by burning give amounts of energy and speeding it up
We know how to reduce carbon emissions immediately, we did a great job of it 3 years ago, we just don't like the answer: reduce economic activity.
Consume less, produce less, work less, spend less. These things will do more to reduce CO2 emissions than if everyone rushed out and bought electric cars (in the US ~oil~ gasoline consumption has been positively correlated with electric car ownership).
But we don't want that, and more importantly, the stock market doesn't want that. I think most people would be fine with reduce work and reduced consumption (to a point), but the people invested deeply in the status quo tend to have asymmetric influence.
I want that. I'd love to trade money for time but the relationship seems non-linear. Working 50% as many hours would mean less than 50% as much pay for the most part.
I've heard this approach called FIRE - financial independence, retire early.
It could be offset by the fact that you could invest the money from the first 25 years thus benefitting from a compound return.
I don't know which has the bigger effect.
Please consider other economic inputs that do not directly increase carbon emissions, and include design consideration where "new machines and methods" can accomplish similar or better economic activity.
That ONLY happens with batteries fusion and AI. We are making progress and as long as the pessimists don't get their way.
Ironically people like Greta have had the worst impact on climate. Not just that she flies around the world instead of doing zooms. But that she is all doom and gloom instead of trying to help us progress technology
I've been hearing a similar statement for decades now, but the global emissions only continue to rise.
In fact, I've been hearing that logic since the late 90s and in that time we have doubled the cumulative emissions up to that point.
We have seen that emissions drop with decrease in economic activity (multiple times). Yes, batteries, renewables, and nuclear would all part a big part in a truly sustainable future... but we have to survive until that future first.
> Reducing carbon emissions isn't a solution
We're well past the "solution" stage of this problem. Where in the "harm reduction" phase. Reduced emissions is absolutely superior in this regard to increased emissions... and yet you're arguing that we should be increasing them because a magic solution is just around the corner, like it always has been.
Yet here we are and the Model Y became the best selling car in the world this year.
Don't give up hope friend.
I'm pretty sure you're wrong here, and Greta doesn't fly, but if you insist, can you share your sources?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Voyages_of_Greta...
The word "emergency" occurs once, in phrase "Thunberg does not fly except for emergency cases.(4)" . The link (4) leads to https://time.com/5663534/greta-thunberg-arrives-sail-atlanti... "Climate Activist Greta Thunberg, 16, Arrives in New York After Sailing Across the Atlantic" . I didn't read the whole article, are you saying that article says Thunberg flies?
So I'm still not sure where's the information supporting "Not just that she flies around the world instead of doing zooms." coming from.
"Significant carbon footprint" asks for, significant compared to what? Maybe Greta leaves bigger footprint than the lowest, say, 10% of the Earth population, who don't really have access to modern technologies with that significant footprint. But she surely tries quite a lot given the circumstances where she is, and encourages us to follow. So I'm skeptical about accusations towards her without enough evidence.
https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-world-s-top-1-of-emitte...
She is most likely in the 90% percentile not the 10% percentile. Which is my point. We shouldn't look to people with huge carbon footprints as role models. Al Gore for example has multiple homes. He is easily in the top 5% of carbon footprints in the world.
If the most alarmist and upset climate activists cannot get their carbon footprint down below the average human, then it is pointless to try. The only fix for this problem is technological acceleration toward clean energy, even if getting there causes short term emissions to increase.
I definitely think this is an organisation problem, not a technology problem. Societies are not organising to fix the issue, instead it seems they are hoping the global free market will eventually make it economically beneficial in the short term, to save the climate.
As the cost of battery/wind/solar plunge, their use goes up. And fusion has the potential to be much cheaper than those.
A very very small percentage of CO2 emissions is due to people wanting to increase CO2 in the atmosphere. Almost all of it is because that is the cheapest or most efficient way to travel, heat your home, make products, etc...
I’ve been hearing this a lot lately, that climate doomerism is somehow damaging to the cause and preventing any meaningful climate action.
I think this is a misunderstanding of what climate doomerism is. I hear people talking as if being realistic about damning nature of the damage we have done, and who is to blame for it all. And instead people believe the message is that we should just give up. If you believe the latter, I dare you to go find any source where Greta Thunberg (or any other supposed climate doomer) has said anything of that nature (hint they haven’t).
But suppose that you are right, and the message of climate doomers is actually that of giving up, now if you compare that to the decades of misdirection and outright lying that the fossil fuel industry has done to actively hinder climate action, and on top of that to actually double down on burning fossil fuels. How much damage, relative to the fossil fuel industry, have people like Greta Thunberg actually caused. Relatively speaking that damage is a drop in the ocean.
US oil consumption peaked in 2005. EV ownership didn't peak in 2005, so it seems like a negative correlation to me.
That has been increasing overtime, barring of course the pandemic, we're on track to pick up from where 2019 left off this year: https://www.statista.com/statistics/188448/total-us-domestic...
Even if we stopped all carbon emissions today the earth would continue to warm for centuries. Mitigating these effects is going to take carbon capture(aka unburning oil) and geoengineering on an immense scale which won't be possible without economic growth. There's no going back.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-st...
More importantly, the sooner we can stop carbon emissions the less severe warming and ecosystem harm we'll experience. Carbon capture may help a bit if we are able to massively scale it up, but there really is not substitute for ending emissions.
The covid lockdowns and their effects were not popular.