Our kids, who will shoulder far more of the effects of this than us, didn't get to choose this. This is their inheritance, generations of neglect for the environment and rampant profiteering culminating in a climate catastrophe.
So not only do our children inherit the mess, but our most optimistic scenarios all include our children being the ones to invent some sort of miracle tech.
Meanwhile we're mostly sitting on our asses and not even a global pandemic could convince us to make any sort of meaningful change.
How is this related? What change was expected from the pandemic?
We know we can live without the commute, we have actual data on its impact on CO2 thanks to the pandemic, and now we're mostly back to commuting. I don't see how anyone could argue that's not a real, tangible change that could've easily stayed.
WFH was never about the workers perspective, it was enforced and companies had no choice.
That the workers were positive about it is irrelevant to whether companies were productive with it
If you go far back enough in my comment history you'll find me arguing FOR WFH, but I'll still be the first to admit that all companies I personally observed took a huge hit to productivity when WFH was in force.
No reason to celebrate because there's much to do, but it's not all doom and gloom.
As it stands, global PV installed capacity has been growing by a pretty constant 20% per annum for the last five years, about half of which is in China and Europe but with similar exponential rates in other countries (Brazil in particular has doubled its installed capacity in less than three years). At that rate, depending on the capacity factor, it would produce the majority of the world's electricity in 15-20 years. Storage is behind, but faces a chicken-and-egg problem: if you don't have installed PV capacity, there's no demand to build storage.
My point is: 20% YoY growth is fast by the standards of almost anything, let alone durable infrastructure. Rome wasn't built in a day. Part of the challenge is to make sure we keep it up.
We learned relatively quickly that although the streets cleared out, our energy use stayed roughly similar overall, and the supply shocks are tied to that story by shifting demand for goods and services in a relatively short period.
Back-to-office is also part of that because one of the goods and services that could not move that quickly is real estate: individuals could move, but businesses had leases. And everyone looking at the commercial real estate market has been shaking their heads and seeing a negative trend: yes, companies did mobilize to get people back on their office commute, but the market is still sliding and cities are looking at the difficult prospect of converting commercial buildings to housing now.
Unfortunately, we are shutting these plants down instead of building more of them.
The tech exists to solve the problem. We have 4th generation designs that cannot melt down. We fail to deploy them to the shame of all of the so-called environmentalists.
Especially useful would be having excess energy for renewal which thermodynamics says is a must.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/figures/summary...
> we really don't know what else would
We absolutely can meet our needs with other clean energy sources. And unlike nuclear most of these technologies are cost competitive with fossil fuels currently, and the ones that are not are continuing to come down in costs as manufacturing scales up.
> We know it would solve the problem
No we don't. There are a number of places where nuclear is highly unlikely to be deployed due to geopolitical concerns or due to a lack of advanced enough economy. Those places are going to have to rely on other options whether they want to or not.
Again, I am all for nuclear as part of the mix. There are absolutely places where it will make the most sense (extreme latitudes for example). And I generally agree that increasing deployment could bring costs down*. But the amount of FUD spread by the pro-nuclear crowd really makes it hard to get onboard. I think you are doing more harm then good.
* Nuclear is unlikely to see the same cost reductions as renewables though, due to the difference in the drivers of the costs for each type of technology.
"The annual number of permanent nuclear reactor shutdowns fluctuated between 2005 and 2022. In the latter year, there were 4 shutdowns worldwide, of which three were in the United Kingdom (UK) and one in the United States (U.S.) "[0x40000000]
[0x3F800000] https://spectrum.ieee.org/slow-steady-progress-for-two-us-nu...
[0x40000000] https://www.statista.com/statistics/238656/number-of-nuclear...
Nuclear takes so long to build it doesn't help at all.
[0] https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-carbon-notes-3-fo...
MIT has a really neat policy simulator called En-ROADS [1] where you can tinker with applying various policies at various levels, and estimate their impacts. Check it out, and see just how minimal nuclear energy's effects are on their own. Compare that to, for example, just "highly reducing" methane emissions.
[1] https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=23.2...
It really seems like the straightforward solution to me, even more than carbon credits which seem to have some issues (I believe you can get paid for 'not emitting' in some cases, which of course can lead to almost-fraudulent behavior) -- taxing emissions is much more concrete and verifiable.
Also deforestation and afforestation are shown incredibly powerful. It really seems to me one of the most important aspects, since it means we also get "for free" the security of our forests and habitats that are collapsing (and even expansion of wild habitats hopefully!).
Kids judge their parents on their inability to change when it matters, and when you’re old and infirm and “kids” are taking care of you, you’re gonna be in for a bad time.
No, we didn't, just like our kids didn't.
We didn't choose shit, we took what we were given while a small minority in a minority of countries chose this.
It’s easy and comforting to spout predictions of the apocalypse, but realistically speaking, things will be okay.
If you think things will be okay because historically has been so, let me remind you that a permanent change of this scale is a catastrophe that is unmatched and unprecedented in human history. Maybe nuclear conflict was as scary, but its solution was comparatively much simpler, and it never passed the point of no return.
More than that, things usually do not turn out okay except for the class of people who initially benefited from bringing about the problem. Many peoples have faced horrors that were not and could not be undone, though it's easy to forget that while living in the society built on their ashes. Things always turn out to be okay... for the colonizer, the wealthy, the powerful
Statistically speaking, commenting on this platform firmly places you in a category that will likely survive climate change (at least in the medium term...) and probably profit from it, so excuse me for calling out your reasons for believing that technology will save us.
By the way, it is my understanding that the scientific consensus is that technological solutions are not going to be able to save us (as they are impractical, too far off, and harder to implement than just stopping the use of fossil fuels).
Also if you think that "spouting predictions of the apocalypse" is comforting, you severely misunderstand the psychological issues that (especially the younger generations) are facing in light of terrifying powerlessness against climate change
Ultimately, this is a political problem, and assuring everyone that "things will be okay" only makes it less likely that any action will be taken in time.
Now is the time to panic, and do something about it. If we are able to turn the tide and somehow make things okay... great! The panic was well placed.
"Peak oil" and CO2 are just the tip of the iceberg.
Some future generation is going to dig up the garbage we buried and harvest it for resources. To a degree we're already doing this ourselves looking for stuff like palladium and rhodium.
Are today's kids more concerned about the environment than we were? It seems they like to consume as much as anybody else
I think we are talking about people who are yet to be born (in the future), not younger humans already born.
They’ll probably never find the attention span to do so. But I can hope.