The also just secured a $10 Billion contract with the US military, which is one of the largest emitters of carbon on the planet.
Americans have been reticent to downsize the military for the benefit of everyone else on the planet, but we might just get around to it for our own benefit in reducing emissions.
And when there was a hole in the ozone layer, for the first time ever the whole world agreed on a measure to stop it. That too was a global climate problem.
Not that there wasn't plenty of ignorant hysteria. But there was also a lot of real mitigation work. A lot of stuff didn't break on 1/1/2000 because we fixed the bugs before then.
When people feel a problem is hopeless, they cease to act. Climate alarmists trying to scare people into action with improbable outcomes, I feel, are being counter productive in this regard.
But the damage is already done. More alarmism (which is almost guaranteed) will be even more counter productive where people will just tune out.
I quite agree. I'm a longtime environmentalist, and when climate change first became a major story I was all for it because CO2 emissions are an excellent proxy for pollution and resource depletion. Now I feel like what should be an integrative approach to a hairball of multiple wicked problems has been simplified to an obtuse marketing campaign, driven by the idea that if enough people agree on the scope of the problem they'll suddenly all pull in the same direction and we'll be most of the way to a solution.
I hate to say it, but I feel that climate change has become a distraction from doing real and necessary environmental work.
People oversimplify to a binary. Yes, it's pretty much impossible to halt climate change at 1.5 degrees. So therefore they think we should do nothing -- why bother if it's going to happen anyway? But it's not anywhere close to binary: the more we do the less change that happens - we can't stop it from happening, but we can definitely stop it from getting worse.
The satire is a little imprecise here, but this is literally why there's a Green New Deal being proposed. We can address climate change AND make sure everyone has a livelihood while society undergoes the massive changes necessary.
Really? I thought governments had a lot more, like trillions more. I thought the quality of life for humanity has never been better than now? Do you mean climate change? If so how does rich people's greed fit in the picture.
I don't think they should hoard cash, there should be a limit on that but net worth usually includea stock value, wealth in form of stocks is far from hoarding. I think cash wealth limits and a legal limit on pay gap would help but I still don't see the rich do anything they haven't done throughout history. If anything, democraric processes and institutions are failing the people.
You must be rich to talk like that. Rich people generally emit a f#ckton of co2 and worse, they do not use their wealth to try to mitigate it, thereby condemning their own children.
You're generalizing and stereotyping. If what you say is true then it seems your law makers are failing to implement laws that curtail CO2 emissions by rich people?
People can do anything legal with their money, if it shouldn't be allowed why is it legal? It seems you're taking a morao high ground against the rich, which is fine so long as you realize rich people are not above the law and even if they control civilian governments they don't control the military (at least not at non-admin levels) so democratic societies still have a lot of power. You also have to consider how just india and china generate emissions that eclipse the US but most billionaires are in the US. So it might feel nice to blame the rich and please don't let me get in the way but I don't see how fixing wealth inequality even makes a small dent on climate change. Mind you, publicly traded corps benefit the rich but their policy making is entirely designed to benefit shareholders as a whole.
I don't care who is to blame,show me solutions not a person to blame.
Oh yes, they are failing, and I can explain you why. We are in a deadlock in my country regarding elected representatives because the baby boomers vote and they are in greater number than us youngs, so the policy will always be conservative and economically liberal. Basically old conservatives control our future even if they have less life remaining than us on this Earth. (That's how I conceived a new democratic process by the way - amount of votes = number of years remaining in your life expectancy. Maybe a first solution offered to you to give younglings a chance about their future ?). Democracies do have power, but they lack a lot of will.
Add to that lobbies and economic agents controlling elected officials so they keep believing in the eternal growth lullaby, and yes - they ARE failing to implement laws that curtail CO2 emissions by rich people/powerful corporations.
I really don't see how that's surprising or subject to debate - everything observable around us is in favor of this argument.
I'm not taking a moral high ground, the problem is systemic and I don't accuse anyone in particular. Rich people, not above the law ? Yeah... I won't answer that because I don't believe it to be true, but I cannot formally prove it.
Oh we do have solutions but you wouldn't like those. Carbon taxes, unlawful to eat meat besides on weekends, mandatory carbon offset of long-distance and/or plane trips, unlawful to advertise in public spaces and I have a whole lot more for you - but they will never get implemented ;)
The global poor don't get to choose. When the choice is firewood or not being able to cook and stay warm, you use firewood.
When the choice is find some way to stay entertained without taking quarterly vacations on CO2 generating flights to expensive getaways or keep polluting somehow no one bats an eyelid.
There aren't enough rich people to compete with commercial airliner's emissions. Cruise ships are HUGE emittors(they even get around emissions control laws) for example but the western middle class is their user not the rich or poor.
You realize the first-world middle class taking cruises is as much a part of the rich as billionaires right?
A yearly salary of something like 32k puts you in the global 1% of earners. I won't be so strict about the definition of the rich, but families having money for cruises are definitely part of the demographic I'm speaking to.
And I mean, vacations is are just the tip of the iceberg, those people so poor they have to use firewood go survive, aren't the reason we have so many commercial airliners shuttling around goods so we can have the latest throwaway item we desire in 48hrs or less.
Being the global 1% earner means nothing in this context. Income is measured against context of currency. A USD can indeed buy a lot but perhaps housing is a lot cheaper in subsaharan africa than Manhattan? Same for food and other expenses? Regardless of their place in the world, being rich is only significant to how much expendible money you have left after accounting for neccessities. Even in america, $80k/yr can mean you're doing great if you live in some no name suburb or small town but you're lucky if you break even with that in NYC.
Your firewood analogies are sensetionalist but do not answer my question of how even if western civilization vanished over night climate change would be resolved? Perhaps delayed by a few decades. I would even say it might get worse due to undeveloped countries desire to compete with minimal costs and inability to create nuclear power or afford wind turbine farms,solar,etc... When oil,charcol and old cars are already affordable.
You spent a whole paragraph arguing a point invalidated in the next sentence when I point out I'm not using the 1% criteria, but rather the fact you have enough disposable income for a cruise (yes, financing it counts)
And my firewood "analogy" is sensationalist?
Is that a joke or are you just that out of touch with the reality of the actual poor.
My parents grew up in those conditions, and even as recently as the last few years we've had family members back home in that situation.
What you're missing is nuclear is too slow to spin up! We simply don't have time. We need to cut emissions 50% in 10 years, and nuclear is not going to get us there. Look to other renewables.
You're assuming that we only need to replace all our energy sources with renewables but otherwise we can keep running as usual.
As you correctly point out, that's not going to cut it. However, there's an easy solution that has been suggested by various people for at least the past 50 years: Lower consumption, lower energy requirements, halt the desire for infinite growth.
The richest countries are the biggest polluters per capita, no competition. Accusing the "Indians and Chinese" for pollution which is in fact the direct consequence of "Western" consumption is misleading, hypocritical and redirects attention from the real, underlying problems.
See also [1] for a counterpoint to your claims of increasing efficiency.
No argument at all about per capita energy consumption. My point isn't to blame developing countries at all. It's to illustrate that as over 2 billion people try to emulate Western lifestyles, their energy consumption is going to skyrocket. And Western expectations that they should just limit their growth/advancement is the hypocritical view.
When you view Western energy consumption, it's growth is largely correlated to population increases.
Of course they can. It doesn't take more than 2 years to setup a solar/wind farm, meanwhile a nuclear plant takes an average of 7 years to build and deploy.
Solar is especially good at this, because with the right incentives you can have people put it on their roofs - it's the sort of scaling that's impossible to achieve in megaprojects like nuclear power plants.
Rooftop solar isn't viable in a large portion of the world, and solar is much better served in mega deployments. Scale matters.
That said, if you look at the total amount of energy consumed worldwide, the grow rate of this energy consumption, the amount currently generated by renewables, and the growth rate of renewables, it's pretty obvious that there's no realistic way to cut emissions 50% in a decade. Absolutely none short of a global war that devastates both modern society and reduces world population by 25%.
If we had the will, there would be ample time. If you look at humanity's achievements, a full-court-press on this problem though multi-faceted technological investment is well within grasp.
However, that framing is de-emphasized in favor of politicizing the issue, imposing guilt on those who consume resources, and trying to alter the way billions of people live through coercion or decree.
We're screwed until the modern-day luddites yield that all of humanity wants, needs, deserves, and can sustain effectively endless economic growth and prosperity as long as the universe's limitless resources remain uncaptured. To think that at this junction we should consider the boundaries of human activity are now fixed is to just continue the endless tradition of doubters and cynics who have lacked imagination over the centuries, and held back all good things.
Conversely, I think that heavy censorship of opposing ideas shows a lack of confidence in one's own opinion. If we can't debate effectively the merits of climate action in a community designed for it, then we need to work on our messaging
Nuclear takes time but I don't think the solution is going to come through only one approach. It seems like we'll need a mix of technologies to actually solve this problem. Nuclear provides clean base load in many places currently (e.g. more than 60% of the base power in Ontario)
We have 10 years to cut 50% of emissions. We literally can't build enough nuclear plants in that time, it's very slow. It's also really expensive. We have to use other renewables.
We should a) build renewable; and b) build nuclear reactors with the idea that you will insert rods, to decrease power output when the winds are blowing strong, and restore power when the winds have dampened. Outcome, lowered nuclear waste from the plant, fewer expensive battery storage (or pumped hydro).
I don't think location matters that much tbh. I have friends (and coworkers) working remotely in the $180k - $250k ranges. They work for bay area tech companies, but they live on the east coast and midwest USA.
It's really not about broadcasting their opinions to you, it's about getting the company to make changes that help mitigate climate change, which threatens the safety of everyone on planet earth?
Americans have been reticent to downsize the military for the benefit of everyone else on the planet, but we might just get around to it for our own benefit in reducing emissions.