Climate Change Tracker

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.

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).

You went straight from "we don't have to lose anything" to "except of course for cars, lawns, pools and technology in general" apparently without noticing the contradiction. This is a good example of why degrowth advocates have no credibility and always come across as anti-civilization Amish wannabees.

There is no such thing as degrowth outside of recessions and wars. If you want to reduce your own consumption, do so! The rest of us who believe in material progress will increase ours to make up for it.

If we don't degrow now, we are heading towards recessions and wars anyway. And not small ones: count billions of climate refugees... that's probably the end of democracy everywhere.

How do you propose to use much less energy without starving everyone? Where does the energy come from if not fossil fuels without conscripting people to be peasants? Does it matter if mass death is caused famine or "degrowth"?

That's the whole point: degrowth is about re-organizing society such that we don't starve. There are big efforts of planning for that in many places. Look at the "shift project" in France. It seems to me that the US are very, very, very far behind on that matter. The US seems to still be stuck on the Silicon Valley mindset ("they will save us with new technology"). But that's not representative of the rest of the world.

> Where does the energy come from if not fossil fuels without conscripting people to be peasants? Does it matter if mass death is caused famine or "degrowth"?

The idea of degrowth is that in order to avoid famines, we have to drastically reduce other stuff and reorganize society. Planes are not even a question there: planes will go away, because everyone agrees that we'd rather eat that fly. There are many decisions that are harder to make, though.

Those who don't believe in degrowth and instead think that "there will be a miracle technology that will save us" are just naive. Degrowth advocates are the ones who are actually trying to play with the cards they were dealt.

A good example or problem with degrowth is proclamation that things like planes won’t be possible. Aviation is 2% of emissions. There are lots of little things that they add up. Like concrete being 3%, but nobody says that have to give up concrete. The big ones are things like heating and cooling and transportation that are hard to give up.

The other problem is that we mostly know how to solve aviation. Hydrogen or liquid fuels should work, both produced from green energy. New technology but no miracles. We know how to do green electricity.

I agree with you that we need to change the world a lot. But it won’t work if impose suffering on people. Or do things that don’t work or don’t help.

Aviation came with oil, it will disappear with oil. It's not a problem of emissions per se, it's a problem of energy. Fossil fuels are not unlimited and we don't know how to completely replace them.

> The big ones are things like heating and cooling

We need to work hard on building isolation, obviously. And people need to live in smaller habitations.

> and transportation

We need more trains

> Hydrogen or liquid fuels should work, both produced from green energy.

Same thing: if you look at the numbers, we won't have enough green energy to produce enough hydrogen for aviation, even if technically we can make planes fly with hydrogen. We will have to choose where we use our hydrogen: for planes, or for steel and agriculture?

> But it won’t work if impose suffering on people.

Yep, we need to teach people and hope they accept to do what's needed to survive.

> Or do things that don’t work or don’t help.

Totally agreed here. Hoping for anything short of degrowth doesn't help. We need everything PLUS degrowth. And still, it will be hard because climate is already pretty messed up (with inertia) and biodiversity is looking bad.

We don't currently have inexhaustible amounts of green energy, and we don't have any viable solution right now. If you think that because we can make 1 solar panel, we will be able to replace fossil fuels, then you have obviously never done any kind of engineering in your life. Problems come with scale. It's not being hyper-pessimistic to know that.

The problem with doomers and degrowthers is that they are pretty ignorant people. They just assume that there's no solution or that green energy is just too weak to solve problems. This is why they are arrogant and not just pessimistic. They believe they already know the answer despite never looking for possible answers in the first place.

Plus, if your only reference is the price of solar power today, then you are highly uninformed on the subject at hand. Of course solar power is cheap: in many places it is subsidized, and it is built with cheap, abundant fossil fuels. But make no mistake: solar today is absolutely marginal. So you are extrapolating from the current marginal energy production of solar to 100% of the world, with the only argument that "last you checked, solar today is very cheap" and "those who believe they know slightly more than me are arrogant, I won't listen to them".

> while not having any desire to learn.

Let me take you on that. I will share with you my favorite introduction book on the subject (it is cheap, from a really respected french engineer, and it took me 5h to read). If you do have any desire to learn, read it seriously. Now in all fairness, if you share with me the title of a serious book that explains why degrowth is "arrogant and stupid", I commit to reading it.

Do we have a deal?

My choice is "World without end" (in French: "Le monde sans fin"):

https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-End-Blain-Christophe-eb...