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usern20260720 5 hours ago

oh, yes. Anything but stopping the extraction, trade or combustion of fossil fuels. Even if the workarounds have unforeseen consequences.

dpc050505 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How do you do that without completely messing up the supply chains that keep us fed and alive for the next 6 months? The wealthiest people (who also happen to be ones that are a bit more sheltered from the climatic crisis) will still be able to afford food. Billions of poor people would just starve without petrochemical fertilizers and the diesel required for industrial farming and transportation of food. We could've had a smooth transition a few decades ago. Now it's super late and the choice is short term catastrophe vs long term catastrophe. Do you know how much fossil fuels it takes to build and maintain a wind farm or an electric truck? How much petroleum coke is burnt making the cement to build the towers that make walkable cities possible?

The alternative to fossil fuels and the climate crisis is basically an incredibly deadly and uncomfortable step out of the industrialized world. No one is making that decision. It's a fancy trolley problem where the amount of people on the tracks has 10 figures on both sides and blurry timelines.

Just the increase of gas prices due to the iran war is going to cause some fucked up harvests in africa, south america and asia. The poorest farmers aren't able to afford fertilizers. I have a coworker who has ties in Guinea-bissau. The farmers there are basically getting spitroasted by the combination of climate changed caused droughts messing up their cash crops followed by increased oil prices due to wars they have nothing to do with increasing the price of their agricultural inputs. Your simplistic view on fossil fuels will not keep them alive long enough to see the even worst effects of climate change that are coming. If it was easy to stop emitting greenhouse gases we would've managed to do it 25+ years ago.

__d 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> If it was easy to stop emitting greenhouse gases we would've managed to do it 25+ years ago.

Also, if it weren’t so profitable.

inigyou 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's too late for that. We had to do it 20 years ago. Plus, you and I have no power over fossil fuel extraction, but we do have the individual ability to put sulphur in the upper atmosphere (with effort). Game theory rules everything.

the__alchemist 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sulfur or similar may be more politically viable due to the tradgedy-of-the-commons. They can be enacted without as much consensus, maybe.

A_D_E_P_T 3 hours ago | parent [-]

In Neal Stephenson's novel Termination Shock it was enacted with zero consensus. I think that there are private bodies working on it right now, too.

oytis 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Any solution relying on collective sacrifice is unrealistic IMO. I believe in geoingineering because it's better compatible with how economy works. Either that or we discover a magic abundant non-polluting energy source, but I woldn't rely on that

ahartmetz 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We're already doing it and making progress. It's not instant and we still have delayed consequences to deal with, so short-term fixes also make sense.

oytis 4 hours ago | parent [-]

You can use different metrics for progress, but it looks like world oil consumption has nearly doubled since 2000

jcynix 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Oh, yes, geoengineering, because nothing can go wrong …

Please read the classic book by Edward Tenner: Why Things Bite Back. Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, 1996 (oldie but goldie and must read for people who think technical solutions have no unintended (and irrevocable) consequences Mike eucalyptus trees in California, or the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toad in Australia, among others.

kmeisthax 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Let's say a magical enviro-fascist cabal of superhumans appears tomorrow and are somehow able to completely dismantle and ban all sources of energy that emit large amounts of CO2 while also somehow providing replacement quantities of non-emitting alternatives (e.g. wind, solar, and nuclear).

In this environment we will still need to geoengineer the planet for as long as the carbon we have already burned remains in the atmosphere. We are already way outside the pre-industrial baseline. And carbon capture is very energy-intensive, so no matter how much of our solar energy abundance we put into it, we are going to be geoengineering for decades.

__d 2 hours ago | parent [-]

If it’s only decades, we’ve been very, very lucky.

hiddencost 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Even if we hit carbon neutral tomorrow it's too late.