The dismaying reality is that it is driven by the wealthy. I got rid of my car, I shop local, and everything in the home is low emissions. No reduction in my personal life can ever offset the way they live.
This is the reason we’re should focus out efforts to make a ruckus and force decision makers to enforce carbon neutrality BY NEXT YEAR instead of by next century. Of course that won’t happen but that would be the reasonable way.
Unfortunately, they'd probably call in the military in the case of a general strike. At least try to assassinate the leadership.
Guillotines might result in less and more well directed bloodshed. Though, I don't disagree entirely. That kind of violence, any kind of mass violence, ends up at least somewhat with spillover and misdirection.
We are all tired and angry, and it would seem violence could provide an amount of catharsis and finality. Yet I think the situation is too dynamic to be sure of a positive outcome. Peaceful but firm methods should be tried first, at least.
Will just result in new draconian laws being drafted and enacted. Watch how fast people lose the right to peaceful assembly if it actually affected the ruling class.
Maybe when I see the magical communist revolution where humanity doesn’t destroy itself I’ll be a believer, but until then, I think humanity as a whole is a destructive force for bad.
I don’t really think communism in the extreme version is currently a solution, but there is a simpler solution for now for the ultra-rich if you tax them for a large amount of money proportional to the income let’s say 100% after 10 million per year you quickly fix (I guess bandaid-patch) a big problem with capitalism.
Yes, we did invent it. However, that was done by a small group of people that have been in power for generations, and kept it difficult to change to a better system.
What I’m trying to say is that I think most people probably don’t find it very fair that someone like Bezos can just be so ridiculously rich.
If we just give up, then there is a 0% chance. If we try, then the chance of succession isn’t zero. We have to try to be optimistic. Yes, the world is fucked, but hey, giving up is just accepting that and allowing it.
It’s not driven by the wealthy, because there are far fewer wealthy people than everyone else.
Individual shopping habits are a band-aid until we can fully replace how some of those habits work.
Carbon taxes would be infinitely preferable to voluntary changes, but we can’t pass carbon taxes because people will go absolutely insane if asked to pay the true cost of their goods.
1.1% of the world’s adult population are millionaires. This adds up to about 56 million people. Collectively, this group has about $191.6 trillion and controls about 46% of the world’s wealth.
People are arguing with you because they don’t want to take responsibility for themselves or pay the true cost of their consumption. As long as they see someone worse, they don’t have to do anything. The top 1% make 16% of the emissions, sure. But the top 10% are responsible for 52%. That’s 34% belonging to the 1.1-10% . Much of that is due to transportation (in dumb Suv and trucks), inefficient home heating, aviation, and dirty power generation.
We simply don’t solve this problem by focusing on the top1% alone . Which, like you said, is why carbon taxes should be effective. Especially how Canada did it, with the tax being redistributed to the bottom 90% or so. Unfortunately, bringing in an effective system of carbon taxation just gets you voted out for a science denier.
I swear, if I was the fossil fuel industry this exact kind of class anxiety is what I would exploit to stop progress. Get people paying attention to Taylor Swifts jet so they’ll refuse the systematic changes needed avoid this actual crisis.
The truth of the matter is that it’s impossible to stop climate change in the short and mid term without degrowth in energy consumption. World leaders gathered and celebrated when they agreed to trade responsibilities for CO2 emissions, when a market-oriented world economy was always going to provoke this result unless there were explicit limits to the production of contaminant energy sources.
If this topic ceased to be a partisan issue, we might actually see real change and limits enforced.
A world where pollution producers would need to price cleanup and management into their production (which would in turn incentivize cleaner alternatives).
Where corporations might be held liable for damages from their climate or eco negligence.
But as long as this remains an issue that the masses are going to be divided over, the world is going to burn as stupid people insist 3rd degree burns on asphalt is just part of the circle of life.
I’ve been day saying this for the past two years now, humanity is fucked, and soon.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is a direct result from the energy we took from burning fossil fuels. To get all that CO2 out were going to have to wait Millenia for earth to do it (that is, if it still can) or spend that same amount of energy to get the CO2 out.
To put that into something understandable: we’re going to have to spend ALL the energy we produced over the last two centuries on too of the energy we need for ourselves to be able to get CO2 back to preindustrial levels. Basically, for the next two to four centuries were going to have to spend at least 50% of our world energy budget to scrubbing CO2 and NONE of that energy is allowed to generate CO2. Actually, NOTHING from humanity can generate CO2 to reach that. If we continue spewing CO2 then you can double that number.
To put that into perspective, adding all required work and infrastructure, energy -all energy- will become 3-4 times as expensive for the next few centuries
People will not understand the issue and will not want to pay more, rich people will not want to foot the bill even though they could, so we won’t do anything and things will get worse and worse until we all die.
One possible alternative might be spraying sulphuric acid into the atmosphere, that might buy us a few valuable years while we fix shit but what will happen is that we’ll just spray the crap out of it and call that a solution while we continue to spray CO2 into the atmosphere like there literally is no tomorrow for humanity
You mean pledging to eventually tackle the problem 20-30 years down the road and doing nothing about it in the meantime hasn’t solved the problem?! I’m shocked! 🤯
Every time I hear “carbon neutral by 2050” I’m always thinking yeah like it’ll fucking matter at that point, Honda (or whomever).
This will disproportionately effect the poor and developing countries, so the thinking of elites and super rich is that there’s still plenty of time to rectify the situation.
It’s not consumer cars that’s raising the temperature, though. They want to electrify cars for control. The elites are going to use this carbon credit crap to make people submit to their will. More rules for thee but not for me.
The primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions by economic sector in the United States are:
Transportation (28% of 2021 greenhouse gas emissions) – The transportation sector generates the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation primarily come from burning fossil fuel for our cars, trucks, ships, trains, and planes.
And
The largest sources of transportation greenhouse gas emissions in 2021 were light-duty trucks, which include sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, and minivans (37%); medium- and heavy-duty trucks (23%); passenger cars (21%); commercial aircraft (7%); other aircraft (2%); pipelines (4%); ships and boats (3%); and rail (2%). In terms of the overall trend, from 1990 to 2021, total transportation emissions have increased due, in large part, to increased demand for travel. The number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by light-duty motor vehicles (passenger cars and light-duty trucks) increased by 45% from 1990 to 2021, as a result of a confluence of factors including population growth, economic growth, urban sprawl, and periods of low fuel prices. Between 1990 and 2004, average fuel economy among new vehicles sold annually declined, as sales of light-duty trucks increased.
In the US, cars and the car-centric sprawl it encourages is absolutely the largest single contributor to carbon emissions.
There’s a reason that the per capita emissions of the Netherlands are literally half of what they are in the states. It’s the cars.
No duh, because not a single country has made any real attempt to lower their citizens’ emissions.
It will take sacrifice from all of us to stop warming.
Forget 1.5°C, honestly, forget 2°C as well, keeping it under 3°C is likely the best that we can hope for right now. You’re needing to throw out our gas-based car infrastructure, reduce our reliance on jets as much as possible, lower not just meat consumption but also almonds/alfalfa/etc., and that is just to get started.
Really, I don’t see the average voter letting that happen. What’s going to happen is eventually, sometime 30-40 years from now, a heat wave is gonna thrash the Middle East, consistent 130°F days for a solid month, 100,000 people dead, and the very next year planes will be in the air, making clouds to block the sun.
We are not ready to give up the things that the developed world will have to give up to truly back away from this coming apocalypse.
Planes are kinda necessary now and less of a convenience. I moved to Miami from NJ (where the rest of my family lives) and just came home today for Thanksgiving. Driving would have taken around 3 days/about 23 hours of total driving and cost a few hundred bucks in gas and maintenance costs. I flew home in under 3 hours and it cost me about $100.
My buddy in NJ married a British woman, so for her, if planes didn’t exist her only option would be to take a boat home which easily takes a week or two, instead it takes her about 7 hours.
So people aren’t supposed to move anywhere in your opinion, and if you do,just forget about seeing them for years. The US is a hell of a lot bigger than any European country.
Not that far and still expect to see family for every freaking occasion. I meant through Europe, if I’m Dutch and my family is in Spain, I’m not going for Christmas or whatever. Maybe once in a few years, or stay for a vacation not just a few days. That’s idiotic.
My parents are getting older and I want to see them as much as I can while still living where I want to. IMO its ridiculous to be like “live in a place you don’t like because you want to see your family often or live where you want to and rarely see your family.” There is a middle ground. Yo may be cool with seeing your family once a year, I’m not.
What you consider “normal” isn’t exactly normal. This isn’t the 1800s.
Umm you know that trains take energy to run right? The energy doesn’t come out of thin air. Most trains either run off diesel fuel which is dirty as hell or they run off electric and that energy is usually from burning fossil fuels.
So your suggestion is “don’t use this one method of transportation that burns fossil fuels, use this other method of transportation that takes longer and still burns fossil fuels!”
Your American perspective is only a thin slice of the world. Don’t be so conceited.
you know that trains take energy to run right?
Less energy per passenger, and the energy sources available are much more diverse.
run off electric and that energy is usually from burning fossil fuels. [sic]
In ass-backwards places, sure. You know Brazil, that country to the south of yours, with a comparable landmass and population? More than 85% of their electricity comes from renewable sources. I guess 'murica is too much of a shithole to figure this one out.
So your suggestion is “don’t use this one method of transportation that burns fossil fuels, use this other method of transportation that takes longer and still burns fossil fuels!” [sic]
So the implication is that you think the efficiency of a process is meaningless and the path to an outcome is unimportant (which is braindead). You may as well drop dead right now, then, since “you’ll still die some day, anyway”.
We live in an age where you can literally talk face to face with virtually anyone, nearly anywhere in the world on a tiny rectangle in your pocket. Yes, we can all afford to travel a little less over long distances.
Not everyone has a smartphone or webcam, you, right? My father is 73 and has neither, he doesn’t like to videochat because he feels it impersonal. My mom has a smartphone but doesn’t video chat with anyone. So I’m just supposed to not see my parents for a year or more because they don’t want to video chat?
So clearly we need a different solution than cutting back on emissions.
I’d argue we might have to start human expansion into space to have any real positive impact. A solar shade, for example, could block out enough sunlight to artificially prevent warming and stabilize the climate while we construct or seek out alternative energy resources.
The majority of emissions come from just a handful of large companies, even if every individual cut their carbon footprint to zero those companies would still continue to kill the planet. It’s also easier to change the behaviour of some companies than every person on the planet.
I mean, over the years I’ve heavily reduced my meat intake, am super conscientious about transportation (haven’t flown in a decade, keep my revs low when I drive, and try to get all my errands done in efficient ways as to minimize gas usage), turn off lights, ration my hot water usage, don’t eat out at wasteful restaurants, buy “ugly” produce from the grocery store, promote renewable energy solutions whenever possible, compost, recycle, and create extremely little garbage. Yet, at my work, several of our AC generators that we use to power the facility use more oil in one day than my car does in its entire lifetime. Several handfuls of billionaires and their families emit the same amount of carbon as the poorest 66% of humanity. Seems to me, if we want to solve climate change, we have to get rid of the biggest polluters first, then transition to clean energy.
There are constant cycles of ‘fuck around’ and ‘find out’ that are naturally occurring, pay too close attention and you’ll see more than you want to. Like 5g conspiracies were always fucking dumb, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t hear almost nothing serious about them after someone decided to try and bomb a city block over it.
It’s China generating all the pollution. Their ‘reported’ emissions are 13.7 billion metric tons versus the US’s 5.9 billion. And 90% of China’s fuel consumers are private, one-off shuttles that don’t even report their emissions. US is contributing a tiny fraction of global emissions and it’s falling. Yes, US industrialized earlier and has contributed more in total, but we can’t time travel, we have to look at who is emitting NOW. China’s emissions are rising and nobody there cares to put a cap on it. You want to stop the world from cooking? Talk to China.
Edit: it’s odd how many tankies are on lemmy. Obviously we should take steps ourselves to stop emissions too but China is the world’s true problem when it comes to emissions. US has been steadily falling while China is rising rapidly and that’s only what’s actually reported
It’s all so complex. They also produce a major chunk of renewable energy tech as I understand. Which I wouldn’t be surprised was made cheaply without longevity in mind. I’d be surprised if some of that tech lasts more than 5 years, especially for what they sold to Europe and the US. And the kicker, they continue to build coal power plants to run their production of western demanded products. The whole current status quo is a giant mess!
Do some research on Chinas main fuel consumers and get back to me. It’s mainly smaller entities who are using personal vehicles or private industry and not reporting their usage at all. Scream all you want but China is not reporting their usage anywhere near accurately because there is only systems in place for the larger corporations that are fuel consumers, and even those are largely corrupt and under reporting so they can continue doing business unabated
Edit: I see your research was “downvote and move on”
I’m not a big fan of China, but that’s just dishonest. Yes, China emits more than twice the co2 US emits. But that means that its per capita emissions are still way below those of the US, even after western countries outsourced a lot of their own pollution to China. Yes, you NEED to talk to China if you’re going to solve it, but pretending that it is more on them than on the west is ridiculous.
The Earth doesn’t care. As long as the western countries keep blaming China only and China not even talking about it, as far as I know from the western media I’m exposed to solely, it will simply get rid of us.
The fact is that this was a conscious choice, even recently. The switch to natural gas that everyone is touting is one that is designed to cause higher short-term emissions.
Methane is really bad over a 20-year time frame and only really lets natural gas equal coal over a 100-year period (assuming typical fugitive emissions rates). The transition from coal to natural gas is accelerating the rate at which we boil ourselves alive.
Oh it does for sure. At least in Canada there are government regulations requiring inspections by 3rd parties to check for leaks with some sort of thermal camera. I’m not familiar with the technology to check for leaks but I’ve had to fix the leaks before and it’s taken seriously and well documented.
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