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Comment by heron88 | Hacker News Reader

One practical solution to climate change may be to shut everything down for one day each week, kind of like some places did in response to the pandemic. Close all non-essential business, restrict all non-essential travel, etc. In addition to giving our planet a much needed day off each week, it’d probably go a long way towards improving our mental health.

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Given that emissions did not drop that much during the pandemic, this wouldn't be sufficient.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-carbon-project-coronaviru...

We didn't really stop industry. It did show how little effect flying and cruises have (which is good because I like flying) but it also shows that the emissions aren't just coming from luxuries that are easy to live without.

Actually shutting down everything one day a week (giving 1/5 to 1/7 theoretical savings) isn't really going to work. Practically a lot of industry can't shut down, or would pollute a lot more by starting and stopping.

Too many big carbon emitters don't shut-down easily, and the cost to start them backup is likely higher (steel processing, container ships, power plants, etc)

Carbon in the atmosphere is cumulative. Shutting down for one day a week just means accumulating at a slightly slower rate. We need to shut down carbon emission 7 days a week.

Or incentivize companies to implement remote work. Talking office commuter cars off the road would be a great step but everyone is rushing back to the office to go back to emitting huge amounts of CO2.

The UK had a three day week for a few months in the 1970s in response to coal shortages and an economic crisis:

https://www.theblackoutreport.co.uk/2021/01/06/three-day-wee...

I think people would shift their emissions to different days of the week. During Covid, I could not work from home, so the office made each person take a different day off in the week to reduce concurrent people working by 20%. We would then work 10 hour days. I shifted all my chores and errands to my day off.

Restrictions are a political non-starter. We need carbon neutral ways for people to go about their daily lives, solar and wind electricity production, electric cars, jet fuel produced by taking carbon from the air and assembling it into long chains.

> Close all non-essential business

I think the last year and a bit has proven that every business would quickly decide itself essential.

So basically earth hour but 168 times longer?

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