Id like lemmings take on how they would actually reduce emissions on a level that actually makes a difference (assuming we can still stop it, which is likely false by now, but let’s ignore that)
I dont think its as simple as “tax billionaires out of existence and ban jets, airplanes, and cars” because thats not realistic.
Bonus points if you can think of any solutions that dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life.
I know yall will have fun with this!
Stop burning fossil fuels. There is no way that doesn’t include that.
How we gonna melt steel, copper, titanium, tungsten, etc?
Sadly, fossil fuels aren’t going away anytime soon. ☹️
There are ways to melt those without burning fossil fuels. Whether the alternatives are easy, affordable, or can run at a useful rate is debatable
Iceland refines a lot of metal and I think they’re close, or at, 100% renewable.
Yup, Iceland has such cheap geothermal and hydro energy that they just use electric furnaces to smelt aluminum.
Arc furnaces are standard already.
The thing you really need a reducing agent for is smelting, and for that hydrogen is already used at smaller scales.
attack the capitalist system.
Wow thanks for this insightful answer
With combat.
And the free market value system, because it doesn’t value externalities.
Vote.
Edit: to be clear, vote in every election you have access to. Local voting and primaries are just important. Voting even if you don’t like any of the options is still important.
If you don’t vote then you’re part of the problem.
Depends on where you live.
In some places, voting is extremely important and can affect things majorly.
In some places, voting is completely useless because the voter has legitimately no power in a rigged system.
If a rigged vote gets 100 votes to person A and 0 votes for person B then you will think person B’s ideas aren’t valid.
If a rigged vote gets 100 for person A and 35 for person B, well person B’s ideas shouldn’t be ignored. It also shows the 90 people that didn’t vote that maybe they should vote next time.
In a rigged election, you’re not going to be delivered legitimate vote totals.
Ban planned obsolescence and make a rigorous standard that any new device is designed repairable, reliable and long lasting enough to last at least 10 years if treated right, 20+ years for vehicles and machinery…
This whole ‘you gotta get a new thing every year’ era causes sooo much unnecessary waste and pollution ☹️
This would have almost 0 impact on climate change. It wouldn’t stop new stuff being produced and bought, people still want shinier things than they had yesterday, long lasting or not. It’d be a positive change, but not for climate change.
Many many would not get the new shiny. In my lifetime my vehicles have had few appreciable improvements. Mostly around safety like air bags and view cameras. I could care less about the radio and if I did its easy enough to upgrade that part.
Make less shit, factories would slow down, less resources used, less pollution emitted, less energy used, and as a result, there would be at least some positive impact on climate change.
Granted it might be minimal, even negligible, but it would make some difference.
But it’s time to disrupt 99% of life.
Survey humanity, produce an agreed on level of technology and lifestyle.
We probably need to limit ourselves to housing, food, internet, and safety/defense for everyone and not much else - then slow all industries based on HOW people want to live.
So getting rid of things like, plastic toys, gizmos, extravagances. Phones wouldn’t be updated as often. People would only be able to update their tech if they could meaningfully show it was necessary.
Lots of technology companies would be folded. Lots of industries would be nationalised and folded. International tourism would be greatly restricted. All the stuff we don’t need basically.
People would be mostly employed in the basics: Housing, food, internet. Too far beyond that and you’d have to rely on local people/groups/makers/repair companies.
So massive degrowth, nationalization, and restrictions/regulations to the market.
Most of all, corporations would no longer count as people. In fact society should have to rely on person to person contracting. I don’t really think corporations should exist becuase they become Zombies/Golems that do a lot of destructive things.
Basically degrowth, and restructuring society around degrowth.
I agree but you should emphasize the positives of degrowth otherwise everyone either gets scared or dismisses it as a non-serious solution politically. The main one being more leisure and less work.
Yeah, but that’s a fantasy, people will not do that. OP is specifically asking for something more realistic.
All other “solutions” in this thread are so funny to me. People thinking more efficient/more sustainable stuff will change anything. Solar panels and whatever still need to be produced, causing emissions. If you continue growing infinitely, you’re going to cause infinite emissions with that.
Security would go a long way. Not national security but life security. For example I own a bunch of tools and I sorta wish I did not. If I was guaranteed access to something like a tool library that had everything I might need to buy from home depot of such I would not carry any. Heck it could be home depot where when you buy the paint you get the rollers and brushes and equipment to clean it up with your purchase and you return it when your done. Heck could return the leftover paint. Also internet replaces a lot of things. My wife and I are committed to not buying physical things so we using streaming services and buy digital copies of stuff. We get books in pdf now and use games and such to get away from toys and such.
The idea of personal action vs. corporate/government action is a false choice. The government can force the corpos to stop burning the planet, but that will mean significant lifestyle changes for everybody.
It also means getting our shit together about immigration/ migration/ refugees. And not just in the US, but globally. A humanitarian catastrophe is assured otherwise.
I’m not optimistic.
dont disrupt the 99%'s way of life.
This is ridiculous, because the problem inherently requires cooperative change, and as we’ve seen people will throw shitfits over things as small as plastic straws.
A big thing would be to start switching from ever expanding auto infrastructure to public transit systems where possible.
- Fewer vehicles that transport more people
- Can use the space that is currently occupied for parking cars better
Another big thing requires changing our diets. Some types of food are more resource intensive than others, but also we ship food all over the planet and the resources for transport also contributes. Eating food that is in season on your continent would make a big difference.
The last thing is maybe the least obvious to regular people, but maybe we don’t need to build that data center yet if we can’t power it without fossil fuel. We need to entirely stop expanding energy usage until we’ve switched over entirely to sustainables.
In summary, basically everything that needs to happen is going to affect regular people, and they’re going to have to get over it, or we’re going to make the planet completely unlivable.
and as we’ve seen people will throw shitfits over things as small as plastic straws.
That’s still depressing as hell, on both sides. One because they’re freaking out over slightly different straws, the other because it’s such a token gesture to plastics pollution that solves nothing.
Yup. ALL single use plastics except maybe for medical need to go. I take my own containers to restaurants for leftovers and people act like I have 2 heads
My jurisdiction has EPR now. I’m pretty curious to see how that goes.
Tax billionaires out of existence, ban fossil fuels, invest in carbon capture, ban corporate greed, switch all solutions to the slightly more expensive, green alternative
Aren’t we at the point of no return?
Passed it a while ago. That doesn’t mean we can’t slow down.
Humanity will evolve to deal with the changes, maybe. Maybe not.
Honestly, if capitalism stopped tomorrow, and we all did community planting. Were restricted on car usage, and did carbon capture techniques that were proven to work… All en mass, globally, I suspect we could change things.
The problem is Capitalism and freemarket “progress”. The endless carbon fuelled march to no where (in the name of money). A lot could be done without that humming away like nothing is wrong, but politicians want to protect Free Market Capitalism and aren’t laying down reasonable restrictions.
There are no carbon capture and storage technologies proven to work at a meaningful scale.
Engineer a virus to send back in time to slow down CO2 emissions
wait a minute…
andromeda strain
Geoengineering: Whether through launching solar shades into space to block sunlight and cool the planet down, pump aerosols into the atmosphere, cloud seeding, or anything else. I think this is where our research should be going. I think it’s too late to avoid the worst-case-scenarios of climate change from merely cutting emissions, so more drastic measures to alleviate or even reverse the effects may be necessary. Plus it’ll help us with any future colonizing and terraforming of worlds outside of Earth.
Public transport infrastructure to reduce our reliance on cars & planes: While I don’t think hyperloops or a transatlantic tunnel are feasible, building tens of thousands of kilometres worth of overground and underground railway routes to interconnect towns and cities with high speed maglev trains is. China have the right idea.
Right to work from home: Remote working reduces our dependency on cars and frees up real estate to address the various housing crises we have.
Right to repair and outlawing planned obsolescence: Should we have to buy a new smartphone every 3 or so years because Apple or Samsung want to maximize profits? Do we care at all about the amount of electronic waste we’re producing?
Accelerate our efforts to reverse desertification and plant trillions more trees: If we can turn parts of the Sahel, Gobi Desert and the Australian outback green, that could have a very beneficial effect on the environment.
Eat the rich. I remember when the Twitter account that posted where Musk’s private jet is all the time and holy shit, he travelled a lot.
Like, multiple times a week where this machine that fucks up the environment is used to transport a single person.
Or the disgusting mega yacht that Zuckerberg uses.
During my whole life I’m not gonna destroy the environment like every single one of leeches on society does in a month.
It’s not everything obviously, but mandate that all people who can do their job from home must do their job from home. This will take a bite out of cars and improve general human morale.
Eliminate carbon trading programs and just set hard limits. Went over your allocation of carbon? Guess you’re done for the quarter.
Eliminate LLCs. Bring on the accountability.
Adopt. Don’t make new people. Take in people who have been abandoned. My father had the same idea in the 1970s — I suppose I should be fortunate my mother overruled him on that one. But he had the idea almost 50 years ago, for similar reasons.
And apply a similar philosophy to the rest of your life. We all know the word recycle. And I have been a proponent of recycling for over 30 years. I’ve heard it doesn’t help. I’ve heard some municipalities take it all to the same place. I don’t care. I still do it. But I also remember when there were three words. The original slogan went “Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.” Many people forgot the first two. You can reuse and repurpose a lot of things. But you should also reduce consumption as well. Eat less processed food. Stick to protein — plant and animal (unless you’re a vegetarian/vegan obviously). Stick to the outside of the grocery store (produce, dairy, deli, meat). Bakery is nice for an occasional treat, but find out what they make in-house and not ship in frozen.
I don’t think I’m doing enough on my own. I also don’t have illusions I’ll convince many others. I’m not really trying to. I’m not trying to save the world, just survive it.
Why do you say stick to protein? I understand for health reasons but emissions wise starches like wheat and maize are some of the most efficient per calorie, especially when compared to animal protein..
I guess you could argue there less filling so you’ll eat more but you’d need to eat a ton of potato chips to get to the same amount of emmisions as a steak.
Oh — I meant strictly for health reasons. Guess I got a bit off-topic there.
But yeah, starch breaks down to sugar and we don’t need more of that. I do love my corn (maize) tortillas for wrapping up meat and vegetables though!
that poore-nemecek paper is dubious.
Major corporations caused this, only major corporations can solve it. Laws would have to be passed requiring them to offset the damage from everything they do. Coops would need to be set up wherever possible for one industry to reuse waste from another. Subsidies would need to be ethically set up to encourage industry involved with cleaning the environment. Cooperation between nations to combat global issues would be needed. Actual consequences for industries it nations that violate. Education!! And most importantly convince half the world’s population to give a shit or even believe the problem exists. I’ve probably missed some.
The alternative would be magic.
Yeah, between the two, I think magic is probably more realistic. Let’s go with that.
