
Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe? - andrewstuart
It seems to me that governments can be counted out of taking the leadership needed to solve this within 12 years. If anything they seem to want to act against solving this issue in some cases.<p>So what can we do so our children don&#x27;t live in some ghastly hothouse world?<p>The scientists have told us its our final chance.... not to start within 12 years, but solve it within 12 years.<p>I feel like the young people need to take charge of the world because the older generations have had their chance and not fixed it.<p>Maybe corporations are the ones who can be pressured to take the lead.
======
tobr
Fundamentally it is a political problem, not a technological problem. We need
high carbon taxes, we need to end fossil fuel subsidies, and we probably need
to change our economic system to something that addresses the tragedy of the
commons.

But we’ve seen in recent years how technology can influence politics. I’d
quote a tweet from Tristan Harris from the other day [1]:

> In an hypothetical world, if Facebook were re-designed _entirely_ into a
> global coordination tool for billions of people to take the most meaningful
> and significant steps to fight climate change -- what would it look like?

1:
[https://twitter.com/tristanharris/status/1049177712227573760](https://twitter.com/tristanharris/status/1049177712227573760)

~~~
xupybd
If we can get renewables cheaper than fossil fuels and get reasonable energy
storage politics won’t be a problem.

~~~
pjc50
This absolutely can be a problem, because infrastructure needs political
approval. Worst case is a ban on renewable generation to protect fossil fuel
profits, for example.

~~~
spuz
As soon as renewables become more profitable than fossil fuels any (personal)
economic incentive politicians have to subsidise the fossil fuel industry will
switch to the renewable industry. Even the most corrupt politicians you could
imagine are not so hell bent on destroying the planet that they would refuse
bribes from their friends in the solar industry.

The real political incentive behind fossil fuel subsidy comes down to
technology and economics. The reality is that every nation is dependent on oil
and gas and without them their economies would be destroyed. The real reason
politicians fear a real push towards cleaner energy is that it will increase
energy prices enough to trigger nationwide riots and protests.

------
cletus
So I'm honestly not as concerned about this as I once was.

Don't get me wrong: the climate is going to change, arguably we're in a mass
extinction event already and people aren't going to suddenly start acting in
the collective long term welfare of humanity.

One of the things I like about futurism is the levelheaded optimism and
pragmatism you tend to get. And I'll call out Isaac Arthur as a well-known
example of this.

Think there's too many people? You can easily show that the world could easily
produce enough to feed a population 10 times what we have now in the very near
future, thanks largely to automation.

Think we're dumping too much CO2 into the atmosphere? We no doubt are but that
problem basically goes away immediately if we ever get economic fusion power.
Even if we don't, the plummetting cost of wind and solar may solve that anyway
(by "solve" I mean that as soon as non-fossil fuel power production is cheaper
than fossil fuels it becomes economic to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and
turn into hydrocarbons).

Too expensive to get to space? Eventually the cost of this will go down to
dollars per kilogram.

Worried about how we'll produce all that power? When getting stuff into orbit
is sufficiently cheap it'll become economic to put solar collectors in orbit
and beam energy back to Earth.

And all you need for this kind of optimism is the kind of technology we're
widely expected to have this century.

So it's kind of sad that a lot of the larger fauna is doomed but you're not
going to change people's appetites for rhino horns, fish bladders, tiger oil
or pangolin dishes. Then again, maybe future genetics can restore some or all
of those species.

The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now so I have trouble
believing the doomsday scenarios of runaway climate change that'll turn the
Earth into Venus just because the Earth has been here for 4-5 billion years,
has been hotter than now and hasn't become Venus yet. We also seem to have a
pretty poor history of predictions when it comes to climate change too.

Fundamentally this also seems like a "betting with the Mayans" type scenario
too. Either the doomsayers are right and we're screwed. If so, you'll be right
but who cares? We're still screwed. You're probably better off just hoping
things will work out because, honestly, I think there's a pretty decent chance
they will.

~~~
netjiro
> The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now

Key here is rate of change, and what humans can survive. We are changing the
climate many many times faster than ever before. Nature does not have the time
to adapt. And the wars, famines and mass displacements coming from ecosystem
collapse is like nothing we've seen in human history. Think we have a problem
with a few million migrants? Try a billion or two!

P-T Extinction event "The Great Dying" took on the order of 100 000 years to
elevate CO2 and still killed off 96% of marine species and 70% of land
vertebrates. The largest mass extinction ever(?) We're going strong in that
direction over a few hundred years.

And a very hot earth will have large areas that are not survivable by humans,
by traditional crops and food animals, and so on. Storms and floods massively
more powerful than we see today.

Frankly, how can you not be afraid of that future? It's very likely your
descendants won't survive it.

~~~
buro9
Earth will be fine.

Life on Earth will be fine, but that life will be different to the life we
have today.

The only thing not fine is whether humans survive what they/we ultimately have
brought about.

But in there is a kind of beautiful justice that the universe has in it's
self-correcting algorithm... if you create imbalance, the imbalance will
correct in time but perhaps to do so it kills you.

If we care about the human race, it means to care about the whole ecosystem
and all other life on Earth. But the evidence of behaviour by people and
governments is that they only care for themselves as individuals and not the
wider human race, and other life on Earth.

I no longer see hope for significant change in the behaviour of humans, and
I've shifted my view to believing that what is needed to provide massively
long-term stability in the ecosystem for life on Earth is another mass
extinction that includes humans.

Which sounds depressing, but doesn't feel it. I'm positive about life on
Earth, just not about humans.

~~~
jjeaff
Humans are the ultimate adapters. Heck, we can survive in the vacuum of space,
the highest peaks and some of the lowest parts of the ocean. We live in
deserts and rain forests and tundra and remote islands.

Humans will survive. They will adapt. It may not be in the same numbers and
lifestyle as today, but the human race will likely be here for a very long
time.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Human _societies_ can have individuals doing all that. Stable, large
societies. The astronauts can survive in the vacuum of space because of
technology, and they can get to space because of technology - technology that
is backed by _hundreds of thousands of people_ all across the greater economic
machine that built the rocket and the space suits, and supplied and fed
everyone involved.

As individuals, we're not much more interesting than any other animal. It's
our technological civilization that makes us interesting in the grand scheme
of things, and that civilization is both hard to bootstrap and extremely
fragile.

~~~
jjeaff
Without our technology, we can still run farther and longer than any other
species, use our delicate fingers and opposable thumbs, control fire, and make
and use tools and solve relatively complex puzzles. As a species, without our
tech, we are head and shoulders above most species.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Sort of. But fire and tools are technology, the very lowest tier. Our ability
to stack technology, to use tools to build better tools, is what makes us
interesting - as long as we actually make use of this ability.

------
pauldjohnston
Well, having done some research into this recently, the tech world has
something it can do right now. Switch to sustainably powered Cloud and move to
renewably powered/offset Data Centres.

e.g. Google (100% carbon neutral), Azure (100% offset), AWS (Oregon, Montreal,
Ireland, Frankfurt regions are 100% carbon neutral)

Cloud/Data Centres emit around 2% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (bet you didn't
know that).

There is also research showing that we're going to increase our Data Centre
usage by 5x in the next 7 years.

So change that 2% to something much much higher... because that much compute
requires that much more energy and we don't have the worldwide renewables
infrastructure at scale to cope with the extra capacity.

[https://bit.ly/2024wp](https://bit.ly/2024wp)

[https://www.change.org/p/sustainable-servers-
by-2024](https://www.change.org/p/sustainable-servers-by-2024)

* Sign the pledge please * (if you agree with it of course)

It's almost the simplest thing we can easily do, and it should put pressure on
tech companies to switch to renewables.

If we believe the tech industry is an innovator and a force for good, why not
start with the means of production - the energy industry?

Sign up... switch... go!

PS I wrote the whitepaper with Anne Currie - we have not been paid for the
work and was entirely voluntary. I used to work for AWS up until June this
year.

~~~
antoineMoPa
I wonder what percentage of CO2 comes from programmers commuting to work.

~~~
CodeCube
Go remote! the planet, along with your family, sanity, and happiness will
thank you!

Every working programmer today can stand up, walk to their boss' desk, and
have the conversation about going remote, even if only part time (for now). If
they say no, ask how you can work towards that in the future, and if they
don't relent, find a different job (don't immediately quit, obviously; now you
have leverage in knowing that you want another job, but don't need it quite
yet). When doing your job search, the first question you should ask is, "is
the position remote friendly?"

Let's change the industry's culture from the ground up.

~~~
cailloud
Stupid question; when saying 'go remote' you mean working from home right?

~~~
gmemstr
Essentially, but the joy of working remote is being able to work whenever you
happen to be, whether it be on the road (I thought I saw an article about this
but I fail to remember the author) or in your home office

~~~
CodeCube
This is a great point. This summer, I took my family for a week of beaching,
boating, and snorkeling. I also worked the full week ... of course my boss
knew what was up, as I'm up front about everything. But it was great being
able to just modify my schedule, go snorkeling in the morning, come back,
work, dinner, and then work a few more hours at night. All you gotta do is
make sure that the place you're staying has wifi.

------
vjsc
In my opinion, the large corporations behind fossil fuels have too much of an
economic clout. The governments around the world are dependent on them for a
considerable amount of their respective national economy. So yes you are right
about government not doing much about this.

Ultimately, unless there is a relatively quick mass extinction event, no
government is going to be bothered into action. Climate change and the
devastation it's going to cause, is going to play out slowly over the years.
The most affected would be the poorest of the world. They are going to die
first. The rich will have enough resources to be able to not only survive, but
also thrive on these events as new business opportunities are going to be
created.

Ultimately, Earth maybe a very different place 100 years from now, but the
rich of today are surely going to have their descendants living quite
comfortably.

The only thing an individual can do is to strive to get as rich as possible,
because that is the only security that's going to save you and your family in
the bleak future that lies ahead of us.

~~~
simonh
In democracies we can't all just throw up our hands and blame it on the
political class and big business. If the ordinary people of the developed
world really wanted something done about it, as a higher priority than
anything else, there is no gun held to their heads preventing them from voting
for that. We are all benefiting hugely from the cheap energy reaped from
fossil fuels, whether we like it or not, and in the main the fact is we like
it.

Imagining that 'large corporations' are reaping all the benefits and could
bear all the cost of weaning the global economy off fossil fuels is jaw
droppingly naive. The massive costs of weaning ourselves off fossil fuels
would bear down heavily on all of us, and especially the poor and the third
world. Can we imagine China elevating hundreds of millions of people out of
poverty over the last 30 years without fossil fuels?

I'm no climate change denier, far from it. You're quite right that the costs
will be severe, even catastrophic, but there is no easy answer to this.

~~~
gjm11
Indeed, there's no gun to our heads preventing us voting for taking serious
action on climate change. There doesn't need to be.

Imagine I'm a voter in, say, the US or the UK. There is no major party I can
vote for that will, if elected, take serious action on climate change. In both
nations there is a Green Party which probably would, but it has a firmly
established track record of getting approximately zero votes; the only way in
which voting Green has ever had any visible impact on US or UK policy is that
a bunch of people voting for Ralph Nader in the 2000 US presidential election
is part of why we had President Bush instead of President Gore, which is
probably not an encouraging precedent to most potential Green voters.

And, of course, voting Green also means voting for all their other policies.
Which doesn't matter if you regard climate change as the _only important
issue_ , but since you probably don't, you might find them unacceptable on
other grounds; and since lots of other voters definitely don't, lots of them
are going to be voting not-Green even if they care a lot about climate change
... which means that, once again, the Greens are not actually going to win,
and the only real effect of voting for them is to give you less influence on
which actually-electable candidate wins instead.

So no, in practice we _don 't_ have the option of voting for taking serious
action on climate change. We have the option of voting for a big package of
things, one of which happens to be serious action on climate change, in the
knowledge that (even if a sizeable majority of voters wants serious action on
climate change) voting for that package won't actually result in a government
that will try to implement it.

It may be that those of us who care about climate change _should_ be voting
Green even though it predictably won't help in the near future, in order to
"send a message" that might change the political landscape in future
elections. Or that we should be putting pressure on the actually-electable
parties to change their policies, or starting new parties, or something. But
none of that means that we have a realistic way of getting action on climate
change just by voting for it.

~~~
lucozade
This isn't how policy making works though.

An excellent example is Brexit. The Brexit referendum existed solely because
of UKIP and UKIP have only ever won 2 parliamentary seats. And those were both
for sitting MPs that had defected.

However, UKIP did get 4-odd million votes, plenty of local councillors, MEPs
etc. In other words, they clearly had a lot of support for their flagship
policies and that caused the main parties, that had UKIP voters in their
constituencies, to take notice. Unfortunately.

This has also, to a lesser extent, been the case with green issues. The Greens
increased their vote from the 80's onwards and the main parties started to
adopt green policies accordingly.

So, in the UK at least, there are well worn paths to get policies, like
climate change action, to the top of the heap.

I'd argue that there are a few reasons why they're not top of the heap today:

1) Other things are deemed more important. Clearly Brexit is one. Whether you
agree that it should be more important, or not, it's fairly undeniable that
it's true.

2) The folk that have expressed most interest in green issues have tended to
not be very engaged in formal politics. <30s predominantly. That changed
somewhat in the 2017 election primarily because of Corbyn (though Greens did
particularly badly). So it may be that green issues become more important as a
byproduct of other changes.

3) There's a strong argument that UKIP's popularity was, in large part, due to
Nigel Farage. He may well be a cock but he's a cock that was on TV a lot
reinforcing his message. I mean, I like Sian Berry (no idea who the other
bloke is) but she's no Nigel Farage.

~~~
gideonparanoid
This is a good analysis of the situation.

>(no idea who the other bloke is) Jonathan Bartley [0].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Bartley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Bartley)

------
wtmt
Don't wait for others to do things or take decisions. That's going to be an
uphill battle if you really want changes quicker. Start with yourself, and
then push others (including friends, family, colleagues, corporations,
politicians, etc.). A lot can be done if people take up changes on their own
instead of waiting for politicians or corporations or "those other polluting
countries" to "just do something" about it.

Here are a few things you can do yourself and encourage those you know
personally to follow:

1\. Eliminate/reduce throwing or wasting food. Don't buy anything you wouldn't
finish eating.

2\. Eat only plants, or make plants the largest part of your meals while
eliminating or reducing the consumption of animal products. Make sure you read
up on nutrition and/or join some support groups.

3\. Walk as much as possible and avoid fossil fuel based transport for
yourself. Or try cycling. If necessary, take public transport.

4\. Promote and use renewable sources of energy, like solar and/or wind,
wherever possible.

5\. Have fewer children or delay have children a little bit. This may have
some other side effects depending on where you live and how the population
demographic looks like.

If you think of yourself as committed to this cause and yet you see issues or
barriers with the above, that's only a sign of how these things seem
impossible to others who don't care enough. Work with (and on) yourself first.

Don't be shocked or surprised: _you will_ see a whole lot of apathy all around
you. People will even try to discourage you from doing anything and try to
convince you that whatever you do just doesn't matter. Stop looking at them or
listening to them.

~~~
unit91
> Have fewer children...think of yourself as committed to this cause...People
> will even try to discourage you...Stop looking at them or listening to them.

This sounds a lot like a cult religion to me.

~~~
jbattle
There's no way we're going to make a meaningful positive impact on the climate
without doing things that make people uncomfortable. The sooner we start, the
less dramatic that discomfort will be

------
Waterluvian
I like polar bears so it's sad to see those go. It will be disturbing to see
coastal cities founded next to sunken cities. Storms are fun but only when
they're occasional. I already miss the insects.

We worry about losing languages, cultures, artwork to the unyielding entropic
horror named time. Not because we have a pragmatic need for them. But the
future is scary when you can't bring the past with you. My culture is my
security blanket.

Maybe my kids are going to grow up in a world not defined by technology but by
the change in daily regimen of existence. Humans adapt really well to just
about anything, so I bet my kids will feel right at home. They'll roll their
eyes on cue when I insist that the future wasn't supposed to be like this.

I've always kind of wondered how someone as liberal as me can possibly turn
into an old curmudgeon. Maybe this is how. Maybe I'll be disquieted not by
being overrun by the creep of new gadgets, but by looking around and seeing a
completely foreign anthroposphere.

~~~
sosense
Polar bear populations are fine, sea level had been rising at the same rate
for much longer than we've been industrialized, storm rate isn't changing, and
where do you live that there are no insects?

~~~
adrianN
Polar bears can swim all summer while they wait for the ice to return.

~~~
therealdrag0
I'd be surprised if you have any evidence for this. Adult bears can swim
surprisingly long (many days, not months), but cubs cannot and die.

------
CalRobert
Well, we _could_ build a world where the majority of people:

* Live in a very well insulated flat in the city that isn't made of concrete

* Have meat and dairy only as a luxury item

* Use solar and wind power for your heat pump and AC

* Ride a bike or walk to work, or take electrically-powered public transport

* Use non-luxurious sea transport to go on foreign holidays

we'd be about there. But boiling today's young people for the sake of cheap
gas has proven more politically feasible.

~~~
JBReefer
People on HN seem to believe the default state of humanity is driving
everywhere and living in the suburbs, when that's only true in particular
parts of the US for the last 80 years or so. A frequent question I see about
not owning a car is "well how could I possibly get groceries otherwise??" The
only way we can address our individual footprint and our isolation crisis is
to build real towns and cities again, but I'm doubtful.

Don't have a lot of hope for this one, people are willing to tell others to
change their patterns but will rarely change their own. That way, you get woke
points but don't have to do anything. Plus that Tesla looks GREAT in the
driveway, especially when you consider that climate change is all everyone
else's fault.

~~~
CalRobert
"People on HN", to me, seems like it should be "People in the US".

There are plenty of urbanists on HN. Anecdotal, but I swear if I post
something like "your free parking is just welfare for car owners" it will be
upvoted most of my workday, and then downvoted as Americans come online. But I
don't have hard data for this (wonder if HN has a way to pull the comment
score history over time...)

For what it's worth, my Brompton looks pretty cool at my desk, too, but that's
less visible.

And yeah, all new cities are garbage. Absolute dystopian nightmares of design
where letting your three year old play in the street is a death sentence.
Never mind that when cars were new a NYC judge decried the possibility of kids
being banished from playing in the streets, which of course was perfectly
normal.

------
josho
> Maybe corporations are the ones who can be pressured to take the lead.

Yes. They absolutely will. But only after they have the right incentives.
Those incentives can be created over night by having governments put in place
a carbon tax.

It gets even worse. If a large group of people reduced their energy
consumption to help climate change it has the consequence of reducing demand
and therefore energy costs will come down. That will make green energy cost
uncompetitive and slow down the transition to green fuels.

This change really does need to come from government. So get politically
involved.

~~~
kebman
Haha, sure! :D Carbon tax. Sounds legit! Here's what's gonna happen:
Corporations just jack up prices accross the board according to the tax, and
then everybody else gets to pay. And then nothing changes. It'll be like the
sugar tax in Norway. Do you really think people are buying less sugar over
here because of it? Get real! :D We're well past incentives. The change has to
be law, and the law has to be protected with the threat of force. (Force
sounds so much better than violence, don't you think, but all this is gonna
end in the latter, eventually, if we just let it slide, because when people
get hungry, they also get desperate.) And where people don't respect the law,
force has to be actually used. However, nobody in their right mind is willing
to do that as long as we're boiling frogs... So I guess we'll just die then.
We had a pretty good run, though. :)

~~~
pimterry
> It'll be like the sugar tax in Norway. Do you really think people are buying
> less sugar over here because of it? Get real!

I can't speak for Norway, but in the UK the sugar tax has had a huge impact -
a _majority_ of soft drink manufacturers have significantly reduced sugar in
their products, to avoid them becoming unaffordable, and it's had a very
noticeable effect.

The UK tax is still pretty new so it's difficult to get hard numbers on that,
but sugar taxes in general are fairly well studied and have been very
effective worldwide.
[https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2018.603](https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2018.603)
has a good summary, some highlights:

* "Overall 21.6% decrease in the monthly purchased volume of the higher taxed, sugary soft drinks"

* "People living in Philadelphia were 40% less likely to report consuming sugary drinks every day after the tax policy"

* "Mexico's 10% tax on sugar-sweetened beverages implemented in January 2014 is said to have led to a 5.5% drop in sugary drinks purchases by the end of that year and a further 9.7% fall in sales in 2015, yielding an average reduction of 7.6% over the study two-year period"

------
DyslexicAtheist
We are past the point where we we can fix this with discussions & civil
discourse. Not to say that we shouldn't try. But a leaflet campaigns and
discussions aren't going to reduce emissions. The best solution would be not
to have kids (too late for me) and adopt instead if you must, not to own a
car, try to own as little as you can (it will make you happier too). Plant
stuff, pick up gardening, go offline and go outside to reconnect with where
you come from. Anything that contains batteries is probably toxic. Most shit
we don't need we just are brainwashed into thinking we do.

An interesting read is _Technological Slavery The Collected Writings Of
Theodore J. Kaczynski, A.k.a. ' The Unabomber'_ which has been mentioned in
Bill Joy's famous post _" Why the Future doesn't Need Us"_ and my guess is
that despite his infamy he might be heralded as some kind of _" hero"_ in
50-100 years time.

Humans and society is in deeper in trouble than we think and stand "no chance
of being saved". If you are of sound mental state, I suggest Thomas Ligotti's
"The Conspiracy against the Human Race"

[https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/](https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/)

[https://archive.org/details/TechnologicalSlaveryTheCollected...](https://archive.org/details/TechnologicalSlaveryTheCollectedWritingsOfTheodoreJ.KaczynskiA.k.a.TheUnabomber/)

[https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-against-Human-Race-
Contriv...](https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-against-Human-Race-
Contrivance/dp/0984480277)

~~~
wrinkl3
Personally, I don't feel like me rescinding my earthly possessions and
refusing to procreate will do anything to help anyone, other than maybe quench
my own conscience.

That whole approach is referred to as hair-shirt environmentalism, I believe.
Bruce Sterling once observed that if you're trying to combat Climate Change
solely by minimizing your individual impact, the logical conclusion would be
to stop living altogether.

~~~
retzkek
No, of course not, you just need to convince others that it's good for _them_
to do it. It's like elections: your single vote is nearly worthless,
convincing others to vote the way you want is not.

Although I believe what GP meant is that nothing _anyone_ can do will improve
the situation, so do what you can to prepare, e.g. learning to grow vegetables
would be quite useful in case of food shortages.

------
revel
Practically speaking, the single biggest area of low hanging fruit is clean
shipping. Right now the largest 15 cargo ships emit more greenhouse gasses
than all the cars on the road combined. The US could take the lead on this
issue by modifying the Jones Act, a peculiar piece of legislation that forces
maritime commerce between US territories to use US ships with an American
crew. If the Jones Act were modified to include incentives for zero emission
ships it would heavily incentive investment in this critical area. This single
change in legislation would reduce the cost of goods and services in Hawaii
and Puerto Rico, increase trade, and provide a powerful economic carrot to
reduce carbon emissions.

~~~
mikeash
The largest 15 cargo ships emit more sulphuric dioxide than all the cars on
the road combined. That is not a greenhouse gas, and actually has a cooling
effect, although it’s not healthy locally.

~~~
revel
So I looked into this more and you're right that it's sulphuric dioxide that I
was thinking of. CO2 emissions from shipping are 800m tons per year and, if
taken alone, would constitute the 6th heaviest source of carbon emissions in
the world.

~~~
mikeash
How are you dividing up other sources such that shipping would be the 6th
heaviest source? At roughly 2% of total global emissions, it seems like you'd
have to lump other sources together in a strange way to come up with that
ranking.

For example, looking at: [https://www.c2es.org/content/international-
emissions/](https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/)

Taking shipping as a separate thing, it would rank 7th in the chart of total
emissions and 6th in the chart of energy-related emissions, but only because
those charts only contain 6 and 5 entries respectively.

------
jonstewart
Give money to Democratic candidates challenging Republican incumbents, right
now.

If we believe in evidence-based science, then all evidence points to
Republicans being anti-science. You don't have to be a committed lifelong
Democrat to see that the current Republican party is fighting climate change
efforts at every turn and needs to be displaced in order for political
progress on the issue to happen.

~~~
lolsal
> If we believe in evidence-based science, then all evidence points to
> Republicans being anti-science.

I am conservative and tend to lean-republican. I am not anti-science. Please
stop generalizing.

~~~
mariojv
I'm not saying you personally are anti-science, but Gallup surveys in 2018
point to 35% of Republicans believing that global warming is caused by human
activities vs. 89% of Democrats. [0]

It's difficult to attribute something as vague as pro or anti science to a
large group of people. I wouldn't want to get into that flame war on HN.
However, OP has a point that Democrats are more likely to be concerned about
the real impact of climate change.

[0] [https://news.gallup.com/poll/231530/global-warming-
concern-s...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/231530/global-warming-concern-
steady-despite-partisan-shifts.aspx)

------
seymour333
What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe? Start an economical
catastrophe.

We need to immediately, and meaningfully, move away from oil, gas, and other
carbon heavy industries in any way that we presently have the means to do so.

If everyone who is presently in the market for a new vehicle could afford to
buy an electric one, we'd probably be in better shape. If every household
could put solar panels and take a load off of the grid, we would be moving in
the right direction.

The problem is these technologies are new, and expensive, and they can't be
effective at solving the problem they set out to solve without mass adoption.

Mass adoption won't even _begin_ to happen until the average person can pick
up a used Model 3 for around $10k. Where populations heavily use mopeds and
motorcycles we need a flood of affordable electric alternatives. Both of those
scenarios are at least a decade out.

If we need to solve this in 12 years we're screwed. Best bet is to move
somewhere cold and inland. Then at least you can be somewhat comfortable while
the whole thing goes down. Although the process of moving the world's economy
away from oil (to whatever extent that can be achieved while still producing
plastics etc.) is going to make life miserable no matter where you are.

~~~
Comevius
Electric cars tend to put out less CO2 compared to gasoline cars only if you
drive them for more than 5 years and don't replace the battery.

[https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cl...](https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cleaner-
Cars-from-Cradle-to-Grave-full-report.pdf)

And yes, 12 years is nothing. Countries could start replacing all cars with
electric ones for free right now, CO2 would just go higher and higher.

The answer to this environmental catastrophe is not manufacturing new cars. If
we would have stopped buying and using cars 40 years ago...

[https://mayerhillman.com/transport/key-
publications/](https://mayerhillman.com/transport/key-publications/)

~~~
roryisok
> Countries could start replacing all cars with electric ones for free right
> now, CO2 would just go higher and higher.

How?

I wish people would stop fixating on this magical 12 years figure. It's not a
countdown. If we keep our current carbon emissions the same for 12 years we'll
see 2 degrees of warming. If we do nothing. If we continue to do nothing after
that point it doesn't stay at 2 degrees. It gets hotter and hotter, and the
effects get worse and worse. If countries start replacing cars with electric
ones for free now, and we still don't reach zero emissions in 12 years, we
might see 2 degrees. But we might avoid 3 degrees, or 4 degrees.

We don't have 12 years left and then game over. We have 12 years until things
start to get really bad. And then the UN will come out and say we have 12
years left to act to avoid 3 degrees, and we'll all have these same fucking
stupid arguments on the internet again in between news bulletins about famine
and the various migrant crises.

------
jsingleton
I wrote a trilogy of long posts on this topic very recently so I'll just link
to that.

[https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as-
a-t...](https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as-a-
technologist-part-1/)

In summary, it's not somebody else's problem. It's our problem and we need to
take responsibility and fix it. We already have all the core technology
required to solve this and we just need to make it happen. Everyone can help,
particularly the talented crowd on here.

~~~
nicolaslem
> Everyone can help, particularly the talented crowd on here.

I've been thinking about that for a while, is it possible to have a positive
impact on the environment writing software?

~~~
perfunctory
Bret Victor wrote on the subject:
[http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/)

~~~
jsingleton
This was the main inspiration for the posts and I refer back to it. Software
is everywhere and can absolutely make a difference. Hopefully this will
inspire others too.

------
super-serial
I've mentioned it here before, but my favorite is crushing and spreading
olivine rocks:
[http://www.innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/oli...](http://www.innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/olivineagainstclimatechange23.pdf)

It's a natural process and we just have to mine as many rocks as we dig up
oil. We just need to catch up for the last few hundred years where we only dug
up oil and no rocks. Just US $200 billion per year to offset all of humanity's
carbon emissions. If I was a billionaire I'd already have started developing
robots to mine and grind up rocks for accelerated weathering.

------
codingdave
Don't forget that the small things add up -- small things on their own won't
change the world, but they change the lifestyle of one family at a time, and
it helps both a little in the short run, and more as children raised in
climate-aware homes grow up. If everyone starts making small changes, it will
change demand, which changes markets, which changes politics.

Some small examples:

Walk to the grocery store every other day instead of driving once a week.

Use mass transit. Recycle. Use products made from renewable, recyclable
materials.

Go ahead and put up a solar electric system, even if the costs aren't perfect,
nor is the tech, or even always the carbon offset.... but it moves demand in
the right direction and sends a message.

Turn down your heat in the winter, and your AC in the summer. Turn lights off
when you leave a room. Be aware of your energy burn. As another commenter
said, don't write or use cryptocurrency.

Produce and buy local goods.

And for cryin' out loud -- VOTE, for people who will be on the right side of
this issue.

~~~
bluGill
Walking to the grocery store means you live within walking distance. That
means zoning codes that allow a grocery store in your neighborhood. Most do
not allow that.

~~~
codingdave
True, but "Walking distance" is a nebulous measurement at best. How far can
you walk? I walk 1.5 miles to my grocery store. Most of my neighbors say that
is not within walking distance, but clearly that is a personal judgement,
because I do it. And if we are talking about what changes we can make to our
lives, expanding your perspective on "walking distance" is not a bad place to
start.

------
crispinb
The collapse of the dynamically stable climate on which agricultural
civilisation is founded is vanishingly unlikely to be prevented at this stage
- no-one has ever even outlined, let alone detailed, even one remotely
plausible political route from business-as-usual to where we need to be. As
others here note, it's fundamentally a problem of world politics, howevermuch
a proportion of HN readership may wish to suck at the corner of their
technological comfort blanket. As we have no meaningful world polity, it's
unsolvable. Our civilisation will almost certainly descend into chaos & war as
the early effects of climate collapse roll in this century. Look at the
convulsions flowing from a tiny trickle of refugees into Europe in 2015-16.
That was barely a taste of what's to come.

It's hardly surprising - nothing in H. Sapiens' constellation of seemingly
unique traits (cognitive flexibility, sociality, cultural transmission through
language etc) equips it to make collective decisions on a global scale. It's
kind of telling that just as it's becoming most blindingly obvious that all
our major challenges are planetary, there is a general retreat from commitment
to global decision-making. We're not adequate to to the task. This isn't
anyone's fault - it's just biology.

~~~
Comevius
I like this comment a lot. Got goosebumps reading it.

------
fallingfrog
To solve this crisis in 12 years would require overthrowing the government of
every country with an industrial base and replacing them with much more
progressive people. You can try if you want but I don't see it happening. As
far as actually convincing people of global warming, the older generation will
absolutely never believe it no matter how much evidence you present. They are
truly lost. Change will only be possible after they have died. This is going
to be a sad, tragic period in human history, and nobody in the future is going
to understand why we made such self destructive decisions. It will pass
though. Hundreds of years from now the climate will slowly begin to return to
normal. Despite the fact that the fight is hopeless, though, I'll continue to
try.

~~~
xupybd
I don’t think the result would be good. All that would do is destabilise the
world crash our economies and set back our green tech.

~~~
adrianN
Crashing the economy has historically been the most efficient way of reducing
CO2 production.

~~~
xupybd
I'm not sure. It might wind things back a bit for a short time. But during a
time of economic down turn the environment becomes a low priority for a lot of
people. Then when things recover there is no guarantee that things will be
done any better. I'm of the opinion that we need stable governments and
economies to tackle this problem.

------
DanielBMarkham
The definition of terms becomes critical here. "Catastrophe" is an alarming
word. If 25% of the human population died, it would certainly be a
catastrophe. But the planet would still be around. Humans would still be
around. A thousand years from now, it _might_ be remembered as "that really
bad time"

Planet-scale change is truly Brobdingnagian. Anything in your life is
insignificant compared to that. You have to frame this discussion before you
even begin. Are you talking about stuff you can do that you can see the result
of? Or are you talking about stuff you can do that will make things look
different a thousand years from now? The first one is doable. The second one?
We've had tens of billions of people live on this planet. I don't know of any
that managed that. Maybe a dozen or so?

If I wanted to enact change, I would create acceptance criteria before I
started. Am I in this to feel good? To change my local government to do X? And
so forth. If your goal is something like "I want the world to be a better
place!" then that's a great goal, but it's a feeling, not a goal. Goals you
can measure. Goals have numbers and measurement criteria.

If you just want to be upset and vent, fine. That's a perfectly fine thing to
do. After all, things suck. A lot of things suck. It's actually a more honest
and healthy goal than any of the others I've discussed. We are a social
species. We adapt through conversation and persuasion.

------
Tempest1981
We should focus our efforts where there is the most bang per buck:

\- Cleaner energy for developing countries, esp. China and India. Pay for
their solar panels, to prevent new coal plants.

\- Research clean energy technology — solar, wind, hydroelectric. Drive
maximum efficiency, and minimum cost.

\- Raise awareness worldwide. Keep talking.

This documentary was informative:
[https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/an_inconvenient_sequel_trut...](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/an_inconvenient_sequel_truth_to_power/)
(2017, 10 years after the original)

2018: [https://www.eco-business.com/news/coal-is-in-decline-
globall...](https://www.eco-business.com/news/coal-is-in-decline-globally-but-
asia-is-driving-new-plant-development/)

------
marmaduke
Related question: where could one find jobs related to climate change efforts?
beyond walking, eating less meat, etc I might want to put my working hours in
as well, but no idea who/what to look for.

~~~
clabauterman
That's actually something I want to know as well. I would like to work as a
Developer to do good in the sense of avoiding climate change or saving nature.
That's hard to find!

------
DocSavage
Geoengineering:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05357-w](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05357-w)

[https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/a38zve/watch-the-
trailer...](https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/a38zve/watch-the-trailer-for-
vice-on-hbos-engineering-earth)

------
korantu
The only solution to rapid reduction in co2 emissions that can be deployed
right now at sufficient scale is nuclear.

There are passively safe designs built right now.

It can provide electricity, heat and desalination if lack of water is an
issue.

There is enough nuclear fuel in sea water to consider it an infinite source as
far as humans are concerned [1].

Further, USA alone can be powered by its existing nuclear _waste_ for many
years.

Surprisingly, nuclear is almost never mentioned as an option.

[1[https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-
from-t...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea)

~~~
Retric
Nuclear still costs far to much vs Wind and Solar.

If all greenhouse gases came from electricity generation then doing the France
model might work, but it's much better to cheaply go 95+% renewable and use
the savings to cut down on transportation and home heating etc.

PS: Grid scale solar is rapidly hitting 2 cents per kWh in sunny places.
Nothing else is anywhere near competing with that.

~~~
korantu
If you factor in cost of storage required to provide continuous power, then
you get way more expensive and less reliable. Now this problem is solved by,
surprise, fossil fuels. [0]

Ofcourse solar is cheaper when it is sunny, provider might even need to pay
consumer to get them to consume. [1]

[0]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/15...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/15/solar-
and-wind-lock-in-fossil-fuels-that-makes-saving-the-climate-harder-slower-
more-expensive/)

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/renewable-power-germany-
nega...](https://www.businessinsider.com/renewable-power-germany-negative-
electricity-cost-2017-12/?IR=T)

~~~
Retric
Continuous aka base-load power is considered a defect as it's not load
following. You can load follow with nuclear but then it becomes ridiculously
expensive. France gets around this largely by buying and selling to other
countries, but that does not scale.

Really, going 100% nuclear takes either massive over supply or large scale
energy storage just like solar. Wind however can supplement solar while still
costing less than nuclear and allowing you to more closely match the demand
curve.

A little peaking power allows you to avoid significant grid storage at very
reasonable costs, and as I said fix transportation etc.

PS: The need for grid electricity storage is overblown. Storing energy for
more than 1 day means you very rarely use that stored energy making in non-
viable. When you can have 2x as much solar and still only pay 4c/kwh that's
pointless. Within the day it needs to compete with an over supply of energy
most of the time.

~~~
korantu
We are comparing two energy sources: one where output depends on the weather,
and can go to near 0 another where output is strictly predictable but takes
time to change.

Option 2 have the problem of oversupply and undersupply. This forces either
storage or fossil fuels in the picture.

Option 1, however, only deals with oversupply, which does not require
expensive mitigations.

Not obvious why option 2 is preferable here

~~~
Retric
First, you can go off grid using 100% solar and a relatively small battery
system as long as you get enough solar cells. The reason this works is your
daytime input never drops to 0 and it's generally lower when you need less
energy for AC systems.

In terms of the grid, Wind and solar really can't go to 0 over large areas.
The minimum vs maximum output shows high variance, but maximum output is
largely irrelevant. Really what you care about is minimum vs average output
and that's more narrow band than you might think. Even better by locating Wind
/ Solar you can more closely match your daily demand curve.

Option 1, costs far more per kWh even if you can use every kWh, it's just
get's worse from there. As it still needs over supply as power plants need
occasional maintenance and the grid maximum and minimum demand over a year are
wildly separated. You can setup maintenance around peak annual demands, but
even then you will have occasional unexpected shutdowns.

~~~
korantu
Majority of energy consumption and population happens in cities / industry, so
if we are talking significant co2 soonest, we should really focus on these.

For large consumers like these to go solar/wind, you will have to really over-
provision solar/wind so that minimum possible power output is still enough.
(Calm night, anyone?) This looks highly inefficient and tough to predict.

Whereas nuclear can and are already operating in load following mode
routinely: [1]

[1] [http://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-
news-29-2-loa...](http://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-
news-29-2-load-following-e.pdf)

~~~
Retric
First, most city’s have a lot of space for solar and can easily import wind
power. ~66w/m2 average over 24 hours is 66 MW per km^2 / the percentage
covered in panels and really adds up.

Wind really can't be calm for long periods over large areas because large
areas will always have temperatures differences.

It's like saying what if the sun does not rise tomorrow? If that's actually
happening you have much bigger problems.

Load following nuclear power plants become even more expensive. Not a huge
deal on nuclear subs, but a major issue for civilian infrastructure. Just like
energy storage they simply increase the cost of energy above alternatives.

PS: Now if you could get nuclear without any form of subsides down to about
2.5c/kWh then running 24/7 or peaking power with average load's of around 30%
down at around 8c/kWh then I would agree it had a major place. But, it's just
no where near those numbers.

------
panic
_> Maybe corporations are the ones who can be pressured to take the lead._

Yep. We need to somehow put pressure on every polluting institution
(corporations, militaries, and so on) to either radically change or stop
existing. Individual action won't work.

Here are some companies to start with:
[https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/2017/jul/10...](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-
responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change)

------
midworst
The first thing we need to do is change the marketing strategy. It should be
“Save the people” rather than “Save the planet” or “Stop Climate Change”.

The goal is saving the people, the method to do so is stopping climate change.

------
chr1
When talking about climate change it is important to remember that climate on
earth is pretty bad already and we need to learn to control it anyway.

High (~5km) solar updraft towers look like a very promising way to do it.

In addition to generating electricity they can generate rain, prevent storms
by reducing the amount of energy in the atmosphere, and reduce the temperature
by improving the convection.

Large number of such towers will give us fine grained control over the
climate, and reduce the rise of sea level by moving a large part of the water
to groundwater in the deserts.

~~~
samatman
I would love to see Australia take the lead on this.

It's a majestic notion and we should be trying it right now.

------
perfunctory
Among other things, stop using cryptocurrencies.

~~~
dane-pgp
Should we also stop using cars given that walking exists, or stop using
computers when we could use a pencil and paper? Is there an amount of energy
that the traditional banking system could use beyond which you would recommend
people stop using banks?

You may not think that cryptocurrencies provide any benefit to the world (and
I admit that I don't own any either), but their energy usage should be
evaluated like any other technology or asset: Does the energy they require
cost more than the amount of value they create in the market? If it did, then
no one would mine cryptocurrencies.

The market value for cryptocurrencies may seem irrational to you, but there
are probably lots of things that people value that seems irrational or
unnecessary to outside observers. I personally think that a global, low-cost,
uncensored means of transacting between strangers is revolutionary, and I look
forward to future innovations that will make it more energy efficient (for the
same level of usefulness and security).

------
nmeofthestate
As far as I can see, nuclear is the only existing technology that can now be
used to rapidly transition to low carbon energy. We then solve the problem of
nuclear waste (if indeed it is a big problem - I suspect not) afterwards.

It's either that or not solving the problem.

------
Carpetsmoker
Politicians say that business must self-regulate or that consumers must choose
different.

Businesses say that they are following the laws made by the politicians and
are meeting consumer demands.

Consumers say the government should regulate things better and that businesses
should be more environmental friendly.

In others words, everyone is looking to everyone else to do something; thus no
one really does something.

Sure, there are some token efforts here and there. But the actual sweeping
changes that we need aren't happening.

Not a new phenomenon, and also not isolated to just climate change. It just
happens to be the most pressing problem.

The solution? I don't see one, save for a fundamental refactor of our
democratic institutions. I don't see that happen in the next 12 years.

So what can be done? Many things _can_ be done technically. What can
_realistically_ be done given the current state of affairs? Quite little, I
think. Stuff like going to work on the bike is cute – and something I do – but
not really making a massive impact.

Vote for your local green party? In some places that's fairly useful; in
others it's about as useful as wiping your arse with the ballot (US and UK
being prominent examples) :-(

Honestly I think nothing serious will happen until it's too late. Maybe not
even then. C'est la vie I suppose?

------
networkimprov
Stratospheric Aerosol Injection:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection_\(climate_engineering\))

~~~
yboris
Thank you for sharing this. It's a dangerous geoengineering project, but it's
also a quick solution to a part of the problem.

Dangerous: we don't know how the nonlinear weather systems will behave. This
may also compound the problem in the future - lots of unknowns.

But very quick: We can cool the earth down rather quickly using this method.

~~~
networkimprov
We do have case studies from specific volcanic events, e.g. Mt. Pinatubo.

------
Juliate
Indirect action idea (I wonder about it).

Gather with other persons to invest a few shares in the major groups
responsible for CO2 emissions.

Not to have weight per se, but to be invited in shareholders assembly. And to
be regularly loud about the topic of the group's responsibility. It's enough
for 4, 5 distinct individuals to bring up related questions in the same
assembly so that it bothers other investors.

Bothering from within is a start.

~~~
monktastic1
If I'm driving the demand they're fulfilling, I'm probably not a good choice
to complain. So I guess we have to find the guiltless ones first....

~~~
Juliate
Beware, that's a trap.

Guilt is not a valid reason not to object to, to criticise the compromission.

Would I be drunk, that wouldn't disqualify me from criticising all of: my own
responsibility, alcohol, policies regarding liquors.

(in the same way, would I be a believer, that wouldn't make it impossible or
irrelevant or even hypocritical to criticise faith, religion, church, customs,
etc.).

That's the good thing with reason: you are allowed and you can detach from
what you're talking about.

------
verroq
Can’t see it happening when a large portion of the population insists that
climate change isn’t real.

~~~
shard972
Maybe if the media managed to actually present the issue in a balanced way we
wouldn't be here. Maybe if every dire prediction wasn't presented as fact and
every criticism labeled as conspiracy theory and vica versa for a-lot of other
outlets.

Maybe if solutions like geo-engineering were at least discussed instead of the
chorus of the media/politicians telling people that taxes and fees are THE
ONLY SOLUTION to the crisis.

Just my 2cents, but we would be so much further ahead if the conversation has
some actual balance instead of these-days where people are complaining that
having a 5/95 skew in favour of the armageddon scenario if we don't have a
global tax on carbon, move to 100% renewables and electric cars as being too
generous to the critics of this plan.

~~~
emilsedgh
It seems that people really prefer to vote extreme people who take hard
instance against situations instead of level-headed ones.

We now have hundreds of years of experience regarding politicians. Maybe we
have to teach politics in schools:

On the methods the politicians have used to manipulate people and how to call
them out.

On the way we should measure politicians and what makes a good decision makes
vs. a poor one.

~~~
shard972
Not really, it's just that the nature of democracy leads power to concentrate
within two power centres. Just look at Australia over the last decade and you
can see how even politicians who are in favour of carbon taxes will campaign
against them one year and fight for them another based on the current
political solution.

Hell for another issue, gay marriage. It was quite the sight to see the Deputy
leader of the labor party who is openly gay vote against gay marriage
legislation because the party had decided that wasn't the way they wanted to
do it.

In any case, that doesn't account for the media which we don't vote for in any
way.

Also just because we have centuries of experience with politics, it's about as
developed as many of the other social sciences, which is to say very
underdeveloped and at times heading backwards in it's understanding of the
subject's truth.

------
roryisok
We're all tired of hearing "eat less meat" etc. But honestly these things
would make a difference. We need to switch everyone who drives a fossil fuel
car to electric, or no car at all. So make the switch. Buy an EV. Nissan leaf
is affordable. Work remote if you can. Switch your home heating from oil or
gas to solar or a heat pump. It's not just about people making little changes
anymore. Every household needs to get rid of their oil burning machines, be
they the home heating or vehicle kind. We can't do anything directly about
trucking companies etc but they will follow. Recharging costs pittance next to
refuelling and range goes up every year. The EV you buy now will save you
money. The next one you buy will run rings around your old gas guzzler.

The best, least depressing and least defeatist way to think about it is that
the world is changing in the next 12 years and we're the early adopters. And
if you don't offload that gas car now it'll be unsellable in 6 years

~~~
kgabis
Wouldn't replacing every ICE car with electric one be extremely wasteful? Cars
cost resources and energy to produce so it makes sense to keep driving them
for as long as possible. Focusing on emissions from driving doesn't account
for the whole picture. Also, in many countries majority of energy production
comes from burning fossil fuels so switching to electric cars doesn't
magically solve CO2 emissions problem.

~~~
roryisok
Cars cost resources and energy to produce, but right now new fossil fuel cars
are being produced every minute. We don't stop that process by continuing to
drive a car that belches out CO2. Sure, if everyone continues driving their 10
year old Volkswagen and all car companies stop production tomorrow it might
have a more immediate short term effect than changing to EV. But even in this
impossible scenario, long term all those cars are still emitting CO2.

I do take your point that transportation is not the whole picture, but we
can't do anything on a personal level to close a coal plant, other than write
to our local representatives in government.

It's also worth pointing out that if all the power for EVs is generated from
coal it's still less carbon than petrol and diesel cars on the road, because
of how power plants are run at optimal efficiency, where as cars have to speed
up and slow down, idle in traffic etc

------
natch
[https://www.drawdown.org](https://www.drawdown.org)

~~~
roryisok
Drawdown is great, but at the end of the day it's just a list of ideas. OP is
more concerned about action

~~~
natch
Drawdown is a list of ideas for action, if you want to put it that way.

------
aoner
If you look at the recent IPCC reports, people are heavily betting on putting
carbon back into the stable form. That can be in the form of carbon capture
storage, or creating new building materials or other stuff out of it. I think
in the near future, people will pay a hefty premium for carbon storage due to
carbon taxes (Check out this great GIF that illustrates carbon tax scheme
growth: [https://www.sightline.org/2017/06/06/map-the-future-is-
carbo...](https://www.sightline.org/2017/06/06/map-the-future-is-carbon-
priced-and-the-us-is-getting-left-behind/) ). Together, these carbon pricing
initiatives cover about 7 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e), or
about 13 percent of annual global GHG emissions. I think this will create a
huge business, so if you are an engineer, I think it makes sense to get
involved.

Personally the state of the world has given me a lot of negativity, but I've
turned that around after doing a lot of research. There is a lot of awesome
work being done.

There are a couple of good resources to see what everybody else is already
doing:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xc6lkrIv1XORl7b31ARq...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xc6lkrIv1XORl7b31ARqFXImwhjcm8MQHG1vfoz5G0M/edit#gid=1946455755)
[https://www.thirdway.org/graphic/carbon-capture-projects-
map](https://www.thirdway.org/graphic/carbon-capture-projects-map)
[http://www.airminers.org/explore](http://www.airminers.org/explore)

I'm very interested in this space, and think there are a lot of other people
interested (just as Ycombinator is in its request for carbon removal
technologies:
[https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#carbon](https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#carbon)
). I have more resources if people are interested.

(On a personal level, I've also made a lot of changes. I stopped eating meat,
and renovated our home to be sustainable, by adding a air to water heat pump,
solar panels, a solar boiler, an heat recovery system for our shower,
ventilation based on CO2 levels so only the necessary heat escapes and of
course better insulation. I'm also thinking about creating an excel of my
carbon footprint yearly and trying to reduce it/compensate it)

~~~
lozenge
"If you look at the recent IPCC reports, people are heavily betting on putting
carbon back into the stable form"

This is more due to its political palatibility than its scientific value. It
allows conclusions like "12 years to save the world" (not actually what the
report says, but what the media was able to spin it as, and OP's
interpretation) instead of a more honest assessment.

As for the EU's carbon trading scheme, it's a joke and efforts to strengthen
it have failed due to lack of political will.

~~~
aoner
In all scenario's we need negative emissions. If you're interested in the
topic, there is a really cool stanford seminar by Brentz Constantz (Cofounder
of BluePlanet LTD) about viable ways to do negative emissions that are cost
effective without carbon trading schemes. It gives you a very good idea of the
amount of carbon that is already in the air and needs to be taken out.

What's your solution for/take on all of this?

~~~
aoner
Sorry forgot the link:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvtHPF1ng0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvtHPF1ng0s)

If you're interested in carbon sequestration this is super interesting

------
ada1981
I watched a film recently called Pandora’s Box about Nuclear vs solar.

They make the case nuclear is the best solution for environmentalists (the
guys who made it were hard core activists) and that things like solar are
toxic and leaching heavy metals.

They say Nuclear is the safest and cleanest solution and is the only viable
solution if we want to solve climate change.

~~~
vbuwivbiu
it exchanges one set of problems for another, and again its our descendents
who'll have to deal with it

traditional solar can be made cleanly and there are advanced biological
systems on the way

------
quadcore
On a high level, I've found the best way to prevail on big issues is to start
by saying _Thank You_. We are given a chance to better ourselves, let's be
excited about it. On the contrary, guilt, fear, finger-pointing and violence
have never solved anything.

 _It seems to me that governments can be counted out of taking the leadership
needed to solve this within 12 years._

The way I see it, you have to think of solutions that work within corruption,
selfishness, etc, and most importantly, with everybody. People who do that are
politicians. It's a voting problem at its heart to me.

 _I feel like the young people need to take charge of the world because the
older generations have had their chance and not fixed it._

Young people aren't less selfish and corrupted than their elders (I mean,
maybe, but we don't know that, do we).

------
otabdeveloper2
> We have 12 years to prevent a climate catastrophe

I don't know how old you are, but those of us over 20 remember that we had '12
years' 20 years ago.

Somehow the prophesied catastrophe never arrives and the date gets perpetually
pushed into the future. Looks like a secular Seventh Day Adventists.

~~~
marmaduke
any citation for that? I'm not saying you're wrong, but IPCC scientists aren't
some sort youtube doomsday clan.

~~~
sien
The IPCC hasn't said it in an official report. But Jim Hansen has said:

"Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark
assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last
week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating
climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to
be taken within Obama's first administration, he added."

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jan/18/jim-
hans...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jan/18/jim-hansen-obama)

The IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, an engineer and economist from India,
acknowledged the new trajectory. "If there's no action before 2012, that's too
late," Pachauri said. "What we do in the next two to three years will
determine our future. This is the defining moment."

from:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/world/europe/18iht-
climat...](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/world/europe/18iht-
climate.2.8378031.html?pagewanted=all)

There are a few lists around the place of people saying similar things. Those
are just I could find easily without too much bother.

Edited to put the Hansen statement in.

~~~
marmaduke
the first link doesn't make any statements just that the changes are alarming.

The second quote is more specific, but it doesn't say that inaction before
2012 will cause the world to end by 2018. If you've seen what IPCC suggests is
required to stay at 1.5C, then that quote from 2007 reads as an
understatement.

------
loriverkutya
Reading these answers make me realize, that we are doomed.

~~~
dougmwne
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
on his not understanding it.”

Which is exactly what I see here. Many of the brightest people gathered
together in one place on the internet. Working in an industry that is scary
good at creating products that change behavior and even culture. Together
creating all manner of logical loops and justifications, "this is why I don't
really need to change anything personally" or "I've made this symbolic change,
so I've done my part."

Every one of us could begin donating a significant portion of our revenue to
climate change lobbying. We could work for existing climate advocacy
organizations. We could found new organisations. We could take every lesson
learned in the rush to get users to click on more ads and apply it to climate
advocacy. American politics and policy is absolutely for sale. We could buy
it.

Shame on us all. Will that money bring you comfort while the world burns?

------
starpilot
Does anyone have any views on buying carbon offsets through services like
TerraPass and Carbonfund? I drive a pickup truck so I'd like to reduce my
impact, but don't know if the efficacy of carbon offsets have really been
evaluated.

~~~
konschubert
I don't think that these services take carbon out of the air and turn it back
into _fossiles_.

I guess that they mostly finance re-forestation. Then, you have to ask
yourself:

Would the new forest happened anyways and they are just taking your money as a
bonus? Is the new forest going to be permanent or will it be removed and re-
forested again in 30 years?

~~~
thedevindevops
>Would the new forest happened anyways and they are just taking your money as
a bonus? Is the new forest going to be permanent or will it be removed and re-
forested again in 30 years?

Perhaps, in decades/centuries a new forest might happen naturally. I should
hope - if you're paying for it - that it not be permanent, carbon capture in
trees happens fastest at the beginning of their lifecycle so by harvesting and
re-foresting it functions as a renewable resource and has greatest efficacy as
a carbon sink.

~~~
konschubert
If you harvest the wood and burn it/let it rot then the carbon will be
released back into the atmosphere.

Of course you might make furniture from the wood, but it will replace other
furniture that then gets burned in place.

A forest only holds carbon, it doesn't continuously remove it.

------
pedro1976
On the topic of geo engineering, I want to share a quote [0] from the
physicist Joshua Bach:

"As long as we are still burning fossil fuels to generate energy, the idea of
capturing the CO2 from the atmosphere is a joke. It would require more than
all the energy we have generated since the beginning of the industrial age. Or
millions of years of growing non-rotting trees."

[0]
[https://twitter.com/Plinz/status/1041881894995013632](https://twitter.com/Plinz/status/1041881894995013632)

~~~
avmich
I wonder why he thinks so. What are the calculations? Why can't we use green
energy to separate CO2 in atmosphere from clean air and do that faster than we
as civilization add CO2 to air, thus buying some time to apply non-technical
solutions?

------
alex_duf
At a personal level, switch energy provider, change your diet, cycle / use
public transport and drive electric if you must drive (it's more complex than
that depending on if you have a car or not). If you have the chance to own
your property and the cash to do so, ensure it's insulated.

On a financial level, divest from fossil fuel, invest in renewable energies
and sustainable technologies

On a professional level, if you have the privilege do be able to choose your
job, try to find one that do no evil.

Happy to hear about more suggestions

------
filoeleven
> This is aimed at people in the tech industry, and is more about what you can
> do with your career than at a hackathon. I’m not going to discuss policy and
> regulation, although they’re no less important than technological
> innovation. A good way to think about it, via Saul Griffith, is that it’s
> the role of technologists to create options for policy-makers.

[http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/)

------
tomwhipple
Start by voting for candidates who believe in science.

It seems odd to need to say this in 2018, but disbelief in clear scientific
evidence should be a disqualification from holding office.

------
starpilot
> The best thing a bright young person can do to help rid civilisation of
> fossil fuels is get an education in engineering.

The Economist, 2009. [https://www.economist.com/news/2009/11/13/wanted-green-
engin...](https://www.economist.com/news/2009/11/13/wanted-green-engineers)

I'm guessing the most relevant fields would be chemE and materials science.

------
T-1000
I believe that a small minority could turn things around. If about 3 % of the
population in the rich world would donate $100 per month, we could use that
money to force the other to change. How? One example is to remove all coal
power plants (which are responsible for 25 % of the greenhouse gas emissions)
by building wind farms. This would drive the price of electricity down and
make coal unprofitable.

------
gonmf
We do nothing of the sort. We wait for the sea levels to rise and we build
dams and walls. And we reinforce our buildings against natural disasters. And
slowly the public demands changes on greenhouse gas emissions, recycling, etc,
and it slowly will slow down the worsening effects.

That's the most likely scenario, nothing will change because the HackerNews
netizens change cloud providers and start recycling more.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Collapse comes that way. Its not about beach houses. Its about food chain
collapse, refugee storms that overwhelm public infrastructure, the 'ring of
fire' of expanding collapse that can (and has) destroyed civilization before

------
crc32
If it's up to us, it's up to us:

\- Invest in (or even set up, if you've got the skills) crowd funded solar
projects like
[http://www.burnhamandwestonenergy.co.uk/](http://www.burnhamandwestonenergy.co.uk/)
\- as a charity or "community interest company"

\- Donate/contribute to charities supporting reforestation - for example
[https://onetreeplanted.org/](https://onetreeplanted.org/) or buy land,
something like this: [http://www.buybrazilland.com/rainforest-property-for-
sale/](http://www.buybrazilland.com/rainforest-property-for-sale/)

So there are existing organisations which offer these kinds of services; but
there's no reason why a "charity startup" couldn't form to provide these kinds
of services in a different way; more focussed on the climate change issue and
with more of a social/viral element; to try and build the scale that would be
necessary. If every twitter user contributed $10...

------
RaceWon
We (USA) don't even do the little things that would add up: virtually every
super market has wide open refrigerated sections. Every house built has No
insulation on hot water piping (less so in commercial buildings but only
because the architects get a percentage of the total job cost so they spec
insulated Hot and Cold domestic water lines).

Look at cars; anyone here make any solar powered products to keep cars warmer
in winter and cooler in summer to reduce idling time to heat and cool the
interiors for the occupants... NOPE no one does (a good business idea btw).

Speaking of solar; why is my laptop plugged in right now (beside the fact that
its a Dell and meh battery life)?... Oh yeah; IDK of any solar boosters that
would either run it or at least help eliminate the drain... build that, market
that. All these things would help.

Are cows put into enclosures at night that capture and scrub the CO2 they
emanate... NOPE they're not.

These are just a few things based on my experience in the construction
industry and casual observation. Let's buy some time until the issue can be
solved in a financially viable way.

------
pimmen
Urbanization is a big thing too, it makes far more climate sense. Instead of
driving to ten places to serve a hundred people on each stop a truck can drive
to one and serve a thousand people. Also, heat in high rises is used more
efficiently than in single family homes because all that excess heat from
bottom homes rise to the ones on the upper floors.

This is thankfully a trend right now, with people moving to bigger cities to
find better jobs, but in some Western countries we have a lot of hurdles to
make new houses and an overconsumption of existing housing. If you own a home
already, that might mean you have to sacrifice something (higher property
taxes to incentivize people to choose smaller properties, for example). Also,
making the cities more accessible without a car does wonders for this too.

I'm convinced there's some way tech can help with this too. Airbnb makes sure
excess or unused living area can be allocated more efficiently, for example.

------
pkrein
For the past 40 years we've viewed climate change as a political problem (see
"Losing Earth" from the NY Times for a history of this [1].) Like you, I no
longer have any faith that politicians will be able to solve the problem. As
the NYT research revealed, politicians generally only take on a cause when
there is a viable solution... and frankly there isn't a great solution yet.
Solar and wind help a good bit. Nuclear would be a fine option but as a
society we are apparently uncomfortable with it... Our politicians don't
_really_ have a good enough, complete enough option.

At Charm Industrial [2] we started with a different question that at first
seems silly: is it possible to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at
a profit? We assumed the answer would be no, but to our surprise we couldn't
convince ourselves of that. We found a pathway (purpose-grown biomass -->
gasification --> hydrocarbons + geological CO2 sequestration) that seems to
have high-scale profit potential. And if you can be profitable, then
effectively unlimited amounts of private capital are available.

If you're interested in following our progress, you can subscribe to our
newsletter here: [https://charmindustrial.us18.list-
manage.com/subscribe?u=aaf...](https://charmindustrial.us18.list-
manage.com/subscribe?u=aafd4c7577e4bc2bfc20baa47&id=3e4a6db592)

And we'd love to see others tackle the problem from the perspective of high-
scale, viable economics. Is it possible to sequester carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere at a profit?

[1]:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/clim...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-
change-losing-earth.html) [2]:
[https://www.charmindustrial.com/](https://www.charmindustrial.com/)

------
nicholast
As the economics continue along Swanson's law (the photovoltaic solar panel
equivalent to Moore's law of ever decreasing costs) I expect the biggest
obstacle to large scale transition to a distributed grid of majority local
generation resources will be regulatory hurdles by legacy utility industry to
protect their business model. Some of these initiatives may even be channeled
outside of the legislative process such as some DOE proposals under current
administration to protect coal generation. Sorry this might go counter to the
intent of this question but I think I'm getting at is that the single biggest
factor will be political, and that the voting box is our strongest lever.

------
brylie
As we have become adults, we learn time and time again about personal
responsibilities. Some of these lessons take many years, and some are
emerging. We are awakening to the fact that the Earth's climate, like bills
and taxes, is both our personal and collective responsibility. This means we
need to take personal, financial, and political steps to lower our resource
usage and carbon footprint. We can look around at our daily lives - the food
we eat, our careers, where/how we live - to find areas where we can shed a few
kilos from our carbon budget. Likewise we can boycott, divest from, and
sanction the major sources of corporate, meaning collective, greenhouse gas
emissions.

------
patagonia
I honestly believe there are 1000 paths to safety, that there only a few to
dangerous climate change, but that we will take a path to dangerous climate
change. Because it is easier. It requires not making hard choices. It requires
not working together. It requires less sacrifice. It will be the path of human
nature and behavioral inertia.

“So what can we do so our children don't live in some ghastly hothouse world?”

We are going to have to explain to later generations why we thought the 6th
great extinction was an appropriate price to pay for having elaborate, throw-
away Halloween lawn decorations which were made by and the most costly to the
most vulnerable citizens of the planet.

I don’t say any of that lightly.

------
startupfounder
"...governments can be counted out of taking the leadership needed to solve
this within 12 years."

 _This_ is the issue.[0]

Governments are the middlemen between citizens that _we the people_ decide to
put in power through voting to represent us and our issues like climate
change.

But democracy has been hijacked by putting additional middlemen between _we
the people_. The second middleman is the _capital election_ , specifically
~132 Americans who donated 60% of the SuperPAC money.

So our representatives spend a significant portion of their time in office
calling these people to get funding for the next election cycle and when they
vote on issues they think of these donors. Follow the money.

Yes we can fix data centers or cargo ships or deploy nuclear power or utility
regulation, but at some point regulation for these as well will be dependent
on the people we vote to put into power to represent us.

At the end of the day, corporations have a fiduciary duty to their
shareholders to maximize profits and shareholder value. If leaders lead,
companies will follow.

I have an idea!

Why don't we, _the very large community of Hacker News_ with 3-3.5M+ monthly
uniques[1] petition one of the most innovative and powerful institutions to
fund more projects that will fix broken governments around the world?
"Government" is only mentioned one time in the YC RFP[2], maybe it should have
it's own category.

Send them an email: hn@ycombinator.com or
[http://www.ycombinator.com/contact/](http://www.ycombinator.com/contact/) or
contact your friends who are in the YC network.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g)
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219581](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219581)
[2] [http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/](http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/)

------
ace_of_spades
Campaign, advocate for and support clean meat as a viable alternative to
conventional factory farmed animal products. Factory farming is one of the
biggest source of carbon emissions worldwide and a switch to clean meat can –
due to higher efficiency of the meat generation process – have a huge impact
here. It’s just one aspect of a possible solution but one that is often
overlooked. Steps you can do right now:

If your skills are applicable in this area think about changing the industry
or maybe consider donating to the Good Food Institute:
[https://www.gfi.org](https://www.gfi.org).

------
kisstheblade
The green parties around the world are to blame for this. The only worthwhile
actions to combat this are

1) Using nuclear power (on a massive scale preferrably) 2) Stopping
globalisation (because transport is such a large contributor to CO2
emissions.). Local manufacturing would be much better for the environment
(reduced transportation needs and also the western countries factories are
much more sustainable than in third world countries and china)

Also reducing immigration helps, people in Africa use much less resources than
the same people eg. transported to the cold north.

------
cstejerean
Absolutely nothing. As long as solutions require major changes in lifestyle
for most people absolutely nothing will happen. Our only hope is to invent
technology to mitigate the problem (sequester carbon from the atmosphere, get
cheaper alternative fuels, protect cities from rising ocean levels and
reinforce infrastructure to better tolerate extreme weather).

Anything else is just wishful thinking that places much more faith in the
ability of people to value their long term interests over their short term
comfort than evidence suggests is warranted.

------
ru999gol
To have any meaningful impact on global warming there would need to be a
massive rapid global economic shift, we would also would need to reduce world
population otherwise anything we do will just be nullified by increases in
population. I think to even suggest that the people in power (politicians and
capitalist corporations) will actually be willing and able to solve this
problem is incredibly naive and I have no idea where anyone gets this optimism
from?

No in reality we will see a slow increase in extreme natural disasters, island
states and all coastlines becoming uninhabitable, permanent drought in most
parts of the world, drinking water crisis, famine, massive unprepared forced
migration, global economic collapse, permanent wars about remaining resources.
I actually don't think humanity has any realistic chance to survive beyond
2080 and that number is actually quite conservative given the research.

------
WhompingWindows
We'll definitely need geo-engineering to artificially cool our climate while
we work out how to effectively remove CO2 from the air and store it for 1000's
of years. It may require mass reforestation or putting carbon dioxide into
concrete; whatever the answer, if we do not employ it on a massive scale, it
won't matter if we transitioned quickly off of fossil fuels, which by the way
we haven't. So, we will DEFINITELY need to artificially cool our planet.

------
legionof7
Don't just vote, run for office.

~~~
jacobkg
[https://www.runforoffice.org](https://www.runforoffice.org)

------
bansheehash
There's a lot that technology can do to fight climate change. I came across
Treetracker ([https://www.greenstand.org/](https://www.greenstand.org/)), an
app that tracks tree planting and pays planters per tree after verification.

Spinning up multiple crowdfunded instances of apps like this across the world
could really bring back a lot of the green cover lost over the years.

------
hycaria
Best solution : One child less.

~~~
DoreenMichele
This is especially true if you are in a developed country. I did a college
paper for an Environmental Law class. American children consume about 200
times the resources of children in developing countries.

I originally wanted three children. I stopped at two for various reasons. I
think I did the right thing.

~~~
haihaibye
>> American children consume about 200 times the resources of children in
developing countries

So one less immigrant is 99.5% as effective at reducing co2 as one less child?

~~~
DoreenMichele
Since I haven't researched that in specific I don't know for sure, but I'm
guessing the answer is "No." Immigrant children from developing countries
typically remain relatively poor by American standards and continue to use
substantially fewer resources. They don't promptly leap up to middle class
American consumption levels.

We would probably be better off, environmentally speaking, to aggressively try
to convince American citizens to have fewer children while having more liberal
immigration policies than to aggressively try to keep immigrants out while
claiming that condemning children who already exist to a life of hardship is
the moral equivalent of Americans choosing to have fewer children for
environmental reasons. They aren't morally equivalent anymore than "Eat the
rich" is some kind of moral high ground.

------
bskinny129
Great timing! I also believe it takes personal actions, not waiting on someone
else.

My personal pledge is to balance the negative impact of my driving and flying.
If you are interested, check out the app I'm building for it:
[https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-
balance](https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance)

------
ed_balls
\- cycle to work, work from home, car pool in a plugin hybrid/electric car

\- improve the energy efficiency of your house (aircon, heating)

\- eat less beef

\- invest in solar panel/sun thermal collectors

\- pick train instead of a car for a trip

\- reduce waste and buying unnecessary stuff

\- Lobby for certain regulations like more charging stations for electric
cars, more bike lanes, electric cars to use a bus lane, property tax that
takes home energy efficiency into account

------
wglb
So my thoughts are how this is a problem of a highly dynamic system. There has
been this massive injection of CO2 that has pushed the chaotic system to a
whole new cycle.

So my question is what exactly is the right amount of change that won’t push
the dynamical system to a point of even more instability.

I haven’t seen any discussion about this. That also concerns me.

------
ForHackernews
[https://www.drawdown.org/](https://www.drawdown.org/) has a nicely presented
list of things that will help with global warming.

Honestly, I think it's too late. There's no way the entire world economy will
be restructured in less than 12 years. Future generations will suffer for
their ancestors' obstinacy.

------
flockonus
Livestock is responsible for a large fraction of grains (and therefore clean
water) consumption, while emitting an equally large amount of CO2 and methane
into atmosphere. So largely reducing animal intake would be of huge help.

This large scale habit change don't require gov. aid, it can be tackled by for
profit businesses and research institutions alike.

------
waylandsmithers
As a meta-comment, it's interesting to me that this is so highly upvoted and
responded to here on hacker news. As a consultant I often find that clients
who are brilliant experts in their own field often assume themselves to be
experts in _every_ domain, including my own area of expertise which is
software design and development.

------
poloolop
There is no single silver bullet. One mechanism which can have lasting impact
is applying William McDonough's "Cradle-to-Cradle" philosophy to large
sectors. Apple seems to be trying to do that. It needs better support and
awareness from consumers, to reward the corporations who deliver on these
parameters.

------
maym86
On a personal note, don't have children. I'm not being facetious. It seems
like we've had opportunities to do the right thing and consistently haven't so
until the outlook looks better and we start taking action it's not a great
idea to create offspring that will have to deal with the consequences.

~~~
claydavisss
But people without children have even less motivation to care about the
future.

Even moreso for people who aren't married....why shouldn't they let their SUV
idle in the driveway?

~~~
maym86
I don't think it's a solution to climate change, it's just a personal choice.
The solutions are out of my reach and ideling the SUV is much less of a
problem than selling the SUV in the first place.

I don't think we're doing a good job handling the issue on a policy level so
creating a child who will potentially have to deal with the worst of these
problems directly seems unnecessary, avoidable and selfish.

------
davidw
End exclusionary zoning in the US, so that people can live closer to the
things they need, and denser, if they so choose

------
tmaly
If we could get fusion rolled out faster, or really try to invest in something
like Thorium reactors and then drastically improve battery technology, we
could substantially reduce the need for fossil fuels.

It would also help if certain countries would not use CFCs that were banned
due to the way they destroy the ozone.

------
barrkel
It's a collective action problem and there's almost no way it can be addressed
politically in today's world. There's too much win for populists to say to
their population, "screw those foreigners / globalists / westerners / elites
telling us what to do, we're going to look after ourselves". This is a hard
message to compete with in domestic politics. And everybody ends up worse off
because everybody else has the same dynamics.

So IMO we'll need to deal with mass migration and political instability in
poor countries. That's the next battle; parts of the world with subsistence
agriculture will become unsustainable, and there will be large migrations of
population to elsewhere. That needs to be dealt with rationally, because if it
becomes irrational, we'll get into the realms of fascism and genocide.

I don't think the whole planet is going to die, FWIW. Instead, I think we're
going to see a shift in ecosystems, where the relative balance of flora and
fauna will alter. Some may be edible, some less so. Prices will change and
people will adjust, but adjustment will be much harder where there's
subsistence agri. I don't think humans are seriously at risk of being wiped
out - we're pretty adaptable and we have a lot of technology we could apply
when prices rise enough for it to make sense. But food prices may rise
generally, and some specifics may become very expensive. This too will lead to
political instability and migration.

------
amanaplanacanal
Here is my take:

Rich people in rich countries will pay what it takes to adapt to the changing
climate.

Poor people in poor countries are basically screwed, just like always.

With some luck, the rich people in the rich countries will donate some of
their excess wealth to help the poor people adapt too.

------
jerkstate
First world citizens need about 600-1000 adult trees to offset their carbon
footprint. Go plant a lot of trees. Also, buy fewer things manufactured in
countries that use primarily coal power, and travel a lot less (especially by
airplane)

------
RickJWagner
In the final analysis, it seems that a smaller population base is the answer.

People are not easily motivated to give up creature comforts. (Though they
often tell others they should.) Fewer people == fewer negative influences on
the earth.

~~~
haihaibye
If altruism is heritible (like almost every other personality trait) won't
this just select for a world of selfish people?

------
chriskanan
As a political solution, I doubt there is much we can do. The young people are
not that politicaly active (as in actualy casting votes). I'm very happy that
Tesla has made automakers take electric cars seriously, and renewable
electricity is doing well. Unfortunately, that's not going to be enough.

Geoengineering research is currently fairly taboo and hard to get money for.
It involves developing methods to alter the environment to compensate for what
we have done. Many say we should just reduce greenhouse gasses, since if we
mess up geoengineering we could really mess up the planet, but I think it
should at least be very well funded and studied.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering)

------
pimterry
If you're concerned about this, help fix it directly:

* Go Climate Neutral: [http://goclimateneutral.com](http://goclimateneutral.com). It's much cheaper than you'd expect (~$10/month, depending on your lifestyle) to improve the world's energy efficiency enough to cancel out all your own impact.

* Donate to other efficient climate change charities: [https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2013/11/less-burn-for-y...](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2013/11/less-burn-for-your-buck-part-ii)

------
halis
I feel that unless we make some major breakthroughs in atmospheric carbon
capture in the next 30 years, we are going to be royally screwed.

------
motiw
I think it is mostly a marketing challenge, once most people realize the risk,
it will gain momentum and solutions will follow.

------
CSstefan
There is a plan already in action...

[https://www.drawdown.org](https://www.drawdown.org)

~~~
roryisok
This is not a plan in action, it is a list of ideas

------
CSstefan
There is a highly distributed plan.

[https://www.drawdown.org](https://www.drawdown.org)

------
curtas
Reduce carbon emission by working remotely. Should be the default. Massively
reduces carbon emission on large scale.

~~~
chefkoch
Not if you walk or bike to work.

------
chrisgray1497
vote against ethanol biofuels. From a thermodynamic perspective they will
never be sustainable. We're literally dumping energy into growing extra corn
that we burn.

It's a farmer subsidy and nothing more.

Just pay the farmers the money. Stop wasting the land, nitrogen, greenhouse
emissions and retooling cars for this nonsense.

------
pisteoff
Plant lots and lots of Azolla. Like a lot of it. In addition to all the other
stuff that people talk about.

------
thewhitetulip
Please start using Solar and wind as much as possible. We have amazing
products available now. I have fiur solar lanterns, one flashlight, a 20k mah
powerbank and a 14w suaoki foldable solar panel

In a few years ehen I buy a vehicle, I'll buy an electric moped, a 60w suoaki
solar charger and a 150wh suoaki power generator. That way, I will be using my
vehicle on renewable energy at all times.

We need to do this and fast.

~~~
thinkcontext
I have to take issue with your use of the foldable solar panel. Studies have
estimated that commercial solar panels take 1-4 years to produce enough
electricity to offset that used in their production [0]. This is for fixed
panels, pointing south, at optimal tilt, during all available daylight hours.
How many hours per day does that portable panel get used? It seems extremely
unlikely to me that the average portable solar panel gets used a significant
fraction of what a fixed dedicated panel does, thus will not offset its
production emissions.

More generally, green gadgets are likely not very green. The true lifecycle
advantages over a conventional product if there are any are likely to be very
small and you are unlikely to be able to even find out for individual
products. People would likely make more of an impact by wasting and consuming
less. There are products that can make an impact, they tend to be high energy
users like a water heater, HVAC system or insulating a building properly.

In the US, many states have deregulated utility markets. That means users can
choose who provides their electricity and many green products are available
like 100% renewable. See
[https://www.electricchoice.com/](https://www.electricchoice.com/) for more
background and if that's available in your area.

0 -
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403211...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403211500146X)

~~~
thewhitetulip
Earlier, I charged my phone using the grid.

I used grid while reading and writing.

Now, I have five solar products and I don't use the grid.

I also plant 10 trees yearly, I use my bicycle.

Doing something is better than being a cynic. The point isn't recuperating
amount of energy spent in manufacturing solar pabel, batteries. It is to stop
from further consumption of polluting items.

Sure, it wouldn't amount to much. I don't use more than 2units of electricity.
We still run diesel trains in India, most industries dint use renewable
energy. We need to make massive changes if we want to be carbon neutral

And I still don't agree with your comment. I have a phone that was
manufactured using coal and petrol. I use the phone's half battery during the
day by consuming even more petrol.

The least I could do is charge it using Solar. The goal of using solar isn't
to be "offset within xyrs" it is to stop reliance on oil. It is to use sun,
wind. It is to invest.

If we don't invest then nothing will happen. This might be similar to banks.
Solar is like investing money in the market when it is abysmally low, sure, it
might not offset immediately, but it eventually will. That's still better than
money under the rug

~~~
thinkcontext
If you are not using the grid and just getting by using a foldable solar panel
to charge 5 devices, then I should definitely not be lecturing you about
minimizing waste.

You make a good point about the important thing being the comparison of
emissions you would have caused had you used the grid versus what was used to
create the panel and batteries. Still, it depends how much charging you
actually wind up doing with the panel over its lifetime whether less CO2 is
emitted or not. Though, I imagine in India pollutants other than CO2 are more
pressing.

Thanks for sharing your experience. On the issue of climate change its
somewhat depressing being in the US, policy has been stuck for a very long
time. Its inspiring to hear from someone so committed from outside my usual
sphere.

~~~
thewhitetulip
Thank you for having a civil discussion! Our current world climate is intensly
hostile and I was afraid that even our discussion would go south.

Well, today morning, I charged my phone on solar power (and I'll do so daily
from now on).

India has bigger issues than CO2, yes, but unfortunately, I can't afford to
ignore CO2issues. Our governments are incredibly corrupt and incompetent.
Their goal in life is to do enough corruption so that their 7 generations
dont5 have to work ever.

That aside, yes, it is depressing that US federal policy is ignoring climate
change, but don't be sad, half your states have committed to going green by
2030 or something. Plus, Tesla motors and Tesla energy are doing more things
for solar than anyone else in this world. They recently bhilt this backup
genset in Australia, they also have built solar energy power stations
(quietly) in remote islands, I forgot the names.

That means US is contributing despite its depressing govt policies. My issue
is that India isn't contributing despite+ve federal policies. For all his
faults, ny PM has obsessively focused on solar, thankfully, shifting away from
nuclear energy. But now company hasa good electric car or 2 wheeler and those
cars are costly and run for 70km on one charge. Tesla runs 250miles!

Coming to less CO2, I won't be able to offset energy used for solar panel, I
don't know how much was used in the first place, But and this is a big but,
I'll surely he offsetting all energy I was going to use from the grid anyways.

I wasn't going to stop using mobiles, lights for reading at night. So, I'll be
saving those emissions and my electricity bill. I get less than 2 $ bill per
month, average bill here, converted in dollars should be somewhat 10$,
depending on how rich people are.

And btw I have five different solar powered devices that can be charged by
builtin solar panel and by USB port. So my Idea is to use my power bank to
store energy and use it to charge phone or lanterns as required. (Powerbank is
20,000 mah, and also has a 2w solar panel included!)

------
daedlanth
Do something about YOU; protest insanity by not being insane. It's actually
quite simple.

------
kpmcc
Reforestation. Stop eating meat. Stop burning fossil fuels. Use less energy
unless your energy is 100% "green". Overthrow capitalism.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Kind of the 'eco-theatre' top-tunes list. But which are doable? And aren't
other non-theatre items more effective?

At least recycling wasn't in the list, which can be an energy sink and actual
climate harm.

------
xupybd
Is this 12 year timeline correct. What degree of catastrophe are we looking
at?

~~~
roryisok
It's generally accepted that if we don't zero our carbon emissions in 12 years
we'll see 2 degrees warming minimum.

Best case scenario is drought, heatwaves, forest fires, lose half the wildlife
in the world, all the coral reefs, most of the fish, reduced crop yield,
flooding, storms, sea level rise, and parts of the world are inhospitable, and
the populations of those regions migrate north. BEST case. WORST case is
runaway warming when all the methane in the arctic is released and the forests
that soak up our carbon burn down and the ocean stops absorbing it, and the
earth gets so hot that humans literally just drop dead from hyperthermia.

I refuse to believe in the worst case, because the majority of scientists are
not going that far, and because it could make a person crazy just thinking
about it. Besides, the best case is bad enough already.

~~~
xupybd
I honestly think there is no way we can zero emissions in that time. But I'm
hopeful the rate of technological progress can out pace our predictions. I'm
also hopeful that we may one day find a means to reverse the problem through
Geo engineering. People are far more motivate when the problem is already at
the door. I just hope it's not too late by then.

~~~
roryisok
I agree, on both counts. Rereading my post now it seems hopelessly
pessimistic, and negative. I was mostly just trying to explain what we can
expect to see as we approach 2 degrees of warming. We won't get to to zero
carbon in the next 12 years and we won't avoid at least 1.5 degrees warming.

But I honestly DO believe that we WILL see a downward trend in he next 12
years. We won't hit zero but i would hope we'd hit pre 2000 levels. And I also
believe that even though we're going to suffer, technology like carbon capture
and geo engineering will play a role in the future. A recent study suggested
painting rooves and footpaths white in hotter countries would have the
equivalent cooling effect of taking every car off the road for 50 years.
Measures like this will help. Fusion power works. ITER in France will generate
500Mw when operational in 2025, and pave the way for more fusion globally.

I think we can fix global warming, but its to our eternal shame that we're
going to be fixing it rather than preventing it

------
nazgulnarsil
there are already a billion people advocating for collective action ie someone
else should do something. Donors need to take it upon themselves to fund and
assist geoengineering moonshots.

------
platz
What is the likelyhood of a runaway feedback loop occuring?

~~~
explainplease
Zero. The hotter the planet gets, the more water evaporates from the oceans,
which condenses into clouds, which reflect sunlight, which cools the planet.

~~~
platz
According to statistical mechanics, even boltzmann brains have a higher
probability than zero.

I find your absolute certainty disturbing.

~~~
explainplease
Earth is 4.5 billion years old. A runaway, climate chain-reaction hasn't
happened yet.

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

~~~
platz
I think you're confusing a complete boil-off of the atmosphere with a slightly
less extreme event that simply eliminates 90% of life on the planet, which has
in fact happened before

~~~
explainplease
I think you're conflating a "runaway feedback loop" with "a slightly less
extreme event that simply eliminates 90% of life on the planet," which says
nothing about whether it was caused by a runaway feedback loop.

~~~
platz
Therefore, by this logic, zero percent chance... qed

~~~
explainplease
So, how many billion years more would it take to convince you that it's not
going to happen? If earth is 4.5 billion years old, that's already more than
25% the age of the universe.

What does the evidence show? Are you willing to believe the evidence?

~~~
platz
As I said before, I think you're confusing a complete boil-off of the
atmosphere with a slightly less extreme event that simply eliminates 90% of
life on the planet, which has in fact happened before

------
brown9-2
Vote for representatives that take the threat seriously.

------
vbezhenar
There's no climate catastrophe. Nothing have to be done about preventing
imaginable things.

~~~
scalesolved
Would you mind expanding on this?

~~~
vbezhenar
I think that the whole human-changing-planet thing is huge fraud. There are
legitimate concerns, like bad air in the cities because of cars, but global
warming, if it exists at all (which I don't observe because winters are as
cold as they always were), is because of planetary cycles, not because human
affected anything significantly. Concentrating on green energy is stupid,
humans should invest more money into nuclear stations and potentially
thermonuclear technology.

------
trymas
EDIT: downvoters, feel free to add your opinion, what seps we can take in 12
years to prevent climate change. I will gladly hear any opinion, especially if
it is not as drastic as mine.

1\. Drop coal and gas as energy sources immediately. Use renewable and nuclear
energy as main power sources. Phase out nuclear after couple decades, when we
hopefully can get all our energy needs from renewables. EDIT: forgot to add in
fusion.

2\. Eat less meat. I am not saying to go full radical vegan, just have less of
it. Most people I know have meat for every main meal of the day (breakfast,
lunch, dinner). We can definitely eat less of it. Meat production generates
extreme amounts of CO2 and consumes too much of valuable land.

3\. "Global one child policy". Sounds extreme - but we must lessen global
population of humans. I know that western countries have negative growth
already, problem is how to solve overpopulation in non-western countries and
do it fast (ideally in one generation). Even with technological advances, IMO
having 10-12+ billion people on Earth won't do any good for anyone.

~~~
pjc50
Nuclear isn't feasible within that timeframe - takes years to even build the
plants! Not to mention the unpopularity of putting fission plants in the less
stable countries of the world.

The other two are even more infeasible.

~~~
realusername
Any electricity grid change takes years anyway, and I don't see how the other
two are not feasible. As an example, we managed to reduce smoking by a good
margin nowadays, which was an even more unrealistic battle than meat
consumption.

------
ojhughes
Zombie apocalypse

------
otikik
I don't think we should, but here's some things that I think we're capable of:

* We could use atomic power, but not to replace oil: we irradiate or directly bomb the main global oil reserves so they are rendered unusable. Both Russia and the US have the power to do this many times over. That would mean World War III, probably. Which would also lower the CO2 levels.

* We can inoculate 10 or 20 people in densely populated areas with highly contagious virus, trigger a pandemic and see the numbers go down.

* We can simultaneously fund anti-vaccination groups, and decrease the funds for the public health organizations like the U.S. Food and Drug administration, worldwide. That could have the same effect, depending on how vicious the viruses we get are in the next 10 years. Super-flu would be fatal enough.

------
buboard
space mirrors

~~~
explainplease
What could possibly go wrong?

------
torgian
Nothing will be done because it’s not profitable.

More people will die from water shortage in the coming years before
starvation.

------
qubax
> So what can we do so our children don't live in some ghastly hothouse world?

How about stopping with the apocalyptic hyperbole?

> The scientists have told us its our final chance....

And "scientists" have been telling us that for decades now.

> I feel like the young people need to take charge of the world because the
> older generations have had their chance and not fixed it.

Or the old have lived long enough not to buy into hysteria. Maybe the older
people are just wiser, better educated and have more experience? Or we could
let the young people, who know nothing about anything, take charge.

> What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

Nothing. No more than we can prevent solar flares, tornadoes or volcanic
eruptions. We simply have to deal with it.

Climate change occurs naturally. It has existed before the industrial
revolution. It has existed before humans. It will exist after humans. Trying
to prevent climate is like trying to prevent the sun from rising in the east.

Is there room for us to mitigate human contribution to climate change? Sure.
Would that matter. Probably not. Are there other areas we should be
concentrating on? Yes.

Environmental preservation ( forests, rivers, oceans ... ). Species
protection. Build better and walkable cities.

Global warming ( rebranded by PR firms as the silly "climate change" ) isn't
the first apocalyptic hysteria by "scientists" ( and by "scientists" I mostly
mean politicians, corporations, lawyers, etc trying to profit ).

Here are some of the "end of the world" events cassandrized by "scientists"

Climate change. Global warming, Global cooling ( from 1940s to 1970s ). That's
right folks, before we were going to boil to death, we were going to freeze to
death. Of course there are the supervolcanic eruptions. Asteroid strike. Of
course dire warnings of nuclear holocaust. Then there was malthusian
prediction of death by population growth. Boy was he wrong about that one.
"Scientists" even warned of extinction of humans by race mixing - look up
social darwinism. Now we laugh at that.

So take a deep breath. The world is not going to end anytime soon. Climate
change happens with or without humans. We'll adapt like we always have.

------
kebman
Prevent? Haha, guys! Very funny! :D You had until 2016.

------
GrumpyNl
Could we have prevented the extinction of the dinosaur with the knowledge we
have now? If not, why worry?

~~~
adrianN
If we had detected the asteroid sufficiently early we probably could have
diverted it.

~~~
krapp
But if it weren't for the extinction of the dinosaurs, we wouldn't be here.

------
ManlyBread
The greed of the 1% most wealthy people in the world has caused this problem
so they should pool their resources and fix it.

~~~
gldalmaso
But they won't, and they will be fine even if comes to living in a bubble. As
it has always been, the poor will carry the burden of humanity.

------
CyberBoom
This is a strictly political issue.

Most people think humans can’t destroy the planet’s atmosphere. That’s hubris,
and based on your politics.

“Science” always thinks it’s proven right until it’s proven wrong.

~~~
pier25
Not really. It's about irrational humans and magical thinking.

------
oytis
Just invent a way to get lots of cheap energy without burning stuff and we're
fine. Not nuclear plants, nuclear energy is evil, we all know that.

------
tomjen3
Invest in co2 scrubbers and nuclear power.

But they also said ten years ago that ten years would be the absolutely
longest time we had to prevent catastrophic climate change.

They also said the world would be overpopulated and we wouldn't be able to
feed everybody by the end of the sixties so who knows.

~~~
roryisok
> They also said the world would be overpopulated and we wouldn't be able to
> feed everybody by the end of the sixties so who knows.

Thanks to the green revolution, we figured out how to massively increase crop
yield, otherwise we would have seen problems supplying enough food. In fact
that's kind of the root of many of todays problems. The population of earth
has doubled since 1980, when GHG levels were safe. If we couldn't feed another
3.5 billion people they wouldn't have been born and we wouldn't be in this
mess. We'd be in a much different mess, where rationing and population control
are common, but at least we wouldn't also be cooking ourselves

------
berkoab
For a balanced view, this is a must read from Professor of Meteorology Richard
S. Lindzen at MIT:
[https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2018/10/Lindzen-2018...](https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2018/10/Lindzen-2018-GWPF-
Lecture.pdf)

~~~
UncleMeat
That's not balanced. The overwhelming majority of experts in the field
disagree with Lindzen, who is largely famous among laypeople because he is one
of the few academics that deniers can point to.

~~~
berkoab
Experts? That's exactly his point. They're far from being experts. What I
meant by balanced was as a balance to all the views being expressed here. I
probably misused that word.

~~~
UncleMeat
I'd describe people with PhDs in atmospheric science who have published papers
on climate change or other climate modeling as experts. These people largely
disagree with Lindzen.

~~~
explainplease
From the paper:

> Richard S. Lindzen was Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology until his retirement in 2013. He is
> the author of over 200 papers on meteorology and climatology and is a member
> of the US National Academy of Sciences and of the Academic Advisory Council
> of GWPF.

Does meteorology count as "atmospheric science"?

Does climatology count as "climate change" or "climate modeling"?

Does 200 papers count as "published papers"?

Does being a professor at MIT count?

By your own criteria, he is an expert.

Therefore, by what reasoning do you dismiss him?

Religion.

~~~
UncleMeat
Yes. Lindzen is a working scientist. But he is _not_ among the majority of
scientists. The fact that his name shows up so goddamn often is because he is
one of the very few people with those creds that speaks what deniers want to
hear.

------
mahasvin
There is a joke "Scientists are telling us that our civilisation stands on the
border of the abyss, and propose themselves to take leadership, and make a
move forward". Seriously speaking, last year I looked into summary of glacial
core data from Greenland. You know, what, climate always changes. This one is
no worse then a Pleistocene. May be some cool animals will emerge in a million
years from now.

------
King-Aaron
Unfortunately at an individual level effecting change, I feel the boat has
long since sailed.

It's pretty obvious that in western democracies, it's not so much the
politicians who control the scene, but the corporates that sponsor their
election campaigns in return for industry specific kickbacks.

While we have vested interests such as coal, oil and gas producers sponsoring
your only valid political choices, you're going to end up voting for parties
that are only there due to those companies. I don't see that changing any time
soon.

I think it's best to just prepare for the most realistic current scenario,
which is an average temperature rise in the area of 1 - 1.5 degrees C. Not so
much dooms day preparation, but maybe don't be that little pig who builds his
house out of straw.

~~~
jsingleton
There is lots of action still required to reach your realistic scenario. Don't
give up. You can help.

Hopefully this can motivate people in an optimistic way: [https://unop.uk/how-
to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as-a-t...](https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with-
a-big-global-problem-as-a-technologist-part-1/)

------
interfixus
I read _2001: A Space Odyssey_ when I was 11. That would have been 1971. The
Moon shuttle, the space station, and the elctronic wizardry were okay by me.
Even the monolith, though things did turn too weird for my taste towards the
end (and I still agree with my younger self here). But one fundamental premise
completely toppled my suspension of disbelief: That humanity would still
seriously _be_ here by the turn of the century. Clearly, ww would by then be
overwhelmed, struggling against or exterminated by ... pollution. Which is
what all doomsday was about then. Some years later it was all-out nuclear war.
Ask me by the beginning of the eighties, and I shall tell you confidently that
I - and you - won't be around by the year 2000. As we now know, I nearly got
that one right during the next few years, but today I really no longer believe
it would have moved far beyond megadisaster - not into actual extermination.
So, these days it's the climate, and I am old and cynical and jaded. Sick to
puking level of being called a _denier_. Noone in his/her/its right mind can
deny that climate is changing. Always has, presumably always will. And of
course we influence the damned thing. Every living and species does, and we
clearly to a very high extent. If we don't - collectively - like the way
things are going, by all means, we ought to take steps to shift the course. We
may even be in for rough times. Maybe _very_ rough. And then again, maybe we
won't. If someone can give me a plausible scenario for the year 2100 - _as
seen from the perpective of someone actually living there and then_ \- I'm all
ears. I have _zero_ idea wheter that scenario in that perspective will be on
the black or on the white side. I shall, however, be extremly surprised if
climate will have actually killed or ruined us, downvotes be damned.

~~~
seren
I understand your sentiment, but it boils down to : past catastrophic
predictions were wrong so future catastrophic predictions are also going to be
wrong.

That does not reassure me one bit.

Let's that the doomsday future is 100 millions people living in the Arctic
circle. Maybe it is not that bad for people living in 2500, with AI,
agricultural drones, floating cities. They might even have fusion and a moon
base.

But I cannot imagine how we can go peacefully from a few billions people
living around the globe to another stable state. This is going to be a very
rocky transition, and we, or our children, are going to experience it fully.

~~~
interfixus
Not so much _past catastrofic predictions were wrong_ as _my past catastrofic
fantasies were wrong_. I see frequent commenting here on HN in the tone of
_the world is ending, we 're all gonna die_. They are no more and no less
credible than my boyhood musings on 2001.

My comment wasn't meant to reassure. I take it for granted (my musings again!)
that this century will bring terrible upheavals, unprecedented warfare, and
probably a sharp decline in world population. It won't be peaceful, it won't
be pretty. It will be history, business as usual, no matter if the planet
grows hotter or colder. I'm far too old for optimism.

------
DoreenMichele
"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."

Y2K was supposed to be a global catastrophe. It got quietly fixed. No one (but
me) wakes up today and goes "Oh. Thank. God. We aren't living in the Y2K post
apocalypse!"

In fact, I have been told that most people laugh at the idea that we ever
worried about it because it turned out fine, so we must not have been in real
danger.

The Kuwait oil wells were supposed to burn for years and be a global
catastrophe. Crack teams converged on the country and put them out in a mere 6
months. No one is saying "Hallelujah!" about that either. It is also forgotten
while we are on to bellyaching about our next catastrophe.

Don't get me wrong. I'm an environmental studies major and I have lived
without a car for more than a decade and I would like to do more to mitigate
this problem. But I'm pretty damn sure that if I actually fixed it, A. I would
likely get zero credit and B. The very next morning the entire world would be
focused on some new problem rather than dancing in the streets to celebrate
this triumph.

In the mean time,let me recommend that you pee on a tree. (Website possibly
coming soon.)

~~~
jandrese
To me the scary part about climate change is the sheer scale of the problem.
We burn something like 4.4 billion tons of oil each year. Eventually we have
to basically un-burn all of that oil. That's a staggeringly huge amount of
work and we have barely begun to stop digging ourselves deeper into the hole.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Walk more.

Eat less meat.

And pee on a tree.

Do that every day. Track it if you need to. Spread the word if you like,
though leading by example is more powerful than trying to lecture people.

We are all just dust in the wind anyway. But you can choose what your little
speck gets up to, at least to some degree.

~~~
jandrese
That's entirely in the "stop digging the hole so fast" category. Except for
the tree peeing I think.

Actually removing thousands of billions of tons of excess carbon from the
atmosphere is still an unsolved problem. We can't do it with trees unless we
find a black hole to stuff them into.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I don't actually agree with you, but let's assume you are correct. In my
experience, if you don't have an effective solution, but you do know that
doing X amounts to "putting out the fire with gasoline," then not doing X is
vastly better than continuing to do X while claiming there's no point in
trying since we don't have a real solution.

If nothing else, slowing things down and hurtling towards our doom less
quickly buys us time to come up with Real Solutions (TM).

------
TheAceOfHearts
What's your source for this 12 year figure? What exactly happening in 12
years? What scientists are saying it's our "final chance"?

I don't think being hyperbolic is constructive or helpful in the slightest
when you're looking to have a serious discussion. To be clear, I'm not saying
there isn't a problem. I agree that there are a multitude of problems and that
we must take action to address them. But over the last few decades a few
people have made a name for themselves by making crazy allegations, and I
believe this has done nothing but make people take the issue less seriously
than they should.

I'm happy to be corrected on this, since I'm not an expert and I haven't done
that much research. When I last looked into this topic it didn't seem like
there was consensus among the scientific community about the predicted
timelines for future climate events or even a clear understanding of what
those events would be. Again, I'm very happy to be corrected on any of this,
as I take the topic of climate change incredibly seriously. It is my belief
that allowing climate change issues to run loose is one of the biggest risks
to our civilization.

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richardknop
The obvious solution would be to decrease the population globally to more
manageable level. That is not possible because humans are hardwired to breed
and multiply. The next best thing we can do is try to do some big action on
government levels. Again very difficult because it would mean decreasing
standard of living (more expensive fuel, for example, to discourage
inefficient cars, higher taxes on products dependent on fossil fuels), so you
would be asking people to vote for decreasing their living standard and making
their life worse off short term. Nobody is going to vote for a politician who
promises to make your life worse and products you use daily more expensive
thus making you poorer.

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shard972
> That is not possible because humans are hardwired to breed and multiply.

Wait a second, then why is it that almost every western country is currently
seeing negative population forecasts without immigration?

Seems like western countries were already heading towards population decline
but have been propped up in recent years with the call for more economic
growth and I don't think those calls are hardwired at all.

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richardknop
I think western countries are not representative of the world as they
represent a small minority of world's population (10% or so).

I have read some predictions about world population continuing to increase to
around 12 billion and stabilising at that number.

Let's say that happens. Then you run into the problem of people in western
countries consuming many times more resources and energy per capital as
developing world.

Then in order to avoid climate catastrophe it would mean you have to reduce
standard of living for the minority that consumes the most fuel and energy,
also standard of living of those in developing world could not catch up.

Basically the argument I'm trying to make it that it won't be sustainable to
have 1 or 2 cars per family like it is normal in the West, and other similar
luxuries.

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shard972
Your assuming that developing countries don't develop in that time which would
be quite the prediction.

Also I don't think 1-2 cars will be the issue, more along the lines of:

\- Can you own a car? Or must you bike to work? \- Can you access goods
outside of your state? Since no trucks/planes for long distance shipping \-
How much Heating/Cooling in the Winter/Summer will you be allowed? If any?

That or we could look into geo-engineering maybe?

