• Coreidan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Reduction isn’t enough. We’ve only been successful in exporting our pollution to places like China. We actually haven’t reduced anything because of that fact. We may have reduced pollution here but only at a cost of increasing it some where else.

    With that said co2 emissions today are the highest they’ve ever been. We haven’t slowed anything. Climate change is increasing at an exponential rate. It’s going to keep increasing until we can figure out how to eliminate emissions and reduce what is already in the atmosphere.

    Reality is no matter what reductions we take here the overall emissions in the world is still going up.

    Hate to say it but it’s a little too late. By the time we figure out how to eliminate emissions the world will have burnt to a crisp. The time for aggressive changes was 50 years ago. We’ve already passed the temperature at which run away climate change is possible.

    It’s quite clear our leaders decided to run it all into the ground instead of making an effort to change our way of life.

    • tikitaki@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      instead of making an effort to change our way of life.

      the unfortunate reality is the only way to significantly change carbon emissions in a fast enough time period would essentially mean throwing all of humanity back a couple of centuries in tech and standard of living

      you try being a politician who advocates for this. you’re not gonna get elected

      even worse, convince all the 3rd world countries who are currently developing trying to get their people out of poverty. the chinese have finally gotten the taste for a little bit of meat with their dinner. of course that comes at the cost of mountains of coal being burned.

      you tell those hundreds of millions of people that they need to go back to the farms and eat rice for the climate - meanwhile we got our chance to burn as much coal as we wanted to last century.

      the reality is that we won’t be able to stop climate change. the reality is that we’re going to have to learn to live with it. and we will. climate change will not destroy us. it will destroy many species, will destroy many habitable zones. but we will survive.

      i’m more worried about nuclear war & AI - which i think has a much more acute danger

      • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        It’s not necessarily true that we have to throw humanity back to the 1600s. Nuclear fission could realistically and safely bring out carbon emissions under control and serve as an actually viable load backbone for a renewable grid (as opposed to having giant battery facilities). We can also pivot away from car dependent infrastructure and long-haul trucking in favor of more walkable cities, better public transit, and expanded freight rail networks.