Is the Controlled Shrinking of Economies a Better Bet to Slow Climate Change Than Unproven Technologies?
Existing plans to limit global warming rely too much on “increasingly unrealistic assumptions” that societies will be able to remove huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere while simultaneously maintaining incessant economic growth over the next 50 years, according to a May 2021 study in Nature Communications. These strategies appear to be speeding the planet deeper into the climate crisis, the authors said.
Economic degrowth—strategies to shrink the economies of rich, developed countries while maintaining the wellbeing of the people and environments they are based on—might be less risky, and a better way to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement. Efforts to slow climate change that are built on structural social changes, like rethinking the way we work, produce food, heat our homes and move around could be more successful than those that rely on uncertain carbon removal technologies, they said.
like rethinking the way we work, produce food, heat our homes and move around could be more successful than those that rely on uncertain carbon removal technologies, they said.
Aren't we already starting down that path to some extent?
Solar panels on homes, work from home, home grown / local grown food sources, increasing efficiencies … etc.
One thing I think we really need to bone up on is reducing waste. Slightly touched on one aspect in another thread about the millions of gallons of water wasted through crumbling infrastructure.
So there you have it. The problem is not that hard to define.
In simplest terms, too many people consuming and polluting our Earth’s biosphere too much to be sustainable for more than a few decades (speaking from a 1970s perspective), so most of those few decades are gone already.
There was and is only one solution. Power down. Less babies, less consumption. Willingness to focus on living our lives within limited means.
Had we made the simple choice to get serious about anti-monopoly laws and stuck with them. Business wouldn’t have become quite the monster it has.
Had we retained the fairness doctrine people might not be as self-deluded as they are. Oh well, here we are.
Somewhere in the '70/'80s there needed to be a change in our mindset. Our collective mindset. A turning away from consumption obsession and towards a forward looking embrace of understanding Earth’s biosphere and learning how to work with Earth’s dynamic systems. Nurturing and doing with less, expecting less, spending more time actually living our lives, rather than on the treadmill. Thinking about the future and making it near as important as today.
But, we couldn’t do it then, when it was easy, now, given the hardening of extremism and all, future’s not looking good.
Still here we are with every year will continue retain excess heat, and we will get warmer, evaporation will suck more moisture from deeper and deeper, yet some skies will load up with water like never before, and weather will continue getting more destructive. Where do we go from here? We still have our one life to live. Indeed life goes on as before for most, some don’t even think anything is going on, still the creeping horror touches more every year, may be my turn this searing summer of drying tinder waiting for any spark, maybe not.
Is the Controlled Shrinking of Economies a Better Bet to Slow Climate Change Than Unproven Technologies?
In order to avoid the climate change, what i presume is the intention. I see three basic ideal steps about what to to.
Stopping inrease in emission of man-made Greenhouse gas in earth's atmosphere
Stopping emission of man-made Greenhouse gas in earth's atmosphere
Reducing emission of Greenhouse gas in earth's atmosphere
To implement this agenda seems to need every useful possibility that is avaiable including developing/engineering new possibilities/technologies. Especially if mankind want's to reduce the total amount of Greenhouse gas again. - My point: it's the best bet to bet on multiple solution methods.
To implement this agenda seems to need every useful possibility that is avaiable including developing/engineering new possibilities/technologies. Especially if mankind want’s to reduce the total amount of Greenhouse gas again. – My point: it’s the best bet to bet on multiple solution methods.
I think conditions will get worse before any changes we might undertake will have any affect. (or is it effect, in this case?) We need to improve the infrastructure to handle the coming changes.
I think conditions will get worse before any changes we might undertake will have any affect. (or is it effect, in this case?) We need to improve the infrastructure to handle the coming changes.
Agreed, and i indeed missed the point of improve/adapt the infrastrucure in order to endure and lengthen the range of options.
Reminds me, is there any number or guess about, when homo sapiens sapiens get’s extinct by this particular climate change?
The ones i can think of, regard only to specific events like rising of sea level for example, what in itself isn’t reason for extinction.
Interesting thought. I don’t believe I’ve heard of a number/temperature. I think the game is Adapt / evolve … will this push forth a new species of “us”? Provided no other species is already better adapted and waiting in the wings for world domination.
Either Homo Sapiens, or the direct ancestor came to the brink of extinction once before. I remember some story about a cave on the coast of Africa could have been one of the last refuges of mankind before it’s rise again. (?)
It's one of the biggest mysteries of recent human evolution. Roughly 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens went through a genetic bottleneck, a period when our genetic diversity shrank dramatically. But why? In the late 1990s, some scientists argued that the culprit was a massive volcanic eruption from what is now Lake Toba, in Sumatra, about 74,000 years ago, whose deadly effects reduced our species to a few thousand hardy individuals.
Now, new evidence suggests we were right about the volcano—but wrong about pretty much everything else.
Ain’t that Earth sciences for you. Well the good news our data was fairly accurate, the bad news, data was incomplete and our assumptions were off the mark.
It’s also what makes science fun. Well, if one isn’t too invested in protecting one’s ego. ?
These early humans survived a supervolcano eruption 74,000 years ago.
Striking evidence means the “Toba Catastrophe Theory” is headed for the dustbin.
ANNALEE NEWITZ - 3/20/2018
What they found surprised them. There was actually more debris from human habitation directly after the eruption than before it. A massive population crash would have resulted in far fewer tools and food remains, and the site might even have been abandoned. But what the researchers saw was a thriving, growing community, inventing new tools and forms of artistic expression. If there had been a volcanic winter, it must have been relatively mild.
“If Toba had triggered a major global climate event, Africa probably would have been affected, and they see no evidence of that,” University of Alberta geologist Britta Jensen told The Atlantic’s Ed Yong.
Of course, it’s always possible that this group was an outlier. …
“In simplest terms, too many people consuming and polluting our Earth’s biosphere too much to be sustainable for more than a few decades (speaking from a 1970s perspective), so most of those few decades are gone already.
There was and is only one solution. Power down. Less babies, less consumption. Willingness to focus on living our lives within limited means”
my friend Citizen as well as anyone else who brings up depopulation as part solution to AGW is to be laughed out of the room and rightly so, never to show their face again. Consider the need to stop temperature increase above 1.5 degrees in the next couple of decades and reduce atm CO 2 conc to 350ppm and you can see depopulation is a non starter for this short time frame in avoiding irreversible change. The other obvious point my friends Citizen and his elk avoids consumption is no uniform across the globe, when you consider the USA with 4% of worlds population but consumes 24% of worlds resources. A shared guilt it is not.
didirus, there is no tackling climate change without tackling capitalism. You can put your cards on a technological “fix” but you still have a system relying on consumerism, never ending and exponential in nature. Capitalism with its supply side economic captains of industry must produce waste as shareholders demand more products be manufactured and sold next year than previous years and the shit show goes on until we hit another crisis in capitalism.
here is an excellent example of the waste capitalism generates
thank you
Amazon destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses every year
there is no tackling climate change without tackling capitalism. ... a system relying on consumerism, never ending and exponential in nature.
Yes, changing/adjust the current system of handling resources is a reasonable and promising possibility, not just to stop the current climate change but to prevent similar and related problems in the future. - Taking the cause by the root.
I didn’t say it was going to happen. In fact from the continued lack of mass interest, it’s obvious nothing of the kind is going to happen. I’m just talking from a Physical Reality stand point, it’s what has to happen for current trends to change. Why do you think I’ve lost all faith in the future and it’s quite literally one day at a time.
@didirius here is an excellent example of the waste capitalism generates
What do you think "waste" isn't "consumption"? Please explain?
Here’s a little update of what’s happen within our physical biosphere,
Climate change: Where we are in seven charts and what you can do to help
Published 14 January 2020
I love how people can say “perpetual growth” with such casual disregard for insanity of the notion.
Another excellent example of how we have damned our futures by being too dunce to recognize the divide between, what our Human Mindscape can offer, and the limits of Physical Reality.
In a half way sane world the Ayn Rands and Milton Friedmans would have been laughed out of the room - instead they’ve become cult heroes of the super wealthy pea brains, and their brainwashed minions.
Milton Friedman, the Father of Economic Freedom
November 20, 2006 - The Heritage Foundation
From 345891 -“What do you think “waste” isn’t “consumption”? Please explain?”
Didirus my friend, do you understand what this person is raging about here when the Amazon point is clearly made of waste generated from predicted future consumption? I can’t make heads or tails out of this sentence in this context.
To stop the deep problem within once and for all, one has to reduce human greed, or control it.
Not all humans can control themselves. Humans, from what I’ve seen, are a greedy lot. They gorge until they can’t gorge anymore and then they gorge some more, until the money’s gone. Once gone, they wait until they have more money and they work until they drop dead from working all the time just to have money to buy more crap.