Climate Change Tracker

I'm starting to wonder whether the conventional wisdom of reducing carbon emissions in favour of more electricalisation is really solving the actual problem. As is often pointed out on HN, electrical cars are substantially heavier than their fossil fueled alternatives, and generate other pollution along the way. Furthermore, we're digging our lithium brines from the environment, without really understanding what all this lithium will do once it's leached out into the environment or what impact the mines themselves will have.

With the recent advances of turning CO2 into other substances, such as propane, should we be focusing more on closing the carbon cycle and simply be producing fossil fuels from the waste products of yesteryear?

Naively, it feels like we understand C, O and H, better than we understand some of the rare metals we're now introducing in the name of climate change.

Well the real answer is to reduce consumption. It can and should be done without sacrificing comfort. This is a very uphill battle against systems that are interested in distracting you by turning your attention towards fads (recycling, electrification, carbon capture) when in reality we need degrowth and permaculture. (Please read this thread a bit more, including my replies, before you tell me what I think degrowth means. I'm only using it to mean "less [economic] growth")

In a bit more detail:

How about less cars? More effective public transit is good for people and the climate.

Let's do away with golf lawns and pools for every house... Perhaps architecture can be adapted to suit the specific location instead of stamping the same stock photo "American house with garage that can fit 4 cars." Look at passive cooling and stuff. [Again, I'm talking about redefining comfort. Is a personal pool and large car and trimmed lawn really, honestly, what makes you comfortable? Or is it more a product of culture and advertising? You're absolutely free to believe either way, and I don't want anyone to force you to do anything.]

And honestly, we need to consoom less. Devices should not have a lifecycle of one year. You and I don't really need all these gadgets and trinkets, either. Let's stop buying random things

If you think this is a distraction or that it won't work because we can't get everyone to agree: Degrowth and permaculture requires honestly no critical mass. You can choose to buy things that last longer, and use them a bit more. Learn to fix things, etc. These are all nothing but straight benefits to you (more money in your pocket, skills that can make you more valuable in the current system, more time available now that you aren't swiping short form videos all day).

As you've seen "degrowth" is a counter-productive argument and you are your own worst enemy and this gives ammunition to the side which claims that climate change is only possible via severe personal sacrifice -- which again reinforces the notion that climate change is an individual problem and failing and the whole "just recycle harder" idea.

We need to decarbonize the fucking electrical grid. Just get it done and that addresses the majority of the problem.

You'd also probably be better off if you focused on just changing the incentives and regulations which promote disposable culture. The CAFE standards need an overhaul and the Chicken tax needs to go away, that would do wonders towards getting us smaller, cheaper vehicles. Right to repair laws and EU regulations around replaceable batteries that are being imposed now on companies like Apple will help a lot. Better public transportation, sure, but that means building it (which means more economic output and jobs, but differently). But we're not going to manage to forcefully stop a lot of people from consuming, so we need to focus on making that impact less, particularly when it comes to GHGs, because that is more or less an emergency right now. We can have scalable carbon-neutral energy which still powers a lot of economic growth for the future up until we're all dead. And if you argue against that you will lose the broader war for the sake of trying to be a perfectionist (#include <leftists_being_their_own_worst_enemy.h>)

Hard disagree.

Degrowth is the only reasonable future if you understand the big picture: it's all about energy. Climate change and biodiversity loss are consequences of what humans do with abundant energy. Again: biodiversity loss is not due to CO2 at all, yet we are currently living a mass extinction. Replace fossils with nuclear fusion, you may solve climate change, but you will still be in a mass extinction.

Now let's be honest, we don't know a technology today that can replace fossil fuels. And fossil fuels are not unlimited (we still have enough to finish messing up the climate, unfortunately, but we are around the peak of production globally right now). So anyway, the days of a world with abundant energy are soon over, you've got to deal with it. That's called degrowth.

Either we go into a controlled degrowth, or we go into uncontrolled degrowth (that's poverty, global instability, wars, famines, ...).