It seems to be that the most obvious solutions will be make amazing technology and make it as cheap or cheaper than the dirty competitors -- eventually, even the people that dont believe in climate change will be driving EVs, have solar panels on their roofs, and eating fake meat.
Also, we should all be hoping there are some breakthroughs in nuclear (cheaper + safer reactors that leads to less regulation and allow nuclear to be more ubiquitous )
(I’m not making a claim that we should slow either branch down nor keep people poor so only the rich can keep burning fossils.)
We have only ever managed to get people out of poverty by increasing their per-capita energy usage.
Any once we do, their families demand to maintain said standard of living that can only be met with enormous amounts of concentrated energy.
We have - and continue - to do this using fossil fuels.
Do you have another, secret, method?
They can skip the fossil fuels and go straight to green energy can they not? This will require advances in technology, and therefore should be our focus.
No they cannot.
We cannot even get Switzerland - small, rich, smart, friendly, good infrastructure, top class law, surrounded by mountains and water, etc. etc. to renewables in a decade.
The US needs to get it's act together, but it is possible to have functional civil society and make decisions in the common good.
I think if enough climate events happen to enough people around the country, a majority could develop that wants to take action. Unfortunately, I think getting people to make the necessary changes to have a meaningful impact is politically impossible.
Unfortunately nuclear too is a political issue.
But I 100% agree, that a true path forward would involve the left taking actions to fix climate change that would be more popular with the conservative crowd.
If all the coal plants we were closing, were being replaced with nuclear power in the same cities and states, there would be a lot of job protection. And that might help move things forward.
Or a call for Solar Panels on homes, with panels made in the U.S. might be a good compromise as well.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/build-back-better/
> Ensures clean energy technology – from wind turbine blades to solar panels to electric cars – will be built in the United States with American made steel and other materials, creating hundreds of thousands of good jobs here at home.
> The Build Back Better legislation will target incentives to grow domestic supply chains in solar, wind, and other critical industries in communities on the frontlines of the energy transition. In addition, the framework will boost the competitiveness of existing industries, like steel, cement, and aluminum, through grants, loans, tax credits, and procurement to drive capital investment in the decarbonization and revitalization of American manufacturing.
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> The framework will also fund port electrification; facilitate the deployment of cleaner transit, buses, and trucks; and support critical community capacity building, including grants to environmental justice communities. In addition, the framework will create a new Civilian Climate Corps – with over 300,000 members that look like America. This diverse new workforce will conserve our public lands, bolster community resilience, and address the changing climate, all while putting good-paying union jobs within reach for more Americans.
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> The consumer rebates and credits included in the Build Back Better framework will save the average American family hundreds of dollars per year in energy costs. These measures include enhancement and expansion of existing home energy and efficiency tax credits, as well as the creation of a new, electrification-focused rebate program. The framework will cut the cost of installing rooftop solar for a home by around 30 percent, shortening the payback period by around 5 years; and the framework’s electric vehicle tax credit will lower the cost of an electric vehicle that is made in America with American materials and union labor by $12,500 for a middle-class family. In addition, the framework will help rural communities tap into the clean energy opportunity through targeted grants and loans through the Department of Agriculture.
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Clinton's campaign had similar promises around retraining coal miners to provide them good jobs in Wind and Solar.
Clinton's campaign did have promises of getting coal miners jobs in wind and solar, but if those industries can't completely replace what we have now, how can they possibly replace all the jobs?
When a coal mine turns into a nuclear power plant that is something that feels like is going to generate even more jobs than existed previously. Where renewables feel like less jobs. Those assumptions may be incorrect but that is how it is going to sound to the average voter.
For most first world countries the first order effects are mostly a drag on infrastructure costs and costs of living. Even absurd things like damming in the entire North Sea to protect against sea level rise are viable with enough political will [1]. But places that can't afford that will lose population centers to sea level rise, will be unable to produce enough water for drinking and agriculture, or just become too hot in the summer months to be livable without AC everywhere. And all those people won't just keel over and die, they will have the same thought you just expressed.
1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/giant-da...
Although the climate crisis is dire, I do not think that climate change alone is likely to kill us all. Resource wars that result from the climate crisis, however, I think could finish off humanity. Arms manufacturers do what they can to increase the likelihood of war.
Not to mention that militaries produce disproportionate amounts of greenhouse gases.
I mean, arms manufacturing is blood money even in "ordinary" times, but it takes another level of self-destructive evil to attempt to profit off the apocalypse.
If you are one of "all those people won't just keel over and die" (as the grandparent post states), then your community will need arms to, well, not just keel over and die. The same applies for any community that might get overrun by their neighbours - if global warming is going to bring on resource conflicts, if you refuse to be prepared and armed as a deterrant, then you will be inviting violence to your home as you will be an attractive victim. Sic pace, para bellum is an ancient principle that's relevant whenever a contest for resources becomes meaningful; so the point in investing in arms companies is not about profit, but about ensuring that your community suffers less in the coming turndown; you and your community will not get a "fair share" of dwindling resources just by existing (that's hard enough even in times of plenty with less motivation to compete for basic resources), it will get only as much as its strength allows.
That feels like an argument to convince people to do something rather than what will actually happen. A bit like "there is no escape, FIGHT NOW!".
But yes, the conclusion would be to either do something before it's too late or to go to a self-sufficient colony on Mars. There's plenty of other angles that support this, whether that's melting permafrost or the studies that calculate that limiting climate change now is far cheaper than mitigating the consequences later.
All of that to say, it feels like you're saying to people "either you fight climate change, or you will get refugees", while in real life that's not really what will happen, I think. I don't think you're completely wrong, but for example the average person can't really run away from refugees, but also can't make a difference in fighting climate change, so many of them will probably fight climate change and get refugees; while a very rich person can change more things but also run away more easily.
At any rate, with regards to climate change, it's important to note that actual progress has been made in mitigating climate change, it's not enough to hit the 1.5C target, but we'd be in an even worse place without it. In 2014 the world was on track to hit 4C by 2100, now its at 3C, (primarily due to rapid growth in clean energy). More reduction is possible in the intervening years, and the reduction is important in cutting out the more catastrophic effects of climate change.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/25/climate/world...
What's more is that it's a cumulative problem, so every little bit helps. Factoring in carbon capture, good actors can even cancel out bad ones. Very unlike the pandemic, where a few bad actors have outsized power to make things terrible for everybody.
It might actually be better to find place that will have plenty of local resources, especially renewable electricity and water, but will be hard to live without supporting tech like AC, heat/insulation, air filtration, etc and even more exotic tech like indoor grown food and general purpose manufacturing like 3d printing.
Beyond the density problem of 'nice' places, the difficulty of living in 'hard' places will provide a forcing function to only allow a population of smart and industrious people to live there, while those who can't hack it flee to the 'nice' places that don't require as much expensive tech to survive in.
In a world ravaged by climate change, you really want to be in the group that is capable of keeping advanced tech running and improving if you want to leave a lasting legacy. Not only because it's going to get harder to live here on Earth, but because we don't have much of a collective future if we never manage to get off this rock.
I'm actually sort of mildly positive about living outside Chicago right now since 1) my vague sense is that winters will get less severe (those crazy polar vortexes we've had a couple times now notwithstanding), 2) there's a fair bit of agriculture in the region that's not on the cusp of failing, 3) the elevation is high-ish and we're not on the coast, and 3) we're next to most of the world's fresh water. That said, I'm sure since this isn't a super well considered position, I'm probably missing a ton.
You should definitely assume that a late-winter polar vortex is an annual occurrence. Summers will get warmer, rain storms will get more intense. So you definitely are going to need to adapt. And flooding is an issue, so you better make sure to be in a FEMA X zone.
On the other hand, Illinois and Chicago are really, really low on the climate migration desirability index. Yet there is excellent soil for agriculture and the state is doing a decent job of incentivizing farmers to protect it. There is a huge amount of good water. Etc. You probably don't have to worry too much about being priced out of a house.
I do my part in the way I travel and what I eat, but I can otherwise only hope me and my kids are long dead before the earth becomes uninhabitable for a large part.
The pandemic is unusual in that we physically had no options but to work together.
With something like climate change, yes, everyone can be a bad contributor, but honestly, the solutions if they are to be arrived at involve a lot of invention, creation, trying things. Individuals & entities & governments are free to explore their own ways of making wins, and we don't all have to work together. We can ignore naysayers, & do the good work.
Siberia may get warmer weather, but the grounds will be awful. Melting permafrost and methane explosions don’t make for a very stable situation.
Rather adapt existing buildings to the changing climate.
I'm partial to the northern half of the great lakes.
Predicting which will be most at risk is relatively easy. Predicting which will be least at risk is much harder, as some of the effects are complex. e.g. Things getting warmer seems like it should be good for cold places, but it turns out to have negative consequences as well.
This is way, way beyond what any kind of scientific data suggests, even under the most extreme assumptions for projecting things into the future (and models based on those extreme assumptions are already falsified by actual data anyway).
Or maybe you misunderstood the words I used.