
The Brutal Truth About Climate Change - dredmorbius
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/william-vollmann-carbon-ideologies/568309/?single_page=true
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Roritharr
If I could save the planet from climate change for a dollar, the nations of
the world would be discussing how to divide that until it's too late.

There is a fixed sum of yearly Global GDP we'd need to spend to fix this. It
may be unknown, but that doesn't make it less existent. Estimating it has been
a whole area of work, but we haven't found a system to actually pay down that
planetary tech-debt. Carbon Engineering can get a ton of carbon out of the
atmosphere for roughly 100$. Driving down that price further while
aggressively scaling the deployments of that technology would be one
engineering solution.

But the political, economical and possibly even legal parts of this stay
unsolved. Who's working on this, how are they even paid?

~~~
bromuro
You can’t fix climate change with money.

~~~
tuesdayrain
If you can't fix climate change with a careful allocation of money then you
can't fix it with anything.

------
emmanuel_1234
I had a minor epiphany last week. I (instinctively) switched my stance from
"hey we need to do something about climate change" to "I need to work to
protect me and my family when shit hits the fan". Then it dawned me. I'm a
small, insignificant human, yet I'm taking a selfish stance on the problem.
The people who can actually change something, that is, the people with some
kind of power, probably think in the exact same manner: their energy is
dedicating to saving their asses when it goes South, not to solve the problem.

We're fucked.

~~~
pkphilip
There are ways of reversing climate change - for instance, by increasing the
area under vegetation (which reduces temperatures, reverses desertification
etc). But the issue is that these methods are not being pursued for whatever
reasons.

~~~
singularity2001
You mean something like the great green Wall of China and Africa and the
billion tree project? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-
North_Shelter_Forest_Pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-
North_Shelter_Forest_Program)

~~~
dredmorbius
Whilst useful, I'd focus on wwetlands rejuvenation. Hectare for hectare,
orders of magnitude more effective.

~~~
singularity2001
or even more effective and cheaper: protection of existing habitats

~~~
dredmorbius
Included in what I'd suggested, though expansion would almost certainly be
necessary.

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YeGoblynQueenne
"He envisions her turning the pages of his climate-change opus within the
darkened recesses of an underground cave in which she has sought shelter from
the unendurable heat; the plagues, droughts, and floods; the methane fireballs
racing across boiling oceans. Because the soil is radioactive, she subsists on
insects and recycled urine"

I can kind of see the "methane fireballs" (I'm guessing, the methane trapped
under the tundra escaping when the permafrost melts and then igniting because,
er, the ambient temperature reaches the methane auto-ignition point at 600
⁰C?) but how does the soil get to be radioactive, because of climate change?

I think this is a weee bit exaggerated.

~~~
dredmorbius
Climate change tends to precipitate other forms of instability. Social,
economic, political, militarry, technological.

Several of those represent scenarios on which radioactive soil might be
present in areas, limited or otherwise.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
But those sorts of instability are not sollely associated with climate change.
We might yet have a thermonuclear war even before the climate warms up.

Equally, why stop at thermonuclear war brought on by economic instability,
brought on by climate change? We can go all the way and imagine hostlie aliens
taking over the Earth now that humanity is nearly wiped out by the rising
temperatures.

There's a point at which predicting the future stops and imagining it begins,
and that stuff about methane fireballs and radioactive soil seems to be over
it.

~~~
dredmorbius
_...those sorts of instability are not solely associated with climate
change..._

That was not the question, or assertion.

 _...hostile aliens taking over the Earth..._

That is an uncorrelated exogenous risk.

As I said above, and for wwhich there is ample historical evidence and
contemporary risk analysis by governments, militaries, and others, the second-
and higher-order consequences of climate change include a wide range of
effects commensurate with the scenario as spelled out in TFA's review.

More generally, one can divide risks into endogenous, or correlated,
scenarios, and exogenous, or uncorrolated ones. I and Vollmann's view is that
the first set seems larger than is generally realised.

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roryisok
Reading this stuff makes me borderline suicidal, and the only thing that stops
me is that I have young children who would be worse off without me.

I've gone from hoping science will save them, to hoping we have a decade to
make a few happy memories before things get truly awful.

The only way I've been able to find peace lately is to think about how the
universe will eventually collapse on itself in a few billion years, and to try
to put human history and my family's lives in context with that. Both are tiny
points of data on a chart.

------
platz
chris hedges often talk about his experience covering wars (such as in
Yugoslavia) that, despite being an ordained minister within the Presbyterian
Church, quickly stripped any american-fashioned persistent demand for hope,
because in those situations, it is more important to take a real accounting of
the situation, rather than be hopeful.

Hope might land you in a worse situation than otherwise.

And if your prospects are grim, it is better to understand that, than deny it.

He's not so hopeful about the environment, either.

~~~
notatcomputer68
We should focus on scenarios where we can move the needle. The consequence of
this: When things look great we should be paranoid, and when things look bad
we should be hopeful.

------
philipkglass
Suggested for readers tired of excessive climate optimism: David Archer’s _The
Long Thaw._ It is harsh in its own way. Rather, I should say it is implacable:
100 years of bad decisions will reverberate for an additional 100,000 years.
It mercifully does not indulge in cinematic fantasies like “methane fireballs
racing across boiling oceans.”

------
xbmcuser
The world's population is going to have 20% more people by 2050. I don't see
how we are going to stop climate change let alone reverse it. Without phasing
out fossil fuels completely as all effiency gains will be lost with higher
usage. The best we can do now is slow it down a bit when we really need to
reverse it by carbon capture or something.

~~~
RickJWagner
I wonder why more discussions about population control aren't seen. It seems
that fewer people will result in fewer pollutants.

~~~
Armisael16
The countries with rapidly expanding populations are not the ones with
significant per-capita carbon emissions.

~~~
ripsawridge
True, but a) it's very much on the plan of every country without significant
per-capita carbon emissions to become a country with significant per-capita
carbon emissions, and b) the expanding populations can and often do emigrate
to countries with significant per-capita carbon emissions where they add to
the per-capita.

High emissions come from a monetary economy with a requirement of profit. Soon
each remaining part of the world outside that economy will be a part of it,
because this is how the monetary economy expands: putting regions "outside"
under it's control. I just don't understand how people are sanguine that "now"
it's "fine" because the rapidly expanding populations are outside of regions
with intensive economic development, because very soon they will be inside
such regions, either because a capital-intensive region enveloped them (no
more free sheep grazing on the meadow, etc) or because the need for money in
some area of their lives drove them into a capital-intensive region (favelas,
etc.).

------
dredmorbius
NB: Print rather than Web title used.

------
dredmorbius
Beyond the topic and book, I found description of author William Vollmann's
manner, style, editorial relations, and biography distinctly engaging. And not
unrelated to the result.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
The environmentalists have been saying for decades that we are destroying
ourselves. Yet as a whole, this is the best time in history for humanity. We
live longer healthier lives. Fewer people as a percentage live in poverty than
ever before. Climate change is real, and the effects are real. However, it is
in the billions of people coming out of poverty and into a “modern” lifestyle
that we find hope. We will have billions of people who will now have the time
and opportunity to fully develop their potential. The wonders of the
scientific revolution of the 15th-20th centuries was with humanities hands
tied behind our back as it was only limited to the elite western white male.
Now we are opening up opportunities to all genders, races, ethnicities, and
countries. The scientific advances and technological breakthroughs of the 21st
and 22nd centuries will be amazing. Humanities politics may be bad, but our
creativity is amazing and will be our salvation.

~~~
Theodores
Not really. Modern capitalism is a serfdom of sorts, 99% working off 25 year
mortgages with the proceeds going to the 1%. Soon it will be 25 years of hard
work to get the deposit to get started on the 25 year mortgage, which is not
the same thing as 'fully developing one's potential'.

A century ago everything was organic. There were no plastics to buy on a daily
basis, there was no glyphosate in food. There might have been tincture of
arsenic and other nasties, food might have not been affordable and so on, but
progress for the better does not mean that everything is better. What point is
there if things are better but everything is polluted?

I do not believe that community has got better over the last century, before
the television made its appearance in every front room people did go out for
their entertainment a lot more. Village halls, church buildings and public
houses used to be where people would go to participate in things. The world
was not a spectacle to be watched. Today it mostly is.

We also live in an age where the motorcar and planes are omnipresent. Kids
used to play in the street, now they have Snapchat. One day of playing in the
street - even if bullied - is worth an eternity of Snapchat, even if not
'cyber-bullied'. Cars also have a way of killing all forms of life, not just
people's pets but every life form that is not well versed in the Green Cross
Code. The billion or so car drivers think it is their divine right to right of
way, that climate change does not concern them and that bicycles are for kids.

As for the wonders of scientific advances and breakthroughs, the ancients in
Greece, Persia and elsewhere worked out all the difficult maths. But 99% of
people get lost at the mention of cosine and would not be able to solve a
simultaneous equation even if their life depended on it.

Even this longer, healthier lifespan you speak of is questionable. Who doesn't
have elderly relatives that have been on some kind of life support for
decades? Fed through a straw, needing a bed hoist, this might be better than
dead, but if the Alzheimer's has set in does it even matter? This extended
life also ties up the potential of younger generations, care workers who pop
by three times a day do not come for free, they too have potential and, whilst
they are doing the bed hoist thing, they are not writing the next War And
Peace or spending time with their own family.

I am playing devil's advocate here, however, we live in an era of Trump and
maximal human stupidity. The baby boomer generation had a better gig in the
last century.

~~~
chaosbutters314
Oh god, I'm not the only one realizing your statement on 25-30 years for the
mortgage, on top of the 25-30 years already spent to pay for the down payment.

It is either save for retirement or save for a house.

