floof.org
I find it hard to care. I don't mean I don't care, but that doing so causes me huge difficulties. I find I can't *partly* care, I either ignore it and try to go about my life, or if I don't ignore it there are almost debilitating levels of depression and anxiety that go with that.
There is pretty well *nothing* I, personally, can do about the global disasters in progress. Pretty much no one can. The oil companies could (hah, some hope!), and probably some other huge corporations, and politicians could, but almost no one else has the resources or power to make a detectable difference - reading the article makes it pretty clear.
Even if I had the money, all I could do is make decisions about what I do. If I owned a house I could decide to put solar panels on the roof or replace the gas boiler with a heat pump system, but read the article - that's going to make almost no difference. (It's *necessary*, but not sufficient - in global terms it would make no difference.) To make a difference we need a government to pass laws mandating change - gas supplies to be banned in 10 years, for example, and organising a massive programme of boiler replacement. Similarly for transport, what we actually need is huge investment in sustainable public transport to reduce car-dependence, rearrangement of land use to make typical journeys shorter (15 minute cities), and replacement of the remaining fossil-powered vehicles with EVs.
I can't do those things. Governments need to do them. All I get to do is cast a vote every few years to choose between several alternatives, most of whom won't do those things and the remaining ones who don't have a hope of getting elected. We also need the voting systems to be changed to make it possible to elect better leaders, but the existing leaders are the ones who control that.
Other than voting, I suppose I could protest. Extinction Rebellion made a good job of that, getting a lot of attention for climate issues. The government's response was to criminalise protest. Great.
So basically there's nothing useful I can do. With that in mind, I'd rather have a few hopeful articles once in a while so that I can occasionally stop being near-suicidally depressed about the situation and feel for a while that maybe, just maybe, those in charge will be able to put self-interest aside long enough to save the humans.
A few weeks ago, Hannah Ritchie published a cheery article in the Guardian announcing that her work as a data scientist has taught her that "there are more reasons for hope than despair about climate change – and why a truly sustainable world is in reach.”Many readers seemed to welcome that sunny outlook, which is understandable. Nobody likes bad news. Nearly everyone prefers hope and optimism.
But here is another opinion piece responding to Ritchie's claims and taking the opposite point of view:
_________________________________Is this a time for optimism or pessimism when it comes to climate change? This is a time for deep, deep pessimism. In this article we will talk about the reasons why pessimism is warranted, and the actions it should prompt humanity to take.
Humanity stands on the brink of at least ten imminent catastrophes. To write that article and present this tone of optimism, the author [Hannah Ritchie] has ignored these imminent catastrophes. Any one of these catastrophes would be terrible. In combination they have the potential to be civilization-ending.
The most obvious catastrophe is a multi-faceted crop failure that cuts global food production to the point where millions of people are dying of starvation.
Another imminent catastrophe is the collapse of the Amazon rainforest.
Another imminent catastrophe is a Blue Ocean Event in the Arctic, closely followed by the collapse of Arctic permafrost.
Another imminent catastrophe is the collapse of major glaciers in Antarctica, which will cause enormous sea level rise.
Another imminent catastrophe is a series of rogue heat waves killing millions of people in places like India, China, Africa, the Middle East, and so on.
Right now, humanity is standing around waiting for these catastrophes to arrive, and then will be dumbstruck when they do – most people lack any awareness of what is coming, and/or they willfully deny it. Meanwhile, we have prominent authors who are telling us that, “there are more reasons for hope than despair about climate change.”
_________________________________The author of this piece, Marshall Brain, goes on to suggest five steps that must be taken now. He then concludes: "These are the kinds of activities that would have a real effect on climate change. We could do all these things, and dozens more. When we see real efforts like these happening, it will be a time for guarded optimism."
FULL ARTICLE -- https://wraltechwire.com/2024/01/12/marshall-brain-this-is-the-worst-possible-time-for-climate-change-optimism/
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAction
Marshall Brain: This is the worst possible time for “climate change optimism” | WRAL TechWire
Editor’s note: Marshall Brain – futurist, inventor, NCSU professor, writer and creator of “How Stuff Works” is a contributor to WRAL TechWire.Marshall Brain (WRAL TechWire)
One of the five things the article says humanity needs to do made me laugh, though.
"Second, we would attach a fee of $1.50 to every gallon of gasoline sold to fund the extraction of its carbon dioxide emissions back out of the atmosphere. We would do the same kind of thing for every pound of coal and every unit of natural gas, and do it globally. This simple step alone would end human emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."
I'm not sure if he means that (a) that is such a huge price hike that people will stop using fossil fuels, or (b) that it'll pay for carbon capture to neutralise the effect of all fossil fuel use.
(a) is laughable; $1.50 per (US) gallon works out to about 30p per litre here in the UK, where petrol costs on the order of £1.50/litre, and we have had price fluctuation larger than 30p in recent years; all that happened then was that people complained about the price of petrol and carried on driving. Attempting to price people out of something they *have* to do doesn't work (and many people *do* have to drive their fossil-powered cars because society requires them to get to places (like work) and there aren't enough EVs for everyone to replace their car immediately, not that most people couldn't afford to do so immediately anyway, and in many places there isn't the alternative of usable public transport).
(b) doesn't seem like it would work either; from all I've read, carbon capture is mostly experimental and small-scale; who knows if it could realistically be scaled up to the point where it could sequester 35 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. And I'm pretty sure it would take many years to scale it up. Far better not to emit it in the first place, which is option (a). So a $1.50/US gallon tax on fossil fuels isn't going to help much, IMO.