I mean the article we are commenting on is literally about climate change hitting faster than expected. IPCC reports are known to be very conservative.
Think we hit the comment nesting limit so replying here.
From what I know, we can't release any more carbon and in fact might need to go carbon negative, so to do that we would need to essentially shut down everything that emits carbon... Cars, trucks, cargo ships, trains, airplanes, eliminate animal agriculture, no more steel or concrete production, all coal, gas oil power production and many other industries would need to shut down.
So yes, I think it would have quite a drastic effect on our standard of living. Some of these things in some parts of the world may someday become carbon neutral, but it will take a long time.
If you frame the conversation that way then yes, there is zero way to meet that standard. You might as well not even try.
Addressing climate change isn’t about being perfect at this point, it’s about averting ever increasing disaster scenarios, especially since the degree of the effects seems to be exponential with the amount of warming we see.
All I see from so many people is the feeling that we might as well not even try/it’s all a waste of time.
The question is, is there inherently a massive trade off between our living standards and addressing climate, given there is no substantial change in our level of technology (you said we’d need to go backwards 2 centuries).
If we “magically” implemented political solutions with proper urgency, does that necessarily entail a massive drop in living standards in your mind?
