Honest question - how do you all cope with this? Do you ignore it because it is painful? Do you donate to environmental groups like the EDF or NRDC? Did you quit your tech/advertising job to work on renewable energy?
I personally have been donating to environmental groups, but it feels like a cop-out. I'm using money to pay-away some of my guilt and my unwillingness to put more substantial effort towards such an important cause as this. It weighs on me daily though.
So honestly, how do you all cope? For those of you who have had the willingness/bravery to go "all-in", how did you do it? I'm addicted to my comfortable, wealthy lifestyle as a software engineer and I'm ashamed of it.
Climate panic isn’t constructive (at best it causes anxiety and depression and energy directed in ways that aren’t constructive, at worst apathy), so I’ve made peace with the prospect of a highly turbulent future.
Some of my personal goals include finding and supporting carbon capture/sequestration efforts, and activism organizations who I believe can lobby for meaningful policy changes in a better direction. That, because I don’t have the skills/network to do something about it directly. If I did I’d be doing something about it directly.
Beyond that, I believe we all have to accept our limitations, that there’s a lot of luck/random chance/etc. in us being alive here on this planet in the first place and be grateful for that, and then do our best to be kind/generous to and have empathy for people suffering from the climate-related disasters.
> so I’ve made peace with the prospect of a highly turbulent future.
It remains to be seen whether the highly turbulent future has made peace with you.
If we can believe the predictions, things have just gotten started. However, we can expect more extreme weather events, more large-scale refugee movements and who knows what else, which might also affect day-to-day life in rich countries.
Until we at least have a clearer idea what exactly we can expect in the next decades, I'm not convinced this "making peace", trusting, we'll "adapt" is any more realistic than some procrastinaling college student who fully trusts his future self to wing that term assignment in an allnighter.
Step 1: Take a deep breath. The world is not ending tomorrow, or next year, or even in 100 years. Subjecting yourself to excess fear is not helpful. You will be fine. Your kids will be fine. Their kids will mostly be fine.
Step 2: Try to understand what will actually happen and prepare yourself accordingly. Severe weather systems will probably continue to worsen - you can prepare yourself for those. You can look up the realistic model predictions for sea level rise and compare on a map like [1] what that means and choose where to live accordingly (aside from Florida, the real risks are from hurricanes). Etc.
Step 3: Ask yourself what you can realistically do and what you cannot realistically do. For the things in the latter bucket, refer to Step 2 and don't worry about them so much. For things in the first bucket, do what you can. Personally, I donate to 3 different orgs to more than offset my carbon footprint, and I try to lead a low-carbon lifestyle where possible (don't use A/C or heat as much, eat less meat, drive less, etc.).
Step 4: If you want to take a "big plunge", ask yourself seriously if you would do more good by quitting your job to work on this space, or if something else would be more effective. In most cases, it's more effective to donate more money to the change you want to see, or to become more involved in politics. In most cases, the core causes of climate change aren't going to be solved by new tech.
" In most cases, the core causes of climate change aren't going to be solved by new tech."
Why not?
If for example a cheap, simple new technology would be out by tomorrow, that provides allmost unlimited energy (let's say a wonderful simple approach to cold fusion◇) - then all the dirty stuff we do today, because it is cheap - could be done without the dirt of fossil fuels.
◇ but I do not believe that will happen at all. I rather would invest in harvesting more the energy provided by us of the big fusion plant called the sun
Honest answer - I don't care at all. Not because I don't believe something is happening, but because I don't buy into the presumption that we need to preserve Life as it is right now.
I believe Life will persevere, sometimes getting better, sometimes getting worse, for millennia in the future.
A comment in a different thread on hacker news today quoted this from a book:
> "Life is composed of reality configurations so constituted. To abandon [my wife] would be to say, I can't endure reality as such. I have to have uniquely special easier conditions."
I don't believe I have to fight or feel guilty that some people in the near future will not get a uniquely special easier life.
---
As another example, there is this community on the internet called LessWrong, whose members believe that the single biggest problem facing humanity right now is the impending arrival of AGI (artificial general intelligence). Many of them truly believe this problem is so urgent and important that you shouldn't be able to think about anything else. But I would guess (if you don't happen to be one of them) you don't really think or care about that. Maybe thinking about this analogy will help you find an answer to your question.
That doesn't make sense. I appreciate the amenities I have, I know I believe quite clearly what a good life is like (with some limitations of course), and there is a somewhat clear path to improving or maintaining our lives and existences.
To throw it all away and "hope for the best" is foolish to say the least. If your life is good or tolerable, if you appreciate the wealth of knowledge and culture etc. it's because its been a long path to where we are. If you stop caring and stop trying, you're simply degenerating to a state where life is much harder, less cultured, with probably less creativity, entertainment, and so on. Cases of people genuinely preferring to live an isolated life in the jungle are extremely rare I believe. When I start romanticizing the Wild Life, I remember my grandmother that had a very difficult childhood, working all day in coffee plantations. She didn't learn how to read until later in life because feeding her family was the priority. She later, for the most part, resented farms and greatly appreciated the urban life -- she could still take care of a plant or two in her backyard. It's very easy to sit on top of civilization with disdain. I think it's our responsibility not only to maintain it, but to make the future amazing, as much as our imagination allows.
This is (sorry) a dumb philosophy that amounts to: don’t do anything about anything. House on fire? C’est la vie. Don’t grab a bucket or else you’ll admit defeat against reality!
You're misusing that quote. The speaker (a sentient taxicab) was asked if it would abandon its life and make a giant sacrifice even though it was absolutely certain that doing so would not change the outcome.
That's pretty much the opposite of the point of view you seem to be extolling. You are right now living a uniquely special easier life. You are choosing not to sacrifice it for the hope of a better outcome, even though it may not be possible.
I bought an old eroded farm with my wife and we’ve been restoring habitats, placing parts of it into conservation, and working towards regenerative farming practices.
We also went pretty much entirely plant-based with our diets years back, and traded in our hybrid for an electric vehicle.
I’m not under any illusions that those steps are going to change the outcome — but our hope was to make people interested in nature, where food comes from, and to learn more ourselves in the process.
I also find that meditation has a lot of value for me when it comes to coping with such massive issues. It reminds me that I can always change myself, and hopefully through that find ways to spread a compassionate mindset towards others.
I have three little kids, and a pretty clear-eyed sense of what their world is shaping up to be. I just try to focus and much of my energy as I can on setting a good example for them. Hopefully they’ll grow up with the tools and knowledge necessary to find ways to thrive in a challenging environment.
I release personal responsibility for it. The leaders and influence class of a handful of rich countries are personally responsible. It is not a problem that can be solved individually or through grassroots action. Only coordinated political action can change the outcome. A well structured global carbon tax or carbon removal grant would begin solving the problem rapidly. If you have a vote, use it to support candidates who want to enact new green economic policy.
I spent 8 years working for environmental nonprofits and I’m proud of my contribution but don’t feel like any non-influential person needs to walk around with personal guilt, no matter what our fundraising materials or political ads may have said to the contrary.
So please go live your life as you see fit, and if that means going to work for NRDC, then by all means. They are a good group of folks that will be happy to have your talent. And if that means mega-yachts, go for it till we manage to tax them out of existence.
Honestly, I am young enough that in elementary school they were already talking about global warming, we were told that it would be too late soon and that we had to do something about it.
15 years later nothing has been done about it, but then again nothing really went wrong yet, being told everyday that the world will end has the pervasive effect that it feels pointless to really try and change things. You just feel numb and wait for something to happen.
It sounds like you are quite young compared to me. They were talking about it in the late 80s while I was in high school. I remember Al Gore in the 90s was saying that Florida will be under water in 10 years or something like that. So this conversation has been going on for a long time.
> 15 years later nothing has been done about it.
That is absolutely is not true. When I moved to SoCal in the 80s, for the first six months I didn't realize there was a mountain nearby because of all the pollution and resulting haziness. You can clearly see it today because the cars have gotten a lot cleaner. This is just one anecdote.
I try to convince others of the enormity of the situation. It is not easy, and people are ignorant, often times willfully so. However, the efforts are giving some fruit - convinced my coworkers to go and vote at the last election, to attend the protest marches in our town and to be mindful of their energy usage in the office and at home. Even managed to convince my bosses to switch the offices to renewable energy and get some e-bikes for the people that were a bit farther away to be comfortable with a regular bike so they don't commute by car that often.
However, I still believe that all these efforts are like a band-aid on a dying whale. It takes one colleague to take a trip to the Bahamas for all these small efforts to be washed away. And unfortunately most people don't want to try harder than that. They want their comfort, their cheap burgers and EasyJet flights. If all of this comes at the cost of screwing the future generations then so be it...
The same way I cope with change in general: by adapting. Which is the approach I think we should be taking in general as a society towards climate change.
> I'm addicted to my comfortable, wealthy lifestyle as a software engineer and I'm ashamed of it.
You shouldn't be. Most people in the world demonstrate by the choices they make that they prefer a more wealthy lifestyle to a less wealthy one. There are people who don't, but even most of them depend for some essential functions on technology that is only possible in a wealthy society. (Anyone who really doesn't depend on technology for anything won't be posting here or reading posts here anyway.)
Human activities can certainly affect the environment, and not just the climate. IMO the hysteria over climate change has had the unfortunate effect of putting many other more pressing environmental issues on the back burner. We should be good stewards of the environment, but that requires being as objective as we can about how much priority issues actually deserve, and also requires recognizing that the best way to fix environmental issues in general is to create more wealth. The wealthier the world is, the cheaper fixing up the environment becomes in comparison.
IMHO the #1 thing you can do is not use a car and help others not use cars, including working to get the infrastructure necessary in urban, suburban and rural contexts to make that possible. That is what I put my energy into on a local level.
We really need to stop placing the burden on the individual. You and I not using cars or minimising our use may help but cars are a necessity of life for many. This is true in urban and rural contexts alike.
What we should be doing is getting governments to band together and penalise industrial-scale polluters. It would do more good to take shipping and trucking electric than for you to rely on public transit and for me to drive one fewer kilometre.
That’s a hard sell. The personal utility one gets from a car is enormous and life changing. The contribution to the climate problem from one car is minuscule (but real).
A better approach might be to add a tax to carbon-based fuels that is used to fund carbon capture.
The price of gas recently increased sixfold here, so I just stopped heating my apartment. It's 12-13C in my living room and after a few weeks of discomfort this now feels like a comfortable temperature to me. (I might need to turn it on in a few weeks though, if it gets much colder. Even so, I've recalibrated my body to feel comfortable at a much lower temperature now, which is super cool!)
I did this due to some combination of poverty and stoicism, but it made me realize how much gas I was burning before without really needing it. (I always felt a little bad using so much of a nonrenewable resource.)
Sure I like it when it's warm inside, but really it's an unnecessary luxury we've all gotten used to. (At least for the young and healthy -- I hear for older people cold temperatures can be harmful?)
Worth noting though that I do get some heat through my walls from the neighbors -- if we all turned off the heat it would be a lot colder ;) Even so I reckon the usage could be cut by a good deal (40-50%?) without any serious issues, it would just be a very unpopular proposal.
I don't eat meat, and I encourage friends and family to avoid it. Livestock production is surprisingly bad for the environment. Cows are particularly bad, consuming somewhere around 25 times more calories and 4 times more protein from feed than they yield in beef.
Absolute vegetarianism is not necessary, either. Even incrementally eliminating meat in some meals will help.
I volunteer with Citizens' Climate Lobby, which I think is the most effective action an individual can take, probably. The best individual action is to put pressure on politicians for collective action. We have to fix the rules of the game -- right now, it's way too cheap to pollute.
One important thing we do is to call Congress regularly and express our support for a carbon fee & dividend policy, for example: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/
And of course, there's lots more to volunteering with CCL if you want to get more involved.
I donate to groups. I also purchase carbon offsets for my personal energy use, use my power company’s “all renewables” option, and have gotten much more attentive to the carbon costs of the things I do. I know it’s a drop in the sea, but it’s my drop. I also work at a company whose outputs I think will help the problem.
The approach I’ve found works best for me for lifestyle changes is to treat them as a slow ratchet - make a decision like “cut down on meat” (or whatever), and just start taking steps down that road. Take the steps that you feel like you can, get used to them, and then take another step. It’s hard to change everything overnight, but you can make a remarkable amount of change if you’re attentive over time.
That said, it’s still the existential elephant in the room. I don’t look at it every day, and when I do, it’s terrifying. But it’s just too big for me alone to face - all I can do is what I can do, and hope it adds up with what everyone else is doing to make a difference.
Plant some trees, preferably food bearing ones (if it makes sense in the location), nurture them. Bask in their growth. Simple, effective, takes little time and next to no money relatively. It is something just about anyone can do if motivated and will most likely still be around long after you have gone. Forget the enormity of the issues and just do something small, in your control that can have a +'ve effect!
I think I've done my best to go all in. You can judge for yourself from the following timeline:
2008: After a couple grueling winters in Canada's oil field, I come to the conclusion that switching off fossil fuels is going to be the defining project of the coming century and that it might be the best place to apply my natural talent at math and science.
2009: Begin studying Sustainable and Renewable Energy Engineering (undergraduate program) with dreams of leveraging the clout an engineer has towards advancing the technology that underpins our way of life.
2014: Graduate, start looking for clean energy jobs
2015: Take a job in telecoms, continue trying to break into the renewable energy industry
2017: Give up on breaking into the renewable energy industry. Rethink my initial assessment that the limiting factor for switching off fossil fuels is brain power. Come to the conclusion that it's really lacking capital and initiative.
2019: Co-found a startup in the horticultural space, with ambitious plans to make local food and medicinals production easier whatever climate disruptions happen. Keep the day job to ensure reliable capital.
2020: Join a second greenhouse start-up in a less directly involved capacity.
2021: The first startup fails (not official yet, but my partner and I have agreed to pursue other projects).
I tell people this and some say it sounds pretty depressing, but none of it has ever made me feel depressed. I guess I don't question that I'm doing my best, so I've never felt like giving up; though I've definitely had to acknowledge I was barking up the wrong tree a few times.
Gordon White, whose work on this subject I follow, says it's important to distinguish the rescue mission from the salvage mission. There are aspects of modern life that are worth rescuing, but most are just worth salvaging, they're tools that can be used to get through the coming times. From that perspective, I've never felt particularly bad about taking part in modern society, because I see myself as getting out as many resources as possible for building what comes after. My attempts at building anything have so far been fruitless, but I don't feel as though I'm playing the wrong game as it were. Christianity has a similar sentiment, 'in this world but not of it', and that resonates as well. I participate in a modern western lifestyle, I even enjoy many aspects of it. But I don't think it's the only thing worth trying and I won't mourn its passing to the same degree as most.
It looks challenging for sure, but most things that have a worth to us humans can be challenging, and if anything it's great to see a path like yours wandering through the problem space from energy sources to societal considerations. Rescue vs salvage, the way you put it, seems to be a mindset of opposition vs growth - and you chose go with the latter. As a clinically depressed person, none of what you shared seems depressing to me but rather constructive with a foundation of hope.
I've spent more energy forming strong relationships with my extended family. I've learned to work outside of work, and am picking up new skills. I don't want to be rudderless if things become turbulent.
It won't be a super catastrophe in my lifetime, but the economic repercussions could case me to be jobless someday, and our lifestyles may change significantly in the next 40 years.
Full acceptance. Until someone shows me that I can actually halt/reverse it, all I can do is wake up and be a good person. Part of this is my belief system; there is no universal law that states human beings, or the earth for that matter, will exist for all time. Once that is truly accepted, your entire perspective changes.
Honest answer - I only vote for candidates that take this issue deadly seriously, and that's about it.
No amount of my meager donations or subtle lifestyle changes (I'm already a lifelong carless urban dweller with a low footprint by Western standards) will accomplish what can only be accomplished by multi-trillion dollar government investment, hardcore and wildly disruptive government regulation, and aggressive diplomatic efforts. Only governments can truly make a dent and I do what I can to elect government officials who will do what needs to be done.
I buy carbon offsets for myself and family. I think they are important, if imperfect. They will improve with time.
And I spend time teaching entrepreneurship to students interested in sustainable tech.
And I keep trying to engage in the design of marine cloud brightening technology, which I view as a potential high-impact cooling tech. We need to buy time for society to transition. No support yet, but I’ll keep knocking.
I very rarely discuss this. People often get uncomfortable and angry, and I have effectively lost touch with friends that way.
My way:
1) calculate your footprint
2) find options to reduce it
3) find ways to offset the remainder
4) execute
Quite literally: if you are still carbon positive you are still part of (this) problem.
People often complain about difficulty of finding information, the lack of scientific consensus, trouble trusting government, non-profit, corporate bodies, issues with accuracy and precision in measurements and models, etc.
But wtf(!?). Do as best you can. It is not difficult to calculate an _estimate_ on your impact. It is not difficult to find ways to get rid of atmospheric or oceanic carbon. Then dedicate some time, effort, money to do it, to whatever level you feel comfortable with. Your conscience is the only thing that holds you to the effort. Set whatever margins to the calculations and actions as you feel ok with.
5) get yourself carbon neutral for now
6) pay off your carbon life debt
7) cross the line, go 100% climate positive instead of neutral ?
All that you've mentioned is likely just a busy work unless you are willing to start a revolution: there are people making a profit due to the status quo and they won't give up peacefully.
People still live too good to support a radical change that could save the modern civilization during the climate change.
I accept that I contribute to the outcome but I can’t control the outcome. Therefore I choose my actions on the basis of how I want to define myself. I don’t do this for any other reason than that I want to define the way in which I give my life meaning. I try and stay true to my self definition in all my actions. For everything that I can’t control I adopt a Stoic attitude of acceptance. Acceptance does not mean resignation. I still act, but I accept that the outcome a not down to just me. Because I act in accordance with my self-definition, and because I try to adopt an attitude of acceptance, I can sleep at nights. Mostly.
That’s not very specific, but I hope it helps you in some way.
I don't feel any guilt about it for several reasons:
- I'm poor, so my impact on CO2 emissions is minimal.
- Rich people will always invest in some green-washing scam (whether intentionally or not). Our leaders are not smart enough to solve global warming. As a poor person, I have no power over anything. Also, I'm trying my best to become rich in order to gain the power to improve things. So I'm basically doing everything I can to get into a position to solve these problems but I'm consistently denied this opportunity... So none of it is on my hands.
- At some level, I don't care about global warming enough because I don't own any stake in the planet. I'm just renting. I'm a nihilist and an atheist; so from my perspective, the entire universe ends in about 50 to 70 years anyway... Who cares about one lousy planet? When I'm dead, I will have 0 association with it because I will be nothing. Do I care about planet ABC in parallel universe XYZ? No! Because it has nothing to do with me... Exactly the same as my relationship with Earth in 100 years.
So the simple answer is:
1. I'm not causing the problem.
2. I'm already doing everything I can to solve the problem.
3. It's not even my problem to begin with...
I think most people experience some of these three points. I actually experience all 3 so I feel absolutely zero responsibility about global warming. If anything, I feel contempt.
I presently work in a clean tech sector, but I have no illusions that we will be able to successfully avert a large portion of the consequences of climate change. It is, of course, important to make sacrifices and responsible choices in the present, but in my view the central interior disposition is accepting it and summoning the courage to endure.
Last year we started writing letters to our children. It has been an effective way to talk about these issues with friends/family and focus our hopes and efforts for a good future.
I ignore it. Not because it's too painful, but because I largely see "climate issues" as driven by politics, and not by actual problems.
There are PLENTY of problems that I (and my community) are facing right now, that are far more pressing than some existential threat that guilts me into paying indulgences to the Church of Climate Change to absolve me from my "sins".
Every hour that I spend teaching kids to read will be far better spent, than any dollar I put into some slush fund so that the megachurch pastors of Climate can fly around in their jumbo jets speaking at million dollar dinners for celebrities to lecture us on how we need to only use one square of toilet paper when we use the bathroom.
Seriously. People dog pile on Joel Osteen and Kenneth Copeland for being massive frauds, but buy right into the same thing when it comes to the environment.
My brutally candid answer is that I'm putting off panicking until it directly affects me. I'm at the stage where I assume that unless somebody invents a machine that cheaply removes carbon from the atmosphere at a global scale, there's nothing anybody can do to stop significant global warming and its knock-on effects. Certainly, nothing I can do at my scale is going to make any difference whatsoever. Even if the entire world did everything it has been promising to do, and everybody complied 100%, it still wouldn't make a meaningful difference over the course of my lifetime. No, it's an R&D problem at this point, so why would I think about it more than necessary? I'll focus on preparing to deal with the consequences when they arrive, since that's at least within my purview.
I have been using my hacker skills to help activist groups tighten up their digital security and navigate through the corporate media to keep them protected and effective. I have been ranting about this coming for over 30 years, and some people are finally starting to listen and realize that they need to massively reduce consumption. Geoengineering and much 'green' tech are only making the problem worse by using more fossil fuels to build them and giving people a delusion that tech will save us. So in summary, I suggest to reduce your own consumption and offer your skills to those who need it if you can.
Big oil is still doing things with impunity. They knew 40 years ago that this was going on, they expanded operations, funded a denialism campaign, bribed left and right, no consequences besides doing more, getting even more money, and people consuming more.
Governments follow the money, they don't touch a finger on them, even invade foreign countries to give them control over even more oil. Other big corporations (banks and so on) keep investing money on them.
People are told to "recycle" but to not put a finger on having cars, having vacations on the other side of the world or consume in general. The top consumers are not the more affected in the short term, so they don't do anything really meaningful. It is easy to convince masses that is their fault, and the small actions that don't affect big money are the things that they should do. Against this even the gods are powerless.
And science? It's been very creative in "mitigations" without consuming less or producing less oil. Going against the symptoms and letting the real problem to keep growing because it can't be touched.
More than half of the CO2 emissions since 1751 were emitted in the last 30 years, after was evident that something very wrong was going on, the IPCC was funded, the UN noted the urgency to solve this and more. And the pledges that we managed to get was to reach "net zero" that is not to limit oil/fossil fuel production (that could still keep expanding over the years), but to somewhat compensate what is extracted with what is captured. And this of course doesn't cover capturing what is already on excess, just try to neutralize the new, and have the fantasy to wait 100+ years till that vanishes.
And time is against us. We already, with a mild increase in the global average temperature, have big extreme weather events, and it not an El Niño year. Some "stable" climate features like the polar vortex and the gulf stream seem that are getting disrupted. And, of course, this article, that points that the biggest warming happens in the artic, where some positive feedback loops are rooted, from albedo lost from a blue ocean and permafrost thawing will worsen "hands free" the already very bad current situation.
So, hoping for the best but expecting the worst. I'm open to good surprises, but I don't bet that things will be solved. At least my worst scenario is not fast extinction but that we will get into a climate dystopia with most people living in weather isolated environments controlled by the same big money that caused all of this.
Honestly it doesn't even rank on the list of things I worry about. Where I am there's a housing crisis, crime is getting worse, taxes are getting higher, and rapid population growth is destroying everything I loved.
Also, I haven't done the research to determine - to my own satisfaction - whether this is man made or not. Sorry but my institutional trust is near rock bottom, and considering I'm not an atmospheric physicist I'm unlikely to ever have a clear picture.
I do my part by bike commuting, conserving energy, reducing consumption, etc.
But I don't worry about the big picture because I can't change it, and I think at this point it's too late to "fix" the problem anyway.
If humans drive themselves extinct it's not going to happen in my lifetime, and it's really not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. We won't kill everything, and something else will evolve to take our place.
I donate to Xerces, bat conservation and non-human-oriented charities. It’s the only thing I can do and unpopular nature charities are desperately in need.
It's not a problem that can be solved at the individual level so I don't worry about it.
Since it's a political problem and I lack power to affect change at that scale I don't worry about it.
By the time it becomes a serious problem I'll hopefully already be dead or die quickly. If I'm somehow still alive then I'll worry about it then. Hopefully my death is painless and free of prolonged suffering.
This sounds trite or oversimplified, but the best thing you can do is stop using every single industrial supply chain you possibly can. The urge to produce/consume away the consequence of industrialization is a capitalist pidgin-hole and is impossible.
The more involvement you have in global industry, the more entropy you are morally responsible for accelerating. Involve yourself as little as possible.
I'm honestly greatly disappointed that the Academic Establishment is pandering to politics this hard that they are underplaying their own results. It's horrific. They did the same thing with COVID. This sort of behavior will be the end of us all and is highly unscientific and unethical. They are literally getting people killed.
The thing is the time-constants of atmospheric green house gases are in the centuries so you can't change any of it quickly. To Wit: if the deadline is 2035 or 2050, we are all already dead if such predictions were true (they are NOT).
On the other hand, a lot of the hype about global warming is bullshit. The presumptions often require that you believe that all Bangledeshis will quietly remain at their current latitude and longitude waiting for the water to rise about them. That's clearly not realistic but most of the numbers of "deaths caused by global warming" are based on EXACTLY such facile and stupid modeling assumptions.
It's like the people making such numbers know NOTHING about human behavior (and it's all too likely they actually do NOT).
I have zero concerns about humanity surviving. We are agile and adaptive. Will it be MY PERSONAL gene line? Don't know. Will it be the majority of gene lines from currently alive people surviving? Probably not but that's not unique to global warming. Add a World War or a comet and the same is true and probably worse.
Of course, I'm a hard ass on numbers and traceable causality and frankly that has not been provided. Just ask about CO2 levels before all the graphs typically trotted out! Pre-Eocene, CO2 levels were 4x-10x higher than today. Crickets on that.
Ok but a significant percentage of the world being displaced by global warming, either because their country literally drops below the sea or that part of the world no longer supporting agriculture/ human life, will lead to deaths right? Either through war or those people being trapped because the parts of the world that are still habitable won't be willing/able to take in the huge flows of refugees.
Most Zoomers have already accepted that they are not going to have children or live very long.
I think following their example is the best one can do on an individual level. It’s baby’s first civilization and it’s over. Acceptance at least allows one some dignity.
For me, I'm making adaptations to my lifestyle now anticipating what will be necessary in the long-term. This way, myself or my children will not be in shock as society adapts.
Did I ask to be born into this world? No. Not my problem.
If you truly want to solve the climate change problem you have to find a way to delete most humans from the planet. There is really no other way, too many humans will change its environment, just like any other organism achieving exponential growth. All other solutions are just coping.
If you dont like that solution you can work on modifying the humans to not be humans anymore, but perhaps like an organism living in a pod connected to a metaverse with neuralink like in the matrix. The environmental footprint of such a solution would be globally insignificant.
Invest in ESG funds. They vote in favor of corporate sustainability. You can do this yourself with proxy campaigns cross-referencing with NGO data, but the effort is overly burdensome. More importantly, companies know what the ESG funds are doing, and they have actual sway to be listened to. They don't have lower returns than the index funds you'd buy anyway (speculative, depends on your choices), it's a no-brainier.
I kinda believe that capitalism can go in the right direction (though government action is needed) with pushes from all of us:
I chose a job specifically because it aims at reducing e-waste, and that's a real business incentive so I know I won't hit corporate walls. Turns out the job also tries to optimize electricity consumption, which is a target I don't think is very useful, but still feels like the right direction. (For reference, said job has a 10 yr old product upgraded to brand new Linux 5.15)
Except for that, the usual, ESG, eating less meat, using cars as little as possible. All of which are monetary incentives for the economy to go "in the right direction".
I also work on Android custom ROMs on my free time. I have yet to determine whether this is a net ecological positive (I buy many smartphones for that project so it has its own cost), and I have a very hard time turning it into monetary incentives.
I find it interesting and wonder how it'll all pan out, then I go make a sandwich.
No, I'm not being snarky and I do think about my environmental footprint, I'm just not a worrier.
Climate action can't really be individuals it has to come through the government and corporations changing, and the idea of guilting us all into thinking that what is wrong is that we aren't personally recycling harder is a big part of the problem.
The only way out of it is to work on turning Republicans into Democrats and Democrats into Progressives/Socialists and dragging the Overton window, kicking and screaming, over to the left.
It's not only this, but it's covid19, the policital situation, disrupting democracy by Qanon and fakenews, drug criminality that is a threat to the state, plus the usual mess that is political life. On top of that, or maybe on the bottom of it, my personal life is a mess in several ways, although I have a job, my own house, and I live in one of the best countries of the world (see my name).
There is too much happening at the moment, and I'm afraid this is just the beginning for this century. But there is only so much that I can do. I cannot stop arctic climate change. I cannot stop the GOP from destroying democracy in the US. I cannot stop drug criminality in my country. So often, I zap away, I just don't want to see it. I've paid to compensate for the gas use of my car, but I don't think that is a solution. My financial situation is not really good, so I cannot do much.
I'm addicted to my lifestyle, which is real average for where I live, but going lower would be a real challenge and make life a lot less attractive. I don't go 3x per year on holiday. The last time I flew was in 2013.
I've recently found a good way of thinking about this in Effective Altruism (https://www.effectivealtruism.org/) - aka "donating time/money as intelligently as possible for the most good". It covers a bunch of intuitions I had and simplifies our options. Some highlights:
- Probably the best thing you can do (if you're a relatively-well-off tech person) is either dedicate a portion of your time to directly trying to solve difficult problems related to climate change (or better yet, poverty), or donate directly to demonstrably-effective causes
- Poverty is probably the more severe problem than global warming itself, and solving it also often indirectly works to solve the other. The biggest threat of global warming is how it will exacerbate poverty problems. Though ecological destruction is another worthy cause.
- By the estimates of some of the most effective charities linked above (at the time of estimation), one can roughly offset their carbon footprint for around $100 a year if donated wisely (best example was paying farmers in the Amazon to not deforest their land, preserving forests and preventing logging companies from making inroads). This includes average flights / meat consumption.
- Another $100 roughly in incentives/advertising to convert someone else to a vegan diet, if you want to offset your meat eating and are concerned with animal cruelty specifically (though you should probably still feel guilty, and there's obviously a floor at which this won't be something that society can throw money at)
- Around $3k to extend a year of life to a 3rd world person (or equivalent quality of life to many). Maybe less by now. Let that one sink in. Some of the solutions to provide huge quality of life improvements for vast numbers of people are very cheap compared to small improvements in first world countries.
- Overall it's very likely that programs like: recycling, reducing plastic use (plastic straws), energy-saving lightbulbs, bike commuting, eating less meat, green building renovations, etc... all amount to just a tiny drop on the scale of things, and probably just a few dollars worth of that $100 of effective emissions potential per year. Renovating the first world is probably just not that cost-efficient - or it's probably happening regardless of your input, and you're better off directing funds/effort/intellect towards something more effective. Overall, if your goal is to be a moral person in regards to climate change and make the most impact, you're probably far better off living exactly how you want to, make as much money as you can, and donate a chunk of that ($1k a year would be enough to offset 10x yourself) to effective causes - instead of worrying about your direct personal impact. (Link above directs to some of those charities, and metrics for discerning)
- That said, if you have rare skills (as most HN people reading this statistically do) and would rather contribute those to improving technology and better options, simply pivoting your career path can make a bigger impact than even donating. There's some calculus to this of course. I recommend reading the link above and some of the introductory texts/audiobook for help.
Personally, I'm contributing a big portion of my time the last few years to assisting with long-shot-but-high-impact logistics infrastructure startup causes I believe in, which I feel my skills are hopefully well suited for and might not succeed without me. If they pay off and it takes off - great. If not, I'm at least contributing the best I have of my skills/experience to a lottery that - if enough people follow suit - eventually some high-impact project will succeed in. Sometimes the aggregate of just giving your time to projects that don't make so much sense economically to you personally (usually due to risk of failure) can go a long way in pushing industries toward overall better outcomes. If this project fails or I find my time isn't being used effectively though, and my moral compass keeps bugging me, I'll probably just "retire" back to just finding a non-saving-the-world job that pays well and giving a portion of those earnings to charity. (aka Work to Give, the best option for the vast majority of us since work is often not all that obviously moral/important).
you bring up very good points, however cutting your own emissions is very helpful because a) rich people emit the most and b) you can be 100% sure that it works (whereas with donating you have to trust third parties) and c) it's pretty simple, even easy, to eat less meat, use less (traditional) energy and fly less. And to drive a smaller car (I don't judge americans for driving because it appears to be necessary there). And to buy less bullshit ;) you can easily reduce your CO2 (equivalent) footprint by 1/3 or more (if you are a usual person and haven't changed your behaviors yet).
Also, I think it's still misunderstood how fast change can happen if the people want it to and the politicians go for it. This hyper-capitalism feels like an eternal thing but it won't be. Because it can't. Younger generations want change and every catastrophe (and there will be many) puts pressure on the old institutions to change.
The US's green house emissions per capita are twice as big as China's[1]. Considering China's population is about 4 times bigger it puts the absolute pollution at about 1:2. Chinese percent of renewables is 25% compared to the US's 15%[2]. What exactly do you want from China? I'm not even gonna address the war idea...
The planet will be fine. Humanity in general tends to act so self-important. We're just specs of dust on a bigger spec of dust. There have been at least 5 mass extinction events, and there's going to be more.
A large-enough CME would cripple the entire planet for decades (if not centuries). From an existential standpoint, global warming is the least of our worries as a species.
No one is concerned that the inanimate object we call "Earth" is going to be harmed or that the Earth itself has an opinion on what's happening. We are worried about present and future inhabitants, including ourselves. It should not need to be said. Citation needed on the least existential threat claim.
You cope with it as a terminal cancer patient might cope.
Personally I’m not changing anything. This world is coming to an end soon and I’d rather enjoy life as I always imagined it would be for as long as I can, than to adopt unnatural behaviors in a futile attempt at saving the planet.
The next generations are screwed, fortunately I find them quite annoying so I don’t care too much about what happens to them. I have no children of my own to worry about, though I may still consider having some if I can imagine a way for them to live a good life and of course if I can find a suitable woman to mate with, but I will not expect grandchildren. I will be far too old anyway, and my children will have to make the call if the world still has support for another human generation to be born.
Overall, the feeling that one should be getting their affairs in order looms with each passing day, and planning for the future doesn’t seem wise.
I just blame others and don’t take it as my fault, I am too young for taking the responsibility. Those are the older generation, who allowed all that to happen, because that over comfortable life looks very appealing, I assume. (I personally never had an issue with that.)
What can you do? Just stop over-consume things, that simple. Wear clothes till they wear out, fix them when you can, reuse them (e.g. you can make that cover for your laptop out of your old jacket very easily). Don’t upgrade your phone (and laptop, and tablet) every other year, just keep it as long as you can. Yeah, that's difficult, because somehow every software application is super bloated. Don't buy that smart watch, you don’t need it, and they all are useless anyway. Don’t fly on planes that often. Don’t buy car, because you don’t need it in most cases. If you need car, use it as seldom as possible. I am sick of all those fat asses comminuting alone, especially inside fat cars. Possibilities are limitless, but the general public is quite mindless, to say the least.
That may sound insane for some of you, but it is not that difficult. As a person who grew up in a poor environment (i.e. no car, no tech, no fancy stuff, saving water, gas, electricity to keep the bills low) I have zero issues with keeping that life style up to this day. I can pay for all that, it’s not the money issue, it’s about being aware whether you really need all that stuff.
If we could summon the political will to do that we could already summon the political will to transfer subsidies that go to fossil fuels to renewables instead and that would mostly end the need for nuclear.
No, it wouldn't. Renewables are nice, but they are not enough by themselves to build the kind of global wealth we need to adapt to change. We need nuclear as an energy source for that.
How confident are you that if all the money that went to renewables would not have been better spent simply increasing our efficiencies with fossil fuels?
Do you feel like this is something we have the power to stop? I feel it is a runaway train, that will just run out of steam in a few hundred/thousand years.
I mean I don’t like to be wasteful, and we shouldn’t pollute the earth for the hell of it, but I’m just like what are we gonna do?
What if all those politicians selling the story of renewables, had lots of investments in those companies? Would you still trust that story, that this will somehow stop climate change, and not just pad their bank accounts?
Maybe I’m just cynical in this area, and it is easy to just look around and say I’m not as bad as most people, but I just can’t think politicians forcing renewables is a good thing.
Renewables are a feel-good hippy joke (the irony, since nuclear is more environmentally friendly). Including a random source in case you ask for it - there are also cost/energy comparisons available if you google around.
"System costs for nuclear power (as well as coal and gas-fired generation) are very much lower than for intermittent renewables."
If nuclear can compete on price; sure why not. But it seems it has some issues with that. That's why the private sector is a bit hands off on this front. There is no shortage of alternatives with more lucrative returns on investment (i.e. non negative ones).
And plenty of those alternatives are doing great in terms of funding, growth, and cost. Hundreds of GW of wind and solar came online during the last two years or so. Most of the projections for this market from only a few years ago were completely wrong and this growth has caught more than a few governments by surprise and prompted quite a few of them to move forward earlier announced dates to clean up the grids in their country. E.g. the UK is now talking about 2030 for this. There might be one new nuclear plant coming online in that time frame and possibly a few more might get built. But it's peanuts compared to renewables. At this point it seems more like an expensive vanity project for politicians than a practical solution to supplying energy.
Most of the challenges are actually not adding capacity but balancing the grid and moving energy around. Energy storage and cables basically. Grid infrastructure is where public spending needs to happen. There are a lot of countries that are actually slowing down renewable energy deployments because their grids just can't keep up. Most of the time when you see a wind mill not spinning it's not because it's broken but because it's been turned off because the grid can't handle the over supply. Kind of embarrassing for the companies involved. All that expensive kit and they can't handle the output.
Expensive nuclear plants that you can't turn off and on on demand are part of the problem here; not the solution. Mostly the hard choice grid providers have to make is turning wind turbines off or shutting down e.g. a gas plant. They both cost money whether they produce or not. Some grid providers even have occasional negative rates because of this: they literally pay consumers to consume more electricity. It's preferable to temporarily reducing capacity at great cost. That's why grid batteries are so hot right now.
IMHO current generations of nuclear technology are a bit of a dead end in terms of cost. But maybe somebody figures out a 10x improvement. Worth some public spending. Fusion is actually getting some traction lately and it seems that is starting to attract some serious money and there have been some breakthroughs reported recently.
Nuclear can't compete on price because it's not subsidized and it's (deliberately or not) a legal and compliance nightmare, not to mention the NIMBY problems it brings.
But if nuclear was getting even a fraction of the money that fossil fuels receives, we would be carbon neutral right now.
You harp on costs, but energy is _always_ expensive, and there is nothing, not even renewables, that will provide the amount of energy that we will need in the coming years anywhere near quickly or efficiently enough.
Nuclear will get cheaper like every other industry does once we create the actual market for it. Right now, we just have decades old reactors on shoestring budgets and scientific studies because _we didn't properly fund it_.
Electric cars alone are predicted to nearly double our energy grid requirements in the next few decades[1]. We're not moving anywhere nearly fast enough with renewables to account for the growth from those vehicles alone.
My understanding is that most of the cost is driven by outdated and draconian compliance requirements (created by public/government agencies). For example, safety requirements that don't have a threshold but instead require reducing risk "as much as possible" which is equivalent to 0 profit.
Langdon Winner [1] argues that nuclear power is authoritarian in nature due to factors like requiring long-term, centralized planning to realize and is infeasible in democratic governments. He argues that solar power is more democratized and is more fitting to a democracy.
That this ultra simple thing to wear a mask meets such resistance really shook me up. It's a minority of people but it's a much bigger, louder, and powerful minority than I ever would have expected.
Still, I remain hopeful as to be otherwise would leave me in despair.
A public sector that requires a profit is not a public sector. To your point, we probably need democracy first, but the idea that money can’t be found without siphoning it from the essential workforce that drives to work (or drives for work) and increasingly lives pay check to pay check is just nonsense.
I would recommend the book Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger. It's an interesting read where the author talks about how environmental alarmism hurts us and makes us focus on the wrong things and the importance of nuclear.
"Mark Serreze, director of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, also welcomes the new analysis but points out that Arctic amplification is never a fixed ratio. As the researchers showed, the time span used to calculate the rate matters, as does the latitude and season—amplification is far larger in the winter. Serreze adds that Arctic warming has always been more uncertain than the rest of the world, because of the spottiness of the observational records. “As a result, I’m always in favor of looking at it as a range,” he says. “Two times to four times.”"
Readit News
I personally have been donating to environmental groups, but it feels like a cop-out. I'm using money to pay-away some of my guilt and my unwillingness to put more substantial effort towards such an important cause as this. It weighs on me daily though.
So honestly, how do you all cope? For those of you who have had the willingness/bravery to go "all-in", how did you do it? I'm addicted to my comfortable, wealthy lifestyle as a software engineer and I'm ashamed of it.
Some of my personal goals include finding and supporting carbon capture/sequestration efforts, and activism organizations who I believe can lobby for meaningful policy changes in a better direction. That, because I don’t have the skills/network to do something about it directly. If I did I’d be doing something about it directly.
Beyond that, I believe we all have to accept our limitations, that there’s a lot of luck/random chance/etc. in us being alive here on this planet in the first place and be grateful for that, and then do our best to be kind/generous to and have empathy for people suffering from the climate-related disasters.
It remains to be seen whether the highly turbulent future has made peace with you.
If we can believe the predictions, things have just gotten started. However, we can expect more extreme weather events, more large-scale refugee movements and who knows what else, which might also affect day-to-day life in rich countries.
Until we at least have a clearer idea what exactly we can expect in the next decades, I'm not convinced this "making peace", trusting, we'll "adapt" is any more realistic than some procrastinaling college student who fully trusts his future self to wing that term assignment in an allnighter.
Step 2: Try to understand what will actually happen and prepare yourself accordingly. Severe weather systems will probably continue to worsen - you can prepare yourself for those. You can look up the realistic model predictions for sea level rise and compare on a map like [1] what that means and choose where to live accordingly (aside from Florida, the real risks are from hurricanes). Etc.
Step 3: Ask yourself what you can realistically do and what you cannot realistically do. For the things in the latter bucket, refer to Step 2 and don't worry about them so much. For things in the first bucket, do what you can. Personally, I donate to 3 different orgs to more than offset my carbon footprint, and I try to lead a low-carbon lifestyle where possible (don't use A/C or heat as much, eat less meat, drive less, etc.).
Step 4: If you want to take a "big plunge", ask yourself seriously if you would do more good by quitting your job to work on this space, or if something else would be more effective. In most cases, it's more effective to donate more money to the change you want to see, or to become more involved in politics. In most cases, the core causes of climate change aren't going to be solved by new tech.
[1] https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/dataset/sea-level-rise-map...
Why not?
If for example a cheap, simple new technology would be out by tomorrow, that provides allmost unlimited energy (let's say a wonderful simple approach to cold fusion◇) - then all the dirty stuff we do today, because it is cheap - could be done without the dirt of fossil fuels.
◇ but I do not believe that will happen at all. I rather would invest in harvesting more the energy provided by us of the big fusion plant called the sun
Dead Comment
I believe Life will persevere, sometimes getting better, sometimes getting worse, for millennia in the future.
A comment in a different thread on hacker news today quoted this from a book: > "Life is composed of reality configurations so constituted. To abandon [my wife] would be to say, I can't endure reality as such. I have to have uniquely special easier conditions."
I don't believe I have to fight or feel guilty that some people in the near future will not get a uniquely special easier life.
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As another example, there is this community on the internet called LessWrong, whose members believe that the single biggest problem facing humanity right now is the impending arrival of AGI (artificial general intelligence). Many of them truly believe this problem is so urgent and important that you shouldn't be able to think about anything else. But I would guess (if you don't happen to be one of them) you don't really think or care about that. Maybe thinking about this analogy will help you find an answer to your question.
To throw it all away and "hope for the best" is foolish to say the least. If your life is good or tolerable, if you appreciate the wealth of knowledge and culture etc. it's because its been a long path to where we are. If you stop caring and stop trying, you're simply degenerating to a state where life is much harder, less cultured, with probably less creativity, entertainment, and so on. Cases of people genuinely preferring to live an isolated life in the jungle are extremely rare I believe. When I start romanticizing the Wild Life, I remember my grandmother that had a very difficult childhood, working all day in coffee plantations. She didn't learn how to read until later in life because feeding her family was the priority. She later, for the most part, resented farms and greatly appreciated the urban life -- she could still take care of a plant or two in her backyard. It's very easy to sit on top of civilization with disdain. I think it's our responsibility not only to maintain it, but to make the future amazing, as much as our imagination allows.
(Here is my personal contribution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29547638)
Re the referenced comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29544104
That's pretty much the opposite of the point of view you seem to be extolling. You are right now living a uniquely special easier life. You are choosing not to sacrifice it for the hope of a better outcome, even though it may not be possible.
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We also went pretty much entirely plant-based with our diets years back, and traded in our hybrid for an electric vehicle.
I’m not under any illusions that those steps are going to change the outcome — but our hope was to make people interested in nature, where food comes from, and to learn more ourselves in the process.
I also find that meditation has a lot of value for me when it comes to coping with such massive issues. It reminds me that I can always change myself, and hopefully through that find ways to spread a compassionate mindset towards others.
I have three little kids, and a pretty clear-eyed sense of what their world is shaping up to be. I just try to focus and much of my energy as I can on setting a good example for them. Hopefully they’ll grow up with the tools and knowledge necessary to find ways to thrive in a challenging environment.
I spent 8 years working for environmental nonprofits and I’m proud of my contribution but don’t feel like any non-influential person needs to walk around with personal guilt, no matter what our fundraising materials or political ads may have said to the contrary.
So please go live your life as you see fit, and if that means going to work for NRDC, then by all means. They are a good group of folks that will be happy to have your talent. And if that means mega-yachts, go for it till we manage to tax them out of existence.
I ignore it.
> Do you ignore it because it is painful?
Yep
Honestly, I am young enough that in elementary school they were already talking about global warming, we were told that it would be too late soon and that we had to do something about it.
15 years later nothing has been done about it, but then again nothing really went wrong yet, being told everyday that the world will end has the pervasive effect that it feels pointless to really try and change things. You just feel numb and wait for something to happen.
> 15 years later nothing has been done about it.
That is absolutely is not true. When I moved to SoCal in the 80s, for the first six months I didn't realize there was a mountain nearby because of all the pollution and resulting haziness. You can clearly see it today because the cars have gotten a lot cleaner. This is just one anecdote.
Seriously, what do you consider to be 'something' or 'going wrong'?
There are so many things, and they are going so badly wrong. Case in point current Kentucky tornadoes and the article you're replying to.
However, I still believe that all these efforts are like a band-aid on a dying whale. It takes one colleague to take a trip to the Bahamas for all these small efforts to be washed away. And unfortunately most people don't want to try harder than that. They want their comfort, their cheap burgers and EasyJet flights. If all of this comes at the cost of screwing the future generations then so be it...
The same way I cope with change in general: by adapting. Which is the approach I think we should be taking in general as a society towards climate change.
> I'm addicted to my comfortable, wealthy lifestyle as a software engineer and I'm ashamed of it.
You shouldn't be. Most people in the world demonstrate by the choices they make that they prefer a more wealthy lifestyle to a less wealthy one. There are people who don't, but even most of them depend for some essential functions on technology that is only possible in a wealthy society. (Anyone who really doesn't depend on technology for anything won't be posting here or reading posts here anyway.)
Human activities can certainly affect the environment, and not just the climate. IMO the hysteria over climate change has had the unfortunate effect of putting many other more pressing environmental issues on the back burner. We should be good stewards of the environment, but that requires being as objective as we can about how much priority issues actually deserve, and also requires recognizing that the best way to fix environmental issues in general is to create more wealth. The wealthier the world is, the cheaper fixing up the environment becomes in comparison.
What we should be doing is getting governments to band together and penalise industrial-scale polluters. It would do more good to take shipping and trucking electric than for you to rely on public transit and for me to drive one fewer kilometre.
A better approach might be to add a tax to carbon-based fuels that is used to fund carbon capture.
I did this due to some combination of poverty and stoicism, but it made me realize how much gas I was burning before without really needing it. (I always felt a little bad using so much of a nonrenewable resource.)
Sure I like it when it's warm inside, but really it's an unnecessary luxury we've all gotten used to. (At least for the young and healthy -- I hear for older people cold temperatures can be harmful?)
Worth noting though that I do get some heat through my walls from the neighbors -- if we all turned off the heat it would be a lot colder ;) Even so I reckon the usage could be cut by a good deal (40-50%?) without any serious issues, it would just be a very unpopular proposal.
Absolute vegetarianism is not necessary, either. Even incrementally eliminating meat in some meals will help.
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One important thing we do is to call Congress regularly and express our support for a carbon fee & dividend policy, for example: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/
And of course, there's lots more to volunteering with CCL if you want to get more involved.
The approach I’ve found works best for me for lifestyle changes is to treat them as a slow ratchet - make a decision like “cut down on meat” (or whatever), and just start taking steps down that road. Take the steps that you feel like you can, get used to them, and then take another step. It’s hard to change everything overnight, but you can make a remarkable amount of change if you’re attentive over time.
That said, it’s still the existential elephant in the room. I don’t look at it every day, and when I do, it’s terrifying. But it’s just too big for me alone to face - all I can do is what I can do, and hope it adds up with what everyone else is doing to make a difference.
2008: After a couple grueling winters in Canada's oil field, I come to the conclusion that switching off fossil fuels is going to be the defining project of the coming century and that it might be the best place to apply my natural talent at math and science.
2009: Begin studying Sustainable and Renewable Energy Engineering (undergraduate program) with dreams of leveraging the clout an engineer has towards advancing the technology that underpins our way of life.
2014: Graduate, start looking for clean energy jobs
2015: Take a job in telecoms, continue trying to break into the renewable energy industry
2017: Give up on breaking into the renewable energy industry. Rethink my initial assessment that the limiting factor for switching off fossil fuels is brain power. Come to the conclusion that it's really lacking capital and initiative.
2019: Co-found a startup in the horticultural space, with ambitious plans to make local food and medicinals production easier whatever climate disruptions happen. Keep the day job to ensure reliable capital.
2020: Join a second greenhouse start-up in a less directly involved capacity.
2021: The first startup fails (not official yet, but my partner and I have agreed to pursue other projects).
I tell people this and some say it sounds pretty depressing, but none of it has ever made me feel depressed. I guess I don't question that I'm doing my best, so I've never felt like giving up; though I've definitely had to acknowledge I was barking up the wrong tree a few times.
Gordon White, whose work on this subject I follow, says it's important to distinguish the rescue mission from the salvage mission. There are aspects of modern life that are worth rescuing, but most are just worth salvaging, they're tools that can be used to get through the coming times. From that perspective, I've never felt particularly bad about taking part in modern society, because I see myself as getting out as many resources as possible for building what comes after. My attempts at building anything have so far been fruitless, but I don't feel as though I'm playing the wrong game as it were. Christianity has a similar sentiment, 'in this world but not of it', and that resonates as well. I participate in a modern western lifestyle, I even enjoy many aspects of it. But I don't think it's the only thing worth trying and I won't mourn its passing to the same degree as most.
It won't be a super catastrophe in my lifetime, but the economic repercussions could case me to be jobless someday, and our lifestyles may change significantly in the next 40 years.
No amount of my meager donations or subtle lifestyle changes (I'm already a lifelong carless urban dweller with a low footprint by Western standards) will accomplish what can only be accomplished by multi-trillion dollar government investment, hardcore and wildly disruptive government regulation, and aggressive diplomatic efforts. Only governments can truly make a dent and I do what I can to elect government officials who will do what needs to be done.
And I spend time teaching entrepreneurship to students interested in sustainable tech.
And I keep trying to engage in the design of marine cloud brightening technology, which I view as a potential high-impact cooling tech. We need to buy time for society to transition. No support yet, but I’ll keep knocking.
My way:
1) calculate your footprint
2) find options to reduce it
3) find ways to offset the remainder
4) execute
Quite literally: if you are still carbon positive you are still part of (this) problem.
People often complain about difficulty of finding information, the lack of scientific consensus, trouble trusting government, non-profit, corporate bodies, issues with accuracy and precision in measurements and models, etc.
But wtf(!?). Do as best you can. It is not difficult to calculate an _estimate_ on your impact. It is not difficult to find ways to get rid of atmospheric or oceanic carbon. Then dedicate some time, effort, money to do it, to whatever level you feel comfortable with. Your conscience is the only thing that holds you to the effort. Set whatever margins to the calculations and actions as you feel ok with.
5) get yourself carbon neutral for now
6) pay off your carbon life debt
7) cross the line, go 100% climate positive instead of neutral ?
People still live too good to support a radical change that could save the modern civilization during the climate change.
1. moved to veggie diet 2 years ago
2. getting solar panels this spring
3. electric car as soon as I have the money
It's a start.
That’s not very specific, but I hope it helps you in some way.
And try to educate those around me bit by bit.
- I'm poor, so my impact on CO2 emissions is minimal.
- Rich people will always invest in some green-washing scam (whether intentionally or not). Our leaders are not smart enough to solve global warming. As a poor person, I have no power over anything. Also, I'm trying my best to become rich in order to gain the power to improve things. So I'm basically doing everything I can to get into a position to solve these problems but I'm consistently denied this opportunity... So none of it is on my hands.
- At some level, I don't care about global warming enough because I don't own any stake in the planet. I'm just renting. I'm a nihilist and an atheist; so from my perspective, the entire universe ends in about 50 to 70 years anyway... Who cares about one lousy planet? When I'm dead, I will have 0 association with it because I will be nothing. Do I care about planet ABC in parallel universe XYZ? No! Because it has nothing to do with me... Exactly the same as my relationship with Earth in 100 years.
So the simple answer is:
1. I'm not causing the problem.
2. I'm already doing everything I can to solve the problem.
3. It's not even my problem to begin with...
I think most people experience some of these three points. I actually experience all 3 so I feel absolutely zero responsibility about global warming. If anything, I feel contempt.
https://ifup.org/letters/dear-zohra-arlan-2020
There are PLENTY of problems that I (and my community) are facing right now, that are far more pressing than some existential threat that guilts me into paying indulgences to the Church of Climate Change to absolve me from my "sins".
Every hour that I spend teaching kids to read will be far better spent, than any dollar I put into some slush fund so that the megachurch pastors of Climate can fly around in their jumbo jets speaking at million dollar dinners for celebrities to lecture us on how we need to only use one square of toilet paper when we use the bathroom.
Seriously. People dog pile on Joel Osteen and Kenneth Copeland for being massive frauds, but buy right into the same thing when it comes to the environment.
Big oil is still doing things with impunity. They knew 40 years ago that this was going on, they expanded operations, funded a denialism campaign, bribed left and right, no consequences besides doing more, getting even more money, and people consuming more.
Governments follow the money, they don't touch a finger on them, even invade foreign countries to give them control over even more oil. Other big corporations (banks and so on) keep investing money on them.
People are told to "recycle" but to not put a finger on having cars, having vacations on the other side of the world or consume in general. The top consumers are not the more affected in the short term, so they don't do anything really meaningful. It is easy to convince masses that is their fault, and the small actions that don't affect big money are the things that they should do. Against this even the gods are powerless.
And science? It's been very creative in "mitigations" without consuming less or producing less oil. Going against the symptoms and letting the real problem to keep growing because it can't be touched.
More than half of the CO2 emissions since 1751 were emitted in the last 30 years, after was evident that something very wrong was going on, the IPCC was funded, the UN noted the urgency to solve this and more. And the pledges that we managed to get was to reach "net zero" that is not to limit oil/fossil fuel production (that could still keep expanding over the years), but to somewhat compensate what is extracted with what is captured. And this of course doesn't cover capturing what is already on excess, just try to neutralize the new, and have the fantasy to wait 100+ years till that vanishes.
And time is against us. We already, with a mild increase in the global average temperature, have big extreme weather events, and it not an El Niño year. Some "stable" climate features like the polar vortex and the gulf stream seem that are getting disrupted. And, of course, this article, that points that the biggest warming happens in the artic, where some positive feedback loops are rooted, from albedo lost from a blue ocean and permafrost thawing will worsen "hands free" the already very bad current situation.
So, hoping for the best but expecting the worst. I'm open to good surprises, but I don't bet that things will be solved. At least my worst scenario is not fast extinction but that we will get into a climate dystopia with most people living in weather isolated environments controlled by the same big money that caused all of this.
Also, I haven't done the research to determine - to my own satisfaction - whether this is man made or not. Sorry but my institutional trust is near rock bottom, and considering I'm not an atmospheric physicist I'm unlikely to ever have a clear picture.
But I don't worry about the big picture because I can't change it, and I think at this point it's too late to "fix" the problem anyway.
If humans drive themselves extinct it's not going to happen in my lifetime, and it's really not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. We won't kill everything, and something else will evolve to take our place.
I recently read an interesting article related to this:
The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try.
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-climate-crisis-is-wor...
Since it's a political problem and I lack power to affect change at that scale I don't worry about it.
By the time it becomes a serious problem I'll hopefully already be dead or die quickly. If I'm somehow still alive then I'll worry about it then. Hopefully my death is painless and free of prolonged suffering.
The more involvement you have in global industry, the more entropy you are morally responsible for accelerating. Involve yourself as little as possible.
On the other hand, a lot of the hype about global warming is bullshit. The presumptions often require that you believe that all Bangledeshis will quietly remain at their current latitude and longitude waiting for the water to rise about them. That's clearly not realistic but most of the numbers of "deaths caused by global warming" are based on EXACTLY such facile and stupid modeling assumptions.
It's like the people making such numbers know NOTHING about human behavior (and it's all too likely they actually do NOT).
I have zero concerns about humanity surviving. We are agile and adaptive. Will it be MY PERSONAL gene line? Don't know. Will it be the majority of gene lines from currently alive people surviving? Probably not but that's not unique to global warming. Add a World War or a comet and the same is true and probably worse.
Of course, I'm a hard ass on numbers and traceable causality and frankly that has not been provided. Just ask about CO2 levels before all the graphs typically trotted out! Pre-Eocene, CO2 levels were 4x-10x higher than today. Crickets on that.
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V21/sep/Davis2017b.jpg
You can not generalize or make predictions based data from only the last 200 years and ignore 500 MY of data!
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I think following their example is the best one can do on an individual level. It’s baby’s first civilization and it’s over. Acceptance at least allows one some dignity.
You're advocating we stop reproducing as a dignified response to your perception that civilization is ending?
Did I ask to be born into this world? No. Not my problem.
If you truly want to solve the climate change problem you have to find a way to delete most humans from the planet. There is really no other way, too many humans will change its environment, just like any other organism achieving exponential growth. All other solutions are just coping.
If you dont like that solution you can work on modifying the humans to not be humans anymore, but perhaps like an organism living in a pod connected to a metaverse with neuralink like in the matrix. The environmental footprint of such a solution would be globally insignificant.
If you dont like that, accept, adapt and live on.
Oh, and become filthy rich. That will help.
"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me."
"Don't believe everything you read."
and to some degree
"Fools' names and fools' faces always appear in public places."
Of course these are exactly as I learned them as a child; I've updated them as I've grown.
Once you make peace with that, coping with feelings of powerlessness is child's play.
I chose a job specifically because it aims at reducing e-waste, and that's a real business incentive so I know I won't hit corporate walls. Turns out the job also tries to optimize electricity consumption, which is a target I don't think is very useful, but still feels like the right direction. (For reference, said job has a 10 yr old product upgraded to brand new Linux 5.15)
Except for that, the usual, ESG, eating less meat, using cars as little as possible. All of which are monetary incentives for the economy to go "in the right direction".
I also work on Android custom ROMs on my free time. I have yet to determine whether this is a net ecological positive (I buy many smartphones for that project so it has its own cost), and I have a very hard time turning it into monetary incentives.
The only way out of it is to work on turning Republicans into Democrats and Democrats into Progressives/Socialists and dragging the Overton window, kicking and screaming, over to the left.
There is too much happening at the moment, and I'm afraid this is just the beginning for this century. But there is only so much that I can do. I cannot stop arctic climate change. I cannot stop the GOP from destroying democracy in the US. I cannot stop drug criminality in my country. So often, I zap away, I just don't want to see it. I've paid to compensate for the gas use of my car, but I don't think that is a solution. My financial situation is not really good, so I cannot do much.
I'm addicted to my lifestyle, which is real average for where I live, but going lower would be a real challenge and make life a lot less attractive. I don't go 3x per year on holiday. The last time I flew was in 2013.
My coping strategy is mostly: ignore it.
- Probably the best thing you can do (if you're a relatively-well-off tech person) is either dedicate a portion of your time to directly trying to solve difficult problems related to climate change (or better yet, poverty), or donate directly to demonstrably-effective causes
- Poverty is probably the more severe problem than global warming itself, and solving it also often indirectly works to solve the other. The biggest threat of global warming is how it will exacerbate poverty problems. Though ecological destruction is another worthy cause.
- By the estimates of some of the most effective charities linked above (at the time of estimation), one can roughly offset their carbon footprint for around $100 a year if donated wisely (best example was paying farmers in the Amazon to not deforest their land, preserving forests and preventing logging companies from making inroads). This includes average flights / meat consumption.
- Another $100 roughly in incentives/advertising to convert someone else to a vegan diet, if you want to offset your meat eating and are concerned with animal cruelty specifically (though you should probably still feel guilty, and there's obviously a floor at which this won't be something that society can throw money at)
- Around $3k to extend a year of life to a 3rd world person (or equivalent quality of life to many). Maybe less by now. Let that one sink in. Some of the solutions to provide huge quality of life improvements for vast numbers of people are very cheap compared to small improvements in first world countries.
- Overall it's very likely that programs like: recycling, reducing plastic use (plastic straws), energy-saving lightbulbs, bike commuting, eating less meat, green building renovations, etc... all amount to just a tiny drop on the scale of things, and probably just a few dollars worth of that $100 of effective emissions potential per year. Renovating the first world is probably just not that cost-efficient - or it's probably happening regardless of your input, and you're better off directing funds/effort/intellect towards something more effective. Overall, if your goal is to be a moral person in regards to climate change and make the most impact, you're probably far better off living exactly how you want to, make as much money as you can, and donate a chunk of that ($1k a year would be enough to offset 10x yourself) to effective causes - instead of worrying about your direct personal impact. (Link above directs to some of those charities, and metrics for discerning)
- That said, if you have rare skills (as most HN people reading this statistically do) and would rather contribute those to improving technology and better options, simply pivoting your career path can make a bigger impact than even donating. There's some calculus to this of course. I recommend reading the link above and some of the introductory texts/audiobook for help.
Personally, I'm contributing a big portion of my time the last few years to assisting with long-shot-but-high-impact logistics infrastructure startup causes I believe in, which I feel my skills are hopefully well suited for and might not succeed without me. If they pay off and it takes off - great. If not, I'm at least contributing the best I have of my skills/experience to a lottery that - if enough people follow suit - eventually some high-impact project will succeed in. Sometimes the aggregate of just giving your time to projects that don't make so much sense economically to you personally (usually due to risk of failure) can go a long way in pushing industries toward overall better outcomes. If this project fails or I find my time isn't being used effectively though, and my moral compass keeps bugging me, I'll probably just "retire" back to just finding a non-saving-the-world job that pays well and giving a portion of those earnings to charity. (aka Work to Give, the best option for the vast majority of us since work is often not all that obviously moral/important).
Also, I think it's still misunderstood how fast change can happen if the people want it to and the politicians go for it. This hyper-capitalism feels like an eternal thing but it won't be. Because it can't. Younger generations want change and every catastrophe (and there will be many) puts pressure on the old institutions to change.
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[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenho... [2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewab...
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A large-enough CME would cripple the entire planet for decades (if not centuries). From an existential standpoint, global warming is the least of our worries as a species.
Personally I’m not changing anything. This world is coming to an end soon and I’d rather enjoy life as I always imagined it would be for as long as I can, than to adopt unnatural behaviors in a futile attempt at saving the planet.
The next generations are screwed, fortunately I find them quite annoying so I don’t care too much about what happens to them. I have no children of my own to worry about, though I may still consider having some if I can imagine a way for them to live a good life and of course if I can find a suitable woman to mate with, but I will not expect grandchildren. I will be far too old anyway, and my children will have to make the call if the world still has support for another human generation to be born.
Overall, the feeling that one should be getting their affairs in order looms with each passing day, and planning for the future doesn’t seem wise.
What can you do? Just stop over-consume things, that simple. Wear clothes till they wear out, fix them when you can, reuse them (e.g. you can make that cover for your laptop out of your old jacket very easily). Don’t upgrade your phone (and laptop, and tablet) every other year, just keep it as long as you can. Yeah, that's difficult, because somehow every software application is super bloated. Don't buy that smart watch, you don’t need it, and they all are useless anyway. Don’t fly on planes that often. Don’t buy car, because you don’t need it in most cases. If you need car, use it as seldom as possible. I am sick of all those fat asses comminuting alone, especially inside fat cars. Possibilities are limitless, but the general public is quite mindless, to say the least.
That may sound insane for some of you, but it is not that difficult. As a person who grew up in a poor environment (i.e. no car, no tech, no fancy stuff, saving water, gas, electricity to keep the bills low) I have zero issues with keeping that life style up to this day. I can pay for all that, it’s not the money issue, it’s about being aware whether you really need all that stuff.
*slight edit for clarity
No, it wouldn't. Renewables are nice, but they are not enough by themselves to build the kind of global wealth we need to adapt to change. We need nuclear as an energy source for that.
Do you feel like this is something we have the power to stop? I feel it is a runaway train, that will just run out of steam in a few hundred/thousand years.
I mean I don’t like to be wasteful, and we shouldn’t pollute the earth for the hell of it, but I’m just like what are we gonna do?
What if all those politicians selling the story of renewables, had lots of investments in those companies? Would you still trust that story, that this will somehow stop climate change, and not just pad their bank accounts?
Maybe I’m just cynical in this area, and it is easy to just look around and say I’m not as bad as most people, but I just can’t think politicians forcing renewables is a good thing.
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"System costs for nuclear power (as well as coal and gas-fired generation) are very much lower than for intermittent renewables."
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...
And plenty of those alternatives are doing great in terms of funding, growth, and cost. Hundreds of GW of wind and solar came online during the last two years or so. Most of the projections for this market from only a few years ago were completely wrong and this growth has caught more than a few governments by surprise and prompted quite a few of them to move forward earlier announced dates to clean up the grids in their country. E.g. the UK is now talking about 2030 for this. There might be one new nuclear plant coming online in that time frame and possibly a few more might get built. But it's peanuts compared to renewables. At this point it seems more like an expensive vanity project for politicians than a practical solution to supplying energy.
Most of the challenges are actually not adding capacity but balancing the grid and moving energy around. Energy storage and cables basically. Grid infrastructure is where public spending needs to happen. There are a lot of countries that are actually slowing down renewable energy deployments because their grids just can't keep up. Most of the time when you see a wind mill not spinning it's not because it's broken but because it's been turned off because the grid can't handle the over supply. Kind of embarrassing for the companies involved. All that expensive kit and they can't handle the output.
Expensive nuclear plants that you can't turn off and on on demand are part of the problem here; not the solution. Mostly the hard choice grid providers have to make is turning wind turbines off or shutting down e.g. a gas plant. They both cost money whether they produce or not. Some grid providers even have occasional negative rates because of this: they literally pay consumers to consume more electricity. It's preferable to temporarily reducing capacity at great cost. That's why grid batteries are so hot right now.
IMHO current generations of nuclear technology are a bit of a dead end in terms of cost. But maybe somebody figures out a 10x improvement. Worth some public spending. Fusion is actually getting some traction lately and it seems that is starting to attract some serious money and there have been some breakthroughs reported recently.
But if nuclear was getting even a fraction of the money that fossil fuels receives, we would be carbon neutral right now.
You harp on costs, but energy is _always_ expensive, and there is nothing, not even renewables, that will provide the amount of energy that we will need in the coming years anywhere near quickly or efficiently enough.
Nuclear will get cheaper like every other industry does once we create the actual market for it. Right now, we just have decades old reactors on shoestring budgets and scientific studies because _we didn't properly fund it_.
Electric cars alone are predicted to nearly double our energy grid requirements in the next few decades[1]. We're not moving anywhere nearly fast enough with renewables to account for the growth from those vehicles alone.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-weather-grids-autos-i...
[1] https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf
We can’t even agree to enforce the rule of law.
Still, I remain hopeful as to be otherwise would leave me in despair.
So my understanding is that linking papers that claim the IPCC is wrong makes you a science denier, or am I confused about how the rules work?
What is the warming rate? Why wasn't it included?
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We've got tornadoes happening outside tornado alley outside of tornado season. See, I can do it too.