https://warmedal.se/~bjorn/posts/2022-06-16-would-1950s-living-standards-save-us-.html
@Sandra It may be a bit doomy, but I think (and as a former environmental researcher for twenty years I think my thoughts bear some weight) it is not doomy enough. I fear that we may have passed the point of no return, there may be some time left if we just stop.
But how could we do that? Reduce earth population to a fraction of a percent of today? I shudder when I think how that could happen … so … perhaps it is too late for any sunshine endings …
First and foremost, we need to stop all extraction of use of fossil fuels and that includes gas. That might not be enough (we've got a backlog to capture) but it'll make a huge difference.
Additionally, the three routes:
• consume less
• renewables (I know renewable≠infinite)
• geoengineering
We might need all three.
And in before someone comes at me with a specific complaint about a specific geoengineering proposal: I'm not talking about that one.
The meta issue is how market capitalism doesn't account for externalities. That's what caused this. It's also susceptible to feedback loops (like how the advertisement business is selling the selling of more selling of selling) but that could be a feature of a good system too, if the feedback loops were about something good, some aspect we were happy about getting boosted.
Please let's all keep on fighting.
> stop all extraction of use of fossil fuels and that includes gas.
"All" is a strong word. I think that on really really small scales (e.g. backup fuel to make heat in the winter) secondary use of fossil fuels aren't a big deal. Regular use or dependence is where things get problematic.
I really like what @neauoire and Low Tech Magazine are doing to get us there, leading by example.
@Seirdy @GoblinQuester @Sandra
What I see happening tho, is the first world might electrify itself on credit, as it suck the world's lithium out, then call a ban on third-world nations that didn't do it in time, and pay off that credit from carbon taxes coming to them.
Non-lithium–based electricity storage, especially renewable, is gonna be key. And also less reliance on electricity.
But this is yet another instance of the very same externalities and exploitation bugs in capitalism that I talk about all the time and that we need to fix.
@Sandra It's a tricky thing power, humans are totally addicted. One thing that scares me is that each year, the knowledge required to live with less of it disappears. If we're just over the hump of the senecca curve, there will be less and less people who remember how, and eventually, people will be born too sick to live outside of the feedback loop, and fighting capitalism would be fighting against their own existence.
I think it was Illich who said:
Preservation of the sick life of medically dependent people in an unhealthy environment became the principal business of the medical profession. Natural immunity, and traditional culture could not cope.
Hospital-born children thus grow into adults who can breathe the air, eat the food, and survive the lifelessness of a modern city, who will breed and raise at almost any cost a generation even more dependent on medicine.
@Sandra I don't have enough fingers to count our friends who rely heavily on refrigerated medicine. I hate to think that my personal grudge against capitalism puts them in the crossfire.
Humans taking care of each other can be a wonderful thing. What we wanna fix is the reckless unaccounted-for memory leak called transaction externalities, and the ruthless proprietarization of means of production called worker exploitation.
Iow, let's kick out the non-ambulance cars first 🤷🏻♀️
@Sandra and people eating medicated animal carcasses 🌱
@Sandra @neauoire I think awareness raising and education are priorities. I was talking to some 16-year old secondary school kids recently and a bit shocked about how little they were aware of the issues and also how little they cared. And the same for my brother's kids, who are in their twenties. They just don't see the urgency.
*: along with wrong ior wack ideas