<story><title>Engineers can disrupt climate change</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/engineers-you-can-disrupt-climate-change</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Robotbeat</author><text>It only becomes politically viable if the engineering (and therefore monetarily, etc) viable.&lt;p&gt;“Vasectomies for everyone, and you have to wear a hair shirt and abandon your house to live with 20 other people in an area dense enough for you to walk to your job, which is harvesting potatoes from an urban organic farm fertilized with human feces” is one possible solution to stopping climate change, but it isn’t politically viable.&lt;p&gt;“Your truck is electric now, and your electricity comes from wind, nuclear, and solar power, including on the roof of your existing home. You travel via High Speed Rail or electric airplane. Steel is made using hydrogen. You use cutting edge low-latency satellite Internet to telecommute. We figured out how to reduce emissions of cattle using seaweed supplements.”&lt;p&gt;…is politically viable. So engineering is necessary for the amount of feasible political capital we have to be spent on climate action.&lt;p&gt;Engineering is essential to enabling political action.</text></item><item><author>BitwiseFool</author><text>Climate Change is first and foremost a political problem. I&amp;#x27;m &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; saying that innovation and engineering can&amp;#x27;t address the issue. But we actually have plenty of good tools to reduce our carbon footprint that our politics just will not allow us to implement. Can you imagine forcing construction of Nuclear Power Plants, restricting meat consumption, and policies that heavily disincentivize population growth? Absolutely not. But people are hoping Engineers find magic bullets so that our leaders don&amp;#x27;t have to take drastic action.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tinco</author><text>Exactly, but the engineering is already done. We already have nuclear power, we already have adequate meat substitutes, we have high efficiency wind mills, we have high efficiency solar panels. We have high capacity batteries and high efficiency motors for our cars.&lt;p&gt;There literally is no &lt;i&gt;essential&lt;/i&gt; challenge left in engineering. Frankly, just nuclear power could have been enough to dodge this whole fiasco 50 years ago if it wasn&amp;#x27;t so much more expensive than oil.&lt;p&gt;To demand even more from engineering is madness. To implement all of these things at the scale needed is politics, nothing else.</text></comment>
<story><title>Engineers can disrupt climate change</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/engineers-you-can-disrupt-climate-change</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Robotbeat</author><text>It only becomes politically viable if the engineering (and therefore monetarily, etc) viable.&lt;p&gt;“Vasectomies for everyone, and you have to wear a hair shirt and abandon your house to live with 20 other people in an area dense enough for you to walk to your job, which is harvesting potatoes from an urban organic farm fertilized with human feces” is one possible solution to stopping climate change, but it isn’t politically viable.&lt;p&gt;“Your truck is electric now, and your electricity comes from wind, nuclear, and solar power, including on the roof of your existing home. You travel via High Speed Rail or electric airplane. Steel is made using hydrogen. You use cutting edge low-latency satellite Internet to telecommute. We figured out how to reduce emissions of cattle using seaweed supplements.”&lt;p&gt;…is politically viable. So engineering is necessary for the amount of feasible political capital we have to be spent on climate action.&lt;p&gt;Engineering is essential to enabling political action.</text></item><item><author>BitwiseFool</author><text>Climate Change is first and foremost a political problem. I&amp;#x27;m &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; saying that innovation and engineering can&amp;#x27;t address the issue. But we actually have plenty of good tools to reduce our carbon footprint that our politics just will not allow us to implement. Can you imagine forcing construction of Nuclear Power Plants, restricting meat consumption, and policies that heavily disincentivize population growth? Absolutely not. But people are hoping Engineers find magic bullets so that our leaders don&amp;#x27;t have to take drastic action.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>oconnore</author><text>I think a major issue is that the viability of solutions is compared on a short term cost basis that ignores externalities.&lt;p&gt;As an example: on a very short term basis, it is easier and cheaper to pile your trash in your basement, or to not brush your teeth. The value of those things only becomes very apparent after a day or more.&lt;p&gt;On a short term basis, fossil fuel based solutions are really great, flexible, stable, and cheap. We have to do something different despite that, because that short term basis doesn&amp;#x27;t tell the full story.</text></comment>