What can be done to prevent more dangerous heatwaves in Europe?
Does Europe need to plant more trees in it’s cities?
It appears that Europe does many things right for sustainability and climate change - public transit over cars, recycling, reducing carbon footprint better compared to other parts of the world. Of course all communities can do better at reducing their carbon footprint - Is this America’s fault with their carbon footprint that Europe is suffering? America has their cars, and simply cranks up their Air conditioners when it’s hot.
What else is there to do? I thought China had success improving their renewable energy output, even though they are still polluters, is it the actions of China and the USA causing misery in Europe? How do we help Europeans suffering and prevent this from happening again?
End all fossil fuel use asap and make trade blocks that prefer countries that do the same. Tarrifs for those that use dirty fuels beyond the Eurobloc’s schedule.
Remember, even if we stopped today, there is a 20 year lag time so it’s getting way, way worse.
https://www.iea.org/energy-system/fossil-fuels#tracking
We are still growing fossil fuel use. The repercussions are enormous, and effectively, permanent.
But that would hurt fossil fuel companies, so we can’t do that. (/jk)
At this point we need to spend all of our effort in advancing ways we can pull carbon out of the atmosphere and ocean, we are fucked unless we find an efficient way to do so.
Yes, but I don’t believe there is any process could ever be efficient enough.
Deep ocean algae farms might do it. Oil companies have brought up and side lined research on it for decades however.
nothing, nothing we do now will stop the warming. if we end all fossil fuel burning, concrete production, and livestock production tomorrow, the atmosphere will continue to warm for hundreds of years before peaking. We are cooked. Grab your popcorn.
This. What part of “well past the tipping point” do people not understand? The time to take drastic action was 20 years ago. It’s “adapt or die” time. The good news is, the elderly are more vulnerable so that should help with the population decline issue.
Sorry. But this comment made me think of this:
Anyway? We’re fucked and the game now is to mitigate and adapt.
And yet we must stop climate change instead of making it even worse.
nothing, nothing we do now will stop the warming.
What if (theoretically speaking, because I don’t think we’re close yet) we rolled out carbon-capture technology and implementation on a massive scale? How much useful impact would that have on mitigating CC versus how much of that is still out of our hands?
👆
Also, it would be helpful not to worsen it with some hype, currently AI or to let go of old fossil technology. But there we go.
That’s the thing about climate change.
One place can do everything right…if the other countries in the world doesn’t do the same everyone is fucked regardless.
“Nobody else is doing anything about it so why should we go slightly without and pay slightly more to do our part?”
- pretty much everyone at the same time, unironically.
Also, what you’re doing now will have an effect a decade or more down the road
We’re past the “prevention” phase and have moved on to the “adaption” phase.
We can do both! And call it pre-daptive
It appears that Europe does many things right for sustainability and climate change - public transit over cars, recycling, reducing carbon footprint better compared to other parts of the world.
No. It wasn’t enough by far
There have been many right ideas, but what has actually been done was only a tiny little change, not significant.
Interesting. What are a couple things Europe should do to reduce it’s carbon footprint?
Stop burning things (oil, gas, …).
(Stop does not mean reduce by 3%)Stop producing and buying so many animals for food.
Grow new woods (real large, not tiny).
Europe is already better per capita than most regions. not much point in getting Europeans to cut C02 more when Americans are still driving tanks and burning coal.
Do you blame the US or other polluter nations for Europe’s heatwave?
A time machine
Methinks this needs policy-level changes. There’s only so much we can do individually at this point
Immediate terms: There’s nothing that can be done to curb the heatwave IMO, but there are ways to prevent danger. Namely, AC, cooling centers, public education on preventing heat-related injuries/deaths… Maybe govts can even temporarily reduce regulations/give subsidies on split-systems to help nudge some folks, but nothing much else can be done. One pet-idea I have is cooling centers, since I know Houston (which has extreme weathers) opens cooling/warming centers when the weather is too extreme; it is a very progressive implementation that benefits those who are underprivileged
Slightly longer term: Trees/green spaces always help. Public transit systems always help. Some fairly sweeping changes in climate-related regulation (ease AC regulations, tighten car regulations, tax on pollution, etc), aimed at both reducing danger and improving the climate… or at least recuperate some “pollution tax” so the govt can use the money to plant more trees and build more trains. Also some European countries can do so much better at discouraging car use (or at least switch to EVs) given how good the train networks are; for countries without good train networks, build some
Even longer term: Massive investments in green energy; if they are investing already, invest more. But be practical… temporary solutions like nuclear are not everyone’s cup of tea but they help with the transition. Do better on international collaboration. Find ways to discourage international trading partners from over-polluting (probably a combination of tariffs and negotiations… not my specialty).
Obligatory not an economist/political scientist, there are probably better ways to implement these than what I suggested
Your last point should be first. Europe (and the UK) are reducing their carbon output but our success is dwarfed by the increase in co2 output by China and India. The US has also made no effort to reduce emissions but because industry there is declining it hasn’t increased for a few years. We need to apply a carbon tax to imports from those countries.
You know those reflector screens they put in cars, yeah picture that but enough to cover a continent.
What if the reflective screen is angled towards another planet and signs of life appear?!
I was thinking aiming it back at the sun to give it a taste of its own medicine but your idea works as well.
You can’t prevent them you can only prepare for them mainly with AC. Europe must get on AC or at least have more cooling centers for people.
Build infrastructure to make Europe more heat tolerant.
A lot of what Americans do to deal with the heat, like air conditioning and ice water, need to get adopted in Europe. As for the concern of the energy needed to power air conditioners, most demand generally follows peak solar production. Also, if you install heat pumps instead of normal air conditioners, it will help lower carbon requirements for heating.
The major pollutants are manufacturing, mining, oil and energy production, and animal agriculture. not air conditioners. If we want the rest of the world to stop producing with manufacturing, you’re going to need to create agreements to share your wealth in ways that do not require the exchange of goods. That’s why people over-produce right now. For money. That’s why the world will continue to get hotter for the considerable future. Nobody wants to be the ones to give away our wealth for free. You need to take care of your people and install air conditioners like the rest of the world. Good luck finding somewhere in China without air conditioning.
More green wouldn’t hurt. The city I live in invested heavily in removing green space. Shrubs and plants are nearly all removed and the remaining empty grass fields are continuously cut. Having green space cools the city down, gives shade and helps animals, so how about we plant things and stop cutting everything?
In the USA, we cover everything we can with black asphalt, and those expansive parking lots means you can’t walk anywhere.
The interesting question for the US is “can we be doing anÿhing to make things worse than we already are?”
According to the UN and other organizations: To PREVENT the heatwaves, it is crucial that the amount of CO2 released globally is reduced. All nations need to tighten laws to lower CO2 production. This means you need to VOTE for the right party. To MITIGATE the effects of the heatwaves, countries can do many things: plant trees in towns (as they lower temperatures due to evaporation and shade), improve architecture etc. That may not help too much though, as the intensity and length of the heatwaves will continue to increase over the next decades. So reduction of CO2 released is the best bet.
Build a big ass wall that keeps out the heat, and mexico will pay for it!
The idea we seem to be going with is that we could kill everyone in Europe who isn’t extremely wealthy. Then there will be no one in that region in danger from climate change, and far less pollution globally.
Or we could guillotine the most wealthy in Europe, which would be interesting
Yes, I fully support the genocide of the global top 1%.
