We aren’t doing enough but we are doing something.

Renewables are up YoY and solar and wind are quickly becoming the predominant deployed energy generators (in the US anyway).

Idk what all the world leaders have & haven’t done, but I know we’ve made great progress in green technology. Compared to 2009, we’re poised to more than double the efficiency of solar panels & the installation price per watt has fallen from $8.50 to $2.77. Bigger, better, better understood…and also cheaper.

This is what you want to see if you want the whole world adopting renewable energy sources.

In Australia we are moving in the right direction towards more energy efficient houses, solar and now batteries. By no means are we close to the low emission society, but 500Pj of renewable electricity generation in a year is not bad, and increasing day by day

Phew

We could eat them. Wdyt?

They actually have studies that show they’d make even more, which makes sense when you realize that the economy is designed to make them richer. They’ve had these studies since the mid '70s. Cruelty and head counts are the point, at this point. They know they’d be better off as well, and are just seeing how many of us they can murder before we do something about it.

If things progress as they are, with accelerating warming, in 20 years the economies start to break down and money can’t buy you things anymore. Making money is over by then.

That’s what’s probably held us back the most.

I see three situations among the affluent that created a substantial delay in any “Green” products becoming a thing faster:

In the first case, someone making money hand over fist. They will let someone else take on the risk of research and development, and getting it off the ground. I’m happy with my stock in BP.

The second case, disgruntled owners of shares in companies forced to “be more green” in some way shape or form, like factories that need some post processing of their waste products, or that need to pay for their waste to be processed or disposed of. “The only thing this ‘save the planet’ nonsense has done, is cost me profits” (or whatever).

The last is driven by the numbers. There’s no way to take the plan to go green and turn it into sales/profits. If someone were to propose any “Green” solution with a business plan that results in them making money, they’re on board, but climate activists aren’t necessarily good with business plans.

I mean, look at what happened with EVs, and solar. As much as I’m personally not a fan of musk, he was willing to take the risk to create Tesla. As soon as he started shipping hundreds of thousands of units at $90k+ each, within a few years, other companies had, at least, HEVs available. Solar panel research is starting to push out some pretty efficient panels, those panels are appearing on big retailers stores to offset costs. Solar companies are buying eachother out, it’s a crazy market. The demand, not just from eco-conscious consumers, but from businesses, has exploded. The reason is that the return on investment of solar is very very clearly laid out. Spend some money putting them in, and you’ll pay less in the long run on electricity. Any retailer with any future vision and roof space would be stupid not to put them in.

If you think about what’s important to these capitalists, and adjust to how risk averse they are, this is all very clear as to why this has been moving so slowly. Fact is, if you can demonstrate that the tech works and show the difference, on paper, for operating costs, you’ll easily have more orders than you can handle for whatever green product you can think of.

The main issue right now is getting physics to work with you, in your favor, to get the thing to work. There are some serious engineering and physics challenges when it comes to most green technologies that usually makes them “not economically viable” aka, they cost more than alternatives. Once we figure out how to make them cost less, you’ll be amazed how fast things change.

Won’t anybody think of the poor shareholders?

its nicely written, but i think ur wrong abt some of these points.

We wanted to eat large amounts of meat every day. We wanted to travel across the world. […] We wanted to have our own personal tanks to drive around in perfect comfort, to use as we wish, to go as we wish. But we wanted it, so we made it so.

Most of this stuff only got popular bc of mass advertising. For example, the idea that bacon & egg makes a good, healthy breakfast was made up and marketed by paying doctors to say its true (look into Edward Bernays). This ofc helped the meat industry sell their dead animals to more ppl. and yet nearly 50% of our food produce is thrown away bc it couldnt be sold. why do they produce so much??

SUVs were heavily marketed to ppl in the US bc theyre classified as “light trucks”, making them not subject to “cafe” (corporate average fuel economy) standards in the US and were therefore cheaper to produce and sell. Look into what cars are around in europe today; most of them are still small, efficient, and safe.

the real issue of this is that corporations have a need to make more money every year. it all needs to keep growing to please their shareholders.

this means more aggressive advertising; more shit nobody really needs has to be sold to those who can barely afford it bc we need to be paid less for them to make more.

capitalism is the real problem here. and it needs to stop. we need an economic system thats based on ppls necessities, not on making the most money (selling the most stuff).

So the bar analogy works, and I hate to agree with an idiot, but when the tab comes due, some people just go to a different bar.

Let’s get off planet.

I live near my workplace and ride a bicycle every day. It keeps my fitness level up, which means I don’t have to pay for a gym membership or take time out of my day for one. If I was in a car, I’d have to pay attention to what other road users are doing and follow the road rules, but I get to have a solitary commute listening to podcasts, with fewer rules. My bike is cheap, all it needs to run is WD-40 and ramen. I never have to worry about gas prices or being scammed by an auto shop or spending attention on how full my gauge is. My bike will keep working even if my home turned into a warzone and there were no supply shipments. I don’t have to feel guilty for giving kids asthma or causing droughts in poor countries.

My bike is better than a car.

This particular joke is from 2009.

So yeah.

God forbid we do something to improve the world without a profit motive.

edit

Even though the profit motive would be healthier people, and happier people, and numerous studies have shown happy, healthy people are far more productive in a orwellian people-as-product labor kind of way.

Owl in disguise

Slightly more complicated than that. It’s also that some countries are way more affected by changes then others. Sure everyone uses fossil fuels but only specific countries export it so you are basically asking a country to cripple itself for you. Same when people suggest we should just not cut down the rainforests. In both cases it would likely be done if other countries paid for it. But right now it’s what you say as well as asking people to handicap themselves

Well it’s more of tragedy of the commons situation than a game of chicken.

How many times do you hear someone say “why should we change if CHINA is going to keep on polluting the air?”

I just counter with, “who’s the leaders of the world? Is China the world leader and we can’t doing anything until they do it first?”

You’re absolutely right. We are driven by evolutionary forces like all life on Earth and that’s just part of being a living being.

I dunno we declared a war on drugs and look how that turned out!

Would the mobilization required to wage war on global warming create more global warming, or worse, a super profitable black market for greenhouse gasses? D:

Lol

That’s just the human condition though.

“Poorer”.

“Everyone”.

You mean the wealthy wouldn’t be as wealthy and everyone else would be subject to strict controls on energy, transportation, and meat consumption. Which describes the lives of our recent ancestors. Air conditioning and heating would be for survival, not comfort. Most people will depend on mass transit and not own cars. And meat becomes a treat you get every now and then. But dairy products and eggs will still be plentiful.

It’s not like we’re going to be eating peanut butter sandwiches and starving while working 3 part time jobs. Unless that’s already your reality. Then it will likely still be your reality because capitalism.

The vast majority of humans could live a perfectly fine, alternative, lifestyle and the planet would be okay.

But we shouldn’t aim for “doable” we should aim for perfection

And the biggest issue is if its even doable.

Right we all didn’t think of that, in that case let’s just keep on overexploiting our finite resources and generate as much short term shareholder value as possible, because we don’t know whether a sustainable approach would even fix some things that are possibly already beyond fixing due to overexploitation and generating short term value in the past.

It’s equivalent to “for no reason” not to “for no cost”

You think preventing climate change is more expensive than not preventing climate change? That’s an interesting point of view. I’m not sure the facts agree with you.

Wildfires that burn down houses and gigantic forests every summer, massive storms that take out coastal cities, that kind of stuff tends to have an expensive price tag attached to it.

It’s easy to forget, but the most effective first step for individuals who want to prevent climate change is: Reduce. And that costs nothing at all. It actually saves money. Of course there are many other things that ought to be done as well, but let’s keep in mind the starting point.

More expensive for the rich, yes. The rest of us want to stop having to pay for things we don’t want through degrading our surrounding environment.

Whoosh.