
There is no Planet B - artur_makly
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2019-1-january-february/feature/there-no-planet-b-kim-stanley-robinson
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fhood
So generally with this sort of article I end up making some point about how I
believe that the only effective solutions to these sorts of problems are
legislative ones. See CFC's and the ozone layer for reference, etc.

A reply I often receive, as mentioned in the article, centers around personal
freedoms and some sort of economic drag or stagnation that apparently makes
the whole thing not worth it, and I have realized that these arguments are an
irrelevant distraction from the topic at hand. So here are some bullet points
I have come up with.

1\. I don't see any argument for how legislative restrictions on carbon could
possibly have a more significant economic impact than the displacement and
disruption caused by sea level rise.

2\. The environment is more important than your ideal of personal freedoms. It
just is. This isn't guns, drugs, privacy or free speech. Climate change is a
nuclear war scale issue, and should be treated as such. As the article states,
it isn't like there is somewhere else to go.

3\. If you are opposed legislative solutions to these issues because you don't
feel like being inconvenienced, fine. But please just say that, and don't
waste time hiding behind irrelevant issues.

~~~
ryanmercer
>I believe that the only effective solutions to these sorts of problems are
legislative ones. See CFC's and the ozone layer

There's still at least one factory in China using CFC-11, with zero regard to
the environmental impact or international stance on use of CFCs.

~~~
8bitsrule
Every time we point a finger, there are 3 pointing back at US.

~~~
linksnapzz
...BUT WHAT ABOUT (what, exactly?)

Please, let's hear about the factories in the US and Europe still using
R-12/R-14 with impunity.

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scythe
It's very true; any other Solar System body can't sustain a large human
population with the lifestyle we've been used to. The rocky bodies are too
small: Mars, the largest (Venus doesn't count), has a surface area about equal
to the Pacific Ocean in size. Cloud cities on Venus or Jupiter require a level
of technology we can barely fathom. And I've got a feeling that living on a
space station makes those cages in Hong Kong look comfortable.

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uhtred
Sierra Club, why do you refuse to ever mention the one thing we could all do
easily that would have a dramatic effect on slowing climate change, i.e. not
eating animal products anymore. Because you care more about donations than the
actual causes you profess to care so much about.

~~~
ryanmercer
Compared to energy generation that directly produces CO2, if everyone on the
planet stopped eating beef today, it would be an insignificant change. It
would ever so modestly slow global warming. (Edit: I would note though, that
if people gave up beef for chicken you get roughly an 85% reduction per unit
of measure of meat! I've personally switched the bulk of my meat consumption
to chicken this year without having to drastically change my dietary
preferences).

A cow averages 70 and 120 kg of methane a year, this gives us a CO2 equivalent
(methane is more powerful than CO2) of about 2300 kg per cow per year. There
are 1.3bn to 1.5bn cattle on the planet.

That's an average of 3.22 Gt CO2-equivalent, we're going to produce nearly 40
Gt of ACTUAL CO2 this year.

Sure, transporting/slaughtering/refrigerating the meat adds some actual CO2
production as well for the beef but still, if you add up all methane and CO2
sources I imagine it's less than 3% of global production.

~~~
8bitsrule
Compared to electricity generation, a lot of progress is possible in the US
... but too slowly implemented.

OTOH, prying people loose from dependencies on their gasoline vehicles (and
the transportation of consumer goods over long distances, and the
transportation of human bodies by jets) is going to be a long, slow job.

From what I'm seeing, they're concerned about climate change ... until they
see where that leads... and then the resistance to the inevitable gets at
least as fierce as it is over gun-control. The possibility of a democratic
solution here -may- have vanished.

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jraedisch
Kim Stanley Robinson is a great SciFi Writer. "2312" is probably my favorite
of his works (the first I read). I enjoyed the hopefulness of the article.
Being part of the next decades will be very interesting.

