Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe? - <AUTHOR> It seems to me that governments can be counted out of taking the leadership needed to solve this within 12 years. If anything they seem to want to act against solving this issue in some cases.
So what can we do so our children don't live in some ghastly hothouse world?
The scientists have told us its our final chance.... not to start within 12 years, but solve it within 12 years.
I feel like the young people need to take charge of the world because the older generations have had their chance and not fixed it.
Maybe corporations are the ones who can be pressured to take the lead. <comment><USER3> Fundamentally it is a political problem, not a technological problem. We need high carbon taxes, we need to end fossil fuel subsidies, and we probably need to change our economic system to something that addresses the tragedy of the commons.

But we've seen in recent years how technology can influence politics. I'd quote a tweet from Tristan Harris from the other day [1]:

> In an hypothetical world, if Facebook were re-designed _entirely_ into a > global coordination tool for billions of people to take the most meaningful > and significant steps to fight climate change -- what would it look like?

1: [https://twitter.com/tristanharris/status/1049177712227573760](https://twitter.com/tristanharris/status/1049177712227573760)

<comment><USER4> If we can get renewables cheaper than fossil fuels and get reasonable energy storage politics won't be a problem.

<comment><USER5> This absolutely can be a problem, because infrastructure needs political approval. Worst case is a ban on renewable generation to protect fossil fuel profits, for example.

<comment><USER6> As soon as renewables become more profitable than fossil fuels any (personal) economic incentive politicians have to subsidise the fossil fuel industry will switch to the renewable industry. Even the most corrupt politicians you could imagine are not so hell bent on destroying the planet that they would refuse bribes from their friends in the solar industry.

The real political incentive behind fossil fuel subsidy comes down to technology and economics. The reality is that every nation is dependent on oil and gas and without them their economies would be destroyed. The real reason politicians fear a real push towards cleaner energy is that it will increase energy prices enough to trigger nationwide riots and protests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So I'm honestly not as concerned about this as I once was.

Don't get me wrong: the climate is going to change, arguably we're in a mass extinction event already and people aren't going to suddenly start acting in the collective long term welfare of humanity.

One of the things I like about futurism is the levelheaded optimism and pragmatism you tend to get. And I'll call out Isaac Arthur as a well-known example of this.

Think there's too many people? You can easily show that the world could easily produce enough to feed a population 10 times what we have now in the very near future, thanks largely to automation.

Think we're dumping too much CO2 into the atmosphere? We no doubt are but that problem basically goes away immediately if we ever get economic fusion power. Even if we don't, the plummetting cost of wind and solar may solve that anyway (by "solve" I mean that as soon as non-fossil fuel power production is cheaper than fossil fuels it becomes economic to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and turn into hydrocarbons).

Too expensive to get to space? Eventually the cost of this will go down to dollars per kilogram.

Worried about how we'll produce all that power? When getting stuff into orbit is sufficiently cheap it'll become economic to put solar collectors in orbit and beam energy back to Earth.

And all you need for this kind of optimism is the kind of technology we're widely expected to have this century.

So it's kind of sad that a lot of the larger fauna is doomed but you're not going to change people's appetites for rhino horns, fish bladders, tiger oil or pangolin dishes. Then again, maybe future genetics can restore some or all of those species.

The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now so I have trouble believing the doomsday scenarios of runaway climate change that'll turn the Earth into Venus just because the Earth has been here for 4-5 billion years, has been hotter than now and hasn't become Venus yet. We also seem to have a pretty poor history of predictions when it comes to climate change too.

Fundamentally this also seems like a "betting with the Mayans" type scenario too. Either the doomsayers are right and we're screwed. If so, you'll be right but who cares? We're still screwed. You're probably better off just hoping things will work out because, honestly, I think there's a pretty decent chance they will.

<comment><USER8> > The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now

Key here is rate of change, and what humans can survive. We are changing the climate many many times faster than ever before. Nature does not have the time to adapt. And the wars, famines and mass displacements coming from ecosystem collapse is like nothing we've seen in human history. Think we have a problem with a few million migrants? Try a billion or two!

P-T Extinction event "The Great Dying" took on the order of 100 000 years to elevate CO2 and still killed off 96% of marine species and 70% of land vertebrates. The largest mass extinction ever(?) We're going strong in that direction over a few hundred years.

And a very hot earth will have large areas that are not survivable by humans, by traditional crops and food animals, and so on. Storms and floods massively more powerful than we see today.

Frankly, how can you not be afraid of that future? It's very likely your descendants won't survive it.

<comment><USER9> Earth will be fine.

Life on Earth will be fine, but that life will be different to the life we have today.

The only thing not fine is whether humans survive what they/we ultimately have brought about.

But in there is a kind of beautiful justice that the universe has in it's self-correcting algorithm... if you create imbalance, the imbalance will correct in time but perhaps to do so it kills you.

If we care about the human race, it means to care about the whole ecosystem and all other life on Earth. But the evidence of behaviour by people and governments is that they only care for themselves as individuals and not the wider human race, and other life on Earth.

I no longer see hope for significant change in the behaviour of humans, and I've shifted my view to believing that what is needed to provide massively long-term stability in the ecosystem for life on Earth is another mass extinction that includes humans.

Which sounds depressing, but doesn't feel it. I'm positive about life on Earth, just not about humans.

<comment><USER10> Humans are the ultimate adapters. Heck, we can survive in the vacuum of space, the highest peaks and some of the lowest parts of the ocean. We live in deserts and rain forests and tundra and remote islands.

Humans will survive. They will adapt. It may not be in the same numbers and lifestyle as today, but the human race will likely be here for a very long time.

<comment><USER11> Human _societies_ can have individuals doing all that. Stable, large societies. The astronauts can survive in the vacuum of space because of technology, and they can get to space because of technology - technology that is backed by _hundreds of thousands of people_ all across the greater economic machine that built the rocket and the space suits, and supplied and fed everyone involved.

As individuals, we're not much more interesting than any other animal. It's our technological civilization that makes us interesting in the grand scheme of things, and that civilization is both hard to bootstrap and extremely fragile.

<comment><USER10> Without our technology, we can still run farther and longer than any other species, use our delicate fingers and opposable thumbs, control fire, and make and use tools and solve relatively complex puzzles. As a species, without our tech, we are head and shoulders above most species.

<comment><USER11> Sort of. But fire and tools are technology, the very lowest tier. Our ability to stack technology, to use tools to build better tools, is what makes us interesting - as long as we actually make use of this ability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well, having done some research into this recently, the tech world has something it can do right now. Switch to sustainably powered Cloud and move to renewably powered/offset Data Centres.

e.g. Google (100% carbon neutral), Azure (100% offset), AWS (Oregon, Montreal, Ireland, Frankfurt regions are 100% carbon neutral)

Cloud/Data Centres emit around 2% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (bet you didn't know that).

There is also research showing that we're going to increase our Data Centre usage by 5x in the next 7 years.

So change that 2% to something much much higher... because that much compute requires that much more energy and we don't have the worldwide renewables infrastructure at scale to cope with the extra capacity.

[https://bit.ly/2024wp](https://bit.ly/2024wp)

[https://www.change.org/p/sustainable-servers- by-2024](https://www.change.org/p/sustainable-servers-by-2024)

* Sign the pledge please * (if you agree with it of course)

It's almost the simplest thing we can easily do, and it should put pressure on tech companies to switch to renewables.

If we believe the tech industry is an innovator and a force for good, why not start with the means of production - the energy industry?

Sign up... switch... go!

PS I wrote the whitepaper with Anne Currie - we have not been paid for the work and was entirely voluntary. I used to work for AWS up until June this year.

<comment><USER13> I wonder what percentage of CO2 comes from programmers commuting to work.

<comment><USER14> Go remote! the planet, along with your family, sanity, and happiness will thank you!

Every working programmer today can stand up, walk to their boss' desk, and have the conversation about going remote, even if only part time (for now). If they say no, ask how you can work towards that in the future, and if they don't relent, find a different job (don't immediately quit, obviously; now you have leverage in knowing that you want another job, but don't need it quite yet). When doing your job search, the first question you should ask is, "is the position remote friendly?"

Let's change the industry's culture from the ground up.

<comment><USER15> Stupid question; when saying 'go remote' you mean working from home right?

<comment><USER16> Essentially, but the joy of working remote is being able to work whenever you happen to be, whether it be on the road (I thought I saw an article about this but I fail to remember the author) or in your home office

<comment><USER14> This is a great point. This summer, I took my family for a week of beaching, boating, and snorkeling. I also worked the full week ... of course my boss knew what was up, as I'm up front about everything. But it was great being able to just modify my schedule, go snorkeling in the morning, come back, work, dinner, and then work a few more hours at night. All you gotta do is make sure that the place you're staying has wifi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In my opinion, the large corporations behind fossil fuels have too much of an economic clout. The governments around the world are dependent on them for a considerable amount of their respective national economy. So yes you are right about government not doing much about this.

Ultimately, unless there is a relatively quick mass extinction event, no government is going to be bothered into action. Climate change and the devastation it's going to cause, is going to play out slowly over the years. The most affected would be the poorest of the world. They are going to die first. The rich will have enough resources to be able to not only survive, but also thrive on these events as new business opportunities are going to be created.

Ultimately, Earth maybe a very different place 100 years from now, but the rich of today are surely going to have their descendants living quite comfortably.

The only thing an individual can do is to strive to get as rich as possible, because that is the only security that's going to save you and your family in the bleak future that lies ahead of us.

<comment><USER18> In democracies we can't all just throw up our hands and blame it on the political class and big business. If the ordinary people of the developed world really wanted something done about it, as a higher priority than anything else, there is no gun held to their heads preventing them from voting for that. We are all benefiting hugely from the cheap energy reaped from fossil fuels, whether we like it or not, and in the main the fact is we like it.

Imagining that 'large corporations' are reaping all the benefits and could bear all the cost of weaning the global economy off fossil fuels is jaw droppingly naive. The massive costs of weaning ourselves off fossil fuels would bear down heavily on all of us, and especially the poor and the third world. Can we imagine China elevating hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the last 30 years without fossil fuels?

I'm no climate change denier, far from it. You're quite right that the costs will be severe, even catastrophic, but there is no easy answer to this.

<comment><USER19> Indeed, there's no gun to our heads preventing us voting for taking serious action on climate change. There doesn't need to be.

Imagine I'm a voter in, say, the US or the UK. There is no major party I can vote for that will, if elected, take serious action on climate change. In both nations there is a Green Party which probably would, but it has a firmly established track record of getting approximately zero votes; the only way in which voting Green has ever had any visible impact on US or UK policy is that a bunch of people voting for Ralph Nader in the 2000 US presidential election is part of why we had President Bush instead of President Gore, which is probably not an encouraging precedent to most potential Green voters.

And, of course, voting Green also means voting for all their other policies. Which doesn't matter if you regard climate change as the _only important issue_ , but since you probably don't, you might find them unacceptable on other grounds; and since lots of other voters definitely don't, lots of them are going to be voting not-Green even if they care a lot about climate change ... which means that, once again, the Greens are not actually going to win, and the only real effect of voting for them is to give you less influence on which actually-electable candidate wins instead.

So no, in practice we _don 't_ have the option of voting for taking serious action on climate change. We have the option of voting for a big package of things, one of which happens to be serious action on climate change, in the knowledge that (even if a sizeable majority of voters wants serious action on climate change) voting for that package won't actually result in a government that will try to implement it.

It may be that those of us who care about climate change _should_ be voting Green even though it predictably won't help in the near future, in order to "send a message" that might change the political landscape in future elections. Or that we should be putting pressure on the actually-electable parties to change their policies, or starting new parties, or something. But none of that means that we have a realistic way of getting action on climate change just by voting for it.

<comment><USER20> This isn't how policy making works though.

An excellent example is Brexit. The Brexit referendum existed solely because of UKIP and UKIP have only ever won 2 parliamentary seats. And those were both for sitting MPs that had defected.

However, UKIP did get 4-odd million votes, plenty of local councillors, MEPs etc. In other words, they clearly had a lot of support for their flagship policies and that caused the main parties, that had UKIP voters in their constituencies, to take notice. Unfortunately.

This has also, to a lesser extent, been the case with green issues. The Greens increased their vote from the 80's onwards and the main parties started to adopt green policies accordingly.

So, in the UK at least, there are well worn paths to get policies, like climate change action, to the top of the heap.

I'd argue that there are a few reasons why they're not top of the heap today:

1) Other things are deemed more important. Clearly Brexit is one. Whether you agree that it should be more important, or not, it's fairly undeniable that it's true.

2) The folk that have expressed most interest in green issues have tended to not be very engaged in formal politics. <30s predominantly. That changed somewhat in the 2017 election primarily because of Corbyn (though Greens did particularly badly). So it may be that green issues become more important as a byproduct of other changes.

3) There's a strong argument that UKIP's popularity was, in large part, due to Nigel Farage. He may well be a cock but he's a cock that was on TV a lot reinforcing his message. I mean, I like Sian Berry (no idea who the other bloke is) but she's no Nigel Farage.

<comment><USER21> This is a good analysis of the situation.

>(no idea who the other bloke is) Jonathan Bartley [0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Bartley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Bartley)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Don't wait for others to do things or take decisions. That's going to be an uphill battle if you really want changes quicker. Start with yourself, and then push others (including friends, family, colleagues, corporations, politicians, etc.). A lot can be done if people take up changes on their own instead of waiting for politicians or corporations or "those other polluting countries" to "just do something" about it.

Here are a few things you can do yourself and encourage those you know personally to follow:

1\. Eliminate/reduce throwing or wasting food. Don't buy anything you wouldn't finish eating.

2\. Eat only plants, or make plants the largest part of your meals while eliminating or reducing the consumption of animal products. Make sure you read up on nutrition and/or join some support groups.

3\. Walk as much as possible and avoid fossil fuel based transport for yourself. Or try cycling. If necessary, take public transport.

4\. Promote and use renewable sources of energy, like solar and/or wind, wherever possible.

5\. Have fewer children or delay have children a little bit. This may have some other side effects depending on where you live and how the population demographic looks like.

If you think of yourself as committed to this cause and yet you see issues or barriers with the above, that's only a sign of how these things seem impossible to others who don't care enough. Work with (and on) yourself first.

Don't be shocked or surprised: _you will_ see a whole lot of apathy all around you. People will even try to discourage you from doing anything and try to convince you that whatever you do just doesn't matter. Stop looking at them or listening to them.

<comment><USER23> > Have fewer children...think of yourself as committed to this cause...People > will even try to discourage you...Stop looking at them or listening to them.

This sounds a lot like a cult religion to me.

<comment><USER24> There's no way we're going to make a meaningful positive impact on the climate without doing things that make people uncomfortable. The sooner we start, the less dramatic that discomfort will be

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I like polar bears so it's sad to see those go. It will be disturbing to see coastal cities founded next to sunken cities. Storms are fun but only when they're occasional. I already miss the insects.

We worry about losing languages, cultures, artwork to the unyielding entropic horror named time. Not because we have a pragmatic need for them. But the future is scary when you can't bring the past with you. My culture is my security blanket.

Maybe my kids are going to grow up in a world not defined by technology but by the change in daily regimen of existence. Humans adapt really well to just about anything, so I bet my kids will feel right at home. They'll roll their eyes on cue when I insist that the future wasn't supposed to be like this.

I've always kind of wondered how someone as liberal as me can possibly turn into an old curmudgeon. Maybe this is how. Maybe I'll be disquieted not by being overrun by the creep of new gadgets, but by looking around and seeing a completely foreign anthroposphere.

<comment><USER26> Polar bear populations are fine, sea level had been rising at the same rate for much longer than we've been industrialized, storm rate isn't changing, and where do you live that there are no insects?

<comment><USER27> Polar bears can swim all summer while they wait for the ice to return.

<comment><USER28> I'd be surprised if you have any evidence for this. Adult bears can swim surprisingly long (many days, not months), but cubs cannot and die.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Well, we _could_ build a world where the majority of people:

* Live in a very well insulated flat in the city that isn't made of concrete

* Have meat and dairy only as a luxury item

* Use solar and wind power for your heat pump and AC

* Ride a bike or walk to work, or take electrically-powered public transport

* Use non-luxurious sea transport to go on foreign holidays

we'd be about there. But boiling today's young people for the sake of cheap gas has proven more politically feasible.

<comment><USER30> People on HN seem to believe the default state of humanity is driving everywhere and living in the suburbs, when that's only true in particular parts of the US for the last 80 years or so. A frequent question I see about not owning a car is "well how could I possibly get groceries otherwise??" The only way we can address our individual footprint and our isolation crisis is to build real towns and cities again, but I'm doubtful.

Don't have a lot of hope for this one, people are willing to tell others to change their patterns but will rarely change their own. That way, you get woke points but don't have to do anything. Plus that Tesla looks GREAT in the driveway, especially when you consider that climate change is all everyone else's fault.

<comment><USER29> "People on HN", to me, seems like it should be "People in the US".

There are plenty of urbanists on HN. Anecdotal, but I swear if I post something like "your free parking is just welfare for car owners" it will be upvoted most of my workday, and then downvoted as Americans come online. But I don't have hard data for this (wonder if HN has a way to pull the comment score history over time...)

For what it's worth, my Brompton looks pretty cool at my desk, too, but that's less visible.

And yeah, all new cities are garbage. Absolute dystopian nightmares of design where letting your three year old play in the street is a death sentence. Never mind that when cars were new a NYC judge decried the possibility of kids being banished from playing in the streets, which of course was perfectly normal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Maybe corporations are the ones who can be pressured to take the lead.

Yes. They absolutely will. But only after they have the right incentives. Those incentives can be created over night by having governments put in place a carbon tax.

It gets even worse. If a large group of people reduced their energy consumption to help climate change it has the consequence of reducing demand and therefore energy costs will come down. That will make green energy cost uncompetitive and slow down the transition to green fuels.

This change really does need to come from government. So get politically involved.

<comment><USER32> Haha, sure! :D Carbon tax. Sounds legit! Here's what's gonna happen: Corporations just jack up prices accross the board according to the tax, and then everybody else gets to pay. And then nothing changes. It'll be like the sugar tax in Norway. Do you really think people are buying less sugar over here because of it? Get real! :D We're well past incentives. The change has to be law, and the law has to be protected with the threat of force. (Force sounds so much better than violence, don't you think, but all this is gonna end in the latter, eventually, if we just let it slide, because when people get hungry, they also get desperate.) And where people don't respect the law, force has to be actually used. However, nobody in their right mind is willing to do that as long as we're boiling frogs... So I guess we'll just die then. We had a pretty good run, though. :)

<comment><USER33> > It'll be like the sugar tax in Norway. Do you really think people are buying > less sugar over here because of it? Get real!

I can't speak for Norway, but in the UK the sugar tax has had a huge impact - a _majority_ of soft drink manufacturers have significantly reduced sugar in their products, to avoid them becoming unaffordable, and it's had a very noticeable effect.

The UK tax is still pretty new so it's difficult to get hard numbers on that, but sugar taxes in general are fairly well studied and have been very effective worldwide. [https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2018.603](https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2018.603) has a good summary, some highlights:

* "Overall 21.6% decrease in the monthly purchased volume of the higher taxed, sugary soft drinks"

* "People living in Philadelphia were 40% less likely to report consuming sugary drinks every day after the tax policy"

* "Mexico's 10% tax on sugar-sweetened beverages implemented in January 2014 is said to have led to a 5.5% drop in sugary drinks purchases by the end of that year and a further 9.7% fall in sales in 2015, yielding an average reduction of 7.6% over the study two-year period"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> We are past the point where we we can fix this with discussions & civil discourse. Not to say that we shouldn't try. But a leaflet campaigns and discussions aren't going to reduce emissions. The best solution would be not to have kids (too late for me) and adopt instead if you must, not to own a car, try to own as little as you can (it will make you happier too). Plant stuff, pick up gardening, go offline and go outside to reconnect with where you come from. Anything that contains batteries is probably toxic. Most shit we don't need we just are brainwashed into thinking we do.

An interesting read is _Technological Slavery The Collected Writings Of Theodore J. Kaczynski, A.k.a. ' The Unabomber'_ which has been mentioned in Bill Joy's famous post _" Why the Future doesn't Need Us"_ and my guess is that despite his infamy he might be heralded as some kind of _" hero"_ in 50-100 years time.

Humans and society is in deeper in trouble than we think and stand "no chance of being saved". If you are of sound mental state, I suggest Thomas Ligotti's "The Conspiracy against the Human Race"

[https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/](https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/)

[https://archive.org/details/TechnologicalSlaveryTheCollected...](https://archive.org/details/TechnologicalSlaveryTheCollectedWritingsOfTheodoreJ.KaczynskiA.k.a.TheUnabomber/)

[https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-against-Human-Race- Contriv...](https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-against-Human-Race- Contrivance/dp/0984480277)

<comment><USER35> Personally, I don't feel like me rescinding my earthly possessions and refusing to procreate will do anything to help anyone, other than maybe quench my own conscience.

That whole approach is referred to as hair-shirt environmentalism, I believe. Bruce Sterling once observed that if you're trying to combat Climate Change solely by minimizing your individual impact, the logical conclusion would be to stop living altogether.

<comment><USER36> No, of course not, you just need to convince others that it's good for _them_ to do it. It's like elections: your single vote is nearly worthless, convincing others to vote the way you want is not.

Although I believe what GP meant is that nothing _anyone_ can do will improve the situation, so do what you can to prepare, e.g. learning to grow vegetables would be quite useful in case of food shortages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Practically speaking, the single biggest area of low hanging fruit is clean shipping. Right now the largest 15 cargo ships emit more greenhouse gasses than all the cars on the road combined. The US could take the lead on this issue by modifying the Jones Act, a peculiar piece of legislation that forces maritime commerce between US territories to use US ships with an American crew. If the Jones Act were modified to include incentives for zero emission ships it would heavily incentive investment in this critical area. This single change in legislation would reduce the cost of goods and services in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, increase trade, and provide a powerful economic carrot to reduce carbon emissions.

<comment><USER38> The largest 15 cargo ships emit more sulphuric dioxide than all the cars on the road combined. That is not a greenhouse gas, and actually has a cooling effect, although it's not healthy locally.

<comment><USER37> So I looked into this more and you're right that it's sulphuric dioxide that I was thinking of. CO2 emissions from shipping are 800m tons per year and, if taken alone, would constitute the 6th heaviest source of carbon emissions in the world.

<comment><USER38> How are you dividing up other sources such that shipping would be the 6th heaviest source? At roughly 2% of total global emissions, it seems like you'd have to lump other sources together in a strange way to come up with that ranking.

For example, looking at: [https://www.c2es.org/content/international- emissions/](https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/)

Taking shipping as a separate thing, it would rank 7th in the chart of total emissions and 6th in the chart of energy-related emissions, but only because those charts only contain 6 and 5 entries respectively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Give money to Democratic candidates challenging Republican incumbents, right now.

If we believe in evidence-based science, then all evidence points to Republicans being anti-science. You don't have to be a committed lifelong Democrat to see that the current Republican party is fighting climate change efforts at every turn and needs to be displaced in order for political progress on the issue to happen.

<comment><USER40> > If we believe in evidence-based science, then all evidence points to > Republicans being anti-science.

I am conservative and tend to lean-republican. I am not anti-science. Please stop generalizing.

<comment><USER41> I'm not saying you personally are anti-science, but Gallup surveys in 2018 point to 35% of Republicans believing that global warming is caused by human activities vs. 89% of Democrats. [0]

It's difficult to attribute something as vague as pro or anti science to a large group of people. I wouldn't want to get into that flame war on HN. However, OP has a point that Democrats are more likely to be concerned about the real impact of climate change.

[0] [https://news.gallup.com/poll/231530/global-warming- concern-s...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/231530/global-warming-concern- steady-despite-partisan-shifts.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe? Start an economical catastrophe.

We need to immediately, and meaningfully, move away from oil, gas, and other carbon heavy industries in any way that we presently have the means to do so.

If everyone who is presently in the market for a new vehicle could afford to buy an electric one, we'd probably be in better shape. If every household could put solar panels and take a load off of the grid, we would be moving in the right direction.

The problem is these technologies are new, and expensive, and they can't be effective at solving the problem they set out to solve without mass adoption.

Mass adoption won't even _begin_ to happen until the average person can pick up a used Model 3 for around $10k. Where populations heavily use mopeds and motorcycles we need a flood of affordable electric alternatives. Both of those scenarios are at least a decade out.

If we need to solve this in 12 years we're screwed. Best bet is to move somewhere cold and inland. Then at least you can be somewhat comfortable while the whole thing goes down. Although the process of moving the world's economy away from oil (to whatever extent that can be achieved while still producing plastics etc.) is going to make life miserable no matter where you are.

<comment><USER43> Electric cars tend to put out less CO2 compared to gasoline cars only if you drive them for more than 5 years and don't replace the battery.

[https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cl...](https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cleaner- Cars-from-Cradle-to-Grave-full-report.pdf)

And yes, 12 years is nothing. Countries could start replacing all cars with electric ones for free right now, CO2 would just go higher and higher.

The answer to this environmental catastrophe is not manufacturing new cars. If we would have stopped buying and using cars 40 years ago...

[https://mayerhillman.com/transport/key- publications/](https://mayerhillman.com/transport/key-publications/)

<comment><USER44> > Countries could start replacing all cars with electric ones for free right > now, CO2 would just go higher and higher.

How?

I wish people would stop fixating on this magical 12 years figure. It's not a countdown. If we keep our current carbon emissions the same for 12 years we'll see 2 degrees of warming. If we do nothing. If we continue to do nothing after that point it doesn't stay at 2 degrees. It gets hotter and hotter, and the effects get worse and worse. If countries start replacing cars with electric ones for free now, and we still don't reach zero emissions in 12 years, we might see 2 degrees. But we might avoid 3 degrees, or 4 degrees.

We don't have 12 years left and then game over. We have 12 years until things start to get really bad. And then the UN will come out and say we have 12 years left to act to avoid 3 degrees, and we'll all have these same fucking stupid arguments on the internet again in between news bulletins about famine and the various migrant crises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I wrote a trilogy of long posts on this topic very recently so I'll just link to that.

[https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as- a-t...](https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as-a- technologist-part-1/)

In summary, it's not somebody else's problem. It's our problem and we need to take responsibility and fix it. We already have all the core technology required to solve this and we just need to make it happen. Everyone can help, particularly the talented crowd on here.

<comment><USER46> > Everyone can help, particularly the talented crowd on here.

I've been thinking about that for a while, is it possible to have a positive impact on the environment writing software?

<comment><USER47> Bret Victor wrote on the subject: [http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/)

<comment><USER45> This was the main inspiration for the posts and I refer back to it. Software is everywhere and can absolutely make a difference. Hopefully this will inspire others too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> super-serial I've mentioned it here before, but my favorite is crushing and spreading olivine rocks: [http://www.innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/oli...](http://www.innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/olivineagainstclimatechange23.pdf)

It's a natural process and we just have to mine as many rocks as we dig up oil. We just need to catch up for the last few hundred years where we only dug up oil and no rocks. Just US $200 billion per year to offset all of humanity's carbon emissions. If I was a billionaire I'd already have started developing robots to mine and grind up rocks for accelerated weathering.

</comment><comment><USER48> Don't forget that the small things add up -- small things on their own won't change the world, but they change the lifestyle of one family at a time, and it helps both a little in the short run, and more as children raised in climate-aware homes grow up. If everyone starts making small changes, it will change demand, which changes markets, which changes politics.

Some small examples:

Walk to the grocery store every other day instead of driving once a week.

Use mass transit. Recycle. Use products made from renewable, recyclable materials.

Go ahead and put up a solar electric system, even if the costs aren't perfect, nor is the tech, or even always the carbon offset.... but it moves demand in the right direction and sends a message.

Turn down your heat in the winter, and your AC in the summer. Turn lights off when you leave a room. Be aware of your energy burn. As another commenter said, don't write or use cryptocurrency.

Produce and buy local goods.

And for cryin' out loud -- VOTE, for people who will be on the right side of this issue.

<comment><USER49> Walking to the grocery store means you live within walking distance. That means zoning codes that allow a grocery store in your neighborhood. Most do not allow that.

<comment><USER48> True, but "Walking distance" is a nebulous measurement at best. How far can you walk? I walk 1.5 miles to my grocery store. Most of my neighbors say that is not within walking distance, but clearly that is a personal judgement, because I do it. And if we are talking about what changes we can make to our lives, expanding your perspective on "walking distance" is not a bad place to start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> The collapse of the dynamically stable climate on which agricultural civilisation is founded is vanishingly unlikely to be prevented at this stage - no-one has ever even outlined, let alone detailed, even one remotely plausible political route from business-as-usual to where we need to be. As others here note, it's fundamentally a problem of world politics, howevermuch a proportion of HN readership may wish to suck at the corner of their technological comfort blanket. As we have no meaningful world polity, it's unsolvable. Our civilisation will almost certainly descend into chaos & war as the early effects of climate collapse roll in this century. Look at the convulsions flowing from a tiny trickle of refugees into Europe in 2015-16. That was barely a taste of what's to come.

It's hardly surprising - nothing in H. Sapiens' constellation of seemingly unique traits (cognitive flexibility, sociality, cultural transmission through language etc) equips it to make collective decisions on a global scale. It's kind of telling that just as it's becoming most blindingly obvious that all our major challenges are planetary, there is a general retreat from commitment to global decision-making. We're not adequate to to the task. This isn't anyone's fault - it's just biology.

<comment><USER43> I like this comment a lot. Got goosebumps reading it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> To solve this crisis in 12 years would require overthrowing the government of every country with an industrial base and replacing them with much more progressive people. You can try if you want but I don't see it happening. As far as actually convincing people of global warming, the older generation will absolutely never believe it no matter how much evidence you present. They are truly lost. Change will only be possible after they have died. This is going to be a sad, tragic period in human history, and nobody in the future is going to understand why we made such self destructive decisions. It will pass though. Hundreds of years from now the climate will slowly begin to return to normal. Despite the fact that the fight is hopeless, though, I'll continue to try.

<comment><USER4> I don't think the result would be good. All that would do is destabilise the world crash our economies and set back our green tech.

<comment><USER27> Crashing the economy has historically been the most efficient way of reducing CO2 production.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure. It might wind things back a bit for a short time. But during a time of economic down turn the environment becomes a low priority for a lot of people. Then when things recover there is no guarantee that things will be done any better. I'm of the opinion that we need stable governments and economies to tackle this problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> The definition of terms becomes critical here. "Catastrophe" is an alarming word. If 25% of the human population died, it would certainly be a catastrophe. But the planet would still be around. Humans would still be around. A thousand years from now, it _might_ be remembered as "that really bad time"

Planet-scale change is truly Brobdingnagian. Anything in your life is insignificant compared to that. You have to frame this discussion before you even begin. Are you talking about stuff you can do that you can see the result of? Or are you talking about stuff you can do that will make things look different a thousand years from now? The first one is doable. The second one? We've had tens of billions of people live on this planet. I don't know of any that managed that. Maybe a dozen or so?

If I wanted to enact change, I would create acceptance criteria before I started. Am I in this to feel good? To change my local government to do X? And so forth. If your goal is something like "I want the world to be a better place!" then that's a great goal, but it's a feeling, not a goal. Goals you can measure. Goals have numbers and measurement criteria.

If you just want to be upset and vent, fine. That's a perfectly fine thing to do. After all, things suck. A lot of things suck. It's actually a more honest and healthy goal than any of the others I've discussed. We are a social species. We adapt through conversation and persuasion.

</comment><comment><USER53> We should focus our efforts where there is the most bang per buck:

\- Cleaner energy for developing countries, esp. China and India. Pay for their solar panels, to prevent new coal plants.

\- Research clean energy technology — solar, wind, hydroelectric. Drive maximum efficiency, and minimum cost.

\- Raise awareness worldwide. Keep talking.

This documentary was informative: [https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/an_inconvenient_sequel_trut...](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/an_inconvenient_sequel_truth_to_power/) (2017, 10 years after the original)

2018: [https://www.eco-business.com/news/coal-is-in-decline- globall...](https://www.eco-business.com/news/coal-is-in-decline-globally-but- asia-is-driving-new-plant-development/)

</comment><comment><USER54> Related question: where could one find jobs related to climate change efforts? beyond walking, eating less meat, etc I might want to put my working hours in as well, but no idea who/what to look for.

<comment><USER55> That's actually something I want to know as well. I would like to work as a Developer to do good in the sense of avoiding climate change or saving nature. That's hard to find!

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Geoengineering: [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05357-w](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05357-w)

[https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/a38zve/watch-the- trailer...](https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/a38zve/watch-the-trailer-for- vice-on-hbos-engineering-earth)

</comment><comment><USER57> The only solution to rapid reduction in co2 emissions that can be deployed right now at sufficient scale is nuclear.

There are passively safe designs built right now.

It can provide electricity, heat and desalination if lack of water is an issue.

There is enough nuclear fuel in sea water to consider it an infinite source as far as humans are concerned [1].

Further, USA alone can be powered by its existing nuclear _waste_ for many years.

Surprisingly, nuclear is almost never mentioned as an option.

[1[https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel- from-t...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea)

<comment><USER58> Nuclear still costs far to much vs Wind and Solar.

If all greenhouse gases came from electricity generation then doing the France model might work, but it's much better to cheaply go 95+% renewable and use the savings to cut down on transportation and home heating etc.

PS: Grid scale solar is rapidly hitting 2 cents per kWh in sunny places. Nothing else is anywhere near competing with that.

<comment><USER57> If you factor in cost of storage required to provide continuous power, then you get way more expensive and less reliable. Now this problem is solved by, surprise, fossil fuels. [0]

Ofcourse solar is cheaper when it is sunny, provider might even need to pay consumer to get them to consume. [1]

[0] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/15...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/15/solar- and-wind-lock-in-fossil-fuels-that-makes-saving-the-climate-harder-slower- more-expensive/)

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/renewable-power-germany- nega...](https://www.businessinsider.com/renewable-power-germany-negative- electricity-cost-2017-12/?IR=T)

<comment><USER58> Continuous aka base-load power is considered a defect as it's not load following. You can load follow with nuclear but then it becomes ridiculously expensive. France gets around this largely by buying and selling to other countries, but that does not scale.

Really, going 100% nuclear takes either massive over supply or large scale energy storage just like solar. Wind however can supplement solar while still costing less than nuclear and allowing you to more closely match the demand curve.

A little peaking power allows you to avoid significant grid storage at very reasonable costs, and as I said fix transportation etc.

PS: The need for grid electricity storage is overblown. Storing energy for more than 1 day means you very rarely use that stored energy making in non- viable. When you can have 2x as much solar and still only pay 4c/kwh that's pointless. Within the day it needs to compete with an over supply of energy most of the time.

<comment><USER57> We are comparing two energy sources: one where output depends on the weather, and can go to near 0 another where output is strictly predictable but takes time to change.

Option 2 have the problem of oversupply and undersupply. This forces either storage or fossil fuels in the picture.

Option 1, however, only deals with oversupply, which does not require expensive mitigations.

Not obvious why option 2 is preferable here

<comment><USER58> First, you can go off grid using 100% solar and a relatively small battery system as long as you get enough solar cells. The reason this works is your daytime input never drops to 0 and it's generally lower when you need less energy for AC systems.

In terms of the grid, Wind and solar really can't go to 0 over large areas. The minimum vs maximum output shows high variance, but maximum output is largely irrelevant. Really what you care about is minimum vs average output and that's more narrow band than you might think. Even better by locating Wind / Solar you can more closely match your daily demand curve.

Option 1, costs far more per kWh even if you can use every kWh, it's just get's worse from there. As it still needs over supply as power plants need occasional maintenance and the grid maximum and minimum demand over a year are wildly separated. You can setup maintenance around peak annual demands, but even then you will have occasional unexpected shutdowns.

<comment><USER57> Majority of energy consumption and population happens in cities / industry, so if we are talking significant co2 soonest, we should really focus on these.

For large consumers like these to go solar/wind, you will have to really over- provision solar/wind so that minimum possible power output is still enough. (Calm night, anyone?) This looks highly inefficient and tough to predict.

Whereas nuclear can and are already operating in load following mode routinely: [1]

[1] [http://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea- news-29-2-loa...](http://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea- news-29-2-load-following-e.pdf)

<comment><USER58> First, most city's have a lot of space for solar and can easily import wind power. ~66w/m2 average over 24 hours is 66 MW per km^2 / the percentage covered in panels and really adds up.

Wind really can't be calm for long periods over large areas because large areas will always have temperatures differences.

It's like saying what if the sun does not rise tomorrow? If that's actually happening you have much bigger problems.

Load following nuclear power plants become even more expensive. Not a huge deal on nuclear subs, but a major issue for civilian infrastructure. Just like energy storage they simply increase the cost of energy above alternatives.

PS: Now if you could get nuclear without any form of subsides down to about 2.5c/kWh then running 24/7 or peaking power with average load's of around 30% down at around 8c/kWh then I would agree it had a major place. But, it's just no where near those numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> _> Maybe corporations are the ones who can be pressured to take the lead._

Yep. We need to somehow put pressure on every polluting institution (corporations, militaries, and so on) to either radically change or stop existing. Individual action won't work.

Here are some companies to start with: [https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable- business/2017/jul/10...](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable- business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors- responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change)

</comment><comment><USER60> The first thing we need to do is change the marketing strategy. It should be "Save the people" rather than "Save the planet" or "Stop Climate Change".

The goal is saving the people, the method to do so is stopping climate change.

</comment><comment><USER61> When talking about climate change it is important to remember that climate on earth is pretty bad already and we need to learn to control it anyway.

High (~5km) solar updraft towers look like a very promising way to do it.

In addition to generating electricity they can generate rain, prevent storms by reducing the amount of energy in the atmosphere, and reduce the temperature by improving the convection.

Large number of such towers will give us fine grained control over the climate, and reduce the rise of sea level by moving a large part of the water to groundwater in the deserts.

<comment><USER62> I would love to see Australia take the lead on this.

It's a majestic notion and we should be trying it right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Among other things, stop using cryptocurrencies.

<comment> dane-pgp Should we also stop using cars given that walking exists, or stop using computers when we could use a pencil and paper? Is there an amount of energy that the traditional banking system could use beyond which you would recommend people stop using banks?

You may not think that cryptocurrencies provide any benefit to the world (and I admit that I don't own any either), but their energy usage should be evaluated like any other technology or asset: Does the energy they require cost more than the amount of value they create in the market? If it did, then no one would mine cryptocurrencies.

The market value for cryptocurrencies may seem irrational to you, but there are probably lots of things that people value that seems irrational or unnecessary to outside observers. I personally think that a global, low-cost, uncensored means of transacting between strangers is revolutionary, and I look forward to future innovations that will make it more energy efficient (for the same level of usefulness and security).

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> As far as I can see, nuclear is the only existing technology that can now be used to rapidly transition to low carbon energy. We then solve the problem of nuclear waste (if indeed it is a big problem - I suspect not) afterwards.

It's either that or not solving the problem.

</comment><comment><USER64> Politicians say that business must self-regulate or that consumers must choose different.

Businesses say that they are following the laws made by the politicians and are meeting consumer demands.

Consumers say the government should regulate things better and that businesses should be more environmental friendly.

In others words, everyone is looking to everyone else to do something; thus no one really does something.

Sure, there are some token efforts here and there. But the actual sweeping changes that we need aren't happening.

Not a new phenomenon, and also not isolated to just climate change. It just happens to be the most pressing problem.

The solution? I don't see one, save for a fundamental refactor of our democratic institutions. I don't see that happen in the next 12 years.

So what can be done? Many things _can_ be done technically. What can _realistically_ be done given the current state of affairs? Quite little, I think. Stuff like going to work on the bike is cute – and something I do – but not really making a massive impact.

Vote for your local green party? In some places that's fairly useful; in others it's about as useful as wiping your arse with the ballot (US and UK being prominent examples) :-(

Honestly I think nothing serious will happen until it's too late. Maybe not even then. C'est la vie I suppose?

</comment><comment><USER65> Stratospheric Aerosol Injection:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection_\(climate_engineering\))

<comment><USER66> Thank you for sharing this. It's a dangerous geoengineering project, but it's also a quick solution to a part of the problem.

Dangerous: we don't know how the nonlinear weather systems will behave. This may also compound the problem in the future - lots of unknowns.

But very quick: We can cool the earth down rather quickly using this method.

<comment><USER65> We do have case studies from specific volcanic events, e.g. Mt. Pinatubo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Indirect action idea (I wonder about it).

Gather with other persons to invest a few shares in the major groups responsible for CO2 emissions.

Not to have weight per se, but to be invited in shareholders assembly. And to be regularly loud about the topic of the group's responsibility. It's enough for 4, 5 distinct individuals to bring up related questions in the same assembly so that it bothers other investors.

Bothering from within is a start.

<comment><USER68> If I'm driving the demand they're fulfilling, I'm probably not a good choice to complain. So I guess we have to find the guiltless ones first....

<comment><USER67> Beware, that's a trap.

Guilt is not a valid reason not to object to, to criticise the compromission.

Would I be drunk, that wouldn't disqualify me from criticising all of: my own responsibility, alcohol, policies regarding liquors.

(in the same way, would I be a believer, that wouldn't make it impossible or irrelevant or even hypocritical to criticise faith, religion, church, customs, etc.).

That's the good thing with reason: you are allowed and you can detach from what you're talking about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Can't see it happening when a large portion of the population insists that climate change isn't real.

<comment><USER70> Maybe if the media managed to actually present the issue in a balanced way we wouldn't be here. Maybe if every dire prediction wasn't presented as fact and every criticism labeled as conspiracy theory and vica versa for a-lot of other outlets.

Maybe if solutions like geo-engineering were at least discussed instead of the chorus of the media/politicians telling people that taxes and fees are THE ONLY SOLUTION to the crisis.

Just my 2cents, but we would be so much further ahead if the conversation has some actual balance instead of these-days where people are complaining that having a 5/95 skew in favour of the armageddon scenario if we don't have a global tax on carbon, move to 100% renewables and electric cars as being too generous to the critics of this plan.

<comment><USER71> It seems that people really prefer to vote extreme people who take hard instance against situations instead of level-headed ones.

We now have hundreds of years of experience regarding politicians. Maybe we have to teach politics in schools:

On the methods the politicians have used to manipulate people and how to call them out.

On the way we should measure politicians and what makes a good decision makes vs. a poor one.

<comment><USER70> Not really, it's just that the nature of democracy leads power to concentrate within two power centres. Just look at Australia over the last decade and you can see how even politicians who are in favour of carbon taxes will campaign against them one year and fight for them another based on the current political solution.

Hell for another issue, gay marriage. It was quite the sight to see the Deputy leader of the labor party who is openly gay vote against gay marriage legislation because the party had decided that wasn't the way they wanted to do it.

In any case, that doesn't account for the media which we don't vote for in any way.

Also just because we have centuries of experience with politics, it's about as developed as many of the other social sciences, which is to say very underdeveloped and at times heading backwards in it's understanding of the subject's truth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> We're all tired of hearing "eat less meat" etc. But honestly these things would make a difference. We need to switch everyone who drives a fossil fuel car to electric, or no car at all. So make the switch. Buy an EV. Nissan leaf is affordable. Work remote if you can. Switch your home heating from oil or gas to solar or a heat pump. It's not just about people making little changes anymore. Every household needs to get rid of their oil burning machines, be they the home heating or vehicle kind. We can't do anything directly about trucking companies etc but they will follow. Recharging costs pittance next to refuelling and range goes up every year. The EV you buy now will save you money. The next one you buy will run rings around your old gas guzzler.

The best, least depressing and least defeatist way to think about it is that the world is changing in the next 12 years and we're the early adopters. And if you don't offload that gas car now it'll be unsellable in 6 years

<comment><USER72> Wouldn't replacing every ICE car with electric one be extremely wasteful? Cars cost resources and energy to produce so it makes sense to keep driving them for as long as possible. Focusing on emissions from driving doesn't account for the whole picture. Also, in many countries majority of energy production comes from burning fossil fuels so switching to electric cars doesn't magically solve CO2 emissions problem.

<comment><USER44> Cars cost resources and energy to produce, but right now new fossil fuel cars are being produced every minute. We don't stop that process by continuing to drive a car that belches out CO2. Sure, if everyone continues driving their 10 year old Volkswagen and all car companies stop production tomorrow it might have a more immediate short term effect than changing to EV. But even in this impossible scenario, long term all those cars are still emitting CO2.

I do take your point that transportation is not the whole picture, but we can't do anything on a personal level to close a coal plant, other than write to our local representatives in government.

It's also worth pointing out that if all the power for EVs is generated from coal it's still less carbon than petrol and diesel cars on the road, because of how power plants are run at optimal efficiency, where as cars have to speed up and slow down, idle in traffic etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> [https://www.drawdown.org](https://www.drawdown.org)

<comment><USER44> Drawdown is great, but at the end of the day it's just a list of ideas. OP is more concerned about action

<comment><USER73> Drawdown is a list of ideas for action, if you want to put it that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> If you look at the recent IPCC reports, people are heavily betting on putting carbon back into the stable form. That can be in the form of carbon capture storage, or creating new building materials or other stuff out of it. I think in the near future, people will pay a hefty premium for carbon storage due to carbon taxes (Check out this great GIF that illustrates carbon tax scheme growth: [https://www.sightline.org/2017/06/06/map-the-future-is- carbo...](https://www.sightline.org/2017/06/06/map-the-future-is-carbon- priced-and-the-us-is-getting-left-behind/) ). Together, these carbon pricing initiatives cover about 7 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e), or about 13 percent of annual global GHG emissions. I think this will create a huge business, so if you are an engineer, I think it makes sense to get involved.

Personally the state of the world has given me a lot of negativity, but I've turned that around after doing a lot of research. There is a lot of awesome work being done.

There are a couple of good resources to see what everybody else is already doing: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xc6lkrIv1XORl7b31ARq...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xc6lkrIv1XORl7b31ARqFXImwhjcm8MQHG1vfoz5G0M/edit#gid=1946455755) [https://www.thirdway.org/graphic/carbon-capture-projects- map](https://www.thirdway.org/graphic/carbon-capture-projects-map) [http://www.airminers.org/explore](http://www.airminers.org/explore)

I'm very interested in this space, and think there are a lot of other people interested (just as Ycombinator is in its request for carbon removal technologies: [https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#carbon](https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#carbon) ). I have more resources if people are interested.

(On a personal level, I've also made a lot of changes. I stopped eating meat, and renovated our home to be sustainable, by adding a air to water heat pump, solar panels, a solar boiler, an heat recovery system for our shower, ventilation based on CO2 levels so only the necessary heat escapes and of course better insulation. I'm also thinking about creating an excel of my carbon footprint yearly and trying to reduce it/compensate it)

<comment><USER75> "If you look at the recent IPCC reports, people are heavily betting on putting carbon back into the stable form"

This is more due to its political palatibility than its scientific value. It allows conclusions like "12 years to save the world" (not actually what the report says, but what the media was able to spin it as, and OP's interpretation) instead of a more honest assessment.

As for the EU's carbon trading scheme, it's a joke and efforts to strengthen it have failed due to lack of political will.

<comment><USER74> In all scenario's we need negative emissions. If you're interested in the topic, there is a really cool stanford seminar by Brentz Constantz (Cofounder of BluePlanet LTD) about viable ways to do negative emissions that are cost effective without carbon trading schemes. It gives you a very good idea of the amount of carbon that is already in the air and needs to be taken out.

What's your solution for/take on all of this?

<comment><USER74> Sorry forgot the link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvtHPF1ng0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvtHPF1ng0s)

If you're interested in carbon sequestration this is super interesting

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I watched a film recently called Pandora's Box about Nuclear vs solar.

They make the case nuclear is the best solution for environmentalists (the guys who made it were hard core activists) and that things like solar are toxic and leaching heavy metals.

They say Nuclear is the safest and cleanest solution and is the only viable solution if we want to solve climate change.

<comment><USER77> it exchanges one set of problems for another, and again its our descendents who'll have to deal with it

traditional solar can be made cleanly and there are advanced biological systems on the way

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> On a high level, I've found the best way to prevail on big issues is to start by saying _Thank You_. We are given a chance to better ourselves, let's be excited about it. On the contrary, guilt, fear, finger-pointing and violence have never solved anything.

 _It seems to me that governments can be counted out of taking the leadership needed to solve this within 12 years._

The way I see it, you have to think of solutions that work within corruption, selfishness, etc, and most importantly, with everybody. People who do that are politicians. It's a voting problem at its heart to me.

 _I feel like the young people need to take charge of the world because the older generations have had their chance and not fixed it._

Young people aren't less selfish and corrupted than their elders (I mean, maybe, but we don't know that, do we).

</comment><comment><USER79> > We have 12 years to prevent a climate catastrophe

I don't know how old you are, but those of us over 20 remember that we had '12 years' 20 years ago.

Somehow the prophesied catastrophe never arrives and the date gets perpetually pushed into the future. Looks like a secular Seventh Day Adventists.

<comment><USER54> any citation for that? I'm not saying you're wrong, but IPCC scientists aren't some sort youtube doomsday clan.

<comment><USER80> The IPCC hasn't said it in an official report. But Jim Hansen has said:

"Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama's first administration, he added."

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jan/18/jim- hans...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jan/18/jim-hansen-obama)

The IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, an engineer and economist from India, acknowledged the new trajectory. "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late," Pachauri said. "What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

from:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/world/europe/18iht- climat...](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/world/europe/18iht- climate.2.8378031.html?pagewanted=all)

There are a few lists around the place of people saying similar things. Those are just I could find easily without too much bother.

Edited to put the Hansen statement in.

<comment><USER54> the first link doesn't make any statements just that the changes are alarming.

The second quote is more specific, but it doesn't say that inaction before 2012 will cause the world to end by 2018. If you've seen what IPCC suggests is required to stay at 1.5C, then that quote from 2007 reads as an understatement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Reading these answers make me realize, that we are doomed.

<comment><USER82> "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Which is exactly what I see here. Many of the brightest people gathered together in one place on the internet. Working in an industry that is scary good at creating products that change behavior and even culture. Together creating all manner of logical loops and justifications, "this is why I don't really need to change anything personally" or "I've made this symbolic change, so I've done my part."

Every one of us could begin donating a significant portion of our revenue to climate change lobbying. We could work for existing climate advocacy organizations. We could found new organisations. We could take every lesson learned in the rush to get users to click on more ads and apply it to climate advocacy. American politics and policy is absolutely for sale. We could buy it.

Shame on us all. Will that money bring you comfort while the world burns?

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Does anyone have any views on buying carbon offsets through services like TerraPass and Carbonfund? I drive a pickup truck so I'd like to reduce my impact, but don't know if the efficacy of carbon offsets have really been evaluated.

<comment><USER84> I don't think that these services take carbon out of the air and turn it back into _fossiles_.

I guess that they mostly finance re-forestation. Then, you have to ask yourself:

Would the new forest happened anyways and they are just taking your money as a bonus? Is the new forest going to be permanent or will it be removed and re- forested again in 30 years?

<comment><USER85> >Would the new forest happened anyways and they are just taking your money as a bonus? Is the new forest going to be permanent or will it be removed and re- forested again in 30 years?

Perhaps, in decades/centuries a new forest might happen naturally. I should hope - if you're paying for it - that it not be permanent, carbon capture in trees happens fastest at the beginning of their lifecycle so by harvesting and re-foresting it functions as a renewable resource and has greatest efficacy as a carbon sink.

<comment><USER84> If you harvest the wood and burn it/let it rot then the carbon will be released back into the atmosphere.

Of course you might make furniture from the wood, but it will replace other furniture that then gets burned in place.

A forest only holds carbon, it doesn't continuously remove it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> On the topic of geo engineering, I want to share a quote [0] from the physicist Joshua Bach:

"As long as we are still burning fossil fuels to generate energy, the idea of capturing the CO2 from the atmosphere is a joke. It would require more than all the energy we have generated since the beginning of the industrial age. Or millions of years of growing non-rotting trees."

[0] [https://twitter.com/Plinz/status/1041881894995013632](https://twitter.com/Plinz/status/1041881894995013632)

<comment><USER87> I wonder why he thinks so. What are the calculations? Why can't we use green energy to separate CO2 in atmosphere from clean air and do that faster than we as civilization add CO2 to air, thus buying some time to apply non-technical solutions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> At a personal level, switch energy provider, change your diet, cycle / use public transport and drive electric if you must drive (it's more complex than that depending on if you have a car or not). If you have the chance to own your property and the cash to do so, ensure it's insulated.

On a financial level, divest from fossil fuel, invest in renewable energies and sustainable technologies

On a professional level, if you have the privilege do be able to choose your job, try to find one that do no evil.

Happy to hear about more suggestions

</comment><comment><USER89> > This is aimed at people in the tech industry, and is more about what you can > do with your career than at a hackathon. I'm not going to discuss policy and > regulation, although they're no less important than technological > innovation. A good way to think about it, via Saul Griffith, is that it's > the role of technologists to create options for policy-makers.

[http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/)

</comment><comment><USER90> Start by voting for candidates who believe in science.

It seems odd to need to say this in 2018, but disbelief in clear scientific evidence should be a disqualification from holding office.

</comment><comment><USER83> > The best thing a bright young person can do to help rid civilisation of > fossil fuels is get an education in engineering.

The Economist, 2009. [https://www.economist.com/news/2009/11/13/wanted-green- engin...](https://www.economist.com/news/2009/11/13/wanted-green-engineers)

I'm guessing the most relevant fields would be chemE and materials science.

</comment><comment> T-1000 I believe that a small minority could turn things around. If about 3 % of the population in the rich world would donate $100 per month, we could use that money to force the other to change. How? One example is to remove all coal power plants (which are responsible for 25 % of the greenhouse gas emissions) by building wind farms. This would drive the price of electricity down and make coal unprofitable.

</comment><comment><USER91> We do nothing of the sort. We wait for the sea levels to rise and we build dams and walls. And we reinforce our buildings against natural disasters. And slowly the public demands changes on greenhouse gas emissions, recycling, etc, and it slowly will slow down the worsening effects.

That's the most likely scenario, nothing will change because the HackerNews netizens change cloud providers and start recycling more.

<comment><USER92> Collapse comes that way. Its not about beach houses. Its about food chain collapse, refugee storms that overwhelm public infrastructure, the 'ring of fire' of expanding collapse that can (and has) destroyed civilization before

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> If it's up to us, it's up to us:

\- Invest in (or even set up, if you've got the skills) crowd funded solar projects like [http://www.burnhamandwestonenergy.co.uk/](http://www.burnhamandwestonenergy.co.uk/) \- as a charity or "community interest company"

\- Donate/contribute to charities supporting reforestation - for example [https://onetreeplanted.org/](https://onetreeplanted.org/) or buy land, something like this: [http://www.buybrazilland.com/rainforest-property-for- sale/](http://www.buybrazilland.com/rainforest-property-for-sale/)

So there are existing organisations which offer these kinds of services; but there's no reason why a "charity startup" couldn't form to provide these kinds of services in a different way; more focussed on the climate change issue and with more of a social/viral element; to try and build the scale that would be necessary. If every twitter user contributed $10...

</comment><comment><USER94> We (USA) don't even do the little things that would add up: virtually every super market has wide open refrigerated sections. Every house built has No insulation on hot water piping (less so in commercial buildings but only because the architects get a percentage of the total job cost so they spec insulated Hot and Cold domestic water lines).

Look at cars; anyone here make any solar powered products to keep cars warmer in winter and cooler in summer to reduce idling time to heat and cool the interiors for the occupants... NOPE no one does (a good business idea btw).

Speaking of solar; why is my laptop plugged in right now (beside the fact that its a Dell and meh battery life)?... Oh yeah; IDK of any solar boosters that would either run it or at least help eliminate the drain... build that, market that. All these things would help.

Are cows put into enclosures at night that capture and scrub the CO2 they emanate... NOPE they're not.

These are just a few things based on my experience in the construction industry and casual observation. Let's buy some time until the issue can be solved in a financially viable way.

</comment><comment><USER95> Urbanization is a big thing too, it makes far more climate sense. Instead of driving to ten places to serve a hundred people on each stop a truck can drive to one and serve a thousand people. Also, heat in high rises is used more efficiently than in single family homes because all that excess heat from bottom homes rise to the ones on the upper floors.

This is thankfully a trend right now, with people moving to bigger cities to find better jobs, but in some Western countries we have a lot of hurdles to make new houses and an overconsumption of existing housing. If you own a home already, that might mean you have to sacrifice something (higher property taxes to incentivize people to choose smaller properties, for example). Also, making the cities more accessible without a car does wonders for this too.

I'm convinced there's some way tech can help with this too. Airbnb makes sure excess or unused living area can be allocated more efficiently, for example.

</comment><comment><USER96> For the past 40 years we've viewed climate change as a political problem (see "Losing Earth" from the NY Times for a history of this [1].) Like you, I no longer have any faith that politicians will be able to solve the problem. As the NYT research revealed, politicians generally only take on a cause when there is a viable solution... and frankly there isn't a great solution yet. Solar and wind help a good bit. Nuclear would be a fine option but as a society we are apparently uncomfortable with it... Our politicians don't _really_ have a good enough, complete enough option.

At Charm Industrial [2] we started with a different question that at first seems silly: is it possible to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a profit? We assumed the answer would be no, but to our surprise we couldn't convince ourselves of that. We found a pathway (purpose-grown biomass --> gasification --> hydrocarbons + geological CO2 sequestration) that seems to have high-scale profit potential. And if you can be profitable, then effectively unlimited amounts of private capital are available.

If you're interested in following our progress, you can subscribe to our newsletter here: [https://charmindustrial.us18.list- manage.com/subscribe?u=aaf...](https://charmindustrial.us18.list- manage.com/subscribe?u=aafd4c7577e4bc2bfc20baa47&id=3e4a6db592)

And we'd love to see others tackle the problem from the perspective of high- scale, viable economics. Is it possible to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a profit?

[1]: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/clim...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate- change-losing-earth.html) [2]: [https://www.charmindustrial.com/](https://www.charmindustrial.com/)

</comment><comment><USER97> As the economics continue along Swanson's law (the photovoltaic solar panel equivalent to Moore's law of ever decreasing costs) I expect the biggest obstacle to large scale transition to a distributed grid of majority local generation resources will be regulatory hurdles by legacy utility industry to protect their business model. Some of these initiatives may even be channeled outside of the legislative process such as some DOE proposals under current administration to protect coal generation. Sorry this might go counter to the intent of this question but I think I'm getting at is that the single biggest factor will be political, and that the voting box is our strongest lever.

</comment><comment><USER98> As we have become adults, we learn time and time again about personal responsibilities. Some of these lessons take many years, and some are emerging. We are awakening to the fact that the Earth's climate, like bills and taxes, is both our personal and collective responsibility. This means we need to take personal, financial, and political steps to lower our resource usage and carbon footprint. We can look around at our daily lives - the food we eat, our careers, where/how we live - to find areas where we can shed a few kilos from our carbon budget. Likewise we can boycott, divest from, and sanction the major sources of corporate, meaning collective, greenhouse gas emissions.

</comment><comment><USER99> I honestly believe there are 1000 paths to safety, that there only a few to dangerous climate change, but that we will take a path to dangerous climate change. Because it is easier. It requires not making hard choices. It requires not working together. It requires less sacrifice. It will be the path of human nature and behavioral inertia.

"So what can we do so our children don't live in some ghastly hothouse world?"

We are going to have to explain to later generations why we thought the 6th great extinction was an appropriate price to pay for having elaborate, throw- away Halloween lawn decorations which were made by and the most costly to the most vulnerable citizens of the planet.

I don't say any of that lightly.

</comment><comment><USER100> "...governments can be counted out of taking the leadership needed to solve this within 12 years."

 _This_ is the issue.[0]

Governments are the middlemen between citizens that _we the people_ decide to put in power through voting to represent us and our issues like climate change.

But democracy has been hijacked by putting additional middlemen between _we the people_. The second middleman is the _capital election_ , specifically ~132 Americans who donated 60% of the SuperPAC money.

So our representatives spend a significant portion of their time in office calling these people to get funding for the next election cycle and when they vote on issues they think of these donors. Follow the money.

Yes we can fix data centers or cargo ships or deploy nuclear power or utility regulation, but at some point regulation for these as well will be dependent on the people we vote to put into power to represent us.

At the end of the day, corporations have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to maximize profits and shareholder value. If leaders lead, companies will follow.

I have an idea!

Why don't we, _the very large community of Hacker News_ with 3-3.5M+ monthly uniques[1] petition one of the most innovative and powerful institutions to fund more projects that will fix broken governments around the world? "Government" is only mentioned one time in the YC RFP[2], maybe it should have it's own category.

Send them an email: email@example.com or [http://www.ycombinator.com/contact/](http://www.ycombinator.com/contact/) or contact your friends who are in the YC network.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g) [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219581](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219581) [2] [http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/](http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/)

</comment><comment><USER101> Campaign, advocate for and support clean meat as a viable alternative to conventional factory farmed animal products. Factory farming is one of the biggest source of carbon emissions worldwide and a switch to clean meat can – due to higher efficiency of the meat generation process – have a huge impact here. It's just one aspect of a possible solution but one that is often overlooked. Steps you can do right now:

If your skills are applicable in this area think about changing the industry or maybe consider donating to the Good Food Institute: [https://www.gfi.org](https://www.gfi.org).

</comment><comment><USER102> The green parties around the world are to blame for this. The only worthwhile actions to combat this are

1) Using nuclear power (on a massive scale preferrably) 2) Stopping globalisation (because transport is such a large contributor to CO2 emissions.). Local manufacturing would be much better for the environment (reduced transportation needs and also the western countries factories are much more sustainable than in third world countries and china)

Also reducing immigration helps, people in Africa use much less resources than the same people eg. transported to the cold north.

</comment><comment><USER103> Absolutely nothing. As long as solutions require major changes in lifestyle for most people absolutely nothing will happen. Our only hope is to invent technology to mitigate the problem (sequester carbon from the atmosphere, get cheaper alternative fuels, protect cities from rising ocean levels and reinforce infrastructure to better tolerate extreme weather).

Anything else is just wishful thinking that places much more faith in the ability of people to value their long term interests over their short term comfort than evidence suggests is warranted.

</comment><comment><USER104> To have any meaningful impact on global warming there would need to be a massive rapid global economic shift, we would also would need to reduce world population otherwise anything we do will just be nullified by increases in population. I think to even suggest that the people in power (politicians and capitalist corporations) will actually be willing and able to solve this problem is incredibly naive and I have no idea where anyone gets this optimism from?

No in reality we will see a slow increase in extreme natural disasters, island states and all coastlines becoming uninhabitable, permanent drought in most parts of the world, drinking water crisis, famine, massive unprepared forced migration, global economic collapse, permanent wars about remaining resources. I actually don't think humanity has any realistic chance to survive beyond 2080 and that number is actually quite conservative given the research.

</comment><comment><USER105> We'll definitely need geo-engineering to artificially cool our climate while we work out how to effectively remove CO2 from the air and store it for 1000's of years. It may require mass reforestation or putting carbon dioxide into concrete; whatever the answer, if we do not employ it on a massive scale, it won't matter if we transitioned quickly off of fossil fuels, which by the way we haven't. So, we will DEFINITELY need to artificially cool our planet.

</comment><comment><USER106> Don't just vote, run for office.

<comment><USER107> [https://www.runforoffice.org](https://www.runforoffice.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> There's a lot that technology can do to fight climate change. I came across Treetracker ([https://www.greenstand.org/](https://www.greenstand.org/)), an app that tracks tree planting and pays planters per tree after verification.

Spinning up multiple crowdfunded instances of apps like this across the world could really bring back a lot of the green cover lost over the years.

</comment><comment><USER109> Best solution : One child less.

<comment><USER110> This is especially true if you are in a developed country. I did a college paper for an Environmental Law class. American children consume about 200 times the resources of children in developing countries.

I originally wanted three children. I stopped at two for various reasons. I think I did the right thing.

<comment><USER111> >> American children consume about 200 times the resources of children in developing countries

So one less immigrant is 99.5% as effective at reducing co2 as one less child?

<comment><USER110> Since I haven't researched that in specific I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing the answer is "No." Immigrant children from developing countries typically remain relatively poor by American standards and continue to use substantially fewer resources. They don't promptly leap up to middle class American consumption levels.

We would probably be better off, environmentally speaking, to aggressively try to convince American citizens to have fewer children while having more liberal immigration policies than to aggressively try to keep immigrants out while claiming that condemning children who already exist to a life of hardship is the moral equivalent of Americans choosing to have fewer children for environmental reasons. They aren't morally equivalent anymore than "Eat the rich" is some kind of moral high ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> Great timing! I also believe it takes personal actions, not waiting on someone else.

My personal pledge is to balance the negative impact of my driving and flying. If you are interested, check out the app I'm building for it: [https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge- balance](https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance)

</comment><comment><USER113> \- cycle to work, work from home, car pool in a plugin hybrid/electric car

\- improve the energy efficiency of your house (aircon, heating)

\- eat less beef

\- invest in solar panel/sun thermal collectors

\- pick train instead of a car for a trip

\- reduce waste and buying unnecessary stuff

\- Lobby for certain regulations like more charging stations for electric cars, more bike lanes, electric cars to use a bus lane, property tax that takes home energy efficiency into account

</comment><comment><USER114> So my thoughts are how this is a problem of a highly dynamic system. There has been this massive injection of CO2 that has pushed the chaotic system to a whole new cycle.

So my question is what exactly is the right amount of change that won't push the dynamical system to a point of even more instability.

I haven't seen any discussion about this. That also concerns me.

</comment><comment><USER115> [https://www.drawdown.org/](https://www.drawdown.org/) has a nicely presented list of things that will help with global warming.

Honestly, I think it's too late. There's no way the entire world economy will be restructured in less than 12 years. Future generations will suffer for their ancestors' obstinacy.

</comment><comment><USER116> Livestock is responsible for a large fraction of grains (and therefore clean water) consumption, while emitting an equally large amount of CO2 and methane into atmosphere. So largely reducing animal intake would be of huge help.

This large scale habit change don't require gov. aid, it can be tackled by for profit businesses and research institutions alike.

</comment><comment><USER117> As a meta-comment, it's interesting to me that this is so highly upvoted and responded to here on hacker news. As a consultant I often find that clients who are brilliant experts in their own field often assume themselves to be experts in _every_ domain, including my own area of expertise which is software design and development.

</comment><comment><USER118> There is no single silver bullet. One mechanism which can have lasting impact is applying William McDonough's "Cradle-to-Cradle" philosophy to large sectors. Apple seems to be trying to do that. It needs better support and awareness from consumers, to reward the corporations who deliver on these parameters.

</comment><comment><USER119> On a personal note, don't have children. I'm not being facetious. It seems like we've had opportunities to do the right thing and consistently haven't so until the outlook looks better and we start taking action it's not a great idea to create offspring that will have to deal with the consequences.

<comment><USER120> But people without children have even less motivation to care about the future.

Even moreso for people who aren't married....why shouldn't they let their SUV idle in the driveway?

<comment><USER119> I don't think it's a solution to climate change, it's just a personal choice. The solutions are out of my reach and ideling the SUV is much less of a problem than selling the SUV in the first place.

I don't think we're doing a good job handling the issue on a policy level so creating a child who will potentially have to deal with the worst of these problems directly seems unnecessary, avoidable and selfish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER121> End exclusionary zoning in the US, so that people can live closer to the things they need, and denser, if they so choose

</comment><comment><USER122> If we could get fusion rolled out faster, or really try to invest in something like Thorium reactors and then drastically improve battery technology, we could substantially reduce the need for fossil fuels.

It would also help if certain countries would not use CFCs that were banned due to the way they destroy the ozone.

</comment><comment><USER123> It's a collective action problem and there's almost no way it can be addressed politically in today's world. There's too much win for populists to say to their population, "screw those foreigners / globalists / westerners / elites telling us what to do, we're going to look after ourselves". This is a hard message to compete with in domestic politics. And everybody ends up worse off because everybody else has the same dynamics.

So IMO we'll need to deal with mass migration and political instability in poor countries. That's the next battle; parts of the world with subsistence agriculture will become unsustainable, and there will be large migrations of population to elsewhere. That needs to be dealt with rationally, because if it becomes irrational, we'll get into the realms of fascism and genocide.

I don't think the whole planet is going to die, FWIW. Instead, I think we're going to see a shift in ecosystems, where the relative balance of flora and fauna will alter. Some may be edible, some less so. Prices will change and people will adjust, but adjustment will be much harder where there's subsistence agri. I don't think humans are seriously at risk of being wiped out - we're pretty adaptable and we have a lot of technology we could apply when prices rise enough for it to make sense. But food prices may rise generally, and some specifics may become very expensive. This too will lead to political instability and migration.

</comment><comment><USER124> Here is my take:

Rich people in rich countries will pay what it takes to adapt to the changing climate.

Poor people in poor countries are basically screwed, just like always.

With some luck, the rich people in the rich countries will donate some of their excess wealth to help the poor people adapt too.

</comment><comment><USER125> First world citizens need about 600-1000 adult trees to offset their carbon footprint. Go plant a lot of trees. Also, buy fewer things manufactured in countries that use primarily coal power, and travel a lot less (especially by airplane)

</comment><comment><USER126> In the final analysis, it seems that a smaller population base is the answer.

People are not easily motivated to give up creature comforts. (Though they often tell others they should.) Fewer people == fewer negative influences on the earth.

<comment><USER111> If altruism is heritible (like almost every other personality trait) won't this just select for a world of selfish people?

</comment></comment><comment><USER127> As a political solution, I doubt there is much we can do. The young people are not that politicaly active (as in actualy casting votes). I'm very happy that Tesla has made automakers take electric cars seriously, and renewable electricity is doing well. Unfortunately, that's not going to be enough.

Geoengineering research is currently fairly taboo and hard to get money for. It involves developing methods to alter the environment to compensate for what we have done. Many say we should just reduce greenhouse gasses, since if we mess up geoengineering we could really mess up the planet, but I think it should at least be very well funded and studied.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering)

</comment><comment><USER33> If you're concerned about this, help fix it directly:

* Go Climate Neutral: [http://goclimateneutral.com](http://goclimateneutral.com). It's much cheaper than you'd expect (~$10/month, depending on your lifestyle) to improve the world's energy efficiency enough to cancel out all your own impact.

* Donate to other efficient climate change charities: [https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2013/11/less-burn-for-y...](https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2013/11/less-burn-for-your-buck-part-ii)

</comment><comment><USER128> I feel that unless we make some major breakthroughs in atmospheric carbon capture in the next 30 years, we are going to be royally screwed.

</comment><comment><USER129> I think it is mostly a marketing challenge, once most people realize the risk, it will gain momentum and solutions will follow.

</comment><comment><USER130> There is a plan already in action...

[https://www.drawdown.org](https://www.drawdown.org)

<comment><USER44> This is not a plan in action, it is a list of ideas

</comment></comment><comment><USER130> There is a highly distributed plan.

[https://www.drawdown.org](https://www.drawdown.org)

</comment><comment><USER131> Reduce carbon emission by working remotely. Should be the default. Massively reduces carbon emission on large scale.

<comment><USER132> Not if you walk or bike to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER133> vote against ethanol biofuels. From a thermodynamic perspective they will never be sustainable. We're literally dumping energy into growing extra corn that we burn.

It's a farmer subsidy and nothing more.

Just pay the farmers the money. Stop wasting the land, nitrogen, greenhouse emissions and retooling cars for this nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER134> Plant lots and lots of Azolla. Like a lot of it. In addition to all the other stuff that people talk about.

</comment><comment><USER135> Please start using Solar and wind as much as possible. We have amazing products available now. I have fiur solar lanterns, one flashlight, a 20k mah powerbank and a 14w suaoki foldable solar panel

In a few years ehen I buy a vehicle, I'll buy an electric moped, a 60w suoaki solar charger and a 150wh suoaki power generator. That way, I will be using my vehicle on renewable energy at all times.

We need to do this and fast.

<comment><USER136> I have to take issue with your use of the foldable solar panel. Studies have estimated that commercial solar panels take 1-4 years to produce enough electricity to offset that used in their production [0]. This is for fixed panels, pointing south, at optimal tilt, during all available daylight hours. How many hours per day does that portable panel get used? It seems extremely unlikely to me that the average portable solar panel gets used a significant fraction of what a fixed dedicated panel does, thus will not offset its production emissions.

More generally, green gadgets are likely not very green. The true lifecycle advantages over a conventional product if there are any are likely to be very small and you are unlikely to be able to even find out for individual products. People would likely make more of an impact by wasting and consuming less. There are products that can make an impact, they tend to be high energy users like a water heater, HVAC system or insulating a building properly.

In the US, many states have deregulated utility markets. That means users can choose who provides their electricity and many green products are available like 100% renewable. See [https://www.electricchoice.com/](https://www.electricchoice.com/) for more background and if that's available in your area.

0 - [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403211...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403211500146X)

<comment><USER135> Earlier, I charged my phone using the grid.

I used grid while reading and writing.

Now, I have five solar products and I don't use the grid.

I also plant 10 trees yearly, I use my bicycle.

Doing something is better than being a cynic. The point isn't recuperating amount of energy spent in manufacturing solar pabel, batteries. It is to stop from further consumption of polluting items.

Sure, it wouldn't amount to much. I don't use more than 2units of electricity. We still run diesel trains in India, most industries dint use renewable energy. We need to make massive changes if we want to be carbon neutral

And I still don't agree with your comment. I have a phone that was manufactured using coal and petrol. I use the phone's half battery during the day by consuming even more petrol.

The least I could do is charge it using Solar. The goal of using solar isn't to be "offset within xyrs" it is to stop reliance on oil. It is to use sun, wind. It is to invest.

If we don't invest then nothing will happen. This might be similar to banks. Solar is like investing money in the market when it is abysmally low, sure, it might not offset immediately, but it eventually will. That's still better than money under the rug

<comment><USER136> If you are not using the grid and just getting by using a foldable solar panel to charge 5 devices, then I should definitely not be lecturing you about minimizing waste.

You make a good point about the important thing being the comparison of emissions you would have caused had you used the grid versus what was used to create the panel and batteries. Still, it depends how much charging you actually wind up doing with the panel over its lifetime whether less CO2 is emitted or not. Though, I imagine in India pollutants other than CO2 are more pressing.

Thanks for sharing your experience. On the issue of climate change its somewhat depressing being in the US, policy has been stuck for a very long time. Its inspiring to hear from someone so committed from outside my usual sphere.

<comment><USER135> Thank you for having a civil discussion! Our current world climate is intensly hostile and I was afraid that even our discussion would go south.

Well, today morning, I charged my phone on solar power (and I'll do so daily from now on).

India has bigger issues than CO2, yes, but unfortunately, I can't afford to ignore CO2issues. Our governments are incredibly corrupt and incompetent. Their goal in life is to do enough corruption so that their 7 generations dont5 have to work ever.

That aside, yes, it is depressing that US federal policy is ignoring climate change, but don't be sad, half your states have committed to going green by 2030 or something. Plus, Tesla motors and Tesla energy are doing more things for solar than anyone else in this world. They recently bhilt this backup genset in Australia, they also have built solar energy power stations (quietly) in remote islands, I forgot the names.

That means US is contributing despite its depressing govt policies. My issue is that India isn't contributing despite+ve federal policies. For all his faults, ny PM has obsessively focused on solar, thankfully, shifting away from nuclear energy. But now company hasa good electric car or 2 wheeler and those cars are costly and run for 70km on one charge. Tesla runs 250miles!

Coming to less CO2, I won't be able to offset energy used for solar panel, I don't know how much was used in the first place, But and this is a big but, I'll surely he offsetting all energy I was going to use from the grid anyways.

I wasn't going to stop using mobiles, lights for reading at night. So, I'll be saving those emissions and my electricity bill. I get less than 2 $ bill per month, average bill here, converted in dollars should be somewhat 10$, depending on how rich people are.

And btw I have five different solar powered devices that can be charged by builtin solar panel and by USB port. So my Idea is to use my power bank to store energy and use it to charge phone or lanterns as required. (Powerbank is 20,000 mah, and also has a 2w solar panel included!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER137> Do something about YOU; protest insanity by not being insane. It's actually quite simple.

</comment><comment><USER138> Reforestation. Stop eating meat. Stop burning fossil fuels. Use less energy unless your energy is 100% "green". Overthrow capitalism.

<comment><USER92> Kind of the 'eco-theatre' top-tunes list. But which are doable? And aren't other non-theatre items more effective?

At least recycling wasn't in the list, which can be an energy sink and actual climate harm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this 12 year timeline correct. What degree of catastrophe are we looking at?

<comment><USER44> It's generally accepted that if we don't zero our carbon emissions in 12 years we'll see 2 degrees warming minimum.

Best case scenario is drought, heatwaves, forest fires, lose half the wildlife in the world, all the coral reefs, most of the fish, reduced crop yield, flooding, storms, sea level rise, and parts of the world are inhospitable, and the populations of those regions migrate north. BEST case. WORST case is runaway warming when all the methane in the arctic is released and the forests that soak up our carbon burn down and the ocean stops absorbing it, and the earth gets so hot that humans literally just drop dead from hyperthermia.

I refuse to believe in the worst case, because the majority of scientists are not going that far, and because it could make a person crazy just thinking about it. Besides, the best case is bad enough already.

<comment><USER4> I honestly think there is no way we can zero emissions in that time. But I'm hopeful the rate of technological progress can out pace our predictions. I'm also hopeful that we may one day find a means to reverse the problem through Geo engineering. People are far more motivate when the problem is already at the door. I just hope it's not too late by then.

<comment><USER44> I agree, on both counts. Rereading my post now it seems hopelessly pessimistic, and negative. I was mostly just trying to explain what we can expect to see as we approach 2 degrees of warming. We won't get to to zero carbon in the next 12 years and we won't avoid at least 1.5 degrees warming.

But I honestly DO believe that we WILL see a downward trend in he next 12 years. We won't hit zero but i would hope we'd hit pre 2000 levels. And I also believe that even though we're going to suffer, technology like carbon capture and geo engineering will play a role in the future. A recent study suggested painting rooves and footpaths white in hotter countries would have the equivalent cooling effect of taking every car off the road for 50 years. Measures like this will help. Fusion power works. ITER in France will generate 500Mw when operational in 2025, and pave the way for more fusion globally.

I think we can fix global warming, but its to our eternal shame that we're going to be fixing it rather than preventing it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER139> there are already a billion people advocating for collective action ie someone else should do something. Donors need to take it upon themselves to fund and assist geoengineering moonshots.

</comment><comment><USER140> What is the likelyhood of a runaway feedback loop occuring?

<comment><USER141> Zero. The hotter the planet gets, the more water evaporates from the oceans, which condenses into clouds, which reflect sunlight, which cools the planet.

<comment><USER140> According to statistical mechanics, even boltzmann brains have a higher probability than zero.

I find your absolute certainty disturbing.

<comment><USER141> Earth is 4.5 billion years old. A runaway, climate chain-reaction hasn't happened yet.

I find your lack of faith disturbing.

<comment><USER140> I think you're confusing a complete boil-off of the atmosphere with a slightly less extreme event that simply eliminates 90% of life on the planet, which has in fact happened before

<comment><USER141> I think you're conflating a "runaway feedback loop" with "a slightly less extreme event that simply eliminates 90% of life on the planet," which says nothing about whether it was caused by a runaway feedback loop.

<comment><USER140> Therefore, by this logic, zero percent chance... qed

<comment><USER141> So, how many billion years more would it take to convince you that it's not going to happen? If earth is 4.5 billion years old, that's already more than 25% the age of the universe.

What does the evidence show? Are you willing to believe the evidence?

<comment><USER140> As I said before, I think you're confusing a complete boil-off of the atmosphere with a slightly less extreme event that simply eliminates 90% of life on the planet, which has in fact happened before

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Vote for representatives that take the threat seriously.

</comment><comment><USER142> There's no climate catastrophe. Nothing have to be done about preventing imaginable things.

<comment><USER143> Would you mind expanding on this?

<comment><USER142> I think that the whole human-changing-planet thing is huge fraud. There are legitimate concerns, like bad air in the cities because of cars, but global warming, if it exists at all (which I don't observe because winters are as cold as they always were), is because of planetary cycles, not because human affected anything significantly. Concentrating on green energy is stupid, humans should invest more money into nuclear stations and potentially thermonuclear technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER144> EDIT: downvoters, feel free to add your opinion, what seps we can take in 12 years to prevent climate change. I will gladly hear any opinion, especially if it is not as drastic as mine.

1\. Drop coal and gas as energy sources immediately. Use renewable and nuclear energy as main power sources. Phase out nuclear after couple decades, when we hopefully can get all our energy needs from renewables. EDIT: forgot to add in fusion.

2\. Eat less meat. I am not saying to go full radical vegan, just have less of it. Most people I know have meat for every main meal of the day (breakfast, lunch, dinner). We can definitely eat less of it. Meat production generates extreme amounts of CO2 and consumes too much of valuable land.

3\. "Global one child policy". Sounds extreme - but we must lessen global population of humans. I know that western countries have negative growth already, problem is how to solve overpopulation in non-western countries and do it fast (ideally in one generation). Even with technological advances, IMO having 10-12+ billion people on Earth won't do any good for anyone.

<comment><USER5> Nuclear isn't feasible within that timeframe - takes years to even build the plants! Not to mention the unpopularity of putting fission plants in the less stable countries of the world.

The other two are even more infeasible.

<comment><USER145> Any electricity grid change takes years anyway, and I don't see how the other two are not feasible. As an example, we managed to reduce smoking by a good margin nowadays, which was an even more unrealistic battle than meat consumption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER146> Zombie apocalypse

</comment><comment><USER147> I don't think we should, but here's some things that I think we're capable of:

* We could use atomic power, but not to replace oil: we irradiate or directly bomb the main global oil reserves so they are rendered unusable. Both Russia and the US have the power to do this many times over. That would mean World War III, probably. Which would also lower the CO2 levels.

* We can inoculate 10 or 20 people in densely populated areas with highly contagious virus, trigger a pandemic and see the numbers go down.

* We can simultaneously fund anti-vaccination groups, and decrease the funds for the public health organizations like the U.S. Food and Drug administration, worldwide. That could have the same effect, depending on how vicious the viruses we get are in the next 10 years. Super-flu would be fatal enough.

</comment><comment><USER148> space mirrors

<comment><USER141> What could possibly go wrong?

</comment></comment><comment><USER149> Nothing will be done because it's not profitable.

More people will die from water shortage in the coming years before starvation.

</comment><comment><USER150> > So what can we do so our children don't live in some ghastly hothouse world?

How about stopping with the apocalyptic hyperbole?

> The scientists have told us its our final chance....

And "scientists" have been telling us that for decades now.

> I feel like the young people need to take charge of the world because the > older generations have had their chance and not fixed it.

Or the old have lived long enough not to buy into hysteria. Maybe the older people are just wiser, better educated and have more experience? Or we could let the young people, who know nothing about anything, take charge.

> What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

Nothing. No more than we can prevent solar flares, tornadoes or volcanic eruptions. We simply have to deal with it.

Climate change occurs naturally. It has existed before the industrial revolution. It has existed before humans. It will exist after humans. Trying to prevent climate is like trying to prevent the sun from rising in the east.

Is there room for us to mitigate human contribution to climate change? Sure. Would that matter. Probably not. Are there other areas we should be concentrating on? Yes.

Environmental preservation ( forests, rivers, oceans ... ). Species protection. Build better and walkable cities.

Global warming ( rebranded by PR firms as the silly "climate change" ) isn't the first apocalyptic hysteria by "scientists" ( and by "scientists" I mostly mean politicians, corporations, lawyers, etc trying to profit ).

Here are some of the "end of the world" events cassandrized by "scientists"

Climate change. Global warming, Global cooling ( from 1940s to 1970s ). That's right folks, before we were going to boil to death, we were going to freeze to death. Of course there are the supervolcanic eruptions. Asteroid strike. Of course dire warnings of nuclear holocaust. Then there was malthusian prediction of death by population growth. Boy was he wrong about that one. "Scientists" even warned of extinction of humans by race mixing - look up social darwinism. Now we laugh at that.

So take a deep breath. The world is not going to end anytime soon. Climate change happens with or without humans. We'll adapt like we always have.

</comment><comment><USER32> Prevent? Haha, guys! Very funny! :D You had until 2016.

</comment><comment><USER151> Could we have prevented the extinction of the dinosaur with the knowledge we have now? If not, why worry?

<comment><USER27> If we had detected the asteroid sufficiently early we probably could have diverted it.

<comment><USER152> But if it weren't for the extinction of the dinosaurs, we wouldn't be here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER153> The greed of the 1% most wealthy people in the world has caused this problem so they should pool their resources and fix it.

<comment><USER154> But they won't, and they will be fine even if comes to living in a bubble. As it has always been, the poor will carry the burden of humanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER155> This is a strictly political issue.

Most people think humans can't destroy the planet's atmosphere. That's hubris, and based on your politics.

"Science" always thinks it's proven right until it's proven wrong.

<comment><USER156> Not really. It's about irrational humans and magical thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER157> Just invent a way to get lots of cheap energy without burning stuff and we're fine. Not nuclear plants, nuclear energy is evil, we all know that.

</comment><comment><USER158> Invest in co2 scrubbers and nuclear power.

But they also said ten years ago that ten years would be the absolutely longest time we had to prevent catastrophic climate change.

They also said the world would be overpopulated and we wouldn't be able to feed everybody by the end of the sixties so who knows.

<comment><USER44> > They also said the world would be overpopulated and we wouldn't be able to > feed everybody by the end of the sixties so who knows.

Thanks to the green revolution, we figured out how to massively increase crop yield, otherwise we would have seen problems supplying enough food. In fact that's kind of the root of many of todays problems. The population of earth has doubled since 1980, when GHG levels were safe. If we couldn't feed another 3.5 billion people they wouldn't have been born and we wouldn't be in this mess. We'd be in a much different mess, where rationing and population control are common, but at least we wouldn't also be cooking ourselves

</comment></comment><comment><USER159> For a balanced view, this is a must read from Professor of Meteorology Richard S. Lindzen at MIT: [https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2018/10/Lindzen-2018...](https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2018/10/Lindzen-2018-GWPF- Lecture.pdf)

<comment><USER160> That's not balanced. The overwhelming majority of experts in the field disagree with Lindzen, who is largely famous among laypeople because he is one of the few academics that deniers can point to.

<comment><USER159> Experts? That's exactly his point. They're far from being experts. What I meant by balanced was as a balance to all the views being expressed here. I probably misused that word.

<comment><USER160> I'd describe people with PhDs in atmospheric science who have published papers on climate change or other climate modeling as experts. These people largely disagree with Lindzen.

<comment><USER141> From the paper:

> Richard S. Lindzen was Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the > Massachusetts Institute of Technology until his retirement in 2013. He is > the author of over 200 papers on meteorology and climatology and is a member > of the US National Academy of Sciences and of the Academic Advisory Council > of GWPF.

Does meteorology count as "atmospheric science"?

Does climatology count as "climate change" or "climate modeling"?

Does 200 papers count as "published papers"?

Does being a professor at MIT count?

By your own criteria, he is an expert.

Therefore, by what reasoning do you dismiss him?

Religion.

<comment><USER160> Yes. Lindzen is a working scientist. But he is _not_ among the majority of scientists. The fact that his name shows up so goddamn often is because he is one of the very few people with those creds that speaks what deniers want to hear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER161> There is a joke "Scientists are telling us that our civilisation stands on the border of the abyss, and propose themselves to take leadership, and make a move forward". Seriously speaking, last year I looked into summary of glacial core data from Greenland. You know, what, climate always changes. This one is no worse then a Pleistocene. May be some cool animals will emerge in a million years from now.

</comment><comment> King-Aaron Unfortunately at an individual level effecting change, I feel the boat has long since sailed.

It's pretty obvious that in western democracies, it's not so much the politicians who control the scene, but the corporates that sponsor their election campaigns in return for industry specific kickbacks.

While we have vested interests such as coal, oil and gas producers sponsoring your only valid political choices, you're going to end up voting for parties that are only there due to those companies. I don't see that changing any time soon.

I think it's best to just prepare for the most realistic current scenario, which is an average temperature rise in the area of 1 - 1.5 degrees C. Not so much dooms day preparation, but maybe don't be that little pig who builds his house out of straw.

<comment><USER45> There is lots of action still required to reach your realistic scenario. Don't give up. You can help.

Hopefully this can motivate people in an optimistic way: [https://unop.uk/how- to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as-a-t...](https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with- a-big-global-problem-as-a-technologist-part-1/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER162> I read _2001: A Space Odyssey_ when I was 11. That would have been 1971. The Moon shuttle, the space station, and the elctronic wizardry were okay by me. Even the monolith, though things did turn too weird for my taste towards the end (and I still agree with my younger self here). But one fundamental premise completely toppled my suspension of disbelief: That humanity would still seriously _be_ here by the turn of the century. Clearly, ww would by then be overwhelmed, struggling against or exterminated by ... pollution. Which is what all doomsday was about then. Some years later it was all-out nuclear war. Ask me by the beginning of the eighties, and I shall tell you confidently that I - and you - won't be around by the year 2000. As we now know, I nearly got that one right during the next few years, but today I really no longer believe it would have moved far beyond megadisaster - not into actual extermination. So, these days it's the climate, and I am old and cynical and jaded. Sick to puking level of being called a _denier_. Noone in his/her/its right mind can deny that climate is changing. Always has, presumably always will. And of course we influence the damned thing. Every living and species does, and we clearly to a very high extent. If we don't - collectively - like the way things are going, by all means, we ought to take steps to shift the course. We may even be in for rough times. Maybe _very_ rough. And then again, maybe we won't. If someone can give me a plausible scenario for the year 2100 - <USER2> seen from the perpective of someone actually living there and then_ \- I'm all ears. I have _zero_ idea wheter that scenario in that perspective will be on the black or on the white side. I shall, however, be extremly surprised if climate will have actually killed or ruined us, downvotes be damned.

<comment><USER163> I understand your sentiment, but it boils down to : past catastrophic predictions were wrong so future catastrophic predictions are also going to be wrong.

That does not reassure me one bit.

Let's that the doomsday future is 100 millions people living in the Arctic circle. Maybe it is not that bad for people living in 2500, with AI, agricultural drones, floating cities. They might even have fusion and a moon base.

But I cannot imagine how we can go peacefully from a few billions people living around the globe to another stable state. This is going to be a very rocky transition, and we, or our children, are going to experience it fully.

<comment><USER162> Not so much _past catastrofic predictions were wrong_ as _my past catastrofic fantasies were wrong_. I see frequent commenting here on HN in the tone of _the world is ending, we 're all gonna die_. They are no more and no less credible than my boyhood musings on 2001.

My comment wasn't meant to reassure. I take it for granted (my musings again!) that this century will bring terrible upheavals, unprecedented warfare, and probably a sharp decline in world population. It won't be peaceful, it won't be pretty. It will be history, business as usual, no matter if the planet grows hotter or colder. I'm far too old for optimism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."

Y2K was supposed to be a global catastrophe. It got quietly fixed. No one (but me) wakes up today and goes "Oh. Thank. God. We aren't living in the Y2K post apocalypse!"

In fact, I have been told that most people laugh at the idea that we ever worried about it because it turned out fine, so we must not have been in real danger.

The Kuwait oil wells were supposed to burn for years and be a global catastrophe. Crack teams converged on the country and put them out in a mere 6 months. No one is saying "Hallelujah!" about that either. It is also forgotten while we are on to bellyaching about our next catastrophe.

Don't get me wrong. I'm an environmental studies major and I have lived without a car for more than a decade and I would like to do more to mitigate this problem. But I'm pretty damn sure that if I actually fixed it, A. I would likely get zero credit and B. The very next morning the entire world would be focused on some new problem rather than dancing in the streets to celebrate this triumph.

In the mean time,let me recommend that you pee on a tree. (Website possibly coming soon.)

<comment><USER164> To me the scary part about climate change is the sheer scale of the problem. We burn something like 4.4 billion tons of oil each year. Eventually we have to basically un-burn all of that oil. That's a staggeringly huge amount of work and we have barely begun to stop digging ourselves deeper into the hole.

<comment><USER110> Walk more.

Eat less meat.

And pee on a tree.

Do that every day. Track it if you need to. Spread the word if you like, though leading by example is more powerful than trying to lecture people.

We are all just dust in the wind anyway. But you can choose what your little speck gets up to, at least to some degree.

<comment><USER164> That's entirely in the "stop digging the hole so fast" category. Except for the tree peeing I think.

Actually removing thousands of billions of tons of excess carbon from the atmosphere is still an unsolved problem. We can't do it with trees unless we find a black hole to stuff them into.

<comment><USER110> I don't actually agree with you, but let's assume you are correct. In my experience, if you don't have an effective solution, but you do know that doing X amounts to "putting out the fire with gasoline," then not doing X is vastly better than continuing to do X while claiming there's no point in trying since we don't have a real solution.

If nothing else, slowing things down and hurtling towards our doom less quickly buys us time to come up with Real Solutions (TM).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER165> What's your source for this 12 year figure? What exactly happening in 12 years? What scientists are saying it's our "final chance"?

I don't think being hyperbolic is constructive or helpful in the slightest when you're looking to have a serious discussion. To be clear, I'm not saying there isn't a problem. I agree that there are a multitude of problems and that we must take action to address them. But over the last few decades a few people have made a name for themselves by making crazy allegations, and I believe this has done nothing but make people take the issue less seriously than they should.

I'm happy to be corrected on this, since I'm not an expert and I haven't done that much research. When I last looked into this topic it didn't seem like there was consensus among the scientific community about the predicted timelines for future climate events or even a clear understanding of what those events would be. Again, I'm very happy to be corrected on any of this, as I take the topic of climate change incredibly seriously. It is my belief that allowing climate change issues to run loose is one of the biggest risks to our civilization.

</comment><comment><USER166> The obvious solution would be to decrease the population globally to more manageable level. That is not possible because humans are hardwired to breed and multiply. The next best thing we can do is try to do some big action on government levels. Again very difficult because it would mean decreasing standard of living (more expensive fuel, for example, to discourage inefficient cars, higher taxes on products dependent on fossil fuels), so you would be asking people to vote for decreasing their living standard and making their life worse off short term. Nobody is going to vote for a politician who promises to make your life worse and products you use daily more expensive thus making you poorer.

<comment><USER70> > That is not possible because humans are hardwired to breed and multiply.

Wait a second, then why is it that almost every western country is currently seeing negative population forecasts without immigration?

Seems like western countries were already heading towards population decline but have been propped up in recent years with the call for more economic growth and I don't think those calls are hardwired at all.

<comment><USER166> I think western countries are not representative of the world as they represent a small minority of world's population (10% or so).

I have read some predictions about world population continuing to increase to around 12 billion and stabilising at that number.

Let's say that happens. Then you run into the problem of people in western countries consuming many times more resources and energy per capital as developing world.

Then in order to avoid climate catastrophe it would mean you have to reduce standard of living for the minority that consumes the most fuel and energy, also standard of living of those in developing world could not catch up.

Basically the argument I'm trying to make it that it won't be sustainable to have 1 or 2 cars per family like it is normal in the West, and other similar luxuries.

<comment><USER70> Your assuming that developing countries don't develop in that time which would be quite the prediction.

Also I don't think 1-2 cars will be the issue, more along the lines of:

\- Can you own a car? Or must you bike to work? \- Can you access goods outside of your state? Since no trucks/planes for long distance shipping \- How much Heating/Cooling in the Winter/Summer will you be allowed? If any?

That or we could look into geo-engineering maybe?</comment></comment></comment></comment>