step in and ban using them. Then, car companies will all be forced to switch to cleaner alternatives, and that's what consumers will start buying.
This goes for every single product on the market. Regulate the shit out of it, and the market will shift. But if you leave it up to the market to decide...it will always choose the cheapest, most profitable option.
We, as consumers, have almost no say in the matter. We buy what we need, based on the available options.
Negative, you don't ban things to get them to go away, you just end up with tons of legal fights that last forever. You make the next gen stuff cheaper. You fund solar, electric and nuclear, and anything else that's renewable and cleaner than what we have now to the max. You kill the market for it, not try and ban it.
Fund the hell out of the research and you'll make the old tech obsolete. People will choose via their wallets and kill the industry overnight basically.
Remember when we discovered there was a giant hole in the ozone layer, and scientists determined that it was due to all the chlorofluorocarbons we were using for a million different things?
Yeah. They didn't get rid of CFC's by incentivizing alternatives. They straight up banned them. And it forced the world to start finding other ways to get the same things done. Period. The world didn't end. We just started using less harmful methods.
When it comes to fossil fuels, we've been fucking around with incentives, in the hope that industry and the market will change their patterns, voluntarily...and we are still nowhere near our goals. And at this point, it's starting to look like they've stopped even pretending they care.
If you make it an "option"...they will never change. If you make it mandatory...they have no choice. It really is that simple.
CFCs didn't make your food, or transport you to work or make sure the electricity stayed on in hospitals. You're talking about something that while used, was not a major foundation of the entire global existence. It's not even in the same galaxy.
They were used in almost everything that required compressed air to function...from fire extinguishers to refrigeration units, air conditioners, and even hair spray bottles. Entire industries needed to come up with alternatives, with millions of products directly affected.
Sure...fossil fuels are a bigger issue. But that only means that even harder methods are required to force a change.
Look around you. What gains have we made, by leaving it up to the fossil fuel industry to phase itself out, voluntarily? We already have cheaper alternatives...thanks to the incentives you mentioned. But we are still nowhere near the point of replacing them on any significant scale. That will never happen as long as they are still "allowed" on the market.
They were used in almost everything that required compressed air to function...from fire extinguishers to refrigeration units, air conditioners, and even hair spray bottles. Entire industries needed to come up with alternatives, with millions of products directly affected.
That's not a ton of stuff. They had replacements already in use. Oil is literally in everything we use, and I mean literally everything.
Sure...fossil fuels are a bigger issue. But that only means that even harder methods are required to force a change.
Again, good luck.
Look around you. What gains have we made, by leaving it up to the fossil fuel industry to phase itself out, voluntarily?
They won't, and that's not the argument I have presented at all. I've already stated they will fight.
We already have cheaper alternatives...thanks to the incentives you mentioned.
Yea no shit, but we've not done enough, and thanks to the turnip we're rolling back a huge portion of those incentives.
But we are still nowhere near the point of replacing them on any significant scale. That will never happen as long as they are still "allowed" on the market.
This is completely incorrect. EVs have a much bigger footprint then ever before, solar and wind as well. Nuclear should be next but NIMBYs push it away more than anything.
You make something that's cheaper than the alternative, people will choose the cheaper option.
And like I said. Good luck banning the use of oil.
So...what you're saying is...we will never solve climate change? That is the opposite of what this post was looking for, but cool. Thanks for sharing.
Didn't say any of that, said the exact opposite but you and apparently others don't understand how societies work. We have fascist and nationalism solely because of the "ban it" thoughts. You don't change someone's mind by force. You provide a better and cheaper way.
Ummm, ok. And how's that been working, so far?
Before trump? Pretty well, EVs became much more common because of grants and funds. Wind and solar is cheaper now than nat. Gas and coal because of funding that pushed the tech further. We just need more funding put towards it. Good luck banning oil.
And none of that slowed down oil and gas production, at all. Did it? Why would it? The oil and gas industry makes billions in profit, every year...largely due to the subsidies and grants provided by the government. They are funding the problem, along with the solutions.
So, of course, they are never going away. Climate change is only going to continue to get worse, because no one is willing to do what's actually necessary in order to change anything.
It doesn't matter how many alternatives there are available. They aren't going to stop producing it, unless they are forced to.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapped-renewable-energy-by-country-in-2022/
The fuck are you talking about?
It absolutely has. At this point you're not even arguing in good faith, your just spouting silliness.
Why are you showing data on renewables? Of course their use is increasing. Our overall demand for power is increasing all the time. Renewables aren't the problem.
Oil production, is. And aside from a few outliers involving economic collapses, production has been steadily increasing for decades, without any signs of slowing down.
Nothing will change unless we do something to stop that. Adding renewables to the supply, does nothing to decrease the effects of fossil fuel use, unless you stop using fossil fuels. How is this so hard for you to understand?
Because renewables are replacing a large portion of oil based fuels? The global use of fossil fuels is also increasing as China/Africa/India and SEA nations are becoming more industrialized. This isn't a new concept. Even your own link shows this.
I'll say it again, good luck banning oil/coal. No one will do so.
Then I guess we're fucked.
Eliminate cattle agriculture. No more growing alfalfa in the desert.
Carbon capture in the form of mass re-forestation.
Zoning out single-family homes.
Increased taxes on rural residents. Decreased taxes in urban areas.
Nurembergesque trials for oil company executives.
Refocusing the Department of Homeland Security on fighting forest fires exclusively. ICE agents will be sent to forest fires all over the globe and tasks with putting them out or die in the attempt.
Every citizen gets 4 flight credits a year. 1 credit needed per flight. These roll over if you don't ude them.
Removal of Trump supporter's reproductive organs for population management
With all the world (at least western nations) drifting backwards at least into nationalism (some countries even at full throttle into fascism), this could be used as an advantage: Why not shifting the narrative into the direction, that a stable, clean and healthy enviroment is pinnacle of patriotism (like the narrative of a healthy body was used in national-socialist propaganda 90 years ago in Germany), along with renewable energy that makes each nation independent from others. Wind turbines and solar power for freedom, so to say. Things like coal rolling or similar acts like wasting resources will be deemed as un-patriotic then.
I'm doing my part by not having children.
If there's no humans there cannot be pollution.
As a matter of fact, there can still be pollution from things such as volcanoes.
We just make it worse by sheer volume.
I don't think I can. I try and make the least impact I can for my own moral reasons. Essentially I want to know I did as much as I could when I leave this existence. I accept that there are forces beyond me that I can only influence indirectly and that despite my efforts can and have gone in a massively opposite direction of reducing climate change.
Locally with your community. None of these governments are prepared to bite the corporate tit that feeds them.
For collective action, vote. Let yourself be known.
For individual action...I personally dont think we will get our collective shit together. So moving to an area that will not experience or have very little experience in climate change is the goal. This might not be possible for a lot of people. But it is for a number of people. So those will do well generations from now. My ancestors moved to get a better life. That is what will be done again.
My proposal... this is a "long con", so this seem more like a political proposal rather than something that can quickly fix up our society to be less polluting:
- Start/contribute to a political party that is catered towards young voters, with somewhere between center-left to full left-wing orientation. Note that sadly this party cannot be "far-left" so no eating billionaires or drastic corporate taxes... yet. Climate change will be a core part of the agenda, but at this point the party has to only focus on low-hanging fruit options (improve recycling & waste management, fines on recycling, taxes on cars, company cars, and high-consumption households, etc). Very important that intermediate steps such as nuclear is accepted (in contrast to some Green Parties), we can't afford to ruin the economy at this point
- Try to pre-emptively rule out serious cases of corruption and/or nepotism, and try to base party focuses and decisions on politically unbiased scientific outputs; might need to hire a good scientific panel
- Use whatever means possible to try and gain popularity without changing the party's principles. Ads... yes. Social media... yes. Paid influencers... have to swallow a hard pill here but also yes
- Try to win enough seats to form a majority coalition government with left-leaning and/or green parties. This is where point 1's not being far-left yet comes into place as the party will need to be at least somewhat popular with most voters and most other politicians
- Work with the coalition to reduce tax loopholes, try to classify more forms of rich-people "income" into regular taxable income, and shift the main beneficiaries of party politics to focus on the working class. So no more tax loopholes for the rich as much as we can try... and the "no corruption" part from point 2 becomes very important here as otherwise the plan can go to waste
- The government should have a healthy tax base at this point. Now start giving tax incentives to perform more serious individualistic environmentally-friendly options (for example, subsidized high-speed rail instead of plane, install solar panels, biking instead of driving), and heavily tax or penalize situations that are polluting with no particular upsides (one-time use plastic, private jets, ,,,)
- Now THINK BIGGER. Invest tax money to public transit and green energy infrastructure; the population might be accepting of more radical interventions such as banning private jets or prison time for some execs now so we can start doing that
... Frankly, if anyone actually carries out this plan until like step 5 or 6, I think the exact details regarding combat climate change would be trivial, since the government would have very sufficient resources/good will/power to do so at that point
Not possible. In order to be effective we need a global generational commitment that is beyond our current capacity for cooperation.

China, US, India, Russia. 1, 2, 3, 4. Guess who is least likely to take part in a global agreement?
Russia and China signed on to the Paris agreement, but largely ignore it. Trump famously pulled the US out of the agreement. Twice.
India has been making the right noises about hitting goals by 2030, but I'm not sure how they're actually progressing, not that it means much without Russia, China and the US.
We need an agreement that commits our people not just now, but for multiple generations into the future without regard to who the individual rulers of the countries are. Won't happen.
We would have to go all-in on a climate focused economy and lifestyle, invest heavily on clean energy, technology and degrowth. Outlaw anti-climate lobbying of any kind, and hunt the billionaires for sport
"climate based economy"?
Er, focussed
CO2 seems to be the main problem, so why don't we just burn it. Powerstations powered by burning CO2 would be good for the atmosphere while providing heat and power for communities. And CO2 is abundant so it should be cheap, too!
Shift away from consumerism and go back to a more local economy. Yes, that's going to be very bad for the western world's way of life. I forfeit my extra points because there's no way to change without some disruption.
Do it like China, handle it, the hard but effective way.
Weatherproof bunkers connected by tunnels
Invest in nuclear energy. Invest in R&D to make energy storage for renewables cheaper at scale.
There were a lot of comments hallucinating about humanity coming together and cooperating towards lowering emissions. We can't. It's better to think of solutions that could work in practice.
I'm a gardener, and focus first and foremost on building soil, through composting and using aerated compost teas. I plant and maintain areas that are supportive of wild pollinators. I ride my bike or walk to most places I need to go. And I drive an EV, which is mostly powered from the solar panels on my roof. Yes, this was a significant expense to do so. I eat a diet that is primarily vegetarian. I've been doing all of these things and more for most of my life.
Seize political power at every level. Do what you can. Compromise. Tell voters the stupid shit they wanna hear about kitchen table issues, or whatever it takes
I see an opportunity with rising electricity costs due to AI infrastructure building. People are getting angry about their high bills. If enough out solar panels on their houses and install batteries, we’ll be off the grid in short order.
Other than inventing time travel, I don't think there's a realistic method at this point. (and then I'm not so sure that time travel is that realistic either)
Billionaires pollute like crazy with their jets. For each one of their jets that goes down, you save the environment and you have one less billionaire that shouldn't exist in the first place.
Eco-facists fuck off
Guns, we fly a space ship to Mercury make a landing party and start shooting everything we have at the Sun. Tell it to cut the crap or we'll tarrif all of its light.
Move to renewable energy. We have the necessary capacity, just keep installing renewable sources and phasing out the rest. Keep nuclear plants operational as long as they're safe, too, but don't waste too much resources building new ones.
Keep on moving electric storage from lithium ion to pumped hydro/sodium ion/other technologies depending on scale. Leave lithium ion for portable electronics and specialized cases only.
Develop better public transit networks, ideally make it free like in some cities. Also, make bicycle lanes mandatory for new neighborhoods, and convert old roads to have bicycle lanes whenever possible. With that, you won't need to ban cars as they'll grow less relevant (although you can increase tax on car sales to raise money and further disincentivise car ownership).
Also, develop high-speed rail whenever it makes sense, as an organic and much more ecological replacement for planes. Make sure they are modular enough to scale for demand, to avoid dragging extra.
Plant more trees and algae to help scrub the extra CO2. Intensify marine plastic collection efforts to assist the natural growth of marine ecosystems.
Ban petroleum-based plastics whenever possible. For most applications, there are more friendly biologically produced options; they are fairly cheap, too, it's just that regular plastic is even cheaper.
Extend reduce-reuse-recycle. Make more places serve into your own tare, make use (on a personal level) of what you normally throw away, and for what you do throw away, make sure it gets into recycling. Get creative! For example, did you know some used plastic bottles can be turned into a 3D printer filament? You can go wherever from there!
Reduce beef production/import and consumption. For what you do consume, make sure it comes from milk breeds, because otherwise you don't share the ecological footprint with the dairy, which skyrockets the footprint of a steak. In any case, beef is the single most terrible food source in terms of ecological footprint, being several times worse than pork, poultry and dozens to hundreds times worse than plant foods.
Oh, and the AI centers currently in construction by tech giants are becoming one extra major point of concern. We should review which of these are actually necessary, because this thing doesn't seem to stop scaling up, with some planned centers consuming as much energy as a major city.
beef is the single most terrible food source in terms of ecological footprint
I simply haven't found compelling evidence this is true
Here's an example research: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216
Full text link (courtesy of sci-hub): https://sci-hub.ru/https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaq0216
poore-nemecek 2018 misuses their source data.
Care to share examples of such misuse or alternative research?
the standard for LCA data precludes combining LCA studies because they use disparate methodologies. to establish this, all you need to do is read the LCA references poore-nemecek cites.
I haven't found alternative research. if you have, please let me know.
Thanks, will pay closer attention to that.
We need a binding international treaty implementing carbon taxes.
They're unpopular so we need to take this decision out of the hands of politicians who might be tempted to defect the next time they're up for reelection, they should only be responsible for the implementation of the policy that was already agreed to and can't easily be wriggled out of.
Oh yeah? And how are other countries going to enforce it if one country breaks the treaty? With bombs? Bombs that release CO2? Think it through! /s
I guess the same way all of the other ones get enforced, imperfectly
I think it's too late. But theoretically speaking, it would require totalitarian measures because people will not willingly choose degrowth and a significant decrease to their standard of living. People will not choose "less."
You would also have to get all nations across the globe to magically work together. The reason is that those who limit themselves based on sustainability will be outcompeted by those who don't impose such limitations. To use an example that is relevant to the present: as much hand-wringing as there is about AI and its various hazards (environmental and otherwise), simply "not doing" AI isn't really an option so long as other parts of the world are going for it. Opting out of an arms race can put you at a severe disadvantage.
Human nature is really working against us.
- heavily tariff companies that attempt to move their companies or operations overseas
- nationalize the biggest environmental offenders
- any company that resists is investigated and charged with crimes against humanity and their company is nationalized
- once tried, executives are imprisoned or executed to set an example
- tax the wealthy with an 80% flat tax, use the income to subsidize impacted industry/workers while also investing in green or net-zero environmental companies
edit: just to add, this would be the less aggressive solution I would want to see. the more aggressive solution would have blood running in the streets of every executive of a fortune 500 company that has negligently damaged the environment and harmed workers rights/safety.
the economic turmoil would be harsh and would take decades to crawl out of, but we could do it. nobody crawls when we're dead on a dying planet.
Make it sexy.
If we had an easier time getting laid fighting back instead of going along, then that's what people would start doing.