Dang, how many biggest problems is it okay to have? I can still think of a couple more.
Beyond that, I agree with you, and it's one of my major concerns as well.
We’re at the beginning of the exponential ramp on this sort of stuff, where the changes are barely noticeable. For example, until last night (so, assuming best case greenhouse projections), there was roughly a 50% chance that some people reading this will live to see the northern half of Europe turn into a glacier.
Anyway, without modern civilization, we probably won’t survive 10,000’s of years of such stuff. The global population bottlenecked at a few thousand the last time this happened.
We are currently living in an era of mass extinction. It's not something that's coming, we are in it, it is measurable. 75% of wild animals, insects and trees have disappeared. That is a fact, and it is not related to climate change at all: "just" to how we humans organize the world (mostly habitat loss).
Climate change will bring famines, natural disasters, and global instability (that means wars). This is yet to come.
It is fairly likely that at this rate, we will reach 4 degrees of global warming. At 4 degrees, a large part of the Earth (around the Equator) becomes unlivable for humans (it's too humid and hot, we can't regulate our temperature by sweating, we die). Which means that billions of people will need to relocate. This is not just normal wars: think entire countries that decide to leave their territory and go somewhere else, together with their army.
I don't know what the definition of "extinction-level" means (maybe you only care about some individuals of the human species surviving), but in my book that's as bad as it gets.
In the book of world history things have been way worse[0].
In the book of world futures things could get way way worse[1].
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin...
Has it been way worse, really? I think that the climate change that ended the dinosaurs happened slower than what we are expecting with ours (but I didn't check it and I am not completely sure).
I am sure of this, though: the mass extinction we are living now is the fastest we know. Let me rephrase it: we human have made 75% of wild animals, insects and trees disappear faster than it ever happened in the history of Earth.
> In the book of world futures things could get way way worse[1].
"Way way worse"? Do you realise what "20 degrees around the equator becomes uninhabitable" means? It's like half of the inhabited world becomes mars, and the people living there have no choice but to move where the other half is.
I think that it was a figure of speech. Whether it brings the human species to the brink of extinction or makes life unbearable for 90% of humans and destroys civilization as we know it is a bit of a technicality, if you ask me.
In any case it is one of the biggest problems of our time.
Maybe. But in the face of a malicious misinformation campaign, I think it's important to be accurate and careful with our words. Hyperbolic statements are not really helpful as it adds just the right ring of truth to the "it's all a load of bollocks by climate alarmists" claims, so it ends up just helping the misinformation campaign.
If you imagine a big stripe around the equator where people can't survive (it's basically mars) and have no other choice than to "invade" the rest of the world that may already not have the capacity to feed its population anymore, with oceans rising and pushing another couple billions inside the lands (so you can't just build walls as a country, you have civil war).
That's pretty much where we are headed now, and the data seems to show every year that we are actually getting there closer than we thought we were (because when our models "forget" something, usually it's something that made it worse). Not only that, but we are accelerating in that direction.
I personally think we're way passed the point where we can call anything "alarmism". The most conservative scenario I can find without us making drastic changes are all "equally bad" (as in: I don't really care whether or not the human species survives if all my relative and I die in very bad conditions).
That's what I mean with "it's as bad as it gets": between extinction of the human species and the most conservative scenario if we don't change, none of them is acceptable to me.
Like, if most of the tropics reach wet-bulb temperature and more than a billion people live there - that will be grim.
"The President might not sign the bill, however. If he specifically rejects the bill, called a veto, the bill returns to Congress. There it is voted on again, and if both houses of Congress pass the bill again, but this time by a two-thirds majority, then the bill becomes law without the President’s signature. This is called “overriding a veto,” and is difficult to do because of the two-thirds majority requirement."
A large part of the Republicans' strategy is to appoint partisan judges & let them legislate from the bench for the rest of their lives. Talking up thread about "the biggest problem", this is probably it. In the context of climate change, recently we can see SCOTUS shooting down environmental protections. This happens in lower courts too, but those don't make national news.
The way I see it, he will continue with the transition whenever it benefits him/the country. Which means some programs might be canceled, especially if they go against such interests.
Sure Elon might have an impact on CO2 emissions in the transport sector but I don't see him moving things that don't directly benefit him, say, electricity/heat production or agriculture.
Not sure how reliable all this is... Yet it seems "road" is nearly 10-11% which is big enough to solve and to have already an impact in everyday life. Then it cascades to other sectors too.
Edit: actually in the graphic it's the largest sector! My bad
I'm not convinced Musk cares all that much about the environment anymore, if he ever truly did. EVs were a bet that car buyers (and governments) would care about the environment.
Musk just wants to go to Mars and leave Earth behind.
I don't want to live in fantasy land here. Based on observable actions, Musk isn't brining any positive force to the table
He clearly does align with the movement in some ways, but he also is responsible for SpaceX, for example. Don’t you think that marks him out as being a bit different from the others?
Also, there are observable actions. If you listen to some of the podcasts he’s been on recently (as painful as they can be) you’ll hear him very flatly rejecting suggestions of quackery and ‘vaccine scepticism’. He’s so obviously not stupid, even if he’s degenerated somewhat, as many of us have, by constant exposure to poisonous social media.
You can't predicate the fact he has had success with those companies and somehow say his actions are some undercover operation to gain a position of power that will help average Americans or moderate the administration or whatever you want to say with that.
We should be focused on public actions and as it sits over the last 4 years in particular, Musk's actions are very concerning and there is serious cause for concern.
You haven't proven he isn't fully bought on MAGA bullshit with this. Its fantasy thinking running contrary to available evidence. He's broadly bought into Trump and the policies that brings, that much is clear.
Have you listened to his interviews? I don’t think you have.
By the way, I’m saying has bought it to some extent — just not fully.
Just because someone does a sit down interview and nudges around the edges about things they disagree with doesn't mean he's not fully bought in. There is zero evidence he meaningfully disagrees with Trump on anything of consequence
He donated at least $132 million dollars to the Trump campaign and GOP allies[0], for god sakes. Do you really think anyone donates $132 million dollars to something they aren't fully bought in to?
When someone shows you who they are, you should believe them.
[0]: https://fortune.com/2024/10/26/elon-musk-political-donations...
> There is zero evidence he meaningfully disagrees with Trump on anything of consequence
What I just said above is evidence, I think. There certainly isn't zero evidence.
> Do you really think anyone donates $132 million dollars to something they aren't fully bought in to?
Yes — absolutely. People make compromises all the time, and employ strategies that exchange short-term (even reputational) cost for long-term benefit.
> When someone shows you who they are, you should believe them.
He has shown us who he is, so far, by his actions in building companies and promoting rationality and science. Yes, he's also recently gone down the rabbit hole of nonsense on Twitter, but for now I don't think that fully represents his underlying nature.
I have no particular dog in this fight. I'm not American and nor do I have any particular love of Musk. However, I think you're overreacting.
As for your source: I know how much he's donated, and it is a shocking amount. However, in the wake of Trump's re-election, the share price of Tesla has just gone up 15% making Musk $15 billion richer. Makes that $132 million seem like pocket change. At worst, he's a self-interested opportunistic capitalist. But he's not a moron or a religious zealot as others are.
I expect he will either indeed be a moderating influence on the administration (remember this is in the context of Trump; I'm not saying he counts as a moderate in the usual sense) or will quickly lose favour or otherwise become disenchanted with Trump and Trumpism and vacate whatever position he's granted and move on.
Also remember: I'm not arguing he's particularly sensible or even acts like a grown up (he doesn't). I'm arguing that he's not 'literally Hitler' as some seem to be insinuating.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049662/fossil-us-carbon...
Dems want to have international treaties to address the problem and are willing to spend money to move away from fossil fuels. Republicans downplay the science (or outright deny it) and think international treaties make the US less independent and therefore weaker, and they would much rather cut taxes for Elon Musk than spend money on energy infrastructure.
The rise of right wing forces globally and anti immigration forces, is a consequence of immigration from regions that are not only crushed by wars, but also by climate instability.
Since solutions are too complex and require global cooperation, its easier for governments to not do anything.
As this keeps up, and larger areas of the world become uninhabitable, more migration will occur, leading to more power to demagogues and dictators.
Alternatively, if the fed didn't just print money to pay for unnecessary vote-buying schemes then the inflation rate would have been only minimally (if at all) impacted by the points you made.
If you want a straight line drawn in markers for something like the global economy - I mean, sure?
Given the forum though, I hesitate to place you amongst such company. I am guessing you know what the Fed's remit is, and therefore WHY they are printing money.
Voting against the environment in favor of lower prices will ultimately lead to higher prices.
also, it’s going to get worse for that person’s grocery bill under trump. the middle class will come under even greater short-term pressure over the next few years as trump’s “concepts of a plan” begin to materialize.
but hey, at lease my kitten is safe. just wish someone would do something about all the geese here.
It will cause huge amounts of human suffering though.
Per capita energy usage is an interesting choice of metric.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
The valid policies will remain. I've been hearing the rest for decades now.
I guess another angle is that he is best buddies with Elon who could potentially do some interesting things there.
In reality we are dealing with Putin having effective control and is now basically unrestrained.
Elon is comoditizing space. If that's profitable, he will get SpaceX to a point where people go on holiday in a rocket. That's exactly going in the wrong direction in terms of climate.
But if you don't see how it is an environmental one... well I don't know how I can help. And I mean that honestly. I see a lot of comments about SpaceX where people seem to genuinely think that it is "helping the human species". And I just don't see what to say against that... it's just pure faith to me.
To me, regarding SpaceX it sounds like engineers saying "if you keep walking one step after the other for long enough, then you'll reach the Moon" and then focusing really hard on the next steps. And if someone says "well if you keep walking you'll surely stay on Earth", they answer "He has a plan, someday a solution will come".
Not to mention, this is a very naive take, at best.
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-solar-industry...
It's not to argue directly against your point but just that we still have a lot of work to move over to a sustainable electrical grid. And that will be helped by favourable policy
Europe and India are the regions that are actually surprisingly negligible. Africa and the rest of the developing world doesn't make a blip.
When you import goods, you import their emissions. It's just super hard to measure (and we like to blame it all on China).
I meant that in practice it's very difficult to track, because it involves a lot of actors in a lot of countries.
The graal of climate policy would actually be to be able to know precisely the impact of every single action we do. So that we could optimize properly. But because we can't do that, we have to rely on proxies, and that makes it error prone and practically very challenging.
And China is already leading the world in moving to renewable technology, they are moving in the right direction (not entirely for altruistic reasons - it fulfils their ambitions of energy self-sufficiency).
Almost 1/5 people are in China, if tomorrow the country divided itself up into smaller nations would thay change anything about the pollution bring emmited?
Unless you have policy recommendations to change the total number of people on Earth (please don't) then global emissions per capita are the only stat that matters.
China just had an astronomically high population. They will always be higher overall due to this.
An actual measurement of this needs to be performed capita.
Similar, countries with aging population will see an increase in emissions per capita regardless if they are actually decreasing emissions, as long the population loss is greater than emissions decreases.
US oil production is the highest in the world, the highest in its history, and is so maxed out that there are loads of drilling rights that aren't even being exercised as oil companies all realized that it was pyrrhic with current low oil prices.
On the climate position I don't think things can go back. Wind, solar and evolving nuclear just make it a silly thing to do.
There just isn't anything to really be done there.
this is the summary of trumps entire campaign platform. i’m honestly not even sure he expressed a concrete policy on anything. he said he wants even more aggressive tariffs and will start deportation on day 1 (and was relatively nonchalant about some “legal” immigrants being caught up with “illegal” ones). cut dei.
there’s honestly no plan or policy, just a nebulous wish list that appeals to the base impulses of humanity.
the only real expectation that i have is that justices thomas and alito will retire early in his term to allow him to appoint new ones early enough to not allow democrats to stall like mcconnell did.
It goes up either way, you might as well have the source be here instead of from a foreign adversary.
He could target research into clean energy technology, ending government initiatives and taking away research grants.
He could remove regulations on energy efficiency.
He could put giant tariffs on anything made in China that is used in clean energy production (like solar panels, batteries, and electronics).
He could make it harder to get approvals to install clean energy production, siding with NIMBYs who oppose solar, wind, and battery projects.
He could cut federal funding for public transit.
I don't know how much of that he would actually do, but in the past he has expressed support for a lot of it. So I think he will try to do some of it.
It's possible we have already reached a tipping point where the total cost of clean energy production and consumption is cheaper even without all of these subsidies and so on. If so, then the transition might continue anyway. But if so, I think it will still be a slower transition.
EPA and other regulatory agencies have been stripped of their regulatory powers. Any “vague” law which was interpreted by agencies can now be challenged in courts.
At this moment it does not matter anymore. In the next decades Mar-a-lago will be hit, either if Trump likes it or if not. He just can make it sooner and worse.
I guess you didn’t know this, the idea is strength in numbers. If you can’t provide for personal and collective defense, gtfo.
When I hear phrases like strength in numbers, I think of elephants. When a herd of elephants watches lions circle their community, the strong ones stand around their young to protect them.
That's analogous to "strong" countries subsidizing ones who can't provide for themselves, because having an allied presence is helpful.
When that is said, its good that most NATO countries are hitting and exceeding 2%. It's clear that Europe can not rely on USA to be the "world police", we need to be be able to defend ourself.
Also, friendly reminder that article 5 has been used exactly once, and that was to defend USA. Soldiers of my country has died defending USA.
This feels like a club you pay 2% for protection…
Chile's attempt at lukewarm socialism didn't fail from internal causes. Cuba didn't brought embargo on themselves. To name but two. Considering the USA has been at war for almost the entirety of it's history, there must be a couple more.
"Club" was a tame euphemism I only took from the comment I was replying to. I think "Mafia" would be more appropriate.
As to what Trump actually is saying, I have no idea, he’s hard to parse.
pay up or gtfo.
That will all depend on how worn down the Russian military actually is and how long it needs to rebuild. And at any rate the threat of Russian military action will be used to punish any European country that doesn’t accept Russian influence. It will be used on former Soviet republics.
The only thing that may stop Trump and saving Europe is his ego now that he has effective immunity from prosecution as Putin is no longer a threat to him.
We will see who the bigger narcissist actually is. Putin is probably smarter though.
We need some seriously smart republicans.
Countries with right wing Russian aligned puppets may prevent direct conflict by appeasement but nevertheless they will be under Putin’s control.
China will continue being China. Where semiconductors fall will be interesting as will access to battery tech.
Trump will print money to appease his base and we will see exactly how economic forces evolve beyond control.
Buying crypto now seems like a good idea.
I stopped reading here. If Putin expands the war it will be nuclear. No country will survive. WW3 is coming soon.
The EU SHOULD be spending the agreed upon 2%, all this weasley shit the EU gov'ts are pulling is a complete joke considering the massive Bear in the room that is Russia.
Any benefit the US thinks they get for the policies that Trump and his ear-whisperers wants to enact will be short-term. Which is not a problem for Trump as he won't be there to see the long term consequences.
Can you imagine what the world might look like if all of the EU spend as much on the military as the U.S.?
Be careful what you wish for.
Decoupling globally continues.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/368528/us-military-army-n...
> Be careful what you wish for.
A strong EU that Putin will think twice before starting anything at their doorstep is my wish. Let's see if they can make it happen!
Why, what's the idea behind it? Isn't he big on military and showing power?
It's fair to say that we're "cooked" in ever sense of the word.
The only thing bad about Elon is business interests he will make policies that promote his own businesses. But trump will likely do the same.
I’ve been saying since the hyperloop in like 2014 that he doesn’t, and he’s done nothing to convince me otherwise.
You don’t know your shit if you aren’t aware of how close Elon is to engineering and science.
He hasn’t designed or engineered a single component. He hasn’t managed any internal project.
I have to ask, are you president of his fan club? You seem personally offended that I pointed out that he doesn’t actually contribute meaningfully to any engineering work.
No. I'm not a fan at all. But I don't have this biased hatred for him that you seem to have.
>He’s not knee deep in engineering, at all. It’s ridiculous to imagine he is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYQxG4KEzvo
You are truly out of touch about this guy if you don't know that he's knee deep in engineering. Not even joking here. The fact that you don't know this shows that you don't really know much about him. Dude, just read his biography or if you don't have time watch the above video that sums it up from an unbiased pov.
That said, you must have a lot more faith in the current policies than I do. The sole focus on limiting carbon in the atmosphere has been woefully misguided in my opinion. We need to focus on reducing our total impact on the planet, not just trying to mitigate it a bit while we continue to consume more resources and use use more energy every year.
If human impact on the planet is going to kill us all with Trump in office, it was going to happen either way.
I'm honestly not sure how much a difference Trump will make in this. The US greatly increased oil and gas production under Biden.
It seems that policies that supported an energy transition were generally working. If those get rolled back, hopefully things are in a good enough place that more sustainable energy continues dominating.
Moving from fossil fuels to renewables or even nuclear is all well and good, but it takes a huge amount of natural resources to pull off. Nuclear may be easier, renewables require a lot more resources than we currently have.
This is very unrealistic IMO. That will never happen. It flies against the whole idea of civilization and the development of human history.
Energy consumption will rise on larger timescales. Best you can do is to tame the growth by efficiency and using more renewable, greener energy generation.
If you want to keep bees on your apartment roof that is fine, but we are not all going back to being subsistence farmers at this point.
Defeatist? Perhaps, but I don't think so.
We're not only increasing total energy consumption every year, we're increasing energy consumption per capita. It may be one thing if the argument is that energy use will rise or fall inline with population, but that's not the case.
This is the main crux of why climate change debates have always felt hollow to me. We can argue about plastic straws, diesel engine emissions, or what an acceptable level of parts per million in the atmosphere is but those are all surface level problems. Assuming the science linking human impact to climate issues is accurate, we're screwed no matter what we do on those issues if we continue to demand more power from whatever today's preferred energy source is.
But it is not completely out of the question we could solve abundant nonpolluting energy. Failure there is not inevitable.
> people collectively will learn what it means to have "enough"
Maybe I am too cynical, but I think the problem with this is that means, in practice:
"OK, everyone. Let's stop accelerated technological progress, and the level of civilization we have today, that's where we're going to stay at from now on, with maybe some smaller bugfixes rolling out once every 50 years or so.
The quality of life you have today? That's it.
Oh, and all you guys still in poverty [there are still billions of people who use very little energy], you're also going to have to stay there. Sorry."
That will in turn cause civil unrest and even more unhappy people than we have today, which means increased totalitarianism, oppression and violence to quash that to keep societies "stable". For all the ills of consumerism and aspirationism, it _is_ serving as an opium to keep people distracted from the harsh realities of the world.
We'd go back to the Middle Ages, in terms of the rate of improvement of the quality of life. I don't think many people are OK with that.
I am pretty cynical and skeptical, so that may be tainting my view here for sure. This idea of abundant, nonpolluting energy feels like a perpetual motion machine to me. Energy systems require control to be useful, from storage to transmission to heat dissipation. Energy systems are inherently lossy and though we could one day find a cleaner or even truly clean energy source, that energy still has to be stored, transmitted, and used.
> OK, everyone. Let's stop accelerated technological progress, and the level of civilization we have today, that's where we're going to stay at from now on, with maybe some smaller bugfixes rolling out once every 50 years or so.
The opposite side of the coin is interesting to consider as well. We will always think things could be better, and maybe we even can make them better. We need to know what "enough" is though, and that would mean that we could get to a point where we have consumed enough resources and we should slow down or stop. "Progress" as a goal always sounds great on the surface, but it has to be directional (we need to know what we're progressing towards) and it must be bounded when goals are reached.
This is really where my cynicism steps in though. I just haven't seen many examples of people who can actually find "enough" and stop there. We tend to get used to what we have now and imagine ways things could get better. If energy were better used today, for example, I strongly believe that everyone could have the basics of food, water, shelter, and community covered and we wouldn't be stuck hating our jobs and always stressed out. We just collectively don't seem to want that.
And critically, I think, the Harris campaign failed to highlight facts like that, and emphasize how she will be different. Instead she completely bungled the messaging and went for "I'll do nothing different from what Biden did except add a Republican in my cabinet".
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/06/politics/harris-campaign-...
> “What, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” co-host of ABC’s “The View” Sunny Hostin asked Harris, looking to give her a set for her to spike over the net. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” she said.
Talk about a monumental failure.
The Federal government is not needed for liberals to take the lead on this, but the mediocre center left Democrats who run everything in Blue States refuse to lift a finger.
The real climate policy we need, and one we might just get from the incoming administration, is support for startups that explore new geoengineering technology. We've on our way to being Kardashev type I civilization, and as such, we should establish explicit closed-loop control over our climate.