Id 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!
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.
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.
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)
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.
Make it socially unacceptable to adopt and maintain some behaviours.
It will take generations, but it’s the only way to have the political support to reject certain things.
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…
In your defense, it’s actually spelled “albedo”.
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
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’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.
Oh no, we will die because of ecological collapse caused by climate change. So it just depends on how many steps you count as being involved, but we will die, ultimately because of anthropogenic climate change.
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.
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.
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
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
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
Physically destroy oil and gas production and storage facilities. Seems like the most straightforward method. If Ukraine can reduce Russian oil production 20% in a matter of months then people who care about the planet should be easily capable of doing the same… I have been looking into producing a google maps style overlay of global infrastructure that anyone who wants to contribute could use as a target list… but there might be others out there more au fait with mapping technology who could do it better. I’ve been inspired by the book How to Blow up an oil pipeline by Andreas Malm.
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.
