The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change

The Economist is torn, because on the one hand they try to appear clever, but on the other hand they generally support unrestrained capitalism. It’s not possible to do both at the same time.

Volunteer with a group trying to do something to improve the situation. There are plenty.

Stop trying to imagine yourself as the hero saving the day all by yourself. It is a fantasy. And learn about the paradox of voting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_voting

As a first step, what do you want? Would you rather live your life in peace, bettering the controllable world around you? Or would you rather live your life in stress and action and possibly fixing the problem?

I chose one of those for myself and can't blame anyone for choosing differently. They're both valid.

> What can I as an individual actually do to stop this?

Short of becoming the Luigi of the environmental movement, there is nothing an individual can do. You have to take part in some kind of ongoing collective action. This can include joining a campaign against the oil and gas industry, going door to door for candidates who will reverse climate change, or engaging in direct action against environmentally destructive projects -- or even all three at the same time.

Trying to go it alone is pointless. At best, you'll go down a rabbit hole of becoming the most virtuous consumer alive. At worst, you'll be spend all your time mad-posting on social media.

Political participation -- voting, organising for the groups you support, actively engaging in meetings and public forums, building social groups of like-minded individuals. It is hugely effective. The worst doomerism is the idea that politics is ineffective. It is incredibly effective, and only the people that participate in it have any effect on it.

There are more types of politics that national and international. Local, state/provincal, city, etc. The close it is to home the more you'll see the effects, and the more power you'll have. But accepting the supine position of "well I can't do anything" only guarantees your powerlessness. Fight for the future you want! Convince 5 people that something is important, and you're already 500% up. It scales like crazy.

> What can I as an individual actually do to stop this?

You've never been responsible for the entire world, that's a defeatist fiction put on your shoulders by people who want you to give up and not take responsibility for your actions.

Take some real time to think about your own actions, your share of the blame. Then begin the process of improving your actions. As a handy benefit, you'll begin saving money, and you can reinvest the savings into more projects that also save money. Eventually your carbon footprint will be a small fraction of what it was and in its place you'll have a pile of money.

Even without the possibility of solving the problem, individuals can still choose to stop contributing to it. You might feel better about the whole thing at the very least. As an added bonus, the more people that choose to stop contributing, the easier it becomes for others to do the same (e.g. less driving --> more cyclists and pedestrians --> better cycling and pedestrian environment).

There's very little to do in Europe. South Korea, Iran, Thailand, Egypt or South Africa e.g. put out significantly more CO2 than say the UK or France (which are towards the top). India and China are higher than the whole EU and are only continuing to pollute more as their standards of living improve. Essentially the only way to stop it is to keep the 3rd world impoverished (in Africa, people often argue that green energy is a Western conspiracy to keep them down). Western economies have already largely stagnated and most of Europe's pollution's fallen to lower per capita than China, let alone South Korea or Russia or... Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and such.

Pro-nuclear efforts are the best hope we have: generate enough electricity and we can scrape the atmosphere clean

People got together and got us all to stop smoking cigarettes against the same kind of opposition. Probably individuals can get together, help educate others which will eventually drive changes through voting or force businesses to change

So you can prepare for what is to come.

It's hard to accept, but there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

> I can collect my recycling, pop solar panels on my roof and be the most carbon footprint conscious person and it wouldn't move the needle an atom's width.

The more people who do that, the faster the needle moves. You create economic incentives for businesses to cater to you, and you set an example for others to follow.

That's why I only buy electric cars, put solar on my roof, and heat with a heat pump. A few years later, my parents put in a heat pump, and an extended family member (who is a denier) also put in a heat pump.

There is nothing you can do as an individual, unfortunately. You can reduce your own impact, that’s something that personally makes me feel better and I would highly recommend (vegetarianism is the simplest way to do so). And if you’re motivated you can join advocacy or activist groups. But it’s a collective issue, individual have no actual power here. We need to act as a group to make meaningful changes.

Though, obviously do not vote for the pro fossil fuel parties (which is pretty much all right wing parties in the west)

I think "how to stop this" is the wrong objective. It's like "what I can do to achieve world peace tomorrow?". There is no answer to that. Yes, people promise to solve wars "in a day" but that does not work.

Depending on your situations different actions will have a different impact.

I do try to choose what I can to help. I am not obsessed with "the impact". If I buy a train ticket instead of a plane ticket - that can mean trains get more money. If I keep my phone for one more year, less waste is produced.

Would I help with the situation if I would buy a car consuming lots of gas, take international trips every years etc. (I could afford it, that's not the issue) ? I think not.

Can I say that my actions significantly influence the outcome? Definitely not, but we are 8 billions on this planet, so it all depends on averages. But if I don't do it (I am convinced there is an issue), how could I expect others to have my position...

Nothing

Focus on the missing prerequisites that are critical for any viable solution. It doesn't matter what anyone does if we literally lack the technical infrastructure required to make a meaningful difference. The first step is making it at least possible.

For example, halting the increase in atmospheric CO2, never mind reversing it, requires an astronomical amount of new clean energy far beyond what we produce today from all sources, clean or dirty. If we were serious about this we'd be building countless terawatts of new carbon-free electrical production as fast as possible instead of letting NIMBYs and activists bury these for decades in lawsuits and paperwork.

The infrastructure modernization that needs to happen will be economically impossible as long as it primarily exists as a mechanism for corruption, graft, and rent-seeking e.g. California's high-speed rail. Even if we had the political will, we literally couldn't afford it unless it became radically more efficient. Letting political constituencies hijack every building project so they can smuggle in unrelated agendas is something that is fundamentally at odds with addressing climate change in a serious way. That's a choice.

If we don't solve these two problems then anything else we do as individuals won't matter. Being able to address climate change in a meaningful way is downstream of these two challenges.

Just a thought, which at T+36 min hasn't been mentioned yet.

Many systems are chaotic. At particular points in state space, a very small delta can result in very different subsequent trajectories.

Viral influence being one example. I'm reminded of Tamim Ansary's email[1] to 20 odd friends after 9-11, that went massively viral ("We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. [...]").

Also, some moments of teaching can change lives. And in everyday life, sometimes recognized and sometimes not, things done and not done can have big impacts on people. Ripples.

It is said of serendipity and opportunity, that you can't control them, but you can shut yourself off from them. And thus advice to live in a way that leaves yourself open to them, and to cultivate the awareness and skills to recognize and execute when they go by.

One can't know when one is a potential part of a state space fork. But might one make throwing spaghetti at the wall part of one's life? An occasional hobby? Support spaghetti throwing? Or potluck spaghetti throwing communities? Or pasta R&D or manufacture? Trebuchets?

Perhaps a category of "Things worth doing all the time, which are far from being worth doing every time, but are still worth doing each time." Or Chesterton’s "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."

[1] https://cmsw.mit.edu/reconstructions/expressions/tamim.html

I know what definitely won't work: Luigi Mangione style action. That will only set people up against one another.

Here's two stories that might inspire:

- I've seen a desperate, fragile grandfather seriously contemplate peaceful Gandhi style sit-ins targeting fossil fuel infrastructure, "so my grandchildren would know I at least tried".

- I've seen a couple radically cut their consumption of about everything. "Taking good care of the earth is a tenet of our religious views. We're realistic enough to realise our efforts won't help anyone directly, but perhaps it might inspire others."

Getting more noses worldwide pointing in the same direction could perhaps make a sliver of difference. The tricky bit will be getting specific groups on board. I can think of a few challenging ones:

- the downtrodden struggling for survival as it is already. They have other priorities, like food on the table.

- those outside liberal democracies (93% of the world!) in a position to bring change. They have to count with sociopaths with little accountability in charge.

- those that won't make a noise because historical experience has taught them to shut up.

- those with too little education/intelligence/eagerness to understand. They will require simple stories and example behaviour/idols/heroes to copy.

Nature's alarm signals itself will induce some fear. That will be the best publicity for change.

I guess you people can post publicly suggesting we improve things. If everyone did that there would be consensus to make changes.

On a personal level I also plan to get aircon which may not help the planet but may help me.

No, I feel the same—my mind has gone down the same paths as yours and found no substantive answers.

Instead, I have tried to relax and to enjoy the company I am going down the slide with.

To quote Vonnegut, “There's only one rule that I know of, babies—‘God damn it, you've got to be kind.ʼ”

We can still do that.

You can sit back and cook to death like the rest of us.

Politicians can only be held accountable as long as their base is willing to hold them to account. And unfortunately the old and wealthy have practiced the maximal mantra of FYGM. The degree with which not only do they hoard wealth but do everything in their power to ensure the old ways they made their wealth stay empowered tilts politics heavily.

If you live in a western democracy your politicians are held very accountable to the opinion and will of the people who vote. They are not kings or inherited aristocracy, they do what the people want (roughly) or get voted out.

The people who vote by-and-large don't believe climate change is real, don't believe it is serious, or are not willing to tolerate the level of discomfort necessary to solve the problem.

At least in my country, politician's hands are completely utterly tied from fighting climate change, because if they do something serious enough to actually matter they will immediately be voted out of office and whatever they did rolled back.

There are more types of politics that national and international. Local, state/provincal, city, etc. The close it is to home the more you'll see the effects, and the more power you'll have. And the more directly the electorate can keep people accountable. But I think it's really throwing the baby out with the bathwater to declare that accountability is impossible, therefore there is no point in enagaging.

Hard to blame this on politicians when raising gas prices is one of the most reliable ways of making voters mad.

And companies

Hilariously naive take. Typical HN.

Population decline will not solve climate change, we already passed multiple points of no return that will result in worsening climate for the next 50-100y. And there won’t be a way to roll back those changes

Rich countries population declines , so much as a win from Club of Rome. Yet poor countries don’t care

Good luck with that.

Take a walk up the alps, compare to pictures from 20 years ago and see for yourself

> I’m not sure: when I was in high school / university it was well understood that places like Florida would be under water and unlivable by now.

I don't doubt that is your recollection, but nobody back then was predicting it would happen in 20 years. The time frames given were much longer. But, the vibe was definitely that we need to wake up and do something right now, because by the time climate change hits real hard it will be too late to avert the calamity.

> I’m not sure: when I was in high school / university it was well understood that places like Florida would be under water and unlivable by now.

This doesn't seem plausible - the worst-case predictions for sea level rise by the end of the century are around 2m.

That would certainly be bad for Florida, but like 80% of the population lives higher than 2m above sea level, so it certainly wouldn't be unliveable.

> I’m not sure: when I was in high school / university it was well understood that places like Florida would be under water and unlivable by now.

Nobody was claiming that Florida would be under water by 2026. You just made up an hyperbolic claim and attributed it to academics to discredit them.

The title has that generic alarmist flavor, but the article is rather sensible: persistent anticyclones may form every summer, such as one over Europe, leading to regular droughts and perhaps an urgent need for desalination plants. The message is to be ready to build infrastructure like that, if this seems to be happening.

Yes, exactly, what time do people think they have? It's here, it's now, it's happening, it's all around us. This headline would have made a little more sense ten years ago.

The world thinks it has time left, but it doesn’t. Seems accurate to me.

I don't know anyone or ever see any media reflecting such a weird standpoint. It's more "better act now than even later"

a lot of people think that the time to do something is when your house is already flooded

Hopefully not average, but I guarantee there are forces out there actively pushing it. Two versions, eventually:

1. Don't do anything that might interfere with our profits, time is available/needed to consider what to do.

2. Don't do anything that might interfere with out profits, it's too late anyway.

The average view is that "climate change" == "higher/lower temperatures". Nobody really thinks of all the secondary effects.

In my family, about 5 out of 100 people believe climate change is even real. So ya, I think the average at this point is "I'm ambivalent, climate change may not even be real. But mostly I don't care"

Because there is still time.

We might not stop what is already happening or what will happen, but we still have time to make it less severe than it would be if no action would be made.

We still can save lives, not all of them but some and for this people it will make a difference.

Better late than never.

China's emissions peaked in 2025 and have been declining since. They have rolled out massive amounts of renewables, unlike the US.

Industry groups saw the ozone scenario unfold and said "never again".

Same thing happened after Nixon - it led directly to the founding of Fox News (https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2011/memo-from-197...).

[flagged]

This worked so well because we had suitable replacement gases and the industry had little financial incentives to push against it.

It's a very different situation with fossil fuels.

Reducing CFCs, while difficult and requiring global cooperation, was far more simplistic and targeted than decreasing co2 emissions

> why is it that for the ozone layer we got together and undid the damage but for climate change we don't?

Because it also happened to be profitable for a large company (DuPont), which was also the company largely responsible for the whole ozone layer thing. They lobbied against ozone layer protections while they had a patent on Freon, but as soon as it expired, they came up with a new more expensive alternative and started supporting environmental regulations forcing people to switch to the new one.

Because with the ozone layer, the causes of the problem were much more narrow, the solutions were orders of magnitude cheaper, and they affected a much smaller industry, much less dramatically.

It’s not that the changes are “too damaging to the economy,” it’s that they’d need to be much more widespread. For example, everyone should have stopped driving gasoline engine cars at least by 2010, when the scientific evidence had already been undeniable for years, for anyone studying the matter in good faith. No such action was needed to deal with the ozone layer.

Compounding the problem for climate change mitigation is that it threatens the wealth of people in the oil, gas, and related industries. Changing refrigerant type for ozone hole mitigation was not an existential threat to any industry. The fossil fuel industry has plowed billions of dollars into propaganda and political influence to prevent or slow down changes.

This has actually been studied. The question even has it's own wikipedia article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion_and_climate_ch...

> why is it that for the ozone layer we got together and undid the damage but for climate change we don't?

For the ozone layer, it was deemed possible to eliminate (or significantly reduce) certain chemical emissions.

For generalised climate change, the common enemy of all people is the transnational petroleum industry. This corporate alliance will topple democracies rather than reduce its profits and influence.

Saving the ozone layer required changing practices in a relatively small part of the economy (refrigeration, mostly). In 1994, the total cost of the transition in the US was estimated to less than $100 billion [1], about 1.3% of GDP ($7.3 trillion [2]).

Reducing global carbon emissions to reach net zero by 2050 has been estimated to cost $9.2 trillion per year [3]. World GDP is currently $126 trillion [4]. That means 7.3% of current world GDP per year, or 1.8x of it over a quarter century.

[1] https://cei.org/studies/the-high-cost-of-cool-the-economic-i...

[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...

[3] https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/sustainability/our-ins...

[4] https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/OEMDC/ADVE...

> why is it that for the ozone layer we got together and undid the damage but for climate change we don't?

If you want the honest, brutal take it is because I remember, at least in my country, that for the ozone stuff there was a lot of scientific people taking lead roles in educating the masses. Especially those with credibility who were otherwise not media savvy.

Climate change on the other hand, whenever I think about the words, I can only get Greta Thunberg and her antics in my mind. Even for someone who believes in climate change I can't help but feel these crazed lunatics have only caused massive damage to what should have otherwise been a wake up call. It is like how COVID got associated with Fauci and Gain-of-function.

> is it too politicized, are the required changes too damaging to the economy to start agressively implementing them?

Ofcourse it was politicized. It became a party vs party, an ideology vs ideology thing. Science took a backseat.

Was an industry really hurt by the actions needed to rebuild the ozone layer? I don’t think so, at least not as far as I can remember. On the other hand the fossil fuel industry has an insane amount of control over politics since a century or so?

1. The damage was understood, fairly easily measured, and could be done repeatably. 2. The cause was widely agreed upon. 3. Solutions weren't predicated on massive societal change. 4. Compliance was fairly easy to track and enforce.

Climate change is lacking all of these to various degrees.

You should look into the economist a bit more.

For one, they have no advertisers to keep happy.

Edit: I stand corrected. A better way to phrase it is that their business model does not rely on advertising, and they traditionally did not run ads until recently.

This goes for almost every institution you can think of, save higher education and the field of climate science - and, even then, you can make an argument for lax funding and marketing on their part, in terms of overwhelming politicians and industry with the truth, no doubt at the behest of wealthy donors looking at their portfolios. But journalism, especially: essentially asleep at the wheel, when the gravity of the situation is considered. Too many people obsessed with their careers and with blinders on.

Usually people trying to be helpful just post an archive link, instead of requesting others to do so...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bypass_Paywalls_Clean works

Now, now, it's only half as much as the rest of the world combined, and only twice the USA and Canada together.